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While empirical research on attitudes towards languages and linguistic varieties has become increasingly popular from the 1960s onwards (e.g.Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, & Fillenbaum, 1960), experimental investigations into the ability to correctlyidentifythe origin of speakers are in comparison still relatively scarce. We know that the ability to correlate a stretch of uncategorised speech (token) with a series of models (types) is experientially acquired in early childhood (e.g.Kristiansen, 2010), but how similar are those abilities in adulthood and across European nations? English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has become an integral part of the linguistic reality in Europe (and of the linguistic scenario in the entire world) (e.g.Jenkins, Baker, & Dewey, 2018). Whenever we communicate with anyone who is not a speaker of our own native language in any European country, most of the time we communicate in English. But does our L1 accent still shine through? Will we be recognised (and in most cases probably also stereotypically judged) on the basis of just a short stretch of speech when we communicate in ELF? In Part I of this paper we outline the design of the first large-scale pan-European project on L1 and L2 identifications of ELF in Europe, including 785 respondents from 8 countries. Exploratory analyses confirm the hypothesis that statistically significant asymmetries would show up across different European countries or regions. In Part II of this paper we then aim to explain these asymmetries through a multifactorial statistical analysis (Geeraerts, Grondelaers, & Speelman, 1999;Tagliamonte & Baayen, 2012;Speelman, Heylen, & Geeraerts, 2018).

Lexical diversity, the amount of lexical variation shown by a particular concept, varies between concepts. For the conceptdrunk, for instance, nearly 3000 English expressions exist, includingblitzed, intoxicated, andhammered. For the conceptsober, however, a significantly smaller number of lexical items is available, likesoberorabstinent. While earlier variation studies have revealed that meaning-related concept characteristics correlate with the amount of lexical variation, these studies were limited in scope, being restricted to one semantic field and to one dialect area, that of the Limburgish dialects of Dutch. In this paper, we investigate whether the impact of concept characteristics, viz. vagueness, lack of salience and proneness to affect, is manifest in a similar way in other dialects and other semantic fields. In particular, by extending the scope of the earlier studies to other carefully selected semantic fields, we investigate the generalizability of the impact of concept characteristics to the lexicon as a whole. The quantitative approach that we employ to measure concept characteristics and lexical diversity methodologically advances the study of linguistic variation. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the further development of Cognitive Sociolinguistics by showcasing how meaning can be a source of lexical diversity.

Variation and change in constructions: At the intersection of construction grammar and variational linguistics This introductory paper outlines the different trends and movements that have in recent years led to a marked increase in the number of linguistic studies that combine a construction-based theoretical outlook on grammar with a dedicated interest in issues of synchronic and/or diachronic language variation. In addition, it gives an overview of the papers included in this thematic issue and links them with broader tendencies in the fields of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar.

The world-wide spread of English is one of the most visible symptoms of globalization. In weak contact settings such as Western Europe, where contact with English is usually indirect, remote and asymmetrical, the English language started diffusing at a hitherto unknown rate in the second half of the twentieth century. Crucially, this diffusion happens at two different levels. First, on the macrolevel, English is more and more used as a language of (international) communication. Second, on the micro-level, English is intruding in local languages, most notably by means of lexical borrowing. So far, the macro- and micro-level of linguistic influence are hardly ever linked or simultaneously studied. Nevertheless, as will be shown in this paper, it is interesting to investigate whether a connection between both levels exists. Specifically, we present a quantitative multivariate comparison of the features underlying the choice for English at both levels of analyses, using a diachronic corpus of over 16 000 job ads published in two Dutch job ad magazines. On the macro-level, we verify what communicative and situational parameters (e.g., branch of industry of the recruiter) determine the choice for and distribution of ads written entirely in English. On the micro-level, we verify the impact of the same set of parameters on the choice for inserting English elements in ads where Dutch is the matrix language. Using two multiple logistic regression models, we can verify to which extent the mechanisms underlying language choice at both levels are different. Results show that a large difference exists in the basic proportion of English at both levels, but that quite some similarities in the distribution of English are found when zooming in on the specific parameters underlying language choice. As such, this paper advocates to perceive of the different manifestations of the spread of English as part of a continuum, rather than as isolated phenomena. Hence, we hope to provide a first step in bridging the theoretical and methodological gap between the ELF paradigm and anglicism research. ispartof: Linguistics vol:51 issue:5 pages:1019-1064 status: published

The article considers the role of frontpage news items in creating a political or a social event, and with reliance on the BBC Web news bulletin seeks to prove that frontpage news items are a special type of multimodal text with recognizable generic characteristics: a headline, a picture and an abstract. Structurally, the present paper consists of three sections, each of which is devoted to a certain aspect of the problem in question. Firstly, the author looks into the history of scientific investigations of genres. Considering both fundamental works and the latest achievements in this field, the author stresses the social role of genres and maintains the view that different types of texts appear as a response to social expectations. Secondly, the issue of multimodality is brought up, and frontpage news items are described as texts written in two semiotic modes. The combination of a written text and a picture serves the purpose of constructing a social or a political event informing and influencing the reader at the same time. Thirdly, analysis of seven BBC frontpage news items is done to prove that frontpage form of news presentation is a special genre that has both technological and social roots. This genre has recently evolved from a traditional way of introducing news and has a number of distinctive features, like a short and meaningful headline provided with an abstract different from the headline of the linked article, an image that often conveys a meaning different from that of the headline. The contradictory meanings serve to construct events and form opinions; suggestion is made that the more meanings there are, the more politicized the event is.

This study lies at the heart of cognitive sociolinguistics and Translation Quality Assessment (TQA). Firstly, the interpersonal deception theory representing the 'cognitive sociolinguistics dimension' is integrated with the 'translation quality assessment approach' -focusing on the interpersonal meaning as one of the three functions stated by Halliday (1973)- to examine Ghali's (2003) English rendition of the Qur'anic narrative 12: Surat Joseph/Yusuf. Given the cognitive sociolinguistic origin, the deceptive process is achieved through three main stages; rationalization, evasion, and jamming. The Qur'anic narrative depicts three 'interpersonal deception' instances a long Joseph's life; when he was a child 'i.e. father deception'; when he was a young man and Zulaikha attempted to deceive both him and the folk of women; and when he became the treasurer of Egypt deceiving his brothers. Secondly, translation refers to rendering the ST linguistic features as well as their functions to the TT. The problem of equivalence (i.e. function equivalence) stems from that the rendering of the ST linguistic features and/or their functions may/not be adequate in the TT due to the target language linguistic and socio-cultural rules (House, 2015). Therefore, this study addresses the issue of representing the equivalent linguistic terms as well as the interpersonal deceptive function across the three selected deceptive instances in Surat Yusuf to figure out the textual-situational dimensions

This paper develops a construction-based dialectometry capable of identifying previously unknown constructions and measuring the degree to which a given construction is subject to regional variation. The central idea is to learn a grammar of constructions (a CxG) using construction grammar induction and then to use these constructions as features for dialectometry. This offers a method for measuring the aggregate similarity between regional CxGs without limiting in advance the set of constructions subject to variation. The learned CxG is evaluated on how well it describes held-out test corpora while dialectometry is evaluated on how well it can model regional varieties of English. The method is tested using two distinct datasets: First, the International Corpus of English representing eight outer circle varieties; Second, a web-crawled corpus representing five inner circle varieties. Results show that the method (1) produces a grammar with stable quality across sub-sets of a single corpus that is (2) capable of distinguishing between regional varieties of English with a high degree of accuracy, thus (3) supporting dialectometric methods for measuring the similarity between varieties of English and (4) measuring the degree to which each construction is subject to regional variation. This is important for cognitive sociolinguistics because it operationalizes the idea that competition between constructions is organized at the functional level so that dialectometry needs to represent as much of the available functional space as possible.

[Otros] El pluricentrisme és el marc d¿estudi d¿un tipus específic d¿estandardització: la que afecta les llengües amb més d¿una varietat d¿estàndard formal. La seua aportació primigènia és precisament aquesta: posar en relleu que hi ha moltes llengües que compten amb més d¿una varietat estàndard i amb una codificació duta a terme per part de més d¿un centre, amb graus diferents de cooperació entre ells. En les seues tres dècades d¿evolució, s¿ha passat de considerar l¿ús d¿una mateixa llengua en diversos estats com a element definidor de la pluricentricitat a considerar-hi l¿existència de facto de normes d¿ús explícites o implícites de diverses varietats d¿estàndard formal. Pel que fa a l¿aspecte metodològic, la pragmalingüística, i sobretot la sociolingüística cognitiva, aporten el necessari enfocament empíric de la recerca. Bevent d¿aquest cos teòric i metodològic, l¿article presenta una proposta de recerca per a l¿estandardització del català basada en la seua conceptualització com a llengua pluricèntrica en conflicte., [EN] Pluricentrism is the framework for studying a specific type of standardization: one that affects languages with more than one standard variety. Its original contribution is precisely to highlight that there are many languages that have more than one standard variety and that have been codified by more than one centre, with different degrees of cooperation between them. In three decades of evolution, this concept has gone from considering the use of one same language in several countries as the defining element of pluricentricity to considering the de facto existence of explicit or implicit rules of use of different varieties of a formal standard. As regards methodology, pragmatics and especially cognitive sociolinguistics have provided the necessary empirical approach to research. Drawing on this body of theoretical and method- ological thought, this paper presents a research proposal for the standardization of Catalan, based on its conceptualization as a pluricentric language in conflict.

Situated at the nexus of variationist, interactional, and cognitive sociolinguistics, the present article discusses the phenomenon of ‘Speaker Design’, or the strategic use of linguistic varieties in interaction to achieve certain communicative effects (e.g. identity projections). Speaker Design is seen as essentially grounded in processes of conversational ‘contextualization’; these processes are outlined from an interactional and from a cognitive perspective in turn. Then, the phenomenon is illustrated in data from an Austrian TV show in which a speaker arguably performs a strategic shift from standard Austrian German into Bavarian-Austrian dialect to create a negative alignment with an opponent. Based on the claim that any such communicative effects of Speaker Design are contingent upon listeners’ inferencing of respective interpretations, which in turn requires a respective ‘perceptual competence’ (perceiving the contrastiveness of the linguistic cues at hand, associating different social meanings with them), the paper then presents two empirical tests (one speech perception elicitation test, one speaker evaluation experiment) to derive evidence for such perceptual competence in an Austrian TV audience regarding standard and dialect usage. It is argued that adducing such empirical evidence is ultimately a prerequisite for any claims regarding the interactional workings of Speaker Design.

Dos elementos clave revelan un cambio de etapa en sociolingüística hacia una perspectiva más flexible: el estudio de la variación semántica y la inclusión de variables microsociológicas. Este artículo consiste en una propuesta teórica para combinar las dos perspectivas responsables de este cambio, respectivamente, la sociolingüística cognitiva y la Tercera Ola de los estudios de variación. Se localizan las conexiones teóricas entre ambas y se expone el programa para una sociolingüística cognitiva de la Tercera Ola. Combinando objetivos, métodos y herramientas de ambas, se subraya la necesidad de investigar la capacidad de la variación semántica para crear significado social. A diferencia de los trabajos sociolingüístico-cognitivos hasta ahora, se defiende una perspectiva ‘más sociolingüística’ tanto en la obtención de datos, como en la interpretación del significado de la variación para los hablantes en tanto que agentes sociales, como en la Tercera Ola de los estudios de variación. Two key elements reveal a step change in Sociolinguistics towards a more flexible perspective: the study of semantic variation and the inclusion of microsociological variables. This article is a theoretical proposal to combine the two perspectives that are responsible for this change: respectively, Cognitive Sociolinguistics and the Third Wave of Variation Studies. The theoretical connections between the two are located and the program for a Third Wave Cognitive Sociolinguistics is exposed. Combining objectives, methods and tools, this paper emphasizes the need to investigate how semantic variation creates social meaning. Unlike cognitive sociolinguistic works so far, the proposal defendes a “more sociolinguistic” perspective, both in data collection and in the interpretation of the meaning of variation for speakers as social agents, as in the Third Wave.

Argumentaremos que um modelo baseado no uso implica uma conceção de língua como sistema dinâmico complexo, que correlaciona os aspetos sociais e os aspetos cognitivos. Descritivamente, um modelo baseado no uso implica a inclusão da variação intralinguística no estudo de qualquer expressão e a sua correlação com o significado conceptual. Metodologicamente, um modelobaseado no uso implica a implementação de métodos empíricos multivariacionais, como os métodos socioletométricos. No plano metateórico, um modelo baseado no uso implica uma des-sistematização do sistema linguístico e a construção de um modelo multifatorial de gramática. Mostraremos como a Sociolinguística Cognitiva, uma extensão emergente da Linguística Cognitiva como modelo orientado para o significado e para o uso, consegue dar conta destas implicações. Como ilustração, apresentaremos os resultados da nossa investigação sociocognitiva e socioletométrica sobre a divergência entre o português europeu e brasileiro., This paper argues that a usage-based model implies a concept of language as a complex dynamic system which correlates social and cognitive aspects. In descriptive terms, a usage-based model implies the inclusion of language-internal variation in the study of any linguistic expression and its correlation with conceptual meaning. In methodological terms, a usage-based model implies using empirical multivariational methods, such as sociolectometrical methods. On a metatheoretical level, a usage-based model implies the de-systematization of the linguistic system and the construction of a multifactorial model of the grammar. It shows how Cognitive Sociolinguistics, an extension of Cognitive Linguistics, as a model orientated towards meaning and use is able to address these implications. To illustrate this argument, the results of socio-cognitive and sociolectometrical research into divergence between European and Brazilian Portuguese will be presented.

The volume offers a number of representative papers on cognitive models that are invoked when people deal with questions of social identity, political and economic manipulation, and more general issues such as the genomic discourse. It demonstrates that the technical apparatus of cognitive linguistics can be used to analyze the various ways our conception of social reality is shaped by underlying cognitive and/or cultural models or patterns of thought, and also looks into how this is done. The new inroad the volume pursues is the deliberate and explicit orientation towards a cognitive sociolinguistics, or more generally, a cognitive semiotics.

Argumentaremos que um modelo baseado no uso implica uma conceção de língua como sistema dinâmico complexo, que correlaciona os aspetos sociais e os aspetos cognitivos. Descritivamente, um modelo baseado no uso implica a inclusão da variação intralinguística no estudo de qualquer expressão e a sua correlação com o significado conceptual. Metodologicamente, um modelo baseado no uso implica a implementação de métodos empíricos multivariacionais, como os métodos socioletométricos. No plano metateórico, um modelo baseado no uso implica uma des-sistematização do sistema linguístico e a construção de um modelo multifatorial de gramática. Mostraremos como a Sociolinguística Cognitiva, uma extensão emergente da Linguística Cognitiva como modelo orientado para o significado e para o uso, consegue dar conta destas implicações. Como ilustração, apresentaremos os resultados da nossa investigação sociocognitiva e socioletométrica sobre a divergência entre o português europeu e brasileiro., This paper argues that a usage-based model implies a concept of language as a complex dynamic system which correlates social and cognitive aspects. In descriptive terms, a usage-based model implies the inclusion of language-internal variation in the study of any linguistic expression and its correlation with conceptual meaning. In methodological terms, a usage-based model implies using empirical multivariational methods, such as sociolectometrical methods. On a metatheoretical level, a usage-based model implies the de-systematization of the linguistic system and the construction of a multifactorial model of the grammar. It shows how Cognitive Sociolinguistics, an extension of Cognitive Linguistics, as a model orientated towards meaning and use is able to address these implications. To illustrate this argument, the results of socio-cognitive and sociolectometrical research into divergence between European and Brazilian Portuguese will be presented.

Este artigo tem um objectivo duplo. Um é argumentar sobre a necessidade de integrar sistematicamente a variação linguística e a metodologia do corpus acompanhada de métodos quantitativos e de análise estatística no estudo cognitivo da linguagem, tal como tem sido desenvolvido pela Linguística Cognitiva. O outro, e mais importante, é apresentar um programa de sociolinguística cognitiva do português europeu e brasileiro centrado na questão da convergência e divergência entre as duas variedades nacionais nos últimos 50 anos. Primeiramente, assinalaremos duas tensões no desenvolvimento actual da Linguística Cognitiva (uma no objecto e outra no método) e mostraremos como é que a sua perspectiva baseada no uso implica integrar e complementar o objecto social e a metodologia empírica. A seguir, identificaremos os contributos específicos da emergente Sociolinguística Cognitiva e do método dos perfis onomasiológicos para o estudo da variação linguística. Finalmente, apresentaremos os resultados da nossa investigação sociolexicológica sobre convergência e divergência nos vocabulários do futebol e do vestuário – as duas variedades convergem no futebol e divergem no vestuário – e indicaremos as extensões desta primeira fase da investigação para os domínios das palavras funcionais e das variáveis não-lexicais., The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First it argues the case for systematic integration of language variation and corpus-based methodology with its accompanying methods of quantitative and statistical analysis in the cognitive study of language, as it has been occurring in Cognitive Linguistics. The second and most important goal is to present a program for Cognitive Sociolinguistics of European and Brazilian Portuguese, centered in the issue of convergence and divergence between the two national varieties in the past 50 years. First, we will highlight two instances of tension in the current stage of the development of Cognitive Linguistics (one focus of tension on the object and the other on the methodology). Then we will show how its usage-based perspective implies to integrate and to correlate a social object and an empirical methodology. We will then identify specific contributions of the emergent Cognitive Sociolinguistics and onomasiological profile-based methodology to the study of language variation. Finally, we will show the results of our sociolexicological research about convergence and divergence in the vocabulary of football and clothing – the two national varieties converge for football and diverge for clothing – and we point out the extension of this first stage of research to the domains of functional words and non-lexical variables.