Showing papers in "Language & Communication in 2014"

From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy

Abstract: Communicative competence includes not only the mastery of grammar and lexicon, but also the rules of speaking. This chapter argues that the individual who wishes to learn a new language must, in addition to acquiring a new vocabulary and a new set of phonological and syntactic rules, learn what Hymes calls the rules of speaking: the patterns of sociolinguistic behaviour of the target language. The inclusion of sociolinguistic interests within language teaching and the recognition of the necessity to make communicative competence the goal of the second language curriculum is a major step both for the theory and the practice of language teaching. The chapter argues that the understanding and knowledge of appropriate speech behaviour is crucial if learners are to communicate effectively with native speakers of the language they are learning. One of the earliest studies of sociolinguistic behaviour in American English focused on terms of address.

Fear and loathing of the English passive

Abstract: Writing advisers have been condemning the English passive since the early 20th century. I provide an informal but comprehensive syntactic description of passive clauses in English, and then exhibit numerous published examples of incompetent criticism in which critics reveal that they cannot tell passives from actives. Some seem to confuse the grammatical concept with a rhetorical one involving inadequate attribution of agency or responsibility, but not all examples are thus explained. The specific stylistic charges leveled against the passive are entirely baseless. The evidence demonstrates an extraordinary level of grammatical ignorance among educated English language critics.

Regional variability and ethnic identity: Chinese Americans in New York City and San Francisco

Abstract: This paper examines the realizations of the bought vowel (in words like taught and sauce) by Chinese Americans of Cantonese heritage in New York City and San Francisco. Quantitative analyses find that Chinese Americans in the two cities pronounce bought in ways that are more similar to their respective regional patterns than to one another. We argue that the quantitative results should be interpreted by considering the complex semiotic links this variable has with respect to non-Asian ethnicities and by considering speakers’ negotiations of their local and cultural identities amidst different (and changing) sociohistorical contexts. We propose that regional features can index not just regional identity but also its intersection with ethnicity.

Rye bread and halal: Enregisterment of food practices in the primary classroom

Abstract: This paper demonstrates how primary school children use food to organize social space, how they do it linguistically, and how they draw on different cultural and social models when doing it. Data comprise recordings from lunch encounters in a primary classroom over two years, and Linguistic Ethnography, as well as Language Socialization constitute the methodological frameworks. The food registers analysed are the Health register and the Halal register. It is shown that there is a specific interpretation of the Health register, and the Halal register is marginalized. On a more general level it is suggested that examination of food events enables us to understand the everyday significance for children of grand notions such as health, hierarchy, and globalization.

Analyzing Ethnic Orientation in the quantitative sociolinguistic paradigm

Abstract: Ethnic Orientation, defined as speakers’ sociolinguistic practices and attitudes, does not affect all communities, languages, or linguistic variables equally. We illustrate that the types of differences that emerge depend on methodological decisions, particularly at the analysis stage. We provide examples of inter-community differences including some that emerge differently depending on the method of analysis. This is accomplished by comparison of Heritage Language patterns among groups of Toronto residents: speakers of Heritage Cantonese, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish; and English patterns in Chinese-descent and Italian-descent Torontonians, comparing across three generations since immigration. We examine the variables pro-drop and Voice Onset Time in the Heritage Language data. The Canadian Vowel Shift and consonant cluster simplification are examined in English. We show that no Ethnic Orientation facets correlate to all types of linguistic variation. The relationships found between linguistic variables and Ethnic Orientation variables suggest Ethnic Orientation is a key factor in modeling variation in Heritage Language communities – their variation should not be attributed solely to subtractive processes like incomplete acquisition or attrition.

Language variation and ethnic identity: A social psychological perspective

Abstract: In the interest of promoting discussion between sociolinguists and social psychologists, this paper offers a social psychological perspective on some of the themes surrounding ethnicity and language that are raised by the authors of the papers in this issue. I present three psychological approaches to ethnic identity and suggest how each of these theoretical models might lead to different research questions regarding the relation between language and ethnicity. I also suggest some caveats regarding the use of self-reports of ethnic identity, particularly quantitative responses to closed-ended questions, that research on language and ethnicity suggests we should be attentive to. I conclude with some discussion of how social psychological and sociolinguistic researchers might jointly advance understanding of the link between ethnicity and language, particularly through a more fully articulated analysis of the “social context”.

Family language policy and heritage language maintenance of Malacca Portuguese Creole

Abstract: One of the key drivers for maintaining the use of a heritage language is its use in the family domain. Within this context, this paper examines the role of family language policy (FLP) in relation to an endangered language, Malacca Portuguese Creole (MPC). Five families in the Portuguese Settlement in Malacca were interviewed about their family language policies. Based on Spolsky’s (2004) language policy model, two areas of FLP were examined: language ideology and language practice. The results indicate that although there is a general sense of MPC being an ethnic and cultural identity marker for the Portuguese Eurasians, this is not directly translated into the transmission of the language in the family domain.

Yiddish endangerment as phenomenological reality and discursive strategy: Crossing into the past and crossing out the present

Abstract: Yiddish has been spoken by millions of Ashkenazic Jews since approximately 1000 C.E. Over the past two centuries, the number of Yiddish speakers within secular Jewish “metalinguistic communities” has diminished while numbers in Hasidic Orthodox communities have been growing. Yiddish is therefore unique in the “endangered language” landscape, challenging prevalent classifications used to describe levels of language vitality. This article analyzes Yiddish “endangerment” as a phenomenological reality and a discursive strategy. Metalinguistic community members engage in ‘nostalgia socialization’, crossing temporal boundaries to connect with authorizing sources of past European Jewish communities; they create alliances with an imagined past while maintaining boundaries with a distant present. Yiddish therefore illuminates how languages are constructed through communities' experiences of loss, fragmentation, and recreation.

Linguistic repertoire and ethnic identity in New York City

Abstract: This paper expands on the ethnolinguistic repertoire approach to consider the use of a broad linguistic repertoire by a single speaker in the construction of a multivalent identity. African American speakers in North America are often analyzed from an ethnolectal perspective, and placed in contrast to (white) speakers of regional varieties of American English. A close analysis of three features – one that is traditionally ethnolectal (copula absence as a feature of African American English), one that is traditionally dialectal ( bought -raising as a feature of New York City English), and one that is potentially either (non-rhoticity in the syllable coda) – reveals intersectional identification practices that go beyond ethnicity and regional identity. The results of a variationist analysis of a community sample of speakers from the Lower East Side of Manhattan is contrasted with a micro-analysis of the repertoire of a single speaker, with the repertoire analysis demonstrating the fluid nature of speaker identity and of the boundaries between ethnolect and dialect in New York City.

Making objectives common in performance appraisal interviews

Abstract: This paper investigates goal setting in performance appraisal interviews. The data are video-recorded performance appraisal interviews from a Finnish public sector organization. The study focuses on the role of writing in deciding on common goals for future development. Drawing from conversation analytical methods, the empirical analysis highlights three central interactional patterns for the setting of goals: a proposal–approval/rejection format, a question–answer format, and a summary format. It is shown that they are different in terms of how they allow the employee to participate in the process. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that writing practices play a crucial role in these interactional sequences. It is thus argued that goal setting is inextricably connected to the discursive action of completing the appraisal form.

(Almost) everyone here spoke Ban Khor Sign Language—Until they started using TSL: Language shift and endangerment of a Thai village sign language

Abstract: Found only in face-to-face communities with distinctive socioeconomic and demographic profiles that include numerous deaf residents, ‘village sign languages’ correlate with special ‘speech/sign communities,’ wherein widespread deafness is successfully communicatively managed because hearing villagers routinely acquire and use the local sign language. This language variety is as unusual as its sociolinguistic environment is fragile. Charting the life course of a contemporary village sign language and speech/sign community in Thailand, this article examines the causes and consequences of the emergence, expansion, and endangerment of Ban Khor Sign Language and its speech/sign community.

“What happened?” From talk to text in police interrogations

Abstract: Based on 11 interrogations and police records, I examine how stories are elicited, told and written up during the police interrogation. In the process of transforming a spoken story to a written story, we see several transformations. The written story is a more factual, detailed, precise and intentional story on paper constructed according to the institutional perspective of the officer. Whether the stories are told freely by the suspect, supervised or imposed by the officer, police officers adhere to their own structure and chronology of how they make events understandable. This is accomplished through further questioning, interrupting or by telling the story themselves. This process of institutionalization already begins in the interaction and continues when transforming talk to text.

Beautiful script, cute spelling and glamorous words: Doing girlhood through language playfulness on Israeli blogs

Abstract: Research on language and gender in CMC has evolved through two trajectories: differences between men and women, and the performance of gender through linguistic resources; both are still underrepresented in languages other than English. While previous studies of language playfulness in CMC have focused mainly on typography and orthography, this study demonstrates a playful principle evoked for performing a specific gender identity across four linguistic levels: digital typography, deviant orthography and morphology, and lexical borrowing. The paper emerges from a larger ethnography of the Hebrew-language blogosphere. I argue gender is performed online through linguistic style choices associated with stereotypical differences and offer CMC constraints and globalization as layers of sensibility that interplay with feminist discourse on language and gender.

Mitigation and epistemic positions in troubles talk: The giving advice activity in close interpersonal relationships. Some examples from Italian

Abstract: The study presents an analysis of giving advice activity in Italian natural troubles talk exchanges, exploring the possible impact of mitigation strategies and speakers' epistemic management. We investigate the giving advice activity as organized in a triplet: the confider's request/solicitation/neither request nor solicitation for advice (Initiation); the confidant/e's giving advice (Advice); the confider's alignment/partial alignment/misalignment to the advice (Reaction). The main findings of our study show that an advice coming after an explicit request, although unmitigated, is normally followed by alignment, while a mitigated advice, if not requested, is prevalently followed by misalignment. Such results suggest how relevant the speakers' agreement in the management and negotiation of their reciprocal epistemic positions (less knowledgeable/more knowledgeable) is for the conversational outcomes.

Cartographies of language: Making sense of mobility among Korean transmigrants in Singapore

Abstract: This paper studies the way transmigrants rely on linguistic difference as an important resource for making sense of their experiences of mobility. Through an analysis of how Korean transmigrants in Singapore talk about their experience of transnational movement, it shows that distinctions of language, which are commonly articulated in hierarchical terms such as competence, legitimacy, and economic value, generate an ideologized image of space for the migrants—a map that allows them to actively interpret space and imagine their position in the global world. It then considers the implications such cartographies of language have for the emerging sociolinguistics of globalization.

Performance of unprecedented genres. Interdiscursivity in the writing practices of a Swedish researcher

Abstract: This paper investigates the sociolinguistic repertoire and writing practices of a Swedish computer science researcher and his first-time performance of unprecedented genres Since the use of written computerese Swedish has no historical anchorage in the social practices of his discipline, texts-to-text relationships cannot be drawn from as models of action Lacking this option, the researcher construes type and token interdiscursive connectivity from iconic Swedish and English texts and from prior discursive events of using academic Swedish orally The resources comprising an individual’s repertoire are, thus, significantly transposable across languages, modes and genres, when they are enacted in new discursive events

On the (re-)production and representation of endangered language communities: Social boundaries and temporal borders

Abstract: Language & Communication xxx (2014) 1–7 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Language & Communication journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langcom Editorial On the (re-)production and representation of endangered language communities: Social boundaries and temporal borders 1. Shifting concepts of language and community Conceptualizations of language and community have mirrored changes in anthropology and the social sciences more generally, shifting from notions of shared linguistic structures, norms, and values in specific regions to complex variation, diverse practices, and multifaceted ideologies across contexts. These evolving changes, of course, were not due solely to ongoing theoretical percolations but also to permutations and complications in the types of language communities that were receiving analytical attention. Once bounded and mostly homogeneous, language communities that began to be analyzed were increasingly in contact with the hybridizing forces of immigration, culture contact, national media penetration, and globalization. But the most recent challenge to the study of language communities comes from scholars attempting to un- derstand the confluence of all these forces in processes of language endangerment. This special issue is dedicated to the exploration of the ways studying endangered language communities makes us rethink the notion of speech or language community both in terms of how those communities construct themselves and how they can be understood and represented by researchers. Since the 1930’s, scholars in the language sciences have engaged in an increasingly sustained preoccupation with concepts that connect language and community. This began with Bloomfield’s (1933) groundbreaking conceptualization of a “speech- community” as “a group of people who interact by means of speech” (p. 42), which he highlights as “the most important kind of social group” (p. 42). His description privileges speech over other forms of language-in-interaction, and does little to acknowledge the complexities of communities that have fragile connections to a common language. In his discussion, he emphasizes the varying sizes of speech-communities and the difficulty of making distinctions within and among these groups. One of his primary interests is in density of communication, recognizing that various members of these groups have more or less interaction with one another. He also discusses issues of standard language, native language, local dialects, immigration, and language attitudes. Bloomfield’s important work laid the foundation for a variety of scholars’ later in- stantiations of the concept. Building upon Bloomfield’s work, Gumperz (1968, p. 43) defined speech community as “any human aggregate charac- terized by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage”. This more complex characterization also acknowledged the amount of interaction as a key component and the elements of what makes speech community members similar to each other and distinctive from others. However, Gumperz’s focus on what is shared does not emphasize sufficiently the variation within speech commu- nities, something that is especially relevant in communities around endangered languages. For example, later pioneering work by Dorian (1982) considered variability within speech communities, introducing terms such as low-proficiency “semi- speaker” and “near passive bilinguals” in relation to Gaelic and English. This acknowledgment of complexity within a speech community, in particular one focused on an endangered language, is valuable. However, in many ways it still holds full fluency and native speakerness as implicit norms and goals. 1 In her editorial introduction to a Journal of Linguistic Anthropology special issue on language and community, Irvine (1996) notes, “the one language-one culture assumption persists in anthropology and elsewhere, both within and outside the academy, despite the long history of arguments against it” (p. 123). She highlights the “semiotic processes.linguistic phenomena and discursive practices” (p. 124) that are central to notions of community. In this way, she acknowledges previous moves toward a more complex understanding of language and community, and pushes the field forward in its conceptualizations. For further discussion about how to represent “semi-speakers” and other types of intra-community linguistic variation, see such sources as Tsitsipis (1989) and Sallabank (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2014.05.003 0271-5309/O 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Please cite this article in press as: Avineri, N., Kroskrity, P.V., On the (re-)production and representation of endangered language communities: Social boundaries and temporal borders, Language & Communication (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.langcom.2014.05.003

Against linguistic Cartesianism: Toward a naturalistic model of human language origins and functioning

Abstract: In spite of the fact that most models of language in cognitive science are naturalistic, many authors are skeptical of Darwinism, especially the idea that language may be an evolutionary adaptation. There is a conceptual obstacle at the basis of this skepticism: the connection with Cartesian tradition. To propose a genuinely naturalistic perspective, the models of language inspired by Cartesianism must give way to those tied to the Darwinian perspective. Hence, we propose a model of language origins and functioning based on two hypotheses: (a) the origin of human language is interpretable in reference to the grounding of language in context; (b) the capacities that ensure this grounding are connected to the motor foundation of human communication.

From local to global: Visual strategies of glocalisation in digital storytelling

Abstract: This paper's main goal is to explore the function of images in the structuring of digital stories and their role in the construction of global meanings from personal experiences. Findings presented here come from the analysis of thirty digital stories taken from several specialised websites on the Internet. The methodology we used is a mixture of the traditional Labovian narrative schema (Labov, 1972) and a multimodal – mainly visual – analysis (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). Among the most interesting results, images play a significant role as evaluative mechanisms by which local, culturally specific elements in digital narratives interact with a global perspective for a universal audience.

Pragmatic failure, epistemic injustice and epistemic vigilance

Abstract: Stemming from real or seeming incompetence, the pragmatic failures L2 learners and LF speakers often commit may lead to stereotyping and negative labelling as a consequence of hearers' mindreading abilities and relevance-driven interpretation of communicative behaviour. Pragmatic incompetence may incite hearers to erroneously attribute beliefs, intentions or feelings to speakers because of lowered epistemic vigilance and to sustain a specific type of epistemic injustice, which, borrowing from social epistemology, is here labelled pragmatic-hermeneutical injustice. Pragmatic-hermeneutical injustices could be avoided or overcome if hearers' vigilance triggered a shift of processing strategy from naive optimism to cautious optimism.

From text to talk in criminal court: Prosecuting, defending, and examining the evidence

Abstract: In this article we analyze how prosecutors, lawyers and judges refer to the case file. Because witnesses are rarely heard again in Dutch criminal court, understanding how their written voices are re-animated in court is of importance. Lawyers and prosecutors select quotations and introduce these in a written (to be spoken) statement and control the sequential embedding. Judges introduce quotations while examining the evidence; the introduction of quotations is hence contingent on the developing interaction with the suspect. We examine one trial and show how referrals to the case file by the different professionals are selected to construct versions of the events and how their sequential embedding contributes to achieving these different versions in pursuit of their respective institutional aims.

Borders traversed, boundaries erected: Creating discursive identities and language communities in the Village of Tewa

Abstract: Today the Village of Tewa, First Mesa of the Hopi Reservation in Northern Arizona experiences unprecedented linguistic diversity and change due to language shift to English. Despite a wide range of speaker fluency, the now emblematic Tewa language that their ancestors transported from the Rio Grande Valley almost 325 years ago, is widely valorized within the community. However Language factions have emerged andtheir debates and contestations focus on legitimate language learning and the proper maintenance of their emblematic language. Boundary creation and crossing are featuresof discourses that rationalize possible forms of language revitalization and construct communities across temporal barriers. The theoretical implications of these discourseson both local and theoretical notions of language/speech community are explored.

AAE as a bounded ethnolinguistic resource for white women with African American ties

Abstract: This paper considers the use of features classically considered AAE (Labov, 1972, Rickford, 1999; Wolfram and Thomas, 2002; Green, 2002) by adult white women with significant social ties with African Americans and explores why some members of a dominant ethnic group adopt the linguistic features of a non-dominant ethnic group with whom they have social ties, while others with similar social ties do not. Participants’ use of a constellation of phonological features associated with AAE is considered, and an exemplary variable which represents this constellation—/l/ vocalization—is analyzed. Through implementation of an ethnographically-informed multi-category quantitative metric of social and cultural practice, the density and affective quality of speakers’ ties to members of the African American community throughout the stages of their lives is measured (cf. Milroy, 1980; Bortoni-Ricardo, 1985), as is speakers’ participation in aesthetic practices associated with their African American cohorts (cf. Bourdieu, 1991; Adli, 2006). Intra-group variation in use of AAE phonological features is evident within the sample; participants also vary with regard to their adoption of other semiotic practices linked to African American ethnicity. These findings reveal that there is no static way of “being” a white woman with African American social ties. Additionally, differentiated use of ethnically-marked linguistic features and participation in other ethnically-marked aesthetic and cultural practices are not only reflective of speakers’ varied social ties, but also signify speakers’ varied personal ideologies about the boundaries of ethnic identification, as evidenced in discursive commentary from the speakers.

Quoting from the case file: How intertextual practices shape discourse at various stages in the legal trajectory

Abstract: Criminal trial hearings are communicative events that are densely intertextually structured. In the course of a trial hearing, written documents such as police records of statements made by suspects, witnesses and experts are extensively referred to, quoted, paraphrased, summarized and recontextualized. In fact, such drawing upon the (written documents in) the case file is inevitable, as demonstrating (or invalidating) the defendant’s criminal liability crucially depends on the transformation of discourses produced at previous stages of the trial into lawful evidence. Detailed analyses of the various discursive processes through which intertextual links with the case file are established are thus essential for understanding exactly how trial participants negotiate versions of events with specific legal implications. In this special issue we bring together a collection of papers that deal with such intertextual practices in different legal settings.

Defending through disaffiliation: The vicissitudes of alignment and footing in Belgian criminal hearings

Abstract: Drawing on Goffman’s notion of footing, I demonstrate how the discursive creation of a legal reality is mediated by the complex interplay of alignments the attorney assumes toward (1) the client, (2) the judge and other trial participants, and (3) written documents produced during preceding trial stages. These footing patterns differ in the way they include or exclude the attorney and other trial participants in the phenomenal field of the discourse. However, they also draw attention to the network of intertextual relationships that connect the hearing and the time of the facts. This decomposition of the situated practice of “representing the client” into a complex of alternating footing patterns thus also contributes to understanding the intertextual structuring of courtroom discourse.

Two modes of referring to the case file in the courtroom. The use of indirect reported text and text-as-addressed speech in case summaries

Abstract: This paper analyzes summaries of the written case file which judges produce at the onset of pre-parole pluridisciplanary hearings for assessing the future dangerousness of an inmate. Such summaries of the case file are a highly reflexive discursive practice, as the inmate who appears before the committee is simultaneously the object of the written expert assessments that are re-enacted by the judge and the recipient of these reenactments. Both the production of the summary as an extended turn-at-talk and the procedures for referring to the file are sensitive to this “participative dilemma”. Two different modes for referring to the file are identified: “indirect reported text” and “text-as-addressed speech.” Each has different sequential implications and invokes different epistemic domains and asymmetries.

Avoiding emotivism: A sociolinguistic approach to moral talk

Abstract: The ways in which people use language to make moral judgements have long been the focus of debates in moral philosophy. But, despite the recent turn in socially and functionally oriented approaches to linguistics towards the study of evaluative language, little has been said within the linguistic tradition about morally evaluative language. The argument of this paper is that we can use the concept of register (as recently deployed by Agha, 2007) to explore linguistic attempts to index the activity of moral judgement – moral talk. In so doing, we might also be able to resist the reification of the idea that moral talk is a necessarily expressive, emotive, or interpersonal thing, and to view it as a multifunctional resource.

Linguistic correlates of Irish-American and Italian-American ethnicity in high school and beyond

Abstract: Young Irish-American and Italian-American women from South Philadelphia were recorded in their senior year of high school and then in their freshman year of college. Despite the relative longevity and increasing cultural integration of the Irish and Italian communities in South Philadelphia, some linguistic differences obtain in the Philadelphia English of women from these two groups. In the 1970s ( Labov, 2001 ), the only Irish or Italian ethnic effect on Philadelphia vowels was found in Italians’ relatively retracted bow / boat and boo / boot . This was supported in the present study for boat , for which Italian-Americans are less fronted than Irish-Americans. Yet other ethnolinguistic differences were unexpectedly also found in the speech of these young women. For instance, Irish-American women and ‘tough’ Italian-American women exhibited more retracted bite -nuclei than their peers. Ethnicity also conditions the alternation between alveolar and velar variants of suffixal (ing), with Irish-Americans more likely than Italian-Americans to use the non-standard alveolar variant. However, the strength of this effect on (ing) attenuates after high school, when ethnicity becomes a less salient component of the speakers’ self-presentation. The article discusses the importance of bringing ethnographic observations to the study of within-White ethnicity, and emphasizes the dynamic nature of ‘ethnicity’ as it is constructed and re-constructed across the individual lifespan.

Linguistic variation and time travel: Barrier, or border-crossing?

Abstract: Language endangerment disrupts indexical relationships between languages and communities prototypically defined by use of those languages, complicating notions of language community and speech community. Language variation, less visible in robust speech communities, is conspicuous in contracting speech communities. This variation is sometimes perceived as aiding border crossings to imagined past communities of practice; it is alternatively perceived as erecting barriers between present and past. Stances towards variation are worked out dialogically, and are key in defining speech communities and identities associated with those communities. In the case of Kawaiisu, spoken in the Tehachapi region of California, variations among speakers index broader community valorization of individuality, and its use by speakers and learners links to those values and practices. By contrast, in planning a teaching program for Pomo communities, the variations among seven distinct Pomoan languages spoken in Lake County, California were framed as a threat to community cohesion because they erected barriers to comprehension and accessibility. The suggestion that language planners subsume that variation into one overarching language with seven dialects was conceptualized as returning to a past when all Pomos could easily communicate with one another.