Appropriation of African American slang by Asian American youth1

This article explores the ways in which Asian American teenagers creatively appropriated two African American slang terms: aite and na mean. While some teens racialized slang as belonging to African Americans, other teens authenticated identities as slang speakers. Through close analysis of slang‐in‐use and particularly of the metapragmatic discussions such uses inspired, this article examines how the teens specified relationships between language, race, age, region and class, while achieving multiple social purposes, such as identifying with African Americans, marking urban youth subcultural participation, and interactionally positioning themselves and others as teachers and students of slang. As slang emerged with local linguistic capital, the teens used slang to create social boundaries not only between teens and adults, but also between each other. The discursive salience of region implicitly indexed socio‐economic status and proximity to African Americans as markers that teens drew on to authenticate themselves and others as slang speakers.     

Youth,slang, and pragmatic expressions: Examples from Brazilian Portuguese1

This article draws on an ethnographic study of the stigmatized speech style of poor black male youth in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These youth are said to speak gíria (‘slang’), and their speech is often described as incomprehensible to the Brazilian middle class. Speakers and listeners point to a wide range of pragmatic expressions as some of the most salient linguistic features associated with this speech style. This article presents examples from Brazilian Portuguese slang, in which youth draw on sound words, obscenities, address forms, and addressee‐oriented tags to create new pragmatic markers and forms of indefinite reference. It is argued that these pragmatic expressions offer multiple opportunities for speakers to convey stance, novelty, and style, social goals long associated with slang. This data suggests that we broaden the purview of slang beyond the lexicon to investigate the ways in which speakers actively innovate within the area of pragmatics.     

Embodying “tech”: Articulatory setting,phonetic variation,and social meaning

This article examines the co‐occurring realization of two sociophonetic variables within a style—the LOT vowel in English and word‐initial /l/—to explore the link between articulatory setting and stylistic practice. At an arts‐focused high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, the curricular and social practices of students in the technical theatre department centre around manual labour. Ethnographic analysis demonstrates that “tech” constitutes a locally enregistered persona, informed by tech students’ positioning as working‐class subjects through their bodily, sartorial, and technological practices. Tech students also produce higher and more rounded variants of LOT, and more velarized productions of /l/, than their non‐tech peers, and I suggest that articulatory setting is at play in the cohesive indexicality of these variants. I advocate for the continued exploration of co‐occurring sociolinguistic variables which treat the body as a broader stylistic context, and propose that studies of co‐occurring features focus on the ideological processes by which combinations of variables come to index thematic styles.     

Patterns of age‐based linguistic variation in American English1

In prior sociolinguistic research, speaker age has been considered the principal correlate of language change, but it ‘has not yet been explicitly studied as a sociolinguistic variable’ ( Eckert 1997 : 167). Consequently, little is known about how language varies across the life span. The present study employs key word analysis on a large corpus of casual conversation in American English to explore age‐based linguistic variation in spontaneous conversation. Analyses of the key words point to two major patterns of age‐based lexico‐grammatical variation: use of slang, and use of stance and involvement markers. Younger speakers' talk is characterized by an unusually frequent use of slang and swear words, and by a marked use of features indexing speaker's stance and emotional involvement, including intensifiers, stance adverbs, discourse markers, personal pronouns, and attitudinal adjectives; older speakers favor modals. These patterns are suggestive of functional differences in the discourse of youth and adults. It is argued that the expression of personal stance is more explicit and plays a key role in younger speakers' discourse.     

A Culturally Salient Polish Emotion: Przykro ['Pshickro]

The author analyzes, on the basis of naturally occurring examples, the Polish word przykro, which, she argues, plays an important role in Polish emotion talk. She compares and contrasts this word with its closest English counterparts, such as hurt, offended, sorry, and sad, and she shows how each of these English words differs in meaning from the Polish key word przykro. To be able to show, clearly and precisely, what these differences are, she relies on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), based on a set of empirically established lexical and grammatical universals. In doing so, she seeks to demonstrate the explanatory power of the proposed methodological framework (the NSM semantic theory). At the same time the author shows how language-specific lexical categories such as the Polish word przykro are linked with a culture's core values. She also shows the cultural implications of the lexical category hurt in Anglo culture, and discusses the cultural implications of the absence of a word like przykro in English, and of a word like hurt in Polish.     

Koud Zyé: A glimpse into linguistic enregisterment on Kréyòl television in Guadeloupe1

This paper examines Koud Zyé, a Kréyòl‐language segment that was incorporated into the local nightly news in Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France located in the Caribbean. I argue that the variety of Kréyòl chosen for use in Koud Zyé illustrates a moment in a process of enregisterment. I demonstrate that the variety of Kréyòl used in Koud Zyé consciously draws on elements of basilectal creole and presents many similarities to a written variety developed by language planners for use in schools and in writing, thus distinguishing it from the Frenchified Kréyòl commonly heard in everyday conversation. I suggest that the ideological position that the writers of Koud Zyé hold toward Kréyòl influenced their choice of language on the program and, furthermore, that the program helped to concretize beliefs about and knowledge of the studied variety of Kréyòl that has been introduced into Guadeloupean schools by activists. Travay‐lasa ka dékatiyéKoud Zyé, on pati a jounal télévizé lokal ki fèt an lang kréyòl, an Gwadloup, ki sé on dépawtèman a Lafwans ka touvé‐y an Karayib‐la. Dapré mwen, modèl a Kréyòl‐la yo chwazi pou Koud Zyé, ka montré on moman adan évolisyon a ‘enregistrement’ a lang‐la (kivédi ki manyè on moun ka palé on lang ka fin pa rantré adan on larèl). An ka montré istil a lang‐la ki adan Koud Zyé, ni détwa éléman a gwo kréyòl‐la yo sèvi èvè‐y volontèwman, ka sanm on jan a kréyòl maké. Modèl lasa, sé tala yonndé mètamannyòk ka prévwa pou lang kréyòl‐la envanté, pou sèvi an lékòl‐la, é ki pa ka sanm tala moun ka palé touléjou. An ka pansé pozisyon idéolojik a sé moun‐la ki fèémisyon‐la, ni on enflians asi chwa a yo. An plis di sa, pwogram lasa rédé mèt déwò sa moun ka pansé asi kréyòl‐la, é fè yo pran konésans a modèl kréyòl sé militan‐la mété an lékòl‐la. [Kréyòl]     

Found in Transliteration: Translanguaging and the Polyvocality of Xiqu Centre

This article illustrates how the linguistic‐anthropological notion of axes of differentiation can illuminate translanguaging practices. Through an analysis of media texts, it explores the ways in which multilingual Hongkongers draw on their semiotic repertoires to make sense of Xiqu Centre as the English name of the recently inaugurated center for traditional Chinese theater in their city. Against the backdrop of different axes of differentiation, supporters and detractors contrast the Putonghua word xìqǔ “traditional Chinese theater” with its equivalents in English and Cantonese respectively, thereby arriving at diametrically opposed interpretations of the name. While many detractors engage in interpretive practices that challenge the discreteness of linguistic systems, others who use their multilingual knowledge to criticize the name appeal to ideologies of linguistic purism. To fully understand multilinguals’ production and interpretation of signs, we need to examine not only communicative practices that disrupt language boundaries but also those practices that do not.     

Anticipating Nollywood: Lagos circa 1996

This essay discusses the Nigerian film Owo Blow (1996 Owo Blow. 1996. Film. Directed by T. Ogidan, Nigeria: First Call Production and Support.  [Google Scholar]), as a way to examine an aesthetic tendency that is largely missing in Nollywood, and to explore the relationship between media and the city, particularly in regard to Lagos. I use this film to propose three issues that are worth highlighting for a productive engagement with the relationship between media and urbanity. First, I argue that the current global interest in Nollywood is highly mediated, isolating the English‐language‐accented, popular genre‐formatted sub‐genre as the Nollywood film. Secondly, this process of mediation has tended to a kind of totalisation because it emphasises the commercial as the primary identity of the cinematic practice. Thirdly, I argue that the possible globalisation of Nollywood is undercut by limitations on how well the generic type can travel. Although recent and longstanding bureaucratic exhortations of Nigerian filmmakers to promote positive images of the country are often derided, Nollywood already fulfils this expectation by default because a systemic, ideologically explicit critique of Lagos as an urban city, for instance, is hard to come by in the films. I contrast this with Owo Blow, which attempts one such critique, a multi‐layered analysis of Lagos as a case study of the postcolonial incredible.     

The Culture of Surveillance

Postmodern cultural theory after Foucault, Debord, and Baudrillard has tended to indict surveillance as a disciplinary apparatus, producing a society that is both carceral and increasingly virtual. At the same time, social critics like Lasch have decried the growth of narcissism amid the failure of liberalism. This essay aims to complicate both of these perspectives by examining the contradictory desire for surveillance in popular media like reality TV and in the social sciences themselves. It may be that the desire to watch and be watched is a more deeply rooted element of the liberal democratic impulse than we normally care to admit.     

Life here beyond now: Chronotopes of the ideal life among Iranian transnationals

I address how U.S.‐based Iranian transnationals’ migration paths affect their (re)‐construction of chronotopes of the ideal life. Adopting an ethnographically grounded, discourse‐analytic approach, I illustrate how participants with student visas and U.S. Green Cards position themselves differently relative to images of success here [in the U.S.] and lack of success there [in Iran]. I argue that the chronotopes of success here and lack of success there (re)‐constructed by non‐resident Iranian students are prompted by a large‐scale cultural chronotope which pertains to their aspiration to stay in the U.S. This chronotope of ‘life beyond’ is less about a ‘remove from homeland’ and more about an ideal future in the host country. Migrants’ desires and anxieties, I argue, can determine what receives topical prominence in migration chronotopes – as in the case of Iranian educational migrants whose future positionings make temporality topically more prominent than spatiality.

     

Investing to Protect Our Children: Using Economics to Derive an Evidence‐based Strategy

Child abuse and neglect are global problems that affect over 25 per cent of children and have serious health, social and economic consequences. Government and other agencies are heavily committed to the provision of services to address the consequences of abuse and neglect. In a climate of scarce resources, there is increasing interest in developing cost‐effective strategies to prevent child maltreatment. Economic evaluation in the context of formal ‘priority setting’ can contribute to the development of an efficient child protection strategy and at the same time develop the arguments to support an increased investment in the prevention of child maltreatment. Key challenges arise from incompleteness of the evidence base of effective interventions and the considerable complexity of the cross‐portfolio effects. The latter has resulted in the widespread failure to capture the full range of impacts, most notably intergenerational effects, quality of life and mortality. This means the benefits of investing in effective preventive strategies to address child maltreatment will be underestimated and too few resources allocated to this important task. Adoption of the proposed priority‐setting framework and translation into action are likely to reduce child maltreatment and associated harms for children at risk now and in the future. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Citing Literature

Number of times cited: 7

• Inga Wagenknecht, Uta Meier-Gräwe and Ute Ziegenhain , Kosten und Nutzen Früher Hilfen - aktuelle Erkenntnisse und zukünftiger Forschungsbedarf/ Economic efficiency of early intervention – current findings and future need for research , Kindesmisshandlung und -vernachlässigung , 18 , 1 , (10) , (2015) . Crossref
• Nicole RS Boyer, Kathleen A Boyd, Fiona Turner-Halliday, Nicholas Watson and Helen Minnis , Examining the feasibility of an economic analysis of dyadic developmental psychotherapy for children with maltreatment associated psychiatric problems in the United Kingdom , BMC Psychiatry , 14 , 1 , (2014) . Crossref
• Madeleine Stevens, Lucy Harris, Megan Ellis, Crispin Day and Jennifer Beecham , Investigating changes in use of services by high‐need families following the Helping Families Programme, an innovative parenting intervention for children with severe and persistent conduct problems , Child and Adolescent Mental Health , 19 , 3 , (185-191) , (2013) . Wiley Online Library
• Madeleine Stevens , The cost-effectiveness of UK parenting programmes for preventing children's behaviour problems - a review of the evidence , Child & Family Social Work , 19 , 1 , (109) , (2014) . Crossref
• Sarah Skeen and Mark Tomlinson , A public health approach to preventing child abuse in low- and middle-income countries: A call for action , International Journal of Psychology , 48 , 2 , (108) , (2013) . Crossref
• Peter Sidebotham , Safeguarding in an Age of Austerity , Child Abuse Review , 21 , 5 , (313-317) , (2012) . Wiley Online Library
• , Public Health Approaches to Safeguarding Children , Child Abuse Review , 20 , 4 , (231-237) , (2011) . Wiley Online Library

Volume 20 , Issue 4 July/August 2011

Pages 274-289     

Queer Christian: The Catholic Homosexual Apologia and Lesbian/Gay Practice

This essay concerns recent positions on homosexuality taken by the Roman Catholic Church and places them with respect to historical documents engaging same-sex desire. Analyzing Aelred of Rievaulx's twelfth-century Spiritual Friendship, John Bloxam's 1894 The Priest and the Acolyte, and Marc-André Raffalovich's 1896 Uranisme et Unisexualité, this essay offers perspectives on contemporary lay and ecclesiastical apologias, defenses, and critiques of homosexual behavior. The relationship between past and present locates the Christian churches' response to the modern homosexual as a historically developed—rather than permanently fixed—model of identity and action.     

Role distancing: Differentiating the role of the elderly from the person

Elderly participants in an extended care class at a senior citizen's center were observed to determine if some of them could continually distance themselves from the client role. Although earlier research suggests that people can use role distancing techniques to disassociate themselves successfully fromoccasionally played roles or certain aspects of a role, it is unclear whether or how people successfully disassociate themselvescontinually from enacted roles. Using a symbolic interactionist's definition of role, this paper attempts to 1) classify the circumstances which give rise to both occasional and continual role distancing; 2) specify the conditions under which disassociation from continually enacted roles may be successful; and 3) suggest the relevance of the data to studies on low-status occupations, deviance, and role theory.I am especially grateful to Melvin Seeman (UCLA) for his critical comments and extensive editorial advice and to Ralph H. Turner (UCLA) for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also would like to thank Shulamit Reinharz for editorial assistance.     

Revisiting sociology's first classic:The division of labor in society and its actuality

Durkheim's doctoral dissertation can justifiably be called sociology's first classic. Rereading it 100 years later enables us to see major domains of the contemporary world where its analysis remains, of actuality, heuristic or yet to be fully appreciated: for example, its themes of anomieas economic deregulation and corporatism as an institutional arrangement to deal with anomie.At the same time, Durkheim's discourse reflects its historical embeddedness, such as his discussion of the sexual division of labor, which needs to be reworked. A second feature of emergent contemporary social solidarity unforeseen by Durkheim (and the great majority of theorists of change) is what may be termed the return of mechanical solidarity.     

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.     

Infant Trafficking and Baby Factories: A New Tale of Child Abuse in Nigeria

Baby factories are new systematic abuse structures that are promoting infant trafficking, neo‐slavery and the exploitation of young women with unwanted pregnancies in Nigeria. Since this practice was first described in 2006, it has been growing rather than abating. This paper reviews the scientific literature, along with media reports, and critiques this phenomenon from a children's rights' perspective. Children born into baby factories are denied various civil rights. They also suffer abuse in the baby factories and as a consequence of being born in such places. This abuse can be classified into immediate and long term. Immediate abuse includes inadequate care and its repercussions, denial of birth registration, illegal adoption and murder. Long‐term or delayed abuse that they may be exposed to includes health‐related consequences, neglect, death, child labour, prostitution and other sexual abuse, organ trafficking and recruitment as child soldiers. Various factors are thought to drive the baby factory phenomenon which include poverty, high infertility rates and the profitability of local and inter‐country adoptions. Programmes directed at addressing the root cause of the problem are needed in order to eliminate infant trafficking. Also, clear laws that delineate inter‐country adoption and infant trafficking need to be enacted. Most importantly, baby factories need to be recognised as child trafficking routes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

‘New systematic abuse structures that are promoting infant trafficking, neo‐slavery and the exploitation of young women’

Key Practitioner Messages:

• A new type of child abuse and human trafficking that targets infants has emerged in Nigeria in what are described as ‘baby factories’.
• Baby factories are criminal entities that exploit young girls with unwanted pregnancies and the practice is growing.
• Children born in baby factories suffer a range of immediate abuses and are exposed to long-term abuses.
• Baby factories violate several articles in the Convention on the Rights of a Child.

‘Criminal entities that exploit young girls with unwanted pregnancies’

Citing Literature

Number of times cited: 5

• Olga B. A. van den Akker , Cross-Border Surrogacy , Surrogate Motherhood Families , 10.1007/978-3-319-60453-4_8 , (199-230) , (2017) . Crossref
• Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde, Clifford Obby Odimegwu and Stella O. Babalola , Reasons for Infertile Couples Not to Patronize Baby Factories , Health & Social Work , 42 , 1 , (57) , (2017) . Crossref
• Peter Sidebotham , Kneeling on Mung Beans , Child Abuse Review , 25 , 6 , (405-409) , (2017) . Wiley Online Library
• Olusesan Ayodeji Makinde, Olufunmbi Olukemi Makinde, Olalekan Olaleye, Brandon Brown and Clifford O. Odimegwu , Baby factories taint surrogacy in Nigeria , Reproductive BioMedicine Online , 32 , 1 , (6) , (2016) . Crossref
• Olusesan Makinde, Bolanle Olapeju, Osondu Ogbuoji and Stella Babalola , Trends in the completeness of birth registration in Nigeria: 2002-2010 , Demographic Research , 35 , (315) , (2016) . Crossref

Volume 25 , Issue 6 November/December 2016

Pages 433-443     

Grounded Futurity: Time and Subjectivity in Lisa Baraitser's Maternal Encounters

In this article, I explore how moments of the “new” that Baraitser (2009 Baraitser , L. ( 2009 ). Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption . London , UK : Routledge . [Google Scholar]) describes throughout Maternal Encounters are characterized by a time of futurity, a time marked by the potentialities of change. By tracing how futuristic time operates in the various maternal encounters that Baraitser details, including naming, interruptions, love and crying, and maternal “stuff,” I argue that each transitory moment is marked by openness to possibility for the maternal self. One of the main innovations of Baraitser's theory is its concurrent ability to ground futuristic force in such a way that enables an articulation of subjectivity in the midst of processes that work to unsettle fixed sureties. And this works two ways. Conjoining maternal subjectivity with futurity, Maternal Encounters has the important, indeed groundbreaking, effect of refiguring the mother, so often constructed as generator of the future, as a futuristic subject in her own right.     

Imaging Homelessness and Homeless People: Visions and Strategies Within the Movement(s)

The deserving versus undeserving distinctions typically applied to poor people are examined as applied to homeless people. When these labels are applied by others, three categories—Lackers, Slackers, and Unwilling Victims—appear rather than a binary division. Further, the role these images play within antihomelessness movements is examined. Images shape strategies, and strategies shape images, both consciously and unconsciously. Three clusters of image and strategy are examined, and the implications for the antihomelessness movement discussed.     

Engaging with a Mental Health Service: Perspectives of At-Risk Youth

Studies suggest that only a small number of young people with diagnosable mental health difficulties are referred for treatment. Of these a significant proportion fail to engage in treatment or terminate prematurely. This situation is exacerbated when the young people are homeless or at risk of homelessness, and considered to be at-risk. With this at-risk population the process of engagement is likely to be a critical aspect of successful interventions. Using qualitative methodology, at-risk clients of a mental health service (n = sixteen) were interviewed, and four primary themes crucial to the engagement process were identified. The data indicated the importance of considering the young person and their multifarious life-experiences; the attractiveness and accessibility of the service; and the follow-up offered by the service provider. The implications for mental health services that provide counseling for young people are discussed.     

Multicultural awareness through English: a potential contribution of TESOL in Greek schools

The cultural diversity now evident in Greek society creates educational challenges and opportunities. Space to address these is provided by the multicultural awareness aspects of the discourse of the Cross‐Thematic Curriculum Framework (CTCF). For English language classes, multicultural direction is provided through the disciplinary discussion of new teaching paradigm possibilities. In particular, these discussions encourage us to explore the repositioning of English teaching in Greek state schooling from a foreign language orientation towards a multicultural one. In this article, having set the context, we present the Multicultural Awareness Through English (MATE) paradigm. We conclude by illustrating the MATE paradigm in action.