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.     

Gender norms and styling in Japanese conversation: A multilevel analysis

The observation that gender differences in Japanese language use are becoming less prevalent as women increasingly use ‘men's language’ appears in popular media from time to time. Some empirical studies support this view. However, such observations are usually based on the consideration of only one or two linguistic features, especially sentence-final forms and personal pronouns. In contrast, this study analyzes the use of multiple linguistic and paralinguistic features related to gender, regarding them as resources for styling identity. According to our analysis of eight same-gender and mixed-gender dyadic conversations of college students, these speakers’ use of features other than sentence-final forms, which we found to vary little by gender, is normatively gendered to a large extent. The study thus demonstrates that the analysis of multiple and multilevel variables enables us to better understand the complex process of styling through the speaker's negotiation of linguistic gender norms in actual practice.     

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.     

Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity1

This paper addresses a contradiction in research on language and ethnicity: how can we discuss distinctively ethnic ways of speaking and still account for the variation and fluidity that characterize them? The theoretical construct introduced in this paper enables researchers to avoid this contradiction. ‘Ethnolinguistic repertoire’ is defined as a fluid set of linguistic resources that members of an ethnic group may use variably as they index their ethnic identities. This construct shifts the analytic focus from ethnic ‘language varieties’ to individuals, ethnic groups, and their distinctive linguistic features. It addresses problems of inter‐group, inter‐speaker, and intra‐speaker variation, as well as debates about who should be considered a speaker of a dialect. This approach, which can also be applied to social groupings beyond ethnicity, is discussed in relation to other approaches and is supported with data on language use in African American, Latino, and Jewish communities in the United States.     

Cute Masquerade and the Pimping of Japan

This essay will consider gendered aspects of Cool Japan ideology as found in government‐sponsored texts and imagery, as well as in other international arenas. Although scholars have recently offered critiques of Cool Japan as a form of nationalistic nation branding, uses of an objectified femininity have rarely been included in these analyses. By displacing female innovations and creativity in cultural production to the margins, Cool Japan reifies and officially promotes male geek culture. We find general dematerialization of the producers of Cool Japan ideology, which in turn becomes characterized as creative, quirky, edgy, and benign, thus masking the way Cool Japan has been produced, critiqued, imagined and endorsed primarily by male elites in Japan and internationally. This discussion suggests that Cool Japan's otaku ethos does not include women and girls who fail to conform to a narrow model of cute femininity, thus maintaining and promoting structures of gender stratification. In addition, the global spread and government exploitation of uncomplicated cuteness (kawaii) often confounds a flat understanding of the aesthetic with a gendered perspective and its expressions in girl culture. Women and girls are contained in Cool Japan ideology, and are not usually represented as shaping, resisting, creating or critiquing Japanese popular culture.     

The Department of Literature and the Department of English: Transforming Aspects of ‘English Studies’ in South Africa

Abstract

This article begins with a brief survey of the different manifestations of ‘English studies’ at various South African universities, demonstrating the lack of clarity regarding the roles and responsibilities of the ‘English Department’: should it teach literature in English, or should it teach the English language? Such inconsistency makes the ‘Department of English’ as it currently exists unable to contribute towards the intellectualisaton of African languages (Alexander, 2005) and the transformation of South Africa's universities, particularly with regard to the use of African languages for learning and teaching. The article thus proposes that the ‘Department of English’ and the ‘Department of Eiterature’ should be separated. The former should take its place alongside other language departments and, at English-language universities, be primarily responsible for English language teaching and support (for those students to whom English-medium instruction presents a barrier to learning). The latter should pursue literary studies – not only ‘literatures in English’, but also texts in translation – a pursuit that calls attention to the potential for dialogue between literary texts across linguistic, ethnic, and national divides.     

Language,games and language games

How do social values come about and gain legitimacy? Starting from the premise that discourses of social analysis affect the ways in which social norms develop and proliferate, this article models the evolution of professional codes and dialects using Wittgenstein’s idea of a language game. A language game is formalized as a repeated game of tacit coordination played among participants with informational asymmetries. The informational asymmetries model the different meanings that people assign to the same word used in a conversation. A language is formalized as a code that emerges as a result of repeated interactions in a language game. The paper argues that certain codes—such as those based on the real number system—lead to more reliable strategies in language games. The result is used to argue that professional dialects based on axiomatizable codes—such as physics, mathematics and economics—are less likely to experience fragmentation into intra-disciplinary ‘sects,’ camps and incommensurable paradigms than are professional dialects that are not based on an axiomatizable code—such as sociology, psychology, organization studies, and strategic management studies. The idea of a language game is extended to explore ways in which certain disciplines can establish cognitive jurisdiction over particular phenomena, starting from a particular set of codes, and thereby claim ‘cognitive monopolies.’ A rudimentary theory of the market for ideas is advanced.     

Living with an accent: a sociological analysis of linguistic strategies of immigrant youth in Canada

This research explores the cultural and linguistic strategies of immigrant youth to negotiate inclusion/exclusion, including language discrimination in Vancouver, Canada. My theoretical framework draws upon the Arendtian notions of ‘public space’, and ‘action and speech’ as well as Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘habitus’. My methodology is a critical qualitative approach. Fourteen immigrant youth, aged 15–25, were involved in this research. The findings of this study indicate that unlike second-generation immigrants, first-generation immigrant youth face cultural and linguistic challenges. Non-recognition of youths’ distinct linguistic and social capitals, the imposition of official languages and the regulation of the education and language market according to the dominant linguistic norms include forms of discrimination against Turkish minority youth in Canada. Taken together, the findings suggest that immigrant youths’ cultural and linguistic experiences of inclusion and exclusion cannot be dissociated from the wider politics of the nation-state, popular hegemony and social inequalities in the host society.     

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.     

‘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.     

Hiding Spinach in the Brownies: Frame Alignment in Suffrage Community Cookbooks, 1886–1916

Recent studies have examined how the conventions of cultural genres help advance frames. This line of scholarship can be used to study how activists might popularize radical frames that fundamentally challenge widespread beliefs. In this article, I analyze how the gendered character of suffrage community cookbooks aids in frame alignment. I determine how these cookbooks advance ‘femininity frames’ that drew on widespread beliefs about femininity (and thus were more likely to resonate with a broad audience). I also examine how suffrage cookbooks advance ‘republican citizenship frames’ that argued that women should vote because they could embody the masculinized republican ideals of civic virtue and public responsibility. Republican citizenship frames challenged widespread beliefs about femininity (and thus were likely to be viewed as more radical). I find that the embrace of domestic femininity in community cookbooks amplifies femininity frames by intensifying traditional beliefs about women. Furthermore, the gendered character of community cookbooks extends republican citizenship frames to the average housewife by proving that women could incorporate new practices into their lives without abandoning their traditional feminine roles. This study enriches our understanding of the roles of cultural genres in framing, and it demonstrates how activists may try to popularize radical frames.     

‘Ch'us mon propre Bescherelle’: Challenges from the Hip‐Hop nation to the Quebec nation1

We examine the uses of and attitudes towards language of members of the Montreal Hip‐Hop community in relation to Quebec language‐in‐education policies. These policies, implemented in the 1970s, have ensured that French has become the common public language of an ethnically diverse young adult population in Montreal. We argue, using Blommaert's (2005) model of orders of indexicality, that the dominant language hierarchy orders established by government policy have been both flattened and reordered by members of the Montreal Hip‐Hop community, whose multilingual lyrics insist: (1) that while French is the lingua franca, it is a much more inclusive category which includes ‘Bad French,’ regional and class dialects, and European French; and (2) that all languages spoken by community members are valuable as linguistic resources for creativity and communication with multiple audiences. We draw from a database which includes interviews with and lyrics from rappers of Haitian, Latin‐American, African‐American and Québécois origin.     

‘Doing femininity’ at work: More than just relational practice1

Workplaces constitute one of the more interesting sites where individuals ‘do gender’, while at the same time constructing their professional identities and meeting their organisation's expectations. Drawing on interactional data recorded in New Zealand professional organisations, this paper focuses in particular on how participants manage and interpret the notion of ‘femininity’ in workplace discourse. In much current usage, the concepts ‘feminine’ and ‘femininity’ typically evoke negative reactions. Our analysis suggests these notions can be reclaimed and reinterpreted positively using an approach which frames doing femininity at work as normal, unmarked, and effective workplace behaviour in many contexts. The analysis also demonstrates that multiple femininities extend beyond normative expectations, such as enacting relational practice ( Fletcher 1999 ), to embrace more contestive and parodic instantiations of femininity in workplace talk.     

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.     

English in French Commercial Advertising: Simultaneity,bivalency, and language boundaries

In recent decades, sociolinguists have begun to challenge the traditional view that multilingualism is fundamentally composed of discrete systems known as ‘languages’. Supporting the assessment that languages are not bounded entities but sociocultural and ideological constructions, this article explores commercial advertisements in France, which are subject to language policies assuming that ‘French’ is easily separable from ‘foreign languages’. Employing the Bakhtinian‐influenced notion of bivalency developed by Woolard (1998), the article argues for a special consideration of mixed‐language advertising in France, rooted not only in linguistic form, but also in the specific contextual tension produced by the socio‐political statuses of French and English. The resulting creativity challenges the monolectal assumptions within French language management, indicating a clash of segregational language ideology with integrational language practices. The article further argues that this language mixing is bidirectional, as advertisements may both erase and emphasise the assumed boundaries between codes.     

BURDA FASHIONS - A WISH THAT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE WISHFUL THINKING: HOME-DRESSMAKING IN AUSTRIA 1950-1970

The German fashion magazine Burda epitomized the success of many pattern magazines in the immediate post-war era that aimed at providing information about creating one's own fashion clothes, as well as tips about adapting existing wardrobes. This concept proved highly topical in Austria too, as it offered women almost unlimited possibilities in their search for a new ‘feminine’ identity full of elegance and style after a period of austerity. This essay sketches opposing theoretical approaches towards the popular practice of home-dressmaking among women, linking these approaches to post-war discourse about femininity.     

'SALSA NO TIENE FRONTERA': ORQUESTA DE LA LUZ AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF POPULAR MUSIC

This article discusses key dynamics in the globalization of popular music, more specifically the interplay between technology, social and commercial structure, and meaningful sound forms. It analyses Orquesta de la Luz, an all-Japanese salsa band, as an example of the transgression of ethnic, geographical, linguistic and national boundaries of Latin American music. The band demonstrated the intertwined nature of the global and the local, in addition to the historical formation of modern Japanese culture. Their worldwide fame derived from their musicianship, their synchronicity with the world music boom, and finally the diffusion of digital technology in popular music production and consumption. This article argues that economic and technological conditions are as much constitutive of the band's unique practices as are aesthetic ones. It then goes on to question the dichotomies, ‘universalism vs. particularism’ and ‘creativity vs. copy’. This discussion builds towards an examination of the relationship between purist aesthetics (hyperrealism) and the Japanese concept/method of learning; it also explores the notion of cultural authenticity that located the activities of the band. Paradoxically, Orquesta de la Luz demonstrated that Japanization does not necessarily imply synthesis with vernacular elements for purist musicians. Theoretically, this ‘becoming Other’ reveals a parallel capacity for self-exoticization and self-orientalization with respect to Japanese identities. Orquesta de la Luz's musical search for the roots of otherness is closely tied with the feeling among many Japanese youth for the loss of Japan's ‘genuine’ cultural identity. Another focus of this study, then, is to shed light on the relevance of exoticism in the band's foreign reception and to assess their Latino image in the Japanese context.     

Vowel harmony redux: Correct sounds,English loan words,and the sociocultural life of a phonological structure in Korean1

This paper examines an ideology of standard pronunciation and spelling of English loan words in South Korea through the lens of Korean vowel harmony. I focus specifically on the alternation between an older Japanese‐style ‘a’[a] and a newer Korean‐style ‘?’[?] for the mapping of mid‐vowels from English to Korean. The opposition between ‘a’ and ‘?’ also figures into the dichotomy of vowel classes between ‘yang’ or ‘light’ vowels and ‘yin’ or ‘dark’ vowels in Korean vowel harmony. This opposition is pervasive in Korean's rich stock of denotationally iconic words (e.g. onomatopoeia), where ablaut between vowel classes produces semantic and pragmatic contrasts. I suggest that this latter structure of phonological opposition has an influence on speakers’ perceptions of vowel difference and associated values in English loan words, despite an overarching ideology of standard pronunciation that is based on assumptions about phonetic fidelity. ? ??? ?? ???? ?? ?? ? ??? ? ?????? ????? ?? ??? ???? ????. ??, ?? ???? ‘?’[a]? ‘?’[?]? ??(mapping)?? ?? ??? ??. ??? ?? ????? ‘?’? ?? ?? ??? ? ?????? ???? ???? ??(正音)?? ?????? ??. ?? ‘?’? ????? ???, ??? ???? ??? ????? ?(音)?? ???? ??. ???, ‘?’/‘?’? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ??; ?, ??? ????? ????? ??? ??. ??, ????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ??? ? ? ??. ????, ????? ????? ????? ??? ?? ???? ????? ??? ??? ???. [Korean]     

Situating language rights: English and Swahili in Tanzania revisited1

This paper argues for an ethnographic‐sociolinguistic approach to the issue of linguistic rights. In much of the literature on linguistic rights, a fundamentally flawed set of assumptions about language and society is being used, leading to assessments of language situations that are empirically not sustainable. An alternative set of assumptions is offered, grounded in ethnography and focused on language use as oriented towards centering institutions that attribute indexicalities – function and value – to linguistic resources. Such centers are invariably multiple but stratified, and the state occupies a crucial place in these systems, between the world system and local forces. This model is applied to the Tanzanian sociolinguistic situation, where a strong state appeared to be caught between pressures that were both transnational and local. This gave rise to a pattern of distribution of linguistic resources, including English and Swahili, that offered semiotic opportunities to speakers to construct deeply ‘local’ meanings. The languages were not in themselves agents of inequality, but the way in which they were distributed nationally and in relation to transnational hierarchies is the key to understanding inequality. Discussions of linguistic rights should start from assessments of the real potential and constraints of linguistic resources, not from idealized and static conceptions of language and society and predefined scenarios of their interaction.