Studying Multimodal Language Processing

This study investigates the combined effects of residents’ use of native languages and tourists’ mindfulness on perceived authenticity and overall satisfaction in multilingual tourism destinations. Using a sample of 281 tourists, data were collected via a structured survey. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) evaluated the hypothesized relationships. The findings reveal that residents’ use of native languages significantly enhances tourists’ perceptions of authenticity, which, in turn, positively impacts satisfaction. Furthermore, mindfulness moderates the effects of native language use on perceived authenticity, highlighting its role in shaping authentic experiences. These results underscore the importance of cultural preservation through native language use in fostering meaningful and satisfying tourist experiences. This study provides actionable insights for tourism stakeholders, emphasizing the balance between cultural authenticity and tourist engagement to enhance destination competitiveness.

There has been a longstanding debate on the use of native language (L1) in second language acquisition (SLA). One important topic in language education to investigate is the use of language in the second language (L2) writing process. The majority of studies have focused on L2 writers in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings. Quantitative research approaches have been dominant. Nevertheless, the complexity of this issue cannot be comprehensively explored without qualitative analysis. This case study investigates the language use of a Chinese international college student in the United States throughout the L2 writing process. It adopts a qualitative research approach. The findings show that language learners draw upon their entire linguistic repertoire while writing; even those with a high proficiency level still rely upon their L1 in the L2 writing process. The findings also reveal the multiple functions of the L1 in facilitating L2 writing. Although this study primarily focuses on the linguistic influences of the L1, its implications can be generalized to a broader context. Teachers working with English learners (ELs) or bilingual students are highly recommended to acknowledge and gain a comprehensive understanding of the value of students’ linguistic knowledge, as well as embrace and strategically utilize students’ linguistic repertoires.

Language profoundly shapes human perception and social interactions. Sigmund Freud emphasized the role of language in uncovering and addressing unconscious conflicts, particularly in the treatment of mental illness. Ludwig Wittgenstein examined the everyday use of language through his concept of “language games,” thereby revealing its normative function in shaping meaning, behavior, and societal norms. This paper compares Freud’s and Wittgenstein’s approaches to language, highlighting their shared emphasis on its normativity and therapeutic potential. While their perspectives differ — Freud focusing on the unconscious structures underlying speech and Wittgenstein on the rule–governed nature of language use — they both illustrate that language is an active force that shapes human experience rather than a passive medium. Finally, the paper argues that Freud’s insights into the symbolic dimensions of language and Wittgenstein’s emphasis on linguistic practice together suggest the need for a culturally sensitive and holistic approach to therapy.

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.

National identity is usually based on certain features, which enable an individual to perceive his/her national identity. In addition to culture, customs, traditions, a defined territory, a shared history, etc., language is a strong basis for an individual’s identification with a certain ethnic group. Language is considered to be the most universal means of communication as it helps us to convey the content of information when communicating. However, accelerating globalization affects even the use of a national language and, thus, the younger generation is often more focused on the dissemination of information in English. As a result, it seems that the native language is pushed aside, and little significance is given to its correctness. National identity and the use of national language are extremely important for representatives of certain professions, for example, statutory officers, soldiers, and specialists of law because clarity and logic are some of the most important elements in legal documents to comprehensively render the content. Therefore, the article aims to reveal the attitudes of the students of the Public Security Academy of Mykolas Romeris University towards the significance and place of national language and national identity in modern society as well as the importance of language skills for professional career. The survey results revealed that many young people associate national identity with their native language and culture, and find common links between them.

Pakistan inherits a multilingual heritage. Along with Urdu, 70 different languages are spoken. The 1973 Constitution officially recognizes Urdu as Pakistan's only national language. Till today, the adoption and promotion of Urdu as a medium of educational instruction has remained a point of controversy. Existing research lacks the voice of academicians on the issue. Present investigation focused on the voice of 100 university professors selected randomly. Part of PhD research, data was gathered using a standardized Likert Summative Ranking Scale. Data analysis revealed that there is a highly significant positive relationship (p = 0.000) between use of national language and nation-building. This means, academicians across Pakistani universities strongly believe in the use of national language in all walks of life to realize the dreams of the nation building. It will help to achieve socio-cultural, developmental, strategic, academic and identity goals amicably.

Adopting a broader dialogical conceptual lens on interactive listening, this study examines advanced adult learners’ language use and thought processes during a problem-solving task. Twenty English as a second language (L2) students from a Scottish university participated in the study. They worked in pairs on the task before taking part in retrospective interviews. In contrast to previous studies which investigated peer interactions, the participants in the present study were from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The analysis shows that L2 listeners utilise a range of verbal and non-verbal discursive practices, including reception strategies, as they negotiate and co-construct a shared understanding. Furthermore, their language use is embedded in an understanding of the sociocultural and discursive norms of both the settings of this study and the backgrounds of the interlocutor. The findings also indicate that rather than being static, listeners’ perceptions of themselves and the others are contingent upon the dynamic interpersonal relationship in communication. The article argues for a need to broaden our understanding of what meaning-in-context in interactive listening entails: when listeners take on an active role, not only do they listen in the conventional sense, but they also become the co-regulator of the discourse.

Fundamental to all human languages is an unlimited expressive capacity and creative flexibility that allow speakers to rapidly generate novel and complex utterances. In turn, listeners interpret language “on-line,” incrementally integrating multiple sources of information as words unfold over time. A challenge for theories of language processing has been to understand how speakers and listeners generate, gather, integrate, and maintain representations in service of language processing. We propose that many of the processes by which we use language place high demands on and receive contributions from the hippocampal declarative memory system. The hippocampal declarative memory system is long known to support relational binding and representational flexibility. Recent findings demonstrate that these same functions are engaged during the real-time processes that support behavior in-the-moment. Such findings point to the hippocampus as a potentially key contributor to cognitive functions that require on-line integration of multiple sources of information, such as on-line language processing. Evidence supporting this view comes from findings that individuals with hippocampal amnesia show deficits in the use of language flexibly and on-line. We conclude that the relational binding and representational flexibility afforded by the hippocampal declarative memory system positions the hippocampus as a key contributor to language use and processing.

This article surveys corpus research into what might generally be referred to as conventionalism in language use, and discusses its implications for second language teaching methodology. After an introductory section with traditional and more recent views on the idiomatic and formulaic nature of language use, Section 2 presents a survey of corpus-based case studies into preselected types of lexical patterning like idioms and collocations. Section 3 presents the cruder statistical approach of automatically assessing the frequency of recurrent combinations in texts. The results suggest that conventionalism extends far beyond the traditionally recognised patterns, and might be the basic combinatory principle underlying the composition of written and oral texts. After a short section with some evidence that conventional sequencing is also a feature in learner output, the concluding section (5) argues that to do justice to the phenomenon of conventionalism in language use, teaching methodology should be essentially text-based.

The present study compared sensitivity for auditory and visual signals in a simple detection task and in a related task in which ,9 was also imaging mental pictures and sounds. Sensitivity (rf') was reduced during imagery; within the imaging conditions, it was smaller when image and signal were both auditory or both visual than for cross-modal conditions and smaller with unfamiliar than familiar images. Likelihood ratio (Lx) was also smaller in the isomodal imaging conditions, as there were more visual false alarms during visual imagery and more auditory false alarms during auditory imagery. The data are not consistent with the assumption that d' is lower during imagery due to distraction; they do not entirely fit a channel competition model, but suggest that imagery functions as an internal signal which is confused with the external signal. Perky's (1910) effect has been difficult to explain: she found that if Os were asked to describe their images of common objects while dim facsimiles of the objects were presented before them, they reported only an imagery, not a perceptual, experience. This finding seemed paradoxical: in ordinary situations, imagery can be distinguished from real stimuli virtually 100% of the time; yet Perky's Os confused external stimuli with the images they were describing and seemed unable to discriminate the real physical signals. It is possible to explain the seeming inconsistency between Perky's experiment and everyday experience by inferring that the two events are at antipodal points on a continuum. The continuum would represent a class of conscious events characterized by activity in the sensory pathways and some central expectancies and memories, encompassing both

This paper examines the language use of a small group of interlingual families of a Japanese parent and a Filipino parent with their offspring living in Japan and qualitatively explores possible explanations for their particular language use. Although the data collected from the subject group are limited, the data analysis does reveal some interesting features regarding language use among the family members: a less frequent use of the Filipino parent's native language(s) in comparison to the Japanese parent's native language and the employment of a language other than either parent's native language(s). These features in the present group greatly contrast with those of the Japanese–English interlingual families that the author previously investigated. Coupled with findings from the author's previous studies, findings from the present study suggest that the how and why of language use in interlingual families might be language-sensitive and not necessarily straightforward reflections of such linguistic considerations as the relative language proficiencies of the family members or access to a language community in the close vicinity.

This sequential explanatory mixed methods design study aimed to investigate the beliefs of English Language Teaching (ELT) prospective teachers about using the target language (L2) at macro and micro-levels in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms in addition to some scaffolding strategies to minimize their native language (L1) use. Furthermore, whether being experienced in language teaching and being abroad made differences in the beliefs of prospective teachers (PTs) were examined. The study was conducted with 128 ELT PTs enrolled in a state university in Turkey by administering a questionnaire as a quantitative instrument and a semi-structured interview as a qualitative instrument. The results of the descriptive statistics revealed that the PTs were in favour of using students’ native language whenever it is required rather than following English-only policy. Accordingly, they agreed on the use of L2 mostly to give feedback, information and instructions besides greeting students and later to encourage students, check their understanding, and to provide them supportive talk. They became hesitant to use L2 to manage classrooms, crack jokes, and to give instructions of new and complex types of activities. The dependent variables in the study indicated few differences in their beliefs as to using L2 in EFL classrooms. The results were discussed and some implications for ELT teacher education were suggested.

In the former South Kanara or south coastal Karnataka region, the presence of overlapping languages, mainly Tulu and Kannada, posed prolonged dilemmas in the nineteenth century for the Basel Mission. The choice of language was important for their evangelical work, supported by important language-related activities such as dictionary making, grammar writing and translations. Since language use was intertwined with caste hierarchy, this raised issues over the position of lower castes, mainly Billavas, for the native elites and upper castes. This article argues that the prioritisation of Kannada, and relegation of Tulu to a secondary position, was an outcome not only of missionary perceptions of the larger Kannada context, but also more importantly can be traced back to elite representations regarding the subaltern Tulu culture and lifeworld. As missionary intervention in education and native language use challenged the status quo of social hierarchy among local communities, this sparked efforts by the native elites to reclaim and restore the earlier hierarchy. In the process, the native elite representations of Tulu language and culture became at the same time an effort at dismissal and appropriation.

We live our lives in conversation, building families, societies and civilisations. In over seven thousand languages across the world, the basic infrastructure by which we communicate remains the same. This is the first ever book-length linguistic introduction to conversation analysis (CA), the field that has done more than any other to illuminate the mechanics of interaction. Starting by locating CA by reference to a number of cognate disciplines investigating language in use, it provides an overview of the origins and methodology of CA. By using conversational data from a range of languages, it examines the basic apparatus of sequence organisation: turn-taking, preference, identity construction and repair. As the basis for these investigations, the book uses the twin analytic resources of action and sequence to throw new light on the origins and nature of language use.

Fidell (1982)has raised questions about the validity of our conclusions regarding performance in a bimodal detection task (Mulligan & Shaw, 1980). This reply explains why his critique is in error. Our paper is concerned with how subjects combine auditory and visual sensory information to decide whether either an auditory or a visual signal is present. Under conditions of continuous auditory and visual noise, subjects were presented with four types of stimuli: (1) auditory signal, (2) visual signal, (3) auditory plus visual signal, and (4) neither auditory nor visual signal. The subject's task was to decide whether at least one signal (visual or auditory) was presented. We presented and tested the predictions of two decision models. According to the independent decisions model, a subject makes a separate, covert, binary (yes-no) decision for each modality by comparing a measure of signal strength in that modality to the relevant decision criterion. The total number of covert yes decisions is then used to make an overt final decision: yes if one or more covert yes decisions have been made and no otherwise. In contrast, according to the integration model, a singledecision variable is formed by taking a weighted sum of the signal strength measures from the separate modalities. If this decision variable exceeds its criterion, the subject responds yes. The data from our experiment supported a version of the independent decisions model and rejected the integration model. In his critique, Fidell emphasizes a formulation of the integration model in which ad' value for bimodal detection is predicted from two separate d' values estimated from unimodal detection data. He shows that our data conform quite well to this prediction, and from this he infers that our conclusion favoring the independent decisions model is erroneous; indeed, he suggests that it must be based exclusivelyon aesthetic preference. We claim that this inference is faulty.' We will substantiate our position below by arguing that a prediction in terms of d' is not appropriate for discriminating between the two models, and that the predictions we use provide a better and more general test of the models. Earlier comparisons of independent-decisions integration models (cf. Green & Swets, 1973) have been restricted to a threshold (i.e., two-state) independentdecisions model with a nonzero probability of a detect state given noise (hence low threshold). In our paper, we consider an independent-decisions model in which sensory strength measures are treated as continuous random variables, and the internal strength measure of each modality is compared with its own criterion. The criteria selected for the auditory and visual modalities are independently adjustable, and can differ between unimodal and bimodal tasks. A consequence of these two properties is that the continuous independent decisions model can produce hit and false alarm rates that mimic the hit and false alarm rates of the integration model. This means that these models are not identifiable on the basis of the relation between bimodal and unimodal d' values. Thus, Fidell's observation that our data conform to the integration model predictions for d' is meaningless-because this conformity also applies to predictions from the independent decisions model, given appropriate choices of criteria. In our paper, we do not rely exclusively on the prediction of one model to discriminate the two theoretical alternatives. Instead, we derive predictions from each model in terms of the same statistic (probability of a no response), and these two predictions are pitted against each other. (See Green & Swets, 1973, and Sternberg, 1963, for a discussion.) A separate analysis (Shaw, 1980) shows that these and the other predictions we use differ enough between the models to provide reliable discrimination. The data we collected clearly reject the integration model and support the independent decisions model. Only if it can be argued that thereliable discrimination of one model from another confers a certain beauty on that model can we agree with Fidell that our choice of the independent decisions model is aesthetic. We claim that our tests of these models are more general in several ways than the test proposed by Fidell (and others; cf. Green & Swets, 1973). First, our predictionsapply to both threshold and continuousstate variants of the independent-decisions model (see Shaw, in press). Second, for none of the models we considered do the critical predictions depend upon subjects' maintaining fixed criteria from unimodal to bimodal detection tasks. Third, for none of our critical predictions is it required that attentional demands be invariant between unimodal and bimodal