The green leaves of love: Japanese romantic heroines,authentic femininity,and dialect1

How is ‘authentic’ linguistic femininity in Japan manifested in popular texts? We analyze the dialogue of female characters in Wakaba, a 2005 Japanese drama set in two very different parts of ‘regional’ Japan – Miyazaki and Kobe. Through this analysis, we examine two contradictory discourses circulated through popular media. The first is that linguistic femininity is based in Standard Japanese – a surprisingly persistent ideology despite a current trend to examine cases in which language ideology and practice do not match. Other studies reflect another dominant discourse, that of the ‘authentic’ dialect speaker, who expresses local alignment by using dialect forms outside the bounds of ideologically modern linguistic forms. The tension between acting linguistically feminine and ‘authentically’ local raises some interesting questions for Japanese language and gender studies, including studies of gendered representations: are women who are speakers of regional dialects authentically ‘feminine’? Can they be? Do some dialects express femininity better than others?     

Emerging Hispanic English: New dialect formation in the American South

Although stable Hispanic populations have existed in some regions of the United States for centuries, other regions, including the mid‐Atlantic South, are just experiencing the emergence of permanent Hispanic communities. This situation offers an ideal opportunity to examine the dynamics of new dialect formation in progress, and the extent to which speakers acquire local dialect traits as they learn English as a second language. We focus on the production of the /ai/ diphthong among adolescents in two emerging Hispanic communities, one in an urban and one in a rural context. Though both English and Spanish have the diphthong /ai/, the Southern regional variant of the benchmark local dialect norm is unglided, thus providing a local dialect alternative. The instrumental analysis of /ai/ shows that there is not pervasive accommodation to the local norm by Hispanic speakers learning English. There is, however, gradient, incremental adjustment of the /ai/, and individual speakers who adopt local cultural values may accommodate to the local dialect pattern.     

Language and power in Japanese transplants in Scotland

Previous research into Japanese owned and managed enterprises in western countries has been alert to problems in cross‐cultural communication but there has been little research into the linguistic patterns accompanying these activities. This study of seven such plants in Scotland illustrates key features of the linguistic patterns evident in them. Forms of pidgin develop in co‐operative working environments but unusually they are based on the language of the formal subordinates, local English speaking managers and workers. In contrast, and more in line with expectations from socio‐linguistic theory, the local dialect is used as a device to promote local workforce solidarity against expatriate management. The former discrepancy between material and cultural power, which is not expected on the basis of Bourdieu's and related theories of cultural behaviour, is explained in terms of the differing career paths of Japanese and non‐Japanese personnel, the marginal involvement of Japanese management in the local society and their reticence in asserting cultural power commensurate with their economic power. However, these lingusitic developments were local phenomena that did not challenge Japanese managerial control, both local and corporate, of decisions on development and investment. Hence, the opposition between cultural and material power may be permitted to persist because of these limited effects.     

'We all speak the same round here': Dialect levelling in a Scottish-English community

In this paper the formation of a new dialect in Corby, Northamptonshire, a former steel town in the English Midlands, is traced across three generations. The study focuses on whether dialect levelling processes can account for the features of the new dialect formed by contact between the displaced Scottish and indigenous English inhabitants in the town. The results of a variationist analysis of the reflexes of two phonological variables are interpreted within a language ideology framework, with reference to commentary from the speakers themselves. Such a combination of perspectives offers a means of socially embedding the interpretation of the data with reference to the identity issues arising from this contact situation.     

Diffusion, levelling, simplification and reallocation in past tense BE in the English Fens

In the dialect contact framework proposed by Trudgill (1986), relatively little research has investigated the consequences of the mixing of different grammatical systems of English. The apparent time survey of the Fenland dialect of eastern England reported here provides an example of a range of dialect contact processes reconfiguring variable patterns of past tense BE, resulting in a variety with analogical levelling to was in positive contexts –' the farms was '– and to weren't in negative clauses –' the farm weren't '. In focussing this was/weren't pattern, a number of the processes typical of koine´isation can be observed – diffusion (the geographical and/or social spread of a linguistic form from another socio-geographical place), levelling (the eradication of marked or minority forms in situations of dialect competition, where the number of variants in the output is dramatically reduced from the number in the input), simplification (a relative diminution of grammatical irregularity and redundancy) and reallocation (where two (or more) ingredient variants of the dialect mix are refunctionalised to serve new social, stylistic, or, as here, grammatical roles).     

The sociolinguistics of exogamy: Dialect acquisition in a Zhuang village

Adult dialect acquisition is typically studied in relatively idiosyncratic situations where adults happen to move to another community. But how does dialect acquisition play out in indigenous minority societies that have systemic adult migration due to exogamy? Do the in‐married spouses acquire the local variety? Why or why not? How much do they acquire? We investigated an indigenous Zhuang community in southern China. Sociophonetic analyses of in‐married women and local villagers show that the in‐married women acquired the local variety in most respects but not in aspirated consonants. To the limits of their phonological ability as adult learners, the wives followed the local sociolinguistic norm: they acquired the husbands’ variety. By contrast, in societies experiencing greater external cross‐cultural contact, exogamous women sometimes use their liminal status to challenge such gendered sociolinguistic expectations. Comparing the present study with outcomes in different societies, we lay the foundation for a typology of the sociolinguistics of exogamy. In this way, we help expand the study of language and gender toward new horizons and under‐represented social settings.     

Infants' Perception of Intonation: Is It a Statement or a Question?

The ability to distinguish phonetic variations in speech that are relevant to meaning is essential for infants' language development. Previous studies into the acquisition of prosodic categories have focused on lexical stress, lexical pitch accent, or lexical tone. However, very little is known about the developmental course of infants' perception of linguistic intonation. In this study, we investigate infants' perception of the correlates of the statement/yes–no question contrast in a language that marks this sentence type distinction only by prosodic means, European Portuguese (EP). Using a modified version of the visual habituation paradigm, EP‐learning infants at 5–6 and 8–9 months were able to successfully discriminate segmentally varied, single‐prosodic word intonational phrases presented with statement or yes–no question intonation, demonstrating that they are sensitive to the prosodic cues marking this distinction as early as 5 months and maintain this sensitivity throughout the first year. These results suggest the presence of precocious discrimination abilities for intonation across segmental variation, similarly to previous reports for lexical pitch accent, but unlike previous findings for word stress.     

The persistence of variation in individual grammars: Copula absence in ‘urban sojourners’ and their stay‐at‐home peers,Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines)1

Recent work on phonological variation largely supports the apparent‐time construct, though some change across an individual's lifespan is possible. But how much change is possible in an individual's grammar? How much is grammar affected by extended absence in a new, urban speech community? Social dialect surveys traditionally exclude individuals who have left their community for an extended period of time, under the assumption that dialect contact causes levelling or restructuring of the linguistic system. However, our ongoing work in a Caribbean speech community suggests that the kinds of changes that can affect grammatical variables are more constrained than we might think. Raw frequencies of vernacular variants may fluctuate, but language‐internal constraints persist. Drawing on recordings from Bequia we compare the group norms for absence of copula/auxiliary be in three villages. We show that ‘urban sojourners’– Bequians who have spent an extended period overseas – may sound very different from their stay‐at‐home peers, but close examination shows only superficial restructuring of their grammars. Overall frequencies of be absence may be dramatically reduced but the ranking of language‐internal constraints remains largely unchanged. These results reaffirm the validity of modelling variable rules in a community grammar, rather than as an aggregation of idiolectal norms.     

Three Paradigms behind River Governance in Japan: Modern Technicism, Nature Conservationism and Life Environmentalism

Abstract:  In this paper I examine river governance or river policy in Japan through the process of modernization over one century and analyze three hidden paradigms, "modern technicism", "nature conservationism" and "life environmentalism", with the theory of environmental value. Japanese rivers were governed traditionally by local people (life environmentalism) but the river management was put under the control of administration and the specialist (modern technicism) in the tide of modernization, and in order to confront this situation a new paradigm of "nature conservationism" was born. In the analysis of the stages of river policy development, the development of economic and political power will be traced according to an environmental sociology point of view. This means analyzing people's initiatives resulting from their recognition and value in the political and economical arena. Structuring of river governance through the interactive process of "government and self-government" is also analyzed by putting an emphasis on local residents as a political body and second, I will describe the theoretical direction of environmental sociology. Lake Biwa and The Yodo River Basin system, which have historical importance in Japanese river policy, will be taken as an example. From the position of environmental sociology, river governance as an interactive process of "government and self-governance" based on independence of people, is one practical model that can give us important keys for the new river governance, transcending difference of social conditions. Consider learning the spirit of traditional communal structure as a process of practice for building a new communalism, life environmentalism model, which fits today's society.     

Reviewing child deaths—learning from the American experience

Current systems for investigating child deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have come under intense scrutiny in recent years and questions have been raised about the accuracy of child death investigations and resulting statistics. Research has highlighted the ways in which multidisciplinary input can contribute to investigative and review processes, a perspective which is further supported by recent UK policy developments. The experience of creating multidisciplinary child death review teams (CDRTs) in America highlights the potential benefits the introduction of a similar system might have. These benefits include improved multi‐agency working and communication, more effective identification of suspicious cases, a decrease in inadequate death certification and a broader and more in‐depth understanding of the causes of child deaths through the systematic collection and analysis of data. While a lack of funding, regional coordination and evaluation limit the impact of American CDRTs, the positive aspects of this process make it worthwhile, and timely, to consider how such a model might fit within our own context. Current policy developments such as the Home Office review of coroner services, the Children Bill and related Department for Education and Skills (DfES) work on developing screening groups demonstrate that strides have been made in respect of introducing a multidisciplinary process. Similarly, the development of local protocols for the investigation and[sol ]or review of child deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland highlights an increased focus on multidisciplinary processes. However, key issues from the American experience, such as the remit of CDRTs[sol ]screening panels, the need for national coordination and the importance of rigorous evaluation, can inform the development of a similar process in the UK. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity

The globalized new economy is bound up with transformations of language and identity in many different ways (cf., e.g. Bauman 1997; Castells 2000; Giddens 1990). These include emerging tensions between State-based and corporate identities and language practices, between local, national and supra-national identities and language practices, and between hybridity and uniformity. Ethnolinguistic minorities provide a particularly revealing window into these processes. In this paper, I explore ways in which the globalized new economy has resulted in the commodification of language and identity, sometimes separately, sometimes together. The paper is based on recent ethnographic, sociolinguistic research in francophone areas of Canada.     

The Use of Pitch Accent in Word–Object Association by Monolingual Japanese Infants

This study investigated the lexical use of Japanese pitch accent in Japanese‐learning infants. A word–object association task revealed that 18‐month‐old infants succeeded in learning the associations between two nonsense objects paired with two nonsense words minimally distinguished by pitch pattern (Experiment 1). In contrast, 14‐month‐old infants failed (Experiment 2). Eighteen‐month‐old infants succeeded even for sounds that contained only the prosodic information (Experiment 3). However, a subsequent experiment revealed that 14‐month‐old infants succeeded in an easier single word–object task using pitch contrast (Experiment 4). These findings indicate that pitch pattern information is robustly available to 18‐month‐old Japanese monolingual infants in a minimal pair word‐learning situation, but only partially accessible in the same context for 14‐month‐old infants.     

Dialect stabilization and speaker awareness in non‐native varieties of English1

Research on indigenized non‐native varieties of English has aimed to distinguish these varieties from individual second language learning in structural and social terms ( B. Kachru 1983 ; Platt, Weber and Ho 1984 ; Cheshire 1991 ) ; however, quantitative evidence of this divergence remains scarce. Through an analysis of a range of Indian English speakers in a contact situation in the United States, this study distinguishes developing dialect features from second language learning features and explores the concomitant emergence of dialect consciousness. First, an implicational analysis shows that some non‐standard variables (past marking, copula use, agreement) exhibit a second language learning cline while others (articles) form a more stable, incipient non‐standard system shared to some extent by all speakers; a multivariate analysis suggests that both sets of variables are governed by proficiency levels. Next, the explanatory scope of proficiency is assessed by examining the use of selected phonological variants (rhoticity, l‐velarization, aspiration). The use of these features resembles native‐like style‐shifting, as it appears to be more sensitive to speakers’ attitudinal stances than to proficiency levels. This points to the importance of understanding emerging speaker awareness and perceptions of stigma, risk, and value in new varieties of English.     

Can we prevent deaths of homeless persons? Police led public health approach to prevent homeless deaths

Abstract

Research on homeless populations demonstrates that homelessness in itself is an independent risk factor for death. However, there is a dearth of detailed data on homeless decedents and the situations surrounding their deaths. This lack of knowledge, a desire to understand how and why homeless individuals were dying, and a sentinel event death led the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Homelessness and Panhandling Unit to partner with a local researcher and begin conducting homeless death reviews. The approach is modeled after the evidence-based, public health approach of the Fetal and Infant Mortality Review process (FIMR). The FIMR model is a systematic approach to understanding system gaps and obtaining insights into the factors that resulted in homelessness and ultimately death. This article reports on the process to develop this unique multi-agency, police-led review of homeless deaths in Indianapolis, Indiana and resulting recommendations for action to decrease these deaths.     

Substrate reinforcement and dialectal differences in Melanesian Pidgin

Stabilization of a new contact language involves a process of levelling, or the reduction of variants. One of the factors influencing which grammatical variants are retained in the process is substrate reinforcement – the existence in the substrate languages of a congruent structure with a similar function. This article illustrates substrate reinforcement in the development of the three current dialects of Melanesian Pidgin. First, evidence of earlier variability is presented and the sociolinguistic conditions that later led to greater stability are described. Second, five grammatical features that differentiate the dialects are examined. For each feature, it is shown first that at least two variants were previously in use. Then evidence is presented illustrating correspondence between the particular variant retained in the dialect and a feature of the substrate languages of that geographic area. Differing substrates reinforced different variants, and this accounts for these dialectal differences.     

'I don't speak with a Geordie accent, I speak, like, the Northern accent': Contact-induced levelling in the Tyneside vowel system

Evidence is presented in this paper of the levelling of the Tyneside (Newcastle) English vowel system toward that of a putative regional standard. This process is hypothesised to follow from the fragmentation of tight-knit urban communities that formed after large-scale immigration to Tyneside from elsewhere in the British Isles during the 18th and 19th centuries. High levels of dialect contact brought about by this influx are argued to have promoted the creation of an urban koiné, which in its contemporary form appears increasingly to be losing specifically local features. In addition to contact and mobility as agents of change, the history of unusually acute stigma attached to Tyneside speech should be considered. These and other social factors inform an analysis of the FACE and GOAT variables in the speech of 32 contemporary Tyneside English speakers of various ages, both sexes and from two social class groups.     

The origins of Soviet sociolinguistics

The work of Lev Iakubinskii, Boris Larin and Viktor Zhirmunskii working at the Institute of Discursive Culture in Leningrad in the 1920s and 1930s deserves to be recognised as an early version of sociolinguistics. These thinkers combined dialect geography with Marxist sociological thought and contemporary work on linguistic conflicts and planning to produce very sophisticated sociological reflections on language. The influence of their teacher, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, was crucial to their work, as was the tradition of Russian dialect research carried out by Aleksei Shakhmatov and others. However, the socio-political conditions for linguistic research brought about by the 1917 revolution were decisive. The historical significance of the reception and reinterpretation of these ideas is considerable, leading to a reconsideration of the origins of sociolinguistics and of the relationship between Marxism and the language sciences in the early years of the Soviet Union.     

Identity maintenance and identity shift: the case of the Tirok Chinese Peranakan in Terengganu

This paper examines the state of identity maintenance and identity shift among the Tirok Chinese Peranakan in Terengganu who are an acculturated rural Chinese community in a Malay populated area. The current older generation still maintains the Peranakan identity, featuring strong Malay cultural influence. Their acculturation by the larger Malay community could be attributed to the combination of three factors: confinement to a Malay environment, common schooling with the local Malays and strong Sino-Malay ties. Malay cultural influence is most evident in their spoken language, building architecture, dressing style, cuisine, eating habits and female inheritance rights. However, amidst acculturation, they still maintain a strong Chinese identity that has been manifested through their observance of Chinese religious and cultural practices, their usage of the Chinese dialect as the home language, their preference for wearing Chinese-style attire in public and their preference for intra-ethnic marriages. But the Peranakan identity has been eroded over the years. There is a noticeable identity shift among the current younger generation as new intervening socio-cultural factors have reduced their interactions with the local Malays and heightened their Chinese identity. The degree of identity shift, however, differs between the current second and third generations and also between those who have moved to town and those who remain in Tirok.     

The role of marriage in linguistic contact and variation: Two Hmong dialects in Texas1

The role of marriage in linguistic contact and variation has been under‐represented in sociolinguistic research. In any practice‐based analysis, individual interactions and relationships are crucial. Therefore, marriage relationships – small but intense communities of practice – deserve variationist attention for their role in dialect construction and identity. This investigation of cross‐dialectal marriages explores how dialect practices and choices are negotiated between partners. The results show the importance of viewing this linguistic behavior in terms of community ideology, culture, and individual choice, rather than primarily as a matter of the amount and intensity of contact. Likewise, the study shows how less commonly studied minority communities can bring new insights to the study of dialect acquisition and linguistic contact. Specifically, this investigation focuses on marriages between speakers of two different dialects of Hmong, a Hmong‐Mien language of Southeast Asia. On the basis of home visits to ten Hmong immigrant households in Texas, the study analyzes lexical and phonetic contrasts and ethnographic interviews. Results suggest that macro‐level shifts in Hmong social organization and gender roles are being reflected and constructed by gendered, marriage‐level dialect practices. The linguistic behavior in these marriages is best viewed as a matter of community ideology in tension with individual choice: individual wives are choosing to challenge the traditional Hmong ideology regarding language behavior in cross‐dialect marriages.