This article investigates children's procedures for constructing oppositional stances in argumentative exchanges. While most previous research on children's arguments entails a monolingual bias, the present analysis focuses on bilingual practices of code-switching in disputes emerging during play activities. Drawing on more than ten hours of video-taped play interaction in a bilingual school setting, it is shown how the language contrast arising through code-switching displays and highlights the affective intensity of oppositional stances. Sequential analyses show how code-switching works to escalate social opposition, often to the peak of an argument, resulting in subsequent backdown or full termination of the dispute. Moreover, in certain participant constellations code-switching may be used to constrain opponents' opportunities to engage in further adversative interaction. Finally, it is argued that an approach to play discourse concerned with children's methods for accomplishing accountable actions allows for a view of bilingualism as socially distributed; that is, as an emergent and interactionally managed feature of discourse.An early version of this article was presented at the 9th European Conference on Second Language Acquisition (EUROSLA 9) in Lund, Sweden, June 1999. Thanks are due to Karin Aronsson and Micke Tholander for comments and discussion on an earlier draft. Financial support from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Grant No. 96-0639:01-02) and from the Swedish National Agency for Education (Grant No. U2001/1912/S) is gratefully acknowledged.

This article examines the ways topic transitions are made in 12 physician-patient encounters between eight physicians (four men and four women) and eight patients, all women, in private practice settings. The data include visits by the same patient to more than one physician; these data are unique in the literature. I expand both the explicit theoretical frame in which topic transitions have been described and the types of these transitions that need consideration. The two major types of transitions are reciprocal and unilateral activities. Reciprocal topic-transition activities are assumed to share power between physician and patient; unilateral topic transitions are assumed to allocate power to the speaker. Ratios of reciprocal to unilateral activities differ widely by gender of the physician. Change in discourse norms for this event may be in progress, due to increasing numbers of women physicians. (Medical discourse, topic, power, gender, sociolinguistic change, English)

In the past twenty years the existence of a sense of ethnic belonging among immigrant groups of European ancestry in the United States has become the focus of frequent debates and polemics. This article argues that ethnicity cannot be understood if it is abstracted from concrete social practices, and that analyses of this construct need to be based on ethnographic observation and on the study of actual talk in interaction. This interactionally oriented perspective is taken to present an analysis of how Italian ethnicity is constructed as a central element in the collective identity of an all-male card playing club. Linguistic strategies, particularly code-switching, are central in this construction, but their role becomes apparent only when language use is analyzed within significant practices in the life of the club. Code-switching into Italian is used as an important index of ethnic affiliation in socialization practices related to the game and in official discourse addressed by the president to club members through the association of the language with central domains of activity.I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal, Barbara Johnstone, for their insightful suggestions, which have substantially contributed to the shaping of this article.

Sociolinguistics has never been a closed or autonomous discipline, but rather has considered relations between linguistic variables and so-called real-world variables, such as age, sex, and social class. Developments in discourse analysis now permit the analysis of the effectiveness of utterances in their real-world context. This study of communicative success uses as its data transcripts of eight aviation accidents, as well as transcripts of fourteen flight simulator sessions. The linguistic variable considered is mitigation; the real-world variables are success or failure of the individual communication, and peer judgments of the overall effectiveness of the simulator crews. To quantify the use of mitigation, a four-degree scale was established by using the judgments of several linguistic analysts and was validated against the judgments of members of the aviation community. Using this scale, a number of hypotheses were confirmed: (1) Utterances going up the chain of command are more mitigated than those going down, showing that mitigation is sensitive to social rank. (2) Utterances introducing a new topic are more likely to fail if they are mitigated than if they are direct. (3) Suggestions by a crew member to the captain are more likely to fail if they are mitigated than if they are direct. These results show a strong effect of mitigation on several measures of communicative success. This study shows that a quantitative study of communicative success is possible and suggests the necessity for further studies of this type as a necessary direction for discourse analysis. (Pragmatics, discourse analysis, communicative effectiveness, politeness, mitigation, perlocutionary force, man-machine interface)

The different taxonomies of illocutionary acts proposed by Austin, Searle, Vendler, Ohmann, and Fraser are compared in summary form, with Searle's taxonomy taken as a reference standard. All five of these taxonomies slight two kinds of illocutionary act: (I) illocutionary acts that combine commissive with directive illocutionary force (e.g., offering, inviting, challenging), and (2) illocutionary acts that require two participants (e.g., giving, selling, contracting). These and related speech acts are discussed in some detail, and Searle's classification is amended to take them into account. (Speech acts, Austin, Searle, law, contracts, English.)

This article develops an interpretive perspective on public displays of bilingualism. Photographic data from contemporary Wales illustrate how public bilingual—Welsh and English—displays are organized in different frames, reflecting historically changing language-ideological priorities and more local symbolic markets. In institutionally driven displays, the Welsh language is framed as an autonomous code in parallel with English, displacing an earlier pattern of representing Welsh subordinated to English norms. In other frames Welsh is constructed as the only legitimate heartland language, or as an impenetrable cultural curiosity. In the most open and least institutionalized frame, Welsh is displayed as part of a culturally distinctive but syncretic cultural system. These framing contests dramatize deeper tensions that surface in attempts to revitalize minority languages under globalization. (Wales, Welsh, bilingualism, language display, language ideology, linguistic landscapes, metaculture)*

This study investigates the construction of linguistic modernity via English mixing in the discourse of Korean television commercials. Specifically, it is concerned with Korean-English bilinguals' linguistic construction of modernity as realized in three domains of advertising: technology, gender roles, and taste as a cultural form. Four hours of commercials were video-taped in Seoul, South Korea, during weekend prime time from August through October 2002. A total of 720 advertising spots were analyzed. The findings suggest that mixing English with Korean is a linguistic mechanism for the construction of modernity in contemporary South Korea. It is argued that knowledge and use of English in South Korea is a defining linguistic expression of modernity, and the conspicuous total absence of English is linguistically disassociated from modernity.A preliminary version of the paper was presented at Sociolinguistic Symposium 15, April 1–4, 2004, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. My sincere thanks to Rakesh Bhatt, Ingrid Piller, Elizabeth Martin and Tej Bhatia for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their comments, and Alice Filmer for her assistance with copyediting.

As scholars have begun to reach a consensus on the Black English Vernacular (BEV) over the last decade, three important assumptions about that variety have emerged: (a) the grammars of children and adults are essentially alike, (b) BEV is decreolizing, and (c) most differences between BEV and white speech are the result of the persistence of creole features. However, these assumptions are largely based on comparisons of the speech of North American black children to that of Caribbean creole speakers, with no real attempt to establish the direction of grammatical change in BEV. Our work with black children and elderly adults in Texas tries to determine the direction of grammatical change in black English. This work suggests that all three of the assumptions listed above are unwarranted. The grammars of elderly adults and children are structurally, not just quantitatively different. The differences between the two varieties indicate that BEV is not decreolizing but is actually diverging from white speech. Finally, the differences suggest that differences between black and white speech are sometimes the result of contemporary developments rather than of the persistence of creole features. (Black English, decreolization, divergence, language change, reanalysis, sociolinguistics)

The effects of language policies on the symbolic value of the linguistic repertoire merit consideration in needed studies of the consequences of language status planning. Since achieving political autonomy within Spain in 1979, Catalonia has instituted a number of policies, particularly in education, to enhance the status and use of Catalan. A matched guise test was conducted among students in Barcelona in 1980 and again in 1987 to gauge changes in attitudes toward Catalan and Castilian. Conflict between positive status and negative solidarity values of Catalan for nonnative speakers found in 1980 appears to be resolved in 1987. Three aspects of public language policy have attenuated ethnic constraints against nonnative use of Catalan, but further changes in social relations may be necessary to alter patterns of language choice. (Language attitudes, language policy, Catalonia)

This article examines the organization and function of information-withholding sequences, a conversational strategy used by participants in gossip interactions on Nukulaelae, a Polynesian atoll of the Central Pacific. A withholding sequence is a three-turn sequence whereby a piece of information is withheld in the first turn, an other-repair is initiated in the second turn, and the withheld material is provided in the third turn. Information-withholding sequences thus involve moves that in other contexts would be construed as face-threatening. They have a dual function: they provide speakers an opportunity to manipulate their audiences into becoming coproducers of the gossip, and they reinforce the status of their initiator as controller of the floor. Withholding sequences illustrate how ambiguity and repairs can be exploited to meet the communicative demands of particular interactional contexts. They also illustrate how gossip may be framed simultaneously as group-cohesive behavior and self-serving behavior. (Conversation analysis, ethnography of speaking, gossip, conversational repair, Polynesia, Nukulaelae Tuvaluan)

The classic sociolinguistic opposition between status and solidarity as organizing principles of linguistic variation is currently being integrated with broader social theories of symbolic domination and resistance. However, not enough attention has yet been paid to the multiplicity and fluidity of both dominant and oppositional linguistic ideologies within a single social order. Changing elite conceptions about the links between language and social group vie with each other for supremacy, and are in turn contested by various forms of resistance among linguistic minorities. Debates surrounding the linguistic census in 19th and 20th century Hungary are used here as evidence about diverse dominant ideologies, to show how German-Hungarians have responded by producing multiple, competing, and ambiguous oppositional conceptions and linguistic practices. (Linguistic ideologies, forms of resistance, politics of language, minority languages, German speakers in Hungary).

Mukbang is a Korean livestream where a host eats while interacting with viewers. The eater ‘speaks’ to the viewers while eating and the viewers ‘type’ to each other and to the eater through a live chat room. Using interactional sociolinguistics along with insights from conversation analysis (CA) studies, the present study examines how sociable eating is jointly and multimodally achieved in mukbang. Analyzing sixty-seven mukbang clips, I find that mukbang participants coordinate their actions through speech, written text, and embodied acts, and that this coordination creates involvement and, by extension, establishes both community and social agency. Specifically, recruitments are the basic joint action of eating, as participants, who are taking turns, assume footings of the recruit and the recruiter. The host embodies viewers’ text recruitments through embodied animating and puppeteering. As in street performance, the viewers often offer voluntary donations, and the host shows entertaining gratitude in response. (Mukbang, footing, recruitments, agency, involvement, constructed action, multimodal interaction, computer-mediated discourse)*

Mealtimes reveal culturally specific ways of talking, and constitute opportunities for socialization of children into those ways. In 22 Norwegian families and 22 American families, matched for age and gender of preschoolaged child and for participant constellation, mealtimes were examined for the occurrence and type of narrative and explanatory talk. All indices suggested that the Norwegian families produced more narrative talk – in particular, talk about minor deviations from social scripts – whereas the American families produced more explanatory talk, particularly talk focused on explanations for physical events or for individual behaviors. When Norwegian families gave explanations, they were likely to be focused on social norms and deviations from them, like their narratives. The results are interpreted in relation to the Norwegian cultural values of mitigated collectivism, egalitarianism, homogeneity, and implicit social rules, in contrast to American values of individualism, diversity, and explicit formulation and transmission of civic values. (Socialization, culture, narrative, explanation, family, mealtimes, Norway, USA.)

The use of interpersonal verbal routines such as greetings and thanks is examined as a universal phenomenon of human languages, related in some way to the widespread ‘greeting’ behavior of other animals. Examples from Syrian Arabic, American English, and other languages are used to show differing patterns of structure and use, susceptible of grammatical and sociolinguistic analysis. Features of diachronic change and children's acquisition are briefly treated. Call is made for better description and analysis of politeness formulas in grammars of languages and in ethnographics of communication. (Ritual, politeness, language change, language acquisition.)

American quantitative sociolinguistics has drawn substantially on data from the African American speech community for its descriptive, theoretical, and methodological development, but has given relatively little in return. Contributions from the speech community to sociolinguistics include the development of variable rules and frameworks for the analysis of tense-aspect markers, social class, style, narratives, and speech events, plus research topics and employment for students and faculty. The contributions which sociolinguistics could make in return to the African American speech community – but has not done sufficiently – include the induction of African Americans into linguistic, the representation of African Americans in our writings, and involvement in courts, workplaces, and schools, especially with respect to the teaching of reading and the language arts. This last issue has surged to public attention following the Oakland School Board's “Ebonics” resolutions on Dec. 18, 1996.

The present unequal partnership between researcher and researched is widespread within linguistics. Suggestions are made for establishing service in return as a general principle and practice of teaching and research in our field. (African American Vernacular English, Ebonics, applications of sociolinguistics, community service, dialect readers, variation theory)

This article examines the influence of language ideology on interactions between English-speaking Anglo and monolingual Spanish-speaking employees in an Anglo-owned Mexican restaurant in Texas. In directives to Spanish-speaking employees, Anglo managers typically use English with elements of Mock Spanish. Because the Anglo managers fail to question whether their limited use of Spanish is sufficient for communicative success, Spanish speakers are almost always held responsible for incidents resulting from miscommunication. For Latino workers, Spanish provides an alternative linguistic market in which Spanish operates as a form of solidarity and resistance. The competing functions of Spanish serve to reinforce racial segregation and inequality in the workplace.I am greatly indebted to the restaurant workers who shared their experiences and opinions with me. For helpful discussions and comments, I would like to thank Eriko Atagi, Mary Bucholtz, Elaine Chun, Erin Debenport, Jane Hill, Jennifer Palmer, Robin Queen, Otto Santa Ana, Teresa Satterfield, Keith Walters, Albert Zapata, and an anonymous reviewer.

This article concerns generation and food morality, drawing on video recordings of dinners in Swedish middle-class families. A detailed analysis of affect displays during one family dinner extends prior work on food morality (Ochs, Pontecorvo, & Fasulo 1996; Grieshaber 1997; Bourdieu 2003; Wiggins 2004), documenting ways in which participants may shift between distinct generational positions with respect to affects and food morality (from “irresponsible child” to caretaker positions). In our recordings, an elder sibling is shifting between a series of contrasting affective stances (Ochs & Schieffelin 1989; M. Goodwin 2006; Stivers 2008), linked to generational positions along an implicit age continuum: positioning himself, at one end of the continuum, as his young brother's accomplice, and at the other as an adult, a serious guardian of food morality. This study shows that generational positions are not fixed, but are positions adopted as parts of language socialization and interactional events. (Generational positions, caretaker positions, social age, affective stances, alignments, negotiations, food morality, language socialization, family life, dinnertime)*

According to some discussions concerning new information technologies and technologically enhanced communication, we are now in a revolution as profound as the printing press. The Internet is creating new kinds of meetingplaces and work areas and the possibilities of new types of relationships across time and space. This article reports on some ways that the Internet is shaping language practices in the Deaf community, with an interest in how new tools mediate and influence human behavior, including language and the organization of interaction. This includes the development and manipulation of a computer-mediated image of self and other, creativity and problem-solving in new communicative spaces, creating reciprocal perspectives, new participation frameworks, and specifics of language change. For the first time, deaf people can communicate using manual visual language, in many cases their native language, across space and time zones. This groundbreaking situation makes the Deaf community a particularly productive site for research into relationships between technological innovations and new communicative practices.

This article examines how social stereotypes influence listeners' perceptions of indexical language. Building on recent developments in linguistics and social psychology, I investigate the extent to which stereotypical attitudes and beliefs about categories of speakers serve to enable the association of linguistic features with particular social meanings while simultaneously blocking others. My arguments are based on an analysis of listener perceptions of the intersecting categories of gender, sexuality, and social class among men in the UK. Using a modified matched-guise paradigm to test three category-relevant variables (mean pitch, spectral characteristics of /s/, and TH-fronting), I demonstrate how the perception of social meaning is governed by a combination of both attitudinal and cognitive factors. This finding is important because it illustrates the listener-dependent nature of sociolinguistic perception. Moreover, it also provides further empirical support for an understanding of social meaning as an emergent property of language-in-use. (speech perception, attitudes and stereotypes, sexuality, phonetic variation)*

The intertwined role of language ideologies and affect in language shift and revitalization can be understood by taking a language socialization perspective on local micro-level interaction between adult Gaelic learners and fluent Gaelic-English bilinguals. Seven adults living in the Western Isles were interviewed about their efforts to learn and speak Scottish Gaelic, a minority language spoken by 1–2% of Scotland’s population. Their negative affective stances in describing their interactions with local Gaelic-English bilinguals indicate that they were being socialized into an ideology of local Gaelic-English sociolinguistic boundaries: an “etiquette of accommodation” to English speakers and wariness about public Gaelic speaking. This socialized combination of ideology and negative affect reduces opportunities for Gaelic speaking, hindering both Gaelic learners’ efforts to become fluent speakers and their potential contribution to language revitalization. In contrast, however, the interviewees described “sociolinguistic mentors” who socialized them into a more inclusive vision of Gaelic speaking laden with positive affect.1