This study examines the linguistic aspects of the formation of a community of practice (CofP) and analyses one aspect of the common repertoire that is being actively developed within the community. On the one hand, it looks at the community itself, placing emphasis on the exact practices, beliefs, and resources that can identify a group brought together at times against their will, as a CofP. On the other, this research takes under scrutiny one specific linguistic variable (Japanese negation) to show how involvement in a CofP can bring about rapid and unexpected changes in the meaning and use of a linguistic variant. (Community of practice, indexical meaning, Japanese, negation)*

This article examines how the political manipulation of Covid-19 statistics was opposed in 2020. It does this by studying in detail the language used in a public exchange of letters in the UK. The exchange was between the chair of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority (UKSA), a statutory body to prevent statistical malpractice, and the Minister of Health, who had been manipulating Covid statistics. The exchange reflects the greater power of the government minister. Initially, the UKSA chair used diplomatic language, marked by paratactic constructions, unspecified arguments, and impersonal structures that did not threaten the minister's face. The minister ignored these and the UKSA chair had to go beyond diplomatic language by re-specifying his arguments and upgrading his critical terminology. Only by catching the press's attention did the chair succeed in making the minister rectify, at least partially, the manipulated statistics. Implications for understanding today's political values are discussed. (Opposing statistical manipulation, manipulating Covid statistics, diplomatic language, parataxis and hypotaxis)

The dramatic reconfiguration of the social, political, and ideological order in South Africa since 1990/1994 has demanded a concomitant reconceptualization of (white) Afrikaner notions of self and belonging in the (new) nation. In this article, we draw on recent developments in the study of varidirectional voicing (polyphony), performance, and mediatization to examine how the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord makes use of parody and metaparody in their music to critique emerging ‘new Afrikaner’ identities and the racial, class, and gender configurations on which they are based. We also discuss the structural limits of these critiques and the political potential of (meta)parodic performance more generally. ((Meta)parody, polyphony, performance, race, class, gender, South Africa)*

Standardization of terminology is a process calling for a thoughtful combination of adherence to linguistic principles and awareness of the sociocultural issues involved. The case of Serbo-Croatian linguistic terminology currently used in Yugoslavia may serve as an example of the different dimensions of sociolinguistic variation in this area. Especially in culturally heterogeneous societies, the distinction between standardization and unification must be observed. (Terminology, language standardization, sociology of language, applied linguistics; Serbo-Croatian.)

Close examination of a segment of classroom discourse permits definition of a set of linguistic devices and rhetorical structures that characterize the primary speaker's repertoire. As the discourse moves from dialog to monolog, and the teacher's roles and ideological assumptions come into conflict, these discourse patterns are seen to reveal the shifting contexts of talk and social personae that the teacher must use language to reconcile. The analysis claims that, under such conditions of discourse stress, opposing contexts can be temporarily harmonized through discourse structure, even though propositional content is contradictory. (Linguistic anthropology, education, coherence, discourse analysis)

A sociolinguist's first reaction to Lewis’ critique of Labov's thirty-five-year-old principle of error correction (PEC) would likely be defensive or dismissive. While never formulated as the full-fledged ‘theory of social change’ Lewis portrays it to be, the PEC has indeed offered a valuable ‘theoretical starting place for diverse social-change efforts’ (Lewis, this issue, p. 326) by (socio)linguists over the years, repeatedly allowing us to use our technical training to provide more accurate diagnoses of language-related social issues than nonlinguists could, and thereby paving the way for their successful (re)solution. An early example is the 1985 trial of Paul Prinzivalli (see Labov 1988), who was rightfully found not guilty of making telephone bomb threats against Pan Am Airlines on the basis of Labov's careful phonetic evidence that his speech did not match the caller's recorded Boston accent. A more recent example is that of Voigt et al. (2017), whose computational analysis of police body-camera footage from 981 stops of Black and White drivers in Oakland, CA revealed that officers showed significantly more verbal respect to White than to Black drivers. This research is now being used to improve police training and police-community interactions in Oakland. In both cases, we could argue that, as in medicine, without an accurate diagnosis, a successful solution would elude us. And we might add that community beneficiaries of the (socio)linguist's on-the-ground ‘error correction and knowledge dissemination’ (Lewis, this issue, p. 339) might value this more than the critical race theorist's lofty theorizing.

This article considers the ways in which the Welsh and English languages are currently used in Bangor, a cathedral and university city in North Wales. The two languages carry different kinds of authority in different contexts and are acquired in different ways by children from different backgrounds. Some religious institutions have a clear commitment to one language, but others practice various forms of bilingualism. The relationship between the two languages in education and the other public services is partially determined by consciously formulated language policies but is less consistent than some official statements might suggest. The patterns of usage in commercial and domestic life are even more various and frequently involve complex forms of code-switching. (Welsh, English, Wales, bilingualism)

Applying the functional approach to language developed by Halliday and Hasan, this study delineates the criterial and characteristic features of language used in 13 peer review letters from a graduate seminar by native speakers of English, with an average length of 300–350 words. Examining discourse goals, global text structure, obligatory and optional elements, sequence and co-occurrence of discourse elements, verb types, modalized directives, and lexical choice, this article demonstrates that peer review texts are shaped by the institutional and situational contexts within which they are embedded, and at the same time contribute to these contexts. (Genre studies, interactive discourse analysis, written communication, systemic linguistics, peer review, classroom discourse)

The explanatory model of cross-cultural miscommunication, or crosstalk, is extended here through a multi-feature, multi-dimensional analysis of Soviet and American speakers' discourse in two three-hour audio/video “spacebridge” meetings. The study demonstrates that variation between speakers' uses of co-occurring sets of lexical and syntactic features can contribute to crosstalk. Crosstalk is shown to be functionally motivated by interlocutors' different constructions of the speech-event context and norms of interpretation.

A factor analysis of lexical and syntactic features in spacebridge participants' discourse identifies two main dimensions of stylistic variation; use of the sets of co-occurring features that constitute these dimensions are interpreted as performing different discourse functions, and thereby indexing different aspects of the speech-event context. Soviet floor turns that exhibit the greatest stylistic divergence from American stylistic behavior and expectations are shown to correlate with communicative breakdowns in the spacebridges, and thereby to contribute to crosstalk. The analysis suggests that, at some level, stylistic contextualization cues are quantitatively “analyzed” in real time by discourse participants, and it demonstrates some of the explanatory potential of quantitative modeling of complex indexical processes such as stylistic accommodation, divergence, and opposition. I wish to thank Doug Biber, Elinor Ochs, and Barbara Johnstone for invaluable feedback on this study.

The sociolinguistic pressures now exerted on the Gullah-speaking communities match the general conditions that DeCamp (1971b) described for postcreole speech communities or communities in which the traditional language variety is decreolizing or dying. There is a correspondence between the dominant official language and the creole, and there is sufficient breakdown in the formerly rigid social stratification brought on by educational programs and other acculturative forces to cause social mobility and to motivate large numbers of Gullah speakers to modify their speech in the direction of standard English. Preliminary research of the processes involved in this modification activity reveals that certain features of the pronominal system are elaborating and dying while certain other features of this system are remaining static and unchanged. Elaboration is well underway in the nominative case, for example, while in the objective case elaboration has barely begun. (Sociolinguistic pressures, postcreole, decreolizing or dying, social mobility, certain features, elaborating, static)

This article contributes to conversation analytic research on the formatting of imperative actions by focusing on the English first person imperative let me/lemme X as it appears in a range of naturally occurring interactions. I argue that lemme X is a practice for displacing what was projectably relevant in a given environment in favor of a self-authorized action. This as a result tends to advance the speaker's interests/initiatives. The analysis accounts for speakers’ apparent presumption of permission in unilaterally undertaking their lemme X action by reference to the placement, design, and subsequent orientations to the self-authorized action. The construction is discussed in terms of the distribution of agency and it is suggested that lemme X is particularly suited to advancing activities that favor autonomous action by the speaker and which involve the recipient only minimally. (Conversation analysis, imperatives, directives, English, agency)*

A critical examination of the findings of Valentine (1985, 1986), studies devoted to cross-sex communication in Hindi and Indian English, is shown to reveal that the assumptions of the models on which such descriptions are based are not only nonexplanatory but also untenable. They fail because they ignore hierarchical power. Their failure “abroad” must be seen as an invitation to reflect on their alleged success back home. (Discourse, discourse strategies, cross-sex communication, Hindi, Indian English, English, sociolinguistics)