Language diaries in the study of language use and language choice: the case of Flemish Sign Language and Scottish Gaelic

Abstract

This article discusses the rationale for using language diaries as a method to evaluate language use and language choice in multilingual contexts, as well as the benefits and limitations of this approach vis-à-vis other research methods. This is illustrated using examples from two contexts: Flemish Sign Language/Dutch bilinguals in Flanders and Gaelic/English bilinguals in the Western Isles of Scotland. In both cases, the language diaries were part of a larger mixed-method study which aimed to evaluate language use and language choice in contexts in which the majority language is in almost all instances the unmarked choice. Language diaries provide a new perspective on individual language practices as they allow for an evaluation of contextualised examples of language use and give insight into the factors that drive language and modality choice, and language ideologies. Language diaries give participants ownership over the information shared with the researcher

A nyelvi napló mint problémaalapú gyakorlat

“…A nyelvi napló a nyelvi tevékenységre való tudatos reflexió kiváltásának és megfigyelésének az egyik módszere, amelyet nyelvészeti és pedagógiai kutatásokban, valamint a nyelvpedagógiai gyakorlatban egyaránt alkalmaznak (bővebben Ludányi -Domonkosi 2021a-Domonkosi , 2021b. A nyelvészeti kutatásban használják például a gyermeknyelv (például Whitehead 1990) vagy a többnyelvű beszélőközösségek nyelvi gyakorlatainak a dokumentálására (például Ure 1971;Rubino 2006;De Meulder-Birnie 2020).…”

A critical sociolinguistic study of diasporization among Hungarians in Catalonia

“…As mentioned in Subsection 3.2.2, at one point under the restrictions, I decided to ask some former participants to contribute to the research by creating diaries on their communicational practices, and 5 participants agreed to participate finally. Such techniques have been used in minority language contexts in order to find out the amount or frequency of how much people actually talk in majority and minority languages (e.g., Jones et al 2000, De Meulder & Birnie 2020. In my case, the scope was a bit wider: I did not limit language to speaking and writing a certain named language, but I asked them to include every communication act that is important for them (for the instructions, see Appendix C).…”