Richard Nightingale

Despite the recognition of multilingualism as a natural, unremarkable phenomenon, and its pedagogical value in multicultural educational spaces, many language teachers still feel unprepared to implement multilingual classroom practices. Some research suggests this is due to a persistent monolingual bias that proves resistant to change, while other research points to a general lack of understanding regarding multilingualism which can make teachers reticent to engage with linguistic diversity.

A study abroad (SA) period is considered an optimum environment for developing pragmatic competence because of the unparalleled target-language access it provides. Within this context, pragmatic development has received extensive attention over the last two decades, during which we have seen an evolution in research orientations.

Globalisation, international mobility, and new technologies make current multilingualism qualitatively different to not only mono- and bi-lingualism but also to any of its historical incarnations. As a new linguistic dispensation (Aronin & Singleton, 2008, 2012; Aronin, 2015), current multilingualism is understood to be complex, suffusive, liminal, and super-diverse; four essential properties which necessitate alternative foci in multilingual research.

Extramural contact with foreign-language media is highly beneficial to language learners. Studies exploring film and television show a positive impact in a range of language learning areas (d’Ydewalle/Van de Poel, 1999; Koolstra/Beentjes, 1999; Weyers, 1999; Kuppens, 2010; Wang, 2012; Nightingale, 2016). Pragmatics research has already considered the role of film and television (Alcón, 2005; Martínez-Flor, 2007; Fernández-Guerra, 2008; Beltrán-Palanques, 2011; Martínez-Flor/Beltrán-Palanques, 2014) however this work focuses on instructed settings.

This study puts forward the term ‘pragmatic translanguaging’ to refer to consciously outcome-oriented language switch motivations. The study focuses on the translanguaging practices of adolescents in their online discourse and explores what Jørgensen (2008) calls the ‘designing mind’ behind such practices; that is, an awareness of both the practices themselves and the motivations for them. With this in mind, the aim is to ascertain whether online translanguaging practices are intentional and to identify the functions they perform.

As academic language skills develop, young learners are able to rise to the challenge of increasingly complex communication in increasingly formal settings (Snow, 2014; Uccelli et al., 2015). Studies suggest that CLIL contexts may favour the development of academic language skills (Dalton-Puffer, 2007; Nikula, 2007; Marsh, 2008; Pasqual Peña, 2010) to a greater extent than non-CLIL contexts. However, research that attempts to test this assumption has so far tended to do so from a pragmalinguistic perspective (Lorenzo & Rodríguez, 2014; Lorenzo, 2017).

This study provides qualitative data on the potential for exposure to Situation-Bound Utterances (SBUs) in English language children’s cartoons. The SBUs are described according to their pragmatic context, and possibilities for pragmalinguistic inference going beyond the scope of traditional learning environments are discussed. The study also notes how those SBUs are dealt with in the Spanish and Catalan dubbed versions of the same cartoons. To achieve this analysis the children’s cartoons Peppa Pig and Charlie and Lola (two episodes of each) were selected.

Debido a la consolidación del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior y al consecuente compromiso con la internacionalización de las universidades españolas, la producción de textos académicos escritos en inglés es una realidad para un número creciente de estudiantes universitarios que cursan una amplia gama de títulos en nuestro país.