‘Don't speak like that to her!’: Linguistic minority children's socialization into an ideology of monolingualism

It is of general interest to the study of language in society how ideologies motivating linguistic hegemony get formulated in the context of increasing diversity. This includes if and how linguistic diversity surfaces under conditions that are clearly disfavouring it, and why or why not it happens. Also, we need to know how ideologies of language surface at the micro‐level, and how they are continuously passed on, shared, negotiated or contested. These are central issues in this study of socialization into a condition and an ideology of linguistic hegemony in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is illustrated how school‐authorities, parents and children co‐create Danish dominance and a linguistic ideology of monolingualism during the first school year. The primary focus is on two school‐beginners with minority language background in a linguistically diverse classroom, and the linguistic registers of particular interest are Danish, the majority language, and Turkish, an immigrant language. The article builds on field‐notes, ethnographic interviews, video‐ and audio‐recordings. Linguistic Ethnography and Language Socialization constitute the methodological frameworks, and Silverstein's ‘total linguistic fact’ forms an analytic principle.     

What does it mean to be a girl with qizhi?:Refinement,gender and language ideologies in contemporary Taiwan1

This study investigates the relationship between ideologies of language and gender as manifested through sociolinguistic interviews conducted on college campuses in Taiwan. The interviews consistently and systematically revealed the use of a term, qizhi– roughly equivalent to ‘refined disposition.’ This paper examines the implications of this preoccupation. Through an examination of the contextual use of qizhi, this study shows that, first, qizhi is commonly associated with a range of social practices, among which linguistic practices play a significant role. Second, qizhi is often used to describe, evaluate, and further regulate women's ways of speaking, although its use is not gender exclusive. Third, common linguistic varieties in Taiwan, such as Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese‐accented Mandarin, are associated with qizhi to varying degrees. This study demonstrates how talk centered on qizhi serves as a meeting ground of social evaluation, linguistic and discursive practices, gender ideologies, and language ideologies.     

On the relevance and accountability of dialect: Conversation analysis and dialect contact

The present study seeks to illustrate how the theory and method of conversation analysis (CA) can be used to begin to unpack the notion of ‘contact’ in contact linguistics research. After reviewing language and dialect contact as they are traditionally conceptualized, we describe an additional set of questions inspired by CA's fundamental concern with relevance and accountability. It is argued that, by analyzing the structure and design of turn‐by‐turn talk in situations of dialect contact, we are able to investigate how co‐participants themselves go about carving out the boundaries of their respective dialects, how they can link those dialects to social identities, and how those social identities can become ‘procedurally consequential’ for the design of subsequent talk between the interlocutors. It is ultimately hypothesized that relevance and accountability at the micro‐interactional level may provide new insight into the moment‐by‐moment mechanisms that bring about the comparatively more macro‐level outcomes of dialect contact (e.g. leveling, koineization, etc.) that have been previously identified in contact linguistics research.     

Scalar politics,language ideologies,and the sociolinguistics of globalization among transnational Korean professionals in Hong Kong

This paper argues that the sociolinguistics of globalization is accompanied by a constitutive scalar politics. Based on ten interviews with Korean professionals in Hong Kong, we report that Korean migrants’ use and experience of English is characterized by competing language ideologies we identify as: Pragmatic English/Perfect English, Multilingualism/English Only, and Global Language/Local Language. Tensions within these ideologies were revealed as respondents referenced the contexts of their daily lives as intersecting sets of geographic, temporal, and social scales. We discuss how sociolinguistic relations associated with the transnational lifecourse, hybridizing identity, and racialization were imagined in ways that re‐negotiated these scales to serve the interests of the participants and provide coherence to their communicative practices. Sociolinguistic relations both reference scales and constitute them. We conclude that attending to scales and scalar politics provides a better explanatory framework for the ways the uneven linguistics markets of globalization are negotiated by transnational subjects.     

On ethnomethodology, feminism, and the analysis of categorial reference to gender in talk-in-interaction

This paper sets out an ethnomethodological approach to the study of gender and interaction, and demonstrates how the topic of ‘gender’ can be studied empirically via its categorial reference in talk‐in‐interaction. I begin by charting the history of ethnomethodological accounts and studies of gender, starting with Garfinkel's groundbreaking work and the subsequent ‘doing gender’ project, alongside a more general discussion of feminism's relationship to ethnomethodology. I then consider two related trajectories of research, one in conversation analysis and the other in membership categorization analysis, both of which deal with the explication of gender's relevance to interaction, but in somewhat different ways that raise different problems. Finally, drawing on data from different institutional settings, I show how ‘categorial’ phenomena such as ‘gender’ can be studied as phenomena of sequential organization using the machinery of membership categorization alongside conversation analysis. I suggest that the analysis of members' categories in their sequential environment allows language and gender researchers to see how everyday notions of gender are taken up, reformulated, or resisted, in turns of talk that accomplish conversational action; that is, how categories ‘might be relevant for the doing of some activity’ ( Sacks, 1992 vol. 1: 597).     

“There Was No Money Left to Save”: Financial Literacy and the Lives of Low-Income People

Despite the popularity of financial literacy programs intended to benefit low-income families, little research explores how families experience and interpret their own participation in these programs. In-depth interviews with participants in one such program revealed participants’ complex analyses of financial literacy and their own poverty. Their analyses simultaneously affirm and challenge hegemonic ideologies and neoliberal practices and, as such, provide an opportunity for social workers to respond in ways that address not only the immediate financial needs of low-income families but also the structures and ideologies that contribute to those needs.     

Performance and ideology in speaking tests for adult migrants

Language learning linked to migration is an important issue in many contemporary societies. This article discusses how adult migrants following a L2 Swedish course express beliefs on competence, language learning and language use during a test event. The theoretical framework is based on performance theory and the Bakhtinian notion of addressivity. Drawing on an interactional analysis of 27 video‐recorded paired speaking tests (a candidate‐candidate discussion) in the final national exam in an L2 Swedish course for adult migrants, the article discusses how the speaking tests could be interpreted as institutionalized staged performance. It is argued here that institutional performance puts ideologies on display. Stance‐taking, interactional alignment and an orientation to dominant discourses on monolingualism and integration become important resources for keeping the discussion going in front of the examiners. Finally, the study argues that the view of speaking tests as performance provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of language use in test settings.     

Multifunctional teasing as a resource for identity construction in the talk of British Bangladeshi girls1

This paper explores how multifunctional teasing is used as a resource for the construction of linguistic identities, establishing a link between previous research on teasing and the field of language/discourse and identity. I draw on a corpus of 38 episodes of teasing contained in 80 minutes of spontaneous talk between five adolescent Bangladeshi girls who formed a friendship group at their comprehensive school in East London. The qualitative analysis of the data reveals that the teasing in this group can serve four main functions: an accomplishment of fun‐based solidarity; a release of underlying tensions; a display of toughness; but also a display of respect for other speakers’ dispreference for taboo subjects. Building on Ochs’(1992) notion of indirect indexicality my discussion of the data will focus on the social meanings of these different functions of teasing which range from maintaining and managing friendship to (re)negotiating class and culture‐related identities. I shall argue that the identity work achieved by and in the teasing needs to be seen in relation to stereotypical notions and ideologies about class, gender and culture‐specific (language) practices which shape the girls’ construction of themselves as British Bangladeshi working‐class adolescents.     

Cultures of Denial: Avoiding Knowledge of State Violations of Human Rights in Argentina and the United States

Why and how do individuals distance themselves from information about their government's participation in torture and other human rights violations? Such citizen (non)response implicitly legitimates and thus facilitates the continuation of abusive state actions. Drawing on a model of socially organized denial, we explore how sociocultural contexts and practices mediate individuals’ avoidance, justification, normalization, silencing, and outright denial of human rights abuses in two sites: Argentina during the last military dictatorship (1976–1983) and the United States during the “war on terror” post September 11, 2001. The study is based on 40 in‐depth interviews with members of diverse civic, religious, community, and political organizations in both countries (20 in each site). Comparing the political circumstances of a dictatorship and an electoral democracy, the analysis shows the roles of patriotic and national security ideologies and practices of silence and talk as organizers of cultures of denial.     

Post‐socialist language ideologies in action: Linking interview context and language ideology through stance

Changes associated with the post‐socialist period in Albania have complicated the legacy of language ideologies grounded in Ottoman‐era and socialist‐era politics. In this article, I analyze two metalinguistic interviews with young adults in the Albanian capital of Tirana in order to investigate the status of standardizing and anti‐standardizing language ideologies while also raising a methodological question regarding interview context and researcher role as persistent issues in sociolinguistic research. As acts of evaluation, language ideologies can be linked to interactional positionings and alignments via stance, which is significant for understanding aspects of identity and context in the interview. I argue that this framework provides a better understanding of interview dynamics than previous style shifting approaches, as any explanation of differences in interview interactions must simultaneously consider macro‐level influences of ideology and micro‐level interactional developments.     

Children's talk and social competence

This article reviews research on the organisation of children's talk. It outlines the range of disciplinary concerns that contribute to the study of children's talk, and focuses on a range of work which foregrounds linkages between children's talk, social interaction and wider social processes. Paying particular attention to studies in conversation analysis, the emphasis is on how talk in peer‐group and in child‐adult interaction contributes to various theoretical and practical interests in children and society.     

Accommodation or rejection? Teenagers’ experiences of tensions between traditional and new speakers of Irish

This article analyses narratives presented by teenage Irish‐speakers about encounters between new speakers of Irish and locals in Gaeltacht (traditionally Irish‐speaking) areas. It demonstrates how two conflicting ideologies of legitimate language promoted by the state in the establishment and maintenance of Irish as ‘the national language’ alienate young new speakers of Irish and young Gaeltacht‐based Irish‐speakers from each other and from the language by construing the Gaeltacht as a resource for the nation, generating unrealistic expectations from new speakers and corresponding resentment from their Gaeltacht peers. The analysis of this case contributes to wider debates about the impact of language revitalisation policies on young people, and explores the tension that may arise between the aim of increasing the number of a language's speakers and the desire to retain its traditional functions in the communities where it has been best maintained.     

School bullying and the ongoing social dynamics: A thematic analysis of young peoples' perspectives on a specific bullying case

Based on analyses of six individual interviews with young people from a sixth-grade school class, this study explores how young people talk about bullying and a particular bullying case in their class from various positions. Utilising thematic analysis, three themes were conceptualised as crucial in bullying: social status, powerful positions and fragile social positions. Symbolic interactionism, emphasising perspectives as constructed in interaction, were used to understand these social dynamics and bullying as a group phenomenon. The findings demonstrate the social landscape in which young people navigate, where social positions are in process but affected by their group norms.     

Migrants' minority‐language newspeakerism: The pervasiveness of nation‐state monolingual regimes in transnational contexts

From a critical sociolinguistics perspective, this paper investigates processes of minority‐language newspeakerism among 23 migrants from heterogeneous socioeconomic and language backgrounds. Informants networked in a cybercafé and a bench in Catalonia, a European society with a majority and a minority language, Spanish and Catalan. Drawing on audio‐recorded interviews, naturally‐occurring interactions and four‐year ethnographic data, I analyze how informants' language practices and ideologies interplay with self‐/other‐ascribed Catalan newspeakerhood. The results show that migrants do not envision themselves as Catalan newspeakers. They employ ethnicist constructions of Catalan as ‘the locals’’ language, and inhabit fluid identities whereby ‘Catalanness’ is vindicated through global Spanish. They invest in Spanish newspeakerhood instead, presenting Spanish as the language of ‘integration’. I conclude that newspeakerism contributes to understanding migrants’ roles in the linguistic conflicts of minority‐language societies; particularly, the ways in which they invest in majority languages, following nation‐state monolingual regimes which pervade as gatekeepers to post‐national citizenship.     

Discursive Struggles Animating Individuals’ Talk About Their Parents’ Coming Out as Lesbian or Gay

The goal in the present study was to understand the discourses that animate children’s talk about having a parent come out and how these discourses interplay to create meaning. Data were gathered through 20 in-depth interviews with adults who remembered a parent coming out to them as lesbian or gay. One discursive struggle animated the participants’ talk about their parents’ coming out: the discourse of lesbian and gay identity as wrong vs. the discourse of lesbian and gay identity as acceptable. Analysis of participants’ talk about their familial identities revealed a range of avenues for resisting the negative discourses regarding lesbian and gay identities. The findings highlight discursive power in participants’ talk about their familial identities and how participants organize the conflicting messages they receive in their culture and in relationships regarding family identities.     

Language educators’ regard for variation in late modernity: Perceptions of linguistic variation in minority contexts

This article investigates language educators’ regard for linguistic variation in a minority language context. It argues that teachers function as language norm authorities who may influence the linguistic practices and ideologies of students, and that this role takes on added significance in minority language contexts where access to the target language may be limited. Data are presented from a study on the linguistic ideologies of Irish language educators – ‘new speakers’ who acquired the language mainly thorough the education system. Participants’ ideologies on variation in modern spoken Irish were explored using semi‐structured interviews incorporating a speaker evaluation design. Although participants valorise traditional dialectal varieties of Irish, in line with established hierarchies, ideological frameworks are contested so that new ways of using Irish are beginning to gain overt acceptance. The results reveal the manner in which hierarchies of language variation in the Irish language are in flux in our contemporary late‐modern period.     

Identifying units in interaction: Reactive tokens in Korean and English conversations

Reactive tokens are conversational resources by which a listener co‐constructs a speaker's turn at talk. The resources that are available include the forms of the reactive tokens themselves, their duration, and their placement by the listener in the current speaker's turn. The present paper is a contrastive study of the use of these resources by Americans in English, and by Koreans in their native language and in English, and in it we show the ecological relationship between the resources that a language provides and their use in constructing active listenership. Although previous research on English has found listeners use reactive tokens to pass up the opportunity for a full turn at talk, we show that, in Korean, reactive tokens are often elicited by the current speaker and the listener is obligated to provide them. We present evidence that Korean bilinguals transfer some conversational resources from their native language when they take part in conversation in English.     

Kids Talking About Race: Tween‐agers in a Post‐Civil Rights Era

Our research examines how American children understand and talk about how race matters in their everyday lives. We draw on interviews with 44 middle school children who attend schools in an integrated county‐wide system and find that while some use color‐blind rhetoric, most children in our study know that race matters, while they offer alternative accounts for why and how. Some explain race as social inequality, while others offer cultural accounts of racial differences. Our analysis suggests that for white children, gender matters; more girls describe racial inequality than boys. For children of color, class seems to be key, with middle‐class children giving cultural explanations, including negative evaluations of others in their own racial group. We use an intersectionality framework to analyze the alternative and complex narratives children give for their own experiences of race and race relations between peers.     

Towards a parental muda for new Basque speakers: Assessing emotional factors and language ideologies

The concept of muda refers to how specific biographical moments can precipitate changes in the speaker's linguistic repertoire (Pujolar & Gonzàlez, 2012). In recent years, more inclusive or participatory approaches to intergenerational transmission in language revitalization contexts have been encouraging all parents, including those with low proficiency in the minority language, to participate in their child's language acquisition. This article examines a Basque‐ language campaign that instructs low‐proficiency parents to adopt child‐directed speech in Basque to mould affective orientations in the home environment. Drawing on a case study, I explore the complications of new speakerhood, especially the difficulties of bringing about a parental muda. I demonstrate how mudas are traversed by competing ideologies of language and language socialization. In disrupting monolingual ideologies, participatory approaches which aim at increasing the symbolic value of the language clash with the attitudes of speakers who view these mudas as inconsequential for achieving normalization.