In the first part of the article, an approach to Greek diglossia is proposed, focusing on the differing social functions of the two coexisting Greek languages. The adoption of “pure” Greek in the early 19th century represented a compromise, which made possible the rejection of Ancient Greek as the official language of the new state. The language question that developed at the turn of the century represented an effort to modernize Greek culture in the context of economic and social change brought about by the rise of the bourgeoisie. Starting in the interwar period and increasingly after the civil war, “pure” Greek became associated exclusively with authoritarian politics. The language reform of 1976, which formally abolished diglossia, thus came at the end of a long process of devaluation of the official “pure” language. Yet, in recent years, a metalinguistic prophecy of language decline has received widespread acceptance. The second half of the article examines the reasons for its success and the resulting revival of the argumentation questioning Demotic Greek, and concludes that they should be attributed to a crisis of national identity. (Diglossia, language ideology, language planning, Greek)

Sixteen African Americans affiliated with a university participated in open-ended interviews exploring their experiential, attitudinal, and descriptive responses to Black English Vernacular (BEV). The fields of sociolinguistics and education report complex and contradictory attitudes and research findings regarding this code. In addition, media representations of BEV have been misleading. This article investigates how these sources have influenced the attitudes of these African Americans over the last 20 years. We found few trends and little unanimity among our respondents. This finding is neither problematic nor surprising. African Americans do not comprise a monolithic group, acting, speaking, and thinking as one. The results are summarized, and three issues that emerged from the interviews are discussed: problems with the label, Black English Vernacular; the possibility that BEV was socially constructed; and the perception that BEV is a limited linguistic system. (Sociolinguistics, education, attitudes toward language varieties, Black English Vernacular)

This article examines the ways topic transitions are made in 12 physician-patient encounters between eight physicians (four men and four women) and eight patients, all women, in private practice settings. The data include visits by the same patient to more than one physician; these data are unique in the literature. I expand both the explicit theoretical frame in which topic transitions have been described and the types of these transitions that need consideration. The two major types of transitions are reciprocal and unilateral activities. Reciprocal topic-transition activities are assumed to share power between physician and patient; unilateral topic transitions are assumed to allocate power to the speaker. Ratios of reciprocal to unilateral activities differ widely by gender of the physician. Change in discourse norms for this event may be in progress, due to increasing numbers of women physicians. (Medical discourse, topic, power, gender, sociolinguistic change, English)

Studies of speech acts such as directives and of gender and language use have rarely considered the details of the speech context. Comparing men's and women's use of directives at a dance group meeting, I find little difference in the frequency with which they direct others, the targets of their directives, or the types of directives used. Status variations within the group, although more important than gender, still fail to show the primary factors influencing the use of directives. Directive usage cannot be adequately understood without considering the specific contexts in which directives occur. Potentially face-threatening, directives are used most and expressed most strongly when another threat to conversation outweighs the threat of the directive, when the bonds between participants are strong enough to mitigate the threat, or when a high degree of involvement in a conversation renders the threat less potent and encourages the expression of solidarity and interest. (Conversation analysis, directives, gender and language use, speech acts, English)

This study examines how speakers on certain TV interview programs resolve problems of agreement with formally singular epicene antecedents. The form most frequently used is they, although he does appear fairly often. Some forms found in written English hardly occur. It appears that they is not used simply to avoid a commitment to gender. Rather, three factors appear to contribute to speakers' choice of pronominal: presuppositions about gender roles associated with the referent, notional number of the referent, and the extent to which the referent can be posited as a specific individual. The idea that there is a gap in third person singular pronouns in spoken English is criticized. (Pronominal gender, agreement, semantics, usage, English)

The language of academic journals tends to become so technical that only specialists are able to understand the unnecessarily complex features of vocabulary, syntax, discourse, and format. This seems particularly unfortunate at a time when the results of present-day scholarship in linguistic and cultural anthropology need to be as widely accessible as possible. An examination of problems in two articles in Language and one in the American Anthropologist points out the nature of the difficulties and some of the solutions. (Sociolinguistics, academic dialects, writing, jargons, English)