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Papers by Vera Regan
John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, Jul 15, 2022
Reviewed by ALEXANDRA JAFFE Stancetaking in Discourse is an edited volume that grew out of the 10... more Reviewed by ALEXANDRA JAFFE Stancetaking in Discourse is an edited volume that grew out of the 10th Biennial Rice Linguistics Symposium held in 2004, organized by Robert Englebretson, and brings together ten articles by a distinguished set of authors. As Englebretson writes in his introduction, the volume seeks 'to explore how it is that speakers (and writers) actively engage in taking stances in natural discourse' (p. 2), adopting an ethnographically informed approach that focuses on stancetaking as social, pragmatic action. Rather than seeking to provide a unified model of stance as social action, the volume is framed as an exploration of the wide variety of phenomena and academic approaches that can be found in this area of research. Englebretson's introductory chapter first explores the use of the word 'stance' in two corpora of contemporary English: the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE). While small in number, the tokens of 'stance' in these corpora illustrate that stance is used to describe physical, moral and personal positions, that it is public, interpretable, socially indexical and consequential. These findings are corroborated by Englebretson's analysis of collocational evidence in these corpora. The second major section of the chapter contextualizes the chapters in the volume with reference to the themes of subjectivity, evaluation and interaction, briefly reviewing key corpus-based approaches as well as work that focuses on the way that stances in particular interactions are jointly constructed and linked to wider social discourses and identity categories. The most comprehensive theoretical overview of stancetaking in the volume is Du Bois' chapter, 'The stance triangle'. Du Bois defines stance as a public act by a social actor, achieved dialogically through overt communicative means, of simultaneously evaluating objects, positioning subjects (self and others), and aligning with other subjects, with respect to any salient dimension of the sociocultural field. (p. 163) The stance triangle is a graphic representation of the dialogic relationship between the stance object of evaluation (one point on the triangle) and the subjects (1 and 2) involved in spoken or written interaction. Du Bois emphasizes that both of these subjects produce alignments (that is, stance is an intersubjective product of
Languages
Until recently, research on language attitudes focused mainly on attitudes relating to speakers’ ... more Until recently, research on language attitudes focused mainly on attitudes relating to speakers’ L1. However, with the increase in interest in multilingualism in a globalised world, there has been a renewed interest in language attitudes relating to L2 speakers. This article focuses on these issues in the context of migration: how language attitudes associated with migrants’ L1 and L2 may affect the L2 acquisition process. The attitudes of two L2 groups (Polish and Italian) are compared to see if, in the case of speakers learning different L2’s (French and Irish English), there was a difference based on the different contexts. Qualitative data and analysis were used to attend to the voices of the participants in the study. Analysis revealed differences in language attitudes amongst Polish migrants in France, Polish migrants in Ireland, and Italian migrants in Ireland that paralleled differences in L2 strategies. This supports recent research which indicates that attitudes associated...
The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics, 2022
Interlanguage Variation in Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspective, 2009
Language, Migration and Identity, 2016
Studies in Bilingualism, 1995
EUROSLA Yearbook, 2001
This article addresses the issue of underrepresentation or avoidance of colloquial words in a cro... more This article addresses the issue of underrepresentation or avoidance of colloquial words in a cross-sectional corpus of advanced French interlanguage (IL) of 29 Dutch L1 speakers and in a longitudinal corpus of 6 Hiberno-Irish English L1 speakers compared with a control group of 6 native speakers of French. The main independent variable analysed in the longitudinal corpus is the effect of spending a year in a francophone environment. This analysis is supplemented by a separate study of sociobiographical and psychological factors that affect the use of colloquial vocabulary in the cross-sectional corpus. Colloquial words are not exceptionally complex morphologically and present no specific grammatical difficulties, yet they are very rare in our data. Multivariate regression analyses suggest that only active authentic communication in the target language (TL) predicts the use of colloquial lexemes in the cross-sectional corpus. This result was confirmed in the longitudinal corpus wher...
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1991
We investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants' acquisition of the variable (ing), which ... more We investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants' acquisition of the variable (ing), which occurs in progressive tenses, participles, noun phrases, etc., and which can be pronounced [iŋ] or [In]. A VARBRUL 2 program analysis of native speaker speech shows that the production of (ing) is constrained by phonological, grammatical, stylistic, and social factors. An analysis of the nonnative speakers' acquisition of these norms shows that [In] is more frequent before anterior segments (reflecting ease of articulation), and that males use [In] more frequently than females, especially in monitored speech (perhaps reflecting their desire to accommodate to a male native speaker norm rather than to an overall native speaker norm). The analysis also shows evidence of grammatical constraints which are different from those in the native speakers' speech. This difference may reflect the fact that it is easier to acquire the [In] variant in “frozen forms,” such as prepositions, than ...
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2004
Journal of French Language Studies, 2006
This article is situated within the recent strand of SLA research which applies variationist soci... more This article is situated within the recent strand of SLA research which applies variationist sociolinguistic methods to the study of the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by the L2 speaker. Whilst that research has tended to focus on the study of morphological and morphosyntactic variables, this article aims to investigate a number of acquisitional trends identified in previous research in relation to phonological variation, namely the variable deletion of /l/ by Irish advanced L2 speakers of French in both an instructed and study abroad environment. Based on quantitative results using GoldVarb 2001, the study further illuminates the difficulty that the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation poses to the instructed L2 speaker, who is found to make minimal use of informal sociolinguistic variants. In contrast, contact with native speakers in the native speech community is seen to allow the L2 speaker to make considerable sociolinguistic gains, not only in relation to the acq...
Language, Identity and Migration
Focus on French as a Foreign Language
Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Acquisition across the Lifespan
Acquisition et interaction en langue étrangère
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 2015
Studies in Bilingualism, 1996
John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, Jul 15, 2022
Reviewed by ALEXANDRA JAFFE Stancetaking in Discourse is an edited volume that grew out of the 10... more Reviewed by ALEXANDRA JAFFE Stancetaking in Discourse is an edited volume that grew out of the 10th Biennial Rice Linguistics Symposium held in 2004, organized by Robert Englebretson, and brings together ten articles by a distinguished set of authors. As Englebretson writes in his introduction, the volume seeks 'to explore how it is that speakers (and writers) actively engage in taking stances in natural discourse' (p. 2), adopting an ethnographically informed approach that focuses on stancetaking as social, pragmatic action. Rather than seeking to provide a unified model of stance as social action, the volume is framed as an exploration of the wide variety of phenomena and academic approaches that can be found in this area of research. Englebretson's introductory chapter first explores the use of the word 'stance' in two corpora of contemporary English: the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE). While small in number, the tokens of 'stance' in these corpora illustrate that stance is used to describe physical, moral and personal positions, that it is public, interpretable, socially indexical and consequential. These findings are corroborated by Englebretson's analysis of collocational evidence in these corpora. The second major section of the chapter contextualizes the chapters in the volume with reference to the themes of subjectivity, evaluation and interaction, briefly reviewing key corpus-based approaches as well as work that focuses on the way that stances in particular interactions are jointly constructed and linked to wider social discourses and identity categories. The most comprehensive theoretical overview of stancetaking in the volume is Du Bois' chapter, 'The stance triangle'. Du Bois defines stance as a public act by a social actor, achieved dialogically through overt communicative means, of simultaneously evaluating objects, positioning subjects (self and others), and aligning with other subjects, with respect to any salient dimension of the sociocultural field. (p. 163) The stance triangle is a graphic representation of the dialogic relationship between the stance object of evaluation (one point on the triangle) and the subjects (1 and 2) involved in spoken or written interaction. Du Bois emphasizes that both of these subjects produce alignments (that is, stance is an intersubjective product of
Languages
Until recently, research on language attitudes focused mainly on attitudes relating to speakers’ ... more Until recently, research on language attitudes focused mainly on attitudes relating to speakers’ L1. However, with the increase in interest in multilingualism in a globalised world, there has been a renewed interest in language attitudes relating to L2 speakers. This article focuses on these issues in the context of migration: how language attitudes associated with migrants’ L1 and L2 may affect the L2 acquisition process. The attitudes of two L2 groups (Polish and Italian) are compared to see if, in the case of speakers learning different L2’s (French and Irish English), there was a difference based on the different contexts. Qualitative data and analysis were used to attend to the voices of the participants in the study. Analysis revealed differences in language attitudes amongst Polish migrants in France, Polish migrants in Ireland, and Italian migrants in Ireland that paralleled differences in L2 strategies. This supports recent research which indicates that attitudes associated...
The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics, 2022
Interlanguage Variation in Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspective, 2009
Language, Migration and Identity, 2016
Studies in Bilingualism, 1995
EUROSLA Yearbook, 2001
This article addresses the issue of underrepresentation or avoidance of colloquial words in a cro... more This article addresses the issue of underrepresentation or avoidance of colloquial words in a cross-sectional corpus of advanced French interlanguage (IL) of 29 Dutch L1 speakers and in a longitudinal corpus of 6 Hiberno-Irish English L1 speakers compared with a control group of 6 native speakers of French. The main independent variable analysed in the longitudinal corpus is the effect of spending a year in a francophone environment. This analysis is supplemented by a separate study of sociobiographical and psychological factors that affect the use of colloquial vocabulary in the cross-sectional corpus. Colloquial words are not exceptionally complex morphologically and present no specific grammatical difficulties, yet they are very rare in our data. Multivariate regression analyses suggest that only active authentic communication in the target language (TL) predicts the use of colloquial lexemes in the cross-sectional corpus. This result was confirmed in the longitudinal corpus wher...
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1991
We investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants' acquisition of the variable (ing), which ... more We investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants' acquisition of the variable (ing), which occurs in progressive tenses, participles, noun phrases, etc., and which can be pronounced [iŋ] or [In]. A VARBRUL 2 program analysis of native speaker speech shows that the production of (ing) is constrained by phonological, grammatical, stylistic, and social factors. An analysis of the nonnative speakers' acquisition of these norms shows that [In] is more frequent before anterior segments (reflecting ease of articulation), and that males use [In] more frequently than females, especially in monitored speech (perhaps reflecting their desire to accommodate to a male native speaker norm rather than to an overall native speaker norm). The analysis also shows evidence of grammatical constraints which are different from those in the native speakers' speech. This difference may reflect the fact that it is easier to acquire the [In] variant in “frozen forms,” such as prepositions, than ...
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2004
Journal of French Language Studies, 2006
This article is situated within the recent strand of SLA research which applies variationist soci... more This article is situated within the recent strand of SLA research which applies variationist sociolinguistic methods to the study of the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by the L2 speaker. Whilst that research has tended to focus on the study of morphological and morphosyntactic variables, this article aims to investigate a number of acquisitional trends identified in previous research in relation to phonological variation, namely the variable deletion of /l/ by Irish advanced L2 speakers of French in both an instructed and study abroad environment. Based on quantitative results using GoldVarb 2001, the study further illuminates the difficulty that the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation poses to the instructed L2 speaker, who is found to make minimal use of informal sociolinguistic variants. In contrast, contact with native speakers in the native speech community is seen to allow the L2 speaker to make considerable sociolinguistic gains, not only in relation to the acq...
Language, Identity and Migration
Focus on French as a Foreign Language
Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Acquisition across the Lifespan
Acquisition et interaction en langue étrangère
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 2015
Studies in Bilingualism, 1996
Modern French Identities 80 Vera Regan and Caitriona Nf Chasaide (eds) Language Practices and Ide... more Modern French Identities 80 Vera Regan and Caitriona Nf Chasaide (eds) Language Practices and Identity Construction by Multilingual Speakers of French L2 The Acquisition of Sociostylistic Variation d sh CD -ti CD Page 2. Page 3. ...
This volume presents a collection of the latest scholarly research on language, migration and ide... more This volume presents a collection of the latest scholarly research on language, migration and identity. In a globalised world where migratory patterns are in constant flux, the traditional notion of the ‘immigrant’ has shifted to include more fluid perspectives of the migrant as a transnational and the language learner as a complex individual possessing a range of dynamic social and contextual identities. This book presents a variety of studies of transnational speakers and communities. It includes research conducted within both established and emerging methodological traditions and frameworks and explores a wide range of contexts and geographical locations, from the multilingual language classroom to the migrant experience, and from Ireland to Eritrea.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1991
We investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants' acquisition of the variable (ing), which occu... more We investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants' acquisition of the variable (ing), which occurs in progressive tenses, participles, noun phrases, etc., and which can be pronounced [ip] or [ln]. A VARBRUL 2 program analysis of native speaker speech shows that the production of (ing) is constrained by phonological, grammatical, stylistic, and social
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2004
IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2000
Journal of French Language Studies, 2006
This article is situated within the recent strand of SLA research which applies variationist soci... more This article is situated within the recent strand of SLA research which applies variationist sociolinguistic methods to the study of the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by the L2 speaker. Whilst that research has tended to focus on the study of morphological and morphosyntactic variables, this article aims to investigate a number of acquisitional trends identified in previous research in relation to phonological variation, namely the variable deletion of /l/ by Irish advanced L2 speakers of French in both an instructed and study abroad environment. Based on quantitative results using GoldVarb 2001, the study further illuminates the difficulty that the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation poses to the instructed L2 speaker, who is found to make minimal use of informal sociolinguistic variants. In contrast, contact with native speakers in the native speech community is seen to allow the L2 speaker make considerable sociolinguistic gains, not only in relation to the acquisition of the informal variant in itself, but also in relation to the underlying native speaker grammatical system as indicated by the constraint ordering at work behind use of the variable.
Teanga: Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, 1990