bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Diffusive waves in inhomogeneous media
Authors: Fife Paul C. 
Published: December 2008

When the function f(u) is of “bistable type’, i.e. has two zeros h̲ and h+ at which f' is negative and (for simplicity) has only one other zero between them, then the constant functions u = h± are L∞-stable solutions of the nonlinear diffusion equationIn addition, there are travelling wave solutions u+(x, t) and u̲(x, t) which, ifconnect h+ to h̲ in the sense thatthe convergence being uniform on bounded x-intervals. These solutions are of the formwhere U(z) is a monotone function (the wave's profile), U(±∞) = h±, and the velocity c is a specific positive number depending on the function f.
The use of Portuguese relationship terms in Kalapalo (Xingu Carib) encounters: changes in a central Brazilian communications network
Authors: Basso Ellen B. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe introduction of Portuguese relationship terms into a system used by the Carib-speaking Kalapalo is explained in terms of internal social developments rather than language contact or acculturation. Upper Xingu Society is described as a linguistically diverse communications network that operates within two types of situations: ‘personal’ situations which emphasize verbal codes and focus on individual relationships and roles, and ‘non-personal’ situations which emphasize non-verbal ritualized performance in an intervillage context, focusing on local group identity rather than the qualities of individual ‘persons’. The adoption of Portuguese terms represents an elaboration of the system by which certain kinds of male relatives are designated as ‘persons’, and in the context of interaction between men speaking mutually unintelligible languages has circumvented the problem of language loyalty for intervillage communication. (Lexical borrowing, language loyalty, relationship terms, South American languages.)
Linguistic variation, context, and meaning: A case of -ing/in' variation in North American workers' speech
Authors: Huspek Michael R. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe variable rule method of accounting for linguistic variability suffers on two counts: (1) it is insensitive to social context; (2) it regards meaning as irrelevant (variability being treated as different ways of “saying the same thing”). Given these shortcomings, an alternative approach sensitive to social context and the relevance of meaning is recommended. The proposed alternative approach, scaffolded on an ethnography of communication base, is then used to support an analysis of -ing/in' variability in some North American industrial workers' speech. The analysis indicates that instances of morphophonemic variation, contrary to what proponents of the variable rule method have suggested, may express a number of various meanings that express, reflect, and reproduce speakers' life experiences. The analysis also enables us to develop a set of theoretical statements that explain the motivations of workers' selections of a low prestige variant and why workers' reliance on a low prestige variant persists. (Ethnography of communication, variable rule methodology, social class dialect, morphophonemic variation)
Expressive style and culture: Individualism and group orientation contrasted
Authors: Billings Dorothy K. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTHerein I examine the parallel, contrasting analyses of expressive patterns proposed by Bernstein for language, by Lomax for song, and by my interpretation of the arts and cultures of two Melanesian societies. The general thesis of this paper is that expressive patterns are related to cultural patterns in systematic ways, and that analysis of societies in terms of a contrast between individualism and group orientation reveals and documents one of those ways. Description of social structures in relation to this contrast is old, but its extension to expressive patterns is recent in anthropology. I argue that this model accounts for fundamental structural distinctions which underlie cultural contrasts in expressive patterns. (Sociolinguistics, conversational analysis, Melanesia, anthropological linguistics, ethnography of speech, isomorphism of expressive forms and social structure)
Language attitudes in Guangzhou, China
Authors: Kalmar Ivan , Yong Zhong , Hong Xiao 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTCantonese and non-Cantonese students of the Guangzhou (Canton) Foreign Language Institute took part in a matched-guise experiment, expressing judgments about two samples of speech produced by the same person but presented as coming from two different speakers. In one sample the person spoke good Putonghua (Mandarin), in the other a Putonghua heavily influenced by Cantonese. All judges tended to agree that what they thought was the better Putonghua speaker would have a better chance for social advancement. However, Cantonese judges also showed some positive evaluation of a “heavy Cantonese accent” in the sphere of personal empathy. Such empathy was stronger among male than among female Cantonese. Similar attitudes regarding a “high” (Putonghua) and a “low” (Cantonese) variant in a multilingual society are typical for most Western societies that sociolinguists have studied. They now seem to be equally typical for an Oriental, socialist society like that of China. (Chinese dialects, evaluative reactions, comparative sociolinguistics)
Gender and topic
Authors: Kipers Pamela S. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis article has two purposes. The first is to examine the relationship between topic and gender on the basis of observation of naturally occurring conversations among all-male, all-female, and mixed gender groups. The second is to undertake an analysis of the relative importance or triviality of these conversations as perceived by the conversants themselves. Several unexpected agreements and differences were found. (Sociolinguistics, conversational topic, gender-related language differences, intuition versus data-based investigation in the study of language, speech acts, English, United States)
Triglossia and Swahili-English bilingualism in Tanzania
Authors: Mkilifi M. H. Abdulaziz 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe paper addresses itself to the study of the sociological correlates of speech behaviour among bilingual speakers of English and Swahili in Tanzania. Factors influencing language maintenance, code-switching and code-mixing are discussed. Four main phases of language acquisition are considered: the pre-primary school phase, the primary school phase, the secondary-school phase, and the post-secondary school phase.Three languages with both varying and overlapping roles interact, creating a triglossia situation: first the vernacular or mother-tongue of each particular ethno-cultural group; secondly Swahili, the local lingua franca and national language; thirdly English, the predominant language of higher learning and to a certain extent of official and commercial business.The paper also discusses the diglossia relationship between the vernacular and Swahili on the one hand and Swahili and English on the other. The developmental state of the languages is dealt with in terms of socially ‘restricted’ and ‘elaborated’ codes.Urban life tends to impose its own socio-cultural influences on the bilinguals. There is free shifting and mixing between Swahili and English interlocutors, topics and setting.Lastly the paper raises questions of the sociological and linguistic consequences of the multilingual situation. (Multilingualism, diglossia; code-switching; code-mixing; Swahili; English, national language problems.)
Aspects of Luo Socialization
Authors: Blount Ben G. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTSocialization is defined as the incorporation of a child into society on the basis of social and linguistic interaction. Central to this process is a child's advancement in communicative skills. As a child progresses in linguistic competence, the structure of interaction changes to accommodate his newfound skills, and underlying these changes are the Luo attitudes and beliefs on child-rearing, language acquisition, and the position of children in society. (Socialization; speech acquisition; social interaction; language attitudes.)
Towards a theory of interpersonal accommodation through language: some Canadian data
Authors: Giles Howard , Taylor Donald M. , Bourhis Richard 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe study was designed to investigate the process of speech accommodation between bilinguals from two ethnolinguistic groups. It was hypothesized that the greater the amount of effort in accommodation that a bilingual speaker of one group was perceived to put into his message, the more favourably he would be perceived by listeners from another ethnic group, and also the more effort they in turn would put into accommodating back to him. Eighty bilingual English-Canadians were divided into four groups and individually tested. Ss heard on tape a French-Canadian describe a picture and they were required to sketch this while listening. Ss were made fully aware that their speaker had a choice of language for his description. The four groups heard the same male speaker describe the drawing but each in a different guise: (1) French, (2) Mix-mix, (3) Fluent English and (4) Nonfluent English. Ss were then requested to rate their speaker and his performance, and to record a description of another picture themselves for that same French-Canadian to draw later. From analyses of the ratings and the Ss' tapes, the hypotheses were confirmed and different types of accommodation noted. A theoretical framework for these results and other forms of interpersonal accommodation was suggested. (Bilingualism; social interaction; accommodation theory; Canadian French, Canadian English.)
A sliding sense of obligatoriness: The poly-structure of Malagasy oratory
Authors: Keenan Elinor O. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTOn the plateau area of Madagascar, the rules for ceremonial speech (kabary), and skill in it, are sources of pride and topics of great interest. The most elaborate use of kabary is in the public marriage request. This event is intended to give honor to the girl's family and to evoke confidence in the boy's family, securing an alliance between them. Conceptions of the ground rules of proper kabary are diverse. There are discussions of them before, within, alongside, and after the event. The diversity includes a broad contrast between the ‘Ancestral Way’ and the ‘New Way’. Social change, but also the interests and strategies of the two parties (the boy's family and the girl's family) are involved in choice of one of these. Crucial to the conduct and success of the event is the notion of an ‘error’. What constitutes an ‘error’ is open to dispute and the significance of particular rules varies with both the strategies of the two parties, and the way in which the event is unfolding. An overriding constraint is that the alliance which the event is to ratify be accomplished. (Speech styles and social structure; ideal speech; conflict of speech norms; performance strategies; ‘error’ in performance; emergent qualities of performances; Madagascar; Malagasy (Malayo-Polynesian).)
Further report on the sociolinguistic survey of multilingual communities: survey of Cayo District, British Honduras
Authors: Page R. B. Le , Christie Pauline , Jurdant Baudouin , Weekes A. J. , Tabouret-Keller Andrée 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe sociolinguistic survey of Cayo District, British Honduras is here further reported upon (cf. LinS i. 155–72 (1972)). We are concerned with acquisition of language habits in a situation in which the child' verbal behaviour reflects its search for identity and social role. For 280 children, the incidence of five linguistic features in from three to five sections of an interview has been calculated. The linguistic profiles of the children were examined by a computer-programmed cluster analysis. In addition, each child' family and each child were interviewed at home, providing socio-economic data. Analysis is incomplete but does suggest an analogue to the child' acts of identity. The paper illustrates a methodological approach that may be useful in other social situations. (Sociolinguistic identity, multilingualism, creole languages, sociolinguistic survey, cluster analysis, British Honduras.)
Some cognitive implications of informant variability in Zinacanteco speech classification
Authors: Bricker Victoria R. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper describes some cases of inter- and intra-informant variability which cannot be explained in terms of social and contextual factors, and which do not seem to require probabilistic models to account for them. Analysis of several Zinacanteco speech taxonomies suggests that what are called variant responses are often onlyincompleteresponses, and that if the cognitive system is represented as a taxonomy, then it is a taxonomy which is made up of a number of partial taxonomies, each of which is produced by a different informant or group of informants or by the same informant on different occasions. A frequently used method of ‘controlled eliciting’ is shown to be inherently incapable of guaranteeing the elicitation of complete taxonomies in every interview. For this reason, it is urged that before constructing a model of a cognitive system it is first necessary to establish what is ‘real’ cognitive variation by recognizing and eliminating that variation which results from methodological indeterminacy. (Ethnoscience, cognition, variability, methodology, controlled eliciting, folk taxonomy, speech, Maya languages.)
Talking about doing: lexicon and event
Authors: Agara Michael 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTSociolinguists have not much attended to participants' terminology for events. For this, the usual ethnosemantic focus on relationships of inclusion within a taxonomic structure is insufficient. Stage-process relationships and case-grammar notions of agent, object, instrument and result are used to account for the conceptual structure encoded in a set of addict's argot terms. It is suggested that the addict's argot functions as a needed, standardized terminology, not just for concealment. (Ethnosemantics, cognitive anthropology, case grammar, generative semantics, argots.)
Linguistics retention and diffusion in Bella Coola
Authors: Newman Stanley 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe ecological vocabulary of the Bella Coola, who speak a Salish language of the American Northwest Coast, shows a larger proportion of loanwords than of forms retained from the parent language. Over a period of centuries the Bella Coola were in contact with many non-Salish tribes, but the direction of their borrowing was highly selective. Although their most intimate contacts were with speakers of Athapaskan and Wakashan, the overwhelming proportion of their ecological loans are Wakashan. This selectivity is explained by cultural affinity rather than intimacy of contact. (Language and cultural history, sociolinguistics, lexical borrowing, ecological vocabulary, Northwest Coast, Bella Coola Indians.)
Some aspects of social grammar features of one type of question in English and Yoruba
Authors: Grayshon M. C. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTAs a more detailed example leading towards a social grammar of language three emotions are analysed first in English and then in the tonal language Yoruba. It is shown that the communication features in English which lie in intonation and stress related to grammatical position of words in English, require a change of grammar in Yoruba and that these changes are subject to further categorization by utilizing status and solidarity. As a by-product it is shown that the group of paralinguistic phenomena in English are intimately related to the communication of social status and emotion and that there is a possibility of classification by social grammar. (Expressive language, para-linguistics, social grammar, English, Yoruba.)
Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular ‘they’, sex-indefinite ‘he’, and ‘he or she’
Authors: Bodine Ann 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper demonstrates that prior to the beginning of the prescriptive grammar movement in English, singular ‘they’ was both accepted and widespread. It is argued that the prescriptive grammarians' attack on singular ‘they’ was socially motivated, and the specific reasons for their attack are discussed. By analogy with socially motivated changes in second person pronouns in a variety of European languages, it is suggested that third person pronoun usage will be affected by the current feminist opposition to sex-indefinite ‘he’ – particularly since the well-established alternative, singular ‘they’, has remained widespread in spoken English throughout the two and a half centuries of its ‘official’ proscription. Finally, the implications of changes in third person singular, sex-indefinite pronouns for several issues of general interest within linguistics are explored. (Language change, sex roles and language, language attitudes, language planning, prescriptive grammar, pronouns.)
Phonological change and the development of an urban dialect in Illinois
Authors: Callary Robert E. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe distribution of raised, nasalized variants of /æ/ in such words as hat, bag, and back in the speech of many Illinoisans cannot be explained by geographical or historical processes; rather the correlations are nearly isomorphic between raised variants of /æ/ and the size of the community in which the speaker was raised. Generally, the higher the variants, the more urban the speaker's background. Raised variants of /æ/ are discussed as they relate to contemporary sound change, to urban distributions, and to phonological context. (Urban dialects, sound change, American English, Illinois.)
Tone of voice in Japanese conversation
Authors: Benjamin Gail R. 
Published: December 2008

AbstractAn experimental study of the role of tone of voice in Japanese conversations, using both Japanese and American subjects, has uncovered situational determinants of voice quality not related to emotion. Some of these variations are perceived differently by the two sets of subjects, some in the same way. The nature of the situational determinants casts new doubt on the plausibility of ‘language’ as a natural subset of human communications. (Tone of voice, non-linguistic communication, ethnography of communication, Japan.)
The organization of turns at formal talk in the classroom
Authors: Mchoul Alexander 
Published: December 2008

AbstractBeginning with a consideration of some commonsense and professional conceptions of what a formal situation might comprise, this paper goes on to ask the question: where along a linear array which has its poles in exemplars of formal and informal speech-exchange systems, can classroom talk be placed? Its answer is given in part in the form of rules for the taking of turns in classrooms, these being modifications of those, already established in the literature, for natural conversation. These rules allow for and require that formal classroom situations be constructed so as to involve differential participation rights for parties to the talk depending on their membership of the social identity-class ‘student/teacher’. The analyses which follow examine some of the applications and violations of these rules found in audio and video recordings of naturally occurring classroom talk (and transcripts thereof) for their orderliness as orientations to these rules. It is argued that the rules provide a systematic basis for the ‘feelings’ of ‘formality’ that researchers and participants have of such situations and that a decision as to the ‘formality’ or otherwise of a social situation can be predicated on the degree of pre-allocation involved in the organization of turns at talk in the situation. (Configuration and distance in interaction, conversational analysis, turn-taking systems, classroom language, sociology of education; British and Australian English).
Speech differences between women and men on the wrong track?
Authors: Brouwer Dédé , Gerritsen Marinel , De Haan Dorian 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTOver the last few years the methods and techniques used in sociolinguistics have aroused keen interest and have continually been improved. Yet the claims that have been made about differences of degree between the language used by women and that used by men are often based on research methods which seem to be anything but reliable. On the basis of a corpus of 587 utterances produced in buying a train ticket, an investigation was made of whether there is a statistically significant difference between women and men in certain aspects of their language use which have been mentioned in the literature: the number of words used to deal with a set task, diminutives, civilities, forms of language expressing insecurity (repetitions, hesitations, self-corrections, requests for information). In addition to the independent variable of sex of speaker, three other variables were introduced: sex of addressee, age of speaker, and time of ticket purchase (rush-hour or normal). The results of our investigation indicate that there are few significant differences between the language used by women and that used by men in this particular situation, with regard to the variables mentioned above. As a consequence, this investigation has demonstrated once again that intuitions should be considered critically. It is remarkable, however, that sex of addressee seems to affect almost all of the variables under consideration. Consequently, the results strongly suggest that anyone who wants to investigate language by means of interviews must take into account the fact that the kind of language used does not depend only on the informant, but just as much on the addressee. (Language and sex, investigation methods, influence of addressee on speaker.)
Colors and culture change in Southwest Iran
Authors: Friedl Erika 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTAn examination of recent changes in the color terminology of a Lurispeaking pepole in Iran shows a strong cultural basis of perception, categorization, and manipulation of colors. Compared to the familiar evolutionary model of the development of color categories, this case constitutes a slight deviation in the position of the colors brown and purple and suggests a qualification of the respective evolutionary stages as well as an expansion of the model's predictive hypotheses. (Color terms, evolutionary universals in linguistic change, Lur language, Iran.)
Hypercorrection and rule generalization
Authors: Decamp David 
Published: December 2008

AbstractHypercorrection is always a function of rule generalization, though the converse does not hold. It is therefore a sociolinguistic term, not definable in purely linguistic terms. What is generalized is not necessarily the original rule of the grammar. It may be an added rule symmetrical to it. These symmetrical rules are not necessarily ‘Last rules’, for their output may undergo further non-hypercorrect rules. (Hypercorrection, sociolinguistics, phonological theory, historical phonology.)
The communicative competence of bilinguals: some hypotheses and suggestions for research
Authors: Gumperz John J. 
Published: December 2008

AbstractA model for the description of bilingual speech is proposed which focuses on the linguistic and social constraints governing the speaker's selection of variables within a single complex linguistic repertoire. The model will be tested with field data from bilingual communities in India and Austria and results will be compared with relevant data on American English. The traditional dichotomy between bilingual and monolingual behavior is discarded and differences between the communities will be described in terms of the level of linguistic structure at which variables appear, the rules governing their co-occurrence and the social meanings they communicate. The goal is to contribute to our knowledge of the linguistic and social nature of code alternation to provide new insights into communication processes in ethnically diverse societies, and to lay the basis for improved educational strategies.