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We present a research article writing course that uses a flipped classroom approach for independent, personalised learning (Deroey & Skipp, 2023). The course aims to improve insight into the structural, stylistic and rhetorical features of research articles as well as the writing and publication process. Its five interlocking components are independent learning tasks, workshops, peer review, writing with reflection, and consultations. Learner autonomy is promoted through corpus work (Charles, 2018), analysis of disciplinary texts (Yasuda, 2011) and interviews with disciplinary experts. The course has been successfully delivered both fully online and on campus to several mixed-discipline cohorts of doctoral students. Before the workshops, students complete independent learning tasks by reading the e-coursebook and completing exercises, including applications to their own texts. The submitted tasks allow us to illustrate key points and design activities with examples from participants’ writing. Submissions of article drafts with reflections further promote and document the application of course content. Peer review happens independently of the instructor but uses a template to guide feedback. Writing consultations with the lecturer provide additional personal feedback. This course stimulates novice research writers to become writing researchers; maximises the added value of the workshops; and enables PhD students to manage their time better. We will explain how this independent, personalised approach works and formulate recommendations based on course evaluations and our experiences. References Charles, M. (2018). Corpus-assisted editing for doctoral students: More than just concordancing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 36, 15-25. Deroey, K. L. B., & Skipp, J. (2023). Designing and delivering an online research article writing course for doctoral students in Luxembourg during Covid-19. In B. Fenton-Smith, J. Gimenez, K. Mansfield, M. Percy, & M. Spinillo (Eds.), International perspectives on teaching academic English in turbulent times (pp. 81-94). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003283409-10 Yasuda, S. (2011). Genre-based tasks in foreign language writing: Developing writers’ genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20(2), 111-133.

There is a consensus that home languages are the foundation on which to develop additional languages and that collaboration between homes and institutions of early childhood education and care (ECEC) can contribute to the development of children’s language and literacy skills. Nevertheless, educators seem rarely to draw on multiple languages in literacy activities. Furthermore, situations where educators and parents jointly read to children are scarce. Luxembourg, which has implemented a programme of multilingual education in ECEC, is an ideal context to investigate literacy practices and language use of educators and parents. Drawing on observations in two multilingual centres in Luxembourg as well as interviews, the present study examines the interactions between the educators and the three-year-old children and those between the educators, parents, and children when the parents occasionally read books in the centres. The findings show that the educators in both centres used several languages and that the types of interactions differed. When the parents offered literacy activities, their use of languages and the roles they played also differed, varying from being fully involved to taking a marginal role. The findings can help educators and policymakers develop inclusive and participatory literacy practices which actively involve children and parents.

La perspective actionnelle, au centre des cours de langues depuis les années 2000, prend en compte le besoin de communiquer des apprenants. Ces derniers sont habitués à réaliser des tâches en contexte pour communiquer dans la langue cible, alors comment rendre aujourd’hui l’apprentissage du lexique dynamique pour nourrir ces interactions dans le contexte multilingue de l’enseignement secondaire au Luxembourg ? Dans cette communication, nous allons explorer plusieurs ressources (l’art et des applications numériques spécialisées sur le lexique) et les travailler sur différents supports (le téléphone et les tablettes). Ces outils didactisés offrent des stratégies d’enseignement-apprentissage en classe inversée ou en enseignement hybride, tout en permettant -nous le verrons-, de maintenir l’attention des élèves en cours de français. Cette démarche facilite également la mise en place de la pédagogie différenciée auprès d’un public aux niveaux hérétogènes (Français Langue Etrangère, Français Langue Seconde, et Français Langue Maternelle).

This article provides an overview of the structure of the Luxembourgish language, the national language of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which has developed from a Moselle Franconian dialect to an Ausbau language in the course of the 20th century. In the early 21st century, Luxembourgish serves several functions, mainly as a multifunctional spoken variety but also as a written language, which has acquired a medium level of language standardization. Because of the embedding into a complex multilingual situation with German and French, Luxembourgish is characterized by a high degree of language contact. As a Germanic language, Luxembourgish has developed its distinct grammatical features. In this article, the main aspects of phonetics and phonology (vowels, consonants, prosody, word stress), morphology (inflection of nouns, adjectives, articles and pronouns, partitive structures, prepositions, verbal system), and syntactic characteristics (complementizer agreement, word order in verbal clusters) are discussed. The lexicon is influenced to a certain degree by loanwords from French. Regarding language variation and change, recent surveys show that Luxembourgish is undergoing major changes affecting phonetics and phonology (reduction of regional pronunciations), the grammatical system (plural of nouns), and, especially, the lexical level (decrease of loans from French, increase of loans from German).

This paper surveys English medium instruction (EMI) lecturer training worldwide in order to inform decisions by practitioners tasked with its design and delivery. The survey encompasses 25 published initiatives from 18 countries. These were analysed for their content components and delivery methods as well as training challenges and recommendations. This analysis revealed four main components: language, communication, pedagogy and EMI awareness. Most programmes were delivered face to face but some were blended with a substantial amount of online and independent work. Delivery methods could broadly be classified into group classes, individual support and peer learning. Microteaching with reflection, feedback and observation was a widely recurring and highly rated activity. Programmes were typically developed in-house by English language professionals. Recurring challenges were contextualisation, group heterogeneity, lecturer confidence and the lack of incentivisation. The paper concludes with pedagogical recommendations for the development of EMI lecturer training programmes.

Das Wörterbuch bietet – zum ersten Mal – einen kompakten Überblick über die deutsche Standardsprache (Hochsprache) in Luxemburg. Wie in Österreich und der Schweiz haben sich auch in Luxemburg mit der Zeit bestimmte sprachliche Eigenständigkeiten gegenüber Deutschland herausgebildet. Das Wörterbuch dokumentiert und erläutert diese in über 1.300 Wortartikeln aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen (Alltag, Politik, Verwaltung, Schule, Gesundheit etc.). Ein Einleitungsteil gibt verständlich Auskunft über die Ziele und die methodischen Grundlagen des Wörterbuches. Vor dem Hintergrund der Mehrsprachigkeit wird darüber hinaus die sprachwissenschaftliche Systematik der Luxemburger Varianten beschrieben. Erläutert werden insbesondere aber auch mögliche Implikationen auf den Bildungssektor.

Multilingual teaching and the promotion of multilingualism among students are important principles of the University of Luxembourg. For their implementation, a variety of e-learning resources are used, adapted to the needs of the learners. We will give an overview of new multimodal communication practices and methods used by learners in multilingual contexts which naturally lead teachers to rethink their approach and incorporate media into their teaching strategies. The hybrid nature of devices (computers, tablets, televisions, smartphones, paper, interactive whiteboards, etc.) and digital tools (document sharing platforms, online correction tools, interactive exercises, online learning programmes, dictionaries, video editing software, automatic pronunciation correction, etc.) offer a great potential to interactive and mobile teaching and learning. We will illustrate this potential by giving an example of how to develop text production competence in Chinese as a foreign language in a motivating way using the content management system Moodle. Our reflection aims at optimising the quality of language teaching both in and out of the classroom.

Motivational speaking usually conveys a highly emotional message and its purpose is to invite action. The goal of this paper is to investigate the prosodic realization of one particular type of cheering, namely inciting cheering for single addressees in sport events (here, long-distance running), using the name of that person. 31 native speakers of German took part in the experiment. They were asked to cheer up an individual marathon runner in a sporting event represented by video by producing his or her name (1-5 syllables long). For reasons of comparison, the participants also produced the same names in isolation and carrier sentences. Our results reveal that speakers use different strategies to meet their motivational communicative goals: while some speakers produced the runners’ names by dividing them into syllables, others pronounced the names as quickly as possible putting more emphasis on the first syllable. A few speakers followed a mixed strategy. Contrary to our expectations, it was not the intensity that mostly contributes to the differences between the different speaking styles (cheering vs. neutral), at least in the methods we were using. Rather, participants employed higher fundamental frequency and longer duration when cheering for marathon runners.

This paper is based in Luxembourg where a multilingual programme has been implemented in early childhood education in 2017. The research project examines the language use in daily communication and literacy activities of educators and parents in day care centres, as reported by educators in two online-questionnaires. The findings show that the educators and parents use multiple languages when communicating, singing and reading with children in the centres. In addition to French and Luxembourgish which dominate, they use five other languages. Their reported multilingual practice reflects their beliefs that speaking and reading in several languages promotes language learning. However, while the programme is multilingual, a range of home languages are marginalised. The educators produce a language hierarchy in the centres which the parents reproduce. While collaboration with parents can be effective in bringing home languages into day care centres, educators need to be aware of language hierarchies and ideologies.

This talk will provide insights into designing and delivering English Medium Instruction (EMI) lecturer training by surveying published initiatives worldwide (Deroey, 2021). Although EMI is not a recent phenomenon, many higher education institutions are only now beginning to organize specific support for EMI lecturers. EAP practitioners are often tasked with providing such support, since the perception commonly is that language is the main issue requiring improvement. However, the efficient design and delivery of EMI lecturing training and support is a complex challenge. First, most literature highlights the need for pedagogical and communication training in addition to language work. Second the varied EMI context means training should be adapted to the local cultural, educational, linguistic and institutional contexts (Herington, 2020; Martinez & Fernandes, 2020; Tuomainen, 2018). Third, we need to be sensitive to lecturers’ attitudes towards EMI and EMI training (Tsui, 2018). Fourth, there are practical considerations such as the timely provision of support (Guarda & Helm, 2017); promoting participation; facilitating learning transfer to lectures; and working with what are usually heterogeneous participant groups in terms of English proficiency, (EMI) lecturing experience and discipline (Ball & Lindsay, 2013). Finally, the design of these programmes typically needs to happen with very limited institutional resources, few (if any) published materials and relatively little published research on lecture discourse and EMI lecturer training. Having surveyed the main components, formats and work forms of the programmes, the conclusion highlights ways forward in EMI lecturer training that emerge from this analysis. References Ball, P., & Lindsay, D. (2013). Language demands and support for English-medium instruction in tertiary education. Learning from a specific context In A. Doiz, D. Lasagabaster, & J. M. Sierra (Eds.), English-medium instruction at universities: Global challenges (pp. 44-61). Multilingual Matters. Deroey, K. L. B. (2021). Lecturer training for English Medium Instruction: what and how? In B. D. Bond, A. & M. Evans (Ed.), Innovation, exploration and transformation. Proceedings of the 2019 BALEAP Conference (pp. 245-253). Garnet. Guarda, M., & Helm, F. (2017). A survey of lecturers’ needs and feedback on EMI training. In K. Ackerley, M. Guarda, & F. Helm (Eds.), Sharing perspectives on English-medium instruction (pp. 167-194). Peter Lang. Herington, R. (2020). Observation as a tool to facilitate the professional development of teaching faculty involved in English as a Medium of Instruction: trainer and trainee perspectives. In M. L. Carrió-Pasto (Ed.), Internationalising Learning in Higher Education (pp. 65-82). IGI Global. Martinez, R., & Fernandes, K. (2020). Development of a teacher training course for English medium instruction for higher education professors in Brazil. In M. Del Mar Sánchez-Pérez (Ed.), Teacher Training for English-Medium Instruction in Higher Education (pp. 125-152). IGI Global. Tuomainen, S. (2018). Supporting non-native university lecturers with English-medium instruction. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 10(3), 230-242.

This paper presents an overview of the LL(O)D and NLP methods, tools and data for detecting and representing semantic change, with its main application in humanities research. The paper’s aim is to provide the starting point for the construction of a workflow and set of multilingual diachronic ontologies within the humanities use case of the COST Action Nexus Linguarum, European network for Web-centred linguistic data science, CA18209. The survey focuses on the essential aspects needed to understand the current trends and to build applications in this area of study.

Numerous scholars have investigated translanguaging in students with a migration background by examining the deployment of their linguistic repertoire. By contrast, few studies have adopted a social semiotic perspective on translanguaging. Similarly, studies on newcomers in this field are scarce. Newcomers, especially those to the trilingual education system in Luxembourg, face significant language challenges. The present paper explores the ways in which Portuguese-speaking Harry combined the resources of his semiotic repertoire in science and French lessons in Year 4, and discusses different combinations of resources. Findings based on field notes and video-recordings of classroom activities show that the eleven-year-old engaged in learning by activating his prior knowledge and deploying his semiotic repertoire in resourceful ways. He mobilised features of five languages, coordinated linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic resources, and aligned his resources to those of his peers. Furthermore, he reproduced the semiotic combinations of peers as well as the translanguaging practices in class. We show that a newcomer orchestrates his semiotic resources in complex ways to communicate, make meaning and engage in learning processes. Further research into the deployment of the semiotic repertoire at school is needed.

Critical sociolinguistics has demonstrated that the social construct of the “native speaker” has a strong impact on people’s lives, but research on “native speaker effects” in the workplace remains rare. This article examines such effects from the perspective of four “native English speaker” trainees on temporary contracts in a multilingual European Union institution in Luxembourg. Applying the framework of sociolinguistic stance to interview data and drawings, we examine how the participants position themselves towards the “native English speaker” construct at work, and how they think others position them. According to our participants, “native English speaker” positioning confers privilege but restricts opportunities, demonstrating that the interest of a multilingual organisation in using the “native English speaker” as a resource does not automatically provide a powerful position to “native English speaking” workers. Our results featuring trainees in precarious labour conditions raise broader issues regarding the precaritisation of language work in the EU.

Die Studiengänge an der Universität Luxemburg sind überwiegend mehrsprachig. Vor diesem Hintergrund sind die mehrsprachigen Kompetenzen unserer studentischen Hilfskräfte im Sprachenzentrum von zentraler Bedeutung. In diesem Zusammenhang werden den Studierenden Peer-Tutoring- und Tandemprogramme angeboten, um sie bei ihrem Integrationsprozess in unser Universitätssystem zu unterstützen. Wir haben im Rahmen eines gemeinsamen Kurses der sechs Sprachzentren der Grenzuniversitäten, der Studierende sprachlich und kulturell auf eine zukünftige Mobilität vorbereiten, ein Tandemmodul integriert, das diese Studierenden zur gegenseitigen Hilfe unter Gleichaltrigen anregen soll. Wenn sich Tandems ergeben sollten, schulen wir unsere studentischen Hilfskräfte darin, Gruppen bei der Durchführung von Tandem-Aktivitäten zu begleiten. Die Studierenden müssen sich auf drei bzw. vier Aktivitäten einigen, die sie gemeinsam durchführen. Um den Nutzen dieser Partnerschaft zwischen Studierenden und studentischen Hilfskräften zu maximieren, werden wir in dieser Mitteilung über die Entwicklung einer Vorgehensweise und eine Verstärkung der Begleitinstrumente nachdenken, die darauf abzielen, ihre "Tandem-Sitzungen" in Gruppen zu strukturieren.

Sentiment is all around us in everyday life. It can be found in blog posts, social media comments, text messages and many other places where people express themselves. Sentiment analysis is the task of automatically detecting those sentiments, attitudes or opinions in written text. In this research, the first sentiment analysis solution for the low-resource language, Luxembourgish, is conducted using a large corpus of user comments published on the RTL Luxembourg website www.rtl.lu. Various resources were created for this purpose to set the foundation for further sentiment research in Luxembourgish. A Luxembourgish sentiment lexicon and an annotation tool were built as external resources that can be used for collecting and enlarging training data for sentiment analysis tasks. Additionally, a corpus of mainly sentences of user comments was annotated with negative, neutral and positive labels. This corpus was furthermore automatically translated to English and German. Afterwards, diverse text representations such as word2vec, tf-idf and one-hot encoding were used on the three versions of the corpus of labeled sentences for training different machine learning models. Furthermore, one part of the experimental setup leveraged linguistic features for the classification process in order to study their impact on sentiment expressions. By following such a broad strategy, this thesis not only sets the basis for sentiment analysis with Luxembourgish texts but also intends to give recommendations for conducting sentiment detection research for other low-resource languages. It is demonstrated that creating new resources for a low-resource language is an intensive task and should be carefully planned in order to outperform working with translations where the target language is a high-resource language such as English and German.

Die vorliegende Studie widmet sich der Problematik von individueller Mehrsprachigkeit und Mehrschriftigkeit innerhalb kollaborativer Schreibinteraktionen. Individuelle Mehrsprachigkeit/Mehrschriftigkeit wird mittels der Konzepte der sprachlichen Repertoires und Register beleuchtet. Als kollaborative Schreibinteraktion wird ein Face-to-Face-Format definiert, bei dem zwei oder mehrere, am selben Ort befindliche Personen, ein Dokument basierend auf gemeinsamen Ideen anfertigen und hierüber ein Gespräch führen. Von Interesse ist die Forschungsfrage, wie mehrsprachige Studierende der Romanistik an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M. ihre schriftsprachlichen Ressourcen beim gemeinsamen Formulieren eines akademischen Texts in einer romanischen Zielsprache (Französisch oder Spanisch) einsetzen. Zur Beantwortung der Fragestellung dient ein qualitatives methodenplurales Forschungsdesign, bei dem theoretisch-methodische Forschungsansätze aus Soziolinguistik, Ethnographie und Aktionsforschung zusammenfließen. Die Datenerhebung erfolgte in einem ethnographisch gerahmten Aktionsforschungsseminar, in dem mehrsprachige Studierende über ihre sprachlichen Repertoires schriftlich reflektieren und zum akademischen Schreiben interaktiv in Gruppen zusammenkommen. Das hierbei entstandene Datenmaterial, die Reflexionstexte einerseits sowie die Audio- und Bildschirmaufnahmen der Schreibinteraktionen andererseits, wurde inhalts- und gesprächsanalytisch ausgewertet. Darüber werden Konzepte aus Mehrsprachigkeits- und Textproduktionsforschung miteinbezogen, um einen ganzheitlichen Blick auf Dynamiken beim kollaborativen Formulieren zu gewinnen. Die Studie bietet zahlreiche Anknüpfungspunkte für zukünftige Forschung über Mehrschriftigkeit. Aus theoretischer Sicht ist es relevant, wie strukturelle Mehrschriftigkeit im Format der kollaborativen Schreibinteraktion konzeptualisiert werden kann. Methodisch betrachtet besteht die Notwendigkeit zur Weiterentwicklung des methodenpluralen Forschungsdesigns, um sowohl Daten zu Prozessen und Produkten als auch zu beteiligten Individuen zu triangulieren. In dieser Hinsicht spielt das Verhältnis von Ethnographie und Gesprächsanalyse eine gewichtige Rolle. Aus didaktischer Sicht ist es schließlich bedeutsam, wie die Aneignung zielsprachlicher Kompetenz beim akademischen Schreiben mit einer Integration mehrsprachiger Ressourcen einhergehen kann. Cette thèse examine la problématique du plurilinguisme et de la plurilitéracie individuelle dans des interactions portant sur des pratiques d’écriture collaborative. Le plurilinguisme et la plurilitéracie sont éclairées par les concepts de répertoires et de registres langagiers. Dans ce type d’interaction en face à face, deux ou plusieurs personnes se retrouvent au même endroit pour rédiger un document à partir d’idées partagées en menant une conversation à ce sujet. Il s’agit là de sonder les pratiques litéraciques d’étudiant·e·s plurilingues en études romanes de l’université Goethe de Francfort lorsqu’ils/elles formulent conjointement un texte académique dans une langue cible romane (en français ou en espagnol). Pour ce faire, cette recherche s’inscrit dans une approche qualitative mobilisant une pluralité de méthodologies et de courants théoriques inspirés principalement des recherches menées en sociolinguistique et de l’ethnographie comme la recherche-action. Le recueil de données a eu lieu dans le cadre d’un séminaire de recherche-action au cours duquel les étudiant·e·s plurilingues ont réfléchi par écrit sur leurs propres répertoires langagiers et se sont réuni·e·s de manière interactive en groupes pour la rédaction de textes académiques. Les données résultantes ont été analysées par le biais d’une analyse de contenu qualitative et d’une analyse conversationnelle. En outre, des concepts venant des recherches sur le plurilinguisme et sur les processus d’écriture sont mobilisés afin d’accéder à une vision holistique des dynamiques d’écriture collaborative. Cette recherche ouvre de nouvelles perspectives pour les recherches portant sur la plurilitéracie. D’un point de vue théorique, on voit comment la plurilitéracie structurelle peut être analysée à partir d’interactions portant sur l’écriture collaborative. D’un point de vue méthodologique, elle ouvre des voies de réflexion pour aiguiser la focalisation sur les processus d’interaction, les productions et leurs corrélations avec les parcours des individus impliqués. À cet égard, la relation entre l’ethnographie et l’analyse conversationnelle joue un rôle primordial. Enfin, d’un point de vue didactique, il est significatif de voir comment dans les écrits universitaires le projet d’appropriation d’une langue cible peut aller de pair avec la prise en compte des ressources plurilingues.

The present study contributes to recent renewed interest in the social construction of folk linguistic knowledge and directs its focus to a multilingual workplace. The article reports on an in-depth sociolinguistic investigation in a European institution in Luxembourg. Data were collected in 2020-2021 with trainees and permanent staff in a terminology and communication unit. The data collection triangulated qualitative techniques of longitudinal interviewing, reflective drawing, writing reflection, and observation. Analysis of participants’ stances uncovered a varying understanding of what multilingualism means in the workplace, how it changes and to what effect. During reflective participation, the trainees heightened their socio-pragmatic awareness of diversity in the meaning-making process. Moreover, they ceased to construct their personal multilingualism as proof of professional competence and started to see it as the basis of their own well-being, personal self-realisation and growth. As such, they re-coupled the social and linguistic aspect of their language use and aligned their stances with the permanent staff. This study aims to inspire more innovative approaches with a potential direct effect in multilingual workplaces, especially in those welcoming workers from monolingual or otherwise homogenous social environments.

In order to explore the social effects of the differentiation between ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ varieties of English, the present qualitative study followed six Anglophone trainees in an EU institution in Luxembourg. Data were gathered in 2018/19 and 2020/21, combining on-site observations with longitudinal and one-off interviews. Research incited participants’ reflections on language practices at work and mapped their discursive positioning. Conclusions drawn from a sociolinguistic analysis of stances show that, despite the vagueness and lack of clearly definable linguistic characteristics for the category, being labelled as ‘native English’ brought distinct negative effects to the experience of the ‘native English’ participants. The contribution highlights the social constructivist character of the native/non-native dichotomy and draws attention to its adverse effects in the multilingual workplace and beyond.

Previous studies have found that students whose home language differs from the language of instruction are prone to school inadequacy and to dropping out early (Cummins, 2015; EC, 2013) This is especially true for the lusophone population in Luxembourg. This thesis aims to capture the experiences of these migrant children in the Luxembourgish educational system to identify possible matches as well as mismatches between children’s support structures at home, school and daycare centre. Drawing on a sociocultural framework that understands that children learn languages when engaging in social practices with members of their communities (Rogoff, 1990) and that gives a prominent role to children’s active role when interacting with their environments (Van Lier, 2004), this thesis investigates the role of the adults in shaping the immediate environments of three newly arrived five-year-old Brazilian children in Luxembourg. It presents two cases studies that examine the supporting structures that parents at home, teachers at school and educators in Maison Relais pour Enfants (a non-formal education institution) provide to support language development of these children. The data from this qualitative study was collected from October 2017 to July 2018, combining participant-observation, fieldnotes, video recordings, photographs, questionnaires and interviews. The data analysis drew on approximately 170 hours of field observation, 25 hours of video material, photographs, interviews, and questionnaires. It was then analysed by employing different qualitative methods, i.e. Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) (Vaismoradi & Snelgrove, 2019), Sociocultural Discourse Analysis (SDA) (Mercer, 2004), and Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) (Anderson, 2007; Vaisomoradi & Snelgrove, 2019). The findings show that the adults designed physical learning spaces and selected material that afforded language and literacy development. They also offered language-related activities such as phonemic awareness exercises, tracing letters, reading books for children, asking children to retell stories, proposing songs and rhymes, among many others. In addition, adults deployed scaffolding strategies when talking to children, especially questions, repetitions, and feedback. While each setting is unique, some similarities could nevertheless be found. The children encountered the following features across the different settings: literacy, play, structure, and multilingual adults with a monolingual ethos. Overall, the findings show a positive start for the three children.

This dissertation is an investigation into the relation between mind and language from different perspectives, split up into three interrelated but still, for the most part, self-standing parts. Parts I and II are concerned with the question how thought is affected by language while Part III investigates the scope covered by mind and language respectively. Part I provides a reconstruction of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous Private Language Argument in order to apply the rationale behind this line of argument to the relation between mind and language. This argumentative strategy yields the conclusion that reasoning – an important type of thought – is constitutively dependent on language possession and is therefore not available to non-linguistic creatures. This result is achieved by considering the preconditions for reasoning – given that it is a rule-governed activity – and eliminating competitors to language for providing reasoners with what it takes to reason. Part II provides a critical outlook on the wide and highly heterogeneous field of linguistic relativity theories. It is argued that no kind of linguistic relativity whatsoever follows from the conclusion of Part I – i.e., the claim that reasoning is constitutively dependent on having a language. While Part II does not provide a conclusive argument against the linguistic relativity hypothesis, it is argued that endorsement of linguistic relativity theories often rests on a mistaken assumption to the effect that language and culture are interwoven in a way which makes it impossible to separate culture and language, as well as their respective studies. This assumption is undermined by providing examples of languages which clearly predate their culture (Esperanto) or do not even have a culture at all (Klingon). So, the assumption that language and culture are inextricably intertwined is refuted by way of counterexample. Part III provides an in-depth examination of the Principle of Expressibility – prominently endorsed and formulated by John Searle – which claims that whatever can be thought can also be said. The domains of what can be thought and of what can be said are considered in set theoretic terms in order to determine whether one is contained in the other, so that everything we can think can also be adequately communicated. After thorough study of interpretative issues regarding the Principle of Expressibility and consideration of the most pressing potential counterexamples to the principle, we can conclude that we have good reason to believe in the truth of the Principle of Expressibility. In conclusion, the achieved results are related back to prominent positions in the discussion about thought and language which already make their appearance in the very beginning of this investigation. The final chapter of this dissertation reminds us that eminent figures in philosophy have often taken a wrongheaded perspective on the relation between language and thought, so that language has frequently appeared to be an impediment to thought. We can, however, confidently conclude that language, on the contrary, is by far our most apt means for thought and that reasoning would not even be possible without the resources language provides.

Cross-language transfer in vowel spelling is difficult to detect because the relation between a vowel and its grapheme is often ambiguous within a writing system and the interpretation of transfer complex. This study examined French spelling patterns of German fourth graders with French as Foreign language cross-linguistically by applying a fine-grained measure to the differences in spelling, tested with a dictation. The study differentiated between phonologically and graphematically joint vs. unshared vowel graphemes in French and German and the contribution of each category to transfer. Instead of testing orthographic knowledge as in applying the orthographic norm correctly, it used the model of the ‘graphematic solution space’ [Neef, M. (2015). Writing systems as modular objects: Proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics, 1(1), 708–721.] that takes into account spelling that is graphematically licensed within the involved writing system. The analysis distinguished between poor and good German spellers to get insights on the relation of the pupils’ competence in the German and French spelling. Results showed an influence of the phonological and graphematic overlap in the spelling patterns, but also inconsistencies with both writing systems. The findings challenge statistical learning in multilingual contexts as the produced graphotactic patterns are rather French-like than French.

This talk has a dual purpose. In addition to mapping the use of one type of metadiscourse, viz. importance markers, across ‘native’ and ‘English Medium Instruction’ (EMI) lecture corpora, we elaborate on analytical issues related to studying metadiscourse in spoken and disciplinary discourse. ‘Importance markers’ (Deroey & Taverniers, 2012) are lexicogrammatical metadiscursive devices combining discourse organization with evaluation along a ‘parameter of importance or relevance’ (Thompson and Hunston, 2000, p. 24). In lectures, they help students identify key content, which is useful for allocating processing resources while listening to what are typically dense monologues that require processing in real time. This in turns is likely to benefit understanding, note-taking and retention. Comparing the use of importance markers in a single-discipline corpus of engineering lectures by ‘native’ speakers and EMI lecturers, our aim was to contribute to the limited insights into the linguistic features of EMI lecture discourse generally and metadiscourse important for lecture discourse organization and hence lecture listening, specifically. Both researchers independently identified potential importance markers manually in lectures 46 engineering lectures (364,542 words) delivered in the Italy, Malaysia, the UK, and New Zealand,. Agreed instances were tagged and the tagged corpus imported into Sketch Engine to facilitate further analysis. Overall, native speakers and EMI lecturers differed little in importance marker frequency, range, types, and lexemes. In both corpora, the predominant verb marker was V n/clause (e.g. remember they don't know each other). The main difference was the far more common use of the listener-oriented 2 pers pron V n/clause marker (you must understand how to apply this one) by the non-native speakers but this was largely due to idiolectic variation. Contrary to most corpus linguistic metadiscourse studies, we report the inevitable analytical difficulties when identifying and classifying metadiscourse. Issues include establishing a definition that is broad enough to capture the various realizations of a metadiscursive function, while not ‘opening the floodgates’ to include instances that are not representative or that render the study unfeasible. For us this included distinguishing between evaluation of discourse and ‘real world’ entities, excluding very frequent phrases that could be viewed as importance markers but in this discipline probably served another function, and establishing a continuum of highlighting ‘force’. These considerations necessitated careful manual analysis of a relatively small corpus, which however means that generalization are limited and idiolectic bias more likely.

This article uses reflective drawing to explore representations of multilingualism by Anglophone migrants in Luxembourg. Analysing twelve interviews in which participants drew and described their language experiences, we examine the language ideologies Anglophone migrants adopt in response to the ideologies of English they encounter. Participants adopt various ideologies, sometimes aligning with the ideology of global English, sometimes with counter-ideologies of resistance to it, and sometimes a mix of the two. Visual features indexing affective states include colour, gesture, facial expression, and composition. Monolingual cringe – expressed as shame, embarrassment and being ‘bad at languages’ – performs several functions for the participants. Sometimes it serves as an affective disclaimer, allowing them to lean on their privilege in a more socially acceptable way. Sometimes it appears to express genuine distress, in the form of searing linguistic insecurity. Sometimes it performs a distancing function, enabling them to oppose themselves to the stereotype of the monolingual English speaker. The affective intensity of the drawings suggests the ideology of global English does have costs for Anglophone migrants. Fundamentally, though, monolingual cringe reinforces privilege, allowing participants to apologise for their monolingualism even as they continue to benefit from it.

The paper presents a method for corpus-based informational analysis, using an open source platform for lexicometric processing and a spreadsheet application. This type of study may serve in illustrating the factors that influence informational measures such as entropy, energy and informativity, and in detecting certain structural or stylistic particularities of the analysed corpora.

À partir d’un échantillon d’offres d’emploi publiées dans le Luxemburger Wort, portant sur la période 1984-2019, cette étude décrit l’évolution des compétences linguistiques exigées ou souhaitées sur le marché du travail du Luxembourg. Après une présentation contextuelle de la situation linguistique et de l’emploi au Luxembourg, l’analyse empirique des quelques 8 340 offres d’emploi de notre échantillon constitue le cœur de cette publication. Aux divers tableaux et graphiques illustrant notre propos s’ajoutent des décryptages de la sémantique utilisée dans les offres d’emploi publiées, utiles à la compréhension des besoins linguistiques dans un marché du travail plurilingue et international.

This workshop will provide insights into designing and delivering English Medium Instruction (EMI) lecturer training. Although universities have been slow to organize EMI lecturer support, an increasing awareness of the challenges faced by EMI lecturers and their students now appears to be boosting the demand for EMI lecturer training and support initiatives. Consequently, EAP practitioners can increasingly expect requests to design and deliver such programmes. However, the efficient design and delivery of EMI lecturing training and support is a complex challenge. First, the EMI context is very varied and initiatives should be adapted to the local cultural, educational, linguistic and institutional contexts (Herington, 2020; Martinez & Fernandes, 2020; Tuomainen, 2018). Second, most literature highlights the need for language, pedagogical and intercultural components (e.g. Fortanet Gómez, 2020). Third, we need to be sensitive to lecturers’ attitudes towards EMI and EMI training (Tsui, 2018). Fourth, there are practical considerations such as the timely provision of support (Guarda & Helm, 2017), promoting participation, facilitating learning transfer to lectures, and optimizing the support in view of what are often heterogeneous participant groups in terms of English proficiency, (EMI) lecturing experience and discipline (Ball & Lindsay, 2013). Finally, the design of these programmes typically needs to happen with very limited institutional resources, few (if any) published materials and relatively little published research on lecture discourse and EMI lecturer training. The workshop will start with an overview of published training initiatives with their reported successes and challenges (Deroey, 2021). Next, participants will work in small groups, brainstorming ideas for an EMI support programme based on a brief we have recently received at the multilingual University of Luxembourg Language Centre. Finally, these proposals will be discussed in the whole group and key ideas summarized to consolidate the insights gained. Ball, P., & Lindsay, D. (2013). Language demands and support for English-medium instruction in tertiary education. Learning from a specific context In A. Doiz, D. Lasagabaster, & J. M. Sierra (Eds.), English-medium instruction at universities: Global challenges (pp. 44-61). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. -Deroey, K. L. B. (2021). Lecturer training for English Medium Instruction: what and how? In B. D. Bond, A. & M. Evans (Ed.), Innovation, exploration and transformation. Proceedings of the 2019 BALEAP Conference. Reading: Garnet. -Fortanet Gómez, I. (2020). The dimensions of EMI in the international classroom: training teachers for the future university. In M. Del Mar Sánchez-Pérez (Ed.), Teacher training for English-medium instruction in higher education (pp. 1-20). Hershey: IGI Global. -Guarda, M., & Helm, F. (2017). A survey of lecturers’ needs and feedback on EMI training. In K. Ackerley, M. Guarda, & F. Helm (Eds.), Sharing perspectives on English-medium instruction (pp. 167-194). Bern: Peter Lang. -Herington, R. (2020). Observation as a tool to facilitate the professional development of teaching faculty involved in English as a Medium of Instruction: trainer and trainee perspectives. In M. L. Carrió-Pasto (Ed.), Internationalising Learning in Higher Education (pp. 65-82). Hershey: IGI Global. -Martinez, R., & Fernandes, K. (2020). Development of a teacher training course for English medium instruction for higher education professors in Brazil. In M. Del Mar Sánchez-Pérez (Ed.), Teacher Training for English-Medium Instruction in Higher Education (pp. 125-152). Hershey: IGI Global. -Tuomainen, S. (2018). Supporting non-native university lecturers with English-medium instruction. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education. 10(3), 230-242. -Tsui, C. (2018). Teacher efficacy: a case study of faculty beliefs in an English-medium instruction teacher training program. Taiwan Journal of TESOL, 15(1), 101-128.

This paper describes and evaluates an online research article writing course at the University of Luxembourg. Participants were self-referred PhD students from different disciplines. The aim of the ten-week course is to improve insight into the structural, stylistic and rhetorical features of research articles as well as the writing and publication process. It also provides tools for students to develop their own writing. We will situate our course rationale and design within the literature, then compare these to both the reality of managing and delivering the course online as well as participants’ feedback as reflected in 30 surveys. We will focus on the following results: • The practicability of including multiple pedagogical elements in an online course was challenging. We wanted to integrate both independent and collaborative work, production and reflection. However, results of the surveys and our own experience show that the multiplicity of elements was often seen as complex and difficult to manage and multiple submission deadlines problematic. • Students favoured working alone over working together and uptake of writing groups (Aitchison, 2009) was poor. Multi-disciplinary peer groups were, however, positively reviewed (cf. Hyland, 2012). • The flexibility of the online environment was seen as positive, yet many reported problems finding time to write. However, participants did see the benefit in having to write regularly. Tools of reflection did not score highly. • The personalisation of learning input scored highly in the survey, but this was time-consuming to implement. Whilst instructor-student consultations were offered to further personalise feedback, these had a low uptake (8/30). • We wanted to create a course which included guidance on the writing and publication process (Starfield & Paltridge, 2016) as well as increased genre awareness (Swales, 1990) to prepare students for publication. However, tasks on language and structure were rated more useful by more students than this content. • More participants commented on the benefit of working through their language issues in live sessions over learning how to address language issues through the corpus-tools that were integrated into the course (Charles, 2018). Through sharing this information, we hope to generate a discussion with the audience about ways to optimise online writing courses and manage some of the problems associated with online delivery. Aitchison, C. (2009). Writing groups for doctoral education. Studies in Higher Education, 34(8), 905-916. Charles, M. (2018) Corpus-assisted editing for doctoral students: More than just concordancing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 36, 15-26. Charles, M. (2018). Using do-it-yourself-corpora in EAP: A tailor-made resource for teachers and students. Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 6(2), 217-224. Hyland, K. (2012). Disciplinary Identities: Individuality and Community in Academic Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nesi, H. & Gardener, S. (2012). Genres across the disciplines: Student writing in higher education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paltridge, B., & Starfield, S. (2016). Getting published in academic journals: Navigating the publication process. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Taking a more quantitative approach in linguistic landscape research, we explore recent techniques of automatic information extraction from images. The recently released Cloud Vision API by Google offers new perspectives on the software-assisted processing and classification of pictures. A software interface makes it possible to extract various kinds of information from pictures automatically, among them the written text, certain labels to describe the picture (e.g. road sign, shop sign, prohibition sign) or the colours used in the picture. Applying this new technique to large-scale image data collections will not only enhance analysis but may also offer hitherto unrecognized structures. The data comes from a large-scale investigation of the Ruhr Metropolis in Germany, where 25,504 photos have been taken to document the linguistic landscape of selected neighbourhoods in four cities (Ziegler et al. 2018). This data has been annotated manually in various categories to analyze the occurrence, form and function of visual multilingualism. These pictures are then automatically processed by the Cloud Vision API and the results compared to the manual annotation. It will be shown that the quality of the image recognition greatly depends on the quality of the picture. The textual information extracted from the pictures will be stored in a database. Rather than presenting results on the linguistic landscape, this chapter is predominantly concerned with practical tools to facilitate large-scale linguistic landscape research.

In this talk I will sketch the development of an EAP curriculum at the University of Luxembourg Language Centre that takes into account multilingualism, needs analysis, insights into EAP teaching and materials, discussions with stakeholders, and human resources. I will argue for an EAP curriculum approach that trains a set of core skills and enables discipline-specific genre and language learning through awareness-raising activities and corpus search tools. In this view, English for Specific Academic Purposes is not the teaching of disciplinary vocabulary. Instead, teachers use their EAP expertise to ascertain disciplinary needs, compose or evaluate materials, set tasks in line with disciplinary activities, and –importantly- provide the skills and tools to continue (discipline-specific) learning beyond the course. I will draw on examples of EAP course design from my own practice as well as on findings from my published research into EAP coursebook authenticity and multilingual course design.

Les compétences transversales développées lors de la mobilité universitaire répondent aux attentes des recruteurs lors de l’entrée dans la vie professionnelle des étudiants (Brandenburg, 2014 : 3). La pandémie de Covid 19 étant la cause de la modification d’un grand nombre de mobilités, l’acquisition de ces compétences est-elle toujours possible ? Les mobilités universitaires sont remodelées, devenant pour la plupart des mobilités partiellement virtuelles puisque les cours sont principalement en ligne. À partir des résultats du projet RECTEC+, notre objectif dans cet article est de proposer une méthodologie pour identifier les compétences transversales développées malgré la Covid19 par les étudiants en mobilité à l’Université du Luxembourg. Die fachübergreifenden Kompetenzen, die während der akademischen Mobilitätsphasen erworben wurden, entsprechen den Erwartungen der Personalvermittlerinnen und -vermittler beim Einstieg der Studierenden ins Berufsleben (Brandenburg, 2014: 3). Können die Studierenden diese Kompetenzen, die, durch die Covid-19-Pandemie verursachten Veränderungen in etlichen Mobilitätsprogrammen wurden, noch immer erwerben? Die akademische Mobilität wurde reduziert, und wurde so zu einer größtenteils virtuellen Mobilität, da die Kurse hauptsächlich online abgehalten wurden. Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, aufgrund der Ergebnisse des RECTEC+-Projekts, eine Methodik zur Identifizierung der fachübergreifenden Kompetenzen, die die Mobilitäts-Studierenden an der Universität Luxemburg, trotz der Covid-19-Pandemie entwickelt haben, vorzuschlagen. The transversal skills developed during academic mobility periods equip students to meet the expectations of recruiters as they embark on professional life (Brandenburg, 2014: 3). With the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting many mobility programmes, is it still possible for students to acquire these skills? The very nature of academic mobility has changed, with most mobility periods becoming partly virtual because teaching is mainly provided online. In this article, drawing on the results of the RECTEC+ project, we aim to propose a method to identify the transversal skills developed by mobility students at the University of Luxembourg despite the impact of COVID-19.

Lorsque les pratiques multilingues en contexte professionnel international sont encadrées par des politiques linguistiques, elles donnent un point d’ancrage pour mesurer les oscillations entre le « prescrit » et l’«existant ». La caractérisation des pratiques multilingues d’une entreprise aéronautique européenne et de l’UNESCO demande de placer notre recherche à la croisée des champs de la linguistique, de la didactique des langues, de la sociologie, et de la psychologie sociale et cognitive. Nous allons présenter les résultats d’analyse des besoins déclarés par les salariés eux-mêmes, des interactions enregistrées en réunions et aussi des bilans d’entretiens. Ces deux terrains de recherche ont des caractéristiques linguistiques similaires : l’utilisation de l’anglais comme langue véhiculaire, la localisation d’un site à Hambourg en Allemagne, leurs sièges sociaux respectifs en France, des communications régulières avec des sites en zone hispanophone, ainsi que l’offre de cours d’anglais, de français, d’allemand et d’espagnol auprès de leurs employés. La polyphonie des discours sur les pratiques multilingues en entreprise montre les tensions existantes entre le choix de l’usage de l’anglais comme lingua franca et celui du français, de l’allemand et de l’espagnol qui ouvre différents « univers du discours » (Charolles 1997). A partir de la question de cadrage, envisagé au plan linguistique comme au plan sociologique, nous essayons d’établir le lien entre posture professionnelle et pratiques langagières. Il semblerait que les faits de pluri-compétences, de pluri-linguisme, de multi-linguisme et de pluri-activités donnent matière à repenser nos méthodologies d’enseignement des langues. Par ailleurs. La relation d’aide (Amério 1991, Lejot 2014) entre les employés favorise le développement des compétences linguistiques dans la langue cible. Notre objectif est ici de faire un lien entre les besoins linguistiques et culturels identifiés en milieu professionnel et le développement des compétences multilingues en milieu universitaire. La personne bilingue n’est pas une somme de deux personnes monolingues (Grosjean 1989), et au même titre, l’enseignement plurilingue n’est pas une somme d’enseignements monolingues au sein d’une même formation en langues appliquées. Des recherches en linguistiques comparatistes (Huemer, Lejot, Deroey 2019) et des méthodes pédagogiques basées sur l’autonomie de l’étudiant ouvrent des perspectives à explorer ou à approfondir.

Luxembourg camp literature has its literary roots in the literature of prisoners of war and prisoners of war of the First World War. During their Soviet imprisonment from 1943 to 1953, the Luxembourg conscripts continued a tradition of documentarism that did not want to create fictional narrative worlds, but instead focused exclusively on what they had experienced themselves. A large part of the texts left behind is also not literature that was written for a larger audience. They have often been published by the authors themselves. Autobiographies, memoirs and a few volumes of poetry (Faber, Bausch, Schauss) were published, some decades later. A fictional play by the former prisoner of war Joseph Schmit has not been printed to this day. Numerous ego documents, as the research of contemporary history calls them today, have also been preserved - private, handwritten texts of a personal nature. Such material will be the primary focus of this paper. The range of Luxembourgish texts to be examined from the Soviet camp ranges from smuggled notes and letters that released comrades brought to Luxembourg, through diaries, speeches and self-made dictionaries to poems and stories, some of which were in the camp and some immediately after their return Tambov and other Soviet camps emerged.

Cet article, qui s’appuie sur Un balcon en forêt de Julien Gracq, se propose de réinterroger la notion de posture énonciative développée par Alain Rabatel dans sa théorie du point de vue. L’attention est focalisée sur la posture de la co-énonciation, qui est abordée sous différents angles : du point de vue de la diathèse en particulier récessive, qui est mise en relation avec l’opération de l’embrayage et une visée centripète ; du point de vue des régimes tonique et atone de la co-énonciation consensuelle et dissensuelle ; enfin, du point de vue d’une proto-posture énonciative sous-tendant la posture de la co-énonciation, qui permet de rendre compte de la gestation du sens et des couches sensibles du pathique. This paper, which analyses extracts of Le balcon en forêt by Julien Gracq, aims to question once more the notion of enunciative posture that has been examined by Alain Rabatel in his point of view theory. Attention is focused on the posture of co-enunciation, which is approached from three different viewing angles: first, we reflect upon the notion of “recessive diathesis”, in relation to a centripetal force; second, we distinguish between tonic and low regimes of consensual and dissensual co-enunciation; third, we want to show that the posture of co-enunciation is based on a sensitive proto-posture, which underlies it.

As children’s agency in influencing institutional language practices is often not carefully reflected in early childhood education curricula, the objective of this paper is to offer meaningful insights about how institutional language policies are both reproduced and transformed by children’s everyday use of language. For this purpose, we will combine conceptual resources from social theory, sociolinguistics and childhood studies in order to analyse children’s linguistic behaviour by applying a structure-agency perspective as a relational approach. Drawing on data from ethnographic field research within institutional day care centres in Luxembourg, our findings demonstrate that the status of children as actors in institutional language practices is strongly connected to institutional policies as a structural condition. However, this does not mean that children just enact these language policies, because they are actors of both maintaining, undermining and alternating them. In this respect, especially the translanguaging of children and caregivers plays a crucial role in the Luxembourgish context as it allows to build a bridge between the official institutional language policy and the individual linguistic repertoires. Considering the goal of establishing a plurilingual environment in early childhood education which now is paramount to the educational language policy of the Luxembourgish government, this article suggests that translanguaging practices should be considered as one of the key starting points to create a plurilingual ecology in and through everyday practice in the day care centres.