Tariana is spoken by about 100 people in the multilingual area of the Vaupés basin in northwest Amazonia (Brazil). Other languages spoken in the area are members of the East Tucanoan subgroup, with its most numerous representative, the Tucano language, rapidly gaining ground as a lingua franca. Also spoken are Makú languages; Baniwa, an Arawak language spoken on the fringes of the area and closely related to Tariana; and Portuguese, the national language. The area is known for its language group exogamy and institutionalized multilingualism, with its language being the badge of identity for each group. Language choice is motivated by power relationship and by status, and there are strict rules for code-switching. Inserting bits of other languages while speaking Tariana (“code-mixing”) has different consequences that mirror existing ethnic stereotypes. Code-mixing with Tucano is considered a “language violation”; using elements of Baniwa is considered funny, while mixing different Tariana dialects implies that one “cannot speak Tariana properly.” Overusing Portuguese is associated with the negative image of an Indian who tries to be better than his peers.

The spread of English has created a rich array of varieties, which are often grouped into a tripartite division: the ENL, ESL, and EFL of Quirk, or the inner-circle, outer-circle, and expanding-circle of Kachru. These varieties, especially ESL, differ among themselves in both form and function. It is often assumed in the literature that these varieties are autonomous systems of communication. This article challenges this assumption by showing that the innovative phonological features of one ESL variety, the vernacular English spoken in Singapore, cannot be analyzed without reference to native English. These change-in-progress features fall into two types: those that originate in phonemes, and those that originate in words. Social stigma associated with them poses a formidable barrier to their stabilization and diffusion, and consequently to their autonomization. Nonnative English is grammatically dependent on native English.

This article examines gender and language in post-Soviet Ukraine, where language laws and turbulent socioeconomic changes are affecting language use. It discusses ideologies of gender, language, and ethnicity in Ukraine and assesses the significance of gender in shaping stances toward three competing languages, Ukrainian, Russian, and English. The analysis focuses on language ideologies and attitudes, based on survey and matched-guise language attitude test data. Two kinds of explanations for the gendered patterning are considered: first, how socialization and cultural ideologies of women's relationship to language shape the attitudes documented; and second, how political/economic forces (differences in possibilities for social power and social advancement linked to language use) lead men and women to benefit from different strategies in their use and valuation of linguistic capital. It is shown that, while sociocultural and political/economic forces reinforce each other in some cases, in others they contradict each other, with economic motives prevailing over cultural paradigms of traditionalism.

This article examines the interactive import of prosody from a perspective of participants' orientation to talk in interaction, taking advantage of data from institutional discourse to focus on the prosodic packaging of recurring turn sequences of the same discourse activity. The analysis focuses on the third slot of a ubiquitous three-part classroom discourse sequence, the IRF exchange (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975), a site in which teachers make repetitive feedback moves following student responses. Examination of more than 25 hours of classroom discourse and more than 300 third-turn teacher feedback types uncovered a systematic use of prosody for these teacher repetitions that coincides with a teacher's positive assessment of the student response. Further analysis shows that more complex prosodic packaging is used by teachers in their repetitive feedback turns to index other interactive functions.

This volume, dedicated to Martin Braine, is the outcome of a conference held at the Max Plank Institute in Nijmegen in 1995. The first of four parts covers general theoretical issues; part 2 focuses specifically on word learning, particularly nouns; in part 3, entities, individuation and quantification are examined; and in part 4, relational concepts in form-function mapping, with a focus on the influence of language-specific properties. Two main issues link the nineteen chapters: whether concepts are language-independent or constructed through language, and the role of experience in conceptual development. As emphasized by the editors in the introduction, past attempts to relate cognitive and linguistic development have not been too successful, possibly because of the focus on language structure within theoretical linguistics. Recent research on the domain-specific cognitive abilities of infants and on semantic and cross-linguistic aspects of language acquisition have provided new insights, and thus it is timely to reexamine the links.

This volume revisits, as its title states, the theory and practice of reversing language shift (RLS) first proposed by Fishman in 1991. A dozen of the original case studies are reanalyzed and several more are added, producing a rich source of detail on some of the specific situations of language shift and efforts to reverse it. Fishman contributes introductory and concluding chapters as well as one of the case studies (Yiddish); other authors cover Navajo, New York Puerto Rican Spanish, Québec French, Otomí, Quechua, Irish, Frisian, Basque, Catalán, Oko, Andamanese, Ainu, Hebrew, immigrant languages in Australia, indigenous languages in Australia, and Maori. The resulting book provides a wealth of information about language shift and public policy directed toward RLS, but its aims are broader than that.

At first glance, the title of this book seems to index major themes of linguistic anthropology; however, it is published as volume 6 in a cultural studies series. Its contributors' interests range from linguistics through the expanse of humanities, illustrating how eclectic and interdisciplinary contemporary research in area of language and culture has become. The editor, Magda Stroinska, begins this volume with a brief overview of several themes recurring throughout: linguistic relativity, the search for universals, cross-cultural identity, globalization, and translatability. The research presented here analyzes interactions among language, behavior, and context as they emerge in several areas of current concern. These include metaphors and their use in speech, as well as discourses on topics such as gender and marriage, science versus postmodernism, internationalized business, politics, nationalism, study abroad experiences, emotion, and religion. The authors examine data from various sources, including original speech data, data first discussed elsewhere, literature, and media. Five thematic sections of two chapters each comprise this edited volume.

This is an exceptionally interesting collective work put together by Camille C. O'Reilly in two volumes, the first focusing on minority languages and problems of nation and ethnicity in western Europe, and particularly in the European Union (EU), and the second taking as its main focus languages and nationalizing discourses in eastern Europe. A large part of the discussion in vol. 2 concentrates on issues related to the fate and ongoing processes of nation formation, citizenship, linguistic ideologies, and minority languages in the successor states of the former Soviet Union. In both volumes, some chapters focus more narrowly on language, whereas others give emphasis to macro processes of a political nature. And, of course, no article in the collection is indifferent to the politics of minoritization, ethnic-national boundaries, and the restructuring of the European national map as a whole. Thus, variation in theme and method of analysis should be considered as a positive element of this endeavor, even though the overall treatment is neither exhaustive nor radically critical, as I will argue below.

This book is an important and useful contribution to the literature on language shift, especially for readers interested in this issue in American Indian communities. House focuses on discrepancies between public discourse about what it means to be a Navajo person and “undiscussed, yet highly visible, linguistic and behavioral practices” – that is, between conscious, discursive ideology and more unconscious, behavioral ideology as revealed through social practice. She challenges the widespread claim in the Navajo community for the existence of Navajo cultural homogeneity, arguing that although such essentializing discourse may have political, economic, and spiritual motivations, it is also unrealistic and complicates efforts to reverse language shift.

This book primarily addresses the following questions:

(a) What are the features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and how is it used?

(b) What is its evolution and where is it headed?

(c) What are its educational implications?

Sociolinguistic variation in American Sign Language is the successful result of applying sociolinguistic theory and methodology originally developed for spoken languages to American Sign Language (ASL). The product of several years of study conducted by a team of researchers, this book is more than just an exercise; both expected and unexpected findings are presented, thereby confirming and advancing the sociolinguistics of signed languages in particular and of language in general. Lucas and Valli bring to this work extensive experience with sign language linguistics; they are joined by Bayley, who is known for his work on Tejano English and Spanish variation among immigrants of Mexican descent. The statistical findings provide the necessary bridge between context and environment, on the one hand, and internal constraints, on the other, to explain the range of variation represented at phonological, syntactic, and lexical levels in ASL. Explicitly building on Weinrich, Labov & Herzog's notion of orderly heterogeneity (14, 193–94; cf. Weinrich, Labov & Herzog 1968), the book provides useful examples and analysis for sign language linguists, and it would do well as a source for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses where materials beyond a primer of sociolinguistics are needed. For those more established in the field, the authors respectfully (and graciously) challenge several frequently cited findings concerning variation in ASL, such as Woodward & DeSantis' (1977) claims about negative incorporation and Liddell & Johnson's (1989) explanations for phonological variation in forms of the sign deaf.

Since the pioneering work of Labov, Yaeger & Steiner 1972, research in phonological variation has steadily grown more reliant on acoustic data – that is, on data resulting from instrumental measurements rather than from the auditory judgments of the researchers. This book from Erik Thomas demonstrates the fruitfulness (as well as some of the limitations) of this research trend.

A signal event in the history of language policy in France was the recognition in 2000 of French-lexifier creoles as languages that students in secondary schools could select as subject matter. This decision by the ministry of education placed these languages on an equal footing with the heretofore officially recognized regional languages, such as Breton or Corsican. For these languages to be taught in French secondary schools, teachers needed to be certified by an examination, the CAPES (Certificat d'Aptitude au Professorat de l'Enseignement Secondaire). This book by the leading creolist of the French Antilles is part of a series of handbooks for prospective candidates for that diploma.