Through the analysis of the various language ideologies that have shaped the sociolinguistic history of Pijin, the lingua franca of Solomon Islands, this article attempts to shed light on the peculiar complexity of the postcolonial linguistic situations where more prestigious and less prestigious languages coexist in the same sociological niche. These ideologies are: reciprocal multilingualism, hierarchical multilingualism, linguistic pragmatism, and linguistic nationalism. Specifically, the article focuses on the development and coalescence of linguistic ideologies that lead Pijin speakers to shift perceptions of Pijin—in a context of urban identity construction that acts as a force of its own. In the case of Pijin, linguistic legitimacy seems to be lagging behind social legitimacy. We show that the development of new ideologies can lead to the re-evaluation of the meaning of symbolic domination of one language (in this case English) over another one (Pijin), without necessarily challenging this symbolic domination. (Language ideology, youth, urbanization, pidgins and creoles, Solomon Islands)*

This article analyzes language ideologies with regard to sign language in Adamorobe, a “shared signing community” in southern Ghana. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is a “shared sign language,” used by all deaf people and a large number of hearing Akan-speaking people. Deaf schoolchildren from Adamorobe attend a school where Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) is taught. Hearing interviewees have experiential knowledge that everything can be said in AdaSL, emphasise the shared roots of AdaSL and Akan, and called AdaSL “natural.” Deaf interlocutors describe Akan, AdaSL, and GSL as three distinct but equivalent languages. AdaSL is said to be a “hard” language, more pleasant to use, and more expressive than GSL, but sign bilingualism is highly valued. These findings are compared and contrasted with accounts on language ideologies with regard to other shared sign languages and larger urban/national sign languages. (Language ideologies, language practices, Ghana, Ghanaian Sign Language, Adamorobe Sign Language, Akan, shared sign languages, shared signing communities, village sign languages)*

It is well documented that the same sociolinguistic feature can be used as a sociolinguistic resource with different indexical potentials in different linguistic as well as social contexts. Often, however, indexical meanings of a specific feature are related to or derived from one another. In this article we present the results of a perceptual study of indexical meanings of alveolar versus fronted (s)—[s] versus [s+]—in different registers. The data consist of responses to male speakers' use of [s] and [s+] respectively, in two different registers that may be labelled “modern Copenhagen speech” and “street language.” Results show that the [s+] indexes femininity and gayness when it occurs in “modern Copenhagen,” whereas the (s)-variation has a different and less significant effect when occurring in “street language.” We discuss the implications for theories of indexical fields and the relation between features and clusters of features in speakers' perceptions. (Indexical meaning, phonetic variation, fronted /s/, perception of sexual orientation and ethnicity, matched guise technique).

This article analyzes folk-linguistic photo blogging as an example of twenty-first-century grassroots prescriptivism. Photo blogs engaged in grassroots prescriptivism usually focus on one specific linguistic phenomenon and collect visual evidence of its usage. Through the overt or covert language policing involved in such displays, folk-linguistic photo blogs contribute to the digital enregisterment of the linguistic practices they focus on as nonstandard or uneducated. This process is closely examined in a case study on emphatic quotation marks, a nonstandard form of punctuation that has been termed ‘greengrocer's quotes’, and its concomitant folk-linguistic photo blog. It is argued here that much of the persuasive power of such blogs can be attributed to their reliance on photographic material depicting signage in public space, and thus on the kind of visual semiotics that also informs many recent approaches in sociolinguistics. The simultaneity of these two phenomena is critically discussed. (Visual semiotics, enregisterment, computer-mediated communication, grassroots prescriptivism, emphatic quotation)*

Studies on stylised language use have tended to focus on the creative exploitation of linguistic heteroglossia among urban multi-ethnic youth. This article argues that there are good reasons for exploring how such practices can also be initiated by norm-enforcing white adults such as teachers. I report on linguistic ethnographic fieldwork in one mixed-ethnicity class at a Brussels Dutch-medium school and describe how one teacher often produced the creative, stylised language use one usually associates with younger speakers. The analysis emphasizes that while teacher stylisations provided alleviation from the friction between linguistic expectations and the reality of the classroom floor, they were also functional in maintaining the school linguistic policy inasmuch as they typified nonstylised, nonaccented, and standard language use as normal and expected. These findings suggest that stylisations can be closely tuned to linguistic normativity and reproductive of wider patterns of sociolinguistic stratification. (Stylisations, urban heteroglossia, crossing, classroom interaction, Brussels, Dutch, enregisterment)*

The past two decades have seen an explosion of interest in interactionally orientated perspectives on identity. The Community of Practice framework was employed by sociolinguists working within this paradigm because it firmly grounds identity in social practice seeing it as a process that speakers engage in during actual interactions. Interest in variation within communities of practice is growing, as the well-boundedness of linguistic and social concepts (including identity and language) is increasingly questioned. The current article develops this perspective by exploring code-switching practices of British-born Greek-Cypriots in two distinct contexts: community meetings and a dinner. Findings indicate that this community of practice does not constitute a uniform entity: complex interactions transpire between local and global variables including gender, community-specific setups, contexts, and discourse types. The study also problematizes the concepts core and periphery, used to describe variation within communities of practice, offering a revised understanding of practice, which focuses on silent participation. (Code-switching, community of practice, Greek-Cypriot, gender, identity, individual variation)

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)*

Recent studies documenting minority linguistic space in urban settings have focused on cities' linguistic landscapes, and external signage is often taken to index linguistic practices within businesses, government offices, and other establishments. To shed light on linguistic practices in culturally significant spaces of this sort, it is helpful to consider social actors' discursive construction of the spaces themselves. This article describes discourses of minority francophone space elicited from members and associates of Moncton, New Brunswick's Centre culturel Aberdeen. The data are analyzed according to Lefebvre's (1974/1991) conceived, perceived, and lived spaces and Heller & Labrie's (2004) modernizing and globalizing discourses. The present findings demonstrate that, while Aberdeen's conceived space is francophone, other languages are spoken in Aberdeen's perceived space. Participants also describe Aberdeen's lived space as bilingual, mediating between anglophones and francophones. These discourses, coupled with changes in the Centre's charter, suggest an emergent, plural conception of minority francophone space. (Francophone, minority, Canada, Acadian, discourse, social space)*

This article presents a variationist analysis of the bought vowel in New York City English (NYCE) and finds that it has reversed the trajectory of change outlined in Labov (1966). An acoustic analysis of production data from sixty-four native residents of the Lower East Side demonstrates that bought is lowering in apparent time, a change led by young people, white and Jewish speakers, and the middle classes. A second source of data comes from perceptions of raised bought gathered from a matched guise experiment, which highlights an indexical field (Eckert 2008) of social meanings for raised bought that comprise a ‘classic New Yorker’ persona: an older, white ethnic New Yorker from the outer boroughs who is mean and aloof. Taken together, the data suggest that bought's reversal is motivated by its contemporary social meanings. (bought, New York City English, dialectology, variationism, sound change, social meaning, perception, sociophonetics)*

When individuals in the United States dial the emergency service telephone number, they immediately encounter some version of the English-language institutional opening “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”. What happens, though, when the one placing the call is not a speaker of English? How do callers and call-takers adapt to overcome this added communicative barrier so that they are able to effectively assess the emergency situation at hand? The present study describes the structure of a language negotiation sequence, which serves to evaluate callers' entitlement to receive service in a language other than the institutional default—in our case, requests for Spanish in lieu of English. We illustrate both how callers initially design requests for language, as well as how call-takers subsequently respond to those differing request formulations. Interactions are examined qualitatively and quantitatively to underscore the context-based contingencies surrounding call-takers' preference for English over the use of translation services. The results prove informative not only in terms of how bilingual talk is organized within social institutions, but also more generally with regard to how humans make active use of a variety of resources in their attempts to engage in interaction with one another. (Entitlement, discourse/social interaction, conversation analysis, requests, language contact, institutional talk, Spanish (in the US))*

This article investigates the transformation of minority language practice in the light of changing European language ideologies. Following a group of young Carinthian Slovenes from their rural hometowns to the capital of Vienna, this article analyzes their metadiscursive commentary about place and language in order to show how local language ideologies structure the indexical orders under which these individuals learn to assign meaning to linguistic practice. The data I present illustrates that these young members of a rurally stigmatized linguistic minority experience a transformation of their language-associated personhood in Vienna. There, their bilingualism allows them to be cosmopolitan participants in a European vision of mobile multilingual citizenship, while simultaneously troubling the language hierarchies erased by European language ideologies. (Linguistic minority, language ideology, indexical order, chronotopes, multilingualism, Carinthian Slovenes, Austria, Europe)

This article examines how social stereotypes influence listeners' perceptions of indexical language. Building on recent developments in linguistics and social psychology, I investigate the extent to which stereotypical attitudes and beliefs about categories of speakers serve to enable the association of linguistic features with particular social meanings while simultaneously blocking others. My arguments are based on an analysis of listener perceptions of the intersecting categories of gender, sexuality, and social class among men in the UK. Using a modified matched-guise paradigm to test three category-relevant variables (mean pitch, spectral characteristics of /s/, and TH-fronting), I demonstrate how the perception of social meaning is governed by a combination of both attitudinal and cognitive factors. This finding is important because it illustrates the listener-dependent nature of sociolinguistic perception. Moreover, it also provides further empirical support for an understanding of social meaning as an emergent property of language-in-use. (speech perception, attitudes and stereotypes, sexuality, phonetic variation)*

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)*

Claims about signed languages present a unique resource for examining sociopolitical formation and change. Examining three claims drawn from original ethnographic data on Hồ Chí Minh City Sign Language, analysis centers on the ways language practices and language ideologies reflect, respond to, and impact sociopolitical formation in Việt Nam, particularly in connection to state restructuring of deaf education during the political reform period (1986 to present). Signer narratives evaluate such circumstances in relation to notions of citizenship, national development, and social participation to posit signed language as the basis for Deaf people's contributions to national development and broader social change. Articulations between signed language and sociopolitical formation have been largely ignored within mainstream social science disciplines and global disability-oriented development, hindering theoretical and practical projects. This article aims to expand the theoretical scope of language-centered inquiry by demonstrating how ethnographic research on signed languages contributes to examination of sociopolitical formation. (Signed language, Việt Nam, deaf education, sociopolitical, citizenship)*

All social life is based on people's ability to recognize what others are doing. Recently, the mechanisms underlying this human ability have become the focus of a growing multidisciplinary interest. This article contributes to this line of research by considering how people's orientations to who they are to each other are built-in in the organization action. We outline a unifying theoretical framework in which the basic facets of human social relations are seen as being anchored in three orders—epistemic order, deontic order, and emotional order—each of which, we argue, also pertains to action recognition. This framework allows us to account for common ambiguities in action recognition and to describe relationship negotiations involving a complex interface between knowledge, power, and emotion. (Action recognition, social relations, conversation analysis, status, stance, epistemic rights, deontic rights, emotion)*

This article examines the nexus of neoliberalism, globalization, and the spread of English, using English-language education (ELE) policies in Taiwan between 2000 and 2008 as a case study. Data from ethnographic work, including interviews with school principals and education managers, is contextualized using recent theoretical innovations in the sociolinguistics of globalization and language and neoliberalism. Neoliberalism venerates the ideals of ‘choice’, ‘competition’, and the ‘free market’. For students and parents, English proficiency is less a ‘choice’ than a necessity for success in education and employment. ‘English for all’ policies are thus imperatives rather than opportunities when individuals, schools, and regions are put into deleterious ‘competition’ with each other in public education, and when public education is pressured by a parallel ‘free’ market private education sector. The structural function of English as a valued capital is examined alongside language ideologies regarding the ‘earlier-the-better’ argument for L2 acquisition and the idealization of the native-speaking teacher. (Taiwan, neoliberalism, globalization, English, sociolinguistics, language policy)*

In this study, two groups of students were asked to listen to recordings made of Senegalese Wolof speakers and make deductions about their social and caste status. The responses of the first group, made up of Senegalese students, did not go beyond the threshold of chance with regard to caste status, but were 65.7% correct regarding the speakers' social status. The second group, who were European students with no prior knowledge of the Wolof language, achieved percentages of correct answers similar to those of the Senegalese listeners with regard to social status. The imposed norm hypothesis, which predicts that sociolinguistic features cannot be gauged by those who have had no previous contact with the community, should thus be reconsidered and enlarge its scope to include a more general, and therefore nuanced, view of language. (Imposed norm hypothesis, inherent value hypothesis, social stratification of language, social identification, Wolof, Senegal, castes)*

This article examines International Sign (IS), a mode of signed cross-linguistic communication, in the context of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD). I contend that the WFD General Assembly's language policy, which bans interpreters and requires that delegates use IS, formalizes the commonsense deaf notion that what is particular about deaf people is their capacity for connecting across differences, rooted in and materialized through the ability to use sign across language boundaries. While such an ability has been explained primarily in terms of the affordances of the visual-gestural modality, this article foregrounds and theorizes the irreducibly relational dimensions of linguistic commensuration. I argue that communicating in IS relies on and produces mutual moral orientation among signers, and that ultimately, it is the labor involved in using IS that deaf people value and that the WFD General Assembly institutionalizes. (International Sign, sign language, deaf, linguistic commensuration, moral orientation)*

This study investigates the figuration of “Spanish” as a sociocultural discourse within the context of a middle school in North Carolina, where immigration from Latin America is new, yet quickly accelerating. The school-based discourse is analyzed in terms of everyday ways of talking among students, as well as institutional ideologies and practices, which mediate national discourses about US Latinos and reinforce tropes circulated by students. Everyday ways of talking among non-Latino students suggest that Latinos—both immigrants and US born—are Spanish monolinguals who “choose” to be segregated from the English speakers. The use of Spanish by Latinos is constructed by non-Latinos as secretive and dangerous, linking local tropes about Spanish to national discourses. Consistent informal pressure against Spanish at school links to broader pressures against Spanish in the community and beyond. The discourse problematizes Latino identity formations and limits the types of identities available to Latino students. (Discursive production, Spanish, US Latinos, Latino threat narrative)*

This article is inspired by the typology of “dialect/standard constellations” outlined in Auer (2005, 2011), which aims to detect common dynamics in the current processes of dialect/standard convergence in Europe. The specific sociolinguistic situation addressed in this article involves Italian, Piedmontese, and Occitan in Piedmont, a northwestern region of Italy. We analyze a set of linguistic features with the aim of depicting the dynamics of intralinguistic and interlinguistic convergence as they relate to the ongoing standardization processes in these languages. Some adjustments to the two types of repertoires drawn by Auer (diaglossia and endoglossic medial diglossia) are proposed to better suit them, respectively, to the Italo-Romance continuum between Piedmontese rural dialects and standard Italian (which actually consists of two separate subcontinua with intermediate varieties) and to the relationship between Occitan dialects and their planned standard variety (as well as that between Piedmontese and its “Frenchified” standard variety). (Language standardization, dialect/standard convergence, Italian, Piedmontese, Occitan.)*