Mediated Discourse (MD) reports a longitudinal study of the development of a one-year-old child, focusing on a single, narrowly defined social practice – handing, or “the simple practice of giving an object to another person” (p. 12). In this book, R. Scollon proposes a framework of mediated discourse to address social (practice) theory, which was “badly in need of an ontogenetic view of social practice” (vii).

Although Ron Scollon is an author of both books under review, the second differs from the first, theoretical, work in focusing on practical application. Professional communication in international settings (PCIIS) is an excellent book that is much needed by professionals, researchers, trainers, or anyone else involved in business or professional communication across cultural boundaries. Different from many other books on the same subject, its goal is to offer a method for effective communication, and it can be used as either a textbook or a reference.

This study explores the link between prosody and other-repetition in a moderately large collection from everyday English talk-in-interaction (n = 200). British English and North American English cases were analysed separately in order to track possible varietal differences. Of initial interest was the question whether focal pitch accents might disambiguate among other-repetition actions, both those related to repair and those that go beyond repair. The results indicate that only two out of six possible other-repetition actions are associated with distinct focal pitch contours in the two varieties. For all other repair and beyond-repair actions speakers use many of the same pitch contours nondistinctively. Overall, falling contours appear more frequently in British other-repetitions, while rising contours are more frequent in North American other-repetitions. In conclusion, it is argued that in addition to pitch contour, prosodic features such as pitch span, loudness, and timing are crucial in distinguishing other-repetition actions, as are nonprosodic factors such as epistemic access (often reflected in oh-prefacing) and visible behavior. (Repair initiation, surprise, challenge, registering, pitch accents, oh-preface, epistemics)*

Although the rates of changes in language are customarily described in relative terms, this paper presents a method of quantifying the rate of a given change during a specific time period. Utilizing the results of recent studies of sound change in progress, the Rate of Change Index is applied to the data for the purpose of indicating precisely the speed of these changes. Also measured in this manner are the rates of change of a variable in different phonetic contexts and among different social classes. The comparisons made here lend support to two important theories: that linguistic change follows an S-curve and that change proceeds more rapidly in urban than in rural areas. The Index contributes, then, to an inductive model of sociolinguistic change. It is also suggested that the Index can be applied to syntactic and lexical changes as well. (Linguistic change, Sociolinguistics, Phonology.)

This article describes inalienability in the Wauja (Arawak) language in the context of Brazilian Upper Xinguan culture. Wauja grammar encodes a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession that marks kin, body parts, and other terms and that largely but not perfectly overlaps with a local cultural category of emblematic possessions. I analyze how grammatical and cultural aspects of inalienable possession combine in discourse and exchange to contribute to the social identities of possessors. I present an ethnographic account of the role of inalienability in Wauja grammar and discourse in the disruption and repair of social relationships between groups in Upper Xinguan ritual. I argue for a mutually reinforcing relationship between grammatical categories and sociocultural meaning. I suggest that attention to language and possession, in addition to language and identity, is important for cross culturally comparative sociolinguistic analysis of such connections. (Inalienable possession, grammatical categories, discourse, exchange, Upper Xingu, Wauja (Arawak), ethnolinguistic identity)*

Work in the ethnography of communication has barely begun to look at writing, despite the fact that the status of writing bas recently preoccupied much of literary theory. The search to locate how writing functions among a culture's communicative practices can involve identifying domains that are unique to it, for example, where some kinds of writing attain a standing such that they are not meant to be understood as the transcription of a testimony or other oral act. Such a possibility is part of our culture but not part of many others, and is, among other things, a significant cognitive development. This article takes a diachronic perspective, back to a moment in our own past when a certain class of writings began to demand a kind of understanding different from that demanded by writing in that culture up to that time. I look at the Middle Ages to examine, inter alia, the written document putting into question prevailing temporal indices; the move of the act of writing away from an identification with other constatable acts and toward a more oblique and less committed relation to those acts; biblical exegesis as elaborating a new stance of writing through its practice of written gloss; the teaching of writing skills and the professionalization of the writer; and the significance of a renewed use of the cursive hand. The changing status of writing both encouraged and is implicated in the appearance and legitimizing of a set of utterances (and the acts behind them) seen as beneficially unmoored rather than moored, in a space and time of their own. (Ethnography of communication, grammatology, medieval studies, writing)

There is a lack of perception of the interrelatedness of the three fish-naming systems: the scientific, the common, and the folk naming systems. Ichthyologists and regulators of fish names do not sufficiently appreciate the motivations and intricacies of folk naming systems or problems of professional and commercial use of names. At the common name level, there seems to be little exchange of information concerning problems and solutions, objectives, and procedures. Also, communities and networks that use the same language(s) seek different solutions to the same or equivalent naming problems. The authors list some common problems and offer a tentative classification. (Taxonomy, naming, language planning, fisheries)

This article summarizes the results of a longer study of address forms in Ancient Greek, based on 11,891 address tokens from a variety of sources. It argues that the Greek evidence appears to contradict two tendencies, found in address forms in other languages, which have been claimed as possible sociolinguistic universals: the tendency toward T/V distinctions, and the principle that “What is new is polite.” It is suggested that these alleged universals should perhaps be re-examined in light of the Greek evidence, and that ancient languages in general have more to contribute to sociolinguistics than is sometimes realized. (Address, Ancient Greek, T/V distinctions)

The Republic of Ireland (ROI) and Northern Ireland (NI) have recently become attractive migrant destinations. Two main dialectal varieties are recognised on the island, but little is known about their adoption by new speakers. Focusing on a panlectal feature, discourse like, we conducted a quantitative sociolinguistic investigation of its adoption by seventeen young Polish and Lithuanian migrants in Armagh (NI), and thirty-six Polish and Chinese adult migrants in Dublin (ROI), with comparator samples drawn from native speakers. Findings show that like rates in both cities diverge, but that migrants mirror local frequencies. Clause-final like is restricted primarily to native speakers, but is twice as frequent in Armagh than in Dublin. English proficiency has a significant effect on the likelihood of young migrants in Armagh adopting the clause-final variant. The article's significance also stems from the original contribution it makes to our understanding of how sociolinguistic competence is acquired in ‘superdiverse’ settings. (Discourse like, identity, migration, Northern Irish-English, Hiberno-English, Ulster English, Southern Irish-English)*

In the Tanzanian Bongo Flava youth music scene, Abel Motika is a popular artist who uses both verbal and visual markers of Kisongo Maasai ethnicity to style himself as “the Maasai rapper” with the stage name “Mr. Ebbo.” Through analysis of his 2002 song “Mi Mmasai” ‘I am Maasai’, this study investigates his ethnic stylizing in playful use of Maa pronunciation and an understudied Swahili language game known as kinyume ‘backwards style’. The study finds that while Ebbo strategically disrupts the sociolinguistic order that privileges Standard Swahili, the Maasai persona he projects is humorously stylized as unable both to speak Standard Swahili and to engage with the urban lifestyle associated with Tanzania's de-ethnicized Swahili modernity, thereby leaving dominant ideologies of language and ethnicity intact. Moreover, in arguing that Motika's stylization of ethnicity has a contradictory effect, both affirming a local ethnic identity and preserving the logic of ethnolinguistic stereotyping, the study critiques approaches to hip hop that privilige authorial intent and assume linguistic subversiveness. (Swahili, Maa, Bongo Flava, parody, ethnicity, rap, kinyume)*

The past two decades have seen an explosion of interest in interactionally orientated perspectives on identity. The Community of Practice framework was employed by sociolinguists working within this paradigm because it firmly grounds identity in social practice seeing it as a process that speakers engage in during actual interactions. Interest in variation within communities of practice is growing, as the well-boundedness of linguistic and social concepts (including identity and language) is increasingly questioned. The current article develops this perspective by exploring code-switching practices of British-born Greek-Cypriots in two distinct contexts: community meetings and a dinner. Findings indicate that this community of practice does not constitute a uniform entity: complex interactions transpire between local and global variables including gender, community-specific setups, contexts, and discourse types. The study also problematizes the concepts core and periphery, used to describe variation within communities of practice, offering a revised understanding of practice, which focuses on silent participation. (Code-switching, community of practice, Greek-Cypriot, gender, identity, individual variation)

In this article I address a number of recent controversial language-related incidents and ideological statements regarding the use of French in the public sphere by Flemish nationalist aldermen in two Flemish towns. By drawing on interviews with different stakeholders (shop owners, aldermen, and passers-by), I address the different perceptions and ideological indexicalities of French shop names and signs in these Flemish contexts. In the data, the indexical field (Eckert 2008) of French in Flanders emerges as both polyvalent and indexically ordered, while the Flemish nationalist interpretations involve rescaled and historically recursive indexical meaning that can only be understood vis-à-vis the historical language ideological debate in Belgium. Language use in the public sphere has thus become a tool to impose monolingual ‘doxic logics’ (Bourdieu 1977) in Flanders, in spite of the fact that commercial and private language use is not regulated by language laws in Belgium. (Flemish nationalism, language ideologies, linguistic landscape)*

Opinions assume a paradoxical character in many speech events. The speaker, by sincerely presenting his views on a topic, is expressing his belief in a proposition, and this belief must be regarded as indisputable. If a speaker says that marijuana should be legalized, one cannot deny the speaker's belief in this proposition. He has expressed an opinion. The proposition, however, may itself be the topic of dispute. Another speaker may disagree by expressing his belief that marijuana should remain illegal, and a dispute regarding the validity of each of these propositions may ensue. Neither of these propositions is subject to proof or disproof, but the speakers may attempt to support them in order to add to the validity of the propositions and substantiate their beliefs.

Contemporary digital media is characterized by a cultural logic of participation that encourages sharing, confession, phatic communication, and an emphasis on the visual. In this techno-cultural milieu, self-presentation has become a key mode of communication, and has enabled ordinary individuals to attain a measure of celebrity status. A key component of being a microcelebrity entails developing a consistent persona that is recognizable and unique. How such persona can be studied from the sociolinguistic perspective of stance and style is the focus of this article. We combined corpus linguistic and qualitative discourse analytic methods to examine a small corpus of videos produced by Chinese online celebrity, Papi Jiang. The article presents key lexico-grammatical, discourse-level, and non-linguistic resources that are analyzed as stance markers that together contribute to Papi's intense, critical-satirical performative style. The significance of the findings is discussed in relation to performance, performativity, and critique in digital media. (Persona, microcelebrity, style, performance, stance)*

In a 2018 referendum, the Irish public voted to lift the Irish state's near-total constitutional ban on abortion, bucking a recent global trend towards restrictions on reproductive rights. While abortion rights have long been a major concern of Irish feminists, appeals to national identity have often been viewed with suspicion by the women's rights movement in Ireland due to the historic role of national identity construction in perpetuating gender-based inequalities. This article explores the way(s) in which discourses of Irish identity and gender were mediated by the use of Irish in the linguistic landscape (LL) at the time of the vote. Proposing a modified version of Du Bois’ (2007) stance triangle, I argue that signs use Irish as both a means of stancetaking and as an object of stance in itself, thus effectively taking a stance on both the referendum and on Irish national identity, indexed by the language. (Stancetaking, Irish (language), national identity, gender, abortion, Eighth Amendment)

This paper describes the functions of a verbal derivational suffix found in the Ngayarda languages Panyjima, Martuthunira, Yinyjiparnti, and Kurrama. This suffix, which appears at first blush to be an essentially syntactic device very like the reciprocal suffix found in other Australian languages, may be used to indicate the existence of a particular kin relationship between participants involved in the action described by a verb. The paper presents firstly the more general functions of the suffix in the Ngayarda languages and then discusses the use of the suffix to mark kin relationships. It is argued that the general “collective activity” meaning of the suffix has generalised to the marking of certain kin relationships through the recognition that collective activity is a feature of these particular relationships. The successful analysis of the data thus relies on a knowledge of the social uses to which utterances involving the suffix are put. (Anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, syntactic theory, cultural anthropology, Australian linguistics)

This paper examines language in a factory setting and shows that: (1) within a single building, different terms for the same thing may be found; (2) such alternation may be sufficiently stable to appear on ‘official’ forms, such as orders and inventories; (3) the major boundary is spatial, not social, in that it has to do with the major boundary between types of work; (4) operational links, proximity, and mobility between departments are major determinants of agreement and difference in usage within and across the two main sections of the factory. The data show lexical variability at a finer scale than has usually been considered in American dialectology, and show variation that appears independent of both region and class in its patterning. The data indicate a need for further investigation into sociolinguistic processes in occupational settings. (Dialectology, language change, lexical variability, sociology of work; American English (New Castle, Pennsylvania).)

Peter Trudgill's account of new-dialect formation is uniformitarian, a position I have embraced explicitly since Mufwene 2001. In Mufwene 2006, I show how similar the mechanisms involved are to those that account for the emergence of creoles, the basic difference lying in the composition of the contact setting's feature pool (see also below). The position I defend is even less moderate, as I argue that in the history of humankind language speciation has basically been a consequence of how internal variation within a language has been affected by migrations of its speakers and additionally by the different contacts the relevant populations have had among themselves (Trudgill's position) and with speakers of other languages in their new, colonial ecologies (Mufwene 2005, 2007, 2008). The reader should not be surprised to see in this response comments that are primarily intended to support and complement the position of the target article.