This article explores the degree and kind of lability that occurs throughout the life span of the individual during ongoing rapid change in the quotative system. Two comparative analyses trace speakers' use of be like across a shorter and a longer time span. Trend data reveal that the robust change is arrested in the middle age brackets; speakers in their thirties seem to display ‘retrograde movement’ (Sankoff & Wagner 2006) away from the community-wide change. This finding could be interpreted as incipient age-grading. A small-scale panel sample collected forty-two years after the initial interview suggests that some older speakers participate in the trend, albeit at very low frequencies. This finding, while exploratory at the moment, might be interpreted as indicative of ‘life-span change’ (Sankoff 2005). A conception of the change in progress in the quotative system as monotonous would thus both under and overestimate the rate of change. (Change across the life span, age-grading, retrograde change, life-span change, quotation, style, language ideologies)*

This article considers a practice in French talk-in-interaction, formally characterized as other-repeats prefaced by the change-of-state particle ah. The target practice accomplishes a claim of receipt, while at the same time indexing as somehow inadequate a previous turn by the receipt speaker. Evidence drawn upon includes: (i) the sequential locations of the examined phenomenon; (ii) ensuing developments of the sequence, wherein the indexed inadequacy is more explicitly acknowledged; and (iii) the discriminability of the focal practice with respect to alternative practices. Two phonetically distinguished variants of the practice, and their respective sequential projections (‘problematizing’ topicalization or ‘accepting’ closure), are discussed. This article contributes to the study of how intersubjectivity is managed and administered by participants, and to research on the management of accountability for producing ‘adequate’ turns and actions. Finally, it addresses ongoing discussions concerning the analysis of multiple actions (first- and second-order) conveyed simultaneously in single turns. (French, talk-in-interaction, repetition, receipts, particles, indexicality, intersubjectivity, prosody, phonetics)*

J. L. Austin's influential dissection of speech acts into locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts has given rise to much scholarly attention to illocutionary acts and forces. While the perlocutionary facet of speech acts has gone largely undiscussed by philosophers and linguists, folk theories of language often attend closely to the relation between speech and its consequences. In this article, I discuss one conception of perlocutions prominent in Yopno speaking communities in Papua New Guinea that emphasizes the agentive role of listeners in mediating between speech and its outcome. This cultural conception of perlocutions, I argue, is tied to a political sensibility that stresses the self-determination and equality of adult men. The article shows how cultural conceptions of perlocutions provide insight into political values and practices, and how political concerns inform folk models of perlocutions. (Perlocutions, politics, fashions of speaking, language ideology, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea)*

This article analyses phonetic variation among young people who have learned a minority language in immersion schooling as part of revitalisation measures. Such speakers are increasingly referred to as ‘new speakers’ in an expanding body of literature. The variable phonetic features analysed are vowels, laterals, and intonation in the speech of new Gaelic speakers from Glasgow and the Isle of Lewis. Results support previous work suggesting that new speakers will sound different from ‘traditional speakers’. These results are discussed in terms of language contact, modes of acquisition in revitalisation situations, and the differing perceptions and ideologies surrounding how new speakers use Gaelic. The data also necessitate an examination of some of the assumptions in sociolinguistic models of change and their applicability to contexts of rapid social evolution. (New speakers, language revitalisation, minority languages, Scottish Gaelic, laterals, vowels, intonation)*