Pattern Mining Across Domain-Specific Text Collections

This paper examines the patterns of language use among immigrant children from Anglophone African countries living in Botswana. The study reveals major differences in their patterns of language use when compared to that of their parents. Three distinct language use patterns were identified; namely, children who are monolingual in English; those who are bilingual in English and the mother tongue, English and Kiswahili, or English and Setswana; and a third group who are multilingual in the mother tongue, English, Kiswahili and/ or Setswana. The study also reveals that whereas majority of the immigrant parents do not speak Setswana, in spite of their length of residence in Botswana, a good percentage of their children speaks Setswana. Another interesting finding is that many of the immigrant children who cannot speak their mother tongues are fluent speakers of Setswana, the dominant language of the host community. Data for this study were collected using two instruments; namely, a questionnaire designed for parents and an interview schedule for children aged between 18- 25. The questionnaire was administered to 100 immigrant parents from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. Fifty immigrant children from these countries were interviewed to get more insightful data on the patterns of language use among this population. Convenience sampling was used to identify the participants. The theoretical framework of this study was based on the “opportunity versus motivation” argument on language maintenance and language shift. The researcher recommends that immigrant children should be given more exposure and opportunities to learn and speak their mother tongue languages, especially in the family domain.

While differences in the production and acceptability of aspectual inflectional morphology between Spanish–English heritage and monolingually raised speakers of Spanish have been argued to support incomplete acquisition approaches to heritage language acquisition, other approaches have argued that differences in access (e.g., lexical access) to representations for receptive and productive purposes are at the core of some of the unique characteristics of heritage language data. We investigate these issues by focusing on the effects of lexical access, dominance, age of acquisition and patterns of language use in heritage Spanish–English bilinguals. We study aspectual se in Spanish, which yields telic interpretations, in expressions such as María se comió la manzana ‘María ate the apple (completely)’ and Maria ate the apple (where completion may not be reached). Our results indicate that se generates telic interpretations for the heritage and monolingually raised group with no group effect. Heritage speakers showed no English effects in terms of lexical access, age of acquisition, patterns of language use or dominance. This suggests that the heritage group did not differ from their monolingually raised counterparts and showed no evidence of incomplete acquisition of telicity.

The present pilot study compares the use of the native language during foreign- language writing processes of two students enrolled in a Translation degree program to that of two students enrolled in an English Language and Literature degree program who had not received training in translation or interpreting. Across a range of sub-processes of source-based academic writing, native language use was found to be more frequent in the Translation students’ than in the English students’ think-aloud protocols. Possible relationships between the participants’ patterns of language use and their academic socialization are discussed, as well as the potential that native language use in foreign-language academic writing processes can have to help students improve their foreign-language texts.

This volume examines the sociocultural factors that influence language choices and uses in the multilingual country of Luxembourg. Patterns of language use within and across communities are viewed in terms of interrelationships among language policy intent, implementation, and experience. The study considers the ways in which the language and social experiences within low socioeconomic communities differ from school expectations and how these differences affect achievement of both individual and government goals. A history of past language policies and practices sets the background for recent policy formation and current language uses and values. An investigation of the roles of reading, writing and speaking within school settings illustrates policy implementation and individual usage. The ways in which policy is experienced is described in terms of the number and extent of language functions within communities. The nature of language experience is reflected in ethnographic descriptions of the roles language and literacy abilities play in social life. These descriptions are presented in terms of patterns of language use across socioeconomic groups and through composite case studies of three families representing upper, middle and lower class backgrounds. Community and school language behaviors are then compared across socioeconomic groups through an analysis of the degree of congruence between reading, writing, and speaking functions outside of the school and the in-school norms and methods of language instruction. The study further explores the practical and theoretical implications of the relationships among policy intent, implementation, and experience in the context of socioeconomic transitions in modern multilingual nations.

Article Some patterns of language use in the period of transition from Dutch to British rule in the Guiana colonies was published on January 1, 1990 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 1990, issue 85).

Any activities conducted at the boundary area between countries will only be successful if the community of speakers has mutual understanding in terms of language, especially those involving business. This study focuses on a community in the northern part of Malaysia near the Thailand border where majority of people are bilingual in Malay and Thai. This study aims to investigate the patterns of language used by speakers in the Malaysia-Thailand border, in the context of language maintenance and language shift. Both countries use different languages; with Malaysians use Malay and the Thais use Thai language. In this cross-border context, activities pertaining to business, visit or personal matters will have an impact on the development of the two languages. This study presents the findings on the language choice from a survey involving 202 respondents that was conducted in two border towns at the Malaysia-Thailand border, namely Rantau Panjang (Malaysian side) and Golok (Thailand side). By utilizing the domain concept that was introduced by Fishman (1972), this study focuses on two domains namely, business and family. In addition to the questionnaire, participant observations and interviews were also conducted as supplements. The data on the patterns of language choice were analyzed statistically. The findings show that although Malaysians and Thais speak two different languages, Kelantanese dialect, which is a variety of the standard Malay, was the most dominant language at the border. This study also found that age was a significant factor in determining the patterns of language use. The younger generations were using Kelantanese dialect and Thai language in domains where older people would only use Kelantanese dialect. This points to the occurrence of language shift at the border. However, the community at the Thai side of the border tends to choose Kelantanese dialect in their daily activities, which seems to indicate language maintenance in this area. These findings suggest that language can serve as a marker of identity, especially for those communities in Golok as most of them are originally from Malaysia. Finally, this study has contributed empirical data on language usage at the Malaysia-Thailand border.

BackgroundGiven mixed results regarding the role of bilingualism in cognitive aging, investigators are increasingly studying continuous measures of bilingualism (e.g., levels of language proficiency or use) as opposed to a dichotomous “yes/no” one, to better characterize the bilingual experience. We investigated associations of continuous measures of bilingualism and cognition.MethodEligible Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) participants self‐reported their and their parents’ birth outside the 50 United States and Spanish as their first language, and used Spanish for baseline cognitive testing at their HCHS/SOL visit (2008‐2011) and comparable cognitive testing 7‐years later as part of the SOL‐Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging (SOL‐INCA; 2015–2018). Composite scores for baseline self‐reported Spanish/English language proficiency (reading/speaking) and patterns of use (thinking/socializing) were rated using a Likert scale from 1 = only Spanish to 4 = English>Spanish. Cognitive testing at both visits included test‐specific and a global composite score(s) of verbal learning and memory, Word Fluency, and Digit Symbol Substitution (DSS). Survey linear regression models examined the associations between our two bilingualism scores (separately) and cognition (at follow‐up, and standardized measures of 7‐year change) adjusting for age, sex, education, depressive symptoms, income, Hispanic/Latino background, and field center.ResultThere were 4,005 eligible participants (unweighted mean SOL‐INCA population age∼56 years, 56% female). Higher levels of second‐language (English) proficiency (β = 0.050, SE = 0.015, p<0.001) and patterns of use (β = 0.035, SE = 0.010, p<0.001) were associated with higher levels of global cognition at follow‐up (Figure), specifically, Fluency and DSS (p‐values<0.001). Only higher levels of second‐language proficiency were associated with better than predicted change in cognition, specifically, Fluency (β = 0.060, SE = 0.023, p<0.01).ConclusionIn an analytic sample of mid‐ to late‐life native Spanish speakers currently living in the US, second‐language (English) proficiency and patterns of use at baseline were associated with better cognitive outcomes over seven years of follow‐up. Associations of bilingualism composites and cognition suggest distinctions in the bilingual experience may differentially relate to level versus 7‐year change in cognition for Hispanics/Latinos. Investigations of foreign language learning on cognition in older adults, some of which have found no cognitive benefit, may be enhanced by using continuous measures of second‐language proficiency and, perhaps, patterns of language use.

Novel treatments in mental health focus on one’s ability to recover and develop resilience. Current concepts are based on The Adaptations Level Theory, which describes the ability of resilient individuals to accustom to new and even downgraded conditions as the new standard, find meaning in trauma, and adapt to new social settings. However, it is not known which treatments specifically help to build up resilience in patients and how to reliably screen for it. We hypothesize that by analyzing mechanisms of behavior and physiology in resilient individuals, we will be able to strengthen these in people that are struggling to bounce back. Recent studies demonstrated that distinct patterns of language use correlated with various mental health conditions. Utilizing text samples from Holocaust survivors, we compared language use in resilient individuals to people with PTSD and the general population. The Holocaust survivors' language use was significantly different from PTSD sufferers, which suggests that we detected a possible resilience word use pattern. Next, we looked into the brain circuitry mechanisms that could be involved in resilience. We found that norepinephrine, the key neurotransmitter in stress response, modulated the activity of amygdala circuitry in a non-linear concentration-dependent manner. The shape and other characteristics of this dependency could be associated with the capacity for resilience.

Investors look to the language a firm uses for information that may not be available otherwise, especially in entrepreneurial settings. One aspect of language that is garnering greater attention in the management and other business literatures is vagueness. Vague language is often viewed negatively by audiences because of its association with greater uncertainty and potential to obscure negative information. However, some work in linguistics implies that the use of vague language can have positive impacts if the speaker understands the needs of the audience. This study explores the use of vague language and its relationship with investor interest as well as how it interacts with the skills of the entrepreneurial founding team. We hypothesize that, in general, investors are less interested in firms that use vague language, but the positive impacts of vague language become apparent when firm founders have human capital endowments associated with the effective use of language. Analyses based on data from a major start-up pitch competition provide evidence to support these hypotheses. Post hoc analyses explore potential mechanisms. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16367 .

Recently, numerous approaches have emerged in the social sciences to exploit the opportunities made possible by the vast amounts of data generated by online social networks (OSNs). Having access to information about users on such a scale opens up a range of possibilities—from predicting individuals’ demographics and health status to their beliefs and political opinions—all without the limitations associated with often slow and expensive paper-based polls. A question that remains to be satisfactorily addressed, however, is how demography is represented in OSN content—that is, what are the relevant aspects that constitute detectable large-scale patterns in language? Here, we study language use in the United States using a corpus of text compiled from over half a billion geotagged messages from the online microblogging platform Twitter. Our intention is to reveal the most important spatial patterns in language use in an unsupervised manner and relate them to demographics. Our approach is based on Latent Semantic Analysis augmented with the Robust Principal Component Analysis methodology, which permits identification of the data’s main sources of variation with an automatic filtering of noise and outliers without influencing results by a priori assumptions. We find spatially correlated patterns that can be interpreted based on the words associated with them. The main language features can be related to slang use, urbanization, travel, religion and ethnicity, the patterns of which are shown to correlate plausibly with traditional census data. Apart from the standard measure of linear correlation, some relations seem to be better explained by Boolean implications, suggesting a threshold-like behaviour where demographic variables influence the users’ word use. Our findings validate the concept of demography being represented in OSN language use and show that the traits observed are inherently present in the word frequencies without any previous assumptions about the dataset. They therefore could form the basis of further research focusing on the evaluation of demographic data estimation from other big data sources, or on the dynamical processes that result in the patterns identified here.

This paper aims to explore the status of language use and attitude among the Sherpa speaking community in the Kathmandu valley, the multilingual capital city of Nepal. It focuses on language contact situations in different domains viz. social, cultural, personal, and official as well as media related activities where the Sherpas make use of different languages along with the use of their own mother tongue. Based on 45 questionnaires from different informants, this paper presents interesting patterns of language use and attitudes among the Sherpa speaking community in Kathmandu.

It is instructive to interpret patterns of language use in light of the interaction between language use and an individual's awareness of, and resistance towards, linguistic hegemony. While heritage language maintenance is often described as language use motivated by antihegemonic ideologies, this paper suggests that the paradox of the resistance to linguistic hegemony is that in order to be successful, this resistance necessitates acquiescence to this hegemony on a certain level, namely proficiency in the dominant language. This paper contends that a key element influencing the dynamic between these existing factors and language maintenance is the speaker's awareness of, and response to, the paradox of the resistance to linguistic hegemony. Awareness of and conviction towards this paradox seems to supply a dynamic in an individual's conviction towards heritage language maintenance. This paper reports the results of a study that examined this interaction in the case studies of families maintaining Spanish across generations in a rural town in upstate New York, USA. The displays of power illustrated on a personal exchange level, on the media level, and within institutions seem to illuminate the awareness of and response to the paradox of linguistic hegemony – successful resistance that leads to heritage language maintenance.

Addis Ababa/Finfinne, the capital of Ethiopia, is currently among the most booming cities in Africa, using Amharic, the Federal working language of the country, as its lingua franca. Afan Oromo, another language with wider usage in the country, is also native to the indigenous Oromo community residing in the Sheger sub-cities surrounding Addis Ababa/Finfinne (SSSAA/F). This study (a) describes patterns of language use and (b) examines if and how the increasing urbanization of Addis Ababa/Finfinne affects language use and lingo-cultural identity among young people residing in SSSAA/F. A combination of descriptive quantitative and qualitative research design involving questionnaires, surveying of official reports, interviews and observation was employed. Data were collected from 151 adolescents (age: M = 18.22, SD = 1.31, range = 10 years; Male = 74, Female = 74) with diverse lingo-cultural backgrounds and analyzed statistically and thematically. Results showed that there has been an increasing pattern of diversity as well as total shifts toward an Amharic-based lingo-cultural identity due to urbanization. Such a phenomenon is only natural in the absence of a language policy that embraces diversity and averts the dominance of a certain lingo-cultural identity at the expense of others. The results, therefore, have policy and practical implications.

The present study provides a test of the basic intergroup model of second-language acquisition where subjects were 67 members of the Spanish community in London. Dependent variables comprised measures of actual and self-reported second-language proficiency as well as measures of language use and opinions about language use. Independent variables comprised measures of ingroup identification and perceptions of intergroup relations. Analyses provided some support for the intergroup model, particularly the impact ofgroup identification and vitality on patterns of language use, although findings relating to certain other aspects of the model were rather mixed.

In this study I investigate the relative frequency with which Americans with a non-English first language use English....The analysis...shows that a respondents characteristics--education age nativity length of residence in the United States if foreign born and marital status--strongly influence the relative frequency with which the childhood language is used vis-a-vis English. The analysis also shows that...the size and degree of geographic segregation of the language groups affect group members patterns of language use. The effect of a spouses native language is also considered. (EXCERPT)