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This is the accepted version of an article from Metaphor and the Social World. The published article can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.00021.gol In order to understand the process of learning new languages as adults, we need to take into account learners’ past experiences with all of their language(s), as such experiences shape attitudes and conceptualizations. In this paper, we present an analysis of metaphorical expressions in the narrated linguistic biographies of (former) refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Norway. The participants speak a multitude of languages, e.g., different local Congolese languages, Congolese national languages (Lingala or Swahili), French (the official language of the DRC), in addition to Norwegian (the language of the host society). Attention is paid to how the participants’ expressions align with conceptual metaphors emerged from work in Cognitive Linguistics, such as LANGUAGE IS AN OBJECT, LANGUAGE IS A PERSON and LANGUAGE IS AN IDENTITY MARKER, as well as specifications LIKE LANGUAGE IS A TOOL and LANGUAGE IS A POSSESSION. We argue that awareness of conceptualizations of ‘language’ can contribute to the development of language training pedagogies that better reflect learners’ past experiences.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Aim and objectives/purpose/research questions: The aim of this study is to examine the pragmatic function of utterance-level declination as used in conversations in French and Norwegian by 10 migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) living in Norway whose repertoires are highly multilingual. Design/methodology/approach: To investigate this contour, we draw on insights from different fields, that is, research on multilingualism, Conversation Analysis (CA), and phonetics/phonology. Data and analysis: By an automatic procedure, we examined pitch variations of 400 declarative utterances (200 in Norwegian and 200 in French). The procedure found that 38 of the utterances have declination. These were then analyzed qualitatively with methods from CA in the context of the sequence. The aim of the CA was to assess the pragmatic functions of the contour. Findings/conclusions: We found that utterance-level declination is a marked contour, that is, used to make certain utterances prominent in relation to other utterances of the sequence. The contour has the same functions in French and Norwegian for these speakers. Our conclusion is that the contour is a flexible resource of the speakers’ repertoires. Originality and significance/implications: This study is a contribution to the scarcely explored area of the prosody-pragmatics interface in speakers with varied linguistic repertoires. Moreover, our approach is emic and inspired by recent trends in the field of multilingualism.

I denne artikkelen har vi en talerfokusert tilnærming til det å lære språk i voksen alder. Målet vårt er å svare på en oppfordring fra flere forskere om at taleres egne erfaringer med og perspektiver på språkinnlæring bør komme fram i andrespråksforskningen. Fokuset vårt er rettet mot en gruppe voksne flyktninger fra Den demokratiske republikken Kongo, og vi ser på hvordan de opplevde den norskopplæringen de fikk som nyankomne til Norge. Et kjennetegn ved disse personene er at de er svært flerspråklige; de hadde allerede bred erfaring med å lære nye språk da de begynte å lære norsk. Vi har studert et utvalg narrativer der de forteller om sine erfaringer fra norskopplæring. Temaene for narrativene er kartlegging for kursplassering, lærernes kvalifikasjoner, antall timer per kurs og norskpraksis på arbeidsplass. Deltakerne stiller seg kritiske til flere aspekter ved den opplæringen de fikk. De fremstår som selvsikre språkinnlærere og framforhandler ulike identiteter. Narrativene gir et innblikk i disse personenes verden, deres egne behov og refleksjoner rundt norskopplæring for flyktninger. De minner oss på det mangfoldet av opplevelser som finnes blant målgruppen for andrespråksopplæring.Nøkkelord: narrativer, norsk som andrespråk, talerfokuserte tilnærminger, identitet, voksne flyktninger“Talk to the wood? Talk to the machine?”Adult refugees’ narratives from Norwegian classesAbstractIn this article, we have a speaker-centered approach to adult additional language learning. Our aim is to answer the call from several researchers to take learners’ own perspectives and experiences into account in research on learning. Our focus is on how a group of adult refugees from the Democratic republic of Congo experienced the language program they attended when they arrived in Norway. A characteristic of the participants is that they are extremely multilingual, and had already extensive language learning experience when they started to learn Norwegian. Our data are narratives where they tell about their experiences from Norwegian classes. The topics of the narratives are assessment, teacher qualifications, number of teaching hours and language internships at workplaces. The participants express criticism towards several aspects of the programs they attended. They seem to be self-confident language learners and negotiate different identities. The narratives give us an insight into their worlds, needs and reflections on education for refugees. They remind us of the multitude of experiences that exist among members of the target group of language education programs.Keywords: narratives, additional language learning, speaker-centered approaches, identity, adult refugees

Aim and objectives/purpose/research questions: The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which multilingual second language (L2) speakers of Norwegian manage to produce lexical pitch accents (L*H¯ or H*LH¯) as expected in natural spontaneous speech. Using native speech as a reference, we analyse realizations of multilingual speakers whose respective dominant languages are Lingala, a lexical tone language, and Swahili, a non-tonal language with fixed stress, and hypothesize that this difference might be reflected in the speakers’ competence in the East Norwegian tone system. Design/methodology/approach: We examined a corpus of spontaneous speech produced by eight L2 speakers and two native speakers of East Norwegian. Acoustic analysis was performed to collect fundamental frequency (f0) contours of 60 accentual phrases per speaker. Data and analysis: For LH and HLH tonal patterns, measuring points were defined for quantitative evaluation of f0 values. Relevant aspects investigated were (a) pattern consistency, (b) f0 dynamic range and (c) rate of f0 change. Pattern consistency data were statistically evaluated using chi-square testing. The dynamic range and rate of f0 change data were explored through to linear mixed effects models. Findings/conclusions: We found no really substantial differences between the speaker groups in the parameters we examined, neither between the L2 speakers and the Norwegian natives nor between the Lingala and Swahili speakers. Originality and significance/implications: This study is a contribution to the scarcely explored area of L2 acquisition of tones. It is concerned with languages that have received little or no attention in the field: Norwegian, Lingala and Swahili. Participants are multilinguals who have extensive language learning experience. Further, the study is based on a corpus of spontaneous speech.