Sociolinguistics

Research on the subjunctive in Australian English has typically relied on corpus interrogation to ascertain frequency of occurrence of the target forms across text types (e.g., Collins and Peters 2004, Peters 2009). Such work has been valuable in confirming trends in usage, such as the increasing use of the mandative subjunctive and the decline of the were subjunctive, but has yet to explore in detail motivations behind the continued survival of what had widely been described as a moribund variant.
Based on syntactic evidence, we distinguish the plain form subjunctive, which includes the traditional mandative subjunctive, from the were subjunctive. Using existing corpus-based results as well as data from additional corpus searches, we suggest that there are two primary factors in the subjunctive’s continued existence in Australian English; firstly, the presence of a growing set of ossifying subjunctive frames within which the subjunctive is marked, and secondly, the role of the subjunctive in indexing formal-prestigious-standard English style, with the were subjunctive indexing literariness and the plain form subjunctive indexing a stance of power and epistemic authority.

Spurred in part by violent conflict and natural disaster, the surge in global migration calls for renewed attention to the central role of language in everyday (in)securitization. In this brief response, I draw on my work in the Middle East and among Arabic‐speaking populations in the United States to offer some illustration of the instantiation of global, macro‐processes of (in)securitization and surveillance in the everyday micro‐practices of schooling—issues that are possible to “see” when language policy is the site of inquiry. In centring everyday communicative practice, sociolinguistics provides a distinctive entry point for examining the lived experience of this (in)securitization, by illuminating pervasive and mundane micro‐processes within the “extraordinary” and routinized social interactions of everyday schooling.

"The presentation guides you to discover in a fresh way how TESOL is a partial and integral expression of the Christian path to wholeness by virtue of the process of cultural, linguistic and identity paradigm shifts. What a meta-cognitive model integrating TESOL and Christianity does, is build from the empirical to the realm of the mind, heart and spirit - which is core transformation.  It’s a journey to an unseen and ideal place, much like Norton’s “imagined communities”.  This can be translated, of course, to Abraham’s journey to a heavenly city.  We meet our students there, in no-man’s-land as it were, and this model gives teachers and students a handle on how to move forward.

This article describes the rise of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) as an institutional designation within postsecondary education in the U.S. context, and outlines some of the language-based challenges U.S. Latinx students face on campus and in the home speech community. Engagement with the mass media through editorial writing and interviews in television, radio, and print formats is conceived of as a productive means of educating the public about HSIs and the language issues that contextualize the lives of the student bodies that attend them, combating misinformation about U.S. Latinx speech communities, and, more generally, for doing what Wolfram (2016) calls " public sociolinguistics education. " A model of mass media engagement is suggested, in which community-based sociolinguistic research is communicated by the researcher to press specialists at the university, who help place it with journalists, who then disseminate sociolinguistic knowledge to the general public. The effects of mass media engagement—including community involvement and the creation of sociolinguistic artifacts—are discussed, and practical advice for promoting sociolinguistic perspectives through mass media engagement is given.

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

This paper examines the dynamic interplay between language policy and local stakeholders in the process of dialect planning in the city of Shanghai, in the context of social tensions surrounding the decline of Shanghai dialect in mainland China. A process-oriented Language Management Theory (LMT) model is adopted as the analytical framework to reveal the interactive facet of micro language planning. Drawing on in-depth interviews and document analysis, the paper analyzes and interprets ten key players' perceptions and experiences in relation to the 'saving Shanghai dialect' movement. Qualitative data analysis demonstrates five stages in the dialect planning process and reveals how individuals' agency, when struggling and striving for local language rights, exert bottom-up influence upon language policy-making. The findings also unravel the social political duality between macro structure and individual agency. The paper ends with a discussion on the need to negotiate the individual agency in a more interactive and democratic dialog with predefined policy constraints. This study may have implications for multilingual/multidialectal contexts in other geographical locations where linguistic diversity in the local contexts is encountering shifts in language use and language changes. Besides, this study may also enrich applicability of the LMT framework which reveals the interactive and dynamic process by unbundling individual responses and influences on language planning.

The twenty-three years (1934-1957) between the end of the US Occupation and the start of the Duvalier era were a dynamic period of introspection and change in Haitian society. The relatively high degree of freedom of expression, the proliferation of ideologies like Marxism and Noirisme, and the "Revolution of 1946" were all linked to a transformation of Haitian politics and culture unprecedented since 1804. One clear indication of the spirit of this chapter of the country's history, which I have labeled the Haitian Sixties, was the progress made by the Kreyòl movement. After the setbacks under the US Occupation, the call for a legitimation of the popular language entered a phase of renewed vigor: it was bolstered by groundbreaking philological studies, concerted attempts to create a standard orthography, experiments in the use of the Kreyòl language as a medium of instruction, and a renaissance in Kreyòl-language literature. Yet as the movement progressed, it was hampered by new internal divisions and longstanding prejudices at different levels of Haitian society.

Spoken in the nineteenth century by the posteggiatori, the wandering minstrels of Naples, parlèsia is a jargon. It shares its syntax and its phonology with the Neapolitan dialect and is characterized by a special lexicon of about 200 words, referring above all to money, women, and music. Parlèsia has been a secret code until the 1950s when Neapolitan pop artists used expressions of the jargon in their music. The results of a sociolinguistic investigation conducted among 150 musicians in Naples demonstrate that parlèsia is still being understood and spoken although today it seems more like a form of youth slang than a code of a marginalised group of speakers.

This article traces the historical background of the term 'belly dance', the English-language name for a complex of solo, improvised dance styles of Middle Eastern and North African origin whose movements are based on articulations of the torso. The expression danse du ventre -- literally, "dance of the belly" -- was initially popularised in France as an alternate title for Orientalist artist Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1863 painting of an Egyptian dancer and ultimately became the standard designation for solo, and especially women's, dances from the Middle East and North Africa. The translation "belly dance" was introduced into English in 1889 in international media coverage of the Rue du Caire exhibit at the Parisian Exposition Universelle. A close examination of the historical sources demonstrates that the evolution of this terminology was influenced by contemporary art, commercial considerations, and popular stereotypes about Eastern societies. The paper concludes with an examination of dancers' attitudes to the various English-language names for the dance in the present day.

This paper addresses the broad question of how work in sociolinguistics should be related to social theory, and in particular the assumptions about cognition that can underpin that relation. A discursive psychological approach to issues of cognition is pressed and illustrated by a reworking of Stubb's review of work on language and cognition. A discursive psychological approach is offered to the topics of racist discourse, courtroom interaction, scientific writing, and sexism. Discursive psychology rejects the approach to 'cognition' as a collection of more or less stable inner entities and processes. Instead the focus is on the way 'mental phenomena' are both constructed and oriented to in people's practices.

Este artículo busca contribuir a una evaluación crítica de la educación intercultural bilingüe (EIB), modelo educativo con al menos cinco décadas de desarrollo conceptual e implementación en Latinoamérica. Cuando este término se acuñó y la EIB comenzó a influir en la toma de decisiones educativas, las poblaciones amerindias eran en su mayoría monolingües y sus asentamientos principalmente rurales y distantes de las sedes de la hegemonía y el poder. La situación ahora es diferente, pues los individuos y las familias indígenas están también en las ciudades, y hoy afirman su indigeneidad más que antes. A la luz de estas profundas transformaciones políticas, sociales, culturales y económicas, se examina la evolución de la EIB para determinar si todavía responde a las diferentes necesidades y expectativas de los niños, jóvenes y adultos indígenas, así como a los igualmente diversos contextos sociolingüísticos que se han configurado a lo largo de la historia de minorización de las sociedades indígenas.

Analizamos la EIB con los lentes de la ideología del lenguaje, la política y la planificación y también desde la pedagogía. Se concluye con un análisis de los desafíos que enfrenta la EIB e identifica posibles nuevos horizontes para estos y otros emprendimientos político-pedagógicos indígenas.

Palabras clave: Agencia; bilingüismo; interculturalidad; multiculturalismo; multilingüismo; política y planificación lingüística; reforma educativa; revitalización.

Human culture and language are deeply intertwined. Anthropologists would have difficulty understanding a culture without becoming familiar with its language and vice versa. In fact, neither one can exist without the other. Like culture, language is continually changing. Societal norms and practices impact the ways that people communicate with each other. Thus, by looking at how people speak to each other, we can deduce certain things about their relationships and relative status in society.

This paper investigates the role of English in Japan, outlining its current status and use. The paper begins with a critical review of the World Englishes model as it relates to the categorization of Japan within the expanding circle of English use and continues with a brief history of English language contact with the country. It then examines the changing role of English in the Japanese education system and media. This is followed by a discussion of the influence of English on the Japanese language as well as the role which the English language plays within the discourses of nihonjinron and kokusaika. The paper concludes with a call for empirical research to be conducted investigating the spread, acquisition and attitudes towards English in Japan.

This paper makes the case for the continuing importance of literacy studies within linguistic ethnography, particularly given the nature of the kinds of societies in which we are working.  It underlines the importance of continuing to develop concepts and approaches for analysis of the textually mediated nature of the contemporary social world, in which the significance of communication in digital environments and multimodal communication have increased.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the subjunctive in modern English is on its deathbed. It has been described variously as “a vestigial survival” (Strang 1968), “a rather feeble and restricted device” (Foster 1976:220), “a literary trick” (Jespersen 1962: 294) and even “probably simply a conspiracy” (Coffey 2000). Most grammar books published before 1975 concur: the subjunctive will soon no longer be. And yet, as early as the 1950s linguists had begun to highlight some curious goings-on in American English. Barber (1964: 133) notes “a surprising reversion” during and after World War II to older subjunctive forms and by the 1970s many studies were being carried out into subjunctive usage in American and British English, most indicating that the subjunctive was not so moribund as previously thought (e.g. Johansson 1979, Haegeman 1986). Interesting divergences were found to exist in its use in the two varieties. It would not be until Peters’ work in 1998 that the status of the subjunctive in Australian English would be examined in detail. This study offered clear evidence of the subjunctive in this variety also, but revealed that Australian usage differs from that of both American and British English. This thesis explores the status of the subjunctive in all its manifestations in contemporary Australian English. The scrutinising of data retrieved from the Australian component of the International Corpus of English allowed for quantitative analyses of subjunctive usage as well as a detailed investigation into the forms this usage takes. The study is intended to be both diachronic and synchronic; corpus data is both compared with previous findings on the use of subjunctive in Australian English and collated with data from parallel corpora representing usage in other World Englishes (namely British, American and New Zealand English). By examining not only cases where the subjunctive is employed, but also cases where an alternative structure is attested, this study aims to elucidate the factors influential in speakers choosing the subjunctive.

This essay seeks to explore the expressions of power and persuasion in Tony Blair’s victory speech in 1997. Firstly, a theoretical framework about power and persuasion in political discourse is demonstrated. Secondly, the context of sociopolitical context of the speech is analyzed and the theoretical underpinnings of Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) are presented in the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Thirdly, utilizing some linguistic tools based on the Halliday's and Matthiessen's (2004) functional grammatical theory, the speech is analyzed investigating the linguistic features that attribute power and persuasion.

The present work is the sociolinguistic analysis of a corpus of short monologues written and acted out by the Veneto actor Andrea Pennacchi –El Pojana–, which is characterized by the the extreme use of code-switching (CS) and code-mixing (CM) strategies between Italian, an extreme version of regional Italian (Veneto) and Veneto dialect. The main challenge concerning artistic use in such cases consists in the fact that similar monologues are thought out and programmed, in other words in a very different way from spontaneous production, and greater difficulty is included by the various strategies due to diamesic factors, recited text, a read text, or typological differences, i.e theatrical production, monologue, dialogue, texts for the cinema or literary texts. Strategies may vary somewhat. When such productions succeed in giving an impression of naturalness, approaching real life situations, it is obvious that the mechanisms characterizing real speech are at work, in all their aspects, even if not in a completely conscious way

Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley ... ABSTRACT Our use of language embodies attitudes as well as referential meanings. 'Woman's language' has as foundation the attitude that women are marginal to the ...

Imagine growing up speaking two different languages, where one is predominantly used at home and the other is used for just about every situation outside of the home. For many bilinguals, they are not only communicating in two languages, but also navigating two different cultures. They have one foot in, and at the same time one foot out of each culture. In the heritage Spanish classroom at the university level, students oftentimes lament that they do not fit nicely into either of the two cultures. Their accent or appearance distinguishes them from the typical “American” (from the United States) and yet their grasp of the Spanish languages makes them feel like they are not authentically Colombian, Mexican, etc. Furthermore, issues of racism and discrimination, which are all too common in today’s society, only add to the feelings of linguistic insecurity and lower self-confidence. Throughout this presentation, both the negative and positive imagery associated with heritage Spanish speakers will be explored. These images are based on class discussions, student reflections, and compositions and arise from our exploration of topics such as bilingualism, the importance of terminology (i.e. Hispanic, Latino, or Latinx, among others), and the mixing of Spanish and English. Although the benefits of bilingualism are quick to come to mind when thinking of bilingualism, the negative aspects, such as feeling as if one does not fit it, must also be addressed. Finally, recently incorporated techniques for working to build self-confidence among heritage Spanish speakers in the classroom will be discussed.

Stephen Pax Leonard is a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and a Research Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute. Educated at the University of Oxford, he studied modern and ancient languages before developing interests in linguistic and existential anthropology. He has carried out both linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. More recently, he spent a year living with the Inugguit of north-west Greenland who live in the northern-most permanently inhabited settlement in the world, documenting their vulnerable minority language and spoken traditions.

DE LA COMUNICACIÓN HUMANA COMO PRÁCTICA CULTURAL COMUNICACIÓN Y CULTURA Enfrentar en términos teóricos el problema de la comunicación humana exige, en primer lugar, entenderla como una práctica social inserta en contextos culturales específicos y, en segundo lugar, pensar a la cultura como una construcción simbólica, o mejor, como una compleja articulación de redes simbólicas (Cassirer 1997 [1944]; Geertz 1997 [1973]).

"Words and Phrases, Unchanged for Centuries.

Containing a rich glossary and in excess of 300 words and phrases, the texts demonstrate the strength of the Macedonian language through preservation.

Following is a comparison of sentences between the texts and the Macedonian
dialect of Bitola as spoken today.

16th cent., Kostur dialect
21st cent., Bitola dialect

Gospodine, brate, da si zdrav, da si prost, ostavi ni da spime, ela da jame, i da pieme, dol da pojdime, da rabotime.
Gospodine, brate, da si zdrav, da si prost, ostai ne da spiame, ela da jaime, i da piame, dolu da pojdime, da rabotime.

Imate hljap-o da kupime, imate vino da kupime, ot koja strana da pojdime vo
Bogasko.
Imate lep da kupime, imate vino da kupime, od koja strana da pojdime vo
Bogatsko.

As can be clearly noticed, most of the vocabulary and grammar is identical.
All of the elements that would later be required to rejuvinate the Macedonian people as they were shaking off centuries of subjugation, were present during this period. The language of the people had solidified, a tradition of heraldry and symbolism had developed which incorporated the emblem of a rapant lion and historical figures from Macedonia's past, and the churches continued preserve the local customs and serve as cultural centres for the population. The significance of all these elements together cannot be overstated, the language of medieval Macedonia is the same as the language of the Macedonians today. Unfortunately, only a small portion of the larger amount of Macedonian literature from the Middle Ages has survived, much of it being looted and destroyed by Greek-speaking officials, clerics and teachers. Nevertheless, Macedonian as a language reached its current form centuries before the creation of the Balkan states in the 19th and 20th centuries. "

The concept of the gentleman amateur was, and remains, an important aspect of upper and middle-class Victorian and Edwardian male identity. Although he remains a significant literary presence, the form and length of time the gentleman amateur remained a cultural influence in society is contested.                                                     

This article examines one realm of this social constructs influence - sport - in terms of the social and philosophical origins of these titles, what they meant in practice and the repercussions their use had on class cultures, British (English) sporting values and success. It proposes that the gentleman amateur - despite the long-term damage inflicted by such men - remains a major philosophical, ideological and physical influence upon British sport today.

This paper investigates the question-and-answer sequence based on data derived from semi-structured interviews which are part of a larger interdisciplinary project on parenthood and kinship –(In)fercit-- vis-à-vis assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and purports to focus on the form and function of questions (cf. Stivers & Rossano 2012) in the frame of semi-structured interviews, which constitute as special genre in conversation analytic studies (Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998).

Luvian is the language of Anatolian hieroglyphic inscriptions and a close relative of Hittite. This book explores the Luvian ethnic history through sociolinguistic methods, with an emphasis on the interpretation of contacts between Luvian and its linguistic neighbors, such as Hittite, Hurrian, and Greek. It is concluded that Luvian was originally spoken in the central part of Anatolia. Subsequent Luvian migrations were connected with the expansion of the Hittite state, where Hittite was the socially dominant language, but the Luvian speakers were more numerous. The unstable balance between the Hittite and the Luvian speakers continued to shift in favor of the second group, to the point that the Hittite elites were fully bilingual in Luvian.

In this chapter, we problematize language in education policies that consider a multilingual system of education against attitudes to language that can impact on the (non)success of these policies. We argue that without addressing perceptions toward the role/s of different languages across various uses, multilingual policies in education may reinforce the hegemony of the English language rather than raise the status of local languages. This can happen because of a lack of understanding of how languages work and function, particularly with respect to vertical discursiveness (Bernstein, 1996) and notions of how power is inscribed in different uses of language. Furthermore, we argue that any multilingual language policy should consider how English and other languages connect to language allocation and affiliation, which, if not considered, can lead to schooling maintaining power relations in an unequal society (Apple, 2004) rather than changing them. In addition, we consider how multilingual contexts with a strong level of English use lead to variations in language whose place must be considered where schooling is concerned. Finally, we consider these policies in terms of the Principles-Based Approach (Mahboob and Tilakaratna, 2011) to language policy. Without using the PBA as a guide, any language policy may just be created without its stakeholders fully understanding what it means. Language policies in a multilingual society that is dominated by English cannot be so simple as insisting on a multilingual system of education. Rather, various issues must be considered to insure that these policies do help toward changing society instead of just maintaining power relationships that limit the access of various sectors to different social, economic, and semantic resources.

Esperantists create a varied group of both speakers and supporters. The sociolinguistic categories often overlap and thus the movement consists of diverse examples: non-movement speakers, supporters not speaking Esperanto and finally speakers actively participating in the movement and identifying themselves through the language with the values associated with the idea of an international auxiliary language, world peace, tolerance, liberty and equality. Therefore the movement’s core constitutes a dynamically interacting speech community, although of a special type.

The article concerns the functioning of the specialized language in statement of journalist, who covers live broadcast of sports competitions. On the basis of observations of the verbal layer of volleyball matches telecasts the author concludes that professional forms are mandatory elements of the commentator’s communique. They not only enable a precise terming techniques or sports actions, but also condition the simultaneity of the journalistic narration and games presented to the viewer.