This study explores the dynamic nature of language in context, utilizing two sets of comparable Chinese discourse data of telephone service encounters collected in the same community a decade apart. It describes and characterizes current business practices and identifies shifts in discursive practices in light of the patterns observed in the past. Observed changes include constitutive components of the global structure, local realization of the structural elements, and interaction dynamics as a result of changed, redefined contexts and realigned footings. I propose that observed shifts may represent and constitute in part the emergence in the community of the reconstruction, or reshaping, of a more distinctive telephone service encounter (TSE) spoken genre and related discursive features. With the adoption of more recognizable boundary markers, shifts in discursive practice of telephone service encounters in Shanghai may result in openings with distinguishable features from calls made to residences. (Discourse analysis, service encounter, practice, telephone in business, China, spoken genre)*

This study examines preference organization in adult second language classrooms in relation to possible -isms—utterances which are hearably racist, classist, (hetero)sexist, or otherwise exclusionary, although their exclusionary nature may be (re)negotiated in situ. A collection of sixty-one possible -isms from a corpus of fifty-five hours of video-recorded English second language classes was examined using conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. The analysis shows that participants orient to solidarity by supporting -isms, progressivity by deleting -isms, and moral accountability by challenging -isms; however, participants prioritize solidarity, enacting it early, even in cases of deletion and challenges. I argue that this preference organization is rooted in the institutional roles and objectives of adult second language classrooms, where presumably competent members of diverse cultures aim to foster an environment for active participation. Findings underscore the importance of conducting microanalyses of talk-in-interaction to uncover structural constraints which facilitate the reproduction of systemic exclusion. (-isms, preference, conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, classroom interaction, exclusion in interaction)*

This article takes an empirical approach to investigate how diasporic identification with the home-land and host-land interacts with language in a mutually influencing dynamic interplay, giving rise to new language ideologies and identities. Since scholars are increasingly of the opinion that the processes of dislocation and resettlement create multi-layered connections with the home-land and host-land (David 2012:377), it is crucial we recognise that the relationship between fixed geographical territories and communities, and the cultural-linguistic practices associated with them, need to be denaturalised (Rosa & Trivedi 2017:331). In doing so, it is possible to retheorise diasporic identity as a sociocultural process. Attention to language can help shift diasporic phenomena away from being defined as ‘bounded, territorialised, static and homogeneous’ (Canagarajah & Silberstein 2012:82). Examining Sri Lankan Tamil diasporic experiences of the home-land and host-land and their relationship with language will promote such an agenda. (Diaspora, space, home-land, host-land)*

The dramatic reconfiguration of the social, political, and ideological order in South Africa since 1990/1994 has demanded a concomitant reconceptualization of (white) Afrikaner notions of self and belonging in the (new) nation. In this article, we draw on recent developments in the study of varidirectional voicing (polyphony), performance, and mediatization to examine how the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord makes use of parody and metaparody in their music to critique emerging ‘new Afrikaner’ identities and the racial, class, and gender configurations on which they are based. We also discuss the structural limits of these critiques and the political potential of (meta)parodic performance more generally. ((Meta)parody, polyphony, performance, race, class, gender, South Africa)*

This, the fourth American anthology about language and sexual minorities, is more consistently professional, more focused on written texts, less focused on explicating rhetorical effects, and considerably more focused on gender than its predecessors (Chesebro 1981, Ringer 1994, and Leap 1995). Why “sexuality” is included in the subtitle at all is a mystery. In contrast to Leap's pioneering collection, sexual practices are almost entirely invisible (inaudible?) herein. The editors claim to have “collected a series of articles that approach the study of language from the twin perspectives of gender and sexuality, conceived as separate but intricately linked categories” (p. 5); but it seems that, in utero, gender throttled sexuality (while sex, either in the sense of biological differences or in the sense of tactile contact, was never conceived).

China's program of language modernization has been as successful as that of any other nation, yet until Chen's book, we have not had a readable and comprehensive discussion of its reforms. Literacy has risen from about 10% in 1949 to around 80% today. Spoken Chinese dialects, from Cantonese through Hakka to Mandarin, vary as much as do the Germanic languages English, German, and Swedish; so it is a major achievement that 90% of Chinese people can now understand Standard Mandarin, up from 40% in the 1950s (p. 8). The current reforms have roots deep in the 19th century, but Chen discusses how early visions of reform became successful only in the past few decades. An unusual virtue of this compact volume is that it discusses language reforms throughout Greater China – not only in the People's Republic, including Hong Kong, but in Taiwan and Singapore as well.

This is the first textbook on metaphor to appear after the cognitive linguistic revolution of metaphorical research launched two decades ago by Lakoff & Johnson with their pioneering work, Metaphors we live by. Much scholarship has since been devoted to this paradigm of research. Twenty years have passed, and Kövecses takes this as a good time to summarize the development of the field. Writing a textbook on metaphor certainly reflects the maturation of the study of metaphor within the cognitive linguistic tradition. Targeted readers are undergraduate and graduate students with interests in metaphor and cognitive linguistics. Experienced researchers may also find this book helpful in motivating new ideas.

This article questions the time of white modernity based on historical periodization and sequential progression, arguing for a more multifaceted approach to time and space in linguistic landscapes (LL). It rethinks the concept of chronotope by examining effects of the African diaspora in Brazil. The experience of radical uprooting it promoted fuses spatiotemporal dimensions that operate in complementary directions. On the one hand, a necrotope sets forth submission and destruction. On the other, visceral resistance to obliteration emerges when the timespace of encruzilhadas ‘crossroads’ is produced in the cracks of colonial power. The LL at Pedra do Sal in Rio de Janeiro suggests that approaching timespace from this perspective captures the juxtaposition of stasis and mobility, oppression and resistance, loss and life, past and present. We argue that thinking of time outside and against the Euro-chronometer requires decolonial epistemologies that have the potential to disrupt racist chronologies. (Chronotope, linguistic landscapes, African diaspora, temporality, race, Rio de Janeiro)*

This article aims to introduce the notion of panoptic structures as a way of theorizing how people strategically exploit the affordances of digital devices to expose other people's behavior. I argue that Foucault's notion of panopticism becomes relevant in new ways in social life as a consequence of the polymedia repertoires of networked individuals. Central here is the ability to store digital communication and repost it for selected audiences. The data I analyze here were collected from a group of students who had just entered the gymnasium (the Danish equivalent of high school). During the months of multi-sited, online and offline ethnography, a conflict occurred between two groups of students. During this conflict, a repeated activity involved students confronting students from the opposing group with screenshots of their earlier social media activities and doing so in front of larger audiences of other students. On this basis, I argue that a theory of such panoptic practices belongs in the sociolinguistic toolbox. (Panopticism, social media, conflict, polymedia repertoire, audience)*