Critical discourse analysts are often criticized for interpreting linguistic data in political contexts, placing the data in an artificial environment motivated by political agendas rather than scientific inquiry, and thereby disregarding findings that would follow from a data-internal and more empirically grounded analysis. This article argues that critical discourse analysis may gain proficiency for social analysis by adopting concepts suitable for cultural and historical analysis of socialization, as found in Bourdieu. Application is demonstrated in a study of a job interview, with close linguistic analysis; close attention is given to the applicant by drawing on evaluations after the interview and on a retrospective interview with the applicant. It is proposed that a method combining linguistic and socio-historical analysis may offer advantages to critical discourse analysis, including a more systematic approach to text-external contexts and qualified, balanced perception of the social agent as a creative yet socially determined individual.

This report extends earlier context-free treatments of turn-taking for conversation by describing the context-sensitive operation of the principal forms of addressing employed by current speakers to select next speakers. It first describes the context-specific limitations of gaze-directional addressing, and the selective deployment and more-than-addressing action regularly accomplished by address terms (most centrally, names). In addition to these explicit methods of addressing, this report introduces tacit forms of addressing that call on the innumerable context-specific particulars of circumstance, content, and composition to select a next speaker.

Numerous discourse markers have been examined in conversation and lecture contexts, but research is sparse on markers in the sermon genre and on the religious discourse communities in which sermons occur. This article examines discourse marker functions of sermonic expressions frequent in performed African American sermons (e.g. Amen, Hallelujah, Praise God). Functions identified include those of textual boundary marker, spiritual maintenance filler, rhythmic marker, and the infrequent call-response marker. Results support the importance of the role that culture (here, African oral tradition) plays in sermon performance.

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.

This article examines variable usage of intensifiers in a corpus from a socially and generationally stratified community. Using multivariate analyses, the authors assess the direction of effect, significance, and relative importance of conditioning factors in apparent time. Of 4,019 adjectival heads, 24% were intensified, and there is an increase in intensification across generations. Earlier forms (e.g. right and well) do not fade away but coexist with newer items. The most frequent intensifiers, however, are shifting rapidly. Very is most common, but only among the older speakers. In contrast, really increases dramatically among the youngest generation; however, the effects of education and sex must be disentangled. The results confirm that variation in intensifier use is a strong indicator of shifting norms and practices in a speech community. Studying such actively changing features can make an important contribution to understanding linguistic change as well as to discovering current trends in contemporary English.

Tsitsipis's valuable and sophisticated linguistic-anthropological study reports on research conducted over a number of years in two Albanian-speaking communities in southern Greece, Spáta in the district of Attika, and Kiriáki in the district of Biotia. These towns historically spoke Arvanítika, a Tosk dialect of Albanian. Although both communities date at least to the fourteenth century, they contrast sharply in that the first is very close to Athens, while the second is in a mountainous, isolated area. Kiriáki has a younger generation of fluent Arvanítika speakers, but language shift to Greek is advanced in both communities – shaped, according to Tsitsipis, not only by economic changes involving improved transportation and communication, the mechanization of agriculture, and urbanization, which have accelerated since the 1950s, but also by the ideological formations associated with the consolidation of the Greek nation-state, dating from the mid-19th century. The latter process focused symbolically on the exaltation of the heritage of the Greeks, and especially of their language. While adding considerable nuance to our understanding of the situation, Tsitsipis confirms the findings of Eric Hamp (1978:161–62; quoted by Tsitsipis on p. 11) that Arvanítika speakers “unflinchingly and happily accept the axioms that Greek is the oldest culture, Greek literature the first … and the Greek language the oldest, the richest … the only one with a true grammar.

This book, it must be said from the outset, is a remarkable addition to the literature on pidgin and creole languages. It is particularly important because it investigates the diachrony and synchrony of an English-lexicon contact language on which very little has been previously published, and whose very existence has been called into question by some.

Glenn Hinson, in Fire in my bones, creatively and accurately captures the essence of Holy Spirit influence on belief and experience among members of the “spirit-filled” or “sanctified” African American community. Much ethnographic work tends to highlight researchers' analytical and supposedly “objective” reports of observed behavior; Hinson, however, takes an ingenious phenomenological approach in which the lived selves of sanctified members are presented through their own individual voices. To the author's credit, attempts to “shape” or refine participants' expressions, observations, analyses, summaries, and so on do not appear in this work.

Readers will observe that this issue has five articles but only three book reviews. This curious ratio is partly the result of my travel schedule, which has required me to submit the issue to the copy editor weeks in advance of when I would normally do so. However, it is also the result of the very slow flow of book reviews into my office. The new five-issue-per-volume format, of course, uses more reviews, and the fault is probably partly mine for not commissioning enough of them. Our founding editor, Dell Hymes, used to write half a dozen book reviews and book notes in each issue; I'm not made of that sort of stuff (although I did contribute a review to this issue, I don't plan to make a habit of it). However, once again, I want to call for book reviewers currently in default to write the reviews that they promised of the excellent volumes that grace their shelves courtesy of this and the past editor! And also, to those who have written offering to do reviews, I thank you and will be in touch with you about your interests. If for some reason I don't reply to your query, please remind me to do so. Readers should watch the “Publications Received” column and request opportunities to review books that look interesting. If the book is not already under review and is appropriate for an LiS review, I'll be delighted to send it to you.