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doi: 10.1111/ijal.12077pmid: N/A
This study presents a metaphor‐based approach to analysing identity in corporate discourse, which hinges on an understanding of corporate memory as a dynamic process of re‐membering that shapes a company's culture and identity. The analysis is based on a corpus of websites of 40 major Italian listed companies. Data comprise verbal and non‐verbal texts exemplifying corporate histories. The focus is on metaphors, looking at their verbal realisation and their intersemiotic construction on the web page, with regard to identity, and as filtered through the memory‐centred discourse addressed to international markets. The investigation reveals that Italian companies' ‘historical’ discourse contributes to the construction of memory in a (culturally‐marked) individual‐to‐collectivity recalling process. As such, historical discourse informs the notion of active past that shapes a company's social identity.
Chui, Hin Leung; Liu, Yiqi; Mak, Bernie Chun Nam
doi: 10.1111/ijal.12078pmid: N/A
Socialization into the workplace is a challenge faced by new foreign workers in multilingual societies. One underexplored factor in the process is code‐switching. We presented a case study of how a Filipino migrant integrated into her Hong Kong workplace where the local veterans used code‐switching at work. Conceptualizing the workplace as Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998), we employed Gee's (2011) model of discourse analysis to examine empirical workplace discourse. Our analysis suggests that for a newcomer, code‐switching indicates desire of socialization, negotiation of membership, linguistic competence, and professional abilities, and that for a veteran, code‐switching reveals situated identities, instantaneous relationships, openness to newcomers, and encouragement to them. We argue that code‐switching is performed by foreign newcomers and local veterans for workplace socialization and mutual identification.
doi: 10.1111/ijal.12079pmid: N/A
This study compares the development of English receptive skills of two groups of Spanish primary school children who were exposed to two different content and language integrated learning (CLIL) subjects, science and arts and crafts (A&C), during two academic years. Participants were also divided into level groups to explore if their level of English at the beginning of the study influenced language development. Science students generally obtained better results than A&C students but such differences became significant only in the case of listening skills after a certain amount of exposure had been accumulated, once the CLIL implementation process was over and all stakeholders had adapted to it. Low achievers improved more than stronger students and benefitted more from Science than from A&C CLIL, particularly in relation to their listening comprehension skills.
doi: 10.1111/ijal.12080pmid: N/A
This study examined the differential effects of teachers' first language (L1) use and second language (L2)‐only explanations on Chinese‐speaking adults' acquisition of concrete and abstract English words. A quasi‐experimental research design was used, in which 50 participants were assigned to an L1‐use condition, 50 participants were assigned to an L2‐only use condition, and another 48 participants served as a comparison group. Assessed with a pre‐test, immediate post‐test, and delayed post‐test, each group's knowledge of the target words was compared with that of the other groups over time. The results suggest that teachers' L1 use, compared to L2‐only explanations, might lead to greater vocabulary gains in immediate and delayed recall. Possible explanations for these findings are proposed.
doi: 10.1111/ijal.12081pmid: N/A
This study investigates pragmalinguistic competence of Javanese learners of English in Indonesia as compared with native speakers of British English when realizing refusal strategies. The research data was obtained by means of a series of discourse completion tasks. Refusal strategies by native speakers of Javanese were also considered so as to observe whether or not the realization of refusal by the learners was informed by the Javanese language. The three groups of speakers broadly used similar types of semantic formulae and adjuncts of refusal. Nevertheless the wording of those phrased by the learners and the native Javanese speakers was more alike than either to that of the native speakers of British English suggesting L1 pragmalinguistic transfer.
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