Men's Identities and Sociolinguistic Variation: The Case of Fraternity Men

The variation patterns of the variable (ING) in an American college fraternity are explained by analyzing individual men's contextualized discourse. While most of the fraternity men predictably use a lower rate of the 'vernacular' variant in weekly meetings, several men use a higher rate. I argue that all of the men index alignment roles associated with power, but that these alignment roles are powerful in different, specifiable ways. Qualitative discourse analysis shows that the men with high rates of the vernacular variant use (ING) to index working-class cultural models and confrontational stances, as part of identity displays based on physical, rather than structural, power. Thus, the variable has several potential abstract social meanings, but specific interactional meanings can only be constructed in contextualized practice.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Thomas A. Sebeok, Global Semiotics
Ceil Lucas (ed.), The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages
Alison Wray, Formulaic Language and the Lexicon
Chris Barker and Dariusz Galasinski, Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis. A Dialogue on Language and Identity
Stanton Wortham, Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research and Analysis
Carmen Silva–Corvalán, Sociolingüística y pragmática del español
M. Teresa Turell (ed.), Multilingualism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups
Dennis Ager, Motivation in Language Planning and Language Policy.
Aled Jones and Bill Jones, Welsh Reflections: Y Drych and America 1851–2001
Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Marianna Spanaki (eds.), A Reader in Greek Sociolinguistics—Studies in Modern Greek Language, Culture and Communication     

Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable

Swearwords influence social evaluation of a speaker in a variety of ways depending on social context (Jay & Janschewitz (2008), The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2), 267–288). Little attention has been paid to the role of linguistic variation in social perceptions of swearing, however. This paper presents two experiments that test the role of sociolinguistic variation in the social evaluation of swearing. Experiment 1 is a variant categorization task, in which participants categorized acoustically ambiguous swearwords and phonetically matching neutral and nonwords as ending in either “-ing” or “-in.” Results suggest that swearwords led participants to hear “-ing” on ambiguous items. Experiment 2 is a matched-guise task in which listeners heard a passage featuring a mix of swearwords and neutral “-ing” words in one of four conditions: fully velar (All-ing), fully alveolar (All-in), only swearwords as velar (Swear-ing), or only neutral words as velar (Swear-in). Participants rated speakers on Likert scales (Schleef et al. (2017), Regional diversity in social perceptions of (ING). Language Variation and Change, 29(1), 29–56). Participants again displayed a tendency towards hearing “-ing” on swearwords. As a result, responses to the Swear-in guises were similar to those for the All-ing guises. The consequences for our understanding of swearing, sociolinguistic perception and cognition, and style, are discussed.     

Book Reviews

Shoshana Blum-Kulka. Dinner Talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and Socialization in Family Discourse .
Karin Aijmer. Conversational Routines in English: Convention and Creativity .
Laurel J. Brinton. Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions .
Gunther Kress. Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy .
Martha C. Pennington. Phonology in English Language Teaching .     

Book Reviews

Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber and Beth B. Hess, (eds.) Revisioning Gender Annmarie Adams and Peta Tancred, Designing Women: Gender and the Architecture Profession Belinda J. Carpenter, Re‐Thinking Prostitution: Feminism, Sex, and the Self Joanna Brewis and Stephen Linstead, Sex, Work and Sex Work: Eroticising Organisation     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: John F. Sawyer and J. M. Y. Simpson (eds.), Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Religion Nikolas Coupland, Srikant Sarangi and Christopher N. Candlin (eds.), Sociolinguistics and Social Theory Ron Scollon, Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice Richard Gwyn, Communicating Health and Illness Guus Extra and Durk Gorter, The Other Languages of Europe: Demographic, Sociolinguistic and Educational Perspectives Council of Europe, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment Abdul Karim Bangura and Martin C. Muo, United States Congress and Bilingual Education Shelley Angelil–Carter, Stolen Language? Plagiarism in Writing Michael Toolan, Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction Jacob L. Mey, Pragmatics: An Introduction     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Ann Brooks and Alison Mackinnon (eds.), Gender and the Restructured University Deborah Cameron, Good to Talk? Living and Working in a Communication Culture Jody Miller, One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs and Gender David D. Hall(ed.), Witch–hunting in Seventeenth–century New England: A Documentary History 1638–1693 Carla Freeman, High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink Collar Identities in the Caribbean     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Grenoble, Leonore A. and Whaley, Lindsay J. (eds) Endangered Languages: Current Issues and Future Prospects van Dijk, Theun A (ed.) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Volume 1: Discourse as Structure and Process. Volume 2: Discourse as Social Interaction Flowerdew, John The Final Years of British Hong Kong: The Discourse of Colonial Withdrawal gumperz, john j. and Levinson, Stephen C. (edds) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity Wodak, Ruth The Disorders of Discourse Clyne, Michael Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning Bakker, Peter A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Me´tis Ewers, Traute The Origin of American Black English: Be-Forms in the Hoodoo Texts Stevenson, Patraick The German Speaking World: A Practical Introduction to Sociolinguistic Issues Travers, Max The Reality of Law: Working and Talking in a Firm of Criminal Lawyers Gudykunst, William B., Ting-Toomey, Stella and Nishida, Tsukasa (eds) Communication in Personal Relationships Across Cultures     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed
Romaine, Suzanne. Communicating Gender
Chouliaraki, Lilie and Fairclough, Norman. Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis
Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.). Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity
Kontra, Miklo´s; Phillipson, Robert; Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove and Va´rady, Tibor (eds.). Language: A Right and a Resource. Approaches to Linguistic Human Rights
Foulkes, Paul and Docherty, Gerard (eds.). Urban Voices. Accent Studies in the British Isles
Baron, Naomi S. Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where It's Heading     

Book Reviews

Gregory Guy, Crawford Feagin, Deborah Schiffrin and John Baugh (eds.). Towards a Social Science of Language: Papers in Honor of William Labov .
Anna Duszak. Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse .
Barbara Johnstone. The Linguistic Individual: Self-expression in Language and Linguistics .
Alessandro Duranti. Linguistic Anthropology . William A. Foley. Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction .     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Carol Miller and Shahra Razavi (eds), Missionaries and Mandarins: Feminist Engagement with Development Institutions Joel F. Handler and Lucie White (eds), Hard Labor: Women and Work in the Post‐Welfare Era K. Kempadoo and J. Doezema, Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition Paul Iles, Managing Staff Selection and Assessment Danusia Malina and Sian Maslin‐Protheroe, Surviving the Academy: Feminist Perspectives Jim Stewart, Employee Development Practice     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Angela Williams and Jon F. Nussbaum, Intergenerational Communication across the Lifespan
Jan Blommaert, (ed.) Language Ideological Debates
Patrick Stevenson and John Theobald, Relocating Germanness: Discursive Disunity in Unified Germany]
Felicia D. Roberts, Talking about Treatment: Recommendations for Breast Cancer Adjuvant Therapy
Alison Sealey, Childly Language: Children, Language and the Social World
Una Cunningham-Andersson and Staffan Andersson, Growing up with Two Languages. A Practical Guide     

Book Reviews

Sandra Lee McKay and Nancy H. Hornberger (eds). Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching.
David Crystal. The Cambridge Encylopaedia of the English Language.
W. Peter Robinson. Deceit, Delusion and Detection.
William F. Hanks. Language and Communicative Practices.
Elizabeth Couper–Kuhlen and Margaret Selting (eds). Prosody in Conversation: Interactive Studies.
Vivian de Klerk (ed.). Focus on South Africa.
M. Teresa Turell Julià (ed.). La Sociolingüística de la variació.
Michael Clyne. The German Language in a Changing Europe.
Jon F. Nussbaum and Justine Coupland (eds). Handbook of Communication and Aging Research.
David W. Green and others. Cognitive Science: an Introduction.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Changing the Way We Argue and Debate .
Adger, Carolyn Temple; Christian, Donna; Taylor, Orlando (eds.) Making the Connection: Language and Academic Achievement among African American Students .
Shuy, Roger W. The Language of Confession, Interrogation, and Deception .
Hutchby, Ian and Wooffitt, Robin. Conversation Analysis .
Ainsworth-Vaughn, Nancy. Claiming Power in Doctor-Patient Talk .
Eco, Umberto. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy .
Beal, Joan. English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Spence's 'Grand Repository of the English Language' .
Habermas, Jürgen. On the Pragmatics of Communication .     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Susan Ehrlich, Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent
Deborah Cameron, Working with Spoken Discourse
Stefan Titscher, Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak and Eva Vetter, Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis
Linda A. Wood and Rolf O. Kroger, Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action in Talk and Text
Srikant Sarangi and Celia Roberts (eds.), Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings
Ulrich Ammon (ed.), The Dominance of English as a Language of Science: Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities
Alexandra Jaffe, Ideologies in Action: Language Politics on Corsica
Niloofar Haeri, The Sociolinguistic Market of Cairo: Gender, Class and Education
Anita Y. K. Poon, Medium of Instruction in Hong Kong: Policy and Practice
Tariq Rahman, Language, Education and Culture
Dariusz Galasinski, The Language of Deception: A Discourse Analytical Study
Clifford Hill and Eric Larsen, Children and Reading Tests
Fern L. Johnson, Speaking Culturally: Language Diversity in the United States
Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin (eds.), The Routledge Language and Cultural Theory Reader     

Book Reviews

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of the social work profession in Western Australia from beginnings in the 1920s through to 1970 when the first local graduates gained employment. The authors illustrate how WA's history both connects with and diverges from patterns of the profession's development in more populous states, througt, the use of interviews conducted with pioneering social workers These oral histories illuminate how gender, class and other markings of privilege and power framed, and were framed by, the education, practice, sites of practice and career paths of social workers in the early years. Two interacting themes identified in this research were restricted employment possibilities for social workers in the State and a lack of locally available professional education until the mining boom of the sixties. The paper concludes by listing six lessons for current practitioners: the transcendent importance of reading contexts; identifying and developing relevant sites of practice; maintaining flexible boundaries of professional practice; being able to articulate a dynamic value base to drive practice; the importance of practitioners in shaping education, and continuing practitioner reflexivity.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Charles Antaki and Sue Widdicombe (eds.)., Identities in Talk Tove Skutnab‐Kangas, Linguistic Genocide in Education–or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Marnie Holborow, The Politics of English: A Marxist View of Language Clare Mar‐Molinero, The Spanish Speaking World: A Practical Introduction to Sociolinguistic Issues Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe (eds.), Global Literacies and the World‐Wide‐Web Justine Coupland (ed.), Small Talk Francesca Bargiela‐Chiappini and Catherine Nickerson (eds.)., Writing Business: Genres, Media and Discourses Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success Kenneth J. Gergen, An Invitation to Social Construction James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English Linda Thomas and Sha¨n Wareing, Language, Society and Power: An Introduction     

Masculine Gender-Role Congruence among Sexual Minority Men

Sexual minority men’s sexual identity may be vulnerable to feelings of masculine gender-role incongruence within heteronormative dominant cultural contexts. This study explored associations between masculine gender-role congruence/incongruence and various aspects of sexual identity development in a sample of 106 nonheterosexual men between ages 18 and 74?years (M?=?34.86, SD?=?14.32). The majority of the sample identified as gay (79%), with the rest of the sample identifying as bisexual (10%), and nonexclusively same-sex-attracted sexual identity labels (e.g., pansexual, queer; 10%). Slightly more than half of the men reported congruence between their actual self-perception of masculinity and their ideal masculine presentation. However, men who experienced greater masculine gender-role incongruence, specifically presenting with lower masculine appearance and behavior than they desired, reported higher levels of identity distress and self-consciousness. Thus, though masculine gender roles are being challenged and gender nonconformity is becoming more widely accepted, masculine gender roles are still relevant to the lives of sexual minority men. Future research and clinical implications are discussed.     

“We don’t have to talk about how I feel”: emotionality as a tool of resistance in political discourse among Israeli students – a gendered socio-linguistic perspective

This article demonstrates how the gendered patriarchal mechanisms that exclude women from the political sphere are being produced, re-produced, and challenged in interpersonal political conversations by concentrating on the discursive mechanisms that construct the way young Israeli women and men talk about politics. The research is based on a yearlong intra-group dialog process. The group met for weekly sessions during two semesters, in which the group members discussed and expressed their thoughts and feelings regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) demonstrated how the political space is being marked, defined and delimited through gendered discursive practices. We present the different roles participants take in the group, and in particular the different strategies women use in face of disciplinary discursive mechanisms. The process revealed that the development in the group discussion was strongly intertwined with the change in the positioning strategies of the female participants. In particular, we found that women deployed emotionality as a tool of resistance that challenges gender binaries and masculine dominance. Our conclusion highlights the importance of the daily interactions in creating, sustaining and changing the political discourse of a society in conflict.     

Book Reviews

Critical appraisal of research studies forms a central role within the application and uptake of evidence‐based approaches within health and social care. While there are established checklists for evaluating quantitative research, this is not the case for qualitative research. This article outlines the process of developing an evaluative tool for qualitative studies, reflecting the uniqueness of the associated paradigm, and illustrates its use by reference to three qualitative research papers appraised within a systematic review of community‐based rehabilitation services. At its centre are concerns with the context of the study and the way the data are collected and analysed. Use of such an evaluative template opens the way for the quality of qualitative research to be judged in a systematic manner and for qualitative research to take its rightful place within debates over what works, where, when and how within health and social care policy and practice.