Bilingual speech takes research on code-mixing a step further toward achieving a better understanding of the differences in what in the past has been referred to simply as the mixing of two languages in the sentence (or intrasentential code-switching). In addition, Muysken presents the state of the discipline of language contact in the year 2000 from the perspective of the grammar and structure of language contact phenomena. He brings together and analyzes an extensive set of language pairs from a wide variety of communities and social contexts. Good familiarity with such varied multilingual data provides the author with a strong base on which to support his three-way classification (insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization) of code-mixing phenomena at the sentence level.

This article examines struggles related to the recasting of the collective memory connected to Danish colonialism, through analyses of exhibitions in, and communication from, the Danish National Museum. By use of multimodal and semiotic landscape analysis, we show how the Danish National Museum works to reformulate the historical relationship between Greenland and Denmark in ways that avoid the colonizer's language and at the same time describe and construct complex relations of past and present. The analysis demonstrates how a temporal ambiguity is present in the museum exhibitions, not offering a conclusive understanding of the colonial period. At the same time, we show how the presence and absence of colonial language in public space is inscribed into temporal frames legitimizing or problematizing their status. (Semiotic landscape, colonialism, language and nation, temporality)*

This article demonstrates how mediatization facilitates the (re)production of mock language. Through an examination of Chinese netizens’ reactions to a series of viral internet commercials that feature three Hong Kong actors speaking nonstandard Mandarin, it uncovers the processes whereby Gangpu (Hong Kong Mandarin) has become increasingly perceived in China as funny. The vast scale of uptake formulations enabled by mediatization has made it possible for Chinese netizens to engage in a collaborative effort not only in highlighting certain features of Gangpu and certain elements of the commercials but also in presenting them in ways that evoke specific meanings and interpretations. Ultimately, it is through the parodic revoicing of Hong Kong celebrities speaking nonstandard Mandarin that this non-native variety has come to be keyed as humorous. This study shows that we gain a better understanding of how mock practices reinforce and build on each other by tracing their uptake and circulation. (Mediatization, mock language, parody, listening subject, Mandarin Chinese, Hong Kong, China)*

This article examines semiotic resignifications undertaken in ‘peripheral’ cultural production through an ethnographic analysis of the trajectory of the Amazonian artist, Jaloo. Jaloo occupies multiple positions of marginality in Brazilian society and artistic scenes, which he connects to other global peripheries in his performances, aesthetics, and self-narratives. Building on anthropological and sociolinguistic scholarship, we show how ‘peripheral’ status is managed by Jaloo in the context of a growing and politicised audience for outsider and alternative cultural production. We theorise Jaloo's negotiation of his relationship with audiences and the media as rescaling. Further, we argue that this rescaling entails the ordering of semiotic resources into a social imaginary that reconfigures peripheral territories and identities, which we consider in terms of a transperipheral chronotope. (Inequality, chronotopes, indexicality, race, coloniality, scales, periphery)

Generic expressions play a key role in the interactional articulation, social circulation, and temporal reproduction of ideology. Here I examine fragments from a conversation between four middle-class participants which took place at a café in Hanoi. After briefly describing the particular grammatico-textual patterns by which specific and generic references are accomplished in Vietnamese, I turn to consider two extended stretches of talk in which these people weave generic reference into the warp and weft of their interaction. I argue that generic reference is intimately tied to social ontology which consists, in part, of ideas about distinct and essentialized ‘kinds of persons’. Deployed in what appears, on the surface at least, as ordinary, mundane conversation, not only does such generic reference serve to position those referred to as ‘ontological other’ (Wynter 1987), it also constitutes an ‘act of alterity’ (Hastings & Manning 2004) by which the participants tacitly characterize themselves. (Reference, Vietnamese, social ontology, alterity, stereotype, essentialism)*

This study examines the use of words per pause (W/P) as a practical means for identifying solidarity in everyday conversation. Eight listeners recorded the narratives of a female and a male, either friends or strangers. Ten speakers were categorized as friends and six as strangers; they talked about a good and a bad experience. Average reliability of coding pauses was .83. The results indicated a statistically significant difference in W/P of speakers who were friends and those who were strangers. Statistical results support the conclusion that friends are more likely to employ many W/P and strangers few W/P. One practical implication of this study is that W/P can be employed by researchers with relative ease and a high degree of reliability for investigations of speaking style in a variety of contexts. A second practical implication is that W/P is a diagnostic device that can serve as a social litmus test in everyday conversation to identify the expression of sympathy and estrangement. (Expressive language, nonverbal communication, paralanguage, pauses, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, solidarity, speech and personality)

Applying the functional approach to language developed by Halliday and Hasan, this study delineates the criterial and characteristic features of language used in 13 peer review letters from a graduate seminar by native speakers of English, with an average length of 300–350 words. Examining discourse goals, global text structure, obligatory and optional elements, sequence and co-occurrence of discourse elements, verb types, modalized directives, and lexical choice, this article demonstrates that peer review texts are shaped by the institutional and situational contexts within which they are embedded, and at the same time contribute to these contexts. (Genre studies, interactive discourse analysis, written communication, systemic linguistics, peer review, classroom discourse)

This article examines an interactive strategy of invited guessing in Chinese telephone conversations. Oriented toward affect bonding between the participants, invited guessing both indexes and strengthens their relationship. Caller identification, typically perceived as a procedural component in telephone conversation, is shown to be constructed as an interactive process serving social functions as well as a discourse-structural function. Its primary purpose is to signify and enhance rapport-building. The observed interactions present patterns of variation from the proposed universal sequence of telephone conversation openings, suggesting that this discourse structure can respond to variables such as the purpose of the interaction and the relationship between participants in the Chinese context. Finally, invited guessing indicates that relationship constitutes an important cultural variable shaping discourse and interaction in Chinese society.

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 article contributes to conversation analytic research on the formatting of imperative actions by focusing on the English first person imperative let me/lemme X as it appears in a range of naturally occurring interactions. I argue that lemme X is a practice for displacing what was projectably relevant in a given environment in favor of a self-authorized action. This as a result tends to advance the speaker's interests/initiatives. The analysis accounts for speakers’ apparent presumption of permission in unilaterally undertaking their lemme X action by reference to the placement, design, and subsequent orientations to the self-authorized action. The construction is discussed in terms of the distribution of agency and it is suggested that lemme X is particularly suited to advancing activities that favor autonomous action by the speaker and which involve the recipient only minimally. (Conversation analysis, imperatives, directives, English, agency)*

The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) is one of several similar responses to a perceived need for better data on language vitality. My remarks here are framed as a direct reply to Lee & Van Way's article, but really address larger issues in the ongoing debate about a perceived need to classify, inventory, and enumerate endangered languages. Lee & Van Way focus on one aspect of ELCat, the Language Endangerment Index (LEI), discussing a number of shortcomings in other current models. As an instrument for determining the level of language endangerment, the LEI is presented as a preferable alternative to other metrics, including Fishman's (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS), or EGIDS, the Expanded scale, based on the work of Lewis & Simons (2010), or UNESCO's (2003) expert scale. Lee & Van Way's discussion presupposes that such metrics are needed, and that it is beneficial to have a method for measuring vitality. Specifically, they argue that ‘for those concerned with preserving the world's fragile linguistic diversity, it is desirable to be able to quantify language vitality’. This is the underlying assumption of not only ELCat and LEI, but of other language catalogues, such as the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig 2015), UNESCO's Atlas (Moseley 2010), and other vitality metrics, as discussed in Lee & Van Way.

This study merges sociocultural linguistic work on identity construction in interaction with the study of epistemic management in conversation analysis (CA). While some CA scholars have examined identity without relying on epistemics, and others study epistemics without a focus on identity, I hope to contribute to a renewal in the exploration of identity and epistemics in interaction, building on a few recent studies. I examine the discursive processes through which an individual actively and assertively constructs his identities as a New York City resident, a Jewish person, and an actor. I focus on epistemics in the relational identity processes of authentication and denaturalization. I show how a speaker uses authenticating epistemic stances to legitimize his claims to knowledge and related identities, while also denaturalizing others’ rights to knowledge, constructing their identities as inauthentic relative to his own. I argue that epistemics and relational identity processes may be fundamentally intertwined. (Epistemics, identity, conversation, discourse analysis, place, religion, ethnicity, actors)*

Stylistic analysis takes account of the dynamic continuities in communication behavior. It is concerned with how people talk or sing or move in relation to each other, rather than what it is they say or sing or do to or with each other. The presence of these styling qualities can, we discover, be reliably assessed; and, as they cluster together, giving each cultural tradition its distinctive performance models, they have remarkable stability through time. However, these patterns of style are not inflexible: they are models comprising a stable set of ranges within which performers can adjust their behavior to the demands of a genre, of a familiar situation, of sex, age or status roles, and to the unexpected. The comparison of these performance models, cross-culturally, reveals factors that tie communication to social structure on the one hand and to cultural traditions on the other.