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This thesis asks why social interaction unfolding in autistic adults and children is often characterised as atypical. To answer this question, I investigated two main hypotheses: the Social Motivation Theory and the Social Anxiety Hypothesis. The five studies comprised in this dissertation are based on three different paradigms: [1] social attention in 40 autistic (20 women; 20 men) and 40 neurotypical adults (matched on age, gender and IQ) in front of speaking videos of actors displaying a direct or averted gaze; [2] social attention and [3] disfluency production in the same sample during a live face-to-face cognitive task with an experimenter displaying a direct or averted gaze; [4] social attention and [5] interactional behaviours in 18 autistic children matched on gender (15 boys; 3 girls) and mental (18) or chronological (18) age to neurotypicals during a real-life recreational task with a familiar or unfamiliar adult experimenter. The investigation of these social aspects has been based on eye- tracking measures, electrodermal activity and fine-grained disfluency and interactional behaviours coding.In Study [1], I found an absence of preference for direct versus averted gaze in the autistic group, probably because of difficulties in distinguishing eye gaze direction. In Study [2], I found no difference in social attention between autistic and neurotypical adults, but an increased experienced arousal in neurotypicals whose direct gaze was not reciprocated. We could wonder whether the neurotypicals' discomfort could provoke a more insistent looking for eye contact behaviour, potentially leading to autistics' uneasiness. In Study [3], I found less listener- and more speaker-oriented disfluencies in the autistic speech, potentially contributing to neurotypicals' difficulties in understanding it. In Study [4], I found similar social attention, experienced stress and familiarity effect in autistic and neurotypical children. This suggests that real-life results could, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Starting from a number of recent evolutions regarding language (education) policies in Belgium and its bilingual capital Brussels, we wish to address in this presentation a number of influential tendencies in the discipline and draw attention to their consequences outside academia. We will discuss the principled rejection in the field of any kind of (value-based) linguistic category as an expression of power/domination and the related claim that all language use has equal value, to suggest they may themselves depend on taken for granted principles and categories which merit further consideration. We will show that this normative stance coexists, paradoxically, with the increasingly relativist epistemological view according to which objective knowledge about language in society must now be considered an at best naïve, and, at worst, disingenuous idea. We will inquire if a concern with structural inequality benefits from powerful knowledge claims and from reflection on the different ways sociolinguists may usefully and legitimately engage with linguistic norms and hierarchies.

La thèse proposée a été menée suivant deux angles d’analyse qui se répondent et entretiennent un rapport d’interdépendance. D’une part, il a été question de s’intéresser aux réseaux qui ont diffusé la problématique de la dissidence tchécoslovaque et lui ont donné visibilité en France et en Belgique ;de l’autre, l’intérêt a été porté sur la réception et l’interprétation de ce phénomène en ces mêmes pays. Se nourrissant de l’examen systématique des discours et stratégies narratives mis en place par les différents protagonistes qui en ont porté et propagé le paradigme, évaluant la dissidence tchécoslovaque au travers des charges interprétatives dont les opinions publiques française et belge la lestèrent, le travail de thèse s’est appliqué à rendre compte d’une problématique dont les formulations aussi bien que les sens furent construits selon certains desseins et suivant divers mobiles. Cette entreprise de déconstruction, de diversification et de particularisation constitue la ligne directrice de la recherche qui a pour objet d’autopsier les constructions narratives qui ont contribué à mythologiser la dissidence tchécoslovaque. Le travail de thèse se base sur un corpus qui embrasse différents types de productions écrites – de la presse spécialisée à la presse généraliste, de déclarations et comptes rendus aux correspondances, d’essais politico-éthiques à des ouvrages littéraires, de textes philosophiques à des manifestes – et s’inscrit conséquemment dans la volonté de mettre en dialogue une collection de sources reflétant la diversité des canaux par le truchement desquels la dissidence tchécoslovaque fut transplantée en France et en Belgique. De par la mise en interaction des discours tchèque, français et belge à propos de la dissidence au travers de plusieurs genres textuels, c’est à l’analyse des chapes narratives qui la recouvrent, aux enjeux qu’elles défendent et aux stratégies narratives dont elles s’alimentent que le travail de recherche a été consacré. Ces struc, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Dutch-medium schools in Brussels traditionally cater to a Dutch-speaking minority, but they have recently seen a massive influx of pupils with a limited competence in Dutch. In order to face the resulting pedagogical and ideological challenges, many of these schools have intensified their efforts to remain Dutch enclaves in a predominantly Francophone city. In this article we discuss one Dutch-medium secondary school that positions itself as fairly severe in this regard. We will demonstrate, however, that teachers were generally drawn to a more friendly interpretation of their language policy as they reconciled monolingual expectations with multilingual pupils. Thus, although teachers agreed that a severe linguistic stance was important, they formulated various reasons for not adopting this stance relentlessly. And while pupils in principle could earn a ticket for not speaking Dutch, teachers often merely prefigured the possibility of sanctions, ignored the use of other languages to address other pressing matters, and occasionally recruited pupils’ other linguistic skills as a pedagogical device–without, however, reneging on their language political stance. We argue that these ambivalent strategies can be usefully explained as the outcome of negotiating dilemmatically related ideological concerns., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This dissertation investigates language policy in a Dutch-medium secondary school in Brussels. The school in question endeavours to implement a language policy in which languages other than Dutch are formally included, which is in stark contrast to their peers, who often implement a strict, Dutch-only policy in order to respond to the increasing linguistic diversity and “Frenchification” in Brussels Dutch-medium education. This thesis addresses the question of how the teachers negotiated such a pro-multilingual language policy in this setting. The research is designed as a (socio)linguistic ethnographic case study based on a conceptualisation of language policy as (1) operating on different levels; (2) consisting of three components; and inseparable from the social world in which it is effectuated. The study combines ethnographic field work and participant observation with interview data, linguistic analyses of interactional data, document analysis and analyses of elements of the linguistic landscape to gain insights into the nature and extent of the school’s unique pro-multilingual project. Although the school profiles itself as an institution which aims to prepare its pupils for future educational and professional success by increasing their language skills, the school’s policy declarations harbour an ambivalent stance vis à vis multilingualism. In terms of individual teachers’ perceptions and practices, then, we demonstrate that they, too, voiced contradictory sentiments and displayed behaviour in the classroom which was at once welcoming of pupils’ use of linguistic resources other than monolingual Dutch, and restrictive of it., Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

‘Nederlanders and buitenlanders: A sociolinguistic ethnographic study of ethnic categorization among secondary school pupils’ is a study based on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork among pupils of the vocational track of a secondary school in Venlo, the Netherlands. Many of these pupils had a migration background, and though they were born in the Netherlands, they often referred to themselves as buitenlander (‘foreigner’), Marokkaan (‘Moroccan’), or Turk (‘Turk’), and referred to others without migration backgrounds as Nederlanders (‘Dutch people’).In this dissertation, van de Weerd combines ethnographic descriptions of the local context with ethnomethodological analyses of interactions to analyze such self- and other-categorizations. Although the use of categories such as Nederlander and buitenlander are commonly interpreted as straightforward indications of (dis) identification with a country or ethnic identity, it is argued that their meanings are constructed and negotiated in local interactions and are therefore much more complex. The pupils in this study, for instance, regularly discussed categories in association with certain clothing styles, language, or behavior, or jokingly teased each other by speaking negatively about these categories. The dissertation furthermore analyzes the relation between categorization practices and the use of different linguistic resources such as Dutch, Limburgish, Turkish, Arabic, and/ or Berber. ‘Nederlanders and buitenlanders’ may be of relevance to researchers interested in categorization in interaction, ethnicity, identification, the effects of diversification outside the metropolitan area, and more broadly, linguistic ethnography and sociocultural linguistics., Dans Néerlandais et étrangers, j'étudie la façon dont les élèves du secondaire à Venlo, ‘classe 3/4b,’ se sont référés aux hiérarchies sociales locales et sociétales, et comment ils ont traité ce sujet, en se catégorisant eux-mêmes et les uns les autres en termes ethniques et en utilisant différents moyens linguistiques. La question de recherche, introduite dans le Chapitre 1, est la suivante: Quelles sont les significations et les fonctions respectives des catégories ethniques et des moyens linguistiques utilisés pour les élèves et les enseignants de la classe 3/4b ?J'ai mené cette étude sur la base des données recueillies pendant neuf mois de travail ethnographique sur le terrain avec les élèves, et en analysant les interactions entre les élèves, les enseignants et moi-même, principalement avec l'analyse de la catégorisation des membres (ACM) et l'analyse de la conversation (AC).À peu près la moitié des élèves de la classe 3/4b sont d'origine étrangère et, bien qu'ils soient nés aux Pays-Bas, ils se classent régulièrement, eux- mêmes et les autres, sous les étiquettes ‘étranger’, ‘Marocain’ et ‘Turc’, et qualifient les autres (mais pas eux-mêmes) de ‘Néerlandais’. Cette catégorisation faisait partie des interactions quotidiennes, que ce soit en se taquinant, en faisant ses devoirs ou en racontant des ragots sur des connaissances. L'utilisation de divers moyens linguistiques (en plus du néerlandais standard, les élèves ont utilisé l'arabe, le berbère, le turc, et les dialectes régionaux de Venlo et Tegelen, entre autres, dans leurs interactions) s'est également avérée importante pour élaborer ces catégories et en discuter., Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Adequate and efficient participation in a social interaction requires the ability to produce and interpret coherent discourse. Coherence can be achieved using a diverse set of cognitive and linguistic tools such as topic continuity or connectives. On the one hand, successful production of coherent discourse requires the ability to integrate these tools in speech, creating continuity and unity between the sequence of utterances in the discourse. For instance, when telling a story, a speaker can maximize coherence by choosing to mark explicitly the relationships between the events with a connective such as ‘then’, ‘however’ or ‘therefore’. On the other hand, the success of the storytelling will also depend upon the listener’s recognition of these cues and their appropriate interpretation. Failing to produce enough coherence cues or to interpret them as such can lead to communication breakdowns or misunderstandings, potentially compromising the on-going interaction. In a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism, characterized by impairments in social communication, autistic individuals often fail to produce and understand coherent discourse.A plethora of studies have already used discourse analysis to examine discourse (in)coherence and (a)typicality in autistic individuals. However, the studies have been one-sided in terms of methodology, viz. investigating either discourse production or comprehension, but not both. They have also been one-sided in terms of the perspective of the analysis, viz. only considering discourse coherence from the standpoint of neurotypical individuals, without also considering the perspective of autistic individuals. However, social communication is a two-sided dynamic, whereby both communication partners, alternating between the roles of speaker and listener, contribute to the coherence of the unfolding discourse. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to define the qualities of discourse (in)coherence and (a)typicality in autistic adult, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This volume offers a critical perspective on current views on linguistic fixity and fluidity in sociolinguistics and highlights empirical accounts alternative to prevailing trends in the field. Featuring accounts from a broad range of regional contexts, the collection takes stock of such terms as "polylingualism", "metrolingualism" and "translanguaging" to question perceptions around multilingual and monolingual language use. The book critiques the status of fluid language use as a more "natural" language practice and in turn, its greater potential for corresponding social transformation, demonstrating the value of linguistic fixity and the continuous debate between fixity and fluidity in multilingual speakers' lives. In providing these accounts, the book seeks not to advocate for linguistic fixity or fluidity, but to argue that sociolinguists pay close attention to the way both types of linguistic practice open up or close down avenues for social transformation. This collection is a key reading for graduate students and scholars in sociolinguistics, multilingualism, and linguistic anthropology., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Let’s imagine a typical word-learning scenario. A toddler sits in her highchair in the kitchen and waits for her lunch. Her mother says: “Use a spoon to eat your meal”. Several objects are placed in front of the child. She can see a dish with her lunch, a spoon, a cup, a sugar bowl, a milk jar, her mother’s plate and a second cup. All these objects, present in the visual array, must be identified by the toddler; she must also parse the auditory stream into segments and determine which words are familiar and which ones are potentially new. If the child does not know the word “spoon”, she will need to use the event of naming of this referent by her mother to adjust her attention to the relevant referent. She also needs to update her representation of this word upon hearing it in different contexts with different speakers and, perhaps, different types of spoons. Efficient attention allocation in this word-learning situation will clearly contribute to the success of mapping; the degree of encoding of the word-form and of its meaning will certainly influence whether this word enters the child’s vocabulary.The complexity of such a typical scenario seems very challenging for a toddler whose cognitive resources are still far from being fully mature. Unsurprisingly, several accounts of how toddlers manage to solve this task are currently on the market. The problem of ambiguity associated with meaning-to-referent mapping (several objects co-presented in the visual scene) and with word form-to-meaning mapping (the correct word is to be singled out among phonological competitors) might be even more challenging for children who present an atypical developmental trajectory.Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and toddlers at risk for the disorder were found to acquire their vocabularies at a slower rate than their typically developing peers. In the contemporary literature, this delay in lexical knowledge acquisition is associated with poor socio-pragmatic understanding that pre, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The implementation of translanguaging at school is often seen to have transformative capacities: it will release bilingual subjectivities, and change unequal social structures. In this paper I argue that translanguaging is likely to be less transformative and socially critical than is suggested, because translanguaging research has more in common with the monolingual authorities it criticizes than it may seem, because it trades on causality effects that cannot be taken for granted, and because translanguaging, in some of its representations, is becoming a dominating rather than a liberating force. This does not detract from the value of translanguaging research, nor from the importance of reconciling schools with linguistic diversity. But it may imply arguing this transformation from a different tack., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

It has long been recognised that the similarity or difference between ways of speaking and their possible institutionalisation as ‘languages’ is an ideological matter, a matter of social opinions, rather than one of objective systemic relatedness. This paper emphasises that such language ideologies in any society are always to some extent competitive, that such lack of consensus is not a temporary stage in between moments of shared opinion but a fundamental aspect of the social life of language, and that the expansion or decline of particular sociolinguistic opinions is interactive with cultural changes, metacultural discourses, as well as political agendas. We argue this through a discussion of the valorisation and countervalorisation of linguistic practices in Flanders (Belgium) and South Africa. Drawing attention to discrepancies between articulated and embodied ideologies, we suggest it is the complex interaction of language ideologies with other factors, rather than the mechanical outcome of linguistic conditions, that drove the eventual recognition of Afrikaans in South Africa and the continuing absence of such a process with respect to ‘Flemish’ in Flanders., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Many studies in recent years identify and discuss Dutch ethnolects. Generally this work takes linguistic phenomena as directly reflective of speakers' ethnic identity. But if ethnicity is an inherent speaker feature, the absence of white ethnolect descriptions is difficult to explain. In this paper, therefore, I wish to judge the appeal of the notion of ethnolect against its usefulness for explaining language use. I argue that ethnolect can usefully label everyday ethnicisations of language, but that such evaluations generally compress a more complex reality in which so-called ethnolectal features are recruited for other purposes than (un)marking one's ascribed ethnicity. Crucial to unpacking this reality is the distinction of an intermediary step, the construction of interactional stance, between the use of linguistic features and their association with common-sense identity categories., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

SCOPUS: ch.b, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This dissertation investigates the comprehension of indirect requests (IRs). Focusing on English and French, it proposes that IRs such as Can you + verbal phrase (for short, Can you VP?) achieve an optimal communicative efficiency because, while they entail extra processing costs, they match the expected level of politeness in many contexts. The approach taken combines Talmy’s force dynamic semantics with a traditional perspective in philosophy of language drawing on speech act theory. First, I sketch a theoretically viable and empirically plausible definition of directive speech acts, and provide a naturalistic explanation of why directives result in obligations for addressees. According to this definition, a directive speech act consists in a force exerted by a speaker towards an addressee’s performance of some action, with a prima facie obligation created for the addressee as a result. Consistently with this definition, I propose that imperative sentences are a convenient means to perform directives insofar as they encode a force dynamic pattern that is compatible with, but distinct from, the force exertion pattern that characterizes directives. I develop a similar analysis for You should/must VP declarative sentences. By contrast, I argue that, if interrogative sentences can be used in the performance of directives such as questioning, they do so by virtue of their incompleteness.To satisfactorily account for the variety of utterances that can be used as directives, I propose a typology based on the formal criterion of (in)directness and on the processing criterion of primariness/secondariness. Three factors are furthermore predicted to influence the processing of IRs: conventionality of means, degree of standardization, and degree of illocutionary force salience. This typology underpins an exhaustive review of experimental work on the comprehension of directives, in which I conclude that further investigation into the processing of IRs is necessary. In particul, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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