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This paper contributes to the study of power imbalances in intercultural encounters by investigating the role of language differences in the construction and deconstruction of ‘cultural differences’. Adopting a Critical Discursive Psychological approach, it demonstrates how self- and other-perceived language proficiency differences can lead to the (re)production of cultural stereotypes. At the same time, evaluations of language proficiency differences might also be used to resist cultural explanations. Taking the example of international management higher education, the study shows how students with self-evaluated stronger English proficiency regularly draw on culture as explanatory factor when describing their perceptions of ‘weaker’ English speakers’ engagement in teaching and learning activities. The study, which is based on 46 student reflexivity papers, thus demonstrates that overlooking the role of language differences in intercultural encounters might lead to stereotyping processes. Language-related power asymmetries get therefore masked as ‘cultural differences’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics teacher education is often described in terms of the mathematical content and pedagogy that teachers need. However, recent calls for equity in mathematics education demand a broadening of this view. In this article, we articulate a theoretical description of what the role of being an advocate in language-diverse classrooms could involve and some of the practical challenges that mathematics teacher educators may have when introducing it, using empirical examples from our teacher education courses for teachers of Grades 1–7 in Norway. In the theoretical description of the role of being an advocate into mathematics teacher education, we distinguish between in-class advocacy and advocacy beyond the classroom and what these different kinds of advocacy might entail in language-diverse classrooms. The practical issues that we identified in raising different aspects of the role indicate the need for further research into how to raise preservice teachers' awareness about the role of being an advocate, in and outside of the classroom, in different cultural settings and how this knowledge could be used in teacher education to challenge preservice teachers' language ideologies and raise non-trivial issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of neurodegeneration, speech and language assessments are useful for diagnosing aphasic syndromes and for characterizing other disorders. As a complement to classic tests, scalable and low-cost digital tools can capture relevant anomalies automatically, potentially supporting the quest for globally equitable markers of brain health. However, this promise remains unfulfilled due to limited linguistic diversity in scientific works and clinical instruments. Here we argue for cross-linguistic research as a core strategy to counter this problem. First, we survey the contributions of linguistic assessments in the study of primary progressive aphasia and the three most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders worldwide-Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. Second, we address two forms of linguistic unfairness in the literature: the neglect of most of the world's 7000 languages and the preponderance of English-speaking cohorts. Third, we review studies showing that linguistic dysfunctions in a given disorder may vary depending on the patient's language and that English speakers offer a suboptimal benchmark for other language groups. Finally, we highlight different approaches, tools and initiatives for cross-linguistic research, identifying core challenges for their deployment. Overall, we seek to inspire timely actions to counter a looming source of inequity in behavioural neurology.

The main aim of the article is to identify Slovenian children's attitudes towards foreign languages (FL), their motivation for learning languages, the influence of different significant others (teachers, parents, peers) on their language attitudes, and the ways they perceive languages which they are exposed to. The focus is on FLs in general rather than on a particular FL. The study is linked to the project 'Languages Matter' whose principal goal is to determine which factors support the creation of a supportive learning environment for the development of plurilingualism in the Slovenian school context. The article presents the results of a survey conducted in different primary schools in Slovenia on a population of 472 pupils aged 8/9 (n = 472). The survey questionnaire consists of two parts. The first part uses the LANGattMini scale (Bratož et al., 2021) to investigate the following factors: FL learning motivation, FL attitudes, and importance of significant others. The second part uses a qualitative paradigm and aims to gain an insight into the respondents' perceptions of FLs. The results of the study indicate that children's attitudes towards FLs are generally positive but at the same time build a complex picture of interdependence between attitudes, motivation, and significant others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilingualism would potentially foster understanding, increase contact between host country members and migrants, and ease the acculturation process. Acculturation and language competence are supposedly connected from the perspectives of second-language acquisition and socio-psychological adjustment in cross-cultural contacts. This article looks at the language policy of Spain and its impact on the sociocultural adjustment of international students through their life stories. Examining cultural adjustment experiences of two male Iranian PhD candidates, the current study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how language policies can shape sociocultural adaptation in a multicultural society like Spain. Qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews were analysed in relation to linguistic traits and social distance factors to reveal the linkages between the candidates' linguistic competence and their acculturation orientation. Results showed that the two participants faced various challenges in their cultural adjustment process, particularly in terms of language learning. It is suggested, based on the findings of the study, that multilingualism may facilitate intercultural communication and enhance social integrati [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying sources of barriers to occupational mobility is central to evaluating the efficiency of the labor market. In this paper, we present an augmented Roy model in which workers self‐select into occupations, subject to labor market barriers that are specific to their socio‐linguistic group. Our findings provide evidence of differences in labor market outcomes across gender and linguistic groups in Canada. We argue that these differences could be attributed to barriers to labor mobility and that the reduction of these disparities would result in higher aggregate productivity in the country. In the augmented Roy model, the frictions result in inefficient allocation of labor across occupations. The study quantifies the change in aggregate productivity that would result from reducing the friction. The elimination of the frictions increased aggregate output on average by 6.2% and 4.4% in 1991 and 2011, respectively. This finding highlights the importance of reducing language barriers and gender inequality in the labor market. We provide policy recommendations for mitigating the disparities in socioeconomic outcomes between gender and linguistic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Menopause is associated with declines in cognitive control. However, there is individual variability in the slope of this decline. Recent work suggests that indices of cognitive control are mediated by communicative demands of the language environment. However, little is known about how the impact of bilingual experience generalizes across the lifespan, particularly in females who exhibit steeper cognitive decline due to increasing age and menopausal transition. Thus, we investigated whether diversity of language use in distinct communicative contexts modulated the effects of aging and menopause on cognitive control in an adult lifespan sample of healthy females. We performed robust linear regressions on a sample of 120 females (age range 20–65 years) to characterize age- (n = 120) and menopause-related (n = 59) declines in cognitive control (as assessed by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) and to determine whether they are modulated by different facets of bilingual language experience, including the diversity of language use (i.e., language entropy) in home and workplace environments. Workplace but not home language diversity modulated age- and menopause-related declines in cognitive control, suggesting that females may compensate for decline by virtue of adapting to the externally imposed demands of the language environment. These findings have implications for identifying which aspects of bilingual experience may contribute to cognitive reserve in healthy aging. Public Significance Statement: The novel findings of this study provide value to understanding the trajectory in age- and menopause-related decline in cognitive control that is experienced by females and how particular aspects of bilingual language experience may, in turn, mitigate these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kidd and Garcia demonstrate that the field of language acquisition must consider a more diverse range of languages. This is certainly needed, to gain a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms of language acquisition; to achieve that, we need more longitudinal studies of several children per language, with (trained) fluent-user transcription and analysis. This could, for example, help to establish the size of the unit from which the child extracts generalizations and builds categories and networks in phonological development.

In an increasing context of internationalisation, the European Commission announced in 2019 the creation of the first seventeen 'European Universities' (EUnis), a Pan-European consortium of higher education institutions designed to promote European values, cooperation and identity. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine the ways in which these newly created EUnis construct their views of linguistic diversity and multilingualism. The research used as a case study the example of UNA EUROPA, an alliance of eight leading universities with eight different languages. Drawing mainly on content analysis combined with a discourse analysis approach, three data sources – the project proposal for the EU Commission, the UNA EUROPA website documents, and a research interview with one of its representatives – were examined to look into the ways in which languages and multilingualism are conceptualised. Findings reveal that linguistic diversity and multilingualism are given different degrees of visibility in the three sets of data examined and that utilitarian objectives seem to predominate over identity ones. It is expected that these findings will help unveil the ways in which language issues are problematised or not in the agenda of these newly created transnational universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has markedly reshaped people's language behaviour on social media and may beget varying interactive possibilities in the online environment. From a perspective of the virtual linguistic landscape, this enquiry looks into the dynamic and multilingual nature of the geotagged social media content by situating this issue in the context of the pandemic. An additional aim is to explore in what way the pandemic has influenced the form of this linguistic landscape. To achieve these goals, the enquiry collects and analyses over 90,000 posts on Instagram from three sites in Dublin, Ireland, between 2019 and 2021, using a set of established computational approaches from the field of natural language processing as well as diversity indices from ecology. The results picture a dynamic mechanism of the virtual linguistic landscape in Dublin over the COVID-19 pandemic, in which linguistic richness and diversity were revealed. This richness and diversity, according to our analysis, were beset by the pandemic associated with a decrease in online activities at the research sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language technology has the potential to facilitate intercultural communication through meaningful translations. However, the current state of language technology is deeply entangled with colonial knowledge due to path dependencies and neo-colonial tendencies in the global governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Language technology is a complex and emerging field that presents challenges for co-design interventions due to enfolding in assemblages of global scale and diverse sites and its knowledge intensity. This paper uses LiveLanguage, a lexical database, a set of services with particular emphasis on modelling language diversity and integrating small and minority languages, as an example to discuss and close the gap from pluriversal design theory to practice. By diversifying the concept of emerging technology, we can better approach language technology in global contexts. The paper presents a model comprising of five layers of technological activity. Each layer consists of specific practices and stakeholders, thus provides distinctive spaces for co-design interventions as mode of inquiry for de-linking, re-thinking and re-building language technology towards pluriversality. In that way, the paper contributes to reflecting the position of co-design in decolonising emergent technologies, and to integrating complex theoretical knowledge towards decoloniality into language technology design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediterranean landscapes have co-evolved with people: they often require human management to sustain biodiversity and local communities have developed detailed ecological knowledge about their surrounding ecosystems. We document plant names used by Tašlḥit speakers in the High Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco and explore how they encode local ecological knowledge of landscape and biodiversity as well as social histories. We conducted two complementary field studies in the communes of Imgdal and Ukaymdn, documenting plant names along with local definitions and perceptions of place, vegetation, and habitat and perceived trends of change in the local botanical environment through structured and semi-structured interviews. In Imgdal we used herbarium prompts, whilst in Ukaymdn we focussed on local definitions of ethnoecological categories. We analyse the diversity and multiplicity of life form and descriptive terms as well as plant names and compare these to scientific taxonomy. We conclude that current social and environmental change, especially climate change, could present a threat to the High Atlas biocultural diversity and local knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the slogan of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, "The Arabic language is the basic component of the national identity." The present study investigates the influence of language on the promotion of the Emirati national identity and its social consequences within the framework of the UAE Centenary Plan 2071. Cultural pluralism theory serves as the theoretical foundation for this research. The study employed random sampling to collect quantitative data from 200 respondents through a survey questionnaire. The data was then analysed using descriptive methods. The results indicate that language plays a crucial role in enhancing the national identity of the UAE. It achieves this by fostering a sense of belonging, preserving societal unity, promoting respect for social values, and contributing to the spirit of cooperation among members of society. The UAE government should continue to promote language as a symbol of national identity, recognising its crucial role in preserving cultural heritage and enhancing societal cohesion. This study concludes by discussing the implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of three Hispanic neighborhoods in Philadelphia, PA, aiming to document and measure the presence of the Spanish language in public spaces and understand the influence of time, location, and establishment type on language use. Based on 3437 signs analyzed from 2021 to 2023, our findings reveal that English dominates the LL at 61.65%, while Spanish constitutes 24.16%. The study employs chi-squared tests to confirm the impact of time and location on language use, highlighting a rise in bilingual and monolingual Spanish signs over time. Additionally, variables were combined into clusters using a heatmap to explore language use across different establishments. Bilingualism emerges as a sustained trend, underscoring inclusivity and linguistic diversity within these contexts. Location analysis exposes unique linguistic characteristics in each neighborhood, reflecting the cultural and linguistic diversity of their communities. The Golden Block exhibits bilingual prevalence, indicative of evolving demographics. Olney showcases language mixtures due to diverse ethnic and sociolinguistic influences, while South Philadelphia's Italian Market area features prevalent Spanish and multilingual signage. The study underscores the growing presence of Spanish and minority languages, emphasizing the need to recognize and revitalize linguistic diversity in urban spaces. As cities evolve, continued exploration of the LL is crucial to understanding language dynamics in relation to identity, culture, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Automatic recognition of stutters (ARS) from speech recordings can facilitate objective assessment and intervention for people who stutter. However, the performance of ARS systems may depend on how the speech data are segmented and labelled for training and testing. This study compared two segmentation methods: event-based, which delimits speech segments by their fluency status, and interval-based, which uses fixed-length segments regardless of fluency. Methods: Machine learning models were trained and evaluated on intervalbased and event-based stuttered speech corpora. The models used acoustic and linguistic features extracted from the speech signal and the transcriptions generated by a state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition system. Results: The results showed that event-based segmentation led to better ARS performance than interval-based segmentation, as measured by the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic. The results suggest differences in the quality and quantity of the data because of segmentation method. The inclusion of linguistic features improved the detection of wholeword repetitions, but not other types of stutters. Discussion: The findings suggest that event-based segmentation is more suitable for ARS than interval-based segmentation, as it preserves the exact boundaries and types of stutters. The linguistic features provide useful information for separating supra-lexical disfluencies from fluent speech but may not capture the acoustic characteristics of stutters. Future work should explore more robust and diverse features, as well as larger and more representative datasets, for developing effective ARS systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local minority languages and dialects, through the local knowledge and expertise associated with them, can play major roles in analysing climate change and biodiversity loss, in facilitating community awareness of environmental crises and in setting up locally‐adapted resilience and sustainability strategies. While the situation and contribution of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples are of emblematic importance, the issue of the relationships between cultural and linguistic diversity and environmental awareness and protection does not solely concern peripheral highly‐specialized communities in specific ecosystems of the Global South, but constitutes a worldwide challenge, throughout all of the countries, whatever their geographical location, their economical development, or their political status. Environmental emergency and climate change resilience should therefore raise international awareness on the need to promote the survival and development of minority languages and dialects and to take into account their creativity and expertise in relation to the dynamics of their local environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the transculturalization of Cultural Studies by focusing on the theoretical and political implications of translating it. This is a question that has been discussed over the years, especially in the context of the global spread and the institutionalization (or lack thereof) of cultural studies in universities outside of Britain in the early 1990s. In this context cultural studies practitioners have questioned the very use of labels such as 'internationalization' or 'globalization', and expressed concerns about whether its expansion would happen at the expense of its distinctiveness. I pick up this discussion while re-framing it from a perspective which focuses on the politics of translation. I argue that translation is not a linear or automatic process (you bring something from A to B and it gets translated), but a collective work which is translingual, trans- and extradisciplinary. From this perspective, cultural studies has always been characterized by a strong commitment to translation. If labels such as 'British' or 'American' cultural studies obscure this commitment, this is because of a narrow understanding of translation as a cultural practice. In light of these considerations, I point to translation as a fundamental means to oppose cultural elitism, and the fragmentation of intellectual engagement produced by disciplinary, (inter)nationalizing and globalizing trends. Against this background, the paper stresses the potential of translation work with respect to re-thinking cultural studies' distinctiveness in the current conjuncture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics teacher educators experience tensions when developing their practices in order to integrate social justice issues, such as language diversity. Research on what in fact causes the experiencing of these tensions and how to navigate them to improve professional practice is yet limited. As part of an action research project, I investigate my reflections on planning to integrate language diversity issues into mathematics teacher education. I discuss three main tensions to do with: focusing on my teaching or the pre-service teachers’ teaching; wanting to change my practices but struggling to let go of control; identifying alternative activities but struggling to choose from them. The analysis revealed that each of these tensions was connected to different moments of my planning and to the uncertainties of wanting to achieve multiple aims simultaneously. Understanding the characteristics and implications of the tensions I experienced provides insights into the complexities of planning, such as the blind spots of aiming to be responsive to pre-service teachers’ needs, whilst at the same time contradicting my assumptions about good practice. Knowledge about these complexities can support future research about what aspects of practice might influence the improvement of integrating language diversity issues into mathematics teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a unit on linguistics in the curriculum of the writing seminar taken by all undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania. The linguistic unit introduces undergraduates to key concepts from linguistic scholarship, and compels students to engage with these language issues in order to advance their consciousness of linguistic inequity and their appreciation of linguistic diversity. Taking our cue from linguists, the unit focuses on the descriptive and contrasts it with the prescriptive approach with which they are typically accustomed. It introduces foundational ideas about language, languaging, and linguistic discrimination through readings and videos. Students write guided reflections in response to the readings and screenings, culminating in a personal narrative and questions they share with their peers on an online discussion board, exploring their own and others' language use or language attitudes. Upon completion of this unit, many students confirm one of the unit's learning outcomes by expressing a new awareness of a linguistic climate that they had previously assumed was neutral. Our goal, in part, is to render the campus's linguistic climate more equitable by advancing students' consciousness of linguistic inequity and appreciation of the rich diversity of their voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early bilingual language experience can enhance children's social-cognitive skills for effective communication. This study examined whether individual variability in bilingual language diversity, measured by language entropy, influenced 3- to 5-year-old children's engagement of contextual information in their selective trust strategies. One-hundred-and-forty Singaporean children (58 girls, M age = 53.64 months, 97.1% Asian) were presented with an informant who provided either accurate or inaccurate information in a context with either adequate or limited information access. Bilingual children with greater language diversity, compared to those with less language diversity, were more likely to adapt their accuracy-based selective trust strategy to the informant's circumstances (i.e, information access). Results provide new insights into the role of diverse linguistic experiences in shaping children's social cognitive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT; Giles et al. 1987), this qualitative study documents the perceptions of Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrants regarding the communicative behaviors that native speakers make when interacting with them in the Canadian workplace. The findings of this phenomenological study resulted from a thematic analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews. Participants gave their accounts of those communicative behaviors by native speakers that they considered helpful to facilitate interactions and enhance their relations (accommodation). Participants also shared examples of nonaccommodative instances where they perceived that their native-speaking peers did not adjust or sufficiently adjust their communicative behaviors (underaccommodation) or engaged in a communicative behaviour that went beyond what was necessary for the interaction (overaccommodation). Based on these findings, this study offers insights into those behaviors and practices that could contribute to constructive interactions between nonnative and native speakers in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Languages are known to describe the world in diverse ways. Across lexicons, diversity is pervasive, appearing through phenomena such as lexical gaps and untranslatability. However, in computational resources, such as multilingual lexical databases, diversity is hardly ever represented. In this paper, we introduce a method to enrich computational lexicons with content relating to linguistic diversity. The method is verified through two large-scale case studies on kinship terminology, a domain known to be diverse across languages and cultures: one case study deals with seven Arabic dialects, while the other one with three Indonesian languages. Our results, made available as browseable and downloadable computational resources, extend prior linguistics research on kinship terminology, and provide insight into the extent of diversity even within linguistically and culturally close communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two middle school educators earned a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching fellowship. A Fulbright Finland Foundation inter-country travel grant provided the grantees with a unique opportunity to connect and collaborate at the University of Helsinki. Within this research, they described their inquiry experiences. The research included examining authentic student-centered learning continuums and phenomenon-based learning in Finland and teachers' adaptability in relation to meeting the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse math classrooms in the Netherlands. This paper summarizes how cross-cultural dialogues, classroom observations, and informal interviews with educators, students, and thought leaders informed each grantee's discovery of how student-centered learning is structured, delivered, and valued in Finland and the Netherlands. This article (1) describes how communication empowers middle school mathematics students, (2) analyzes the learning-to-learn framework, and (3) provides insights into how to utilize language diversity in a mathematics classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linguistic landscape of Canadian workplaces is becoming increasingly diverse as organizations employ individuals from various countries and who speak different native languages. As language is a critical marker of identity and group membership, language-based identities are powerful in shaping workplace experiences. Understanding these experiences and how individuals adapt can offer organizations insight into how to integrate a linguistically diverse workforce. This study explored the language-related experiences of Spanish-speaking Latin Americans in the Canadian National Capital Region as they adapt to and integrate into their workplaces and the coping strategies they use. Twenty-four semi-structured interviews demonstrated that participants vacillate between feelings of self-doubt and a sense of confidence as they navigate the emotional and cognitive challenges of working in their non-native language. A detailed description of the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and interactional coping strategies that participants enacted to navigate and adapt to their workplaces is provided. Findings from this study have implications for practical strategies to facilitate the integration of non-native speakers into the Canadian workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have recently emphasized the importance of diversity inclusion. Motivated by this goal, we examine the impact of employing individuals with disabilities in apparel manufacturing cells on overall team productivity (PD). We formulate a series of deterministic and stochastic PD maximization assignment problems to study the impact of disability inclusion on a production line. We extend the baseline PD maximization formulation to study a multi‐objective problem that simultaneously maximizes PD, disability diversity (DD), and language diversity (LD). Each analysis is performed across two different garments drawn from a real‐world setting. The models are tested using archival time study data collected in partnership with an apparel manufacturing firm where more than 75% of the billed work hours are from individuals with significant disabilities. The following insights emerge from the analyses. First, the PD of teams that have individuals across multiple, different types of disabilities is higher than the PD of teams with employees who share a single, specific type of disability. Second, teams that employ both individuals with and without disabilities perform slightly better than teams that consist of only individuals with disabilities. In some instances, contrary to intuition, teams of only individuals with disabilities even have higher PD than teams of only individuals with no disabilities. Finally, our results from the multi‐objective problem that simultaneously maximizes PD, DD, and LD suggest that PD is not generally sensitive to increases in DD. However, PD is sensitive at extreme levels of DD and LD. Limitations and possible future extensions of the study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the orthography of words used by the National University of Lesotho undergraduate students on WhatsApp. Although language is regarded as a coherent and homogeneous system, it can also be studied in its variations across time and space and how it is actually used in social interaction. Youth immersion in the use of social media has successfully made the presence of the digital era to be felt not only in social life but also in communicative competencies. This paper recognised the youth linguistic creativity as a concept that characterised nomenclature of spelling conventions observed on social media. Using voluntary participatory approach, data was collected from undergraduate students majoring in English at the University who volunteered to share their WhatsApp posts for the purpose of this study. Data revealed that youths’ social media discourse featured different orthographic representations as a result of accent stylisation, substitution, acronym, hybrid, clipping, coalescence, onomatopoeic spellings and deletions. The paper concluded that youth social media discourse deviates from conventional spellings, and thus serves as a linguistic innovation from the part of the youths. It further concluded that social media discourse is a true reflection of language diversity in this digital era especially with regards to the language of the youth globally.

Approval by the French Parliament of the law on the protection of regional languages as heritage and the decision by the Constitutional Council concerning this law reveal that the protection of language diversity continues to be a matter of debate in France. These recent developments illustrate the State’s ambivalence regarding this diversity and the enduring tension between the affirmation of linguistic unity and official monolingualism and the intention to protect regional languages. In a laconic statement of reasons, which has become a source of criticism and uncertainty, the Council declared immersive teaching and the use of the regional languages’ diacritic signs in civil status documents to be unconstitutional on the basis of Article 2 of the Constitution. This provision, which proclaims that “The language of the Republic is French” constrains the possible scope of protection of regional languages. It is clear from this decision and from the law that was eventually enacted that the boundaries of this protection remain unmoved and its content is inevitably limited.

IntroductionAutomatic recognition of stutters (ARS) from speech recordings can facilitate objective assessment and intervention for people who stutter. However, the performance of ARS systems may depend on how the speech data are segmented and labelled for training and testing. This study compared two segmentation methods: event-based, which delimits speech segments by their fluency status, and interval-based, which uses fixed-length segments regardless of fluency.MethodsMachine learning models were trained and evaluated on interval-based and event-based stuttered speech corpora. The models used acoustic and linguistic features extracted from the speech signal and the transcriptions generated by a state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition system.ResultsThe results showed that event-based segmentation led to better ARS performance than interval-based segmentation, as measured by the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic. The results suggest differences in the quality and quantity of the data because of segmentation method. The inclusion of linguistic features improved the detection of whole-word repetitions, but not other types of stutters.DiscussionThe findings suggest that event-based segmentation is more suitable for ARS than interval-based segmentation, as it preserves the exact boundaries and types of stutters. The linguistic features provide useful information for separating supra-lexical disfluencies from fluent speech but may not capture the acoustic characteristics of stutters. Future work should explore more robust and diverse features, as well as larger and more representative datasets, for developing effective ARS systems.

The study examines language aware practices in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finland. In Finland, the number of citizens with languages other than the national languages is estimated to increase, and population growth is dependent on migration. Children enrolled in ECEC have increasingly diverse language backgrounds. This calls for adjusting pedagogical practices to the needs of multilingual children only starting to familiarise themselves with the language of instruction. The data analysed were part of a national survey. A total of 882 respondents working in ECEC answered the survey. For this study, we concentrated on two open questions: “What kinds of practices do you have to support the language learning of children with an immigration background?” (N = 538) and “What kinds of needs to develop practices have you identified regarding language learning of children with an immigrant background or organising linguistic support?” (N = 509). Qualitative content analysis was used as an analytical approach. Our findings were condensed to a model consisting of six steps of language aware ECEC. The first three steps were well implemented according to the data. However, more attention is still needed to fully support language aware teachers, teams and systems.

This paper constructs a Chinese speech evaluation system based on the characteristics of the vocal mechanism of Chinese speech and uses the detection framework of statistical speech recognition to realize the automatic detection function of pronunciation bias. Assuming that the amplitude spectra of speech and noise obey the generalized Gamma distribution and Gaussian distribution, respectively, the MMSE estimator of the logarithmic spectrum of the speech signal is derived. The speech presence probability under the generalized Gamma speech model is derived as a correction to the MMSE estimation based on language evolution and diversity features. The correct recognition rate of the proposed algorithm reaches 64%, which indicates that the proposed algorithm can effectively suppress the interference of convolutional noise on the speech signal features and improve the subjective perceptual quality of diverse languages.

Language diversity is an inherent part of international business transactions, despite the dominance of English. The challenge for management, HRM, and employees in multinational companies is to find the right strategy. Multinational organizations can be categorized using the EPRG (ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, geocentric) model, according to how they define their relationship with subsidiaries, and how they operate in foreign markets. Using this model, conclusions can also be drawn from their applied language strategy. JEL code: F23, Z13

Two middle school educators earned a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching fellowship. A Fulbright Finland Foundation inter-country travel grant provided the grantees with a unique opportunity to connect and collaborate at the University of Helsinki. Within this research, they described their inquiry experiences. The research included examining authentic student-centered learning continuums and phenomenon-based learning in Finland and teachers’ adaptability in relation to meeting the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse math classrooms in the Netherlands. This paper summarizes how cross-cultural dialogues, classroom observations, and informal interviews with educators, students, and thought leaders informed each grantee’s discovery of how student-centered learning is structured, delivered, and valued in Finland and the Netherlands. This article (1) describes how communication empowers middle school mathematics students, (2) analyzes the learning-to-learn framework, and (3) provides insights into how to utilize language diversity in a mathematics classroom.

In today's multilingual lexical databases, the majority of the world's languages are under-represented. Beyond a mere issue of resource incompleteness, we show that existing lexical databases have structural limitations that result in a reduced expressivity on culturally-specific words and in mapping them across languages. In particular, the lexical meaning space of dominant languages, such as English, is represented more accurately while linguistically or culturally diverse languages are mapped in an approximate manner. Our paper assesses state-of-the-art multilingual lexical databases and evaluates their strengths and limitations with respect to their expressivity on lexical phenomena of linguistic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing emphasis on the role of language in teaching and learning mathematics, most significantly in classrooms with increased language diversity. Consequently, teachers face considerable challenges in accommodating diverse needs and must employ strategies to support all students. It is, therefore, crucial to provide prospective teachers with opportunities to enhance their pedagogical approaches while raising their awareness of the relationship between language and mathematics. In this respect, Live Brief assessments in Higher Education, which involve students working on authentic projects/tasks from a school, may be a promising avenue. This research draws on the 19 Live Brief group presentations prepared by a total of 118 Year 1 prospective primary school teachers, specifically focusing on the language-related challenges faced by a local school in early years mathematics. The data encompassed prospective teachers' proposed practices, including one-to-one, small group and whole class activities, that aimed to address language diversity. Data analysis was informed by Moschkovich's three perspectives on the relation between language and teaching and learning mathematics, namely lexicon, register and situated-sociocultural perspectives. While a lexicon perspective was commonly evident in the activities, the manifestation of a situated socio-cultural perspective mainly in the one–to-one activities is noteworthy, given its social and discursive nature. Three themes encapsulated a range of practices suggested in the findings: explicit vocabulary teaching, different strategies of scaffolding and utilising multi-sensory approaches. While the lexicon and register perspectives were commonly evident, the situated socio-cultural perspective was much less commonly manifested in the practices. We offer implications to initial teacher education curriculum, future research and policies about teaching and learning mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Languages are known to describe the world in diverse ways. Across lexicons, diversity is pervasive, appearing through phenomena such as lexical gaps and untranslatability. However, in computational resources, such as multilingual lexical databases, diversity is hardly ever represented. In this paper, we introduce a method to enrich computational lexicons with content relating to linguistic diversity. The method is verified through two large-scale case studies on kinship terminology, a domain known to be diverse across languages and cultures: one case study deals with seven Arabic dialects, while the other one with three Indonesian languages. Our results, made available as browseable and downloadable computational resources, extend prior linguistics research on kinship terminology, and provide insight into the extent of diversity even within linguistically and culturally close communities.

How do teachers deal with multilingual pupils, and what reasons govern these choices? Whereas most studies on this topic have examined teachers in schools with monolingual policies, this paper includes teachers at bilingual schools. Framed by pedagogical theory, we present a qualitative research study based on interviews with teachers in the German state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). This area constitutes an interesting research site since 30-50% of the children are multilingual, but language policies in schools differ: Whereas most schools have a monolingual orientation, bilingual schools aim to purposely integrate languages beyond German in regular classes. Our results show that despite the differences in school language policies, despite different professional biographies and independent of knowledge on multilingual upbringings, teachers in mono- as well as bilingual schools reproduce the unquestioned perception of a monolingual norm. Furthermore, teachers at bilingual schools focusing on European languages deem migration-induced multilingualism as even less important than do teachers at regular schools. Finally, the results underline the importance of institutional policies and allow for insights into individual logic. On a larger horizon, the study contributes to issues of language-responsible teaching, equal opportunities, educational equality and social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The empirical study presents the quantitative representation of languages in the investigated areas - Michalska and Zelena Street - in the linguistic landscape of Bratislava. At the same time, it emphasizes the necessity of further qualitative data analysis with regard to the perception of individual languages - present in the language landscape under study - by a specific type of recipient. Important evaluation criteria in the analysis process are (1) the visual accessibility of the sign, (2) the rate of distribution of the sign in the investigated area and (3) the classification of the sign (top-down vs. bottom-up signs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to examine Spanish-speaking students' attainment to improve our knowledge about students at the end of secondary school in England. The sample consisted of students who completed the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in inner London Local Authority. The findings of the analysis of GCSE results by language spoken at home suggest that, overall, students who speak Spanish language do less well than other groups, and their low attainment is a key concern for policymakers and teachers. However, while this is true overall, there were wide differences in performance when broken down into European speakers and Latin American speakers. The empirical evidence suggest that European Spanish speakers do better that Latin American Spanish speakers. A number of factors were identified in the underachievement of Spanish students, including the language barrier, poverty, and pupil mobility rate. Policy implications for data collection and further research are discussed in the final section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies have examined only the unidirectional impact of cultural diversity on the economic performance of countries, regions, and cities, not the other ways. They have assumed the diversity as given, while it may also grow, due to in-migration of workers and entrepreneurs, with economic growth and may be dependent on it. This paper models diversity and economic growth in a bi-directional causal frame and demonstrates that economic growth has a substantial impact on religious, language, and overall cultural diversities in the major states of India. However, the Granger causality between economic growth to language diversity and overall cultural diversity is found to be stronger and more widespread across the states than the causality from economic growth to religious diversity. The findings of this paper may have significant theoretical and empirical implications, as mainly the unidirectional way the impact of cultural diversity on economic growth has been advocated and the empirical studies have been modelled to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I report the results of an analysis of an episode of elementary school second language mathematics classroom talk focused on the classification of geometric forms, drawing on a dialogic, sources of meaning perspective. The episode was selected because participants make use of a variety of features of language, including vocabulary, gestures and diagrams. The analysis drew on methods and principles from conversation analysis and revealed that interactional repair was a key feature in the organisation of the episode. Repair sequences are stretches of interaction in which participants deal with explicitly signalled 'trouble' in participants' working assumption of shared understanding. The results include a distinction between meaning-focused and language-focused repair, with some repair sequences embedded within others. This layered organisation is important in the emergence of meaning for participants' utterances and mediates the tension between centripetal and centrifugal language forces. The findings highlight the complexity of mathematics classroom interaction and suggest possibilities for the careful management of focusing on language and on mathematical meaning in classroom interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There is a large consensus (e.g., Cristia, Foushee, Aravena-Bravo, Cychosz, Scaff & Casillas, 2023; Kidd & Garcia, 2022) that diversification in language acquisition research is needed. Cristia et al. (2023) convincingly argue for studying language acquisition in rural populations and recommend combining observational and experimental approaches in doing so. In this commentary, we identify that diversification efforts must also include children growing up in non-western urban societies and that combining experiments with more easy-to-obtain data on language exposure can be a solid method to start with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Roman Catholic Church is often spoken of in the singular. This article argues that this was not applicable for language politics. The many dioceses in late Habsburg Austria approached the organization of language use differently, whether it be the internal language use, the ordinariate language, or the daily language use in the many parishes. The reasons for this varied organization were mixed: so called historical traditions, but most importantly, individuals acting, on top bishops. Beside, many priests actively took part in local (nationalist) language discourse, and bishops judged their activity differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pedagogische Studien is the property of Vereniging Onderwijsresearch and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Language diversity is an inherent part of international business transactions, despite the dominance of English. The challenge for management, HRM, and employees in multinational companies is to find the right strategy. Multinational organizations can be categorized using the EPRG (ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, geocentric) model, according to how they define their relationship with subsidiaries, and how they operate in foreign markets. Using this model, conclusions can also be drawn from their applied language strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]