In 2015 former president Reuven Rivlin claimed that Israel needs a redefinition of Israeliness to preserve the Israeli society. According to him, a new national identity must be created, with which...Show moreIn 2015 former president Reuven Rivlin claimed that Israel needs a redefinition of Israeliness to preserve the Israeli society. According to him, a new national identity must be created, with which all citizens can identify. When looking at the Israeli educational system, it becomes apparent that such a redefinition is necessary. As multiple studies have shown, the Arab- Palestinian community in Israel is not only marginalized in terms of the quality of the educational system, but also with regards to the contents of the education, mainly -but not limited to- in the field of history education, which amongst others ignore Palestinian perspectives on the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and which deny Palestinian belonging to the country. As this thesis shows, bilingual schools in Israel offer a radical alternative historical narrative that includes Palestinian perspectives, that treats Jewish and Palestinian identities on an equal basis and that at the same time creates an overarching narrative (or if you wish Israeliness) which connects both communities. At the same time however, this thesis argues that the success of the alternative historical narrative at bilingual schools is limited due to the same inequalities the education tries to counter, namely the lack of classes on Palestinian/Middle Eastern history, the continuing dominance of Jewish-Israeli frameworks for teaching history and the dominance of the Hebrew language. Nonetheless, although progress can still be made, the alternative approach to education of bilingual schools provide an inspirational basis for redefining Jewish-Palestinian relationships in the future.Show less
In this research the English proficiency of two groups of students who attended the same secondary school in the Netherlands are compared. The first group of students followed a monolingual pre...Show moreIn this research the English proficiency of two groups of students who attended the same secondary school in the Netherlands are compared. The first group of students followed a monolingual pre-university programme, while the other group attended a bilingual preuniversity stream. After an explanation about the differences between these two programmes and an exploration of earlier research into pronunciation and vocabulary acquisition, this study examined what the differences/similarities were between these two groups in terms of oral proficiency after five years of secondary education. Twenty students, ten of each programme, were asked to complete two tasks. For the first task they were asked to read out a text, and afterwards their pronunciation of pre-selected vowels and consonants was analyzed with the speech analysis program Praat. The second task required the students to first describe a painting by Breughel in their own words and then to describe five specific scenes on the painting. The results showed that there were slight differences between the oral proficiencies of monolingual and bilingual students and that both groups of students had not acquired a set of characteristics that all of them adhered to in terms of vowel and consonant pronunciation. A lot of variation existed between the two groups, even though the agreement was stronger in the bilingual group. When comparing both groups’ lexicon quantitatively, the bilingual group clearly expressed themselves more extensively in their second language than the monolingual group, but qualitatively speaking the bilingual students did not appear to be familiar with more lower-frequency words than the monolingual students.Show less
In this study, conceptual transfer among the conceptualization of liquid containers of Dutch/Japanese bilingual users when using their first language (L1) has been examined. A naming task was...Show moreIn this study, conceptual transfer among the conceptualization of liquid containers of Dutch/Japanese bilingual users when using their first language (L1) has been examined. A naming task was performed with adult Dutch monolingual users, Japanese monolingual users and Dutch/Japanese bilingual users. No statistical evidence could be found of bilingual users to significantly differ from their monolingual counterparts during a naming task in their L1. Therefore, according to this study, it seems unlikely that bilingual participants undergo strong effects of backwards transfer. Nevertheless, there were indications of small-scale effects of conceptual transfer which could provide an interesting starting point for future research on conceptual transfer among Dutch/Japanese bilinguals.Show less
This thesis aims to present more evidence for the theory that in the same brain areas two languages are processed. A summary is given on all the relevant background information. Also, by presenting...Show moreThis thesis aims to present more evidence for the theory that in the same brain areas two languages are processed. A summary is given on all the relevant background information. Also, by presenting an overview of case studies in Bilingual Aphasia and using a newly conducted scale and a difference-percentage, this thesis will try to give more insight in the issue if kinship plays a significant role in the parallel deterioration patterns in bilingual aphasia. The results show that a slight trend is visible in the data. Case studies scoring low on the scale of kinship, tend to have a low difference-percentage as well, which is as expected. Although the Spearman correlation is negative, this doesn’t mean that kinship doesn’t have influence on the difference-percentage. This negative correlation is most likely due to the small sample size. So, even though the correlation is negative, the trend in the data is visible and the means and knowledge are present as well, so more research is possible and recommended.Show less
The main focus of this study is the use of English on the covers of Japanese girls’ fashion magazines. A lot has been written about the use of English in Japanese media and other sources, with most...Show moreThe main focus of this study is the use of English on the covers of Japanese girls’ fashion magazines. A lot has been written about the use of English in Japanese media and other sources, with most authors stating that borrowing in Japan is mostly limited to loanwords. What I intend to provide is a thorough explanation of existing linguistic theories on loaning behavior, followed by the application of these theories on my research data which I have taken directly from the covers of Japanese girls’ fashion magazines. What I intend to prove is that the language borrowing behavior that takes place, goes further than simply loaning words. First of all there is a division between conventional loanwords and unconventionally used English words. More importantly, there are more complex ways in which English is borrowed and bent, such as through creative word hybrids or even the alteration of grammatical structures. A thorough introduction on linguistic theories will be provided, followed by a step-by-step guidance through examples from the data, looking beyond the eye-catching slogans and delving deeper into the linguistic characteristics of these code-switching behaviours.Show less
