This article lends empirical support to the notion that quoted speech is “constructed dialogue” by exploring empirically how narratives of personal experience involve creative performance of locally imaginable personas, rather than accurate or faithful representation of actual people and their words. This work examines quotation in narratives of personal experience as a site where speakers use language pragmatically to enact socio-culturally locatable identities. Using a corpus of narratives in which French–Portuguese bilinguals told the same narratives of personal experience once in each language, it demonstrates that speakers do not quote more extensively when recounting experiences in the language in which those events “originally” occurred. Ultimately, what differs most in speakers' quotations in French and Portuguese tellings of the “same event” are the nonequivalent kinds and ranges of registers in which narrated characters are quoted. More specifically, speakers are more likely to quote themselves as speaking or having spoken in creative, marked registers in French than in Portuguese. This difference in the registers put in the mouths of quoted characters, in particular of quoted selves, may point to ways in which these bilinguals' multiple identities are instantiated within and across their two languages. More broadly, this work reveals ways in which all speakers may use narrative not only to describe the past but also to perform a variety of cultural selves, reinventing and reenacting characters as quoted selves and others.

This article employs conversation analysis to investigate the role of adverbials in Japanese talk-in-interaction for the projection of further talk and some implications this has for interactional styles. Through examination of naturally occurring talk, it is first observed that a typical usage of adverbials is in some position preceding the predicate, although they are also appended as post-predicate additions. Second, when adverbials are produced prior to a predicate, evidently they can strongly project a forthcoming predicate within the particular interactional context. Given the importance of predicates within Japanese turns, adverbials have a major part to play, not only in assisting participants to foreshadow a probable unfolding of an utterance, but also to enable recipients to achieve early alignment with emerging talk and to expedite the implementation of subsequent actions. These features are shown to be a powerful resource in the facilitation of seemingly implicit styles of communication.

Although the subject of gender sensitivity has been under investigation for some time in language for general purposes (LGP), this subject has not been explored in any great detail in the context of language for special purposes (LSP). There are numerous guidelines available for term formation, but the issue of gender sensitivity is not typically addressed by these guidelines. This article presents a corpus-based study of the terminology of the subject field of infertility, with a view to establishing the nature and degree of gender insensitivity currently present in that subject field and recommending extensions to term formation and usage guidelines to make them more gender-sensitive.

This article examines complaint sequences that terminate with one party's walking out, unilaterally, on the other. The analysis of three such extended sequences, using the Conversation Analytic approach, reveals interactional parallels among them. The complaints that precede the walkouts are constructed so as to identify deleterious and generic personal deficiencies. As these sequences develop, they come to focus on faults in the current behavior of those involved. In their final stages, the actions of the leavers appear sensitive to the persistence of behavior that has been deemed to be at fault. This combination of features seems connected to both the unilateral departure and the state of indignation that also becomes evidently present. This invites comparison with other forms of antagonistic dispute, such as those that lead to certain instances of murder.

These two books are indeed similar in that they cover related topics, have overlapping contributors, and bear the unmistakable stamp of the linguistic rights duo, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson. Rights to language is a Festschrift to mark Skutnabb-Kangas's sixtieth birthday. It parades a star-studded list of contributors, particularly in the field of sociolinguistics; however, as with most books of this genre, the contributions are uneven in quality and scope. The 47 chapters in the book are contributed by 51 authors, and, according to the editor, 20 other invited scholars were unable to contribute. This ambitious goal – to include as many of the honoree's friends as possible – has had the unfortunate effect of making several authors produce brief, less than adequate expositions of their topics.

The 15 articles in this book focus on the evaluation of competence in clinical, educational, and other contexts in which people are regularly judged as incompetent. Several focus on interactions involving adults and children with communication disorders; others present issues of competence and incompetence in foreign-language learning, educational assessment, the discussion of medical diagnoses between medical staff and clients, and psychotherapy sessions. Although there is no single prevailing research methodology used throughout, a consistent theme is that competence and incompetence are socially constructed within interaction, and that the evaluation of (in)competence is central to the creation and negotiation of social identity in everyday life.

The book under review is the most comprehensive introduction to discourse analysis that I have ever read. It consists of seven chapters and an appendix, covering a wide range of both macro and micro issues related to discourse analysis.

One of the reasons why the area of language and emotion attracts many of us lies in the continuing endeavor – whether implicitly or explicitly conducted – to overcome our own persistent assumptions concerning such dichotomies as nature vs. culture, individuality vs. society, and emotion vs. cognition. In other words, our focus on language and its constitutive role in the creation of what seems to be so “natural” and “individual” has led to the deconstruction of our own epistemology, as well as contributing to our better understanding of how people's emotive meanings are situated in the midst of complex social relations and interactions. Languages of sentiment can be located within this long intellectual engagement. Although its contributors particularly explore Asian languages of sentiment, illustrated by Tamil, Bangla, Javanese, Japanese, and Tagalog cases, the aim of the book is not to essentialize “the” Asian sentiment. Instead, all the chapters try to capture the pragmatics of language and emotion that interact with global politics as well as with local social relations and interactions.

Andrea de Jorio's rich and precocious La Mimica, written in 1832, is now translated and set into a larger context by Adam Kendon. Highlighted by Kendon's introduction and footnotes, this refurbished work offers us a unique and valuable insight into a perspective on language and culture that prevailed during an era when national interests were directing a new kind of attention to both.

Amara begins his study of language variation in Palestinian border villages in Israel and the West Bank with three main premises: (1) researchers have not paid enough attention to the sociolinguistics of what he calls “radical political situations,” of which the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an example; (2) the connection between macro-sociolinguistic issues, such as language planning and language attitudes, and micro issues, such as variation in use of linguistic structures, has not been explored enough; and (3) socio-political events and changes affect (i.e., change) patterns of use of linguistic structures. On the third point, Amara predicts, “When a society is divided, we should expect to find a reflected linguistic division; when two societies share common cultural or political values, we should expect to find some reflection of this in their languages.” Amara sets out to investigate this prediction for three villages on the border between Israel and the West Bank. Two of the villages, Zalafa and Western Barta'a, are situated in the area of Israel called the “Little Triangle,” which designates an area that Jordan agreed to cede to Israel in the armistice agreement following the Arab–Israeli War of 1948. The armistice line drawn between Israel and Jordan in 1949 divided several Palestinian villages and cities, including Barta'a. The third village in Amara's study, Eastern Barta'a, is situated in the West Bank. Western and Eastern Barta'a were reunited in 1967, when Israel took control of the West Bank.

The foundation of the Ebonics controversy (EC) was laid centuries before its December 1996 debut. The EC was not about the name “Ebonics,” but about a legacy. In the Introduction, Baugh writes: “This text attempts to clarify several of the issues, misconceptions, and educational policies that emerged from the Ebonics controversy while striving to view them within the broader context of the linguistic legacy of American slavery and to address the linguistic prejudices that tend to inhibit improved race relations” (xiii). Within this context, Baugh clarifies how the EC happened, and why.

From the 1930s through the 1970s, the Muskogean languages of the southeastern US were virtually the scholarly preserve of the late Mary R. Haas, and no modern grammars or dictionaries were available for them. In more recent years, it has been a pleasure to witness increasing work in this language family by Pamela Munro at UCLA – and her students, and her students' students – and by Karen Booker and her associates at the University of Kansas. The present volume is the third major Muskogean dictionary to appear in the past few years.