This work concerns structural outcomes of contact between Mexican Sign Language (LSM) and American Sign Language (ASL). A brief description of the social environment that leads to contact between LSM and ASL along the U.S.–Mexico border is provided, and two claims are advanced: (i) Contact between sign languages can exhibit characteristics of contact between spoken languages (e.g., interference), but there are also unique features of signed-language contact due to the ability to produce elements from a signed and spoken language simultaneously; and (ii) examples of interference from one sign language in the production of the other are sometimes systematic and predictable based on the signer's linguistic background, but cases of lack of interference also provide evidence that some signers are able to employ subtle articulatory differences, either consciously or not, when producing signs from the sign language that was learned after they acquired their first sign language.This work was supported by a National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders grant (F31 DC00352) to the author. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and Barbara Johnstone for their comments on an earlier draft of this article, and Claire Ramsey and Sergio Peña provided input about the Mexican Deaf situation as well. Any errors are, of course, my own.

This article treats a place-naming genre among residents of the White Mountain Apache reservation in which people use English-language mass media discourse to name newly constructed neighborhoods on the reservation, usually with humorous effect. It is argued that these names do not represent simple assimilation to mainstream discursive norms. Instead, they represent the deployment of media discourse according to locally defined speech genres and language ideology to comment on social changes brought about by the new housing developments. As a strategy for engaging with the dominant society, these names are acts of community self-definition that confound mainstream expectations for place names generally, and for Native American place names in particular. They celebrate participation in media discourse, but in terms that privilege reservation insiders. Use of these names constitutes the reservation as an interpretive community in which participation is defined not along nationalistic models of citizenship, but in terms of locally established idioms of sociality.I gratefully acknowledge financial support for this research provided by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Phillips Fund for Native American Research of the American Philosophical Society, and the Jacobs Research Fund of the Whatcom Museum. I thank Eva Lupe, Everett Lupe, Leo Cruz, Cline Griggs, Arlene Lupe, Annette Tenejieth, Gary Lupe, and John Welsh for helping me understand the meaning and use of the names. Particular thanks are due to Barbara Johnstone and two anonymous reviewers for Language in Society for suggesting revisions that substantially improved the argument of this article and its articulation with other work in linguistic anthropology. Earlier versions of this article were presented in a session organized by David Samuels at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, to the anthropology departments at Hamilton College and the University of Nevada, Reno; and to the University of Virginia Linguistic Anthropology Seminar. I am grateful for the critical contributions of Dell Hymes, Thomas J. Nevins, David Samuels, Margaret Field, Allexandra Jaffe, Ellen Contini-Morava, Eve Danziger, Phillip Greenfeld, Bonnie Urciuoli, and Charles Kaut. Any shortcomings, of course, are my own.

This study provides a linguistic perspective on the structure and the interpretation of a key historical narrative in Umpithamu (a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia), against the background of a larger corpus of narrative texts in Umpithamu. The analysis focuses on the role of participant tracking devices in the macro-structure of the narrative, and the role of case marking in the build-up of narrative motifs. It is argued not only that marked types of participant tracking serve to mark the boundaries of episodes, as often noted in the literature, but also that some types have additional functions within episodes, which leads to a proposal for refinement of Fox's (1987) Principle of Morphosyntactic Markedness. On a micro-structural level, it is shown how a rare system of case marking is used by the narrator to construe white–Aboriginal interactions as events in which the Aboriginal participants experience an extreme lack of control.The first author would like to thank Mrs. Florrie Bassani and Ms. Joan Liddy, who so patiently taught him about their language, their life, and their history, and Bruce Rigsby, who introduced him to the Lamalama people and generously shared his earlier recordings of Umpithamu and his vast knowledge of Princess Charlotte Bay languages. Fieldwork on Umpithamu was sponsored by the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders, which funded two research stays at the University of Melbourne, and the Australian Department of Communication, IT and the Arts (DCITA), which funded another fieldtrip. Many thanks to Nick Evans and the Department of Linguistics in Melbourne for hosting the first author's stays, and to Clair Hill for organizing the DCITA grant. A previous version of this article was presented at the 2nd European Workshop on Australian Aboriginal Languages in Somlószőlős, and at a workshop on Australian Aboriginal Narrative at the Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik. We would like to thank the members of the audience, especially Nick Enfield, Nick Evans, Clair Hill, Judit Horváth, Danièle Klapproth, Stephen Levinson, Bill McGregor, Adam Saulwick, Gunter Senft, Peter Sutton, and Michael Walsh, for very useful comments. We are also grateful to the reviewers and the editor for very detailed comments on a previous version.

It is often supposed that dialect contact and dialect mixture were involved in the development of new colonial varieties of European languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, and Australian English. However, while no one has denied that dialect contact took place, the role of dialect mixture has been disputed. Among those who do not accept a role for it, some have also considered the role of identity, especially new national identities, to be self-evident. This article argues for the role of dialect mixture and against the role of identity. It presents case studies from pre-16th-century colonial expansions of European languages, an era when any role for national identities would be very hard to argue for. Instead, it suggests that dialect mixture is the inevitable result of dialect contact, and that the mechanism which accounts for this is quasi-automatic accommodation in face-to-face interaction.NOTE: Very many thanks for help with this article go to David Britain, Brian Joseph, Lesley Milroy, James Milroy, and especially Max Wheeler.

Peter Trudgill's account of new-dialect formation is uniformitarian, a position I have embraced explicitly since Mufwene 2001. In Mufwene 2006, I show how similar the mechanisms involved are to those that account for the emergence of creoles, the basic difference lying in the composition of the contact setting's feature pool (see also below). The position I defend is even less moderate, as I argue that in the history of humankind language speciation has basically been a consequence of how internal variation within a language has been affected by migrations of its speakers and additionally by the different contacts the relevant populations have had among themselves (Trudgill's position) and with speakers of other languages in their new, colonial ecologies (Mufwene 2005, 2007, 2008). The reader should not be surprised to see in this response comments that are primarily intended to support and complement the position of the target article.

Trudgill argues cogently against identity and in favor of automaticity as the primary basis for accommodation in koine formation. I agree with the general thrust of his arguments, and below offer qualifications and evidence that support them, but I also present caveats and alternative views, particularly with regard to the ordering relations between identity (or identity formation) and accommodation.

Peter Trudgill's essay raises important issues, some of which are uncontroversial while others are less convincing, partly because of a narrow concept of identity and partly because of an infelicitous choice of case studies. For him, the denial of identity seems axiomatic, while I suggest that what his criticism boils down to is the relationship between accommodation and identity, and the question of when and how identity as a social concept is effective, specifically in processes of colonial and postcolonial dialect formation.

In sociolinguistics, where identity tends to be our first explanatory resource, Peter Trudgill's claim that identity is “irrelevant” as a factor in his area of interest is particularly striking. There are at least three questions here. The first is Trudgill's direct concern: whether identity considerations impinged on the development of new national colonial varieties. The second is the underlying question of whether identity, in itself and in general, can stand as a motive for sociolinguistic action and change. The third is whether face-to-face linguistic accommodation, which Trudgill invokes as the core process through which new dialects come to be, can and does function in the absence of identity considerations.

I shall begin this brief contribution with a small amount of self-justification, since I appear to have become picked out as one of the “bad guys” in Trudgill's thesis. I shall then go on to agree with some of Trudgill's points, but not with all. In particular, I shall conduct a small thought experiment on the link between accommodation and the development of new dialects.

There is much that any sociolinguist would agree with in Peter Trudgill's essay. It is written in his usual lucid style, and supported by a wealth of detail, reflecting his extensive knowledge, research, and scholarly expertise. However, it is stimulatingly provocative on the issue of why particular variants win out in dialect contact situations. Our response falls into two sections: (i) the identity issue, and (ii) the New Zealand situation.

There is nothing controversial about Keller's assertion that human beings operate according to a powerful maxim which he renders as “Talk like the others talk.” This is self-evidently true (although we could of course discuss precisely who “the others” might be). If it were not true, there would be, say, no local dialects. The fact that everyone who has grown up in the same community speaks in the same way therefore, in a sense, needs no discussion. It is always the case, as near enough as makes no difference.

Anne O'Keeffe, Investigating media discourse. London: Routledge. 2006. Pp. x, 180. Pb $24.99.

Researchers who examine media discourse play in a field made wide by the polysemy of both of the constituent terms that name it. While “media” texts appear in newspapers, on television, on the web, on the radio, in film, in books, and in magazines, among others, most studies can only afford to focus on a single medium and on a single layer of media production or media language. And “discourse” presents its usual problems of site and scale: Are we examining cultures, professions, performances, texts, and/or linguistic features? Although all of these can claim to be parts of discourse, most studies can only afford to focus in detail on a single layer.

Alessandro Duranti (ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, 2006. Pp. xx, 625. Pb $39.95.

Looked at one way, Duranti's hefty edited volume could be construed as one massive speech act that performatively attempts to crystallize “linguistic anthropology” as a discipline. Twenty-two chapters, many of them written by leading lights in the field, are grouped into four sections: “Speech communities, contact, and variation,” “The performing of language,” “Achieving subjectivities and intersubjectivities through language,” and “The power in language.” Many chapters, however, are so richly conceived their content cross-cuts these groupings. The authors have been charged with crafting an introductory account of their assigned topics, which they do for the most part with success, pitching their arguments to appeal to readers ranging from advanced undergraduates to scholars seeking an entrée into new intellectual territory. The ambitious reader who covers the entire volume can extrapolate a portrait of how the discipline has come into focus over the past three decades or so under the influence of certain key scholars (Susan Gal, Jane Hill, Judith Irvine, Elinor Ochs, Michael Silverstein, and Kathryn Woolard, to name but a few). And all readers will emerge informed about the tools linguistic anthropology offers to understand how selves and social worlds are negotiated through language.

Deborah Cameron & Don Kulick (eds.), The language and sexuality reader. London & New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 322. Pb $41.95.

This collection of articles represents a range of different takes on the subject of language, gender, and sexuality. The editors' definition of their project is deliberately broad: “the role played by language in producing and organizing sex as a meaningful domain of human experience” (p. 1). Accordingly, there are 23 articles organized into two unequal parts. The first is historical and takes up one-third of the book, while the second is contemporary and comprises the latter two-thirds. Each section is prefaced by a brief introduction providing the theoretical background informing the choice of texts. Overall, although occasionally lacking focus, the collection is intellectually stimulating, absorbing, and often downright enjoyable. For instructors teaching a course on language and gender, this reader would make a good starting place for class discussion, including as it does many key pieces on topics like verbally positioning oneself as heterosexual, the discourses of rape and resistance, and the creation of sexual identities among the ambiguously gendered.

Ian Hutchby, Media talk: Conversation analysis and the study of broadcasting. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 185. Hb £60.00, Pb £18.99.

Ian Hutchby's Media talk is an introduction to the analysis of talk-in-interaction on television and radio. Since the early 1990s, attention to interactive and discursive patterns in these broadcast media has produced a large, rich, and diversified body of work, targeting a wide range of media genres and issues from a variety of approaches. Gradually, this body of work is combining to form a unique field of study. One possible indication of this gradual consolidation of the field and of its diversity and richness is the recent, almost simultaneous publication of two introductory texts on media talk that share the same title but differ in scope, methodological approach, and generic breadth (the other is Tolson 2006). Despite its development, the study of media talk has remained until now on the periphery of media studies, and attention to the details of talk-in-interaction is often missing from the methodological mainstream of the discipline. Ian Hutchby's book aims at addressing this gap by introducing the study of media talk to students of the media. The book can be read as an extended argument for the analysis of talk, demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing macroscopic questions regarding broadcast media as a social institution from a unique perspective grounded in micro-analysis.

Louis de Saussure & Peter Schulz (eds.), Manipulation and ideologies in the twentieth century. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2005. Pp. xvi, 312. Hb €115.00/$US 138.00

One of the interesting developments in discourse analysis is its increasing interest in the explicit description and account of politically relevant text and talk and their relationships to various forms of social cognition. The collection of studies edited by Louis de Saussure and Peter Schulz is among those books that focus on this interface between political discourse and political cognition. It does so specifically by examining one of the most conspicuous forms of discursive power abuse – manipulation – as well as its relationship with ideologies, especially the totalitarian right-wing ideologies of the 20th century.

Donal A. Carbaugh, Cultures in conversation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xxvii, 149. $22.50.

Cultures in conversation examines intercultural interactions in Finland, Russia, and the United States. Drawing primarily on research in communications, the book presents selected case studies that highlight key “cultural symbols” and the communicative practices these make relevant. These include American beliefs about self-expression, Finnish “silence,” the Russian “soul,” and Blackfeet “spirit.” In each chapter, intercultural encounters (e.g. Russian/American, Finnish/American, Blackfeet/White) are explained using a key concept. Both public and private interactions are covered, and the author himself features prominently as a participant in several of the examples. The transcripts of the encounters include ones drawn from fieldnotes, videotaped reenacted versions of earlier interactions, and broadcast media.

Roger W. Shuy, Linguistics in the courtroom: A practical guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 146. Hb $35.00.

The focus of Linguistics in the courtroom is narrower than the title implies: It is not intended for, say, linguists who are courtroom interpreters or those who are concerned with reforming jury instructions to make them more intelligible. Rather, this is a succinct, authoritative guidebook for linguists who give scientific advice to attorneys about linguistic issues in criminal and civil court cases. Consultants frequently are asked to write reports, filed under oath, that are intended to influence judges and worry opposing counsel; Roger Shuy cogently describes such documents, their purposes, and the processes for drawing them up (chapter 6). In civil cases, report writers are usually cross-examined under oath in a discovery procedure called a “deposition” (chapter 7). Occasionally, the linguist also appears as an expert witness in trial appearances before judges and juries (chapters 8–9). These chapters alone are well worth the price of the book.

Sali Tagliamonte, Analysing sociolinguistic variation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 296. Pb $34.99.

Analysing sociolinguistic variation fulfills the expectations of a modern textbook. It includes exercises (one at the end of each chapter) and breakout boxes containing tips, summaries, tables, and data analysis examples. However, I can envision myself using it more in my own research than in the classroom. This is not because it lacks much as a textbook, but because its detailed explanations and breadth of coverage concerning variationist statistical analysis should direct scholars to more thorough and responsible methodology.

Jane Sunderland, Language and gender: An advanced resource book. London & New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xxiv, 359. Hb $110 Pb $33.95.

This is a textbook designed for use by those studying, researching, and teaching in the field of gender and language. Although it is written from the perspective of linguistics, it is also accessible to people in other relevant disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, and education. As a teacher (Celia Kitzinger) and as an advanced undergraduate student (Rose Rickford) in a sociology department, we read this book at our different academic career stages and both found it a comprehensive and scholarly overview of the field and a useful resource for our own work.