This special issue brings together a set of papers which look to the future of translation in higher education. It is a direct response to the flurry of publications which over the last two decades have highlighted and explored the value of translation as a pedagogical tool in modern language learning. In a now oft-cited early example, Cook (2007, p. 396) decried the marginality of translation in “mainstream applied linguistic and English language teaching theory” and called for a return to translation both in the language classroom and as a “major topic for applied linguistic research”. This call echoes through subsequent publications and now, at the start of the third decade of the millennium, there certainly is an ample body of scholarship, theory, and methodology that centers on translation in the language classroom. The changes are so dramatic and the signs so positive that some have gone so far as to speak of a “translation turn” in language teaching (Carreres, Muñoz-Calvo, and Noriega-Sánchez, 2017b, p. 99, our translation). On the ground, however, things are not always so rosy and we are still very far today from a situation in which translation is systematically used in language instruction, especially in the Anglophone countries where translation was long overlooked. Rather than adding to the now numerous calls for the use of translation in the language classroom, the papers in this special issue seek to move the debate forward by exploring what we refer to as the implementation problem and the question of impact. The papers exploring the implementation problem address the gap that can exist between scholarly literature where translation is now valorized and classroom practice where it can often remain marginal. The papers exploring the question of impact, on the other hand, draw attention to the wider effects that the (re-)introduction of translation into the language classroom will have in order to reimagine translation right across higher education.

This final article brings together reflections written by all of the contributors to the special issue on “The Future of Translation in Higher Education”. In August 2021, the final versions of each article were circulated to all of the contributors. Each person had the chance to read all of the articles together and to see the context in which their own contribution would appear. Each person was then asked to submit a short reflection. There was no set formula for the reflections: some general questions were shared to get the ball rolling but each person was free to focus on whatever they found to be most important.

Before submitting the reflections, most of the contributors were able to meet on Zoom in late September 2021. The aim of the virtual meeting was to personalize the process of contributing to—and editing—a special issue and to share ideas for the reflection pieces. That conversation was a highpoint for all of us as we talked about the experiences, both rewarding and challenging, that we had all had as educators and scholars, as members of fields and of institutions. There were moments where experience, contexts and perspectives overlapped but there were also moments where sharp differences were revealed and those moments were often the most instructive. The conversation that we had on Zoom was inspiring both during the process of writing the reflection pieces but also more generally since such moments of connection and personalization had been so lacking since March 2020.

In what follows, each reflection is presented in turn following the order of the articles in the special issue. As we will see, the contributors intervene in a diverse range of ways. Some pieces bring out the most important themes and questions which cut across the special issue. Others situate the work done here more broadly, drawing attention to gaps in the field which should be filled by future research. Some contributors explore how their own take on translation in higher education evolved as a result of reading their work in the context of the rest of the special issue. Still others reflect on the changes that they will make to their own pedagogy after taking part in this special issue. However they chose to intervene, the contributors’ reflections offer a precious glimpse of the possibility of change coming out of activities such as this which are designed to promote the bridging of theory and practice, or of research, policy and pedagogy.

In this dissertation, I use a bilingual epistolary corpus to examine the interaction of language contact, language- and genre-specific conventions, and speakers’ individual communicative strategies. Although multilingualism was a common historical condition, many traditional language histories and studies of historical speech only consider monolinguals, or bilingualism as it affects a particular language, rather than seeing multilingualism as part of an individual and community repertoire. In contrast, this study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the linguistic practices of a bilingual network of speakers in both of their languages. The corpus analyzed here is a collection of private letters which I selected and transcribed from the family correspondence of Francisco Bouligny, a soldier and military governor in colonial New Orleans. These letters were written in both French and Spanish as the family and acquaintances corresponded between New Orleans, France, and Spain for a period spanning from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century.

I address the following research questions through case studies at three levels: phonological/orthographic, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic.

(1) In what way(s) does bilingualism affect language usage? How do bilingual and monolingual usage differ?

(2) How does bilingualism interact with other factors such as convention, genre, audience, and stance, and how do bilingual writers use the resources of their two languages in their production?

In Chapter 3, I find widespread orthographic variation conditioned by factors such as age and geographic location. However, I argue for the inclusion of language-specific education and literacy as an additional factor in variation, as I find that the written standard can obscure variation and contact effects while also serving as a resource for bilinguals when writing in a second language. Chapter 4 addresses the contrast between the complex and simple past tenses in both Spanish and French. As the monolingual patterns of use in each language diverge, I find that bilinguals as a group do not follow monolinguals in showing an increased use of the complex past in French but not Spanish. Although individual patterns vary greatly, bilinguals use the French complex past overall less frequently than monolinguals, arguably because of the restraining influence of Spanish contact. This contact influence can be seen in discourse-pragmatic uses of the two tenses, used to shape the narrative or create temporal contrast. In Chapter 5, I consider the construction of identity and interpersonal relationships in bilingual correspondence through choice of language, forms of address, and expressions of sincerity. I find that speakers choose and continue to use only one language with their addressees, even when both speakers are bilingual, and that this choice is motivated largely by the characteristics of the addressee. The choice of second person pronouns (T or V) patterns fairly rigidly according to language and familial relationship, but I argue that speakers vary opening formulae to express more subtle distinctions in the intimacy of the relationship. Some speakers similarly appeal to existing formulae to convince the addressee of their sincerity, but this can be shown to be particularly true of less literate or second-language speakers, while other speakers eschew explicit mentions of sincerity for other strategies. Overall, although speakers show awarenes of epistolary norms in each language and in many ways adhere to language-specific practices, they also manipulate these conventions in meaningful ways.

This study is the first to delve into issues of historical bilingualism through a balanced bilingual epistolary corpus and one of few to explore language use in Spanish Louisiana. I find that individual speakers show evidence of using resources from their bilingual repertoire to aid in composition and construction of meaning in various ways. This is particularly true of loci of variation in the individual language systems or structures that share typological similarities across the systems. However, at the community level the variety of individual patterns and the force of the monolingual norms and written formulae appear to inhibit the spread of change. I underscore the importance in future studies of considering a speaker’s (and community’s) language use in its entire context, including other languages, literacies, and considerations of genre, as we explore how speakers use the available resources for interpersonal communication and how that translates to the community level.

Among all the studies performed on medieval French syntax during the last decade, one construction in particular, variously known in the literature as “stylistic fronting” or “leftward stylistic displacement”, has provoked particularly lively debate. Atheoretically conceived, this construction is characterized by the presence of non-subject constituents to the left of the finite verb, such as adjectives, adverbs, nouns, infinitives, past participles, and prepositional phrases. One or more such elements may appear in both main and subordinate clauses, either to the left or to the right of the subject, when the subject is expressed. Originally at the heart of this debate was the apparent similarity between the medieval French construction and one found in contemporary and historical Scandinavian languages (Holmberg 2000; Hrafnbjargarson 2004). On the basis of a corpus containing instances of leftward stylistic displacement involving infinitives, past participles, and a small group of adverbs, Labelle and Hirschbühler (2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2017) have successfully illustrated that the medieval French construction is different from the Scandinavian one; there remains, however, much work to be done in terms of the holistic description of medieval French leftward stylistic displacement, particularly in view of the full variety of elements that can be displaced.

The aim of the current project is twofold: firstly, to continue the descriptive project of Labelle and Hirschbühler (2017) by offering as complete a picture as possible of the totality of morphosyntactic variation that is inherent in this family of constructions, and secondly, to begin to understand what factors may (or may not) condition this variation. To that end, we construct a ~225,000-word plurigeneric corpus from portions of twelve texts ranging in date from the late-twelfth to the mid-fifteenth centuries and undertake a complete description of the leftward stylistic displacement that we find there. In addition to describing the construction itself as it appears through time, we consider three external textual and discursive variables: domain (a macro-version of text type), information structure, and reported discourse status. As a result of our study, we conclude that domain, on its own, is not a particularly good predictor of the morphosyntactic variation intrinsic to leftward stylistic displacement; we find that time, however, is an excellent predictor of this variation, an indication of a construction where change is very much at work. Using a series of decision trees for the information-structural tagging of our data, we also find that leftward stylistic displacement generally bears one of two information-structural values. On the basis of these, we propose a reanalysis of the structure of subordinate clauses in medieval French. With respect to discourse type, we find that discourse type (direct discourse versus narration) is not a good predictor of the morphosyntactic variation that characterizes leftward stylistic displacement. We conclude, finally, that leftward stylistic displacement represents a fertile ground for continued research in medieval French, especially as it pertains to subordinate clauses.

Use of the Occitan language in southern France has steadily declined over the past eight centuries, as part of a societal shift toward French. This shift has culminated in the current endangerment of Occitan (UNESCO, Ethnologue). Native speakers are aging rapidly, and according to some estimates, the language will disappear by the end of the 21st century (Bernissan 2012, Kranzer 2015). Contemporary efforts to revitalize Occitan have been well received. Whereas the language was once an obstacle to the acquisition of French and denigrated as a patois, it now carries widely recognized cultural cachet (Martel 2013). Previous studies on Occitan have centered on language attitudes (Paulston 1994, Priest 2008, Joubert 2010), on ideological clashes between groups of different speakers (Blanchet 1992, Sumien 2006, Costa 2016, Escudé 2009), and on the presence of Occitan within particular spheres like education (Boyer 2009, Costa 2015) and the media (Alén-Garabato 2011, Hagège 2015). At present, there is a lack of research into the social, historical, and political factors that affect Occitan revitalization efforts on the local level. This study aims to address these factors by analyzing public discourses on Occitan circulating in two small communities in southwestern France, Carmaux and Villefranche-de-Rouergue. These towns are both located in rural areas, where contemporary society is troubled by economic transformation, an aging population, and the pressures of globalization.

The study is an in-depth analysis of contemporary texts drawn from three sources of public discourse: the press, government documents, and documents circulated by associations promoting the Occitan language. Such public discourses both reflect and shape social attitudes and practices. Thus, the representations of Occitan that appear in the corpus allow me to analyze the role that it plays in each community.

The three research questions that guide the study are as follows:

1. How is Occitan portrayed in public discourse in Carmaux and Villefranche-de- Rouergue?

2. What is Occitan’s role in local society, as evidenced in in public discourse in Carmaux and Villefranche-de-Rouergue?

3. In what domains of language use is Occitan portrayed as being present, according to public discourse in Carmaux and Villefranche-de-Rouergue?

In order to address the questions, I use a purpose-built corpus of public discourses, gathered during a fieldwork period at the two research sites. In order to analyze these texts, I employ a methodology adapted from Reisigl and Wodak’s Discourse-historical approach (2009).

Analysis related to the first research question indicates that explicit portrayals of Occitan are largely positive. I find that three Discourses predominate such depictions. The first insists on the aesthetic, emotional, and social value of Occitan. The second casts Occitan as a valuable part of the community. The third insists on Occitan’s role as a link with history, culture, and tradition. All three of them combine to create the impression that Occitan is vital to the community. This finding contrasts interestingly with analysis related to the second question, which finds that Occitan is highly restricted to a set of creative cultural practices that serve to reinforce a larger Occitan regional identity, not necessarily the local character of the town. Therefore, it appears that the limited presence of Occitan in the community is at odds with assertions of its vitality and relevance that appear in the corpus. Finally, analysis of the third research question shows that Occitan is represented as being marginally present or completely absent from all major domains of language use, save that of secular society. Most manifestations of Occitan are facilitated by language promotion and other civil society associations, and are related to cultural events. Thus, I conclude that the function of Occitan in Villefranche-de-Rouergue and Carmaux, as represented in the study corpus, is to facilitate community engagement and local identity, with emphasis on expansion of language use as a lower priority.

                This study suggests that Occitan is undergoing a process of language revalorization and being refashioned as a marker of community belonging in Villefranche-de-Rouergue and Carmaux (Beier and Michael 2018, Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer 1998). Previous studies have also remarked on the lack of dynamism and language acquisition in Occitan as a consequence of a lack of nationalism (Paulston 1994), being limited to ideology (Costa 2016), and failing to break free of state language ideology (Escude 2009). However, I propose that Occitan revitalization is best viewed as a community revitalization project that privileges traditional cultural and linguistic practices that emphasize conviviality and creativity as a response to modern social pressures.

In journalistic texts in both French and Spanish, the conditional may be used to report an unconfirmed fact, akin to the use of allegedy in English, as in (1) and (2):

(1) La justice pénale américaine enquêterait sur General Motors ‘The Justice Department [would be investigating] General Motors’

(2) Según los datos en poder de este periódico, un informe de Hacienda acreditaría muchos de los obsequios y confirmaría los datos del ex gerente

‘According to information in possession of this newspaper, a source from the Treasury [would substantiate] many of the gifts and [would confirm] the former director’s information’

In French, this use of the conditional has accumulated many names, one of which is the conditionnel de presse. In Spanish, it is most often referred to as the condicional del rumor. I refer to both as the press conditional given the construction’s association with journalistic language in both French and Spanish. While this use of the conditional has been extensively studied in French, its Spanish counterpart has only recently begun to receive closer attention from scholars, much of it in the shadow of prior work undertaken on French. This dissertation addresses this gap by proposing a study that allows for a more thorough treatment of the construction in each language using an extensive news corpus. Not only does this study provide new data for Spanish, it provides a comprehensive examination of the press conditional in newswriting in each language, which, until now, was lacking in both French and Spanish.

In Chapter 1, I present an overview of the uses of the conditional in French and Spanish. I then focus on the press conditional, its history and its prescriptive status in each language. I also review previous theoretical models of the press conditional and previous work on the construction in journalistic texts. In Chapter 2, I present my methodology. I describe my bilingual corpus consisting of a constructed week’s worth of editions of two French and two Spanish newspapers: Le Monde, Libération, El Mundo and El Periódico de Catalunya. I then demonstrate the paraphrases I use to extract tokens of the press conditional from the corpus. These combine the appropriate indicative tense with adverbial markers paraît-il ‘it seems’ in French and por lo visto ‘apparently’ in Spanish. I then outline the analytic framework through which I examine the data. I approach the press conditional from the perspective of register, examining its use in journalistic texts in the light of their communicative aims. Since the primary aim of journalistic texts is to represent the truth, I understand the choice to use the press conditional as one made with consideration for precise writing and accurate reporting, which are the means by which journalists establish credibility.

In Chapter 3, I first examine the forms and frequency of the press conditional in French. I find that the data here bears out prior claims in the literature: the present conditional is most frequent with a present reading, while the past conditional is used for past events. I confirm that the present conditional with a prospective reading is rare, as it is not present in the corpus. I then analyze how the press conditional is used within the newspapers. I find that article type is not explanatory with respect to the use of the press conditional in French. Rather, I draw a distinction between conditionals serving to report information (reporting conditionals) and those that serve to reprise discourse (discursive conditionals). This distinction is shown here to correlate with article type, when a high-level split between news and commentary is made. Reporting and discursive conditionals are found at relatively similar rates in news articles, while reporting conditionals are rare in commentary, unlike discursive conditionals. The press conditional also frequently accompanies quantification in reportative contexts in journalistic texts. Discursive conditionals prove interesting because of their rarity in commentary in Libération and their relatively higher frequency in Le Monde. I find that Le Monde’s more extensive use of the discursive conditional in its commentary articles serves to signal a consistently journalistic style while also demonstrating that the press conditional appears to be a stereotypical feature of journalistic writing in French. Finally, I argue that, as used in journalistic texts, the press conditional can be seen as a marker of non-prise-en-charge.

In Chapter 4, I begin by providing the forms and frequency of the press conditional in Spanish. I note that the press conditional in fact encompasses the press conditional to mark both inferences and reported information. I provide a tabulation of the frequency of each use as well as an overview of their functions within the Spanish corpus. I then examine the temporality of each. I find that the present conditional may refer to present and past states, as well as future events and states. Notably, I confirm that present conditionals marking reported information do not require a future time marker to trigger a prospective reading (as is the case in French) in Peninsular Spanish. I then account for the use of the press conditional in Spanish as a function of article type. I find that in the case of polls and scientific articles the presence of the conditional may actually reflect the presence of scientific discourse within the pages of a newspaper. Conversely, I argue that in the case of articles on official misconduct and criminal activity, the press conditional’s efficiency in marking uncertainty in sensitive contexts may override prescriptive discouragement of the press conditional. I end by arguing that more diachronic and synchronic studies across journalistic, scientific and legal text types may better clarify the reported and inferential uses of the conditional in the Spanish press and also more generally.

In Chapter 5, I compare the forms, frequencies and temporalities of the present and past conditional in French and Spanish. I then examine the use of the press conditional in its capacities to convey reported information and/or inference. To the extent that it is a marker of reported information, I argue that it constitutes a special kind of reported speech in journalistic writing. I find that in its speech reporting function, the French press conditional implies an element of subjectivity not seen in its Spanish counterpart. On the basis of the common use of the press conditional to mark inference in Spanish, I examine tokens in French that appeared to convey inference. I argue that this function, while numerically marginal, requires further study. I then compare the press conditional at the level of the article, at the level of the newspaper and at the level of the language itself. I recall that while article type can be used to explain the use of the press conditional in Spanish, its use is more generalized in French. With respect to newspapers, I show that the press conditional reflects little of Libération and El Periódico’s journalistic practices. The press conditional has what one might call a performative function in Le Monde and is a pragmatic outgrowth of El Mundo’s investigative reporting. This points to the varying capacity the press conditional has in helping shape a newspaper’s journalistic identity. Finally, I conclude with a reflection on the fact that the press conditional is not only a stereotypical feature of French journalistic language, it is also on its way to becoming such a feature in Spanish. Thought of this way, it is not just a register feature but potentially a stylistic one as well.