Mark Lewis invites us to reconsider the theory of social change that underpins Labov's principle of error correction (PEC), which assumes that change will occur when researchers share their (privileged) linguistic knowledge with the wider public. This is a welcome invitation, for it opens up space for critical reflection on the role sociolinguists can play in public debates about language. As my use of the term critical suggests, I align with Lewis’ position that we must relinquish Labov's (1982) quest for ‘objectivity’ in favour of critical reflexivity. This involves interrogating our own positioning, interests and investments, the nature of the knowledge we produce, and how this relates to other sources of knowledge and opinion. In this spirit, I reflect on my own experiences as a sociolinguist who has made relatively modest attempts to intervene in UK debates about language, with questionable success. In doing so, I take up Lewis’ call to incorporate a language ideological analysis into social-change efforts and to refocus attention on the material and institutional aspects of inequality.

This article considers a practice in French talk-in-interaction, formally characterized as other-repeats prefaced by the change-of-state particle ah. The target practice accomplishes a claim of receipt, while at the same time indexing as somehow inadequate a previous turn by the receipt speaker. Evidence drawn upon includes: (i) the sequential locations of the examined phenomenon; (ii) ensuing developments of the sequence, wherein the indexed inadequacy is more explicitly acknowledged; and (iii) the discriminability of the focal practice with respect to alternative practices. Two phonetically distinguished variants of the practice, and their respective sequential projections (‘problematizing’ topicalization or ‘accepting’ closure), are discussed. This article contributes to the study of how intersubjectivity is managed and administered by participants, and to research on the management of accountability for producing ‘adequate’ turns and actions. Finally, it addresses ongoing discussions concerning the analysis of multiple actions (first- and second-order) conveyed simultaneously in single turns. (French, talk-in-interaction, repetition, receipts, particles, indexicality, intersubjectivity, prosody, phonetics)*

We examined the effect of general statements against sexist usage in the style manual for The Washington Post. We selected a minor usage pattern that was not the subject of an explicit rule, namely, the difference in the use of a middle initial in references to men and to women. This usage was taken as an index of the possible effect of a general policy statement on newswriting practice. We found significantly less difference by sex in this usage subsequent to the publication of the style manual. We take the difference as support for the effectiveness of language planning in this instance, although the significance of our results as evidence of real equality of treatment remains somewhat problematic. There are different points of view in sociolinguistics about the relative value of quantitative versus more directly interpretive methods. We present in some detail the reasoning behind the use of quantitative methods to support an investigation such as ours. (Language planning, language treatment, language and sex, language and the media, style and usage, forms of reference, statistical methods)

Ongoing change in Wolof noun classification is traced by comparing nineteenth-century linguistic evidence with modern sociolinguistic data. On the rural scene, the noun class system today displays competing generalizations, associated with different social groups. Upwardly mobile middle-aged men of high caste tend to reduce the system, whereas other speakers tend to elaborate it. The source of both tendencies can be found in Wolof cultural assumptions relating social rank to norms of verbal conduct. In particular, an idea that linguistic ‘error’ can be appropriate for high-ranking persons underlies the reductionist tendencies of upwardly mobile speakers. Although the two tendencies compete on one level, on another they combine to form a more general systemic trend toward the incorporation of social features into Wolof syntax. (Sociolinguistic change, noun classification, norms for performance, ‘appropriate error’, criteria for inference of change; Wolof language of Senegal.)

To reexamine the explanation of stylistic variation given by Bell 1984, this article considers Bell's audience design factors in relation to those associated with the domains described by Fishman 1972. Data collected longitudinally from three preschool children in the Trinidad sociolinguistic complex were examined for variation in production of Trinidad Creole and Standard English verb forms. All three children exhibited stylistic variation; but the nature of the variation shed further light on audience design, since audience factors sometimes remained constant, while speech patterns exhibited variation. It appears that the demands of the wider Trinidadian society (in particular for children), along with the education system, interact with familial demands to impose social/psychological constraints which impinge on and modify audience design. In addition, an implicational scaling of response to addressee, auditor, overhearer, and eavesdropper cannot be unequivocally adopted, since response to audience may vary according to the personal significance which individuals in a given setting have for the child-speaker. (Child language acquisition, creole studies, Trinidad)

This article discusses the use of well as a discourse marker in some New Zealand courtrooms. While well has been discussed by many in the past, the data have been selected mainly from small, friendly encounters of various kinds, including sociolinguistic interviews. The study reported on here looks at a very different situation that necessarily involves a range of relationships and includes both cooperative and adversarial activities. It confirms that explanations of well’s use focusing on single strands such as social indicators (e.g. gender) or discourse coherence are simplistic, a more fruitful account being afforded through a multi-pronged functional approach. Finally, the article considers the application of politeness and relevance theory.*

In many Native American and Canadian First Nations communities, indigenous languages are important for the linguistic construction of ethnic identity. But because many younger speakers have limited access to their heritage languages, English may have an even more important role in identity construction than Native languages do. Prior literature shows distinctive local English features in particular tribes. Our study builds on this knowledge but takes a wider perspective: We hypothesize that certain features are shared across much larger distances, particularly prosody. Native cultural insiders (the first two co-authors) had a central role in this project. Our recordings of seventy-five speakers in three deliberately diverse locations (Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North/South Dakota; Northwest Territories, Canada; and diverse tribes represented at Dartmouth College) show that speakers are heteroglossically performing prosodic features to index Native ethnic identity. They have taken a ‘foreign’ language (English) and enregistered these prosodic features, creatively producing and reproducing a shared ethnic identity across great distances. (Native Americans, prosody, ethnicity, ethnic identity, English, dialects)*

We present a quantitative study of the linguistic and social factors conditioning the use of grammatical gender with reference to women, focusing on variation in the debates of the French parliament. Two prime ministers of similar political leanings regulated the use of feminine g-gender through identical policies in 1986 and 1998, with no effect on parliamentary speech in the first instance, and dramatic success in the second. We claim that the latter outcome resulted from changes in gender ideologies between these two dates. The 1990s saw the emergence of a new social type for female politicians, which only feminine g-gender can construct. We hypothesize that the 1998 policy was effective because it strengthened existing associations between feminine g-gender and a persona, while the original policy tried to build on ideological structure that was not widespread. We conclude that linguistic prescriptions are only successful if they build on existing ideologies. (Linguistic prescription, gender ideology, grammatical gender, ideological structure)*

This article builds on ethnomethodological, conversation analytic research on object transfers: how participants hand over objects to one another. By analyzing video recordings of mundane (cars) and institutional interactions (laboratories), we focus on situations where an object is central to and talked about in the joint course of action. We focus on different organizations of object transfer and show that one embodied move is decisive, either a sequentially implicative ‘give’ or an arm extension designed as a stand-alone ‘take’. We examine the interrelationship between the organization of the object transfer and the broader course of action (e.g. request or offer sequence), which is either overlapping or intersecting. We demonstrate that by making the decisive move, either the participant initially holding the object or her recipient critically influences the progression and trajectory of the activity, and displays agency. (Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis, multimodal interactions, objects in interaction, object transfers, agency)*

Public and scholarly discourse has established the ‘coming-out story’ as a culturally significant narrative genre for gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identifying (LGBTQ) individuals. Yet what happens when this genre is disciplined and managed for institutional ends? This study examines the process of how several LGBTQ individuals learn to narrate their coming-out experiences through trainings for a university's LGBTQ-themed speaker panels. Data include ethnographic observations and audio recordings related to training activities such as practice tellings and peer feedback sessions. Analysis focuses on the discursive practices through which training participants manage a pair of narrative dilemmas that stem from an institutional variation of the coming-out genre. This article contributes to literature on narrative and genre by demonstrating how a regulated form of personal narrative is learned and enforced to achieve the larger ideological aims of an institution. It also contributes to knowledge about identity as a fluid concept. (Coming-out story, genre, narrative, identity, ideology, performance, LGBTQ)*

This article discusses stylistic and contextual variations in the political oratory (kabary politika) of urban Madagascar. New imported oratorical styles and older styles of kabary represent competing linguistic markets where political leaders field broader issues of political modernity, fighting government corruption through reforms toward transparency. Kabary has become the object of criticism in models for transparent government practice. This has affected the way leaders speak to and about the country, reifying a moral structure arguing what constitutes truth and how speakers understand language as conveying that truth. In this respect, this article describes linguistic and metalinguistic encodings of transparency versus corruption in the political communication styles of highland Malagasy political orators. It looks at how the rhetorical modes of an urban polity are reorganized in ways that reshape vernacular epistemologies of truth in language and shift the production of particular publics and their access to participation in political process. (Madagascar, kabary, oratory, democracy, linguistic variation, language ideology, truth and ethics, public opinion, public culture)*

The results of the reintroduction and renativization of Hebrew are highlighted, and some commonly made assumptions about Hebrew and its place in Israeli life examined. The main topics are (a) the debatable equation of an ideal nation-state with a single and exclusive language, (b) the long history of Hebrew as a component of Jewish multilingualism, (c) the Hebraist movement, (d) the extent of its success and its advantages and disadvantages, (e) linguistic rights in Israel. (Language revitalization, language and nationalism, language policy and planning)

This article examines the use of English discourse markers in Louisiana French, focusing in particular on English but and its French counterpart mais. Based on data collected in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, we examine the speech of bilinguals to determine the status of these markers, which provide a window onto the role of discourse markers in situations of language contact. Though the markers show an overlapping semantic and functional distribution, but more often appears in the context of at least one pause. We also provide acoustic evidence and an analysis of the markers in different functions to conclude that the need for iconic contrast via language mixing (Maschler 1994, 1997; de Rooij 2000) is only one possible motivation for the use of foreign markers. We conclude that discourse markers may carry social meaning and be the site of identity construction as much as they are the site of text organization. (Discourse markers, bilingual discourse, codeswitching, language shift)*

The anonymous telephone public opinion survey is supposed to be invariant. Interviewers' individual linguistic styles are supposed to be suppressed. However, transcripts of interviews show that no two interviewers perform the task alike. Interviewers make changes in the scripted introduction and add unscripted answer-acknowledgments and commentary throughout the interviews, the effect of which is to point up their identities as individuals rather than merely fillers of the interviewer role. Much of the deviation can be explained by the heightened requirement for politeness in the “cold call,” for Americans one of the most egregious of interactional impositions. But no two interviewers fulfill this requirement in quite the same way. This may be because Americans value individuality in discourse, so that in order to be polite it is necessary to perform a differentiated, individual self. Such an understanding of personhood, and its linguistic ramifications, conflicts with the positivistic understanding of language on which survey research is based. In light of the amount of individual variation where one might not expect to find it, I suggest that linguists focus attention on the individual voice. (Individual variation, individual voice, interviewing, public opinion polls, survey research, politeness)

This paper addresses the proposition that certain multilingual situations favor certain learning strategies on the part of speakers. The paper takes this proposition as the best approach to explaining the development of pidgin grammars, and exemplifies the general approach by studying the seventeenth-century Delaware-based Traders’ Jargon in its linguistic and social context. The task of the paper, then, is to see if the evidence provided by the Jargon's grammatical structures fits the theory's predictions, and if the evidence for the multilingual situation in which it arose fits as well. The conclusion is that both types of evidence fit well if we assume that the Jargon arose before the period of European settlement, and that this assumption is indeed justified. (Pidgin and creole studies; languages in contact; early European/Indian; North American Indian languages)

The Sámi (formerly called Lapps) are the indigenous people of Arctic Scandinavia and northwest Russia. Legislation giving major language and cultural rights to Norway's Sámi people was enacted in 1992. As an introduction to discussion of the impact of the Sámi Language Act on Norwegian education, this article begins with an outline of the schooling system in Norway. Its review of the act itself covers the following topics: the Sámi culture and the Sámi languages, social and political problems that affect the Sámi, the place of the Sámi languages in education, and recent educational changes that flow from the Sámi Language Act. Three research questions, covering the practice and organization of bilingual aboriginal education in Norway, are then addressed at length. The article concludes by drawing emancipatory implications from the Sámi experience for members of aboriginal cultures and for the future of aboriginal education generally. (Power and culture, Sámi culture, minority education, native language education, bilingual education)

Recent studies of socially situated ways of speaking have reflected a growing uneasiness with the tidy dichotomies (for example, formal/informal, polite/casual) that have informed sociolinguistic inquiries in the past. The ritual language of the Kamsà indigenous community of Andean Colombia presents a serious challenge to these familiar conceptual molds. In elaborating a semiotic constitution for this speech variety, I articulate a model founded on three interrelated variables – accessibility, formalization, and efficacy – that may prove relevant to the discussion of ritual and ceremonial languages elsewhere. (Ritual and ceremonial languages, South American Indian speech forms, semiotics.)

This study, drawing on data from a large sociolinguistic interview corpus for three Acadian communities of Atlantic Canada, concerns codeswitches involving verbs of opinion or belief (e.g. guess, think, imagine, believe) in French-English bilingual discourse. The codeswitch itself serves to underscore the speaker's stance as to the truth of the proposition – and, in some cases, to indicate a degree of uncertainty not nuanced by corresponding French language forms. Variation in usage is related to intensity of language contact at the levels of the community and of the individual.

This article examines the language ideologies undergirding university English language admission requirements. Universities are today caught between the order of the nation state and that of corporate globalization as they seek to attract both national and international students. This tension produces conflicting processes of (converse) racialization and linguistic (un)marking within which universities construct language proficiencies and ethnonational identities. Our study finds two categorically different constructs of English language proficiency (ELP): inherent ELP based on citizenship, linguistic heritage, and prior education, and tested ELP. These two constructs of ELP map onto two dichotomous student groups. One side of this binary—the white native-speaker citizen construct—is subject to converse racialization and unmarking. While it becomes blurred, it casts its Other into clear relief: the Asian non-native speaker non-citizen. The research has implications for critical language testing and language policies in higher education. (Citizenship, English as a global academic language, internationalization of higher education, international students, language ideologies, language testing, native speakerism, racialization, World Englishes)