bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of genetic potential of shoot fly resistant sources in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench)
Authors: ARUNA C. , PADMAJA P. G.
Published: December 2008

Twelve sorghum lines resistant to sorghum shoot fly were evaluated for their combining ability for shoot fly resistance and traits associated with resistance, using three male sterile lines in two environments. Using a completely randomized block design with three replications, 36 hybrids and 15 parental genotypes were raised. Considerable genetic variation was observed for all the traits studied. Non-additive gene effects played an important role in governing glossiness, seedling vigour and proportion of plants with deadhearts. For trichome density, both additive and non-additive gene actions were important. Among the lines evaluated, those identified to be good combiners were SFCR 1047 for seedling vigour, deadheart proportion and trichome density, RSE 03 for glossiness, deadheart proportion at 21 DAE and trichome density, and SPSFR 94032 for seedling vigour and shoot fly eggs per plant. Genetic diversity and cluster analysis grouped the 15 parents (12 resistant and 3 susceptible parents) into five clusters. Utilization of the resistant lines belonging to different clusters in improving shoot fly resistance in sorghum is discussed.
The linguistic consequences of being a lame
Authors: Labov William
Published: December 2008

The most uniform and characteristic variety of Black English is the grammar used by members of the vernacular culture in pre-adolescent and adolescent years: the ‘Black English Vernacular’. Less regular varieties which show the influence of other dialects, are used by isolated individuals within the community (‘lames’) who are less familiar with vernacular norms. Rules that are categorical for the vernacular are often variable for lames. Within the vernacular peer groups, core members show the most regular or frequent use of characteristic rules such as the deletion ofis. Since most linguists grow up relatively isolated individuals within their own communities, it is important that they become aware of the linguistic consequences of being lame, and apply this knowledge in their methodology.

Who's the lame who says he knows the game

And where did he learn to play?

– The Fall
The social identity of Welsh learners
Authors: Trosset Carol S.
Published: December 2008

The process of the attempted acquisition of spoken Welsh by English speakers in Wales is examined ethnographically in relation to the native association of Welsh-language speech with a Welsh cultural identity. Perceptions of Welsh learners by members of other linguistic groups reveal the symbolic significance of the learning of a minority language. The status of learners as verbal performers is investigated, together with the psychological impact of that status and of the ambiguity of the learners' identity on the learning process. (Bilingualism, language learning, Wales/Welsh)
Five visions of America
Authors: Preston Dennis R.
Published: December 2008

The study of dialect distribution has generally focused on the performance of speakers rather than on their perception of speech variation. The exceptions in so-called attitude studies do not further our understanding of where ordinary speakers believe dialect boundaries exist. Hand-drawn maps from five areas (Hawaii, southeastern Michigan, southern Indiana, western New York, and New York City) are converted into generalized maps of local perceptions of dialect areas of the United States. The maps are compared with one another, with traditional maps of U.S.dialect areas, and with maps of cultural and regional zones of the United States. The maps are shown to be of value in calculating attitudinal factors and may be of considerable importance in determining the existence and scope of such notions as “speech community.” (Dialect geography, language standards, American speech, language attitudes)
Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban British English of Norwich
Authors: Trudgill Peter
Published: December 2008

Women use linguistic forms associated with the prestige standard more frequently than men. One reason for this is that working-class speech has favourable connotations for male speakers. Favourable attitudes to non-standard speech are not normally expressed, however, and emerge only in inaccurate self-evaluation test responses. Patterns of sex differentiation deviating from the norm indicate that a linguistic change is taking place: standard forms are introduced by middle-class women, non-standard forms by working-class men. (Sociolinguistic variation; linguistic change; women's and men's speech; contextual styles; social class; British English.)
Language in Ethiopia: implications of a survey for sociolinguistic theory and method
Authors: Bender M. L. , Cooper R. L. , Ferguson C. A.
Published: December 2008

Work of the Language Survey of Ethiopia is drawn on to illustrate that social surveys can contribute to scientific theories and methods as well as to policy making. Findings with regard to four general problems are indicated: a metric of linguistic distance (considered here in terms of selection of diagnostic traits for linguistic areas, subgrouping of related languages, and dialect variation within a language; measurement of basic cognate frequencies; and testing of mutual intelligibility, a typology of the processes of language spread (lingua franca, mother tongue, superposed variety); verbal deference behavior (in use of Amharic second person pronouns); and pidginization (Simplified Italian of Ethiopia). Some comparisons to findings in sociolinguistics research elsewhere are made. (Language surveys; measurement of linguistic distance; language spread; social meaning and mode of address; pidginization.)
I have nothing to hide: The language of Ilongot oratory
Authors: Rosaldo Michelle
Published: December 2008

The Ilongots of the northern Philippines traditionally value a speech style, ‘crooked language,’ rich in art, wit, and indirection, in certain situations. Purun ‘oratory’, both as event and speech style, is one of these. A brideprice meeting is recounted and examined in detail. Unique features of oratory, in contrast to everyday verbal interaction, depend on its public character, as a scheduled event with large audience (rather than special setting, personnel or ritual), and as having the purpose of achieving explicit, formal understanding and agreement. The special features of oratory include body-motion; category labels for self-reference; degree of use of deferential, self-deprecating, and qualifying phrases and terms; degree of use of metalinguistic terms generally; and rhythms. Degree of use of these features may vary in the course of the event. Acculturation has brought about conflict with the preference of newly educated and missionized Ilongots for ‘straight speech’. In effect, the indirect ‘crooked’ speech style is linked with indigenous egalitarian norms, while the public use of ‘straight speech’ is linked with externally imposed authoritarian relationships. (Speech styles and social structure; public performance everyday interaction; discourse devices; metalinguistic concepts and devices; conflict of speech norms; social change; Northern Luzon, Philippines: Malayo-Polynesian.)
The modernization of the Japanese system of communication
Authors: Neustupný J. V.
Published: December 2008

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, the author wishes to suggest an evolutionary typology of languages (early modern, modern, contemporary, etc.) and to specify the position of present day Japanese on this evolutionary scale. Secondly, it suggests a way to integrate the concept of linguistic modernization with a theory of language problems, and shows that for modernization at least two types of processes, macro-modernization and micro-modernization, must be distinguished. The former concerns such tasks as the establishment of a modern national language and as far as Japan is concerned this process has been completed. The latter process concerns problems such as the individual's use of language. It still awaits its completion. (Sociolinguistic typology, language evolution, linguistic modernization, Japan.)
A stylistic analysis of speaking
Authors: Lomax Alan
Published: December 2008

Stylistic analysis takes account of the dynamic continuities in communication behavior. It is concerned with how people talk or sing or move in relation to each other, rather than what it is they say or sing or do to or with each other. The presence of these styling qualities can, we discover, be reliably assessed; and, as they cluster together, giving each cultural tradition its distinctive performance models, they have remarkable stability through time. However, these patterns of style are not inflexible: they are models comprising a stable set of ranges within which performers can adjust their behavior to the demands of a genre, of a familiar situation, of sex, age or status roles, and to the unexpected. The comparison of these performance models, cross-culturally, reveals factors that tie communication to social structure on the one hand and to cultural traditions on the other.
The female register: an empirical study of Lakoff's hypotheses
Authors: Crosby Faye , Nyquist Linda
Published: December 2008

Sociolinguists (e.g. Swacker 1975) and anthropologists (e.g. Hall 1959) are increasingly aware of the fact that sex, like social class or subcultural group, is a variable which strongly affects speech (Thorne & Henley 1975). While sexexclusive differentiation (i.e. separate male and female languages) now appears to be an almost nonexistent phenomenon, sex-preferred differentiation seems to be widespread across a number of languages and language families (Bodine 1975). In particular, recent studies indicate that syntax (Labov 1966), intonation (Brend 1972), and pronunciation(Trudgill 1972) in spoken English all vary as a function of the sex of the speaker.
English and Sinhala bilingualism in Sri Lanka
Authors: Fernando Chitra
Published: December 2008

This study describes the language situation of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and examines the factors governing the language choice of Sinhalese bilinguals while attempting to correlate such factors with domains and role relations. It also examines the way in which such correlations reflect social differences in Sri Lankan society. The use of two languages by the same speakers almost inevitably affects the forms of the languages so used. The use of English by Sinhalese speakers has led to the functional elaboration of both English and Sinhala. Bilinguals show varying degrees of proficiency in the languages they use. Such disparities in performance have led to differing patterns of bilingualism manifested in different phonological and grammatical features. Materials are drawn from the English of newspapers, fiction, drama, poetry etc. and personal knowledge. (Language as a class indicator; bilingualism; conflict of speech norms; Sri Lankan English.)
Toward a theory of social dialect variation
Authors: Kroch Anthony S.
Published: December 2008

Over the past ten years the study of language in its social context has become a mature field with a substantial body of method and empirical results. As a result of this work we are arriving at new insights into such classical problems as the origin and diffusion of linguistic change, the nature of stylistic variation in language use, and the effect of class structure on linguistic variation within a speech community. Advances in sociolinguistics have been most evident in the study of co-variation between social context and the sound pattern of speech. The results reported in numerous monographs have laid the basis for substantial theoretical progress in our understanding of the factors that govern dialect variation in stratified communities, at least in its phonological aspect. The formulation of theories of the causes of phonological variation that go beyond guesswork and vague generalities appears at last to be possible. Therefore, we offer the following discussion, based on the material that is now available, as a contribution to the development of an explanatory theory of the mechanisms underlying social dialect variation. Although we shall state our views strongly, we know that they are far from definitive. We present them, not as positions to be defended at all costs, but as stimuli to further theoretical reflection in a field that has been, thus far, descriptively oriented.
Dialect acquisition among Puerto Rican bilinguals
Authors: Poplack Shana
Published: December 2008

Sociolinguistic studies over the past ten years have demonstrated time and again how linguistic behavior changes as a person's social position changes, and how language is thus an excellent indicator of social status and social change.
Introduction
Authors: Boggs Stephen , Lein Laura
Published: December 2008

The present issue presents the continuation of work begun at a symposium on child discourse held at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association in 1974. The papers presented there were subsequently published (Mitchell-Kernan & Ervin-Tripp icy). These papers on social discourse all dealt with children's sociolinguistic skills applied to conversation. Among the topics we explored together, the sequencing and function of children's discourse was a problem of particular interest and complexity. Therefore, following the first symposium, the participants planned another for the purpose of discussing sequencing in child discourse. The papers presented at the second symposium, held at the 1975 meetings of the American Anthropological Association, are included here in revised form. These papers indicate the complexity of the issues related to the structure of children's discourse. Sequencing, for instance, appears to be more than a matter of linguistic rules, or even a matter of turn-taking between speakers. Rather, the choice of linguistic forms, of speech acts or routines, like the choice of whether to speak or to communicate in some other way, seems to be determined by interactional strategies as well as linguistic rules. Interactional strategies, in turn, reveal assumptions that speakers appear to hold about the nature of the participants and the most appropriate and effective way to use language in interactions with them. A consensus concerning the importance and implications of interactional strategies can be discerned in these papers, and this is the central theme of this volume.
The development of verbal disputing in part-Hawaiian children
Authors: Boggs Stephen T.
Published: December 2008

Children in Hawaii who have some Polynesian ancestry have been observed to engage frequently in a pattern of verbal disputing that is characterized by the forceful use of ‘Not!’ as an outright contradiction by one speaker of another. This paper describes the pattern and its development from early childhood into adolescence and the context of relationships in which it develops.
The development of directives among Norwegian and Hungarian children: an example of communicative style in culture
Authors: Hollos Marida , Beeman William
Published: December 2008

A great deal of interest has developed in the last few years in studying children's linguistic routines in interaction as a means toward understanding child cognitive development (see for example Mitchell-Kernan & Ervin-Tripp 1977). In this study we hope to extend the parameters of this line of research to include cross- cultural investigation. We also hope to shift the focus of investigation away from concentration on children's routinized usage of linguistic form to concentration on children's strategies in their total communicative behavior, both linguistic and non-linguistic.
Question intonation and sex roles
Authors: Edelsky Carole
Published: December 2008

In order to find out if more women than men use rising intonation when they answer questions to which only they have the answer, 154 men and 16 women were approached by either a male or a female interviewer and asked either where they were born or what their favorite color was. Both sexes used straight rising intonation rarely and equally. Women used a rise–fall–rise pattern more than men only when they were approached by a female interviewer. The ‘meaning’ to the speakers themselves of the three contours used is difficult to ascertain since lexical frames provided by some speakers often contradicted the meanings previously attributed to the contours by other writers.

Listeners' associations with the contours were tested with a matched guise tape of three male and three female voices each using each of three contours produced during the interviews (straight fall, straight rise, and rise–fall–rise). Listeners associated simpler rises with more stereotypically feminine attributes; they associated the female voices with feminine attributes regardless of the contour used; and they associated both male and female voices with more stereotypically feminine attributes when the speakers used the straight rise contour. In light of the lack of production evidence in this study to account for the source of these 30 listeners' associations of terminal rises with feminine attributes, some other possibilities are proposed to account for the associational ties. (Sex differences in speech, language attitudes.)
The training of the man of words in talking sweet
Authors: Abrahams Roger D.
Published: December 2008

Discussions of Negro non-standard English (or Black English) emphasizes the most socially stigmatizing features. It is clear, however, that within anglophonic black communities a diglossia situation occurs in which the high form is a speaking variety close to oratorical standard English. This paper explores how this high variety is learned in one Afro-American peasant community in the West Indies as an illustration of the social and ritual importance of certain codes. (diglossia, Creole languages, the formal teaching of speech varieties, oratory.)
Speculations on the growth of ethnobotanical nomenclature
Authors: Berlin Brent
Published: December 2008

Assuming the ethnobiological classification evolves as a reflection of cultural development, data are presented which suggest an orderly and predictable temporal appearance of ethnobotanical nomenclatural categories. A general correspondence is seen to exist between the number of categories encoded at any point in time in a particular language's history and degree of sociocultural development. The principles of lexical marking are applied to ethnobiological nomenclature as a means of inferring relative age of the corresponding categories. (Ethnoscience, primitive classification, language universals, cultural evolution.)
The effects of speech style and other attributes on teachers' attitudes toward pupils
Authors: Seligman C. R. , Tucker G. R. , Lambert W. E.
Published: December 2008

This study examined some of the clues which teachers use to form attitudes toward students. Photographs, speech samples, drawings and compositions, obtained from Grade III boys, served as the stimulus materials. These were randomly combined and presented to student-teachers as examples of the personal characteristics and schoolwork of certain pupils. The student-teacher judges were asked to form subjective impressions of the pupils and to evaluate them on various characteristics using semantic differential scales. The results indicated that the voice and photograph cues significantly affected their judgments of the students' intelligence and personal characteristics.
Preliminary report on the sociolinguistic survey of multilingual communities, part I: Survey of Cayo District, British Honduras
Authors: Le Page R. B.
Published: December 2008

The sociolinguistic survey of Cayo District, British Honduras, is planned as one of a series to be carried out by the same methods and as far as possible by the same team, so that comparable results can be obtained from a number of territories, and hypotheses about the relationship between patterns of verbal behaviour and other social factors based on one territory tested in the next. The hypotheses to be tested were formed (somewhat pretentiously) within a general ‘law’ with four riders in ‘Problems of description in multilingual communities’ (Le Page 1968a), and the practical ends of the survey also adumbrated there — viz., to help improve the quality of education in multilingual communities by illuminating the problems, the motives and the performance of children, by training the teachers and by helping in a basic way with the preparation of materials. The scientific aims are to gain an understanding of linguistic processes in relation to other relevant factors and modes of behaviour, so as to improve both linguistic and sociolinguistic theory.
Sociolinguistic research on French in Montréal
Authors: Sankoff Gillian , Cedergren Henrietta
Published: December 2008

This brief note describes a study of Montréal French presently being conducted by a group based at the Université de Montréal, and directed by Gillian Sankoff and Henrietta Cedergren. A pilot project, carried out during June, July and August of 1970, and made possible by a grant from the Ministère de l'Education (Québec), enabled us to make a series of recordings which were studied in order to identify speech variables, as well as invariant dialect characteristics. In addition, interviewers were trained in eliciting conversation on a number of topics.
Pronominal address in Icelandic: from you-two to you-all
Authors: Haugen Einar
Published: December 2008

The conservatism of modern Icelandic is a bromide so well worn that it is refreshing now and then to be reminded that Icelandic has in fact changed from that Old Norwegian which the settlers brought with them in the ninth century, and that it is not, in the words of a recent writer, ‘eine versteinerte Sprachform’ (Décsy 1973: 48). One striking change, which involves phonological, morphological, syntactic, and sociolinguistic problems, is that of the dual and plural pronouns of the first and second persons. Succinctly stated: ON vit ‘we’ dual and pit ‘you’ dual have become við ‘we’ plural and pið ‘you’ plural, while ON vér ‘we’ plural and pér ‘you’ plural have become ‘we’ honorific and ‘you’ honorific. A systematic shift of meaning has affected both pronouns, eliminating the dual meaning in favor of the plural, and the plural in favor of the honorific singular.
A classification of illocutionary acts
Authors: Searle John R.
Published: December 2008

There are at least a dozen linguistically significant dimensions of differences between illocutionary acts. Of these, the most important are illocutionary point, direction of fit, and expressed psychological state. These three form the basis of a taxonomy of the fundamental classes of illocutionary acts. The five basic kinds of illocutionary acts are: representatives (or assertives), directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Each of these notions is defined. An earlier attempt at constructing a taxonomy by Austin is defective for several reasons, especially in its lack of clear criteria for distinguishing one kind of illocutionary force from another. Paradigm performative verbs in each of the five categories exhibit different syntactical properties. These are explained. (Speech acts, Austin's taxonomy, functions of speech, implications for ethnography and ethnology; English.)
Is Sybil there? the structure of some American English directives
Authors: Ervin-Tripp Susan
Published: December 2008

Directives to hearers can be expressed in a variety of syntactic forms. The social distribution of such forms shows them to occur systematically, according to familiarity, rank, territorial location, difficulty of task, whether or not a duty is normally expected, whether or not non-compliance is likely. Except for some hints and questions not mentioning what is desired, directives do not require inference from a prior literal interpretation to be understood. Indeed, misunderstandings and puns imply that the interpretation of many directives is not likely to include a literal phase. On the contrary, where knowledge of obligations and prohibitions is shared, simple interpretation rules suffice, allowing prompt understanding. To interpret the affective significance of directives, one must compare the expected and realized forms, and recognize the social features that the difference implies. Deference, solidarity, coldness, sarcasm, rudeness, and qualitatively specified compliments or insults can be communicated systematically by such departures. (Pragmatics, directives, requests, politeness, conversational analysis, performatives, US English.)
Hypercorrection and grammar change
Authors: Pfaff Carol W.
Published: December 2008

Pfaff (1973, 1975) reports on 81 low- and middle-income first-grade Black children who produced multiple instances of linguistic variables by answering questions about a set of pictures and telling the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. No models were given of the linguistic variables under investigation, which included a number of third person singular present-tense verb forms: -s inflection of regular verbs, auxiliary and main verb be, auxiliary and main verb have, auxiliary do and possessive marking on nouns. Standard marking of all of these linguistic variables has been shown by previous studies of free conversation to be variably lacking in Black English (Labov, Cohen, Robins & Lewis 1968; Fasold 1972).
Social class and language in Glasgow
Authors: Macaulay Ronald K. S.
Published: December 2008

A number of studies have shown regular correlation between linguistic variation and social-class differences. Definition and identification of social class in a particular situation, however, still presents problems. The problems are discussed with reference to a study in Glasgow where occupation was used as the sole criterion for social-class membership.
Pronouns of address in Swedish: social class semantics and a changing system
Authors: Paulston Christina Bratt
Published: December 2008

One who has lived soon an entire century must learn to change all her habits, and habits of address surely are not the easiest. What comes simply and naturally in one place is wrong and ill-mannered in another (Former servant-girl, informant KU 2849).

Even an ordinary simple worker has today became aware of the fact that he also is a human being, and that the great machinery would not function if he did not play his part. An old conservative postmaster's wife said once to my mother, who was the simple wife of a worker: ‘I think things now are not the way they should be; the workers' conditions are so good that they dress so well that nowadays one cannot tell the difference between workers and fine folk.’ This utterance from a woman who believed she belonged to the fine folk my mother never forgot, and I myself have also remembered it (Retired railroad worker, informant KU 2768)
Class differences in syntactic complexity in the Flemish town of Maaseik
Authors: van den Broeck Jef
Published: December 2008

The linguistic foundation of Bernstein's code theory is tested in a bidimensional sociolinguistic investigation. Not only class, but also situation is controlled. In the Flemish town of Maaseik each of eight informants (four middle class and four working class) have been interviewed in two different situations, one formal and one informal. In the formal situation standard Netherlandic was spoken and in the informal the local dialect. Five measures of syntactic complexity constituted the linguistic variable. The results in the formal situation corroborate those of Bernstein: the middle-class subjects exhibit a greater degree of syntactic complexity than the working-class subjects. In the informal situation all subjects exhibit about the same degree of syntactic complexity, and for the middle-class subjects this degree is less than that in the formal situation (as might be expected). The striking result is that the working-class informants exhibit significantlyhighercomplexity in theinformalsituation. In the discussion these findings are compared to those of previous studies, Bernsteinian and other. In an appendix sample data for formal and informal styles from one middle- and one working-class subject are presented. (‘elaborated’ and ‘restricted’ codes, social vs. cognitive meaning, syntactic variation; Flemish cf. Maaseik, Belgium).
On the uses of variable rules
Authors: Sankoff David , Labov William
Published: December 2008

The introduction of variable rules ten years ago has provoked a variety of critical reactions; among these Kay & McDaniel's (1979) review appears as a clear and penetrating study of many issues neglected or unresolved in earlier discussions. It is refreshing to observe an approach to the problems of variation and sociolinguistics relatively free from the ideological constraints that other critiques have inherited from formal linguistics (e.g. Bickerton 1971, 1973; Gazdar 1976). They bring to the discussion of variable rules a clarity gained by several years' reflection on the early statistical approaches, together with a certain distance from current sociolinguistic methodological developments and problems. At the same time, there are some attendant disadvantages of such a distance; these appear in their treatment of the work that preceded probabilistic models, in their lack of attention to the interaction between the practical aspects of linguistic data analysis and the evolution of theoretical concerns, in their misunderstanding of certain mathematical facts, and in their neglect of the more recent developments over the past five years. The K & M analysis may best be evaluated as a reaction to the stage in variable rule analysis around 1971–4 when the first probabilistic models were being proposed and tested.
‘We're friends, right?’: Children's use of access rituals in a nursery school
Authors: Corsaro William A.
Published: December 2008

In this paper, children's use of access rituals in peer interaction in a nursery school is examined and a discussion of the implications of the findings regarding the development of communicative competence is presented. The findings show that entry into play is a production of some importance involving considerable time and strategy to accomplish, while leave-taking usually involves unmarked physical movement from play areas. The importance of peer interaction in the acquisition of access rituals and the necessity of studying children's verbal routines in natural settings are discussed. (Developmental sociolinguistics, peer interaction, children's use of access rituals, US English.)
Guugu Yimidhirr brother-in-law language
Authors: Haviland John B.
Published: December 2008

Aboriginal Australians are celebrated for their use of linguistic devices to mark the subtleties of social situation and relationship. Three sorts of phenomenon are widely reported (see Capell 1962; Dixon 1972: 19): (1) special vocabulary is often associated with male initiation (see, for example, Hale 1971); (2) there is often extensive word tabooing, usually involving strict prohibition on names of deceased people, as well as on words that sound like such names (for examples of such practices across Cape York Peninsula, see Roth 1903); and (3) many societies have so-called ‘Mother-in-law’ languages – special vocabularies that replace all or part of the normal lexicon in speech between kin who stand in certain avoidance relationships to one another. Prototypically across the continent, a man must avoid his own mother-in-law. Such vocabularies have been reported from widely separated areas, but the most detailed and best-known descriptions involve languages of North Queensland (see Thomson 1935; Dixon 1971, 1972). The material I discuss in this paper is of the last type and comes also from Cape York Peninsula.
Mixed grammar, purist grammar, and language attitudes in modern Nahuatl
Authors: Hill Jane H. , Hill Kenneth C.
Published: December 2008

In Tlaxcala and Puebla, Mexico, Nahuatl is being replaced by Spanish. Economic and social factors, principally a shift from a peripheral agrarian integration in the Mexican economy to integration as a rural proletariat involved in migratory labor, has been accompanied by a shift in language attitudes which has led to a narrowing of the range of functions of Nahuatl to a function primarily as a “language of solidarity.” This narrowing of function and the accompanying development of ethnic self-consciousness and egalitarianism are expressed through the stigmatization of Spanish loan words, other ethnic boundary-marking usages, the narrowing of honorific usage, and the differentiation of Nahuatl from Spanish grammar in noun-number constructions. (Nahuatl, Spanish, language shift, ethnicity.)
“Sharing time”: Children's narrative styles and differential access to literacy
Authors: Michaels Sarah
Published: December 2008

A discourse-oriented classroom activity in an ethnically mixed, first grade classroom is studied from an interpretive perspective, integrating ethnographic observation and fine-grained conversational analysis. “Sharing time” is a recurring activity where children are called upon to describe an object or give a narrative account about some past event to the entire class. The teacher, through her questions and comments, tries to help the children structure and focus their discourse. This kind of activity serves to bridge the gap between the child's home-based oral discourse competence and the acquisition of literate discourse features required in written communication.

Through a detailed characterization of the children's sharing styles, evidence is provided suggesting that children from different backgrounds come to school with different narrative strategies and prosodic conventions for giving narrative accounts. When the child's discourse style matches the teacher's own literate style and expectations, collaboration is rhythmically synchronized and allows for informal practice and instruction in the development of a literate discourse style. For these children, sharing time can be seen as a kind of oral preparation for literacy. In contrast, when the child's narrative style is at variance with the teacher's expectations, collaboration is often unsuccessful and, over time, may adversely affect school performance and evaluation. Sharing time, then, can either provide or deny access to key literacy-related experiences, depending, ironically, on the degree to which teacher and child start out “sharing” a set of discourse conventions and interpretive strategies. (Urban communication, ethnic/subcultural differences in discourse style, the transition to literacy, American English.)
Contrastive patterns of intragroup and intergroup interaction in the creole continuum of Belize
Authors: Escure Geneviève
Published: December 2008

The decreolization process observed in the creole continuum of Belize, Central America is examined in relation to the extralinguistic factor of ethnicity. The speech patterns of Creole speakers are analyzed in terms of two distinct types of ethnic contact, namely, intragroup communication vs. interaction with Black Caribs. Decreolization is viewed as a code-switching phenomenon which affects all native speakers of creole without implying a unified progression toward the acrolect (English). Special attention is given to: I) intraindividual variability which is found to span the whole continuum in intragroup contexts, but to be restricted to mesolectal varieties in intergroup situations; and 2) the relative significance of the five morphosyntactic variables selected to measure decreolization. These features follow distinctive overall patterns of co-occurrence. However, the mesolectal bloc, when viewed in detail, discloses an internal complexity which defies scaling of linguistic features, and reveals the influence of conflicting social and psychological pressures. (Creole studies; ethnic interaction; sociolinguistics; code-switching.)
Sports announcer talk: Syntactic aspects of register variation
Authors: Ferguson Charles A.
Published: December 2008

The language of sports casting is analyzed in terms of register variation. First the register is “located” by successive approximations to a characterization of its occasions of use, then selected syntactic characteristics are identified: simplification (deletion of copula and sentence initial nominals), inversions, heavy modifiers, result expressions (for + noun, to + verb), routines (e.g., giving the “count”). Some of these are discussed in relation to possible communicative functions, but all are seen as register markers. Sports announcer talk (SAT) is described as a promising topic for comparative, historical, and acquisitional studies of register variation. (Register, mass media, performance; American English, Japanese.)
Hospital slang for patients: Crocks, gomers, groks, and others
Authors: Gordon David Paul
Published: December 2008

According to a widespread view, people or experiences that evoke painful feelings of empathy, anxiety, or fear can be dealt with by giving them humorous, derogatory, or evasive names. Such terms allow the release or avoidance of unpleasant emotion. At first glance, hospital slang expressions for patients appear to provide numerous examples of this, but closer inspection suggests very different conclusions. Patient conditions which may be expected to create particular anxiety or distress do not lead to slang labels. Slang terms for patients fall into four categories, three of which characterize types of patients who claim more attention for their conditions than is warranted. The fourth category is made up of positive or neutral descriptive terms.

Hospital slang for patients serves social as well as expressive functions. Rapport within a group and rapport between individuals are distinct phenomena. When embedded in contexts that avoid individualized expressions of emotion or experience, hospital slang may promote group rapport at the same time that it maintains individual distance. In this respect is is similar to other kinds of slang, and other discourse devices. (Slang, discourse negotiation and contextualization, medical anthropology, rapport, expressive function of names and labels.)
Code selection and shifting in Guyana
Authors: Edwards Walter F.
Published: December 2008

Creolists have been showing that the use of codes in Creole societies is linguistically motivated, but these scholars have neglected the social principles informing the use of language varieties in these societies. This paper takes the position that the use of Creole and English varieties in Guyana is socially motivated. The typical Guyanese speaker uses linguistic items which are socially appropriate or mandated in the social context or cultural milieu he finds himself in, and uses items from both English and Creole. The speaker's use of linguistic forms seems to be related more to his conscious or subconscious social intentions than to linguistic principles which inhere in the basilect to acrolect continuum model with which many creolists work. The linguistic behavior of nine groups of individuals from three communities in Guyana is examined within a theoretical framework proposed by R. B. LePage (1972, 1973, 1977). This framework allows us to see these groups, and individuals within them, as exploiting the codal resources of their society to their social advantage. (Sociolinguistics, Creole linguistics, language contact)
Patterns of encounter management: Further arguments for discourse variables
Authors: Coupland Nikolas
Published: December 2008

Studies of linguistic variation in communities ought to be able to capture variable patterns of discourse. But there are problems in quantitatively studying variable realisations of functional units, because it is impossible to list variants exhaustively. A more abstract approach to discourse variation can examine the distribution of variants which are themselves functional units, tied to higher-order functions. This form of analysis is exemplified in a travel agency setting, where education groups are differentiated by the levels of explicitness with which they manage their encounters: in the identifying of purposes and roles and in the marking of closing transactions and other transaction boundaries. (Discourse variation, discourse analysis, communicative explicitness, travel agency talk)
Social changes and changing address norms in China
Authors: Fang Hanquan , Heng J. H.
Published: December 2008

The paper is concerned with the changing address norms in China since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The first part of the paper deals with the termtóngzhì‘comrade’ as well as some other address terms relevant to it. Emphasis is on the discussion of why official titles rather thantóngzhìare preferred by certain Chinese officials. The second part focuses on how traditional address terms such asxiānsheng‘Mr.’,tàitai‘Mrs.’ andxiaojie‘Miss’ have undergone changes; and the third part refers to the use of the second singular pronouns of both the regular formníand the honorificním. The paper also reports on the changes in some other aspects including address terms to women and some proper names relevant to address. (Address, language change, Chinese linguistics, anthropological linguistics, politics of language)
Naming fish: A problem exploration
Authors: Jernudd Björn H. , Thuan Elizabeth
Published: December 2008

There is a lack of perception of the interrelatedness of the three fish-naming systems: the scientific, the common, and the folk naming systems. Ichthyologists and regulators of fish names do not sufficiently appreciate the motivations and intricacies of folk naming systems or problems of professional and commercial use of names. At the common name level, there seems to be little exchange of information concerning problems and solutions, objectives, and procedures. Also, communities and networks that use the same language(s) seek different solutions to the same or equivalent naming problems. The authors list some common problems and offer a tentative classification. (Taxonomy, naming, language planning, fisheries)
Una nación acorralada: Southern Peruvian Quechua language planning and politics in historical perspective
Authors: Mannheim Bruce
Published: December 2008

This paper sketches Spanish colonial policies toward Southern Peruvian Quechua in order to identify long-term trends and constants. I emphasize the following conjunctures in the debate on the status of the indigenous languages: (1) the simultaneous efforts to restrict the inroads of bilingualism in the legal and political domain and to encourage bilingualism among local headmen so as to facilitate indirect rule in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; (2) the debate as to the role of the vernacular in religious education and missionary work in the same period, a debate in which the position favoring use of the vernacular held out for a time against calls for forced liquidation of the indigenous languages; (3) the ascendancy of the position calling for liquidation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and (4) the role of Southern Peruvian Quechua as a nationalist emblem during the eighteenth century.

These conjunctures have considerable relevance today. Differences in vocabulary and ideological justification have obscured the continuity between colonial and modern language policy. The issues debated, the limits of the alternatives proposed as solutions, and even the practical efforts carried out on behalf of alternative policies, have been surprisingly perdurable. For four and a half centuries the “Andean language debate,” the issues and terms of language policy, have continued to have at their center the question of whether or not the Quechua have a right to exist as a separate community. (Language policy, colonialism, South America, Quechua)
Jewish argument as sociability
Authors: Schiffrin Deborah
Published: December 2008

Talk that is argumentative in form can have sociable functions for members of some groups. In sociable argument, speakers repeatedly disagree, remain nonaligned with each other, and compete for interactional goods. Yet they do so in a nonserious way, and in ways which actually display their solidarity and protect their intimacy. The analysis raises questions about the adequacy of many current views about conversational cooperation, showing that the levels at which cooperation (and competition) exist are not always overt. The analysis also demonstrates the cultural relativity of norms of evaluation about dispute. (Conflict, conversation, cooperation, culture, evaluation, frames, key, pragmatics, rhetoric)
Linguistic insecurity in Winnipeg: Validation of a Canadian index of linguistic insecurity
Authors: Owens Thomposon W. , Baker Paul M.
Published: December 2008

The study reported here reports data on the validity of a Canadian version of Labov's “index of linguistic insecurity.” Data were gathered from a random sample of two census tracts in Winnipeg, Canada. Both Labov's original test and a new Canadian equivalent test were given to the sample of eighty adults. Scores on the two tests were highly correlated, indicating high criterion validity of the Canadian test. Also, social class and gender differences followed the same pattern as in Labov's study, with the lower middle class and females showing higher levels of linguistic insecurity. The use of the New York City test in Winnipeg is discussed, and some details concerning Canadian English are presented. (Language attitudes, linguistic insecurity, Canadian English, social class)
On decreolization and language death in Gullah
Authors: Jones-Jackson Patricia
Published: December 2008

The sociolinguistic pressures now exerted on the Gullah-speaking communities match the general conditions that DeCamp (1971b) described for postcreole speech communities or communities in which the traditional language variety is decreolizing or dying. There is a correspondence between the dominant official language and the creole, and there is sufficient breakdown in the formerly rigid social stratification brought on by educational programs and other acculturative forces to cause social mobility and to motivate large numbers of Gullah speakers to modify their speech in the direction of standard English. Preliminary research of the processes involved in this modification activity reveals that certain features of the pronominal system are elaborating and dying while certain other features of this system are remaining static and unchanged. Elaboration is well underway in the nominative case, for example, while in the objective case elaboration has barely begun. (Sociolinguistic pressures, postcreole, decreolizing or dying, social mobility, certain features, elaborating, static)
Toward a model of members' methods for recognizing interruptions
Authors: Murray Stephen O.
Published: December 2008

Simultaneous speech is neither necessary nor sufficient for the recognition of “interruption” by interlocutors. A peaker's “completion right” is vitiated by how long she has been speaking, how often she has spoken, the number of “points” made in a speaking turn, and the special rights of some speakers to speak about some topics. There are no absolute syntactical or acoustical criteria for recognizing an occurrence of “interruption” available either to those involved in a speech event nor to analysts. (Turn taking, California English conversation)