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This study examines how impoliteness is carried out through code-switching in the Hong Kong Cantonese television talk show Sze U Tonight. Hong Kong is a modern and globalised Chinese society with a colonial background and is currently part of China. This unique combination makes the norms that govern code-switching and impoliteness in talk shows worth exploring. It is interesting to examine how the Hong Kong people express themselves through their language choices, especially when this is put in the media for public viewing, situated in the context of semi-institutional conversations on a Hong Kong television talk show. Using Spencer-Oatey's (2002, 2008) rapport management framework, this paper discusses the forms and functions of code-switching that manifest as impoliteness in the media of a multilingual Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine practices of language alternation in email communication among native speakers of Greek and to argue that such practices are a facet of the performative construction of an 'online' communicative identity. In the slowly-growing body of literature on linguistic practices in computer-mediated communication (CMC) or computer-mediated discourse (CMD) it is emerging that concomitant aspects of linguistic performance relate to the construction of particular sociolinguistic identities relevant to the medium, or, to adopt a less radical perspective, that sociolinguistic identities typical of face-to-face or written interaction are mediated by the social/communicative practices and norms relevant to, or accruing to, types of CMD. Language alternation features prominently among the mechanisms used in constructing such novel linguistic/social-performative identities. In this context, the research presented in this paper examines the performance of a group of six native speakers of Greek, who are also part of a relatively closely-knit social network. The analysis reveals extensive code-switching between Greek and English, both inter- and intra-sentential, with English coveting around 20% of the total of words used. The qualitative analysis shows that expressions of affect and evaluative comments are mostly in English, while Greek is reserved for the transmission of factual/referential information. The data further reveal that extensive style- or register-shifting and mixing is a favored strategy among members of the group; such mixing includes shifting among dialects or sociolects of Greek, the use of other languages, and, notably, the use of constructed words and structures with humorous overtones. This complex type of language play is an overarching feature of the group's (socio)linguistic performance in asynchronous electronic communication, which may single them out as a localized community of practice. The data highlight the theoretical and methodological necessity for fine-grained accounts of specific types of CMD, which can be tackled not in terms of overarching macrocontextual linguistic and extralinguistic variables, but as dynamic reflexes both of specific participant constellations and of the negotiation of emerging generic norms within localized communities of practice. The paper also presents and discusses a quantitative study of views and attitudes on language alternation expressed by subjects who code-switch systematically on email, in an attempt to gauge the types of metalinguistic awareness involved. It emerges from the quantitative study that users abstract away from 'phobic' attitudes towards the use of English and that they treat language alternation as a manifestation of balanced or functional bilingualism, which is furthermore situation-specific and 'genre'-appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turns in interaction that initiate closure of expanded sequences are often summaries, accounts and assessments of the preceding talk. Sometimes these turns are produced by means that can be described as heteroglossic. This paper investigates singing and codeswitching in sequence closures, as well as other accompanying contextualisation cues such as prosodic changes and gestures. The heteroglossic character of these contextualised turns is a means for the speakers to distance themselves from the actions of their turns, and from the ongoing sequential activities. For the recipients this gives a possibility to make interpretations of non-seriousness. The sequences can then be closed with joint affiliative action such as laughter. In cases where the sequences have been expanded because of problems in interaction, singing and codeswitching relieve the tension between participants. On occasion, they also give rise to new topics. This paper is written in a conversation analytic framework, on data collected from everyday face-to-face interaction among Finns living in Estonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of co-switching in Navajo written poetry. I look specifically at the use of code-switching from English dominant poems to Navajo. I outline three general semantic domains that are most commonly code-switched from English to Navajo: 1) emotions; 2) mythic characters; and 3) traditional place-names. I suggest that this has to do with a general linguistic ideology that understands these domains as incommensurate with English. I argue that such code-switches are "emblematic identity displays." I conclude by discussing the relationship between "folk" orthographies and "standard" orthographies. I argue that an over-reliance on "the standard" and a diminishing of "folk" orthographies limits the potential for creativity and subtly undermines notions of incommensurability when Navajo poets are limited to "the standard", a standard that many Navajos do not know. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the situated ways in which Moroccan immigrant children in Spain create imagined, alternative life worlds and explore possible forms of identification through an investigation of these children's hybrid linguistic practices in the midst of play. Drawing on Bakhtin's (1981, 1986) notions of heteroglossia and hybridity, the analysis focuses on the meanings of codeswitching practices that a group of Moroccan immigrant girls deploy in pretend-play sequences involving dolls to construct female identities; identities that they treat as desirable in the context of Spanish idealizations of femininity, but that are considered transgressional by adults in Moroccan diaspora communities in Spain. Neighborhood peer group play affords Moroccan immigrant girls' transformations and engagement in subversive tactics, in that these activities take place outside the scrutiny of parents and other adults. The rich verbal and sociocultural environment of Moroccan immigrant children's peer groups provide us with an excellent window to investigate peer language socialization processes in relation to how immigrant children negotiate, transform, and subvert in the midst of play the different, and often incongruous, socio-cultural and linguistic expectations and constraints that they encounter on a daily basis. Use of Moroccan Arabic and Spanish in this pretend play, in particular, results in a heteroglossic polyphony of voices imbued with moral tensions (Bahktin 1981, 1986). This analysis highlights the importance of these hybrid linguistic practices in immigrant girls' explorations of alternative processes of gendered identification in multilingual, culturally-syncretic environments. Through surreptitious pretend-play, Moroccan immigrant girls explore imagined transgressional possible identities and moral worlds. In this sense, this research also underscores the implications of children's language use and language choice in pretend-play for larger processes of cultural continuity and transformation in transnational, diasporic communities undergoing rapid change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociolinguistic studies of 'minority languages' and bilingualism have increasingly moved away from a singular emphasis on issues of ethnicity that poses direct links between the use of a language and an ethnic or cultural identity towards exploring the construction of identities that are not firmly located in category-bound descriptions. In this paper, we draw on these latest insights to account for processes of identity construction in a bilingual (in Greek Cypriot and English) youth organization group based in North London. Our main data consist of the audio-recorded interactional data from a socialization outing after one of the group's meeting but we also bring in insights from the group's ethnographic study and a larger study of the North London Cypriot community that involved interviews and questionnaires. In the close analysis of our main data, we note a conventional association between the 'London Greek Cypriot' (henceforth LGC) variety that is switched to from English as the main interactional frame and a set of genres (in the sense of recurrent evolving responses to social practices) that are produced and taken up as humorous discourse: These include narrative jokes, ritual insults, hypothetical scenarios, and metalinguistic instances of mock Cypriot. We will suggest that the use of LGC demonstrates a relationship of ambivalence, a "partly ours partly theirs" status, with the participants carving out a different, third space for themselves that transcends macro-social categories (e.g. the Cypriots, the Greek-Cypriot community). At the same time, we will show how the discursive process of choosing language from a bi- or multi- lingual repertoire does not only create identities in the sense of socially and culturally derived positions but also identities (sic (dis)-identifications) in the sense of desiring and fantasizing personas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic hybridity is the process of the authorial unmasking of another's speech, through a language that is double-accented and double-styled. The present study investigates how linguistic resources, especially code-switching is used for meaning making in local comedy shows in Hawai'i. Local comedy is inseparable from the use of carnivalistic act. This act deconstructs attempts at stabilizing social systems by being playfully and non-violently subversive. While there are many studies of language and humor, there are much fewer studies on the use of code-switching in comedy. The present study is particularly interested in the latter and specifically addresses Bakhtin's work on carnival. It is often maintained that ethnic jokes marginalize those of Filipino origin as the Other. However, the present paper claims that both functions of comedy -- marginalizing of the Other and disrupting of official views of reality -- are inseparably intertwined. Andy Bumatai, a local comic, tactically achieves carnivalistic effects while negotiating and juggling his subjectivity. Given this, code-switching as well as language selection can be a powerful tool for doublevoicing. Little is known about the pragmatics of pidgin and creole languages. Hence, the present study provides a starting point for future projects on the discursive practice in Hawai'i Creole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to compare three distinct grammatical and conversational patterns of code-switching, which it tentatively links to three different South African ethnoracial labels: White, Coloured and Black. It forms a continuation of a previous article in which correlations were established between Afrikaans-English code-switching patterns and White and Coloured ethnicities. The typological framework used is derived from Muysken, and the hypotheses are based on his predictions as to which type of grammatical CS (i.e. insertional, alternational, congruent lexicalisation) will dominate in which linguistic an sociolinguistic settings. Apart from strengthening the idea of a correlation between patterns of language variation and ethnicity in general, the article explores the theoretical possibility of specific social factors overriding linguistic constraints in determining the grammatical form of CS patterns. In this regard, it will be shown that -- on account of specific social factors underlying ethnicity -- CS between two typologically unrelated languages, namely Sesotho and English, can exhibit more marks of congruent lexicalisation than CS between two typologically related languages, namely Afrikaans and English, while -- from the point of view of linguistic constraints -- insertional/alternational CS would be expected in the former language pair and congruent lexicalization in the latter. That finding will be placed against the background of different pragmatic norms regulating the conversational use of CS within the Black Sesotho-speaking community (which we will describe as 'language mixing' in Auer's sense) and with the Afrikaans speech community (which in the case of Whites we will describe as tending more towards 'language alternation' in Auer's sense, and in the case of Coloureds as occupying an intermediate position between language alternation and language mixing). The summary of findings on grammatical an conversational CS patterns across ethnic samples will finally be placed against the background of ethnicity and its specific definition in the South African context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adapts Bakhtin's term "heteroglossia" as a framework for analyzing Miskitu children's multilingual speech on Corn Island, off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Analysis of naturally occurring speech in this context illustrates the utility of partial competencies and hybridized speech, supporting a view of language not as a bounded system, but as a diverse pool of communicative resources that socialize children into multiple modes of voicing and acting. More broadly, the article examines the relations between language ideologies and language socialization, and the ways that both are articulated within complex histories of cultural interaction and stratified social relations. The article challenges conventional dichotomies of language loss and revitalization by viewing the hybrid linguistic practices that enable children to bridge social and cultural worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Afrikaans speech community is characterized by a long-standing rift between Whites and Coloureds, and is for a large part bilingual, with English being increasingly integrated in its stylistic repertoire. Yet, the history of English is different across the White/Coloured divide, as in particular in terms of diffusion and in terms of ideological associations. The question we wish to ask is twofold. First, how far may there be a question of ethnic norms of Afrikaans-English code-switching? Second, if norms of code-switching are different across the ethnic divide, is code-switching used differently in the negotiation of White and Coloured identities? This contribution is organized in three main parts. First, we give an overview of the different norms of Afrikaans-English code-switching encountered across Whites and Coloureds on the basis of a corpus of informal speech data. Then we give an overview of the sequential patterns of Afrikaans-English code-switching following a CA methodology. Finally, we determine with the help of macrosocial knowledge in how far these different forms and functions of Afrikaans-English code-switching are made relevant to the projection of White and Coloured identities in South Africa's current post-Apartheid context on the basis of select individual examples. The results of our analysis indicate that Afrikaans-English code-switching in the Coloured data displays the features of a 'mixed code', which is perceived as a 'we-code', where English input tends to be stylistically neutral. By contrast, English input is more syntactically and sequentially salient in the White data, and more visibly serves purposes of identity-negotiation. Despite those differences, there remains a clear correlation in both White and Coloured samples between the use of English monolingual code and affiliation with 'New South African values'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]