Divergent practices for displaying respect in face-to-face interaction are an ongoing cause of tension in the US between immigrant Korean retailers and their African American customers. Communicative practices in service encounters involving Korean customers contrast sharply with those involving African American customers in 25 liquor store encounters that were videotaped and transcribed for analysis. The relative restraint of immigrant Korean storekeepers in these encounters is perceived by many African Americans as a sign of racism, while the relatively personable involvement of African Americans is perceived by many storekeepers as disrespectful imposition. These contrasting interactional practices reflect differing concepts of the relationship between customer and storekeeper, and different ideas about the speech activities that are appropriate in service encounters. (Intercultural communication, respect, service encounters, African Americans, Koreans)

This article examines use of kinship terms, pronouns, and proper names in China, in an overall framework termed “naming” that demonstrates the performative power of uttering relational terms, especially by the junior in the relationship. It also describes the prototypical routine of introductions, which consist of three participants, in contrast to the more typical conversation in Western analysis which posits two participants. In this three-party exchange, the animator is not the author of the words, but rather the willing and necessary namer of the relationship. Finally, it situates this performative function of naming within a general discussion of language ideology in Chinese society, in which signifiers and their homophones are seen as somehow inseparable from the signifieds. (Naming, speech act theory, ideology, kinship, China)

This article examines nominalization in Japanese television news programs with the aim of identifying its sociolinguistic meaning as it relates to context. Given that such programs create shifting contexts available for observation, approximately five hours of news programs (aired in Tokyo in 1992) are examined. The study finds that the use of nominalization varies between two related but different speech contexts identified as “TV Talk” and “TV Announcements.” The significance for the use of nominalization in Japanese is explored, adopting an interdisciplinary approach, by appealing to the critical socio-cultural concepts of uchi ‘inside’ and soto ‘outside’. (Context, Japanese, nominalization, media discourse, sociocultural concepts)

In a combination of ethnohistorical records and longitudinal data gathered over a period of 30 years, the development of Solomon Islands Pijin is documented and analyzed in light of the current debate surrounding creolization theory. Using a pragmatic definition of a Creole (Jourdan 1991), the authors argue that pidgins can be very elaborate codes even before they become the mother tongue of children, and that this elaboration is the result of the linguistic creativity of adults. It is further shown that, in sociolinguistic niches where adults and children use the pidgin as their main language, the impact of the latter on the evolution of the language is of a different nature. (Creolization theory, pidgin languages, substrate influences, urbanization, Solomon Islands Pijin)