<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Most school systems around the world prioritize the teaching of languages and aim to develop bilingual or multilingual proficiencies among their students. However, in a large number of contexts, schools also systematically and intentionally <italic>undermine</italic> the potential of immigrant-background and minoritized students to develop multilingual abilities. This undermining of multilingualism operates either by explicitly prohibiting students from using their home languages (L1) within the school or through ignoring the languages that students bring to school (benign neglect). In some cases, exclusion of students’ L1 is rationalized on the grounds that maintenance of L1 will hinder students’ integration into the mainstream society. In other cases, exclusion is based on the conviction that there is competition between languages and use of the L1 either in school or home will reduce students’ exposure to the school language (L2). The validity of this time-on-task argument is critically analyzed in the present paper. I argue that the research shows no consistent relationship between immigrant students’ academic achievement (in L2) and use of L1 in the home or in the school. By contrast, several research syntheses have highlighted the positive academic outcomes of bilingual programs for minoritized students and also the feasibility of implementing multilingual or translanguaging pedagogies in the mainstream classroom.</abstract>

Should Schools Undermine or Sustain Multilingualism? an Analysis of Theory, Research, and Pedagogical Practice

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The paper aims to present a critical review of language policy development in Algeria since its independence (1962) to present time. It takes the policy of Arabization, an important turning point in Algerian history that was troubled with serious problems, as an example of language planning in the country. Data was gathered from policy documents, laws, and newspaper articles. It was then coded into themes before it was analysed employing a documentary research method. To provide a methodical discussion, the first part of the paper explores language policy and planning in Algeria. The second part discusses the impact of Arabization on the country’s current state of policy development in light of the debates over the national educational reforms of 2003. The third part highlights the quandary that language planners face during the processes of language planning and policy making. Lastly, the paper concludes with an evaluation of the process of language policy development in the country. The paper argues that in order to foster sustainable multilingualism and achieve effective educational reforms, a keener recognition of Algerian linguistic diversity by the government is imperative.</abstract>

Educational Reforms and Language Planning Quandary in Algeria: An Illustration with Arabization

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The purpose of this study was to find the main factors that guide language policies and discover correlations between top-down and bottom-up ideologies in the context of Hungary and Kyrgyzstan. To accomplish this, the study created a database of relevant official documents, photos of linguistic landscapes and qualitative data. The study analyzed the documented top-down decisions from historical perspectives, and then compared them with the data collected from interviews and surveys, and from the collection of photos. The participants included both high-ranking political figures, professors, students and random citizens. Results showed that the official policies often do not comprehensively match with the people’s beliefs, attitudes and desires. Findings also imply that using either document analysis, or the method of linguistic landscape, or qualitative methods alone, might not sufficiently validate the results in the absence of each other, since errors may top up from various discrepancies between top-down and bottom-up arrangements, as well as from overt and covert ideologies.</abstract>

A Comparative Study of the Gap Between De-Jure and De-Facto Language Policies: The Case of Kyrgyzstan and Hungary

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Adults learning a minoritized language are potential new speakers, that is “adults who acquire a socially and communicatively consequential level of competence and practice in a minority language” (Jaffe, 2015; see also O’Rourke, Pujolar, &amp; Ramallo, 2015). New speakers’ research has become quite common recently, marking a shift from traditional notions of speakerness in minority contexts, built around the Fishmanian discourse of reversing language shift (see Kubota, 2009). The new speaker—actually neo-speaker—is one of the seven categories put forward by Grinevald and Bert (2011), who considered them central to language revitalization. Answering the call for more data on new speakers of minoritized languages in O’Rourke, Pujolar, &amp; Ramallo, 2015, this research aims to start the debate on the new speakers of Frisian (see Belmar, 2018; Belmar, Eikens, Jong, Miedema, &amp; Pinho, 2018; and Belmar, Boven, &amp; Pinho, 2019) by means of a questionnaire filled in by adults learning the language in the evening courses offered by Afûk. This article presents an analysis of their backgrounds, their attitudes towards the language, and their language use.</abstract>

Attitudes and Language Use of (Potential) New Speakers of a Minoritized Language: The Case of Adults Learning West Frisian in Formal Courses

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The acquisition of lexical competence is a complex process, because for learners, it is not enough to distinguish the form and meaning of a lexical element in order to know how to integrate it correctly into the language context. The skill also involves the understanding of the properties of lexical and grammatical combinatorics. The present analysis of the written production of Lithuanian learners of French as a Second Language (FSL) is based on an annotated corpus and focuses on apposition. The term refers to a noun to which it provides additional information on its quality or nature. Choosing apposition for the study is prompted its particular use for elucidation in French then makes it possible to compare its use by FSL learners of and native speakers. The use of apposition in L1 of the analysed level is not very frequent, which poses another question, namely, how Lithuanian learners convey information without apposition. We task ourselves with noting, the different uses of apposition in FSL learners’ writing and analysing their particularities and correspondences in native speakers’ use. Apposition, as NP (noun phrase) constituent, will be analysed syntactically, taking into account correct, erroneous or uncertain constructs. The learners’ writings serve to orient the didactic reflections towards the general use of apposition in the learners’ corpora and a better represent typical interlanguage constructions.</abstract>

The Apposition in the Written Production of Lithuanian Learners in French

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The article provides an overview of the state of the Bariba language on the Replublic of Benin (West Africa) and reflects on the urgent need to make effective the wishes of implementing a language policy that promotes a rigurous multilingual education of quality that helps preserve native languages. Through some visits to local schools of the Beninese Departments of Borgou and Alibori and through the language autobiographies of significant people from the Bariba language community of those departments, we highlight five reflections that underline the importance of multilingualism and point out the multilingual school as a key element for the preservation of intangible heritage, for social development and for achieving the sustainable development goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.</abstract>

Multilingualism in Benin. Some Reflections from the Perspective of Sustainable Development and Multilingual Education

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Translators, linguists and translation researchers often have to deal with subtle and sometimes complex syntactical aspects involved in translation. Properly conveying the structure and rhythm of a sentence or text in another language is a difficult task that requires a good understanding of syntactical aspects of both the source and the target language. The morphology of Lithuanian verbs and nouns, and specially its system of declensions and cases, without any doubt facilitates a relatively flexible word order. Many linguists also agree that word order in the Spanish sentence is also freer than in French, English or other modern languages. It has often been said that Spanish has the most flexible word order of all Romance languages. However, Spanish word order is by no means as free as in Lithuanian. A comparative study of Lithuanian texts and their translation into Spanish allows a better understanding of the syntactical differences between both languages. This article examines a case of syntactical inversion in Lithuanian: the displacement of the direct object and its location at the beginning of the sentence, and the translation of such sentences into Spanish. In Spanish the direct object usually follows the verb, except in the cases when that function is carried out by pronouns. In order to displace a direct object to the beginning of the sentence, Spanish syntactical structures should be used. In this article two stylistically different Lithuanian texts will be compared with their Spanish translation so as to identify the linguistic means used in each case. A comparative analysis of different types of texts is useful to reveal the Spanish syntactical structures chosen by the translators as well as certain tendencies in each specific context.</abstract>

Syntactic Aspects of Lithuanian-Spanish Translation of Fiction and Scientific Texts

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The role of the translator as a mediator in literary translation has been a salient topic since the late twentieth century; however, more recent research signifies that instead of mediating, the translator sometimes affects the literary work translated, shifting the focus of such studies onto the reader. This article aims at investigating the possible effects the literary translator has on readers by examining the translation of address forms, the linguistic markers of social status into Lithuanian and the use of polite or familiar second-person pronouns in two crime fiction novels, Agatha Christie’s (1962) <italic>The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side</italic> and John Grisham’s (1992) <italic>The Pelican Brief</italic>. The literary translator may grapple with the issue of translating social interactions which derives from cultural differences present in the source and target societies. Subsequently, containing a plethora of realistically depicted social interactions adherent to the societies represented, crime fiction provides Lithuanian literary translators with the issue of deciphering power relations based on the contexts they occur in and choosing accordant polite or familiar second-person pronouns, a distinction not present in English. As this study has shown, the translator sometimes misinterprets power relations or favours the social norms of the target culture, affecting the narrative, creating effects discordant with the writer’s intentions, and in some cases, entailing a contingent barrier between the reader and the original literary work.</abstract>

Translation as a Barrier Between the Original Narrative and the Reader: A Case Study of Power Relations and Address forms in two Crime Fiction Novels

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">One way in which language practitioners and researchers have furthered our understanding of heritage language learners’ linguistic abilities has been to compare them to L2 learners. The current study implemented this modality and examined metaphoric competence. This is one area in learners’ overall linguistic competence that provides them with access to the concepts and models of the language community and facilitates mediation during communitive tasks (Lantolf, 1999). Participants (n=16) in this study were heritage language learners and L2 learners enrolled in an advanced conversation class in Spanish. They completed an oral portfolio assignment which consisted of regularly engaging in conversation with a Spanish native speaker and recording their interactions. The analysis of their unscripted conversations included the identification of metaphoric samples and the calculation of metaphoric density. Findings revealed that learners produced what were termed true metaphors (original constructions), light metaphors (metaphoric constructions that are already established in the language), and transfer metaphors (constructions resulting from contact with the English language). Comparisons between L2 learners and heritage language learners did not reveal significant differences, which suggests that in the area of metaphoric competence these learners are more similar than not.</abstract>

Metaphor in Spanish L2 and Heritage Language Learners’ Speech: How Does it Compare?

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This article aims to study the field of sociocultural aspects teaching in the Spanish as foreign language classes in Lithuania and development of intercultural competencies of the students. In the curriculum of the language teaching, is very important the topic of sociocultural behaviours in the different Hispanic communities. The conducted research aimed to analyse how this topic can be studied during the Spanish classes in Lithuania and what is the receptivity of sociocultural elements among the local students. This paper also talks about the intercultural competences of the students, and the process of assimilation of cultural behaviours, which are different from the native culture. In order to achieve the aim, the data collection was carried on among students through observations and interviews in depth, using a qualitative method. The opinions and interpretations of Spanish and Hispanic traditions, celebrations and customs given by the students, were used for the qualitative analysis. The results of the research showed that students’ perception of the Spanish-speaking world contains prejudiced ideas and this is why it is important to include the sociocultural content in the classes of Spanish as a foreign language.</abstract>

Teaching Sociocultural Aspects in the SFL Class in Lithuania: Analysis of the Perception of Sociocultural Content

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