This article is concerned with understanding situations in which speakers talk in the presence of scientific inscriptions (lectures in science classes, public presentations). Drawing on extensive video materials accumulated in middle and high school science classrooms and university lectures, we develop a framework for the resources speakers make available to their audience for understanding what the talk is about. We distinguish three situations according to the nature of reference to the phenomenon talked about: (i) talk is about phenomenon but mediated by reference to a two-dimensional (2-D) inscription; (ii) talk is about phenomenon but mediated by reference to a three-dimensional (3-D) inscription; and (iii) talk is directly about phenomenon. Associated with these three situations are different body orientations, distances from inscriptions, and types of gestures. When speakers laminate talk characteristic of two different types of situations, the orientation “up” can become “down” and “down” can become “up,” potentially leading to confusing statements.

A crucial division of linguistic labor is that among metalinguistic labors. Who is authorized to speak about language, how, and where? Language ideologies not only ascribe different functions to different languages; they also ascribe different sorts of metadiscourse to speakers of (or about) those languages. Drawing from archival and field work, this article traces the ways particular Soviet and post-Soviet institutions and actors modeled and regimented metapragmatic discourses, specifically through stage and screen practices and representations that hypercontextualized utterances in Romani. They became so hegemonic that, in public arenas, Romani speakers spoke only about nonreferential functions; only in less well broadcast contexts (and mainly with other Roma) did they articulate metalinguistic and metareferential discourses. These practices reverse and contrast with the mainstream metapragmatics of Russian. Language ideologies commonly rank codes and metadiscourses; this case illuminates not only that they do so, but also how they do so, and it suggests what their social effects may be.

This study examines bilingual discourse markers in a language contact situation. The focus is on how English-dominant, bilingual, and Spanish-dominant New York Puerto Ricans integrate English-language discourse markers into their Spanish-language oral narratives. The corpus comprises 60 Spanish-language oral narratives of personal experience extracted from transcripts of conversations with New York Puerto Ricans. After a review of the study of discourse markers in language contact situations, the use of English-language discourse markers is compared to the use of Spanish-language markers in the texts. The discussion considers the question of whether English-language discourse markers are more profitably identified as instances of code-switching or of borrowing. Finally, the essay explores how bilingual speakers integrate English discourse markers in their narratives with a pattern of usage and frequency that varies according to language proficiency.

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.

Meant to be challenging, controversial, and even radical, McWhorter's (McW) latest work on creole genesis may well be the most revisionist book on contact languages to appear since Bickerton's Roots of Language (1981) and Thomason and Kaufman's Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics (1988). It will therefore be required reading for anyone interested in the ongoing exploration of the origins of plantation creoles and of contact languages in general.

Following a long tradition in anthropology and linguistics, introductory textbooks typically claim that all languages are equal and have an equal potential for communication and thought. The theoretical model posed in this anthology, as articulated by contributor Angela Gilliam, similarly suggests that “all languages are equal in terms of their expressive potential” (p. 84). However, editor Arthur K. Spears and the contributors aim to situate linguistic relativity within a framework of political, social, economic, and (most centrally) racial inequalities. The key theme of the collection is the centrality of politics, particularly what Spears terms “racial hierarchies of oppression” (13), in the study of language and linguistic diversity. As the contributors provide detailed historical, economic, and social frameworks for their studies, they demonstrate a claim made by Dell Hymes more than two decades ago that linguistic relativity “omits the costs and the constitutive role of social factors” (1973: 64). Thus, this edited volume challenges the tradition of claiming linguistic equality and demonstrates sociolinguistic inequality; it is part of a theoretical movement in this direction also exemplified by Zentella 1995, Hymes 1996, Schieffelin, Woolard & Kroskrity 1998, and Kroskrity 2000.

Lynn Messing and Ruth Campbell's Gesture, speech and sign provides an interesting overview of the fields of gesture and sign language research, including work by a number of the best-known names in the field. The strongest chapters have fascinating insights from psychology, neuropsychology, and Deaf studies on the interconnections between language and gesture. Paul Ekman catalogs different kinds of gestures found accompanying speech, including “emblems,” or socially learned gestures with consistent meaning like “the finger”; “illustrators,” like deictic pointing gestures; “manipulators,” which include scratching and fiddling with hair; “regulators,” the gestural equivalents of the “uh-huhs” and “mmms” of the attentive listener; and “emotional expressions” such as smiles and tears.

The book under review is a special one in regard to both content and form. The rich content of Against essentialism (AE) includes philosophical, linguistic, and social claims as well as the interrelationships between them. The form of AE is a continuation of a respectable tradition of dialogical and argumentative writing from Plato to Feyerabend. However, the focus of Janicki's investigations is not Feyerabend and his iconoclastic principles – for example, “Anything goes,” or the critique of the scientific method that is, Feyerabend's contribution to postmodern thought – but rather Popper's (1945) rejection of Aristotelian essentialism (cf. Janicki 1990). The main goals of AE are clear: first, to show the errors and harmfulness of essentialist thinking, the unjustified belief in the importance and power of definitions (or defining concepts and terms in sciences), and the claim that words and their definitions adequately reflect physical, mental or social reality; and second, to propose language awareness as a remedy that can alleviate the problems produced by the uncritical acceptance of essentialist ideology and philosophy. The main object of Janicki's critique is the social-scientific insistence on providing definitions of all concepts, including those that in reality cannot be defined. The eight dialogues in AE deal with crucial aspects of language use and its consequences for human (mis)communication, interpersonal relations, and various other social phenomena.

Characterizing the discourse functions of linguistic expressions is surely one of the most difficult tasks in linguistic analysis. The starting point for any study of discourse functions is the examination of naturally occurring data; the limiting factor is the lack of well-developed theoretical frameworks for understanding language use. Still, a good descriptive study has lasting value, and empirical claims invite further analysis. Overstreet's study of the “general extenders” or something, and everything, and other members of this class makes a solid contribution on both fronts.

The central claim of Ideophones and sound symbolism in Atlantic creoles is that ideophones constitute a relevant category in Atlantic creoles, and that they show both functional and substantial correspondences with ideophones in African languages. The book consists of two main parts: a critical review of the literature on ideophones (Introduction; Chap. 1, “Previous treatment of ideophones and sound symbolism in the literature”; Chap. 2, “Characterization of ideophones: towards a cross-linguistic prototype”), and an etymological database of ideophones in the Atlantic creoles (Chap. 3, “The use of ideophone in the Atlantic creoles and their tentative etymologies”). Two appendices present data sources and the approximate number of ideophones in some languages. The study is based on the available literature, supplemented by data on Atlantic creoles, African languages, European languages, and two Asian languages that was obtained either from specialists on certain languages or from first-language speakers.

This is a collection of twenty matchless essays on the subject of language contact (Quechua, Guaraní, and occasionally Aymara in contact with Spanish). The first one serves as an introduction to the main theme and as a justification for the author's rejection of certain methodologies. “Observaciones metodológicas sobre la investigación sociolingüística en Hispanoamérica” (pp. 7–18) offers an excellent review of stratificational sociolinguistics, a field the author proves to know but prefers to discard on the basis of its inadequacy for studying marginalized Amerindian communities. The major deterrent is the application of quantitative methods to populations that do not belong to post-industrialized societies, where the continua of social strata and sociolinguistic variables are more easily grasped with contemporary methods of the social sciences. In contrast, groups in Latin American societies display wider socio-economic and socio-political gaps, not to mention massive peripheral strata.

Speaking culturally is designed as a language-oriented introduction to ethnic and gender issues in the United States, concentrating on what the author perceives to be widely unrecognized intercultural communication problems. The text is divided into three sections, with the first – “Language in demographic and cultural perspective” – providing theoretical background on the relationship of speech to community. The second, “Locating cultural discourses,” provides overviews of language and gender and of three ethnic communities: African American, Hispanic and Asian American. The last section, “Language consequences and controversies,” addresses the consequences of linguistic and cultural diversity and current language policy designed to deal with this diversity.

The French in the United States offers valuable insight on processes of identity formation among French-born individuals living permanently in the US. The book's title foreshadows the ambiguity of how the French in America are defined in objective terms, as well as their subject positioning as members of an ethnic group. For instance, Lindenfeld cautions against relying on the criterion of ancestry used in census-based rankings to study the French presence in the United States, since census identification includes people of various national origins and does not distinguish the number of intervening generations since departure from France. The limitations of the native use of the French language as a valid indicator of direct French origin neglects the fact that native speakers of French who reside in the US often possess Canadian or Caribbean lineage. Although Lindenfeld does not say so directly, relying on native use of French to identify direct immigrants from France would equally exclude the possibility of identifying French citizens who do not speak French as their first language, as well as those who were raised speaking two or more languages. Another concern raised in the book is the broad significance of the label “French American,” traditionally used to identify Americans of French ancestry, such as Cajuns in Louisiana. The designation currently enjoys a certain popularity among French immigrants because it offers a direct parallel with other immigrant groups, such as Italian Americans.

The current issue inaugurates an increase in frequency for Language in Society, which will now appear five times a year. We will be able to publish more papers, and thus be able to reduce the amount of time that authors must wait to see their accepted papers in print. This time lag has recently been a year from acceptance (and has threatened to be as long as 18 months) and was difficult to reduce within the four-issue per year constraint given the high quality of our submissions. The new schedule will help cut the time from acceptance to appearance in a printed issue. It will also permit me to continue to be flexible about the length of papers, and will allow more flexibility to consider proposals for special issues.