The dramatic reconfiguration of the social, political, and ideological order in South Africa since 1990/1994 has demanded a concomitant reconceptualization of (white) Afrikaner notions of self and belonging in the (new) nation. In this article, we draw on recent developments in the study of varidirectional voicing (polyphony), performance, and mediatization to examine how the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord makes use of parody and metaparody in their music to critique emerging ‘new Afrikaner’ identities and the racial, class, and gender configurations on which they are based. We also discuss the structural limits of these critiques and the political potential of (meta)parodic performance more generally. ((Meta)parody, polyphony, performance, race, class, gender, South Africa)*

This study investigates cases of language ‘policing’ as educational language policies, and the way that these are represented across different policy levels. Focusing on UK schools and using discursive approaches to language policy as a theoretical framework, I critically examine the motivations and justifications that institutions provide for designing and implementing policies whereby nonstandardised forms are ‘banned’, and how these are reported in metalinguistic discourse. Drawing on a range of data including media discourse, policy documents, teacher interviews and linguistic landscapes, I textually trace how educational language policies (re)produce prescriptive and linguicist ideologies, often using metaphors of crime, and often using language as a proxy for social factors such as academic achievement, employability, and standards. Overall, I argue that micro- and meso-level language policies are a partial product of the linguistic conservatism as found within current macro-level educational policy. (Language policy, language policing, schools, language ideologies)*

Sign language lexicons include iconic items, where phonological form is somewhat representative of sense. As experiences of individuals change, the mapping from form to meaning may become inappropriate (as when technological or environmental changes occur) or may be considered incongruous with perceptions of reality (as when culture shifts). Many misalignments of form and sense are tolerated, with the result that a sign's original iconicity is lost. Other misalignments are obliterated; signers make sublexical changes or entire lexical substitutions. We call these (sub)lexical changes ‘corrections’. We argue that misalignments that are regrettable are more likely to be corrected, where regrettable misalignments are those that are not true to realities/experiences of profound importance to deaf individuals.

While the focus here is on American Sign Language, corrections should be apparent in any sign language and might occur in those spoken languages with a high frequency of nonarbitrary relationships between form and sense. (Sign language, variation, taboo terms, euphemism, iconicity, identity)*

As part of the project reported on in this special issue, the present study provides an overview of the types of action accomplished by other-repetition in Italian, with particular reference to the variety of the language spoken in the northeastern province of Trento. The analysis surveys actions within the domain of initiating repair, actions that extend beyond initiating repair, and actions that are alternative to initiating repair. Pitch contour emerges as a central design feature of other-repetition in Italian, with six nuclear contours associated with distinct types of action, sequential trajectories, and response patterns. The study also documents the interplay of pitch contour with other prosodic features (pitch span and register) and visible behavior (head nods, eyebrow movements). (Repetition, conversation, prosody, intonation, action, Italian)*

This study examines other-repetitions in Finland Swedish talk-in-interaction: their sequential trajectories, prosodic design, and lexicogrammatical features. The key objective is to explore how prosody can contribute to the action conveyed by a repetition turn, that is, whether it deals with a problem of hearing or understanding, a problem of expectation, or just registers receipt of information. The analysis shows that large and upgraded prosodic features (higher onset, wider pitch span than the previous turn) co-occur with repair- and expectation-oriented repetitions, whereas small, downgraded prosody (lower onset, narrower pitch span than the previous turn) is characteristic of registering. However, the distinguishing strength of prosody is mostly gradient (rather than discrete), and because of this, other concomitant cues, most notably the speakers’ epistemic positions in relation to the repeated item, are also of importance for ascribing a certain pragmatic function to a repetition. (Repetition, other-repetition, action ascription, prosody in conversation, repair, epistemics, conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, Finland Swedish)*

Cushing argues that government policy in the UK is prescriptive and encourages similar policies at school level (as reported in the press), which in turn encourage the ‘policing’ of language by school teachers. I offer an alternative reading of the evidence in which government policy, as stated in official documents, generally avoids prescriptivism, as do an unknown number of schools and school teachers; where prescriptivism persists it reflects a prescriptive culture in society, not government policy. The conclusion is that government policy is only one influence on teachers’ behaviour, so if government wants to eliminate prescriptivism it needs to take a stronger position than simply avoiding prescriptivism in its own documents. (Education, prescriptivism, policy, Britain)

This discussion is a response to Richard Hudson's response to my article, ‘The policy and policing of language in schools’ (Cushing 2019). Hudson argues that current education policy in England generally rejects and avoids prescriptivism and sets out to illustrate this in reference to a number of policy documents. As in my original article, I conceive of language policy as p/Political and one way in which language ideologies get turned into practices, through a series of policy mechanisms such as curricula, tests, and guidance for teachers. I show how these mechanisms do not ‘reject’ prescriptivism, but explicitly perpetuate it, and thus act as a system of coercion which can lead teachers into reproducing these ideologies in their practice. I argue that Hudson's argument is limited because of its depoliticised stance and understanding of key sociolinguistic concepts and issues, such as ‘Standard English’, ‘linguistic correctness’, and language education itself. (Language education policy, language ideologies, critical applied linguistics, schools, England)*