People often begin stories in conversation by referring to person, time, and place. We study story beginnings in three societies and find place reference is recurrently used to (i) set the stage, foreshadowing the type of story and the kind of response due, and to (ii) make the story cohere, anchoring elements of the developing story. Recipients orient to these interactional affordances of place reference by responding in ways that attend to the relevance of place for the story and by requesting clarification when references are incongruent or noticeably absent. The findings are based on 108 story beginnings in three unrelated languages: Cha'palaa, a Barbacoan language of Ecuador; Northern Italian, a Romance language of Italy; and Siwu, a Kwa language of Ghana. The commonalities suggest we have identified generic affordances of place reference, and that storytelling in conversation offers a robust sequential environment for systematic comparative research. (Storytelling, place, narrative, conversation analysis, interactional linguistics)*

Parallels between female communication strategies in the West and Japanese communication strategies are striking. Power figures prominently in descriptions of male-female behavior in the West and, by implication, in descriptions of Japanese linguistic behavior. Similarities between Western female and Japanese communication styles are taken not as an indication that Japanese linguistic behavior is feminine, but as indicative of the problems inherent in analyzing linguistic behavior in culturally bound-terms such as power. (Japanese sociolinguistics, language and the sexes, inter-cultural communication)

This article examines the discourse about race and racism that ensued in the US media after the shooting death of an African American youth, Trayvon Martin, by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, in February 2012. The analysis examines news programs from the three major cable television channels in the United States: CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. The theoretical framework builds upon Hill's (2008) discussion of the ‘folk theory of race and racism’ in contrast to critical race theory, and asks, to what extent does the mainstream media's discourse about race remain embedded in folk ideas and to what extent (if at all) does the conversation move beyond those ideas? The paper aims to unpack the ideologies of race and language that underpin talk about race and racism in an effort to expose the hidden assumptions in the discourse that hinder more productive dialogue on the topic. (Critical race theory, folk theory of race and racism, George Zimmerman, ideology, language ideology, media discourse, race, race talk, racism, slurs, Trayvon Martin)*

This article examines how the social meanings of phonetic variation in a British adolescent community are influenced by a complex relationship between ethnicity, social class, and social practice. I focus on the realisation of the happy vowel in Sheffield English, which is reported to be a lax variant [ε̈] amongst working-class speakers but is undergoing change towards a tense variant [i] amongst middle-class speakers. I analyse the acoustic realisation of this vowel across four female communities of practice in a multiethnic secondary school and find that the variable's community-wide associations of social class are projected onto the ethnographic category of school orientation, which I suggest is a more local interpretation of class relations. Ethnographic evidence and discourse analysis reveal that local meanings of the happy vowel vary further within distinctive community of practice styles, which is the result of how ethnicity and social class intersect in structuring local social practices. (Intersectionality, indexicality, social meaning, identity, ethnicity, social class)*

In Italy, barzellette are short funny stories that speakers perform in various social events with large groups of friends, relatives, or colleagues. In Northern Italy, where a strong anti-immigration platform has been implemented by two influential political parties of the Veneto region, barzellette are performed to represent certain immigrant groups, especially the so-called extracomunitari. In this article, I examine the performative power of multidialectal language play in race-based humor through an analysis of two such joking events. I show how Veneto speakers perform barzellette in their local language, Veneto dialect, to mock immigrant voices, using approaches that purport, not necessarily in a deliberate fashion, to ‘contain’ or ‘conceal’ their racist remarks in their local code. In this way, they sharpen an exclusionary divide between an ‘us’, as insiders, as the local speakers of this language, and a ‘them’, as outsiders, or the immigrant ‘others’, who do not share this code. I thus examine issues of covert racist discourse within an ‘unmarked’ framework in which race and racializing discourses are embedded in social and cultural patterns. (Code-shifting, jokes, Lega Nord, migration, race, racialized discourse, Veneto dialect)*

A central concern in linguistics is assessing the linguistic competence of individuals or groups. Formal linguists usually accomplish this by the study of intuitions with little regard for observed usage, while survey sociolinguists usually depend on observations – especially the data of “spontaneous” interviews – with little regard for intuitions. In this paper I argue that survey sociolinguists need to make greater use of repeated recordings and elicited intuitions.

The existence of this need is illustrated in most detail by an attempt to replicate an earlier implicational analysis of pronominal variation in the Guyanese creole continuum. It is shown that with repeated sampling and the inclusion of elicited intuitions, the discontinuities on which implicational scaling depends disappear almost entirely. With a clearer idea of what speakers can say, however, the sociolinguistic interpretation of what they do say in the spontaneous interviews and recordings is rendered more reliable and revealing.

In the conclusion, some of the theoretical implications and methodological difficulties involved in extending the use of repeated recordings and elicited intuitions in sociolinguistic surveys more generally are discussed. (Sociolinguistic survey methodology, variation, style, implicational scaling, creoles)

This study examines two public hearings on a zoning proposal that would allow the construction of a Super Wal-Mart Center on a field over the town's aquifer. Many citizens speak out against the zoning change because of the risk to drinking water, as well as other issues. Citizens face the speaker's problem of how to make their presentations convincing, given the technical matters involved and the fact that Town Board members have likely already heard about these issues. Some speakers draw on the words of others in their presentations. Using another's words allows the speaker to cite an authoritative source or to respond to what another has said, to evaluate it, and often to challenge it. Speakers use other devices in addition to quotes, such as formulations, repetition, and membership categorizations to develop their evaluative stances in the reporting context. The study's focus is the discursive construction and rhetoric of using others' words for the speaker's own purposes.We gratefully acknowledge the early discussions and help in transcribing from Katherine Hobbs, Diana Martinez, and Jackie Smith. Thanks for the useful comments from Jamie Dangler, Kendall Phillips, Karen Tracy, Donal Carbaugh, Benjamin Bailey, Robin Shoaps, and Vern Cronen. Portions of this study were presented to the Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts, 2006, at the National Communication Association Convention, San Antonio, 2006, and at the International Communication Association Convention, San Francisco The final version of this paper benefited tremendously from detailed comments and criticisms from Barbara Johnstone and the two anonymous reviewers.

This article examines how a group of Tanzanian journalists employ various tactics of intersubjectivity to achieve mutual understanding during a conversation at work. The analysis focuses on one particularly challenging episode of talk wherein political figures and clothing styles from the early days of African independence are referenced, and an ensuing joke about body image is made using the phrase kumaintain figure ‘to maintain figure’ in reference to a male journalist. The joke arguably (re)appropriates the original meaning of the phrase and challenges the relevance of Western body aesthetics for Africans. All participants laugh at the joke, but the basis for their laughter is ambiguous. The participants' interpretations of the joke are examined through ethnographic methods within the framework of (re)entextualization (Silverstein & Urban 1996). The analysis shows that the participants have produced somewhat different indexical orders (Silverstein 2003) for the phrase and, therefore, have different reasons for finding it humorous.

The region of Murcia has historically been a transition area of southeastern Spain where many different cultures and civilizations have met, and the Spanish spoken in Murcia is a transitional variety sharing features with Valencian Catalan, Castilian, Aragonese, and Andalusian Spanish. Murcia is traditionally characterized as an eminently nonstandard-speaking region. The aim of this study is to analyze the possible relationship between the geolinguistic patterns of diffusion of standard Castilian Spanish over the Murcian territory and the increasing use of standard forms in this traditionally nonstandard area. For this purpose, the adoption of Castilian Spanish features by Murcian speakers is correlated with interaction and exposure to innovations. The real presence or absence of some degree of standardization as well as its intraregional variation indicates whether the detected geographical patterns of linguistic uniformity apply to Murcia.

Socialization 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.)

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.)

In this article, I argue that one social theory that could help us better understand the interaction between social structure and human agency in the context of family language policy (FLP) research is realist social theory. FLP studies in multilingual contexts have shown that home often becomes a site where dominant societal ideologies and discourses of structuring nature compete with individual views and agency, ultimately informing language behavior. Realist social theory advocates the analytical separation of structure and agency and attributes causal powers to both social structures and individual agency. This conceptualization of structure and agency prevents us from falling into structural determinism or individual voluntarism. Through examining the linguistic ideologies and practices of thirteen mothers of young children in Tabriz, Iran, I illustrate how family language policy emerges in interaction with and response to structural powers. (Family language policy, realist social theory, Iranian Azerbaijanis, agency, social structures, language maintenance)

The phrase inshallah ‘God willing’ is well known, even to non-Arabic speakers, as a mitigator of any statement regarding the future, or hopes for the future. Here we use the methods of conversation analysis (CA) to examine a less salient but nonetheless pervasive and compelling interactional usage: in topic-transition sequences. We use a corpus of Levantine (predominantly Syrian) Arabic talk-in-interaction to pay detailed attention to the sequential contexts of inshallah and its cognates across a number of exemplars. It emerges that these invocations are used to secure possible sequence and topic closure, and that they may engender reciprocal invocations. Topical talk following invocations or their responses is subsequently shown to be suspended by both parties; this provides for a move to a new topic by either party. (Arabic, religious expressions, conversation, conversation analysis, topic)*

Comparative analysis demonstrates salient stylistic, contextual and content features of two genres of dispute discourse in a Fiji Indian village. Specific strategies of persuasion are examined, as well as explanations for their effectiveness in influencing the course of community conflicts.

Studies on stylised language use have tended to focus on the creative exploitation of linguistic heteroglossia among urban multi-ethnic youth. This article argues that there are good reasons for exploring how such practices can also be initiated by norm-enforcing white adults such as teachers. I report on linguistic ethnographic fieldwork in one mixed-ethnicity class at a Brussels Dutch-medium school and describe how one teacher often produced the creative, stylised language use one usually associates with younger speakers. The analysis emphasizes that while teacher stylisations provided alleviation from the friction between linguistic expectations and the reality of the classroom floor, they were also functional in maintaining the school linguistic policy inasmuch as they typified nonstylised, nonaccented, and standard language use as normal and expected. These findings suggest that stylisations can be closely tuned to linguistic normativity and reproductive of wider patterns of sociolinguistic stratification. (Stylisations, urban heteroglossia, crossing, classroom interaction, Brussels, Dutch, enregisterment)*

Contrary to Labov's principle of style shifting, studies in language obsolescence portray speakers of dying languages as ‘monostylistic’, a characterization questioned here. Variationist methodology is adopted in a context of gradual language death. By combining quantitative and interactional analyses of data from older, younger, and new speakers of Francoprovençal in France and Switzerland, the article considers (a) to what extent variability in language obsolescence differs from that found in ‘healthy’ languages, and (b) how innovations might spread through communities speaking threatened languages characterized as ‘monostylistic’ and lacking overt normative infrastructure. It is argued that style variation (not monostylism) emerges from linguistic decay: among more fluent speakers, a categorical rule of /l/-palatalization before obstruents becomes underspecified, rendering palatalization available for strategic use. Among new speakers, novel palatal variants form part of an emergent sociolinguistic norm. The study offers fresh insights on the origins of sociolinguistic variation with implications for variationist theory. (Language obsolescence, language death, language variation and change, style variation, new speakers)*

The language of Chinese secret societies (“triads”) in Hong Kong can be studied by relating triad language to anti-languages, to taboo language, and to the status of the vernacular in sociolinguistic theory. Also examined here are the laws in Hong Kong concerning triad language, and the attitudes of government agencies charged with policing the media. One striking feature of the Hong Kong situation is that the use of triad jargon can in some circumstances constitute a serious criminal offense. However, triad language also appears to be a source of innovation, through the popular media, into mainstream Hong Kong Cantonese. Research on triad language is relevant to the relationship between colonialism and language control. (Cantonese, Hong Kong, colonialism, triad secret societies, censorship, vernacular, taboo language, criminal slang)

As a case study in the formation of a new written language in a speech community moving from diglossia toward a “standard-with-dialects”, this article analyzes the development of M[odern] W[ritten] C[hinese] during the past 80 years. After a brief account of the historical background, the article discusses the sources and avenues of influence on the development of MWC, then examines the emergent grammatical and lexical norms, and investigates the variations displayed by the four main Chinese communities: mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The role of language planning is also explored. The similarities and differences between China and Western Europe, in their progress from diglossic to non-diglossic communities, are discussed. (Diglossia, Chinese linguistics, written language, language planning)

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)

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.)