This study analyzes how English-medium instruction (EMI) content lecturers in Vietnam navigate opportunities and challenges of incentivization, institutional support, and disciplinary autonomy in a context of transnational academic expansion. It reports on interview data with bio-engineering lecturers from five universities. Findings show that, despite the lecturers' understanding of the institutional importance of prestigious international programs, the necessary linguistic and pedagogical support systems are rarely in place. Lecturers detail their struggles in a setting marked by the presence of personal incentives but a lack of training needed to reach language proficiency standards or feel confident about managing interaction and knowledge transfer. They describe difficulties preparing for classes, report extraneous workloads, and occasionally redact teaching materials to safeguard comprehension. Viewing the lecturers through the lens of , we bring into focus their highly informed, agentive behavior, highlighting how lecturers conceptualize students' linguistic and academic needs, and identify pedagogical strategies to overcome language-related and other barriers in EMI. Two forms of mutual entanglement are stressed: (i) lecturer needs and student needs and (ii) subject teaching and language learning.

Many musicologists and researchers of popular music have recently stressed the omnipresence of covers in today’s music industry. In the sociolinguistics of music, however, studio-recorded covers and their potential differences from ‘original’ compositions have certainly been acknowledged in passing, but very few sociolinguists concerned with the study of song seem to have systematically explored how language use may differ in such re-imagined musical outputs. This article reports on a study which examines the language use of 45 blues artists from three distinct time periods (viz., 1960s, 1980s, and 2010s) and three specific social groups (viz., African American; non-African American, US-based; and non-African American, non-US based) distributed over 270 studio-recorded original and cover performances. Through gradient boosting decision tree classification, it aims to analyze the artists’ use of eight phonological and lexico-grammatical features that are traditionally associated with African American English (viz., /aɪ/ monophthongization, post-consonantal word-final /t/ deletion, post-consonantal word-final /d/ deletion, alveolar nasal /n/ in ultimas, post-vocalic word-final /r/ deletion, copula deletion, third-person singular deletion, and not-contraction). Our analysis finds song type (i.e., the distinction between covers and originals) to have no meaningful impact on artists’ use of the examined features of African American English. Instead, our analysis reveals how performers seem to rely on these features to a great extent and do so markedly consistently, regardless of factors such as time period, socio-cultural background, or song type. This paper hence builds on our previous work on the language use of blues performers by further teasing out the complex indexical and iconic relationships between features of African American English, authenticity, and the blues genre in its various manifestations of time, place, and performance types.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of collecting and disseminating publicly relevant health information from and to lay audiences to combat global health crises. In Flanders, Belgium, reaching linguistic minority groups within this context largely depended on government-mandated contact tracing through telephone interactions, which was initially put in place to contain the level of outbreak, but was gradually tasked with relaying safety measures and other information related to the pandemic. In line with these developments, Flemish contact tracing over the telephone initially supported Belgium's three national languages, viz. Dutch, French and German, as well as English as a lingua franca. This list was gradually expanded with minority languages including, among others, Turkish, Arabic, Bulgarian and Polish. This article reports on a one-year fundamental research project as part of which we recorded and analyzed telephone contact tracing conversations which were conducted in the minority languages Turkish and Arabic. We specifically analyze these Turkish and Arabic data as spaces of linguistic non-understanding from the perspective of the researcher-fieldworker (van Hest, Ella & Marie Jacobs. 2022. Spaces of linguistic non-understanding in linguistic ethnography (and beyond). In Methodological issues and challenges in researching transculturally, 14-38. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8772518), and aim to uncover their impact on the interactional dynamics in this 'novel' institutional activity type. Through a Goffmanian analysis, the study reveals how the inclusion of minority languages in contact tracing practice led to complex shifts in participant roles, as contact tracers balanced their institutional responsibilities with imperatives of patient-centered rapport, cultural mediation, and enabling the data collection on behalf of the researchers. The condition of linguistic non-understanding also underlines how the (potential) presence of an overhearing eavesdropper may have influenced the interactional dynamics between contact tracers and index patients. The paper hence provides insights into the complexities of conducting contact tracing in a multilingual context, while simultaneously shedding light on the implications of linguistic diversity on situated institutional practices. COVID-19 salgı nı, kü resel sağ lı k krizleriyle mü cadele etmek iç in kamuyu ilgilendiren sağ lı k bilgilerinin toplanması nı n ve yaygı nlaş tı rı lması nı n ö nemini ö ne çı karmış tı r. Bu bağ lamda Belç ika'nı n Flaman bö lgesinde dilsel azı nlı k grupları na ulaş mak bü yü k ö lçü de, baş langıç ta salgı n seviyesini kontrol altı na almak iç in uygulamaya konan ancak giderek gü venlik ö nlemlerini ve salgı nla ilgili diğ er bilgileri aktarmak iç in dü zenlenen, hü kü met tarafı ndan zorunlu kı lı nan telefon etkileş im yoluyla yapı lan temas takibine dayanmaktaydı. Bu geliş meler doğ rultusunda Flaman bö lgesinde telefon ü zerinden gerç ekleş en temas takipleri ilk baş ta Belç ika'nı n üç ulusal dili olan Hollandaca, Fransı zca ve Almanca'nı n yanı sı ra ortak dil olarak İ ngilizce'de gerç ekleş mekteydi. Bu liste zamanla Tü rkç e, Arapç a, Bulgarca ve Lehç e gibi azı nlı k dillerini de kapsayacak ş ekilde geniş letildi. Bu makale, azı nlı k dilleri olan Tü rkç e ve Arapç a dillerinde gerç ekleş en telefon gö rüş melerinin kaydedilip incelendiğ i bir yı llı k temel araş tı rma projesini sunmaktadı r. Ö zellikle Tü rkç e ve Arapç a verileri, araş tı rmacı ve saha ç alış anı (van Hest, Ella & Marie Jacobs. 2022. Spaces of linguistic non-understanding in linguistic ethnography (and beyond). In Methodological issues and challenges in researching transculturally, 14-38. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8772518) perspektifinden dilsel anlamama alanları biç iminde incelenmiş tir ve bö ylelikle bu 'yeni' kurumsal uygulama tü rü nü n etkileş imsel dinamiklere etkisini ortaya çı karmak amaç lanmış tı r. Goffman'ı n analizine dayanan bu ç alış ma, temas takip uygulaması na azı nlı k dillerinin dahil edilmesinin katı lı mcı rollerinde nası l karmaşı k değ iş imlere yol aç tığı nı gö stermektedir; temas takip gö revlileri kurumsal sorumlulukları nı hastaya yö nelik yaklaşı m, kü ltü rel arabuluculuk ve araş tı rmacı lar adı na veri toplanması nı sağ lama gibi zorunluluklarla dengelemiş lerdir. Dilsel anlamama durumu, (olası) gizli bir dinleyicinin varlığı nı n temas takip gö revlileri ve indeks hastaları arası ndaki etkileş im dinamiklerini nası l etkileyebileceğ ini de vurgulamaktadı r. Dolayı sı yla bu makale, ç ok dilli bir bağ lamda temas takibi yapmanı n karmaşı klı kları na dair gö rüş ler sunarken, aynı zamanda dilsel ç eş itliliğ in yerleş ik kurumsal uygulamalar ü zerindeki etkilerine de ışı k tutmaktadı r.

This study examines the impact of linguistic accommodations on the science performance of multilingual pupils. In a randomized controlled trial conducted in Flanders (Belgium), pupils aged 9–12 were assigned to one of three conditions: a control group taking a science test in the language of schooling (n = 64), a group receiving a written bilingual test in both the pupils’ L1 and language of schooling (n = 64), and a group with a written bilingual test accompanied by read-aloud accommodations in both languages (n = 69). The hypothesis posited that pupils in accommodated conditions would outperform those in non-accommodated conditions. However, univariate analysis of variance did not reveal significant differences between conditions, suggesting that accommodations did not lead to higher test scores. Subsequent multiple linear regression within the condition involving the bilingual test with read-alouds examined how within-group variance impacted accommodation effectiveness, considering both main effects and interaction effects. Results indicate that proficiency in the L1 and frequency of read-aloud use in the L1 significantly predict science performance. Notably, for pupils who frequently used read-alouds, the significant interaction effect with L1 proficiency suggests an amplified beneficial effect on the test scores when pupils are more proficient in their L1.

This paper addresses the necessary complementarity between a translanguaging and named language-perspective by critically examining risks of 'overshooting' when a translanguaging view is theoretically posited as the ultimately superior (sociolinguistic) theory of language use and learning in today's multilingual world.

Background: During the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, one of the critical strategies employed by governments around the world to contain the virus’s spread was contact tracing. In Belgium, contact tracing was mostly implemented through government-mandated call centres employing a mix of experienced and recently recruited telephone workers. As the collection of reliable information concerns a central goal of contact tracing interactions, the posing of questions by contact tracers becomes a highly consequential, yet challenging task to execute. Expansions which accompany questions may be useful as important vectors to manage the sensitivity of invasive questioning of index patients. Objective: In this article, we zoom in on the multiple guises of how questions were posed by Flemish contact tracers in the period 2020-2021, with specific attention to the positioning of the contact tracers’ questions in adjacency pairs (expansions), and how this relates to the accomplishment of the goals of the contact tracing call (including obtaining relevant and truthful answers and managing the intrusive and sensitive aspects of questioning behaviour). Methods: A corpus of 100 contact tracing calls conducted in Dutch between a contact tracer and index patient was gathered between late 2020 and early 2021. A quantitative analysis was conducted on the transcribed interactions to identify the type of expansion applied by contact tracers (pre-expansions, insert expansions and post- expansions) and the interactional meaning accomplished in the expansion (e.g., motivation for asking a question, apology for the intrusion, an explanation of a term used, etc.). Results: Our results show that contact tracers mostly expand after an answer has been received, rather than anticipate the need to frame a question-answer sequence or guide the index patient enroute from question to answer. Most prevalent as pre-expansions are question announcements and recall of what was said earlier. In the case of insert expansion, the most prevalent interactional accomplishments are clarifications or time management signals. In the case of post- expansions, the prevalent types are backchannel, question clarifications and repetitions of the index patient’s answer as a form of acknowledgement or display of information processing.

This article reports on a sociolinguistic study into the prevalence of African-American English (AAE) features in the lyrical language use of blues artists, relying on data from different social and national backgrounds and time periods. It adopts a variationist linguistic methodological approach to examine the prevalence of five AAE forms in live-performed blues music: /a?/ monophthongization, post-consonantal word-final /t/ deletion, post-consonantal word-final /d/ deletion, alveolar nasal /n/ in ultimas, and post-vocalic word-final /r/ deletion. Mixed effects logistic regression analysis applied to a corpus of 80 performances finds no statistically significant association between national/ethnic background and variant use, and indicates that blues artists, from different eras and nationalities, are highly probable to realize the AAE variant of the analyzed variables, regardless of their sociocultural background. By building on early scholarly work on language and music, existing studies considering the use of AAE by non-members of the African-American community, and current theorizing on authenticity, style, and indexicality, this study hence provides tentative support for the existence of a standard blues singing style, which involves performers using AAE forms as a stylistic-linguistic strategy to index artistic authenticity.

This article focuses on transformative interactional practice in COVID-19 contact tracing telephone calls in Flanders (Belgium). It is based on a large corpus of recorded telephone conversations conducted by COVID-19 contact tracers with index patients in the period mid-2020 to mid-2022. The calls were conducted through government-contracted commercial call centers. For nearly 2 years and applied country-wide, this was the most prominent strategy in Belgium for breaking transmission chains. COVID-19 telephone contact tracing with infected patients counts as transformative professional work in two ways. First, in addition to the registration of recent contacts in a relevant time window, the work is oriented to awareness-raising about how patients and their co-dwellers can and should adjust their behavior by attending actively to critical aspects of the pandemic during an individual period of (potential) infection. This is the terrain of advice, interdictions and recommendations about quarantine, isolation, personal hygiene, etc. In addition, the focus on interactional attention indexes patients' affect and emotions (e.g., anxiety, worry, or anger) in a period of health uncertainty and social isolation. The transformative work thus depends on successfully established rapport and empathetic, responsive behavior. Our analysis of the recorded conversational sequences focuses on the complexities of client-sensitive and responsive transformative sequences and highlights the constraints and affordances which surround the interactional task of 'instructional awareness raising' which is central to telephone contact tracing. Specifically, we detail the following dimensions of transformative sequences: (i) how do contact tracers deal with the knowledge status of clients, (ii) their use of upgrading/downgrading formulations, (iii) the use of humor and other mitigating strategies, and (iv) how contact tracers attend to interactional displays of affect and emotion. In a final section, we tie together our observations about the communication of particularized advice in a context of general measures through the twin notions of categorization/particularization-work. The findings in this paper are limited to the first step in the chain of contact tracing, i.e., telephone calls with tested and infected citizens.

The field of English as a Medium-of-Instruction (EMI) research in tertiary education is undergoing a context-specific turn, focusing attention on how the official medium of instruction interacts with local languages, as well as the multi-faceted interplay between national and/or institutional language policies and classroom practice. This article reports on findings from linguistic ethnographic fieldwork at a Belgian higher education institution: for two semesters, the interactions between a lecturer and his students in an English-medium Industrial Design Engineering course were observed. The lecturer's micro-level didactic choices are studied through the lens of Lipsky's Street-Level Bureaucracy. This reveals a systematic pattern of on-the-ground language policy construction which is evidenced in classroom practice. While the findings of this study problematise the pillarized 'either/or' language choices that continue to dominate a polarised language policy debate, they equally underline the micro-level agency of the disciplinary EMI instructors in shaping public policy. For EMI-contexts more generally, our analysis suggests the viability and sociolinguistic relevance of an enactment-of-policy-in-interaction perspective which is equally a matter of disciplinary induction. The study of 'coping mechanisms' thus becomes an arena for policy development and teacher training.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium, most COVID-19-related information was communicated to the public through mainstream media such as newspaper outlets, television, and radio. These media had substantial influence over which information was (widely) distributed and how this information was framed, subsequently shaping citizens' interpretations of matters concerning the pandemic. This chapter considers one of the government's endeavors to contain the pandemic: COVID-19 telephone contact tracing. Specifically, we compare the image of such telephone contact tracing generated by the media with the de facto interactional practice. We report on analyses made as part of a 1 year applied conversation analytic and pragmatic study conducted at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp in collaboration with the Flemish Agency of Health and Care. Methodologically, we use thematic content analysis to examine the portrayal of COVID-19 telephone contact tracing in widespread Flemish newspapers and its evolution throughout the pandemic. We then compare this media analysis to our analysis of a corpus of 170 recorded, transcribed, and interactionally analyzed contact tracing calls. Our results demonstrate how the mainstream media's image of contact tracing does not align with the various (interactional) functions of COVID-19 contact tracing calls identified in the study. We argue that this one-sided, distorted image produced by the media may have had considerable consequences for the efficacy of contact tracing, especially because the contact tracing call was a new genre of conversation. It was introduced to the public almost exclusively through mainstream media and, at the same time, its success relied for the most part on citizens' voluntary participation, trust, and willingness to share private information.

Government responses to the Covid-19 health crisis are composed of recursively applied stages of risk calculation and management as necessary processes in the containment of outbreaks. One of the most prominent forms of risk management in Flanders was contact tracing. It occurs in three variants: (i) the development and implementation of a smartphone-based contact tracing app, (ii) regionally-organised contact tracing telephone conversations conducted through commercially-contracted call centres, and (iii) home visiting by local field agents of populations who are difficult to reach. This chapter focuses on (ii), due to its prevalence, and is based on an interactional analysis of a corpus of 220 contact tracing conversations with index patients that was compiled late 2020 and early 2021. The chapter opens with a discussion of the notions of “Risk Society” and “responsibilisation” as relevant socio-cultural orientations in the current era of globalized Late Modernity and “governmentality” as a discursive field. The regionally-organised contact tracing telephone call can be characterized as a large-scale, micro-level form of interactionally and dialogically-accomplished risk management. The genre foregrounds the articulation of multiple dimensions of risk and responsibility, situated at various levels of social organization and appeal. The management of risk and responsibility intersects with the accomplishment of the specific communicative functions of the genre. The contact tracer’s three-fold task is to (i) gather private information about the index patient’s symptoms and their contacts during a relevant time period; (ii) provide instructions about quarantine. In addition, (iii) contact tracers are expected to sustain a caring and empathetic stance during their interactions with index patients. In this respect, the contact tracers’ responsibilities include their role as a representative of the government’s risk-managing response to successive stages of the pandemic. The analysis illustrates how various formulations of risk and responsibility interrelate with the communicative goals and the specific interactional demands of contact tracing telephone conversations.

In this paper, the idea of ethnograpies of hegemony is taken up as a reflexive orientation in research which addresses the complexity of forms of domination in late modern society also by trying to come to terms with the situatednes of interactionally-established interview data. Following a number of methodological remarks on the establishment of a ‘native point of view’ as well as a number of observations on the data trajectories (tribulations and triangulations) which mark this particular discursive ethnography, the analysis goes on to concentrate on the ways in which case categorisation is ‘spoken’ through social class in one particular account of child protection. As an exercise in ‘classifying the classifiers’ (Bourdieu 1992: 242) 2, the analysis highlights how professional and private talk about social problems is implicated in class-based subjectivities and involves (displaced) representations of class? However, much depends here on what we mean by ‘class’ when referring to a contemporary context such as the Flemish/Belgian field of child protection. If hegemony then counts as a historicising interpretative move which highlights the interwovenness of domain - and profession-based discourses of social problems with discourses of class and the contextualisation of particular sense-making repertoires, then it is just as much about the situational contingencies under which class and domination becomes speakable in a particular way. This, I suggest, is where ethnography becomes all-important - as an investigative strategy and as an epistemology of dialogic engagement with social theory and contemporary analyses of the late modern world.

AbstractThis study investigated the relationship between the level of cognitive-linguistic difficulty of task input and the size of the cross-linguistic relationship for academic listening comprehension in emergent bilinguals. It was theoretically motivated by task-dependent cross-linguistic interaction frameworks. We hypothesized that task item sets that involve a higher level of cognitive-linguistic difficulty, drawing on a number of sources of item difficulty, would show a smaller strength of interaction than sets involving a lower level. Using a task-based assessment instrument, listening comprehension was measured in 75 Turkish–Dutch bilingual children at first-grade entry (Mage= 6;7). Partial L1-L2 correlations indicated that cognitively more demanding item sets tended to coincide with smaller L1-L2 correlations. This finding was, in part, consistent for cognitive difficulty, yet inconclusive for linguistic difficulty. An explanation is discussed that, in line with information-processing theory, highlights a trade-off between cognitive-linguistic task demands and cross-linguistic influence.

Assessment is a powerful tool for both teachers and students to get more insight into students’ competences. However, multilingual learners may be underperforming on tests because linguistic barriers hinder them in demonstrating their content knowledge. In this study, we investigate whether multilingual assessment holds the potential to adjust erroneous teacher expectations of multilingual students. We discuss a randomised experiment in which 1,154 students in 5th grade (age 9 to 12) were randomly assigned to one of four test conditions: (1) a bilingual test, (2) a bilingual test with additional read-aloud accommodation in both the language of schooling and home language, (3) read-aloud accommodation in the language of schooling and (4) a control condition without accommodations. Flemish teachers were asked how well they expected their students to perform on a science test. By using chi-square tests, we examine the accuracy of teacher expectations and investigate whether this differs according to students’ linguistic backgrounds and test accommodations. The results suggest that when multilingual students use read-aloud accommodations in their L1, they more often tend to do better than expected by their teachers. Implications for testing culture, test accommodations and teacher expectations are discussed.

Assessment is a powerful tool for both teachers and students to get more insight into students' competences. However, multilingual learners may be underperforming on tests because linguistic barriers hinder them in demonstrating their content knowledge. In this study, we investigate whether multilingual assessment holds the potential to adjust erroneous teacher expectations of multilingual students. We discuss a randomised experiment in which 1,154 students in 5th grade (age 9 to 12) were randomly assigned to one of four test conditions: (1) a bilingual test, (2) a bilingual test with additional read-aloud accommodation in both the language of schooling and home language, (3) read-aloud accommodation in the language of schooling and (4) a control condition without accommodations. Flemish teachers were asked how well they expected their students to perform on a science test. By using chi-square tests, we examine the accuracy of teacher expectations and investigate whether this differs according to students' linguistic backgrounds and test accommodations. The results suggest that when multilingual students use read-aloud accommodations in their L1, they more often tend to do better than expected by their teachers. Implications for testing culture, test accommodations and teacher expectations are discussed.

This study aimed to test three competing hypotheses concerning the strength of the cross-language relationship in listening comprehension proficiency in emergent bilinguals: Cummins's developmental linguistic interdependence hypothesis, Proctor, August, Snow, and Barr's interdependence continuum hypothesis, and Goodrich, Lonigan, Kleuver, and Farver's language independence hypothesis. We assessed 75 Turkish–Dutch bilingual children attending Dutch-medium schools using a two-wave design. This involved an assessment of sentence comprehension when the children were in preschool, followed by an assessment of their discourse comprehension in 1st grade. Correlational, multiple regression, and path analyses indicated significant positive and medium-sized L1–L2 relationships between listening comprehension proficiency at the two points in time yet not over time. These findings were consistent with the developmental linguistic interdependence hypothesis for sentence comprehension and with the developmental linguistic interdependence and the language independence hypotheses for discourse comprehension. We advocate a multidimensional explanatory framework to explore the moderating role of type of skill in determining the strength of the cross-language relationship.

The chapter describes how information sharing and multi-agency coordination is established as a central concern of child protection policy and procedure in England. It looks at Core Group Meetings as the ‘control room’ of multi-agency work. The analysis draws on framing and boundary work to explore how professionals from different agencies contribute to multi-agency meetings and examines the activities of the chair in terms of framing turns and topics. It demonstrates how different professionals ensure that their presence is established in the meeting. The conclusion is that managing professional contributions involves complex boundary work by all participants.

This study aimed to test three competing hypotheses concerning the strength of the cross-language relationship in listening comprehension proficiency in emergent bilinguals: Cummins's developmental linguistic interdependence hypothesis, Proctor, August, Snow, and Barr's interdependence continuum hypothesis, and Goodrich, Lonigan, Kleuver, and Farver's language independence hypothesis. We assessed 75 Turkish-Dutch bilingual children attending Dutch-medium schools using a two-wave design. This involved an assessment of sentence comprehension when the children were in preschool, followed by an assessment of their discourse comprehension in 1st grade. Correlational, multiple regression, and path analyses indicated significant positive and medium-sized L1-L2 relationships between listening comprehension proficiency at the two points in time yet not over time. These findings were consistent with the developmental linguistic interdependence hypothesis for sentence comprehension and with the developmental linguistic interdependence and the language independence hypotheses for discourse comprehension. We advocate a multidimensional explanatory framework to explore the moderating role of type of skill in determining the strength of the cross-language relationship.