To ensure smooth communication and collaboration, here are some troubleshooting tips to address common issues:
Check Internet Connection: Verify that you have a stable and reliable internet connection. Use a wired connection when possible, as it tends to be more stable than Wi-Fi. If using Wi-Fi, make sure you have a strong signal.
Update the Browser or App: Ensure that you are using the latest version of the web browser. Developers frequently release updates to address bugs and improve performance.
Clear Browser Cache: Sometimes, cached data can cause conflicts or issues. Clear the browser cache and cookies before joining the meeting.
Test Audio and Video: Before the meeting, check your microphone and camera to ensure they are working correctly. If you are a speaker, you can click on "Start Practice Session" button test to ensure audio and video devices are functioning.
Close Other Applications: Running multiple applications in the background can consume system resources and lead to performance issues. Close unnecessary apps to free up resources for the Dryfta meeting platform.
Restart Your Device: If you encounter persistent issues, try restarting your computer or mobile device. This can help resolve various software-related problems.
Use Supported Browsers: Ensure you are using a browser supported by the meeting platform. Recommended browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
Allow Necessary Permissions: Make sure the Dryfta meeting platform has the required permissions to access your microphone, camera, and other necessary features.
Disable VPN or Firewall: Sometimes, VPNs or firewalls can interfere with the connection to the meeting platform. Temporarily disable them and see if the issue persists.
Switch Devices: If possible, try joining the meeting from a different device to see if the problem is specific to one device.
Reduce Bandwidth Usage: In cases of slow or unstable internet connections, ask participants to disable video or share video selectively to reduce bandwidth consumption.
Update Drivers and Software: Ensure your operating system, audio drivers, and video drivers are up to date. Outdated drivers can cause compatibility issues with the Dryfta meeting platform.
Contact Support: If none of the above steps resolve the issue, reach out to the platform's support team. They can provide personalized assistance and troubleshoot specific problems.
By following these troubleshooting tips, you can tackle many common problems encountered on Dryfta meeting platform and have a more productive and seamless meeting experience.
Constructions of Chinese students' sense of belonging through language use in intercultural communicative practice in the UK
Oral Presentation[SYMP10] AILA ReN - Participatory Linguistics: Non-academic language expertise in linguistic research08:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 09:30:00 UTC
By investigating the intercultural engagement of Chinese students in the UK as well as the 'reverse cultural shock' experienced by students who return to China after studying in the UK, this research identifies learning and social activities that effectively help students engage in intercultural communication and navigate the challenges these may cause, as well as their reflections of the culture of origin as former international students. By conducting participant-led photography and 'photo interviews', the study allows participants to have freedom over the data, enhancing their active engagement in the research process. This presentation will illustrate the preliminary findings which demonstrate that Chinese students' attitudes to cultural differences can be expressed through language practices, as can be noted from regional accent and humour in everyday communication with Chinese or non-Chinese people in the UK. It further illustrates Chinese students language choice carries the meanings of either sticking to their core Chinese identity or mediating among cosmopolitan/English/Chinese identity. This study has implications for the way in which prospective international students are prepared for their encounter with the receiving society and for in-depth considerations of how the experience of living in the UK influences returnee students' cultural understanding and readaptation.
Language has been found to play an important role in creating a sense of intimacy among national group members (Gu, 2011). Language use among international students is more complicated than among domestic students who are studying in their own country because they are immersed in a multi-lingual environment. The intimacy Chinese students are building in the UK with local and Chinese communities in the UK is twofold: a sense of belonging to the culture of origin and localism to the host culture. This section discusses Chinese students' language choice in daily encounters and how their language choice links to their sense of belonging to the Chinese community or the local community. The everyday priorities of study and living in the UK incentivise Chinese students' use of English, and it is widely discussed that increasing exposure to L2 correlates positively with the promotion of L2 learning (Rubenfeld et al, 2006). However, research has also evidenced that some students resort to using more L1 in the study abroad context than they anticipate (Badstübner & Ecke, 2009) and that international students' use of L1 or L2 changes over time during their study abroad period, as a consequence of speakers' changing language proficiency, adaptation to the new environment, cultural differences, familiarity and contextual needs, etc (e.g. McManus, 2019; García-Amaya, 2017). While facing the complexities of intercultural communication with people from different language backgrounds, Chinese students also need to deal with issues of interaction with their national fellows since China is a huge country with many different sub-cultures and most individuals also carry specific regional cultures and dialects. The analysis of the data from my project shows that the connection to their home culture and L1 or the regional language serves as an emotional link to other Chinese or 'home' students who are from the same areas; while using English (L2) firstly serves for academic or professional purposes, and secondly, the use of L2 also suggests speakers' English proficiency and intercultural competence which, in turn, promotes students' further adaptation and integration to the local community. The data also suggests that, rather than sticking to one language in one context, students use translanguaging to expand their linguistic repertoire and for smooth and effective communication. References Badstübner, T. and Ecke, P., 2009. Student expectations, motivations, target language use, and perceived learning progress in a summer study abroad program in Germany. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 42(1), pp.41-49. García-Amaya, L., 2017. Detailing L1 and L2 use in study-abroad research: Data from the daily linguistic questionnaire. System, 71, pp.60-72. Gu, M., 2011. Language choice and identity construction in peer interactions: Insights from a multilingual university in Hong Kong. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural development, 32(1), pp.17-31. McManus, K., 2019. Relationships between social networks and language development during study abroad. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 32(3), pp.270-284. Rubenfeld, S., Clément, R., Lussier, D., Lebrun, M. and Auger, R., 2006. Second language learning and cultural representations: Beyond competence and identity. Language Learning, 56(4), pp.609-631.
Integration of children arriving in Hungary from Ukraine
Oral Presentation[SYMP10] AILA ReN - Participatory Linguistics: Non-academic language expertise in linguistic research08:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 09:30:00 UTC
Due to the state of war in Ukraine, since February 24th, 2022, a large number of refugees have arrived in Hungary. A significant part of them came with their families or followed their father, who had already worked "outside" (meaning in Hungary), leaving behind the older generations whose task was to look after the former residences of the emigrants in the hope of the possible return of the young and middle-aged working population. They are mainly men between 18 and 60 and their families. When the armed conflict broke out, it was unknown how long it would last. Thus, some families decided to send their children to school in Hungary and not, or not only, to continue the 2021/22 academic year online in Ukrainian public education. In the end, they finished this year in their new schools. Our research aims to examine the children's enrollment process into the Hungarian public education system and their experience with the change in their place of residence. The research methodology we follow is a participatory approach (Bodó et al. 2022, Buchholz et al. 2016, Svendsen 2018), given that we want to learn about children's experiences. Alongside researchers, the children's parents and teachers are involved in the research as participants. We gather data about the children in different ways (1) in the form of interviews with the children, (2) their parents and teachers narrate events from everyday interactions, in which they were participants; and also they retell and audio record stories narrated by the children; (3) they keep diary records; (4) they also make audio and video recordings at home and school. In addition to the data collection, the participatory approach actively invites the participants to develop the research questions and their thematics, embrace and explore their own experiences and become inherent actors of the research. Among the research subjects, there are four linguistically different groups. The children are between 5 and 10 years old. The common characteristics of the first group of children are that they all come from Transcarpathia and speak Hungarian.The second group includes children whose first language is Ukrainian. They do not speak Hungarian at all.In the third group, the children belong to the Russian minority in Ukraine.The other Russian-speaking group includes children born in a Russian-Ukrainian marriage who speak both languages equally. From the grouping above, we can also see how the language and ethnic issues can appear in Ukraine in many different ways due to the country's multicultural situation. Thus in the present research, we explore, to the best of our ability and from as many perspectives as possible, but without claiming to be exhaustive, the outlined issues of school integration of refugees and those displaced by the war in Ukraine. In this paper, we present the integration patterns that emerged in the first year of the research, which concentrates on the phenomenon of language use and school integration.
Language expertise in the making: Participatory research and linguistic ethnography
Oral Presentation[SYMP10] AILA ReN - Participatory Linguistics: Non-academic language expertise in linguistic research08:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 09:30:00 UTC
In this paper we discuss the academic researcher's role in producing and maintaining social inequalities and power relations when doing research, and how these obstacles can be overcome with applying a participatory approach in the linguistic ethnography of a community formed around a language revitalisation movement. Although social inequalities and power relations have always been there on the horizon of the study of language in society, the dilemma that the researcher is part of these relations has rarely been posed. Yet linguists derive their expertise precisely from the fact that they have a different kind of knowledge about language than those who have no linguistic training. In our presentation, we outline the relationship between the participatory approach and linguistic ethnography as one in which the language expertise of linguists and non-linguists can be transformed into shared knowledge, not through the persuasion of non-linguists, but through practices of collective action. The paper is based on ethnographic research on a community directly or indirectly participating in a programme aimed to revitalise the Hungarian language in North-East Romanian Moldavia. We argue that while language expertise belongs to all, linguists and non-linguists alike, a kind of knowledge that reflects the social inequalities associated with differences in language expertise can only be achieved by shaping it into the co-creation of knowledge through collective action. The participatory approach is seen as a form of such action.
Presenters Fazakas Noémi Associate Professor, Sapientia Hungarian University Of Transylvania
Language expertise of diasporic speakers in the study of diasporization
Oral Presentation[SYMP10] AILA ReN - Participatory Linguistics: Non-academic language expertise in linguistic research08:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 09:30:00 UTC
Studying diasporas and diasporization has lately been at the center of interest in sociolinguistic inquiry (Márquez Reiter & Martín Rojo eds. 2015). However, the literature on the inclusion of interested parties and their expertise in the academic knowledge production in connection with diasporas is scarce; even though this would be of crucial importance to achieve "thinking diaspora from below" (Rosa & Trivedi 2017) and researching the "language issues that matter" (Heller et al. 2018) for the diasporic speakers. My paper addresses the possibilities of collaboration with diasporic subjects in separate stages of the research process by drawing on the experiences of an ethnographically informed critical sociolinguistic study of Hungarians in Catalonia. Specifically, in this paper, I will discuss the different modes by which I endeavored to contribute to the democratization of the research process (Lexander & Androutsopoulos 2021). Among them, I will show how conventional research methods (e.g., interviewing, ethnographic observations) can be used to find access to the own lived experiences of diasporic subjects, how the method of diary writing can be implemented as a way to show the own interests of diasporic subjects, and how the key participants took part in the precise definition of the final research questions and in the confirmation of the research findings during the post-fieldwork phase. I argue that the most fruitful way to approach diasporas and diasporization is through the inclusion of the emic perspectives of diasporic subjects and their language expertise in the research process. That requires long-term collaboration and commitment from the research participants; but it also requires commitment for participatory methods from the research-active parties. I also argue that this way of researching is not only legally and ethically correct, but, by paying attention to the needs and interests of the participants, it is also morally proper as research on, for and with the participants (Cameron et al. 1992). And, thus, it is also a way to make linguistic knowledge applied by the people.
Cameron, Deborah, Elizabeth Frazer, Penelope Harvey, M. B. H. Rampton & Kay Richardson. 1992. Researching Language: Issues of Power and Method. London & New York: Routledge. Heller, Monica, Sari Pietikäinen & Joan Pujolar. 2018. Critical Sociolinguistic Research Methods: Studying Language Issues That Matter. London & New York: Routledge Lexander, Kristin Vold & Jannis Androutsopoulos. 2021. Working with mediagrams: A methodology for collaborative research on mediational repertoires in multilingual families. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 42(1). 1–18. Márquez Reiter, Rosina & Luisa Martín Rojo (eds., 2015). A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora: Latino Practices, Identities, and Ideologies. New York & London: Routledge. Rosa, Jonathan & Sunny Trivedi. 2017. Diaspora and language. In Suresh Canagarajah (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language, 330–346. London & New York: Routledge.
Presenters Gergely Szabó Research Fellow, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University
Mutual involvement and engagement in the study of languaging: Towards a participatory sociolinguistics
Oral Presentation[SYMP10] AILA ReN - Participatory Linguistics: Non-academic language expertise in linguistic research08:30 AM - 11:30 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 09:30:00 UTC
Participatory approaches are widespread in the social sciences and they are also starting to take hold in the study of language in society. Participatory research is based on the involvement and engagement of as many stakeholders as possible and with a critical view to the quality or level of participation, including the participation of those who are usually called researchers (Bodó et al. 2022). Despite the rise of participatory approaches, there has been hardly any research on how, if at all, they can be linked to critical sociolinguistics. While critical sociolinguistics celebrates fluid language practices and develops concepts to describe them, such as languaging, heteroglossia, and superdiversity, stakeholders often stigmatize these practices as deficit and mixed (Spolsky 2021). We argue that a participatory approach in critical sociolinguistics is feasible, when heterogenity of all participants' linguistic ideologies become the focus of research, and participants seek to relate their own ideologies to each other through common acts of participatory practices. We illustrate this with two case studies from our own research project, which centered around understanding the contemporary language practices of potential stakeholders in a language revitalisation programme. We point out that the participants' (again, including researchers) common ideologising work (Gal & Irvine 2019) and situated knowledge (Haraway 1988) may lead to results which depend on the participants' own positionalities, be these practices of sociolinguistic belonging and nostalgia (Bucholtz 2003) or those of relational/functional multilingualism. References
Bodó, Csanád; Barabás, Blanka; Fazakas, Noémi; Gáspár, Judit; Jani-Demetriou, Bernadett; Laihonen, Petteri; Lajos, Veronika and Szabó, Gergely 2022. Participation in sociolinguistic research. Language & Linguistics Compass 16(4): e12451. DOI: 10.1111/lnc3.12451
Bucholtz, Mary 2003. Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3): 398–416. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9481.00232
Gal, Susan and Irvine, Judith T. 2019. Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. Cambridge University Press.
Haraway, Donna 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14(3): 575–599. DOI: 10.2307/3178066
Spolsky, Bernard 2021. Rethinking language policy. Edinburgh University Press.
Fazakas Noémi
Judit Gáspár
Gergely Szabó