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Drawing on research on multilingualism in South Africa and India, this paper attempts to integrate world Englishes studies and variationist sociolinguistics; in other words, to fill in a missing dialogue between Braj Kachru and William Labov. The classic studies of variationism have been undertaken in large western centres in which the hegemony of one language is largely accepted. In the postcolonial world elsewhere, language functions and statuses are apportioned differently. This paper therefore probes the extent to which mainstream variationism is applicable outside the western milieu that it has so powerfully illuminated. This paper will outline how P languages (carrying overt prestige and power) interact with S languages (for solidarity and community interaction) within multilingual repertoires in post‐colonial contexts. The paper also explores the extent to which S and P codes interact under contact and switching in ‘third space’ moments that best capture the post‐colonial habitus among educated bilingual speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how eight London nurseries examined whether better use of bicycles would strengthen children's physical activity as a step to reducing child obesity. The nurseries are part of a social enterprise which offers one-third of the 4200 nursery places to children from poor and disadvantaged families/communities where rates of child obesity are high and increasing. The research was instigated because the nurseries built a partnership with Bikeworks which provided free bikes and staff wanted to ensure they were using them effectively to benefit children. Parents were involved but also asked a specific question about interest in a bike lending scheme. The paper concluded that staff became more observant of how they could enhance their practice using bikes to support children's physical and sociolinguistic development. It heightened the importance of observation of the children but also in identifying barriers such as poor cycling surface and state of bike repairs. Parents considered bikes to be a key part of their children's nursery life especially extending physical skills but were divided evenly about the value of introducing a bike lending scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses experiences of everyday racism as narrated by South Sudanese refugee-background informants living in Australia. The paper draws on accounts of verbal and physical attacks reported during a sociolinguistic interview about the refugee experience and adaptation to the Australian lifestyle. The study contributes to the exploration of features of refugee narratives, using the socio-interactional approach to narrative analysis. Selected stories about racism are explored using positioning theory, paying attention to the discursive strategies narrators use to position themselves in the interactional world of the interview setting as well as the story-world. Their narratives demonstrate that despite the harsh experiences of everyday racism, they position themselves as resilient and strong individuals. They do this by drawing on their refugee history and making references to harder times. However, the stories also reveal their mitigation strategies to soften the accounts and either downplay or deny racism. However, by sharing their stories and making explicit evaluative statements about social injustice, they mobilise their agency to make their story heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Prize Paper Collections in the National Archives in Kew Gardens contain more than fifty-five Arabic letters and another two dozen accounts and other documents, which were seized in 1759 by British privateers as part of the loot on a Tuscan ship, set out from Livorno towards Alexandria. Virtually untouched since that time, they present a most exciting source of documentary Ottoman Arabic. The letters were written by Christian merchants trading in the Mediterranean and by Christian clergy in Rome to their co-religionists in Egypt and Turkey. This article presents an introduction to the Arabic Prize Papers, a short linguistic analysis of a preliminary corpus of eleven letters, the edition and translation of three sample letters. Particular attention is paid to the linguistic divergence between those letters written by merchants and those composed by church dignitaries, as well as to the sociolinguistic variation found in specific writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we link between two scholarly traditions that share the goal of understanding how people accomplish the achievement of living together: linguistic-politeness and diplomacy. We look at a specific speech event—presidential introductory conversations during credential ceremonies, in which the interlocutors are simultaneously talking on behalf of themselves and the states they represent. On the basis of 23 introductory conversations at Israel's presidential residence. We aim to understand how good relations are cultivated in diplomatic conversations and the resources and strategies hosting presidents and foreign ambassadors employ to establish amicable interpersonal and interstate relations. The infusion of elite discourse, institutional discourse, and initial interactions brought forth in our study a gamut of bonding strategies applied in the process of rapport management between state representatives. The president and ambassadors did their best to avoid sensitive issues and managed the attending audience as a resource for enhancing interpersonal relations, advancing the interaction, and solving problems at both the interstate and interpersonal levels. In the Conclusion we underline the importance of analyzing actual conversations between individuals who simultaneously embody themselves and their states in order to understand how relationships between large social entities are managed. • The paper links between two related scholarly traditions: politeness and diplomacy. • It asks how amicable interpersonal and interstate relations are cultivated in diplomatic conversations. • We analyze 23 introductory conversations between Israel's president and foreign ambassadors. • A variety of strategies are applied for bonding between state representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linguistic diversity of France is a highly discussed topic, particularly in relation to the French state's (lack of) support for regional and minority languages (RMLs). There are approximately 200,000 speakers of the regional language Breton, while Arabic is the second-most widely spoken language in France with an estimated 3–4 million speakers. Recent studies have called for comparative analyses and this research seeks to fill this gap, focusing on individual speakers and their social experiences as they relate to language(s), diversity, and identity. This paper discusses findings of fieldwork conducted in Brittany with Breton and Arabic language users, examining how Breton and Arabic language users describe their language experiences, and how identity can be shaped by language practices. This research also explores how such language practices relate to diversity and multilingualism across France more broadly, and how individuals understand the multifaceted nature of identity using terms such as 'double culture' and 'mélange'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers in variationist sociolinguistics have long sought to develop social measures that are more sophisticated than demographic categories such as age, gender, and social class, while still being useful for quantitative analysis. This paper presents one such new measure: discursive worlds. For each speaker in a corpus, their discursive world is operationalized through compiling a list of specific referents cited in their interview. These lists are then used to construct similarity spaces locating the speakers along dimensions that are discursively relevant in the corpus. Using common clustering algorithms, the corpus speakers are then partitioned into categories, and this partition can be used in statistical analysis. We show how this method can be used to analyze a series of lexical variables in the Cartographie linguistique des féminismes corpus, a corpus of francophone interviews with feminist and queer activists, for which, we argue, quantitative analysis using classic demographic categories is inappropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the concept of 'enregisterment,' which defines processes and practices linking linguistic repertoires with social meanings, by examining meta-linguistic commentary in newspapers. Focussing on 'Multicultural London English (MLE),' the study analyses 200 articles from major British newspapers (2006–2022) qualitatively and quantitatively. The research uncovers recurring linguistic shibboleths, indexically linked social meanings, and prevalent language ideologies concerning MLE and other London dialects. Results reveal a consistent emphasis on specific linguistic shibboleths repeated in articles. Indexical links for 'MLE' are constructed through evaluative comments, alarmist metaphors employing xenophobic immigration tropes, and loaded keywords. 'Cockney' and 'Estuary English' are portrayed more favourably and, together with 'Received Pronunciation (RP)', serve to stigmatise MLE. This study underscores the role of media discourse in shaping the enregisterment of dialects, contributing to social stratification and the 'othering' of certain linguistic varieties. • Multicultural London English (MLE) is 'enregistered' in English newspapers. • Enregisterment describes the process of linking social meanings to linguistic shibboleths, thus creating sociolinguistic indexes. • Enregisterment happens against a backdrop of language ideologies, which become apparent in newspaper discourse. • MLE is often evaluated negatively in newspapers due to conservative ideologies, also in left-leaning newspapers. • Other London dialects are used to 'other' MLE and receive a more benign treatment in print media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop an account of linguistic content based on the active inference framework. While ecological and enactive theorists have rightly rejected the notion of content as a basis for cognitive processes, they must recognize the important role that it plays in the social regulation of linguistic interaction. According to an influential theory in philosophy of language, normative inferentialism, an utterance has the content that it has in virtue of its normative status, that is, in virtue of the set of commitments and entitlements that the speaker undertakes by producing this utterance. This normative status is determined by the normative attitudes shared by members of the utterer's linguistic community. I propose here an account of such normative attitudes based on the ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. I explain how social normativity can be understood in that framework as the way in which members of a group shape their social niche to make it more predictable. Finally, I apply this account of social normativity to basic communicative practices, thereby explaining how social normative expectations can emerge to regulate these communicative practices, eventually leading to the institution of the sort of normative statuses constitutive of linguistic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, semanticists moving beyond truth conditional meaning and sociolinguists moving beyond correlations with social structural categories have developed a shared interest in what is commonly called social meaning. This raises the possibility of a comprehensive theory of meaning, moving away from the exclusively propositional model of grammar, and treating language not just as structure but as practice. The paper briefly traces the emergence of social meaning in sociolinguistics, and discusses some issues involved in a broader theory, such as what counts as social meaning, the notions of context and intention, and the need to adopt the Peircian sign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that 'urban contact dialects' tend to diffuse beyond the speech communities in which they first emerge. However, no research has attempted to explore the distribution of these varieties across an entire nation nor isolate the social mechanisms that propel their spread. In this paper, we use a corpus of 1.8 billion geo‐tagged tweets to explore the spread of Multicultural London English (MLE) lexis across the United Kingdom. We find evidence for the diffusion of MLE lexis from East and North London into other ethnically and culturally diverse urban centres across England, particularly those in the South (e.g. Luton), but find lower frequencies of MLE lexis in the North of England (e.g. Manchester), and in Scotland and Wales. Concluding, we emphasise the role of demographic similarity in the diffusion of linguistic innovations by demonstrating that this variety originated in London and diffused into other urban areas in England through the social networks of Black and Asian users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive expansion of English in Germany over the past few decades has not challenged a robustly exonormative orientation, which still by and large recognises standardised British and American English as the most authentic and prestigious representations of the language. Attitudes to the use of English in the national context are diverse, ranging from enthusiastic embracement via grudging acceptance to active resistance. This diversity of opinion reflects the fact that English is currently transitioning from a foreign language (EFL) to a lingua franca (ELF). On the national scale, ELF use is promoted in business, academia and, more generally, among young and well‐educated Germans with an international orientation, but deeply resented by sectors of society. This paper argues that English (in its lingua franca function) has become the only language other than German that has open prestige. The task ahead will be to develop strategies of intelligent multilingualism that will help to 'domesticate' English in the national sociolinguistic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn 2016, Sanrio debuted a series of shorts featuring Retsuko, a cute lesser panda with a penchant for bursts of death-metal infused violent rage. The shorts, eventually transformed into a full show on Netflix, were a comedic look at Retsuko’s anger at unfair treatment in the Japanese workplace, casting a critical eye on issues of sexism, harassment, and overwork. But while Retsuko has been explicitly positioned as counter cultural, what does it mean to be transgressive and Sanrio? This paper analyzes this question from a cross-disciplinary perspective, drawing on critical feminist studies, rage studies, media studies, and sociolinguistics. Approaching the framing, content, and speech of Retsuko throughout her media appearances, we argue that while Retsuko is certainly critical of contemporary Japan, her transgression is ultimately limited, with any potential paths to freedom or rebellion hampered by a corporate system that reabsorbs transgressive behavior and sells it back to customers, closing off the potential to imagine new ways of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a focus on an under-studied group of immigrants in the UK, this paper examines Iranian families' language ideologies and practices at home in relation to Persian acquisition and maintenance for their children. Working within a family language policy (FLP) framework, we draw on sociolinguistic data from semi-structured interviews with eighteen mothers to understand how parental beliefs, their everyday language practices and the attempts they make to maintain, improve, or alter their language use will lead to their children's heritage language acquisition and maintenance. The results of the study suggest that the success in heritage language development and maintenance boils down to parental pro heritage language ideologies and their everyday small-scale practices. It was also found that the interrelationship between language and cultural values and a successful FLP was further reinforced by the parents' migration trajectory and proficiency in English as the societal language. This research also showed that the large size of this diaspora in the UK (particularly in London), their close-knit social network, availability of heritage language weekend schools and the possibility of frequent visits to the home country create a conducive situation for the Iranian diaspora to raise their children bilingually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between language, (in)visibility, and (im)mobility in racialized spaces, focusing on Finnish, Somali, and Arabic speakers in Sweden. Using a theoretical framework based on hegemonic whiteness and intersectionality, the study explores how multilingual practices and subjectivities intersect with race, religion, gender, and class to shape social visibility and mobility. The research draws on linguistic ethnographic data, including interviews, linguistic landscape documentation, and an analysis of the media discourse. The study finds that while Finnish speakers have become invisible due to assimilation policies, Somali and Arabic speakers are hypervisible in Swedish public spaces and discourse, although Arabic speakers are sometimes, and in relation to other migrants, nearing Swedish whiteness. However, all three languages and their speakers are constrained by a white normativity that reproduces inequality. The paper challenges simplistic notions of mobility/immobility and visibility/invisibility in the context of a changing racial order in Sweden, where whiteness serves as a binary sorting mechanism that perpetuates inequality. Overall, this research sheds light on the complex entanglement of language, visibility, and mobility in white spaces and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the intersectional dynamics of race and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction Grammar (CxG) is an innovative approach to language that has become increasingly popular in the Anglosphere over the last 30 years. In CxG, the basic units of linguistic analysis are constructions: arbitrary and conventional form-meaning pairings, reminiscent of Saussure's linguistic sign, but applied to levels of linguistic analysis beyond the lexicon. A large body of research has provided ample evidence in support of CxG. However, the theory remains unknown to many colleagues outside the Anglosphere. In this paper, I highlight a particularly interesting strand of CxG that is referred to as 'usage-based', an approach that assumes constructions are learned based on input frequency, that is, through repeated exposure to and use of a linguistic structure (hence usage-based). The main aim of this paper is thus to demonstrate how corpus data can be analyzed to find evidence for 'entrenchment' of linguistic structures and thus, the existence of constructions. I will illustrate this procedure by applying so-called covarying-collexeme analyses to data from the Slovak National Corpus (SNC) and the Slovak Web 2011 corpus from which I extracted 785 tokens of the so-called Comparative Correlative (CC) construction (e.g. Čím viac čítam, tým viac rozumiem). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The special issue on 'The sociolinguistics of exclusion: Indexing (non)belonging in mobile communities' delves into the phenomenon of exclusion as a means and outcome of social positioning within diverse communities undergoing continual transformation due to social, demographic, political, and technological changes. Through empirical studies that critically engage with exclusionary discourse practices, this issue analyzes the semiotic means that social actors employ to presuppose and/or entail exclusion. Additionally, it explores the underlying ideological assumptions on which these choices are perceived, rationalized, justified, and/or contested as exclusionary. • The papers of this issue delve into the multifaceted realm of (non)belonging. • Social exclusion is a communicative phenomenon that we can observe at different social scales—from everyday interaction to (inter)national policy making. • The papers investigate the semiotic practices through which exclusionary dynamics shape mobile communities. • All the papers share the hope of suggesting new ways of achieving social inclusion through a better understanding of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary reviews, synthesizes, and expands upon the articles in this special issue. The review notes that the papers update the idea that language style – the combination of habitual forms used in languaging – can be used in exclusionary practices. That said, the papers in this issue all approach exclusion in language style from a different standpoint, and this diversity of approaches and topics at once demonstrates how central the exclusionary function of language is for humans, and at the same time suggests some generalizations about how to theorize about exclusion. I note some of the different sociolinguistic processes used in the exclusion cases in the issue, and suggest that we should also study the opposing process on creating inclusion through sociolinguistics. • Processes of exclusion are reviewed. • Style and enregisterment are argued to be an important part of such sociolinguistic exclusion. • The strategic use of code in languaging is revealed to be a theme of exclusion. • Processes of differentiation are shown to be central to the overall process of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I intend to show how Pickwick's trial in Dickens's novel The Pickwick Papers is characterized by a strategic use of address and reference forms that produce effects of discoursal incongruities during the opening and the evidence phase of the proceeding. The analysis reveals Dickens's ability to exploit socio-pragmatic features of the speaker-addressee and speaker-referent-addressee relationships in order to foreground the lawyers' manipulative discourse behaviour towards their addressees and referents. In so doing, the writer undermines the assumption according to which the courtroom is a polite setting characterized by the exchange of mutual respect and deference between participants. The manipulation of address strategies is mainly accomplished by violating the sociolinguistic rules expected in the legal setting or by producing a disjunction between the conventional meaning of honorifics and the speaker's pragmatic intention. The result is that many of the honorifics in the text assume a sarcastic function that contrasts with the politic behaviour prescribed by the courtroom. The manipulation of reference strategies, on the other hand, is accomplished by means of a skilful selection of words for the description of persons and events in a way congenial to the story as claimed and supported by the speaker, no matter how far from the truth this may be. Text evidence shows how the lawyer's referent-term selection denigrates the defendant and creates a mismatch between the reader's expectation of formal politeness in the courtroom and the interrogator's strategic use of a controlled but finally effective rudeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the Lannang Corpus (LanCorp), a public 375,000-word collection of raw and transcribed recordings of Lannang languages spoken in metropolitan Manila, which have been annotated with part-of-speech tags and linked to 40 types of sociolinguistic metadata. It begins by providing an overview of the LanCorp (e.g. design, formats, accessibility). Then, it goes on to show various examples of how the corpus can be used for variationist sociolinguistic research, using Lánnang-uè data as a case study. The findings from the exploratory studies indicate that Lannang languages are influenced by sociolinguistic factors, demonstrating the intricate nature of the Sino-Philippine sociolinguistic ecology. Due to its large size, sociolinguistic metadata, and various formats, LanCorp can be used to study Lannang languages in general and how they are used by specific social groups. It enables scholars to investigate multilingual interactions in a wide range of sociolinguistic factors, furthering the field of Sino-Philippine (socio)linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the necessary complementarity between a translanguaging and named language-perspective by critically examining risks of 'overshooting' when a translanguaging view is theoretically posited as the ultimately superior (sociolinguistic) theory of language use and learning in today's multilingual world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: Spanish subject pronoun expression (SPE) among Bube speakers in Equatorial Guinea has hardly been examined. Thus, the paper aims to (a) examine the SPE rate (b) and the linguistic and social predictors of SPE in this variety. Methodology: The data for the present study were collected using sociolinguistic interviews. These interviews lasted between 45 minutes and an hour. Data and analysis: The audio recordings of 18 bilinguals of Bube and Spanish in Equatorial Guinea were transcribed and analyzed using the Rbrul mixed-effects statistical software. Findings: The overt SPE rate of these bilingual speakers is 17.9%. This pronoun rate is one of the lowest ever found among bilinguals. The significant factors are grammatical person and number, ambiguity, the lexical content, and gender. The insignificant predictors were reference, reflexivity, and education. Originality: This is the first variationist study on Spanish SPE among Bube speakers in Equatorial Guinea. In this study, switch reference, a usually robust predictor, is insignificant among bilingual speakers. Significance: This study expands on the scarce research conducted on Equatoguinean Spanish and opens new avenues for exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates knowledge management in interaction and the role of epistemic stance in place identity construction. We examine how a US expat in Toronto negotiates her New Yorker identity in conversation with two Canadians by demonstrating how authoritative epistemic stances are employed to produce relations of distinction, adequation, and authentication in service of place identity construction. We also discuss 'epistemic disputes', wherein epistemic stances and claims to place identity are challenged through the notion of epistemic rights. In doing so, we argue for the fundamental connection between information state, management of knowledge in interaction, and processes of identity construction. • Analysis of place identity construction through epistemic stancetaking. • Negotiation of epistemic rights and responsibilities. • How 'epistemic disputes' highlight incongruences between epistemic status and stance. • How epistemic stance contributes to tactics of intersubjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread application of semiotic theory in sociolinguistics, the development of children's social-semiotic landscapes remains underexplored. This paper analyzes the spontaneous responses of 94 children to short American English speech samples, with emic coding of responses. Results support a view of children's social-semiotic landscapes as rich and expanding; children as young as 5 volunteer a wide range of social indexes, but substantive comments increase in developmental time. Children use personal and local information early and often. Developmental increases in comments relying on more public or evaluative social knowledge suggest a developmental process building outward from the personal to the public. Children offer a window into the vibrant scaffolding process that all language users utilize, connecting language to the social in a local and dialogic process. • The development of children's social-semiotic landscapes remains underexplored. • Children provided open-ended responses of their impressions of English voices. • We qualitatively coded responses based on what social information children used. • Results support a view of children's social-semiotic landscapes as rich and expanding. • Suggests a developmental process that builds outward from the personal to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Languages are at the centre of nationalistic discourses across South Asia since they have played a historically and politically significant role in defining nationhood and both uniting and dividing countries throughout the British Empire. Despite multilingualism and multiculturalism, and vast differences in individual access to, and command of, mother tongue, national and official languages, paradoxically a collective language is always considered as an important imagined marker of 'national' identity. It is this latter point I explore by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amongst Bangladeshi youths from indigenous ethnic communities who are designated as ethnic minority groups in Bangladesh. Positioning the paper at the nexus of multilingual ecology, I thereby investigate how youths from the indigenous ethnic communities perceive themselves with reference to their mother tongue, national language, and foreign language, and what impact their relationships, their preferences, and use have on the maintenance and sustainability of their mother tongue in the multilingual ecology. A qualitative content analysis of the data demonstrates that it is only by taking the varying potential scopes of language into account that we can fully appreciate these complex Asian multilingual ecologies, where the mother tongues, indigenous ethnic languages, national languages, and English have specific historical, political, and sociocultural significances. The discursive claims of Bangladeshi ethnic youth participants indicate that the presence of the 'mother-tongue' and 'national language' in these contexts is ideologically infused, layered, value-laden, relational, and paradoxical at the microlevel – as these languages are practiced and nurtured by the linguistically minoritized subjects themselves. They negotiate their relationship with these languages, strictly keeping in consideration the existence of other languages and their social, cultural, economic significance in the multilingual ecology. It is via the paradoxical role of these languages in contexts that the paper aims to identify the socio-psychological reasons behind language loss in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a diachronic and bibliometric overview of register studies in the past decade. A total of 545 articles were selected from the field of linguistics of the database of Web of Science Core Collection for the analysis. For bibliometric analysis, CiteSpace and VOSViewer were used in order to reveal the co-citation analysis, the high-frequency keywords, keyword clusters, and the timeline of the keyword network in register studies. The results are summarized as follows. First, register studies have been gaining considerable academic attention in the examined years. Second, the major theoretical origins of register studies were text linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Third, corpus analysis and discourse analysis are the main research methods, followed by genre analysis, and conversation analysis. Fourth, important research themes were extracted and classified based on the following dimensions of register studies, namely, linguistic features, register types, register variations and pragmatic function. Furthermore, Teaching and education was an important dimension in register studies. Fifth, the recent research tended to focus on the register variations caused by the audiences, and corpus analysis and discourse analysis were widely used for broad analyses in different register studies. This bibliometric analysis also shows that online registers have become the research hotspot. Plain Language Summary: A Bibliometric Analysis of Register Studies (2012-2021) Research purpose: This paper provides a diachronic and bibliometric overview of register studies in the past decade. Methods: bibliometric analysis. Conclusion: First, register studies have been gaining considerable academic attention in the examined years. Second, the major theoretical origins of register studies were text linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Third, corpus analysis and discourse analysis are the main research methods, followed by genre analysis, and conversation analysis. Fourth, important research themes were extracted and classified based on the following dimensions of register studies, namely, linguistic features, register types, register variations and pragmatic function. Furthermore, Teaching and education was an important dimension in register studies. Fifth, the recent research tended to focus on the register variations caused by the audiences, and corpus analysis and discourse analysis were widely used for broad analyses in different register studies. Implication: The research may be a useful resource for novice researchers and established scholars in the field, and perhaps also critical in assisting journal editors to continue to promote theoretical or methodological advances in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long critiqued points of view in which monolingual perspectives are seen as normative in research on multilingualism. In relation to this monolingual orientation, however, in which monolingualism is perceived to be the implicit norm, less work has been dedicated to methodological challenges. As disciplinary perspectives on language in Linguistics and related fields move further towards the de-emphasizing and deconstructing of the boundaries between named linguistic varieties, this paper addresses some issues that come up in operationalizing this in our research. It does so through self-reflexivity, from a primarily Sociolinguistic and Applied Linguistic point of view, by addressing monolingual perspectives found in data on a project on multilingual practices in India. It focuses more narrowly on the ethnographic field notes from the research context. With discourse analysis, these are looked at through the lens of the monolingual orientation, with a particular focus on language ideologies and the compartmentalization of named-language varieties. Ideologies in the data are discussed in relation to their bearing on methodology in transcribing, coding, and the framing of research questions. This paper explores the tensions between evolving theoretical perspectives and on-the-ground research practice, concluding by proposing questions for reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most approaches to discourse markers tend to rely on observation on the behavior of monolingual classes of markers. In this paper, we offer a detailed analysis of the behavior and function of a single Spanish discourse marker, namely bueno , in bilingual discourse as opposed to its bilingual counterpart well. In particular, we compare pragmatic factors, and namely fine-grained differences between Spanish bueno and English well , with interactional factors such as the position of the marker in monological vs. dialogical sequences. Finally, we also take into account the impact of individual linguistic choices by comparing the behavior of different speakers when using the scrutinized discourse marker. Thus, we do not only contribute to and expand on previous literature on the behavior of discourse markers, but we also offer a new perspective to further study discourse markers in situations of language contact. • The paper explains the behavior of a single Spanish DM and its English counterpart in bilingual discourse. • A methodology based on online focus groups is used to explore the functionality of the discourse marker in interactions. • The paper finds a broad range of interpersonal functions that explain the use of bueno in bilingual discourse. • An underexplored community is proposed as a focal point in the study of contact and pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normative political theorists working in the field of linguistic justice generally believe that participation in democratic life in linguistically diverse societies requires a shared lingua franca (e.g., Patten 2009; Van Parijs 2011). Even when a shared lingua franca is present, however, there is likely to be a variety of ways in which people speak it, due to variations in accent, pitch, register, and lexicon. This paper examines the implications of intra‐linguistic diversity for democracy and political representation. More specifically, by drawing on Andrew Rehfeld's (2010) work and on relevant sociolinguistics research, the paper argues that widespread unconscious linguistic prejudice constitutes a constraint on some citizens' right to run for political office that is incompatible with democratic equality. The argument is illustrated via a number of examples concerning Australian politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of local dialect forms and other semiotic signs in languagecultural practices on social media in the southern Dutch province North Brabant. Although dialect use is severely decreasing in this area, we find abundant dialect features in present-day media productions, but these are not simply some last remains. By conducting a qualitative discourse analysis of a carnivalesque music video (2020), we argue that non-linguistic resources and co-occurring dialect features are enregistered as recognizably 'Brabantish' for the purpose of indexing place-based identities. Moreover, we show that reproduction on TikTok (2021) takes place through recontextualization and indexical stance-taking. • Languishing dialect in popular media productions. • The paper presents a case study from the Dutch province of North Brabant. • Discourse analysis of a carnivalesque YouTube music video and spinoffs on TikTok. • Analysis through concepts of enregisterment, stylization and recontextualization. • Study provides insight into indexing place-based identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces and discusses Occitan sociolinguistics as it evolved from the 1970s onward as a theory of language contact as conflict. It was developed in conjunction with its Catalan counterpart and as a reaction to Joshua Fishman's allocational model of diglossia, and came as a response to conditions of swift social and linguistic change in Southern France after the Second World War. This model, proposed mainly at first by Robèrt Lafont in Montpelhièr, is strongly materialist in that it focuses on the material conditions of language production and replaces the language movement among other social struggles. This paper first explores the roots of the contemporary Occitan movement and its links with the birth of Occitan sociolinguistics. It then analyzes key concepts in Occitan sociolinguistics such as diglossic ideology as essential to understand processes of minoritization, linguistic alienation, and social domination. Finally, it looks at how this approach conceptualizes language revitalization not as a linguistic issue but as a social one and suggests that Occitan sociolinguistics provides an alternative to models of language loss and revival rooted in cultural and identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of meaning and changes in meaning has enjoyed varying levels of popularity within linguistics. There have been periods during which the exploration of meaning was of prime importance. For instance, in the late 19th century scholars considered the exploration of the etymology of words to be crucial in their quest to find the ‘true’ meaning of lexemes (Geeraerts, 2010; Malkiel, 1993). There have also been periods where semantic analysis was considered redundant to linguistic investigation (Hockett, 1954: 152). In the past 20–30 years semantics has enjoyed a period of revival. This has been mainly led by the advances in cognitive linguistics (and to some extent, historical linguistics) as well by the innovations associated with the development of electronic corpora and computational methods for extracting and tracing changes in the behaviour of the lexicon (cf. Geeraerts, 2010: 168ff, 261ff). However, there are still areas of linguistics which hardly involve lexis in their theoretical and epistemological considerations. One such area is sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to analyze the acknowledgment (ACK) paratext of medical research articles written in English and Spanish in three geographical contexts: Venezuela, Spain, and the United States of America. We thus randomly selected 150 research articles from leading medical journals in each country. The frequency and length of ACKs, the number of named and unnamed acknowledgees, the reasons why they were acknowledged, the number of grants received, and the sources of funding were recorded. The motivations that underpinned each ACK were classified according to B. Cronin's (1995) and C.L. Giles & I.G. Councill's (2004) typology. Results were analyzed by means of chi-square tests. Our results show that ACKs from the English-language corpus are significantly more frequent and longer than those from both the Spanish and Venezuelan samples. The number of persons acknowledged and the number of grants received also were significantly greater in the U.S. sample than they were in the two Spanish-language corpora. Differences were found in the number and types of funding sources. Moreover, in the three corpora, technical/instrumental assistance was more frequently acknowledged than was peers' ideational input. A small-scale ethnographic research study was conducted with Spanish and Venezuelan researchers to get firsthand feedback on the motivations that could lie behind their ACK behavior. We conclude that “backstage solidarity” (E. Goffman, 1959, p. 177; also see B. Cronin & S. Franks, 2006, p. 1915) significantly differs from one context to another, and that the communicative and sociocultural conventions of academic contributorship are not only discipline-dependent but also language- and context-dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze double modal use in American English based on a multi-billion-word corpus of geolocated posts from the social media platform Twitter. We identify and map 76 distinct double modals totaling 5,349 examples, many more types and tokens of double modals than have ever been observed. These descriptive results show that double modal structure and use in American English is far more complex than has generally been assumed. We then consider the relevance of these results to three current theoretical debates. First, we demonstrate that although there are various semantic tendencies in the types of modals that most often combine, there are no absolute constraints on double modal formation in American English. Most surprisingly, our results suggest that double modals are used productively across the US. Second, we argue that there is considerable dialect variation in double modal use in the southern US, with double modals generally being most strongly associated with African American Language, especially in the Deep South. This result challenges previous sociolinguistic research, which has often highlighted double modal use in White Southern English, especially in Appalachia. Third, we consider how these results can help us better understand the origins of double modals in America English: although it has generally been assumed that double modals were introduced by Scots-Irish settlers, we believe our results are more consistent with the hypothesis that double modals are an innovation of African American Language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the diffusion of linguistic change from a case study: the adoption of Spanish tío/tía as a counter-cultural vocatives spreading to youth language over the 70's and 80's (Llopis y Pons 2020). The study is based on a comprehensive corpus, which is interpreted in the light of socio-cultural movements and historical events. To explain this process, it is started from the proposal of diffusion of innovations by Rogers (1962 [2003]) adapted to linguistic change (Labov 1994; Croft 2000; Moreno 1998 [2009]; Blythe y Croft 2012; Nevalainen 2015). It is shown that innovations integrated in cheli slang are part of a complex mosaic of factors, which bring to light certain theoretical issues, such as the cultural factor. It is meant to integrate both sociolinguistic and philological approaches as a strong method to research linguistic change with greater depth and scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'intertextuality' has been in use in biblical studies for over three decades. However, the study of the relationship of biblical elements (e.g. theme and pattern) in the OT and how it functions as a compositional framework in the NT seems to have gained less attention. This paper, thus, aims to investigate whether the temple cleansing-rebuilding tradition in the OT underlies John's Gospel as a compositional framework by: (1) introducing the term 'hyper-intertextuality'; (2) discussing the distinctive pericope of Jesus' temple cleansing in John's Gospel; and (3) formulating a comparative method adapted from Halliday's sociolinguistic theory of context of situation as a heuristic tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal naming culture among the Igbos in South-eastern Nigeria is ethnopragmatically conceived to contextualize their collective worldview which communicates their religious and sociocultural connections. This paper explores an aspect of Igbo naming practices which shows the diverse conceptualization of Chi (God) from an ethnopragmatic perspective that situate names and meanings within the language and religious interpretations. Data for the study were generated through participant observation, semi-structured interviews and informal interactions with 40 recruited participants as representative sample of the name-givers, bearers and users among Mbaise and Ngwa people in Aboh Mbaise and Aba North Local Government Areas in Imo and Abia States of Nigeria. Findings show that the personal names contextualize Igbo Christians' conceptualization of Chi as supreme, virtuous, extolling and trustworthy, giver of wealth and a faithful promise keeper. We conclude that Chi has a deepened value in the Igbo sociocultural and religious beliefs nuanced in their naming practices that construct particular circumstance(s) of the name bearer, parents and community. The emerging orientations expand the ethnopragmatic functions of the personal names beyond linguistic and sociocultural identities to situate Igbo as a society with supreme attachment to Christian religion, reverence to, and propagation of the virtues and nature of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syntactic theories are typically construed based on acceptability judgments. These judgments are increasingly often collected experimentally, testing larger sets of linguistically naive participants. An important assumption is that participants have a very clear understanding of what it is they are asked to do, which can be assessed by establishing their internal consistency. The question we address in this paper is whether 'human measuring instruments' are consistent in their judgments. To this end, we re-examined the judgment data from Schoenmakers (2023), where three types of violations of the prescriptive norm and object scrambling sentences were evaluated. We used Generalizability Theory to investigate the degree of covariation in the judgments and found that the internal consistency was poor in the norm violation item sets, but excellent in the scrambling item set. A difference between the data patterns is that the former item sets led to 'sledgehammer' effects between the stigmatized and non-stigmatized variants, which left little room for participant variation. Our analyses show that judgments from naive native speakers can adequately serve linguistic theorizing, both in the case of stigmatized and non-stigmatized variation. Furthermore, we performed cluster analyses to identify subgroups of participants to get a better grasp on the variation in the data set. We conclude that specific statistical analyses can help understand data and advance linguistic theory building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the way people communicate and convey information, particularly in public spaces. This paper investigates the use of language and signs in COVID-19-related directives in Japan from a pragmatic perspective. Using data collected through a linguistic landscape survey, the study qualitatively examines the use of politeness in linguistic formulation and the semiotic use of space through the combination of signs and objects. The analyses reveal the differences in politeness strategies used in top-down signs compared to bottom-up signs. Top-down signs, such as those produced by the government or large organizations, tend to use an invitation form and incomplete sentences, whereas bottom-up signs, created by individuals or small shops, often use more formal language and formulaic request expressions. The study highlights the role of addressers of bottom-up signs as "handlers" who play an active role in pragmatically utilizing space through the arrangement of semiotic signs. The study argues that a detailed linguistic and semiotic analysis is crucial in comprehending how meaning is co-constructed in the linguistic and semiotic landscape. This is particularly relevant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, where clear and effective communication is of utmost importance in order to maintain public health and safety. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the use of language and signs in public spaces, and have implications for the development of effective communicative strategies in the context of the pandemic and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article maps the linguistic views on the common language users as non-experts in the field of linguistics and their ability to think reflectively and rationally about issues related to language. An overview of attitudes towards non-linguists is presented against the background of the development of linguistics, ranging from a structural understanding of language with an emphasis on standard language cultivation and linguistic prescription, through a sociolinguistic approach that emphasizes the role of the language user as a creator of the linguistic norm and its variation, to the view of folk linguistics and citizen linguistics, which examine how ordinary people in various forms of public communication present their opinions, beliefs, as well as their myths and ideologies about language. At the same time, the paper argues for the view that some folk knowledge and beliefs about language are not only incorrect or inaccurate, but, on the contrary, that they provide valuable information for linguistics about the background of language behaviour and language change. The material was drawn from the databases of Slovak linguistic journals and the specialized corpus of the journal Slovenská reč. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written and said about the roles, functions, and status of English and its diverse implications in local contexts and for people therein. However, Northern Cyprus stands out as a 'blind spot' as it is often annexed in studies related to Turkey or diluted within discussions focusing on Cyprus – which collectively leads to limited, partial, and tangential accounts of the complexities embedded in the local context. Departing from this premise, the current paper offers a comprehensive sociolinguistic profile of English in Northern Cyprus. More specifically, it portrays a historical account of the sociolinguistic situation with present‐day connections to statuses, roles, attitudes, functions, domains, policies, and practices in the local context. It is concluded that as the island morphed first into a postcolonial context and later into a partitioned sociopolitical entity, the linguacultural hegemony of English remained in Turkish Cypriots' linguistic repertoires, collective psyche, and educational curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the sociolinguistic history of English in one of the post‐Soviet Eastern European countries ‐ Lithuania ‐ covering three post‐1990 decades. The aim is to examine the dynamics of the spread of English in relation to the 'non‐native' Russian, the main lingua franca and L2 in this region after WWII until 1990. Based on a set of attitudinal, educational and self‐assessment data as well as mixed language use for identity construction, the study shows that English was not accepted as rapidly as is sometimes claimed. With lower English scores and additional Russian, the 'periphery' of the Expanding Circle remains noticeably distinct from the European context. In demographic terms, however, the end of the third post‐1990 decade can be considered a turning point in the sociolinguistic development of the community, led by the youth generations born around 1990 and after. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From January 2017 until January 2020, the Stormont assembly in Northern Ireland was suspended, with the Irish language being cited as the main stumbling block to the restoration of government. The continued debate around the necessity of an Irish Language Act (ILA) for Northern Ireland is bound up with more general divisions in society surrounding national identity, and as such, it divided political parties and the nationalist and unionist communities from which they draw their support. Through the analysis of ethnographic interviews conducted in various language learning centres across Belfast, I explore how this debate around legislating for the language impacted on the engagement of learners with the language in the city. By considering the role played by the media in the engagement of interview participants with the Irish language in Belfast, I aim to examine how the policy delay and political discourse affects those engaging with the language. This paper aims to address changing attitudes to the Irish language in Belfast in a period of political crisis, and what it means for those who use the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper explores the funerary epigraphy of contemporary Galician rural societies to contextualise it within social, historical, and linguistic dynamics. This hypothesis suggests an apparently contradictory record, with diverse primary sources offering apparently conflicting versions of the same process: while funerary memorials show an absolute predominance of Castilian as the vehicular language, sociolinguistic and historical studies suggest an absolute predominance of Galician. Considering these contextual discordances, different questions arise: how are these ambiguous contexts generated? Is it a methodological problem or are they real representations of ambivalent social dynamics? How can we identify them and in what kind of social processes? Accordingly, this work develops a twofold approach: firstly, an analytical methodology that collects relevant data from epigraphic evidence is provided, aiming to expose the funerary record and identify possible contextual ambiguities in relation to other available sources. All analytical procedures will be described, and the results obtained will be presented. Moreover, a broad historical and sociolinguistic perspective is presented, with the aim of contextualising what dynamics define and explain this apparently contradictory phenomenon. Secondly, a discussion about the problems of these discordances, their relationship with the discourses of power, and their analysis from the material register has been considered. Different theoretical and methodological approaches are explored to study these ambiguous records, considering their role in different power relations. The main objective is to reflect on how we approach ambiguous records in order to provide terminological tools to understand material and social contexts entangled in power dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a pilot study aimed at investigating the comprehension of pantomimic stories and its possible cognitive underpinnings in typically developing children. A group of twenty-two Italian-speaking children aged between 8.02 and 10.11 years were included in the study. Participants watched short videos in which professional actors performed pantomime narratives; then answered a comprehension question and retold the stories. Analyses revealed positive correlations between the comprehension of pantomimes and age, theory of mind, and working memory. The implications of these results for a narrative model of language origin are discussed against the background of an eco-evo-devo perspective. • The study explores the comprehension of pantomimic stories and its cognitive underpinnings in children. • They watched pantomime narratives; then they answered a comprehension question and retold the stories. • Correlations between story comprehension and age, theory of mind, and working memory emerged. • Results are discussed against the background of a narrative model of language origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses metalanguage, metadiscourse, metacommunication and metapragmatics testifying to users' conscious awareness enacted in human-AI interactions, based on a corpus of posts sent to Reddit's r/ChatGPT. The emphasis falls on users' foci of attention as they perform linguistic tests on ChatGPT and on how the "meta" practices manifest themselves interactionally on the selected subreddit, where human-AI interactions are showcased for entertainment purposes. The findings suggest that engaging with AI reflects and, potentially, enhances language users' metalinguistic, metadiscursive, metacommunicative and metapragmatic awareness. This awareness is mirrored in ChatGPT's output, indicative of its previous human-assisted training. Additionally, this investigation demonstrates that, when acknowledged as one subject of study, the four "meta" concepts are intricately intertwined as they may co-occur and overlap. • Posts at r/ChatGPT report users' challenging ChatGPT for entertainment purposes. • Challenges involve (im)politeness, language play, pretend play, and epistemic states. • Human-AI interactions show and boost users' conscious meta-linguistic/communicative/pragmatic awareness. • Users' "meta" conscious awareness shows on three interactional levels at r/ChatGPT. • Metapragmatics, metacommunication, metadiscourse and metalanguage are overlapping notions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In interpreter-mediated encounters, one participant's contributions are multivoiced, other participants' contributions are collectively produced, as the interpreter mediates their words. It is interesting what mediation does to their voice, and even more relevant if participants speak in ways deviating from local norms. This paper offers a case study of an interpreter-mediated court meeting. I discuss how a courtroom interpreter handles the accused's contributions, what consequences the interpreter's choices have, and what it adds to our understanding of voice. I argue that speaking and being heard "in one's own terms" is not necessarily the most beneficial to less powerful institutional participants. • It is central for courtroom interpreters to represent the voice of lay participants. • Interpreters often choose to interpret for legal participants rather than lay participants when they speak simultaneously. • Interpreters standardize the linguistic contributions they mediate. • Standardization and normalization may help a participant being heard. • At the same time it may suppress the social voice of a participant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a study of Arabic-French language alternation in medical consultations in Algeria to reveal the ways in which code-switching is used to build and organise activities in medical interactions. Conversation analysis is applied to examine the participants' linguistic choices. Audio-recorded data was collected in two public hospitals in the Northwest of Algeria. This study suggests that there are misperceptions in the research literature about doctors' use of French as a resource to disempower patients and to limit their contribution in consultations. It refines our understanding of the nature of language alternation – code switching - in Algerian medical consultations. The results show that: 1) French is dispreferred with patients, 2) code-switching is used as a resource to organise and distinguish activities in turns and sequences, however, 3) doctors' use of French can contribute to pushing back against patients' resistance and to disaffiliate with patients' stances. • Language alternation on a moment-by-moment analysis of action in medical examinations. • Code switching is used as a resource to organise and distinguish activities in turns and sequences. • Arabic is preferred by doctors with both bilingual and monolingual patients. • Doctors' use French with patients when pushing back against patients' resistance and to disaffiliate with patients' stances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tel Aviv neighborhood of HaTikva, originally home mostly to Mizrahi Jews, has undergone a considerable demographic shift in recent years. This paper discusses the narratives of Mizrahi longtime residents of the neighborhood, who are uncomfortable with the recent changes. Focusing on a micro-analysis of the stylistic variation in two interviews, the results show that the voiced pharyngeal approximant (ʕ), a linguistic feature strongly associated with Mizrahi identity, is used in the construction of place identity, by reinforcing the links between these speakers' Mizrahi identity and their status as authentic residents of the neighborhood. • Residents of South Tel Aviv are experiencing a rapid change in their neighborhood. • Linguistic resources are utilized to construct an authentic place identity. • (ʕ), a linguistic feature associated with ethnicity, is used to index place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]