This article examines the use of corporate names as personal nicknames for Asian American youth. The analysis traces the meanings of these nicknaming practices through the concepts of brand personification (how figures of personhood are recruited as embodiments of corporate brands) and emblematic scales (how signs of personhood emerge across trajectories of use and scales of time). Within the crossracial institutional structure of an Asian American supplementary school, these nicknaming practices not only formulate speech, participants, relationships, and settings as informal, but also infuse the nicknamed with brand qualities linked to race, nation, class, and status. These practices also generate fleeting and stable frameworks of group distinction and adequation that operate simultaneously or cyclically and that maintain or transgress classroom roles and racial boundaries. This article demonstrates how an attention to temporal dimensions enables researchers to explore the ways in which small-scale activities accumulate across events and assemble into wider scale structural change. (Nickname, brand, emblem, timescale, trajectory, Asian American youth, race, classroom discourse)*

The topic of this article is how conversationalists deal with emergent problems of reference in the construction of a turn at talk. It analyzes practices for modifying and expanding a turn-constructional unit in progress to accommodate information that will introduce a referent to the interlocutor or check his or her familiarity with it. One set of practices expands the turn after the referring expression has been produced: apokoinou constructions and appositions. A second, and previously undescribed, practice is identified by which speakers insert referent identification before the referring expression has been produced. In this practice, speakers initiate two separate sentence structures and complete them both by merging them in a common complement. This practice has the advantage of embedding the subordinate activity of establishing reference within the main sentence frame, and furthermore minimizes the disruption of sequential progressivity of the talk. (Turn construction, reference, expansions, apokoinou, apposition, progressivity)*

This article contributes to attempts on the part of Quechua scholars to understand the evidential system of this language family, and thereby paves the way for a more complex understanding of Quechua speakers' language and culture. The author opposes the position that the most general meaning of the -mi suffix is to indicate a direct or first-hand experience; and she holds that specific claims about Quechua speakers' epistemological orientations, based on such an analysis, cannot be supported. Evidence from speakers' use of -mi indicates that it encodes two paradigmatic contrasts: one is status-like or modal, the other evidential. The patterning of -mi, including its use and nonuse in a variety of speech types, suggests that Quechua speakers from the Pastaza region of Ecuador do not share Euro-American concern for facts that transcend aesthetic and emotive significance. (Quechua language and culture, evidentiality, language in context, grammatical categories)

Language is involved in processes of group identification in that it provides a focus for explicit discourses of identity and constitutes a field of less overt practices for creating groupness. Drawing on examples from Mauritian television broadcasting, this study traces the ethnicization of Mauritian Bhojpuri as a “Hindu language” through the hierarchization and subsuming of linguistic practices under larger language labels with ethno-national significance. Purist forms of Mauritian Bhojpuri that are locally perceived as “intermediate” registers between Hindi and Bhojpuri are used to represent Hindi as a language spoken in Mauritius, and at the same time to link Mauritian Bhojpuri ideologically to Hindu identity. This blurring of language boundaries serves a Hindu nationalist agenda in a diasporic location by establishing new links between linguistic forms and ethno-national values.Fieldwork in Mauritius was carried out in 1996 and 1997–1998 and was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Chicago Council for Advanced Studies in Peace and International Cooperation (CASPIC). I would like to extend my sincere thanks to these institutions. Research in Mauritius was also facilitated by the University of Mauritius, where I would especially like to thank Vinesh Hookoomsing. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Second University of Chicago/University of Michigan (“Michicagoan”) Graduate Student Conference in Linguistic Anthropology and at the Working Group for Urban Sociolinguistics at New York University. My thanks go to the organizers and participants of these events, from whose comments I greatly benefited. I am also indebted to Lou Brown, Sara Friedman, Susan Gal, Vinesh Hookoomsing, Judith Irvine, Michael Silverstein, and two anonymous reviewers for Language in Society for their careful readings and helpful suggestions at different stages in the writing of this article. Of course, any mistakes are my own. Most of all, I am indebted to the many Mauritians without whose help and friendship my research would have been impossible.

Adaptations to a partner perceived to be conversationally incompetent can be heard in speech to children, the hard-of-hearing, foreigners, speakers with certain speech defects, the aged, and hospital patients. These adaptations may be controlled partially by the actual performance of partners in conversations, through influences on perceived ability. The first half of this paper describes specific changes in children's conversational abilities in early childhood, which in turn may serve to alter how their partners judge their abilities to understand. The second half of the paper addresses the evidence regarding the level and types of changes in adult speech to children as the child's ability changes.

Modern social theory highlights the role of language in social change/reproduction, yet rarely draws on actual linguistic resources or theory. Equally, sociolinguistics situates linguistic practice within the social domain, but only weakly makes links to social theory. Using a linguistic analysis of policing discourses in Northern Ireland, this article considers how such analyses can both inform and be informed by broader social theories. Policing is a contentious issue for nationalists, and despite recent reforms, many continue to regard the (new) police force with suspicion. Data from nationalist women in Belfast are used to explore the thematic frameworks and interactional/pragmatic strategies (pragmatic blocking) through which the speakers jointly produce a “discourse of resistance,” effectively blocking acceptance of the new service. The analysis is discussed in relation to theories of social change (with particular reference to Bourdieu's habitus). Considered are implications for sociolinguistics, social theory, and policing policy in Northern Ireland.This article derives from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded study (Award No. RES 00-22-0257).

This article addresses relationships between micro and macro aspects of language use through analyzing online interactions among neighbors discussing racism in their neighborhood. Membership categorization analysis supplemented with critical theory highlights how the ways neighbors name, characterize, and position categories orients to their rhetorical and identity goals (to construct reasonable stances, to seem not racist), which in turn motivates alignment with critical, folk, or colorblind ideologies of racism. Thus, ideologies do not determine interactional choices participants make, but rather are constituted by those choices. Findings also illustrate how discursive strategies such as reported speech, absurdity, three-part lists, and metadiscourse support ways that neighbors organize categories and achieve their aims. Additional contributions to this study include demonstrating the utility of membership categorization analysis for analyzing discourses of racism and providing practical insight into how racially diverse groups can have productive conversations about racism. (Racism, ideology, membership categorization analysis)*

Stories provide rich environments for understanding how invitations to action, and responses to them, are delicately managed and consequential for shaping just how “the story” evolves as a form of social organization. The present analysis focuses on seventeen invited collaborations, as “Two guys” co-author gossip about an absent woman, and on the distinct interactional dilemmas that arise as morally indignant references are occasioned, initially avoided, and yet gradually pursued as resources for escalating affiliation and intimacy. At noticeably risky moments, as the story gets reconfigured – from a reporting about “last night,” to sexualized fantasy enacted through stereotypic portrayals of uneducated Southern males – speakers' intoned and animated voices are revealed as methodically deployed, prosodically constructed, and increasingly choral practices for shaping story trajectories: artfully crafted resources for contextualizing and negotiating concerted actions in ordinary conversation. The analysis concludes by addressing the question: Are these gossiping actions “sexist”?

While studies of written text continue to engage students from a number disciplines, investigations of naturally occurring talk have increased exponentially in the last decade. This paper reports on such an investigation, comprehensive discourse analysis of talk among professional peers (in a doctoral dissertation defense), attending to an instance of problematic communication and to some possible implications and interpretations of such nonsuccesses in social interaction. The method employed is an adaptation Labov and Fanshel. (Communicative nonsuccess, comprehensive discourse analysis, interaction among professional peers, naturally occurring talk, social structure, and language use.)

A central feature of the oral discourse of the Kuna Indians of Panama is the line. The nature of lines, verses, and other poetic and rhetorical units has recently emerged as a significant topic within the study of native American languages and discourse generally. Investigation of the structuring of Kuna lines requires attention to the intersection and interplay of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and poetic structures, patterns, and processes. (Discourse, line and verse patterning, ethnopoetics; Panama, Kuna.)

This study uses data from a shoe-repair shop, supplemented by data from medical and mundane contexts, to analyze three progressively minimal grammatical formats used to implement offers and requests in interaction (i.e. do you want…?, you want…?, and want…?). We argue that this cline of minimality reflects a cline of the action-initiator's stance, from relatively weak to strong (respectively), regarding their expectation that the action will be accepted or complied with. In doing so, we illustrate that, as part of the design of requests and offers, participants rely on more granular distinctions than a simple binary between interrogative and declarative morphosyntax. We conclude with a discussion of the interactional logic that undergirds the normative use of these grammatical formats, and of our findings’ implications for action formation and preference organization. (Conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, offer, request, stance, grammar, morphosyntax)*

This study explores a phenomenon in Japanese conversation that might be regarded as “discourse-within-a-sentence,” or interpolating a sequence of talk during ongoing sentence construction. It explicates the way in which Japanese speakers use postpositional particles as a resource to incorporate an element in a parenthetical sequence into the syntax of a sentence-in-progress. It is shown that the usability of postpositions for achieving discourse-within-a-sentence comes from the situated workings of postpositions used in a wider range of interactional contexts. Through a detailed examination of relevant instances from transcribed Japanese conversations, this study addresses such issues as (i) “sentences” in interaction as both a resource for, and an outcome of, intricate interactional work; (ii) postpositions as resources for retroactive transformations of turn-shapes in Japanese; and (iii) the relationship between typological features of the grammar of a language and forms of interactional practices.I wish to thank the following people for valuable comments at various stages in the development of this article: William Bright, Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, Noriko Fujii, Charles Goodwin, Jane Hill, Junko Mori, Tsuyoshi Ono, Jerome Packard, Hiroko Tanaka, and Sandra Thompson. Remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.

On the plateau area of Madagascar, the rules for ceremonial speech (kabary), and skill in it, are sources of pride and topics of great interest. The most elaborate use of kabary is in the public marriage request. This event is intended to give honor to the girl's family and to evoke confidence in the boy's family, securing an alliance between them. Conceptions of the ground rules of proper kabary are diverse. There are discussions of them before, within, alongside, and after the event. The diversity includes a broad contrast between the ‘Ancestral Way’ and the ‘New Way’. Social change, but also the interests and strategies of the two parties (the boy's family and the girl's family) are involved in choice of one of these. Crucial to the conduct and success of the event is the notion of an ‘error’. What constitutes an ‘error’ is open to dispute and the significance of particular rules varies with both the strategies of the two parties, and the way in which the event is unfolding. An overriding constraint is that the alliance which the event is to ratify be accomplished. (Speech styles and social structure; ideal speech; conflict of speech norms; performance strategies; ‘error’ in performance; emergent qualities of performances; Madagascar; Malagasy (Malayo-Polynesian).)

This study examines the language-driven aspects of the formation of a classroom-based community of practice (CoP), placing emphasis on ways in which researchers can verify the status of observed practices. Discourse analysis is reinforced by such an evidence-based understanding of the social milieu of a research site. When determining whether an aggregate of people is functioning as a CoP, however, the nature of the measuring stick is a vital question. When institutional forces have brought a group of participants together, how can an observer verify empirically the dynamic development of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire? In a sample case study, representative features outlined by Wenger (1998:130–31) are identified, and their emergence traced, via analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes and audio recordings. These features provide evidence of the development of localised practices (i.e. ways of doing grounded in this community) as distinct from more widely recognisable practices. Identifying the difference increases the likelihood that results of discourse analysis can be useful to educators. (Community of practice, discourse analysis, nexus of practices, warranting)*

This introduction presents a framework for analyzing the semiotic dimensions of mobility. Drawing upon the notion of pathway (Wortham & Reyes 2015), it examines how mobility is facilitated by semiotic processes that link linguistic emblems with speaker images across time and space (Agha 2007). It focuses on the circulation of discursive forms, facilitated by media technologies and complex patterns of transnational interaction, which ascribe identities to people on the move and root such identities within hierarchical structures of the market on local, national, and transnational scales. Looking at how interdiscursive networks intersect with people's experience of mobility and the way they position themselves in social space, this article problematizes the divide between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ approaches, offering a historically grounded approach to operations of power that permeate both metapragmatic discourse and experiences of mobility. (Mobility, metapragmatics, mediatization, interdiscursivity)*

The multilingualism and patterns of language use in Misión La Paz, Salta Province, Argentina are described and analyzed. Three indigenous languages, Chorote, Nivaclé, and Wichí, are spoken here, but interlocutors in conversations usually do not speak the same language to one another. There is extensive linguistic exogamy, and husbands and wives typically speak different languages to one another. Individuals identify with one language, speak it to all others, and claim only to understand but not to speak the other languages spoken to them. Children in the same family very often identify with and thus speak different languages from one another. This situation is examined and explanations are offered, with comparisons to similar situations elsewhere. The pattern of language choice and multilingual use in this case is arguably unique, with implications for several general claims about language contact and multilingualism.

This article characterizes a spoken genre, bargaining, found in retail encounters in traditional markets in southern China. Analysis of substantive acts in 38 tape-recorded interactions shows that verbal and nonverbal actions within the event carry a small set of illocutionary forces germane to negotiating price and quantity. Analysis of ritual acts that mark boundaries of the event shows that participants behave primarily as outgroup persons seeking to transact business. Bargaining hence constitutes a primary genre (Bakhtin 1986), a textual form that shows domination of a transaction frame over a consultation and a valet frame, and a communicative purpose that is tightly circumscribed around the exchange of commodities and not relationship. A socially oriented form of genre analysis is apt for elucidating the speakers' strategic use of generic resources, as well as investigating development in retail marketing in the PRC, marked by growing popularity of new retail outlets and changing consumer attitudes.

The study reported here reports data on the validity of a Canadian version of Labov's “index of linguistic insecurity.” Data were gathered from a random sample of two census tracts in Winnipeg, Canada. Both Labov's original test and a new Canadian equivalent test were given to the sample of eighty adults. Scores on the two tests were highly correlated, indicating high criterion validity of the Canadian test. Also, social class and gender differences followed the same pattern as in Labov's study, with the lower middle class and females showing higher levels of linguistic insecurity. The use of the New York City test in Winnipeg is discussed, and some details concerning Canadian English are presented. (Language attitudes, linguistic insecurity, Canadian English, social class)

Although it is well accepted that linguistic naming conventions provide valuable insights into the social and linguistic perceptions of people, this topic has not received much attention in sociolinguistics. Studies focus on the etymology of names, details about the social and historical circumstances of their emergence, and their users, and sometimes make recommendations about the appropriateness of terms. This article departs from this tradition. Focusing on the term “Takitaki” in French Guiana, it shows that an analysis of the discursive uses of language names by all local actors provides significant insights into the social and linguistic makeup of a complex sociolinguistic situation. Descriptions of languages in such settings should be based on the varieties identified by such an analysis and on practices in a range of naturalistic interactions. Based on these analytical steps, the authors propose a multi-perspective approach to language documentation.We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal for valuable comments and criticisms on an earlier version of this article. All remaining errors are, of course, our own responsibility.

This article combines textual, videotape, historical, and ethnographic evidence to describe the Bangla psychiatric register and its enregisterment. Enregisterment is a process “through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable [and] … socially recognized” (Agha 2003:231). The emergence of psychiatric registers in Europe and, later, Bangladesh bore the particular burden of psychiatry's “magic complex” – its need to convince a skeptical public that its perceived associations with magic and religion were finished, vanquished in part by discursive measures, focused on a scientizing drive. Psychiatric Bangla appears to involve the sort of pervasive use of parallelism normally associated with ritual texts. This indicates a profound hybridity that may contribute to the psychiatric unease epitomized in the magic complex.The author gratefully acknowledges suggestions and comments from Carol Berkenkotter, Dan Conrad, Laurence Kirmayer, Barbara Johnstone, Greg Matoesian, and two anonymous reviewers for Language in Society. Sayeed Ahmed provided enormous help with transliterating most of the letters analyzed, and with translating some. Anna Corwin and other students in my Linguistic Anthropology Lab (fall 2006) helped with figures. Naturally, the author is responsible for all flaws that remain.