Search

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

As in many linguistics subfields, studies of prosody have mainly focused on majority languages and dialects and on speakers who hold power in social structures. The goal of this Special Issue is to diversify prosody research in terms of the languages and dialects being investigated, as well as the social structures that influence prosodic variation. The Special Issue brings together prosody researchers and researchers exploring sociological variation in prosody, with a focus on the prosody of marginalized dialects and on prosodic differences based on gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. The papers in this volume don't just advance our understanding of critical issues in sociolinguistics, but they also challenge some of the received wisdom in the exploration of sociolinguistic influences on prosody. Not only does this collection highlight the value of this work to informing theories of prosodic variation and change, but the collected papers also provide examples of methodological innovations in the field that will be valuable for all prosody researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on scholarly works that are both ethnographically-based (such as Stephen Levinson and Elinor Ochs’s) and socially-based (such as Jacob Mey and Joana Pinto’s), this paper takes a particular stance on linguistic pragmatics. Originally named by Peirce and established as a perspective – rather than a discipline – pragmatics gathers researches from different traditions around the world. In departmental terms, people working on language from a pragmatic perspective may be affiliated with areas such as sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, neurolinguistics, etc., yet a family resemblance unites them: pragmatics seen as social science, which stands for both a field ethnographically oriented to the role, ideologies and agency of language users, and science “in society,” politically situated. The paper revisits language ethnographies in Oceania and Africa, in addition to semantically-oriented scholarship. I conclude, with Rajagopalan, that a diversity of problems investigated in pragmatics are refinements from subjects’ situated action [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roleplay, as a form of speaker imitation, has commonly been used as a tool to investigate the emergence of sociolinguistic expectations in children. In this paper, we integrate previous methodological insights on roleplay with the aim to draft a unified protocol for its design and analysis in (developmental) (socio)linguistics. Special attention is paid to guiding principles for (1) role selection, (2) roleplay elicitation, (3) roleplay identification, (4) isolation of the linguistic variable and (5) cross-verification of the results. The roleplay protocol is applied to a case study on English insertions in Belgian Dutch by five preadolescents, where it seems to effectively capture sociolinguistic expectations: respondents increasingly insert English elements in their performances of English-oriented roles (e.g. rapper) and limit those elements in their performances of Dutch-oriented roles (e.g. farmer). Overall, this paper unites previous insights on the implementation of roleplay designs, aiming to further empirical investigations into speaker imitation in developmental sociolinguistics and the study of linguistic behavior in roleplay in general. • A unified protocol for roleplay design and analysis with children is proposed. • The protocol is created to optimally capture sociolinguistic expectations. • The protocol is applied to a case study on English insertions in Belgian Dutch. • Children use more English insertions for roles like rapper and soccer player. • Children limit their English insertions for roles like farmer and prime minister. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functional category of general extenders (e.g. and so on, or something, etcetera) has been mainly analysed in previous work with a focus on spoken language. The aim of this paper is to further explore its use in standard written language, through the analysis of a corpus of Italian texts. The paper shows that general extenders in written language display several specific features that need to be considered within a general account of the class: (i) from a quantitative point of view, their frequency of use is lower than that of their spoken counterparts; (ii) forms like the abbreviation ecc./etc. and the ellipsis <...> are exclusive of written language; (iii) they are often employed in lists that exemplify a co-occurring referring expression, thus reinforcing text cohesion without the proper online categorization that regularly takes place in spoken language; (iv) their frequency of use is higher in formal texts, whereas in spoken language it increases in interactive and informal discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contribution of the Norwegian historian, politician, and ethnologist Ludvig Kristensen Daa (1809–1877) to the study of the Indigenous languages of North America. We focus on his accounts of sound systems, where he argued that North American languages are characterized by greater linguistic diversity, small consonant inventories and gaps in inventories, unusual sounds, and indistinct pronunciation of consonants. Daa attributed these features to the use of the languages in small and isolated communities, thus anticipating more recent discussions in which the degree of linguistic complexity is attributed to social and demographic factors. While some of his claims reflect methodological shortcomings of pre-20th-century phonetic study, the factors which according to Daa shape languages spoken in isolation are analogous to the parameters now examined by typologists, thus providing a sense of continuity across centuries in the links sought between structural diversity among languages and external factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigates variation in the marking of two aspectual subcategories of the imperfective in Bahamian English. First, it looks into variable auxiliary be use in progressive and future constructions, that is, the variation between full, contracted and zero be in non‐past V‐ing environments and related contexts. Second, the paper examines variable application of preverbal does/is/'s in non‐past habitual environments. The two variables were selected to represent the 'informal' and 'anti‐formal' group respectively, that is, one feature that classifies as a reduction of English structure and one direct transfer from the creole (Allsopp, 1996, pp. lvi–lvii). Thus, in addition to examining the linguistic constraints, the study will take a close look at the stylistic factors conditioning the variation, placing a special focus on the distribution of the non‐standardized variants over various registers as well as how speakers employ them to create linguistic styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comprehensive survey of corpora and lexical resources available for Turkish. We review a broad range of resources, focusing on the ones that are publicly available. In addition to providing information about the available linguistic resources, we present a set of recommendations, and identify gaps in the data available for conducting research and building applications in Turkish Linguistics and Natural Language Processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constitutes an introduction to our special issue on Transcending circulations of southern and northern concepts: Towards mobile and dialogic perspectives on language puts the spotlight on the hegemonies and marginalizations of mainstream academic productions and the circulations of concepts in the contemporary fields that are labelled Multilingualism, Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, etc. Transcending the demarcations that have emerged in the Language Sciences broadly conceptualized across time, it particularly attempts to illuminate, through different scholars' engagements, the circulations of concepts inside and across academic circles located in various places on the planet, identified as central or marginal places of production of academic norms, including what is understood as global epistemic circuits. The editors present reflections from their own positionalities and recent trajectories as illustrative points of departure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic repertoire is regarded as one of the foundational concepts of sociolinguistics but despite its prominence during the early years of the discipline, it is commonly believed that for decades scant theoretical development on repertoire occurred. This situation is seen to change in the early 2000s when several (Northern) researchers increasingly advocated that linguistic repertoire could be more productive to theorize contemporary communicative practices than language. In this paper, I aim to foreground the South/North entanglements in the coinage and development of linguistic repertoire and present erased, forgotten, or obscured parts of the linguistic repertoire story. I show how Southern thinkers, both linguists and non-linguists came up with precursors to the way in which repertoires are currently conceptualized. By presenting this obscured narrative from the South, I want to offer critical questions about the trajectories of concepts and the kind of knowledge that gets excluded by the sidelining of Southern thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language is the mirror of society, it reflects all its manifestations, from a civilization and paper, or backwardness and delay, it is clos ely related to all aspects of society. Therefore, language has received the attention of linguists, sociologists and anthropologists from the angle that it is a social phenomenon. Thus it has a science that examines linguistic issues and relations with society. This science is known as sociolinguistics. It studies the language in its relations with society, the social significance of all aspects of the structure of the language, and the methods of its use that are related to its social and cultural functions. In this paper I would like to treat some of Epistemological problematics in sociolinguistics concerning the sociological, and the sociolinguistic perspectives of social varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language is the mirror of society, it reflects all its manifestations, from a civilization and paper, or backwardness and delay, it is closely related to all aspects of society. Therefore, language has received the attention of linguists, sociologists and anthropologists from the angle that it is a social phenomenon. Thus it has a science that examines linguistic issues and relations with society. This science is known as sociolinguistics. It studies the language in its relations with society, the social significance of all aspects of the structure of the language, and the methods of its use that are related to its social and cultural functions. In this paper I would like to treat some of Epistemological problematics in sociolinguistics concerning the sociological, and the sociolinguistic perspectives of social varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary-dialect works are useful tools for dialect study as they are characterized by the presence of deviant spellings based on semi-phonetic spellings of Standard English. This paper analyzes these spellings and their sounds within the GOAT lexical set in the dialect of nineteenth-century Lancashire, according to the classification that Wells (1982) provides for RP [au]. For this purpose, we examined nineteen literary-dialect works. In this endeavor, the deviant spellings related to that RP diphthong were gathered and attributed to their realizations in the dialect. This paper discusses the coexistence of the different sounds related to RP [au] considering historical and sociolinguistic reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a descriptive case study of the status and functions of English in contemporary Lebanon. It consults archival research (primary and secondary sources), firsthand observations, and governmental artifacts for data collection purposes. I use such data to portray the spread of English in various domains of use and build an evidence‐based argument about the relationship between policy making/implementation and its effects on local users for practicing agency in promoting the status of English. The paper includes a sociohistorical overview of the Lebanese context and discusses findings in relation to the uses of English, the role of educational institutions in enforcing language policies, and users' interactions with language policy and planning. The sociolinguistic profiling of English in Lebanon facilitates a unique analysis of a multifaceted argument in favor of linguistic pragmatism over linguistic colonialism for institutionalizing the uses and functions of English in an Arabic speaking country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes perceptual multilingualism as a research interest within the broader folk linguistic enterprise. By drawing on the geolinguistic mapping tasks popular in perceptual dialectology – whereby participants are asked to draw and depict dialectal diversity in a given region – we show that perceptual multilingualism can elicit knowledge and reasoning in the community about linguistic diversity more broadly. To do this, we analysed and discussed 41 perceptual multilingualism maps produced by high school students in Hong Kong about societal multilingualism across the Hong Kong region. On the one hand, the maps allowed us to quantify which languages manifest in the youths' metalinguistic awareness and where. On the other hand, we positioned the maps as discourses to be compared and analysed through a critical social theoretical lens. Doing so revealed implicit and contested power relations as they manifested in epistemic claims in dialectic relation to broader sociopolitical narratives in Hong Kong. This included Hong Kong's contentious transition to governance by Beijing and the marginalisation of the blue-collar workforce. Beyond the empirical metalinguistic data, our paper shows that perceptual multilingualism can contribute to critical sociolinguistics by helping to reveal power relations, hegemonies and ideologies, and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature has addressed the 'complex layers and nuances of today's multilingual, mobile and global society' [Barakos & Selleck, 2019, Elite multilingualism: Discourses, practices, and debates. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 40(5), 361]. Heller [2010. The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 101–114] argues that the globalised new economy is bound up with transformations of language and identity in many different ways [e.g. Bauman, 1997. Postmodernity and its discontents. London: Routledge; Castells, 2000. The information age: Economy, society and culture (3 vols). Oxford: Blackwell; Giddens, 1990. The consequences of modernity. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University California Press]. This paper examines how these themes play out in Wales, in the relative value placed on Welsh and English by 'new' or 'learner' speakers of Welsh. These 'new' or 'learner' speakers have learnt a minority language often through non-traditional routes and this article seeks to understand what linguistic varieties are capitalised by these learners, how they characterise their own language knowledge, and how these 'new speakers' position themselves in relation to mobility and the new globalised economy. Additionally, the paper seeks to explore how disparities in terms of access to resources can impact on new speakers' trajectories – in other words, how different routes to bilingualism are perceived as opening or closing metaphorical doors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a sociolinguistic profile of contemporary Nepal, with particular reference to the status and functions of English in Nepali society. Nepal has been said to belong to the Expanding Circle, as English has traditionally had no official status there, although the language has been playing significant economic, educational, and social roles in society, in similar fashion to an Outer Circle variety of English. The use of English has increasingly spread in various domains of society, including education. This paper begins by providing an overview of Nepal and its cultural, linguistic and social dynamics, and by discussing the history of English in Nepal from the 17th century to date. It then proceeds to discuss the users and uses of English in contemporary society, documenting how the interpersonal, instrumental, administrative, and creative/innovative functions, along with linguistic adaptation and innovation, are manifested in the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accessibility hierarchy was first proposed by Keenan & Comrie (1977) to describe the cross-linguistic distribution of relative markers in terms of likelihood of relativization of different syntactic roles. The hierarchy is also commonly believed to reflect constraints on possible changes in the domain of relativization. For example, the hierarchy predicts that locative relatives that develop into general relativizers should expand their functional range in a step-by-step fashion from lower to higher roles. In this paper, we revise existing claims about the diachrony of locative relatives. In doing so, we survey known cases of locative relatives that develop into general relativizers and we also discuss data from linguistic variation in non-standard varieties in European languages, with a focus on social variation in Italian. As we argue, data from Italian suggests that another possible cline of development of locative relatives should be acknowledged, that is, locative > concern > subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the latest report of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) International, Ayta Magbukun, which has approximately one thousand speakers, is currently one of the Philippine languages with the smallest population. The present paper seeks to contribute to the limited documentation and studies on the said language by providing a brief discussion on some of the phonological characteristics of Ayta Magbukun. The discussion specifically revolves around the following areas: segmental and suprasegmental phonemes, phonotactics, and morphophonological processes. In order to provide a comprehensive analysis of the topic, methods commonly used in acoustic phonetics were employed in this study, such as the use of computer software Praat and JPlot Formants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the controversy over the creation of the Canarian Academy of Language. I adopt a glottopolitical perspective that considers institutional linguistic descriptions as interventions in the public space of language in order to maintain power and organize specific social orders. I examine the antecedents of the study of Atlantic Spanish and Spanish in the Canary Islands from the fifties to the nineties at the Universidad de La Laguna, and I observe a break in the language discourses that construct Canarian Spanish as a symbol of identity, a result of the dynamics of quasi–nationalism in the state of the autonomies. The need for the Canarian Academy of Language functioned as part of the rhetoric of the abandonment of the state and was established in terms of repairing a sociolinguistic trauma that would be solved with the action of philologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differently from other areas of linguistic research, the study of metaphor variation and change presents some uniquely difficult challenges for systematic linguistic analysis. The recent development of cognitive sociolinguistic theory has showcased the importance of the study of conceptual differences among linguistic varieties. This paper is intended as a contribution to this field of investigation: using statistical analysis of large sets of dialectal data, we will propose an analysis of onomasiological lexical variation and change across varieties of World English. In particular, we will focus on why particular emotion conceptualizations are more frequent in some of these varieties of English. Our analysis shows that local socio-cultural models of emotions affect lexical variation and change at the dialectal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in the Expanding Circle, Turkey has become a setting which offers vibrant linguistic landscapes fascinating to linguists. Underlying this vibrancy is the prevalent use of English for a wide variety of instrumental purposes and multilingualism that is becoming increasingly tangible. This paper explores how diversity brought about by globalization and migration has generated an interesting mix of languages, scripts and modalities led by English in the Turkish context. The data collected from the streets of various districts in Istanbul indicate an interplay of Turkish, English and Arabic, and a sociolinguistic analysis reveals practices of code‐switching and translanguaging. The pedagogical implications highlight the importance of promoting a WE/ELF‐aware English language teaching through a framework that considers both the plurilingual view of English and the entailing sociolinguistic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the linguistic features of Afro-Peruvian Spanish as spoken in the municipality of El Carmen, in the immediate vicinity of Chincha. These are linguistic variants that can mostly be found in other parts of Peru, being always stigmatized as 'peasant', 'vulgar', etc. Some features, however, are rather unusual within their national context and may even be related to Caribbean Spanish or to other afrovernacular varieties spoken in Latin America. Against this background, some comments about the place of Afro-Peruvian Spanish in the Peruvian variational context and in the so-called Afro-Hispanic Linguistics turn out to be mandatory. Finally, this paper highlights the actual need of an accurate variational description of Afro-Peruvian Spanish, even more as the Afro-Peruvian community is demanding and, fortunately, gaining visibility in today's Peru (although much work remains to be done). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translation is an interdisciplinary activity in which translators must consider all aspects of the text being translated, including both psychology and ideology. They must also view translation as a complex process that spans linguistic, cultural, economic, and ideological factors, analysing intricate issues that usually lie at the boundaries of languages, cultures, and societies. This paper examines the challenges inherent in translating the sociolinguistic aspects of Thartharah fawq al-Nil (1966), published in English as "Adrift on the Nile" (1993) – challenges that include drug addicts' slang and jargon, register, and figurative language. The specific objective is to identify error patterns produced by the translator and to analyse these errors quantitatively and qualitatively, assessing their negative impact on the reader and suggesting possible solutions. "Adrift on the Nile" is an important novel in an exceptional period of modern Egyptian history, and is regarded by many critics as "one of the richest essays on symbolism" (Allen 1982: 145). This paper calls for adopting a more sociolinguistic perspective when translating unique texts overloaded with cultural and socio-political meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an introduction to the papers in this special issue on the sociophonetics of /s/. We begin by reviewing some of the principal findings on variation in the production and perception of /s/, summarizing studies in sociolinguistics, experimental phonetics, and laboratory phonology. We go on to identify similarities in the meanings associated with /s/ variation cross-linguistically, and briefly describe how theories of sound symbolism may help us to account for these patterns. We conclude this introductory article with a summary of the contributions to the special issue and a discussion of how together these articles help us to better understand that origin and trajectory of socially meaningful sociophonetic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We learn language from our social environment. In general, the more sources we have, the less informative each of them is, and the less weight we should assign it. If this is the case, people who interact with fewer others should be more susceptible to the influence of each of their interlocutors. This paper tests whether indeed people who interact with fewer other people have more malleable phonological representations. Using a perceptual learning paradigm, this paper shows that individuals who regularly interact with fewer others are more likely to change their boundary between /d/ and /t/ following exposure to an atypical speaker. It further shows that the effect of number of interlocutors is not due to differences in ability to learn the speaker’s speech patterns, but specific to likelihood of generalizing the learned pattern. These results have implications for both language learning and language change, as they suggest that individuals with smaller social networks might play an important role in propagating linguistic changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the Andalusian variety carried out in the last decades have allowed us to know, with some precision, the way in which certain factors condition the operation. The objective of this paper is to determine if some of these changes are subject to common behaviour. In our research, we focus on the changes that have some kind of prestige and we left aside the non-prestigious ones. The results have shown us a big difference between changes that operate from the top down to the bottom and those that, on the contrary, operate from the bottom upwards. This first group of changes, in addition to having a wide range of prestige and being in agreement with the national standard, these changes are relatively new. In fact, they were driven by a generation subjected to extremely marked social pressures. Currently, these prestigious processes are common throughout the entire dialect, although the rate in which they arrive on the social strata differs depending on the geographical zone. By contrast, the changes that operate from the bottom upwards are not new, they have local prestige, and they present different solutions in different geographical areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mishnaic Hebrew shows considerable linguistic variation, which may be narrowed down to three phases: the original living language, its literary crystallization, and its written and oral transmission. While scholars of Mishnaic Hebrew are well aware of this fact, they generally do not explore it and neglect to utilize tools of variationist linguistics and historical sociolinguistics in order to enhance their understanding of the language and the motivations of its users. This paper calls for a careful integration of variationist and sociolinguistic methods into the research on Mishnaic Hebrew and offers two case studies that demonstrate the advantages of this approach. The first case study concerns the distribution of the two feminine singular demonstrative pronouns זו and זאת, for which I argue for a variationist rather than structuralist analysis. The second case study concerns a metalinguistic discussion in tractate 'Eruvin of the Babylonian Talmud, which is claimed here to demonstrate the ideological nature of rabbinic literature and its linguistic implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper is a quantitative analysis of the influence of linguistic and social factors over the deletion of the voiced plosive series /bdg/ in Chilean Spanish, in order to determine whether the deletion of the series follows the same conditioning that has been described for its weakening. The study is based on a sample of ten informants native to Santiago in sociolinguistic interviews using four speech styles. Additionally, a careful procedure of spectrographic inspections and identification of non-deleted and deleted variants of the series was defined. After the coding and analysis, it is concluded that the voiced plosive series does not present a regular behaviour in the deletion of these segments in intervocalic contexts. Deletion of voiced plosives /b/ and /d/ was found mainly in reduced speech contexts, but style of speech was not a factor for /g/ deletion. Voiced plosive /d/ showed 65.6% of deletion, in addition to showing a stronger tendency to deletion in more linguistic contexts and across genders. Voiced plosive /b/ showed 37.6% of deletion, in similar linguistic contexts as for /d/, but more predominant in male speakers. Voiced plosive /g/ showed 5.8% of deletion, and its conditioning for deletion differed from /b/ and /d/ with regards to linguistic factors, and neither gender nor speech style were seen as factors involved in its deletion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic evaluation is portrayed and explored in sociolinguistic studies in various ways (e.g. LABOV, 2008 [1972]; KROCH, 1995). In this paper, we discuss the ways in which speakers are asked, in sociolinguistic interviews, about their perceptions and evaluations of accent: what the speakers understand by this term and how the opinion about their own accent can be correlated to the production of linguistic variables. Firstly, we compare how these questions are asked in three studies of Brazilian Portuguese (BARBOSA, 2002; OUSHIRO, 2015; CARREÃO, 2018). Secondly, we focus on data about Louveira (a city in the countryside of São Paulo state, but rather close to the state capital, also named São Paulo), which shows a correlation between opinions on accent and the production of two linguistic variables: (i) (t,d) followed by [i] - variably pronounced as dental stops [t, d] or africates [t, d]; and (ii) coda (-r) - variably pronounced as retroflex [ɻ] or tap [ɾ]. Louveira's less common variants ([t, d] and [ɾ]) correlate in production to accent evaluation by the speakers. Considering that accents tend to be ranked in comparison to one another (see BARBOSA, 2002), we discuss how the opposition "capital vs. countryside" is operationalized in Louveira. The cities that exert the greatest influence on speakers also determine which values (positive or negative/stigmatized) are attributed to certain linguistic variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical null hypothesis significance tests are not appropriate in corpus linguistics, because the randomness assumption underlying these testing procedures is not fulfilled. Nevertheless, there are numerous scenarios where it would be beneficial to have some kind of test in order to judge the relevance of a result (e.g. a difference between two corpora) by answering the question whether the attribute of interest is pronounced enough to warrant the conclusion that it is substantial and not due to chance. In this paper, I outline such a test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a case study of non-linguists’ perceptions of accent, this paper investigates how accurately and on what basis Japanese-accented English (JAE) is discernible from other L2 varieties of English in New Zealand (NZ). The paper sheds light on how a feature salient in speech is associated with the perceived sociolinguistic identity of speakers. An analysis of a test with local university students demonstrates that JAE had the highest identification rate among six L2 English accents and that the lack of contrast between English /l/ and /r/ was the most crucial to their identification of major segmental features previously noted as characteristic of JAE. Although the participants also frequently perceived the /l/–/r/ conflation in Cantonese- and Korean-accented speakers, they were more likely to assume that the accent was Japanese rather than any other L2 accent. The conflation served as an indexical cue of JAE in NZ society at the beginning of this century because of New Zealanders’ extensive contact with Japanese visitors and familiarity with the Japanese language in secondary education, along with ESL reference books’ frequent reference to this feature as peculiar to JAE. The study confirms the applicability of the concept of indexicality to L2 accent investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of the human species out of Africa in the Pleistocene, and the subsequent development of agriculture in the Holocene, resulted in waves of linguistic diversification and replacement across the planet. Analogous to the growth of populations or the speciation of biological organisms, languages diversify over time to form phylogenies of language families. However, the dynamics of this diversification process are unclear. Bayesian methods applied to lexical and phonetic data have created dated linguistic phylogenies for 18 language families encompassing ~3,000 of the world’s ~7,000 extant languages. In this paper we use these phylogenies to quantify how fast languages expand and diversify through time both within and across language families. The overall diversification rate of languages in our sample is ~0.001 yr-1 (or a doubling time of ~700 yr) over the last 6,000 years with evidence for nonlinear dynamics in language diversification rates over time, where both within and across language families, diversity initially increases rapidly and then slows. The expansion, evolution, and diversification of languages as they spread around the planet was a non-constant process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful open source software (OSS) projects comprise freely observable, task-oriented social networks with hundreds or thousands of participants and large amounts of (textual and technical) discussion. The sheer volume of interactions and participants makes it challenging for participants to find relevant tasks, discussions and people. Tagging (e.g., @AmySmith) is a socio-technical practice that enables more focused discussion. By tagging important and relevant people, discussions can be advanced more effectively. However, for all but a few insiders, it can be difficult to identify important and/or relevant people. In this paper we study tagging in OSS projects from a socio-linguistics perspective. First we argue that textual content per se reveals a great deal about the status and identity of who is speaking and who is being addressed. Next, we suggest that this phenomenon can be usefully modeled using modern deep-learning methods. Finally, we illustrate the value of these approaches with tools that could assist people to find the important and relevant people for a discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a production study to explore the controversial question about /l/ velarisation. Measurements of first (F1), second (F2) and third (F3) formant frequencies and the slope of F2 were analysed to clarify the /l/ velarisation behaviour in European Portuguese (EP). The acoustic data were collected from ten EP speakers, producing trisyllabic words with paroxytone stress pattern, with the liquid consonant at the middle of the word in onset, complex onset and coda positions. Results suggested that /l/ is produced on a continuum in EP. The consistently low F2 indicates that /l/ is velarised in all syllable positions, but variation especially in F1 and F3 revealed that /l/ could be “more velarised” or “less velarised” dependent on syllable positions and vowel contexts. These findings suggest that it is important to consider different acoustic measures to better understand /l/ velarisation in EP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the 'liberation linguistics' perspective that Professor Kachru championed achieved two important aims: (i) it explored the creative manipulation of multilinguals' repertoire in the late‐modern contexts of mobility and complexity; and (ii) it brought into focus the sociolinguistic inequalities engendered by a politics of conformity. Braj Kachru's teaching consistently highlighted the heterogeneity and multifunctionality of language, together with the meaning potential of variation, and his work continues to provide inspiration for the ongoing development of the field, and the 'gloriously impure' alchemy of English that he has bequeathed to us all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

is article provides some refiections stemming from the doctorate research project concerning the "ideologhemes on the formation processes for former combatants aer signing the Peace Agreement in Colombia". is article introduces the topics and study problems dealt with by the glottopolitics, particularly from the ideologhemes. Glottopolitics as a eld of knowledge linked to the sociolinguistics inquires into the linguistic practices legitimating, reproducing and transforming the social relationships and the power structures. is paper develops in three parts: a) the ideological representations of language; b) the political function of the language in dictionaries, grammar books and text manuals; and c) the linguistic policies: linguistic norms and regulations accounting for the growing interest in understanding both the language and the country language articulated with then politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World Englishes as a discipline has developed more than half a century of research and practice. It is closely connected with such other disciplines as applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and applied cultural linguistics. In this paper, we adopt a holistic analytical framework drawing upon world Englishes and applied cultural linguistics with reference to lexical borrowing, semantic variation, and cultural conceptualizations to unpack the culturally‐embedded meanings underlying the twelve Chinese zodiac animals. In particular, we explore the cultural meanings of creative expressions that use dragon and horse in Chinese English, for example, the dragon horse spirit, by analysing qualitative data collected through semi‐structured interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land reclamation has become a significant way for the improvement of ecological environment in mining areas. When selecting the optimal land reclamation scheme, LNNs (linguistic neutrosophic numbers) are suitable to describe the complex fuzzy evaluation information through linguistic truth, indeterminacy and falsity membership degrees. Furthermore, the Hamacher aggregation operators are good tools to handle multi-criteria decision making problems. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to extend Hamacher aggregation operators with LNNs and then build a decision making framework for evaluating land reclamation schemes in mining areas. First, new operational laws of LNNs based on Hamacher t-norm and t-conorm are defined. Then, several linguistic neutrosophic Hamacher aggregation operators, including the linguistic neutrosophic Hamacher weighted mean aggregation operators and linguistic neutrosophic Hamacher hybrid weighted mean aggregation operators are developed. Meanwhile, their desirable properties are proved. Thereafter, a method for decision making with linguistic neutrosophic information based on these operators is proposed to deal with complex decision problems. At last, the validity of this method is confirmed by an illustrative example of evaluating the land reclamation schemes in mining areas. In addition, the impact of the parameter in extended Hamacher aggregation operators is discussed. The merits of the proposed method are also highlighted by comparing with other decision making methods. The results show that the proposed linguistic neutrosophic Hamacher aggregation operators have great flexibility and advantages, and can provide powerful ways for the evaluation of land reclamation schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings of a case study of the networked language practices of two young users of the social networking site Facebook. Theoretically informed by sociolinguistics and computer-mediated discourse analysis, this paper contributes to the study of language and participation in social media by developing an empirical approach to sharing and by focusing on the relation between sharing practices and linguistic repertoires. The paper proposes an understanding of sharing as an interactional practice of entextualizing significant moments for a networked audience. Data collection and analysis follow a mixed-methods approach. The primary data consists of the participants’ public Facebook timelines during a period of one year. It is complemented by qualitative interviews and systematic observation of the their digital literacy practices on Facebook. The analysis distinguishes three stages of sharing – selecting, styling, and negotiating – and then moves on to individual case studies, which illustrate how the two participants mobilise linguistic resources in order to share moments of transnational mobility with their audience. The findings show how subtle shifts in the selection, combination and negotiation of linguistic resources index participants’ transnational trajectories and their orientation to particular subsets of their audience, and how the audience takes an active role in negotiating the modes and meanings of sharing in social networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the phenomenon of linguistic mudes or transformations in linguistic practices, in the case of highly proficient speakers of Irish, Basque and Catalan and we investigate the extent to which speakers in the three contexts share ideologies and experiences related to the process. Such an investigation will deepen understanding of the triggers behind the mudes and what it means to successfully become a new speaker of Irish, Basque or Catalan. This is necessary in order to develop a better understanding of how new speakers respond to the linguistic repertoires that they encounter in the various social milieus in which they navigate. The study relates to broader questions of policy towards the three languages in question: as all are operating within a revitalisation framework it is essential to understand the experiences of new speakers who have adopted the languages in order to guide future policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the notion of speaker authenticity in the context of obsolescent ‘Francoprovençal’: a highly fragmented grouping of Romance varieties spoken in parts of France, Italy, and Switzerland by less than 1% of the total regional population. While Francoprovençal has long been losing ground to the dominant language(s) with which it is in contact, new speakers have begun to emerge within the context of revitalisation movements and activities geared more favourable language planning policies and increased literacy. The emergence of these new speakers has polarised native-speaker communities, and has blurred the lines associated with the traditional view of sociolinguistic authenticity. Through an analysis of qualitative data collected in 2012, this article argues in particular that it may not be sufficient to simply examine contested authenticities from a native-non-native perspective, but rather it is important to consider how new speakers might themselves form a complex spectrum of speaker types with new sets of tensions as has been argued elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]