Police-suspect interviews in England and Wales are a multi-audience, multi-purpose, transcontextual mode of discourse. They are conducted as part of the initial investigation into a crime, but are subsequently recontextualized through the judicial process, ultimately being presented in court as evidence against the interviewee. The communicative challenges posed by multiple future audiences are investigated by applying Bell's (1984) audience design model to the police interview, and the resulting “poor fit” demonstrates why this context is discursively counterintuitive to participants. Further, data analysis indicates that interviewer and interviewee, although ostensibly addressing each other, may orientate to different audiences, with potentially serious consequences. As well as providing new insight into police-suspect interview interaction, this article seeks to extend understanding of the influence of audience on interaction at the discourse level, and to contribute to the development of theoretical models for contexts with multiple or asynchronous audiences. (Audience design, audience orientation, police interviews, forensic linguistics)*

This study examines the language-driven aspects of the formation of a classroom-based community of practice (CoP), placing emphasis on ways in which researchers can verify the status of observed practices. Discourse analysis is reinforced by such an evidence-based understanding of the social milieu of a research site. When determining whether an aggregate of people is functioning as a CoP, however, the nature of the measuring stick is a vital question. When institutional forces have brought a group of participants together, how can an observer verify empirically the dynamic development of mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire? In a sample case study, representative features outlined by Wenger (1998:130–31) are identified, and their emergence traced, via analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes and audio recordings. These features provide evidence of the development of localised practices (i.e. ways of doing grounded in this community) as distinct from more widely recognisable practices. Identifying the difference increases the likelihood that results of discourse analysis can be useful to educators. (Community of practice, discourse analysis, nexus of practices, warranting)*

In sociolinguistics, Urdu and Hindi are considered to be textbook examples of digraphia—a linguistic situation in which varieties of the same language are written in different scripts. Urdu has traditionally been written in the Arabic script, whereas Hindi is written in Devanagari. Analyzing the recent orthographic practice of writing Urdu in Devanagari, this article challenges the traditional ideology that the choice of script is crucial in differentiating Urdu and Hindi. Based on written data, interviews, and ethnographic observations, I show that Muslims no longer view the Arabic script as a necessary element of Urdu, nor do they see Devanagari as completely antithetical to their identity. I demonstrate that using the strategies of phonetic and orthographic transliteration, Muslims are making Urdu-in-Devanagari different from Hindi, although the difference is much more subtle. My data further shows that the very structure of a writing system is in part socially constituted. (Script-change, Urdu, Urdu-in-Devanagari, Hindi, Arabic script, Devanagari, orthography, transliteration)*

The decreolization process observed in the creole continuum of Belize, Central America is examined in relation to the extralinguistic factor of ethnicity. The speech patterns of Creole speakers are analyzed in terms of two distinct types of ethnic contact, namely, intragroup communication vs. interaction with Black Caribs. Decreolization is viewed as a code-switching phenomenon which affects all native speakers of creole without implying a unified progression toward the acrolect (English). Special attention is given to: I) intraindividual variability which is found to span the whole continuum in intragroup contexts, but to be restricted to mesolectal varieties in intergroup situations; and 2) the relative significance of the five morphosyntactic variables selected to measure decreolization. These features follow distinctive overall patterns of co-occurrence. However, the mesolectal bloc, when viewed in detail, discloses an internal complexity which defies scaling of linguistic features, and reveals the influence of conflicting social and psychological pressures. (Creole studies; ethnic interaction; sociolinguistics; code-switching.)

The multilingualism and patterns of language use in Misión La Paz, Salta Province, Argentina are described and analyzed. Three indigenous languages, Chorote, Nivaclé, and Wichí, are spoken here, but interlocutors in conversations usually do not speak the same language to one another. There is extensive linguistic exogamy, and husbands and wives typically speak different languages to one another. Individuals identify with one language, speak it to all others, and claim only to understand but not to speak the other languages spoken to them. Children in the same family very often identify with and thus speak different languages from one another. This situation is examined and explanations are offered, with comparisons to similar situations elsewhere. The pattern of language choice and multilingual use in this case is arguably unique, with implications for several general claims about language contact and multilingualism.

Research on languages in contact has shown evidence of structural convergence, as well as internally motivated language change; one language which has been frequently studied in this light is Pennsylvania German (PG). Myers-Scotton 1993 posits that convergence involves a change in the selection of the language which sets the morpho-syntactic frame involved in language production. This is called a turnover in the Matrix Language (ML). Data from PG collected in the 1940s, as compared with data collected in the late 1970s and 1980s, indicate that an ML turnover is underway in the sectarian communities; the language can be characterized as having a composite ML. The primary features of convergence in these data are English lexical-conceptual structures in the tense system, English morphological realization patterns in verb phrases, and the increased syntactization of word order in PG. There is only weak evidence for the introduction of English system morphemes at this stage. The loss of case-marking does not conform to English patterns; this indicates that much of the influence of language contact occurs at the lexical-conceptual level. (Pennsylvania German, convergence, Matrix Language Frame Model, code-switching, borrowing, language contact)

This article characterizes a spoken genre, bargaining, found in retail encounters in traditional markets in southern China. Analysis of substantive acts in 38 tape-recorded interactions shows that verbal and nonverbal actions within the event carry a small set of illocutionary forces germane to negotiating price and quantity. Analysis of ritual acts that mark boundaries of the event shows that participants behave primarily as outgroup persons seeking to transact business. Bargaining hence constitutes a primary genre (Bakhtin 1986), a textual form that shows domination of a transaction frame over a consultation and a valet frame, and a communicative purpose that is tightly circumscribed around the exchange of commodities and not relationship. A socially oriented form of genre analysis is apt for elucidating the speakers' strategic use of generic resources, as well as investigating development in retail marketing in the PRC, marked by growing popularity of new retail outlets and changing consumer attitudes.

The study reported here reports data on the validity of a Canadian version of Labov's “index of linguistic insecurity.” Data were gathered from a random sample of two census tracts in Winnipeg, Canada. Both Labov's original test and a new Canadian equivalent test were given to the sample of eighty adults. Scores on the two tests were highly correlated, indicating high criterion validity of the Canadian test. Also, social class and gender differences followed the same pattern as in Labov's study, with the lower middle class and females showing higher levels of linguistic insecurity. The use of the New York City test in Winnipeg is discussed, and some details concerning Canadian English are presented. (Language attitudes, linguistic insecurity, Canadian English, social class)

Critical discourse analysts are often criticized for interpreting linguistic data in political contexts, placing the data in an artificial environment motivated by political agendas rather than scientific inquiry, and thereby disregarding findings that would follow from a data-internal and more empirically grounded analysis. This article argues that critical discourse analysis may gain proficiency for social analysis by adopting concepts suitable for cultural and historical analysis of socialization, as found in Bourdieu. Application is demonstrated in a study of a job interview, with close linguistic analysis; close attention is given to the applicant by drawing on evaluations after the interview and on a retrospective interview with the applicant. It is proposed that a method combining linguistic and socio-historical analysis may offer advantages to critical discourse analysis, including a more systematic approach to text-external contexts and qualified, balanced perception of the social agent as a creative yet socially determined individual.

This study examines how friends in their mid-twenties appropriate texts from videogames they have played to serve particular functions in their everyday face-to-face conversations. Speakers use references to the videogames Papers, Please and The Oregon Trail to shift the epistemic territories of conversations when they encounter interactional dilemmas. These epistemic shifts simultaneously rekey formerly problematic talk (on topics like rent, money, and injuries) to lighter, humorous talk, reframing these issues as being part of a lived videogame experience. Overlapping game frames are laminated upon real-life frames, and are strengthened by embedded frames containing constructed dialogue. This study contributes to understanding how epistemic shifts relying on intertextual ties can shift frames during interactional dilemmas in everyday conversation, which is ultimately conducive to group identity construction. (Intertextuality, framing, epistemics, identity, interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, humor, videogames)*

This article analyzes language ideologies with regard to sign language in Adamorobe, a “shared signing community” in southern Ghana. Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is a “shared sign language,” used by all deaf people and a large number of hearing Akan-speaking people. Deaf schoolchildren from Adamorobe attend a school where Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) is taught. Hearing interviewees have experiential knowledge that everything can be said in AdaSL, emphasise the shared roots of AdaSL and Akan, and called AdaSL “natural.” Deaf interlocutors describe Akan, AdaSL, and GSL as three distinct but equivalent languages. AdaSL is said to be a “hard” language, more pleasant to use, and more expressive than GSL, but sign bilingualism is highly valued. These findings are compared and contrasted with accounts on language ideologies with regard to other shared sign languages and larger urban/national sign languages. (Language ideologies, language practices, Ghana, Ghanaian Sign Language, Adamorobe Sign Language, Akan, shared sign languages, shared signing communities, village sign languages)*

This article combines textual, videotape, historical, and ethnographic evidence to describe the Bangla psychiatric register and its enregisterment. Enregisterment is a process “through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable [and] … socially recognized” (Agha 2003:231). The emergence of psychiatric registers in Europe and, later, Bangladesh bore the particular burden of psychiatry's “magic complex” – its need to convince a skeptical public that its perceived associations with magic and religion were finished, vanquished in part by discursive measures, focused on a scientizing drive. Psychiatric Bangla appears to involve the sort of pervasive use of parallelism normally associated with ritual texts. This indicates a profound hybridity that may contribute to the psychiatric unease epitomized in the magic complex.The author gratefully acknowledges suggestions and comments from Carol Berkenkotter, Dan Conrad, Laurence Kirmayer, Barbara Johnstone, Greg Matoesian, and two anonymous reviewers for Language in Society. Sayeed Ahmed provided enormous help with transliterating most of the letters analyzed, and with translating some. Anna Corwin and other students in my Linguistic Anthropology Lab (fall 2006) helped with figures. Naturally, the author is responsible for all flaws that remain.

The Arabic-speaking speech communities of the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain are undergoing a special kind of sociolinguistic change which requires the recognition of both dialectal and supradialectal prestige systems. Variation can be accounted for in terms of the articulation/conflict of these two systems. Although it appears at first sight that all of the observed variation could be explained at the phonological level, a closer analysis of the data suggests that, psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically, a lexical explanation fits part of it better. (Variation studies, standard and nonstandard languages)

This study explores a phenomenon in Japanese conversation that might be regarded as “discourse-within-a-sentence,” or interpolating a sequence of talk during ongoing sentence construction. It explicates the way in which Japanese speakers use postpositional particles as a resource to incorporate an element in a parenthetical sequence into the syntax of a sentence-in-progress. It is shown that the usability of postpositions for achieving discourse-within-a-sentence comes from the situated workings of postpositions used in a wider range of interactional contexts. Through a detailed examination of relevant instances from transcribed Japanese conversations, this study addresses such issues as (i) “sentences” in interaction as both a resource for, and an outcome of, intricate interactional work; (ii) postpositions as resources for retroactive transformations of turn-shapes in Japanese; and (iii) the relationship between typological features of the grammar of a language and forms of interactional practices.I wish to thank the following people for valuable comments at various stages in the development of this article: William Bright, Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, Noriko Fujii, Charles Goodwin, Jane Hill, Junko Mori, Tsuyoshi Ono, Jerome Packard, Hiroko Tanaka, and Sandra Thompson. Remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.

This article brings the study of language to the social phenomenon of gender-related violence as it is currently being dealt with in institutional settings. It investigates the social significance of 2nd person pronoun variation and alternation in 26 professional-victim interactions in two parallel institutions created to address violence against women in Brazil: a police station with an all-female staff, and a feminist crisis intervention center. A quantitative analysis of patterns of use is complemented by a qualitative analysis of the interactional strategies of 2nd person pronoun alternation in the two settings. Pronoun switching is innovatively analyzed under the theory of code alternation developed by Auer 1995. The qualitative analysis demonstrates how pronoun alternation functions as a contextualization cue in face-to-face interactions. In particular, it shows the different ways in which pronoun alternation is used to contextualize phenomena such as preference organization and changes in frames and footings, and locally to exercise power and/or solidarity.

Peter Trudgill's essay raises important issues, some of which are uncontroversial while others are less convincing, partly because of a narrow concept of identity and partly because of an infelicitous choice of case studies. For him, the denial of identity seems axiomatic, while I suggest that what his criticism boils down to is the relationship between accommodation and identity, and the question of when and how identity as a social concept is effective, specifically in processes of colonial and postcolonial dialect formation.

This article presents an analysis of a slang variety, called oxtšit, as it is described and used by a cohort of gay men in Israel. Unlike many previous analyses of gay slang, I argue that the men described do not use the variety to help construct and affirm an alternative gay identity, but rather that they use it as a form of in-group mockery through which normative and nonnormative articulations of Israeli gay male sexuality are delineated. It is suggested that this discussion has implications for sociolinguistic understandings of “groupness” more broadly, and particularly the relationship between macro-level social categories (like “gay”) and individual lived experience. (Gay slang, Israel, vari-directional voicing, identity/alterity)*

A number of studies have been conducted on “dominance” as reflected in spoken interactional features, most of which deal with English. Many of these studies adopt a quantitative approach, examining the amount and distribution of interactional features such as amount of talk, interruptions and overlaps, turn-taking, questions, and topic initiations, and they have drawn conclusions on “dominance” accordingly. The present study explores gender dominance in conversation by analyzing conversational data from eight Japanese dyads by integrating quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis of two dimensions of conversational dominance, sequential dominance and participatory dominance, does not show any obvious gender dominance; however, the qualitative analysis of three of the dyads finds a clear pattern of male speakers' self-oriented conversational style, which is manifested in their storytelling and claiming expertise, and this is supported by female speakers' other-oriented conversational style. Gender dominance therefore is seen as a mutual construction. The conclusion discusses the importance of integrating findings from both quantitative and qualitative analyses in situated contexts to deepen understanding of the complexity of gender dominance.The authors wish to thank Dwight Atkinson, Andy Curtis, Jane Hill, and two anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and valuable comments on earlier drafts of the paper. They also wish to thank Simon Lai, senior research assistant, for his help in conducting the statistical test.

In many Native American and Canadian First Nations communities, indigenous languages are important for the linguistic construction of ethnic identity. But because many younger speakers have limited access to their heritage languages, English may have an even more important role in identity construction than Native languages do. Prior literature shows distinctive local English features in particular tribes. Our study builds on this knowledge but takes a wider perspective: We hypothesize that certain features are shared across much larger distances, particularly prosody. Native cultural insiders (the first two co-authors) had a central role in this project. Our recordings of seventy-five speakers in three deliberately diverse locations (Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North/South Dakota; Northwest Territories, Canada; and diverse tribes represented at Dartmouth College) show that speakers are heteroglossically performing prosodic features to index Native ethnic identity. They have taken a ‘foreign’ language (English) and enregistered these prosodic features, creatively producing and reproducing a shared ethnic identity across great distances. (Native Americans, prosody, ethnicity, ethnic identity, English, dialects)*

A number of studies have shown regular correlation between linguistic variation and social-class differences. Definition and identification of social class in a particular situation, however, still presents problems. The problems are discussed with reference to a study in Glasgow where occupation was used as the sole criterion for social-class membership.