Colloquium: Critical Views on Methods and Practices in Research

on Multilingualism

Margreet Dorleijn and Jacomine Nortier:

Data from the Internet in CS Research

Presentation based on

Margreet Dorleijn en Jacomine Nortier

‘Codeswitching on the internet’

Chapter in Bullock & Toribio

(to appear)

The questions presenters seek to address are:

1. What counts as good data for research on multilingualism and how do these data contribute to the understanding of multilingualism?

2. How does the theory we use shape the data we collect and the analysis?

3. Are some methods more advantageous than others?4. Are there common methodological principles for all approaches to

the field?5. How are theory, methods and data linked to the research

endeavour on multilingualism?

In our presentation, we will concentrate on 1, and an additional question ‘3a’: are some data more advantageous than others?

What counts as good data for research on multilingualism and how do these data contribute to the understanding of

multilingualism?

Topics:• Main question: are computer mediated

communication (CMC) data useful as a basis for the analysis of bilingual language use? (Illustrated with examples from Turkish/Dutch and Moroccan/Dutch digital communities)

• Brief discussion of literature• Advantages and disadvantages of spoken vs.

CMC data.

Research on bilingual behavior on the Internet

Most studies: interactional aspects of CS. Examples:

• Androutsopoulos (2006): relation between language choice and topic of discussion on ‘Ethno Portalen’

• Lars Hinrichs (2006): relation between language and group identity

• Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003): relation between language choice and topic

• Studies on structural aspects of cs on the internet:

Not found!

Why? Is this coincidence or are CMC data not suitable?

In order to find out, we carried out a small-scale study on Turkish and Moroccan websites in NL. Is bilingual behavior on the Internet different from real-life linguistic behavior?

(From yesterday)

The Turkish and Moroccan communities in NL are comparable in terms of:

• Migration history

• Size

• Cultural background

• Socio-economic status

• Moroccans: bilingual community• Turks: monolingual community

• Moroccans: L1s have low prestige• Turks: L1 has high prestige

• Moroccans: language is not an ethnic core value• Turks: language is core value

• Moroccans: loosely knit community• Turks: closely knit community

• Moroccans: rapidly shifting to Dutch• Turks: not (or slowly) shifting to Dutch

Websites

• www.lokum.nl

• www.turksestudent.nl

• www.TurkishTexas.nl

• www.Maroc.nl

• www.maghreb.nl

• www.amazigh.nl

In terms of bilingual behavior: similar to spoken language use:

Moroccans use Dutch predominantly; Turks use a mix of Dutch and Turkish

Ok, I admit, maar h0e wil je dan 00it mr Right vinden als je t0ch geen relaties mag aangaan.. behalve het huwelijk ???

(‘Ok, I admit, but how will you ever find Mr Right if you’re not allowed to have any relations.. except marriage???’)

(posted on www.maroc.nl)

bende havo 4 en 5 in 1 jaar yapdim me too havo 4 and 5 in 1 year I-finished

Me too I finished havo 4 and 5 in 1 year (havo 4 and 5 are school type and grades)

(posted on www.lokum.nl)

• Is CMC ‘written speech’? Conclusion: In some text types almost equivalent to ‘spoken speech’. (Crystal 2001, Yates 1996; Baron 2000; Hinrichs 2006)

• What is CMC?

• We selected three types of CMC (and excluded non-interactional text types):

1. Email

2. Chatrooms

3. forums

characteristics e-mail chat forum

Easily obtainable - + +

Background authors known + - -

Easy to store + - +

Longitudinal study ? - +

Manipulable - + +

Diversity in texttype + - +

Informal/colloquial ? + +

Interaction ? + ?

Embedding in real-life relationships + - -

Different language pairsDifferent types of data

Data from moroccan sites: communicative motivations for CS (for effect)

Data from Turkish sites: often CS as default communication mode

Question:

• Is the grammar of CS that aims at communicative effects different from CS as the default mode of communication?

Example:1. Je bent nog mooier dan mijn remra7, gezien vanaf de sta7,

bij het krieken van de sba7.

‘You are even prettier than my court yard, seen from the roof, at dawn in the morning’

2. Is er geen moppen topic of zo, fikralar topigi falan var, mop guzel ama, her mopa bir topic acilirsa, is een beetje onnodig.

‘Is there no jokes topic or so, joke-PL topic-POSS or-so there-is, joke nice-is,

but each joke-DAT one topic open-PASS-COND-3sg, is a little unnecessary.’

 

Different types of datadifferent focus of research?

• Moroccan sites more suitable for research on interactional aspects of CS

• Turkish sites more suitable for research on structural aspects, conventionalisation patterns, congruent lexicalisation, loan translations etc.

But:

• Moroccan Dutch digital data may have similar structural chracteristics as spoken CS (e.g. the use of articles).

So: Moroccan digital data may be useful for structural research as well

And:

• Comparison of digital and spoken data may be revealing in its own right when answering a question like:

‘In how far do spoken (on-line produced) and digital (premeditated) CS - data differ?’

References: • Androutsopoulos, J. (2006) : “Mehrsprachigkeit im deutschen internet:

Sprachwahl und Sprachwechsel in Ethno-Portalen”, to appear in Peter Schoblinsky (Hg.) Sprache und neue Medien. Duden – thema Deutsch, Band 7.

• Baron, Dennis. (2000). ‘From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology’. In Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, editors, Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st. Century Technologies, pages 15--33. Logan, UT: Utah State Univ. Press

• Crystal, David (2001): Language and the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. in H. Bennis, G. Extra, P. Muysken and J. Nortier: Een buurt in beweging. Talen en Culturen in het Utrechtse Lombok en Transvaal, Amsterdam: Aksant, 249.

• Lars Hinrichs (2006): CS on the Web. English and Jamaican Creole in e-mail communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• David Palfreyman & Muhamed al Khalil (2003): ‘”A funky Language for Teenzz to Use”: Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant Messaging’. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 9-1, 29 pages.

• Yates 1996 ‘Oral and written aspects of computer conferencing: a corpus based study.’ S.C. Herring (ed.) Computer Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, pp. 30-46.