Incorporating translation into sociolinguistic research: Translation policy in an international non‐governmental organisation

This article explores aspects of translation, multilingualism and language policy in the field of transnational civil society. By focusing on translation policies at Amnesty International, an international non‐governmental organisation that performs a key role in global governance, this article seeks to contribute to a globalisation‐sensitive sociolinguistics. It argues that combining a sociolinguistic approach – more precisely linguistic ethnography – with translation studies leads to an increased understanding of the language practices under study. Furthermore, the article calls for more interdisciplinary research, stating that there is space for sociolinguistics and translation studies to contribute to research in international relations and development studies by highlighting the role of multilingualism and challenging the traditionally powerful position of English in transnational civil society.     

The dynamics of citizen sociolinguistics

The objective of this paper is to explore the dynamics of citizen science (CS) in sociolinguistics or citizen sociolinguistics, i.e. the engagement of non‐professionals in doing sociolinguistic research. Based on a CS‐study undertaken in Norway where we engaged young people as citizen scientists to explore linguistic diversity, this paper aims to clarify the definition of citizen sociolinguistics; it seeks to advance the discussion of the advantages of CS and of how CS can contribute to sociolinguistics; it also addresses the opposite: how sociolinguistics can contribute to the general field of citizen science; and it discusses the challenges of a CS‐methodology for sociolinguistic research, epistemologically and ethically, as well as in terms of recruitment, quality control and possible types of sociolinguistic tasks and topics. To meet the needs of society and societal challenges of today there is a need to develop methods and establish scientific acceptance for the relevance of public engagement in research. This paper argues that citizen sociolinguistics has the potential to advance the societal impact of sociolinguistics by constructing a dialogue between ‘the academy’ and ‘the citizens’; citizen sociolinguistics relies on and encourages participatory citizen agency, provides research experience, stimulates curiosity, further research, public understanding of science and (socio)linguistic awareness, and encourages linguistic stewardship.     

The mediated innovation model: A framework for researching media influence in language change

Linguistic innovations that arise contemporaneously in highly distant locations, such as quotative be like, have been termed ‘global linguistic variants’. This is not necessarily to suggest fully global usage, but to invoke more general themes of globalisation vis‐à‐vis space and time. This research area has grown steadily in the last twenty years, and by asserting a role for mass media, researchers have departed intrepidly from sociolinguistic convention. Yet they have largely relied on quite conventional sociolinguistic methodologies, only inferring media influence post hoc. This methodological conservatism has been overcome recently, but uncertainty remains about the overall shape of the new epistemological landscape. In this paper, I review existing research on global variants, and propose an epistemological model for researching media influence in language change: the mediated innovation model. I also analyse the way arguments are constructed in existing research, including the use of rhetorical devices to plug empirical gaps – a worthy sociolinguistic topic in its own right.     

Language ideologies and practices in Africa

Sociolinguistics in African Contexts is an edited collection of 18 chapters providing detailed accounts of language ideologies and urban youth language practices in Africa. Its overall twin‐goal is ‘to foreground work that places African languages, rather than European languages, at the center of sociolinguistic studies’ in Africa, and to argue against ‘the continued exclusion of African languages from many education networks.’ In this review article, I first describe each of the chapters that make up the book. Next, I offer a critical evaluation of the book's strengths and weaknesses. Briefly, the book's major weakness is that it lacks editorial rigor, and this distracts from its major strength and greatest contribution to the discipline: the carefully documented case studies of youth language practices in Africa's urban centers. I then point to the challenges that the field of African sociolinguistics faces, in light of urban youth language practices and of the aftereffect of inherited colonial ideologies in education in particular, to make African languages the focus of sociolinguistic studies. In conclusion, I explore how the debate over language ideologies and practices in African education could be moved beyond the traditional criticism of existing policies to offer constructive suggestions for policy and practice alternatives.     

Language,structure and agency: What can realist social theory offer to sociolinguistics?

The sociolinguistic enterprise raises fundamental questions about the nature of the relationships between social phenomena (such as social class or gender) and linguistic variation, while within social theory a persistent concern is the nature of the relationship between structure and agency. Sociolinguistics can draw on social theory for analysis of the relationship between speaker and system, the role of language in the creation, maintenance and change of social institutions, and the role of human agency in sociolinguistic phenomena. This article summarises the key tenets of a sociological realism, based on the recent work of Margaret Archer (in particular her exploration of analytical dualism) and of Derek Layder (specifically his theory of ‘social domains’). It relates these ideas to sociolinguistics, arguing that language can be seen to have a different significance, depending on which domain is the focus of the researcher's interest. The article considers the distinctiveness of this approach, contrasting it with structuralist and social constructionist accounts and with structuration. It concludes by identifying some methodological implications, suggesting that sociological realism offers a productive theoretical framework for sociolinguistics in dealing with questions of language, structure and agency.     

A materialist take on minoritization,emancipation, and language revitalization: Occitan sociolinguistics since the 1970s

This paper introduces and discusses Occitan sociolinguistics as it evolved from the 1970s onward as a theory of language contact as conflict. It was developed in conjunction with its Catalan counterpart and as a reaction to Joshua Fishman's allocational model of diglossia, and came as a response to conditions of swift social and linguistic change in Southern France after the Second World War. This model, proposed mainly at first by Robèrt Lafont in Montpelhièr, is strongly materialist in that it focuses on the material conditions of language production and replaces the language movement among other social struggles. This paper first explores the roots of the contemporary Occitan movement and its links with the birth of Occitan sociolinguistics. It then analyzes key concepts in Occitan sociolinguistics such as diglossic ideology as essential to understand processes of minoritization, linguistic alienation, and social domination. Finally, it looks at how this approach conceptualizes language revitalization not as a linguistic issue but as a social one and suggests that Occitan sociolinguistics provides an alternative to models of language loss and revival rooted in cultural and identity politics.     

Constructing ethnicity in interaction

In the present study, I continue ongoing efforts to incorporate social constructionist viewpoints into sociolinguistics by demonstrating how two interlocutors use linguistic resources to project and shape ethnic (and other facets of) identity in unfolding talk. The interaction is a sociolinguistic interview from a large‐scale sociolinguistic study of a rural tri‐ethnic community in the southeastern U.S. I examine a range of features and types of features and in addition use both quantitative and qualitative methods. Further, I examine the linguistic usages of both the researcher (the interviewer) and the research subject. The analysis confirms that identity is dynamic and multifaceted and is very much a product of ongoing talk, although pre‐existing linguistic and social structures also come into play. In addition, the analysis demonstrates that identity is dialogic as well as dynamic and that researchers play a large role in shaping the linguistic usages of those they study.     

Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of globalization: Markets,timescales, neoliberalism1

This special issue seeks a new direction for the sociolinguistics of globalization in the process of transnationalism, using as a case study new modes of Korean migration that are changing the face of Korean transnationalism, including short‐term early study abroad and return migration. Through a discussion of the historical and sociolinguistic context of South Korea, this paper demonstrates how transnational Korea is a relevant site for refining, reframing, and reconsidering the current sociolinguistics of globalization. We identify two important interventions into the theoretical considerations of language and globalization brought forward by the Korean case: (1) a heightened attention to multiple timescales and markets; and (2) a more serious engagement with and critique of neoliberalism. ? ???? ????? ???? ?????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ????, ????? ??? ? ??? ????? ??? ????? ??? ?? ???? ? ??? ????. ??? ???, ?????? ??? ?? ??? ??, ? ??? ? ??? ????? ???? ?? ?????? ??? ??? ????? ??? ????? ? ? ??? ????. ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ?? ? ??? ????: (1) ????? ???? ???? ??? ?? ?; ??? (2) ?????? ?? ? ??? ??? ?? ?. [Korean]     

The Apparent‐Time Construct and stable variation: Final /z/ devoicing in northwestern Indiana1

As real‐time language data becomes increasingly available for sociolinguistic research, a growing number of studies are benefitting from it in order to study language changes in progress, some of which even explicitly seek to scrutinize the Apparent‐Time Construct itself. Vanishingly few real‐time studies, however, have focused specifically on stable sociolinguistic variables, leaving an important gap in our understanding of the Apparent‐Time Construct's abilities to model real‐time facts. In an effort to address this gap, the present study analyzes a presumably stable sociolinguistic variable – final /z/ devoicing – in extreme northwestern Indiana through real and apparent time. A series of Varbrul analyses indicate that this variable is, indeed, stable throughout the 20 years of real time covered by the data and that its stability is successfully modeled in apparent time. Additionally, similarities in /z/ devoicing between this community and some other communities where it has also been studied are identified and discussed.     

The learning of spoken French variation by immersion students from Toronto, Canada

This study on the learning of sociolinguistic variants by 41 adolescents from a French immersion program in Toronto, Canada, synthesizes the findings of our research on this topic. This article provides answers to the following questions. First, do the immersion students use the same range of sociolinguistic variants as do speakers of Quebec French, who are used in our research as a first language (L1) benchmark? Second, do they use variants with the same discursive frequency as do L1 speakers? Third, is their use of variants correlated with the same linguistic constraints observable in L1 speech? Finally, what are the independent variables influencing their learning of variants, for example: treatment of variants by immersion teachers and authors of French language arts materials used in immersion programs; interactions with L1 speakers; influence of the students' L1(s); influence of intra‐systemic factors – markedness of variants; and influence of the students' social characteristics – social standing, sex?     

Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and performativity

In this article I suggest that while recent sociolinguistic work focusing on crossing, styling the Other or language boundaries is raising significant questions concerning how we relate language, identity and popular culture, these insights have largely passed by the sociolinguistics of world Englishes. This latter work is still caught between arguments about homogeneity and heterogeneity, between arguments based on liberal accommodationism, linguistic imperialism or linguistic hybridity that do not allow for sufficiently complex understandings of what is currently happening with global Englishes. Focusing particularly on rap music, I suggest that we need, at the very least, a critical understanding of globalization, a focus on popular cultural flows, and a way of taking up performance and performativity in relationship to identity and culture.     

Performing blackness,forming whiteness: Linguistic minstrelsy in Hollywood film1

The ideological and indexical aspects of linguistic representation have been extensively examined in contemporary sociolinguistics both through investigations of language crossing in everyday interaction and through analyses of mediatized linguistic performances. Less well understood are the indexical meanings achieved when language crossing itself becomes the focus of linguistic representation. One prominent instance of this phenomenon is the use of African American English by European American actors in Hollywood films as part of what is argued to be a complex language‐based form of blackface minstrelsy. As mock language, linguistic minstrelsy in such films involves sociolinguistic processes of deauthentication, maximizing of intertextual gaps, and indexical regimentation of the performed language, but unlike earlier forms of minstrelsy these performances are typically problematized within the films as transgressions of the ideology of racial essentialism. In the two films analyzed in detail in the article, linguistic minstrelsy is shown both to reproduce and to undermine the symbolic dominance of hegemonic white masculinity.     

Sociolinguistics and everyday (in)securitization

This Journal of Sociolinguistics dialogue starts from the perception that existential threats to national security have become an increasingly pervasive concern in daily life, spreading fear and suspicion through civil society. Communicative practices play a central role in these processes of (in)securitization, but sociolinguists appear to have paid them less attention than they deserve. So in what follows, six researchers discuss the significance of (in)securitization for our everyday experience and the implications for sociolinguistic theory and research. The dialogue opens with Ben Rampton and Constadina Charalambous, who introduce the concept of (in)securitization from International Relations (IR) research and sketch potential connections and challenges to standard sociolinguistic theories and concepts. Then the four papers that follow pick this up from different angles in different geographic locations. Ariana Mangual Figueroa discusses (in)securitization’s radical impact on research relationships in ethnography, focusing on the US. Zeena Zakharia addresses the effects of large‐scale conflict on language education, both in the US and in Lebanon. Erez Levon considers the connections between nationalism and sexuality, bringing in the strategies with which gay and lesbian Israelis navigate the insecuritizing discourses they encounter. Then Rodney Jones discusses the interactional dynamics of surveillance, moving between police encounters and the internet to show the thin line between protection and precarity. At the end of the dialogue, we address three questions, collaboratively reaffirming the urgency of these issues, the significance of (in)securitization in everyday communicative practice, and the ramifications for sociolinguistics.     

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

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

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.     

Entanglements of colonialism,social class,and Unequal Englishes

Recent work in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language education has called for the “return” of class in the critical examination of the role of language in society and education under the organizing logic of capitalist globalization. Nevertheless, while the restoration of class as a core aspect of sociolinguistic analysis is much welcome, it has also come with its own ideological erasures: the disappearance of colonialism and coloniality. Thus, this paper aims to, first, tackle the general erasure of class in intellectual movements in the humanities and social sciences for the past few decades, then second, demonstrate how such erasure in fact involves the decoupling of class and colonialism through the example of the politics of Englishes in the Philippines, before introducing the concept of colonially induced Unequal Englishes (Tupas, 2015; Tupas & Salonga, 2016) as a way to address directly such politics.     

Noisy zones of proximal development: Conversation in noisy classrooms

Despite the importance of context in studies of language use, sociolinguists have ignored the impact of noise on conversational interaction. This inattention is of particular concern in classrooms where language is a learning tool. Our research on interaction in noisy settings took place in English language elementary school classrooms with students in grades 3, 5, and 7, whose first language was English. Students were observed during regular classroom activities. Employing a novel method, in which students wore ear‐level microphones, we obtained stereophonic recordings of the noise and conversation that reached each listener's ears. A dosimeter measured the noise levels in each classroom. Analyses of students’ patterns of conversation suggest that noise levels impeded the intended development of complex conversational interaction and collaborative learning. This study also questions the place of acoustics in understanding context, and the significance of the hearer's perspective in sociolinguistic studies of conversational interactions.     

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.     

Non‐understanding as a heuristic to hypothesizing cultural models: A meta‐oriented sociolinguistic strategy1

This article is concerned with the development of an analytic strategy to construct U.S. cultural models of war and terrorism, which are ‘mediatized’ or significantly shaped by the media. Central to that strategy are repair cues to non‐understanding as heuristics in intercultural encounters. These are applied to an inherently mediatized discursive ‘reality’ of war and terrorism. Theoretically, I synthesize sociolinguistic and anthropological perspectives into a ‘meta‐oriented sociolinguistics’, which analytically focuses on the meta‐dimension of discourse. The strategy is applied to a text on war and terrorism from the New York Times, to demonstrate its utility. Furthermore, I provide implications for enhancing validity in the ethnography of mediatized discourse. Specific to the findings of this article, I suggest that corpus studies of media discourse should be conducted on the metadiscursive keywords kamikaze, surprise attacks, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 in particular temporal frames.     

Variation in American Sign Language: The case of DEAF

Variation in sign languages has been a neglected area of research in sociolinguistics. This article, part of a large-scale study of variation in American Sign Language (ASL) designed to redress that situation, examines variation in the form of the sign DEAF, which can be produced by moving the forefinger from ear to chin, from chin to ear, or by contacting the lower cheek. Multivariate analysis of more than 1600 tokens of DEAF extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with 207 signers residing in seven regions of the United States shows that both linguistic and social factors significantly constrain choice among the three variants. The analysis also illustrates patterns that parallel variation in spoken languages. However, despite the similarities to variation in spoken languages, we suggest that results for the regional patterning of variation are best explained by reference to Deaf history, particularly to changes in the status and use of ASL in deaf education.