BIOGRAPHY

Hello, I’m Olivia. I’m currently a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I believe understanding language and culture is the key to expanding your world. I have a background in five years of previous study in French as well as experience abroad developing my language skills.

While taking my first course in linguistics, I have learned so much about how language itself was created and continues to adapt, as well as how people view language and process different languages.

In particular, I really enjoyed learning about my assigned language contact "Chiac" found in Canada. It was exciting to identify the linguistic features of Chiac as it borrowed both French syntax and English lexicon, but it was also surprising to reveal it's often negative perception by the public (schools, media), and even by native speakers of the language.

GLOSSARY

language contact - social and linguistic phenomenon by which speakers of different languages (or different dialects of the same language) interactwith one another, leading to a transfer of linguistic features

sociolinguistics - the study of language in relation to social factors, including differences of regional, class, and occupational dialect, genderdifferences, and bilingualism

insertional code-switching - the insertion of well defined chunks of language B into asentence that otherwise belongs to language A

lexical borrowing --where vocabulary is adapted from one language into another

additive bilingualism - process of bilingual acquisition andlearning is seen as socially, cognitively, and educationally beneficial, both by the learnersthemselves and in the wider society

subtractive bilingualism - theongoing use of a person’s L1 is seen as “harmful” to the “successful” acquisition and use of thedominant or majority second language (L2) at the individual level

enrichment program- are generally (but notexclusively) associated with teaching majority language students (such as L1 English speakers)through a minority target language

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Canadian Language Museum (2015, February 2). French and English Collide. RetrievedNovember 17, 2019, fromhttps://langmusecad.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/french-and-english-collide/.

Chiac anti-bullying student film gets French subtitles | CBC News. (2013, November 1).Retrieved November 17, 2019, fromhttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/chiac-anti-bullying-student-film-gets-french-subtitles-1.2303261.