Linguistics 

About: Linguistics is an academic journal published by De Gruyter. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Theoretical linguistics & Verb. It has an ISSN identifier of 0024-3949. Over the lifetime, 2364 publications have been published receiving 52064 citations. The journal is also known as: linguistic science & linguistic.

“Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish Y TERMINO EN ESPAÑOL”: Toward a typology of code-switching

Abstract: This chapter is an attempt to integrate the results of the ethnographic and attitudinal components of the broader study into a specifically sociolinguistic analysis. It explores code-switching on a community-wide basis, focusing on speakers of varying bilingual abilities. The chapter demonstrates how the incorporation of both functional and linguistic factors into a single model is necessary to account for code-switching behaviour. The phenomenon of code-switching has been a point of contention in assessing community identity. While intellectuals have seen language mixture as constituting evidence of the disintegration of the Puerto Rican Spanish language and culture, community members themselves appear to consider various bilingual behaviours to be defining features of their identity. Code-switches provoked by lack of availability or utilized as an emblem of ethnic identity appear, then, to be only weak factors in speakers’ perception of their own behaviour.

Activity types and language

Abstract: Repercussion des contraintes sur l'emploi de la langue dans des types specifiques d'activite sociale sur les concepts d'actes de langage, d'implication conversationnelle et de jeux de langage.

The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation

Abstract: This paper represents a comprehensive study of English loanword usage in five diverse francophone neighborhoods in the national capital region of Canada. Twenty thousand loan tokens extracted from informal conversations with 120 speakers are analyzedfor degree oflinguistic integration into French and social assimilation by the francophone community. Attestation histories ofEnglish forms in Canadian and European French are compared with current usage frequencies and various measures of integration. We distinguish two basic patterns of borrowing nonce and established which show similar linguistic characteristics, contrasting thereby with unambiguous code-switches. We trace the differential effects ofenvironmental (majority/minority status of French in the neighborhood) , individual (degree of bilingual proficiency), and sociodemographic (occupational class, age, etc.) factors on overall borrowing rates anti patterns of use of different types of loanwords. With respect to overall rate of borrowing, social class membership is found to be a better predictor than either environmental effects or individual bilingualproficiency. In terms ofborrowing pattern, environmentalfactors are paramount, suggesting that borrowing behavior is acquired, and not merely a function of lexical need.

Documentary and descriptive linguistics

Abstract: Much of the work that is labeled "deseriptive" within linguistics comprises two activities, the collection of primary data and a (low-level) analysis of these data. These are indeed two separate activities as shown by the fact that the methods employed in each activity differ substantially. To date, the field concerned with the first aetivity — called "doeumentary linguisties" here — has received very little attention from linguists. It is proposed that documentary linguistics be conceived of as a fairly independent field of linguistic inquiry and practice that is no longer linked exclusively to the descriptive framework. A format for language documentations (in contrast to language deseriptions) is presented (section 2), and various practical and theoretical issues connected with this format are discussed. These include the rights of the individuals and communities contributing to a language doeumentation (section 3.1), the parameters for the selection of the data to be included in a doeumentation (section 3.2), and the assessment of the quality of such data (section 3.3),

Po-faced receipts of teases

Abstract: This paper concerns the verbal activity of 'teasing'; that is, mocking but playful jibes against someone. The particular phenomenon investigated is that of 'po-faced' responses to teasing. In a large collection of teases occurring in natural conversations, recipients of teases recurrently respond quite seriously to the teasing proposal. Even where there is evidence that they recognize that the tease was meant humorously, recipients nevertheless usually deny and correct the tease: in only a small minority of cases do they play along with it. This paper first documents a continuum of responses, the most common of which are patterns of serious responses to teases. The analysis proceeds, using the conversation analytic approach, to account for the phenomenon of 'po-faced' responses, by first identifying the sequential environment in which teasing occurs: namely, one in which recipient has been complaining, extolling, bragging, etc., in a somewhat overdone or exaggerated fashion. Thus teasing can be a form of social control of minor conversational transgressions. Also teasing jokingly attributes certain deviant actions!identities which are mapped onto (an) identity (s) which recipient actually possesses; insofar as recipients see themselves as conceivably portrayed as deviant, teasing is 'close to the bone'. Recipients respond to these 'social control' and 'deviance attribution' properties defensively, hence in a po-faced manner.