• Journal Menu
  • About This Journal
  • Aims and Audience
  • Abstracting/Indexing
  • Editorial Board
  • Subscription Information
  • Contact Information
• Authors
  • Author Guidelines
  • Code of Conduct
  • IJLS Editorial Style
  • IJLS Style Sheet
  • Peer Review Process
  • Call for Papers
  • FAQ
• Editors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewer Guidelines
  • Code of Conduct
  • Peer Review Process
  • IJLS Editorial Style
• Archives
  • Papers in Press
  • Latest Issue
  • Back Issues
  • Special Issues
• Home

This article examines the emotional dimension in both image and text in two Swedish picture books: Gittan och gråvargarna and Stackars Pettson. To this end, a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) model, developed by Painter, Martin and Unsworth (2013) is used. The analysis illustrates similarities, but also differences, in the way the two picture books draw on visual and verbal interpersonal meaning-making systems, and how they use text and image as narrative elements. This should partly be seen as an outcome of the picture books’ different drawings styles (generic versus naturalistic drawing style), and that they address different age groups. The emotional level is examined in light of how each picture book may challenge the reader’s/viewer’s Theory of Mind capacities and knowledge of literary/artistic conventions. For example, intertextuality and a psychological/symbolic dimension are incorporated into one of the picture books, whereas the other involves characters’ intentionality and multiple shifting emotions.

The paper investigates how ex-servicemen, seamen and factory workers stranded or left destitute in Liverpool after the First World War construct their identity through letters written to the Lord Mayor’s Office and the Lord Mayor’s responses to the letters. This was a period when there was racial tension in Liverpool and competition for jobs was fierce. This led to white workers resenting the presence of these men in the community, ultimately leading to the race riots of 1919. Although these petitioners were British subjects fighting for their mother country, they were regarded as outsiders. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper examines how these veterans negotiate identity through language. The findings show that three identities emerge: firstly, an identity that is strongly tied to their own nationality; secondly, an identity tied to military service or other work in service of Britain’s war effort; and finally, an identity as husbands and fathers who are trying hard to provide for their families and defined in relation to their families and dependents. It is also clear that while the petitioners were treated badly, this was not necessarily by the authorities but by other people in Liverpool.

This study compares current US President Donald Trump and Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, through discourse analysis. Venturing beyond the similarities found in their private and political lives, the study observes the similarities and differences between these two public figures belonging to two different countries and cultures from a linguistic perspective. The analysis focuses on three speeches held by each politician under similar circumstances, specifically focussing on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of their use of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. This study partially confirms the media’s ideas about the similarity between the two politicians and highlights how their comparison can reveal some aspects of the evolution of politics in the Western world which is becoming ever more similar to a form of infotainment.

Tsonga people are one of South Africa’s recognised ethnic groups with a population of over 4.5 million speakers in the country (Census 2011). This qualifies the language as one of the least spoken indigenous languages in the country when compared to Zulu, Xhosa, Pedi, Sotho, and Tswana. In cases where a language is spoken by the minority, there tends to be concomitant negative attitudes towards that particular language by speakers of the majority languages. This paper reports the findings of a study that investigated the attitudes and opinions of young Tsonga-speaking students towards their own language (or their perception of the self) at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Ten (N=10) Tsonga-speaking students were asked how they felt about their own language. Structured questionnaires that consisted of both open ended and closed ended questions were used. Results indicated that the participants of the study not only had positive attitudes and opinions towards their own language, but they also had the same with the other indigenous South African languages.

In EFL context, where English is the medium of instruction at select universities, university students aim to develop foreign language writing skills for academic and professional purposes. However, higher language proficiency in itself cannot guarantee success in writing. Self-efficacy, the individual judgement of their capabilities, seems to play an important role in individuals’ writing performance and the effort given to writing tasks. The objective of this study is to measure Turkish university students’ foreign language writing self-efficacy and to identify the variables that may be related to foreign language writing self-efficacy. A newly developed and validated foreign language writing self-efficacy scale was implemented to collect data from students taking a writing class at a private university. Results indicated that the participants’ foreign language writing self-efficacy is moderate, and that their writing self-efficacy does not change due to their gender, area of study, or actual English language proficiency levels. Perceived language proficiency seems to play a more prominent role than actual proficiency level.

The aim of this research was to investigate readers’ meaning-making processes from words and pictures in picture books. Ten junior university students were engaged in eye-tracking analyses and interviews, and their eye movements and fixations from the words to the corresponding picture parts were analyzed. The results showed that the students produced some original questions when they were viewing and tracking on the double-page spread, and they demonstrated many types of approaches to producing and solving their own questions, utilizing structural relationships among the visual cues corresponding to their questions. The results of the study revealed tendencies that have implications for the processes of identifying how readers create structural relationships among visual cues in reading texts, and how they utilize these relationships to ask questions. It was concluded that these tendencies as well as the readers’ questions may be helpful in identifying students’ reading/viewing states.

Studies have shown that learner autonomy plays a decisive role in online learning, but teachers’ autonomy supportiveness is still under-researched. This issue has particularly remained untouched in online instruction which has gained importance recently. Considering the lack of an appropriate context-specific scale for the investigation of online teachers’ autonomy support, the current study sought to develop and validate a scale for this purpose. It investigated the factors that contribute to autonomy support by Iranian EFL teachers in online contexts. The literature on the topics of autonomy and e-learning was reviewed extensively, and a questionnaire was developed and validated through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) methodology. The thematic analysis of the literature and experts’ opinions finally yielded 48 factors that were grouped in seven categories comprising negotiation, awareness, freedom, teacher attitude, scaffolding, authenticity, and technical help.

Language testing has witnessed three major trends in the 1990s: theoretical, methodological, and analytical. Theoretically, emphasis has been placed on the further understanding of the construct of language proficiency. Methodologically, there has been an outburst of interest in language performance testing and the promotion of the professional standards of test development and use. Analytically, emphasis has been placed on the implementation of Item Response Theory (IRT), G-theory, and the understanding of the multiple sources of variance in test performance. After a review of these trends, the current paper presents a complete picture of language assessment from an Archimedean point. It argues that language assessment, seen from such a point, has four intertwined but self-informed pillars: construct issues, psychometrics, edumetrics, and construct-irrelevant factors.