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In writing of the economies of abandonment of late liberal globalization, Elizabeth Povinelli also points to the potential for SPACES OF OTHERWISE, those spaces of "curiosity and risk, potentiality and exhaustion" which open possibilities for more ethical becoming and the emergence of new forms of sociality and social life (2012. The will to be otherwise/the effort of endurance. South Atlantic Quarterly 111(3). 453–475: 454). This Special Issue aims to contribute to an expanded, southernized sociology of language and sociolinguistics by exploring what role sociolinguistics can play in thinking through and with these spaces. It brings together a set of papers from southern contexts rarely represented in sociolinguistic research (Crimea, Mozambique, Palestine) spaces of grim endurance where suffering is chronic rather than catastrophic, and a study of the metaphorical south in the north, where migration imperatives land people in situations of precarity, in this case, Sweden. An illuminating invited commentary offers a novel perspective on the key theme QUASI-EVENT threading across all the papers. In exploring the construction of spaces of otherwise, authors use the southern concept of Linguistic Citizenship that construes language as a site of political struggle. This framing offers an alternative approach to a politics of language where potentialities for otherwise can be attended to. The papers show how, through acts of Linguistic Citizenship, participants bring potential worlds into existence, however fleetingly. From the chronicling of these 'quasi-events' emerges a sociolinguistics of potentiality, one which contributes to an understanding of what enables some emergent forms of life to endure and others not. The sociolinguistics of potentiality is an invitation to listen beyond and within 'noise' to those who inhabit discounted bodies and speak unvalued languages, to move beyond 'community' and 'selfhood' to becoming otherwise with others in projects of world-building, simultaneously prompting research which seeks to be 'ethically otherwise'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing to existing studies on global circuits of knowledge and labour, this paper presents a case study of Andy – a Chinese doctoral student in the UK – and looks at his transition from higher education to later joining the labour market after returning to China through the lens of personality traits. It draws upon literature on language socialisation and sociolinguistic studies of mobility, focusing on how social actors navigate transnational higher education and the consequences on professional development in a neoliberalising market economy. It aims to investigate how (in)appropriate personhood – as manifested in recurrent personality attributes – is enacted and negotiated in specific learning contexts in Andy's trajectory and the impact on employability, with various types of data consisting of participant observation, interviews, and relevant materials. The analysis suggests that Andy has been trained to engage communicatively with academic tasks in higher education settings. However, Andy considers himself lacking certain personality variables that could align with the criteria of a "good doctoral student" depicted by the institutions, such as being independent, motivated, and self-disciplined. Andy gradually shows disorientation in an academic career, albeit finding his inadequacy to perform the desired professional personhood in a labour market that values working experience and communication skills over education certification. This process explains why sometimes the expected communicative repertories and training acquired in higher education are not transferable into valuable resources that Andy can mobilise to become employed. This paper argues that neoliberal rationality has stratifying effects on individuals primarily due to an emphasis on self-responsibility and constant improvements. In transnational higher education, certain personality traits are considered desirable and lacking such characteristics can have side effects on mobile actors like Andy, who navigate the globalising labour market through uncertainty and precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that a sociolinguistics of potentiality is an "ethical" sociolinguistics that will grapple with the difference of others. Drawing on a linguistic ethnography of Social Sciences classrooms in a Swedish university, it illuminates how students and teachers work to foster improved sociality and mutual responsibility across social and linguistic difference in internationalising university life. The paper develops through a consideration of Levinasian "ethical events", defined as interactions involving that which is not known, normative or ordinarily visible, but for which all involved are called upon to take responsibility. Analysis of the ethical events involving instances of embodied interdiscursive performance brings to light how late liberal values such as individualism and competition could be disrupted in favour of collaborative and mutually responsible academic and social practice. Yet, as is characteristic of "spaces of otherwise", the task of shaping such new relations in and around the classroom spaces involved risk and exhaustion. The study concludes by arguing that constructing university spaces as open to different ways of engaging, learning and knowing involves an orientation in response to others' desire for mutuality and reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of mobility and borders in sociolinguistics, arguing that borders should be seen as social and political constructs. It emphasizes the importance of language and discourse in border production and discusses the diverse realities of borders and their impact on power dynamics. The authors draw inspiration from their local context in Kazakhstan, where the collapse of the Soviet Union changed the role of borders between former Soviet Socialist Republics. The article also highlights that borders are historically contested and mobile, especially for nomadic populations, and discusses cases in Turkey, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, and Cyprus to demonstrate how language, politics, history, and ideologies shape border discourses. The authors call for further research and discussions on the construction of borders in sociolinguistics. [Extracted from the article]

The papers in this collection use the tools of sociolinguistics to examine how social actors navigate contemporary crises of the neoliberal nation-state. But the nation and the welfare state are linked precisely in the construction of differential citizenship; who deserves to be included in the welfare state? What that does is to place Europe, notably, in the unchanged position of being able to enjoy the resources accumulated in Europe as a result of colonialism, with no radical redistribution globally, and with internal social harmony assured via internal redistribution. [Extracted from the article]

This introduction presents the concept of raciolinguistic ideologies and discusses its potential to look at issues related to labor in the Americas. We explore the concept of raciolinguistics as a helpful anchor for researchers to examine the co-construction of race and language. Additionally, we link the current reproduction of social and economic inequality to the interconnection of slavery and capitalism stemming from the colonial projects. We briefly present the six contributions to this special issue, a collection of works that rely on different theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and analytical approaches to examine the (re)production of inequality in American labor markets as it materializes in unfair working practices and discourses that naturalize labor discrimination across the region. The six papers included in the issue offer an interesting dialogue between the raciolinguistic perspective and political economy approaches. Finally, these papers highlight four overarching themes: the repercussions for vulnerabilized communities of the stratification of the labor market, the ways in which the commodification and decommodification of racialized languages tend to favor powerful social positions, the way in which language authority operates to decide what counts as legitimate languages/speakers; and the need felt by speakers to make discursive sense of raciolinguistic practices and discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document introduces a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language that focuses on language ideology in Japan. The authors explore how contact and space influence language ideologies and metapragmatic meanings, as well as the impact of language contact situations on identity formation. The document emphasizes the need for a broader investigation of language ideologies in Japan, particularly in relation to power dynamics. It also discusses the importance of studying the materiality and commodification of language, and highlights the multidimensional nature of language ideologies and their intersection with power dynamics. The authors hope that their contributions will expand the understanding of ideology and contribute to the development of language and power studies. [Extracted from the article]

This short paper discusses language and globalization in the context of COVID-19. The pandemic has important impacts on people across the globe, and in particular the absence of face-to-face interaction results in new forms of communication and may lead to new ways of language change. This paper revisits sociolinguistics and globalization, and discusses challenges brought about by COVID-19 and its containment measures. The pandemic generates particularly discourses, especially from those who are affected the most. This paper includes a vignette of such discourses to show that mobility and inequality remain key issues in the current stage of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section introduces a series of research on language and political economy. These selected papers on a common topic of language in power, from the spring 1989 seminar of the University of Washington's program in the Comparative Study of Ethnicity and Nationality (CSEN). take a distinct approach to the study of language and political economy. The papers complement recent interest in the interaction of language use and political behavior. in particular, these papers complement Norman Fairclough's Language in Power and its emphasis on the social effects of language in such areas as advertising, police interrogations, doctor-patient interaction, and political rhetoric. The papers here also complement Language and Politics, a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, in which Chomsky discusses the inherent power in language as exercised, for example, in propaganda. Fairclough's book focuses on the way language affects what people do, While Otero's Chomsky interviews stress the relationship between linguistic and political analysis--both seen as ways to understand human nature and cognition. The present work is a survey of macro-level social science concerns with languages as they play a role in the way power is exercised within a political-economic entity.

This introductory article describes the theme of the papers featured in the volume 93, 1992 issue of the "International Journal of Sociology of Language." The papers are devoted to description of the processes of obsolescence and death in Native American language communities as opposed to some form of salvage description of the languages themselves. The author of this article notes that each of the papers is a fine example of the description of some aspect of language obsolescence, and some may well become classics in their own right.

This article investigates both universal and relative aspects of sociolinguistic academic writing and reading. It engages with Wolfgang Klein's (1989. Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 74. 116–119) article. Klein starts from an implicit assumption that writing and reading are individual activities and suggests that (individual) writers must decrease their production to enable their (individual) readers to read it. I argue that the contemporary world transformed reading and writing from individual to institutional activities. This means that the importance and feasibility of contemporary academic research are not linked to the individualistic reading but rather to the institutional reading that transforms its results into policies, procedures, applications, and laws. Despite worldwide shared academic writing, reading, and publishing practices, the politics of writing and reading vary over time, disciplines and cultures. I argue that Arab knowledge production on sociolinguistics is highly affected by sociopolitical peculiarities, such as academic freedom restrictions, lack of resources and loose academic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a series of articles about the relationship between language and ethnicity in post-apartheid South Africa. As a result of apartheid and its legacy, South African society has been divided rigidly along ethnic lines, with language and ethnicity being the main pillars of the apartheid divide-and-rule ideology. Ernst Kotzé's paper examines apartheid-based sociocultural and linguistic corollaries of ethnicity in South African society, corollaries whose impact is evident in the construction of ethnolinguistic identities in post-apartheid South Africa. The paper by Vic Webb and Mariana Kriel examines the interrelationship between Afrikaans and Afrikaner nationalism from the perspective of the theories of linguistic nationalism, theories according to which ethnicity and language are central, decisive or even the only criteria of potential nationhood. In a related paper, Barbara Bosch discusses ethnicity markers in Afrikaans, with a focus on how the various ethnic characteristics of Afrikaans-speaking individuals and groups are reflected or marked by and in their use of the Afrikaans language. Elizabeth de Kadt in her paper addresses language maintenance and ethnicity in a German-speaking rural community in Wartburg.

Eastern European migration to Portugal is a relatively recent yet significant phenomenon due to its impact on national legislation and discourses about language, citizenship and identity. Along with other migration movements to Portugal, it has also brought about changes in state policies. The monolingual order within the Portuguese education system has been reinforced through the adoption of the notion of 'Portuguese as a non-native language' and the creation of different categories of speakers of 'other' languages. While these discourses predominate within the national educational system, other discursive spaces (such as complementary schools and playgroups) are being constructed, on the margins of Portuguese society, where other languages and literacies are being learned and used, alongside Portuguese. This paper presents some insights from longitudinal ethnographic research (2004–2013) that was carried out in a complementary school for Russian-speaking children in Portugal run by their parents and grandparents. It looks into the complex ways in which literacy ideologies and practices were reproduced, contested and negotiated in this particular discursive space. It also shows how students drew on the language, literacy and semiotic resources within their communicative repertoires in different ways as they responded agentively to tasks set by the teacher. The paper concludes with reflections on the potential of the complementary school as a "safe space" for fostering flexible multilingual pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article discusses the theme of the papers featured in the volume 85, 1990 issue of the "International Journal of Sociology of Language." It is noted that Caribbean languages have been the subject of considerable study during the last three decades, the focus being creoles which draw the bulk of their lexicons from one or another European language. The present selection of papers maintains the said focus while extending the interest to retentions from languages of Africa and India brought to the region by slaves and indentured laborers and yielding to the pressures of creole and standard language alike in the territories represented.

Language vitality and endangerment theorizing and research have been focused mainly on whole languages, relegating their individual dialects to the background, on the one hand; and on using single scales in assessing vitality and endangerment, on the other. In this paper, however, we advocate a paradigm shift for more, better successes in this undertaking. Therefore, we aim to examine the degree(s) of vitality and endangerment of Gombe dialect of Fulfulde using multiple evaluative scales, both western and non-western. Prior to placing the dialect on these scales, we collected data from Fulfulde speakers of varied age ranges, all Gombe radio stations and listeners of their Fulfulde programs, using 'insider' participant observations, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a proficiency test component (after which both the respondents and the researchers agreed on the proficiency levels of the former) and online surveys. Analysis of the data reveals that the vitality of this code is better viewed relatively rather than absolutely. Its subsequent placement on the evaluative scales only helps to corroborate this. Finally, while our analysis shows that dialects are just as place-able on these evaluative scales as whole languages are (notwithstanding the hitches characterizing the scales), we argue that, with sustained collective efforts, a dialect-focused evaluative framework is likely to be born in the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This process helped us to frame what we wanted to do with IJSL and what IJSL could become. The advantage of our point of departure, we hope, is that IJSL is an old journal. Framing IJSL around inequalities and emancipation means also that we get back to our own practices as a journal. Many of these orientations and practices might only become possible in many years since a journal like IJSL does its planning far in advance. [Extracted from the article]

This introductory paper serves two main purposes. The first is to review the epistomological and methodological underpinnings of economic approaches to language issues, and to propose a definition of the economics of language as a field of research in its own right. The second purpose of this paper is to introduce the contributions gathered in this issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language -- the first instance ever, to my knowledge, of a scientific journal devoting an entire issue to the work of economists on language matters. Language and economic variables influence one another in a number of ways, a fact which inspires much of the existing research. However, the core paradigm of economics, which focuses on resource allocation, can be applied to the study of a broad range of language problems, even if economic variables play no part in them. This generates a definition of the economics of language emphasizing the use of economic concepts and tools in the study of relationships featuring linguistic variables. The paper advocates the use of such concepts and tools, while also stressing two important points. First, researchers need to exercise caution when applying the principles of economic modeling to language issues -- while such circumspection should be advocated in all forms of social research, it is crucial when studying language. Second, the endeavor must necessarily be an interdisciplinary one, precisely because of the exceedingly complex nature of language, both as a strictly linguistic and as a social phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The section explores issues and topics featured in the May 1987 issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. The purpose in planning the special issues was to explore the multifarious nature of the relationship between language and humor. Section One is devoted to general theories of humor. Victor Raskin and W.J. Pepicello present semantic and pragmatic theories and underscore the widening scope of the discipline of linguistics. Section Two focuses on humor based on the significance of similarities and differences in languages and the attitudes generated by them and includes papers by Christie Davies and Ronald K.S. Macaulay. Section Three is concerned with humor based on language use in specific sociological contexts. Section 4 consists of Dell Hymes's application of a specific humor theory to folklore texts. His analysis of two Chinookan narratives from which a pattern of verbal irony is extrapolated is based on a new theoretical perspective presented by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. The theme of ambiguity or ambivalence and its resolution has figured prominently in theories of humor. Ambiguity or ambivalence in humor development occurs when a word, utterance, act, role, identity can be considered as belonging to two or more frames of reference. Humor cognition often depends on the resolution of such a state of affairs. The papers in the periodical demonstrate the importance of ambiguity or ambivalence in humor development. Furthermore, the papers also demonstrate that in humor research, disciplinary boundaries are difficult to maintain, since perspectives over and above linguistic ones are necessary for analytical and theoretical developments in the area of language and humor.

This section comments on the article, Levels of Analysis in Sociolinguistic Explanation: Bilingual Code Switching, Social Relations, and Domain Therapy, by L. B. Breitborde. The explicit aim of the paper is to reexamine the connections between code switching and situation. More specifically, the author addresses himself to the problem of how an abstract social system may be related to the individual's action. He does this by examining studies of Jan-Petter Blom and John J. Gumperz, and Joshua A. Fishman. Almost half of the paper is devoted to a summary and critical discussion of the Blom and Gumperz paper, while the rest is divided between an account of Fishman's paper and Breitborde's own work. After his initial summary of Blom and Gumperz's paper, Breitborde addresses himself to the concept of network, which he sees as being of crucial importance in Gumperz's work generally, as indeed it is. The main interest of those network studies to which Breitborde's paper refers is that they are mainly structural. With a view to explaining social behavior, they concentrate not on the social or personal attributes of the individuals in a social network, but rather on the character of the linkages which bind them to each other.

Keywords: interpreting; mediatization; sociolinguistics; upset; uptake EN interpreting mediatization sociolinguistics upset uptake 21 41 21 05/12/22 20220501 NES 220501 1 Introduction This paper discusses some of the communicative processes which happened at specific moments during the transition of Danish legal interpreting to the private company EasyTranslate in 2019. Consequently, EasyTranslate was hundreds of interpreters short and had to hire outside of the established interpreter community to live up to a contract which required a delivery rate of 98% of the needed interpreters and translators. For the trial, still short of a Georgian-Danish interpreter, EasyTranslate flew in a Georgian-Norwegian interpreter who spoke Russian and a Danish-Russian interpreter was assigned. [Extracted from the article]

This paper engages with the notion of the shibboleth, an indexically loaded, usually referentially indifferent set of (ideologically constructed) minimal pairs that is used in order to mark and perform social differentiation. We argue that the shibboleth is to be considered an interpretive (metapragmatic) phenomenon that operates on different sociolinguistic scales, notably the discursive scale (ideologies of communication), the performative scale (performance and metapragmatic stance-taking), and the subjective scale (lived experience). We propose a scalar metapragmatic theory of the shibboleth as an "indexical border" that takes into account how shibboleths emerge (are enregistered) and how they depend on contextualisation (or the indexical field). As a case in point, we present analyses of biographical construals of sociolinguistic displacement in the context of remigration from German-speaking countries to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Specifically, we focus on construals of displacement that are connected with (mis-)performances of phonologically rather subtle but indexically highly salient Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian affricate shibboleths (<č/dž> and <ć/đ>). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a general presentation of the economics of language as it has evolved since the publication of the earliest articles in this field in the mid-1960s. To this end, it begins by extensively reviewing the main trends and results found in the literature, which is arranged, for the purposes of this paper, in nine categories. Although much of the existing research is empirical and documents the relationship between linguistic attributes and socioeconomic status (usually in Canada or in the United States), an increasingly wide range of topics is being studied. These include language maintenance and shift, the relationship between linguistic patterns and economic activity, and the selection and design of language policies. The paper then moves on to an assessment of the particular challenges facing researchers in the economics of language. On the one hand, it is important to guard against tempting but misleading analogies, of which some examples are discussed; on the other hand, the economics of language is well equipped to shed light on some causal links between linguistic and economic variables and to select, design, implement, and evaluate language policies. I try to show that language planning raises questions that are analytically similar to many of those encountered in other types of pub/k policy and must therefore be amenable to policy analysis; this requires the development of appropriate concepts and tools, many of which can be supplied by an economic approach. The priorities for further research are examined and shown to fall into two main categories. The first consists of the development of a wide range of sectoral models addressing specific issues, such as, for example, the cost structure of the production of language-specific goods and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section introduces a series of articles on ethnolinguistic vitality (EV). The first paper, by Rodrigue Landry and Réal Allard, compares the EV construct with another influential concept in the sociology of language, diglossia. After using both constructs in the analysis of the language behavior of anglophone and francophone students from seven Canadian provinces, it is concluded that both theoretical constructs have heuristic value for the understanding and prediction of language behavior. In the second paper, Herbert D. Pierson reviews the EV studies that have been made in the British colony of Hong Kong. The cultural complexity and the political uncertainty that impinge upon the residents of this territory has provided a rich context for EV studies. A third paper by Jehannes Ytsma, Maria Angles Viladot and Howard Giles presents a comparative EV study done in two different countries. This cross-national study contrasts objective and perceived vitality in Catalonia, Spain and Friesland, The Netherlands with special emphasis on the relationship between ethnic identity and EV. Roberta Kraemer, Elite Olshtain and Saleh Badier have also used Subjective Vitality Questionnaire to analyze the vitality perceptions of an Israeli Arab sample. Perceptions of both the Arab and the Israeli vitality are contrasted.

This section provides an overview of papers about language and work. This collection covers four separate areas. These are language for work, language about work, language as work, and language in reaction to work. Language for work is the language which workers use when they are performing their work. Five papers in this collection are concerned with language for work. Philips discusses the ways in which judges and lawyers describe crimes in two different contexts. Coleman analyzes how members of two ethnic groups working together perceive the way they communicate with each other at work. Bonamy and Waters illustrate the communicative strategies employed by native speakers of English and Indonesian with minimal knowledge of each other's language when they are trying to discuss a work problem. In the fourth discussion of language for work, Torbe looks at the ways in which young people in Britain must use language to do jobs in the engineering industry and in clerical and retail work. Finally, van Naerssen describes one variety of the language of the hospital doctors which does not involve communication with the patient, that is, the creation of medical records. Records are not used by the patient but by professional colleagues.

This section presents a list of books and journals related to sociolinguistics.

By focusing predominantly on discourse production and language management, language policy research de-emphasizes the material sources of inequality. The paper argues that language management, often restricted by ritualistic and symbolic gestures, cannot rectify historically formed relations of power and calls for critical examination of both sociolinguistic and socio-economic consequences of language reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of the Sociology of Language is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the fluctuating value of Arabic when constructed as a linguistic resource for multilingual, "languaged" workers in a counselling centre for refugees in Austria and in an international humanitarian agency operating in ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Drawing on a variety of ethnographic data (observations, interviews and documents), our analyses of the institutionalised division of labour and of workers' narrative positioning show how workers in both organisations discursively construct this linguistic resource as being of ambivalent value in their positioning vis-à-vis their colleagues, for their careers and in work interactions. Stratifying and empowerment effects are interwoven in the varying and coexisting values of Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language contraction leading to language death is reported to have associated with it increased variation at different linguistic levels', including phonetics and phonology. This variation has been attributed not to influence from the ascendant language, but rather to lack of performance and a relaxation of sociolinguistic norms. This paper examines a contracting language, Cambap, now spoken by fewer than 35 people, to assess the claims concerning increased variation. The speech characteristics of seven native speakers of Cambap are examined. It is found that variation in phonetics and phonology not attributable to the influence of the dominant language does indeed exist, but lack of performance is rejected as a possible cause. Evidence .for a more general view of the notion of "relaxed sociolinguistic norms" is presented, suggesting that the increased variation frequently observed in such cases is not a phenomenon intrinsic to the process of language contraction and death but rather may be characteristic of small and relatively isolated language communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to describe the development of a sense of group identity among the people of Taiwan in recent years. This emergent identity is generally referred to as the "New Taiwanese People." An in-depth analysis of this new sociolinguistic development shows that this emergent group identity is the result of the interaction among a number of highly complicated historical, political, and sociolinguistic factors. The focus of the paper is on the changing conception of group identity, particularly within the last decade, and the interaction between this emergent new identity and language. Besides the introduction, two major sections are included, with the first providing information on the historical background and the second dealing with the interaction between language and this new group identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a brief introduction focusing on the linguistic situation in the previously multilingual northern part of Norway in general, the present paper takes as its point of departure the sociolinguistical situation in one particular Village in the coastal region inhabited by so-called "Sea Samis." The linguistic development of the village since the turn of the century is described as a case of language shift, in which the language of the dominating group, Norwegian, has gradually been taken over by the dominated group. The last part of the paper attempts to explain the development described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents overviews of several research on Hungarian language. Although Hungarian speech had been studied with tape recorders before the 1980s, it is probably fair to say that the investigation of tape-recorded Hungarian is still in a very early phase. A number of basic methodological issues, such as the transcription of pauses and intonation in continuous narratives or dialogs, were first addressed seriously as late as 1988 in a volume containing a meticulous prosodic transcription of a 20-minute cable television program and several studies of that transcript. Research into spoken Hungarian also appears in the study of the speech of bilingual Hungarians. Foremost among these is the study of Hungarian-to-German language shift in Oberwart/Felsöör, Austria. In 1987, two sister projects were launched at the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: a pen-and-paper national survey, called the Hungarian National Sociolinguistic Survey (HNSS), and a tape-recorded Budapest survey, called the Survey of Spoken Hungarian. The HNSS aims to study the social distribution of certain linguistic variables, and the interaction of sociocultural stratification and styles of communication. The Survey of Spoken Hungarian aims to investigate the social and stylistic stratification of the Hungarian spoken in the capital city of Budapest.

This section introduces the articles featured in the 1995 issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. The issue is devoted to sociolinguistics in Hungary. Most of the contributors are linguists and sociologists in the middle of their career. The study of relationships between language and society has a relatively long past in the Hungarian social science community. Traditional dialectologists and historical linguists have always had to have social considerations in mind when, for example, they had to account for some aspects of language change in terms of contact linguistics or when they had to motivate some of their attempts to intervene in the acceptance of certain forms. The papers by Kassai, Kontra, Pléh, and Terestyéni grew out of the project called the Hungarian National Sociolinguistic Survey (HNSS). The project is tightly bound to a sociological project run by Angelusz and Tardos to investigate the interaction of communicative patterns and knowledge styles. While it is much more sociological than sociolinguistic, the inclusion of Angelusz and Tardo's paper in the collection is justified by the fact that the HNSS relies crucially on their empirical findings. The volume also demonstrates some shortcomings of present-day Hungarian sociolinguistics.

This article comments on John Edwards' paper on recent developments in Canada, in particular Quebec. The paper by Edwards is an ambitious effort towards the formulation of an account of recent developments in Canada, in particular Quebec. The paper proves the importance of providing such detailed accounts. Edwards places this account in the context of his own views, held for quite sometime on the relationship between language and identity. In this light, criticizing his paper becomes interesting for more than one reason. Today, language, identity and nationalism are no longer part of this or that revivalist movement. These issues have become major aspects of global politics. Edwards claims that the Canadian scene is not well known:This may be so. However, the infrastructure that does provide information about English, French and other languages in Canada is superior to that provided by most language communities around the world. Several governmental bodies are ready to provide information and many academic studies are published. Canada is one of the best documented language situations. An outsider can easily get on overview of what is going on. This is not to say that Edwards' account is superfluous; on the contrary it is an invaluable contribution.

Indian citizens who seek a wide range of mobility opportunities within India are expected to have facility in 3±1 languages. The purpose of this paper if to address the above-mentioned language outcome, and to do so in such a way that the answer is consistent with the findings of the companion paper that India does not have a unique official language, and suitable as well for a broad comparative framework for the study of migration and language shift. This paper has rejected approaches toward language choice among Indian migrants based on such variables as loyalty to mother tongue, or tolerance of diversity. It has assumed that migrants make investments in language learning, and that they are strategic in doing so. Migrants to India's large cities have maintained the languages of their ancestral homes, even after generations. Retention of mother tongue seems therefore to be stronger among Indian migrants than among other migrants moving into new linguistic zones. Although a number of variable to explain this outcome have been identified, the key variable that appears to explain this difference, discerned from an examination of surveys conducted by researchers at the Central Institute of Indian Languages and predicted by a general model of language choice, concerns uncertainty that Indian migrants have about the linguistic needs of their children.

Presents an introduction to the Volume 94, 1992 issue of the "International Journal of the Sociology of Language."

In this paper, the author investigates the "Rezas" and "Benzeções," healing practices associated with popular culture in Brazil. The practices are seen as illegitimate mystical cults from the vantage point of orthodox Catholicism and of the medical establishment. The aim of the paper is to examine the communicative functions of the benzedeiras' directives and the ethnographic context of the "Rezas" and "Benzeções." The author also investigates the symbols and the meaning of kinesics in the ritualized encounter. The author argues that kinesics not only can inform about a particular belief system, but also prove to be an invaluable source of data on the social nature of discourse.

This article discusses the topics contained in the book "Language Death in East Africa: A Report on an International Symposium" by Matthias Brenzinger. An article analyzes language situations in Tanzania from a sociolinguistic perspective. An author presents a general discussion of the linguistic situation of his country Tanzania and points out that one has to distinguish the potential replacing languages according to which of them possess merely local prestige, which holds regional or even international prestige. It follows another author's discussion on the disintegration of ethnic notions based on language. Another paper is also presented that attempts to trace the origin of linguistic strata in two Swahili dialects in Kenya.

The discussion in this paper confirms that the linguistic stereotypes on which identification of particular Dominicans by themselves and others depends are not altogether valid, and that this is revealed upon observation of actual usage. In addition, the paper has introduced what must be considered an important aspect of the linguistic situation in Dominica. It has also drawn attention to Cockoy, a locally recognized linguistic variety which has not so far been systematically described.

This article introduces the topics featured in the September 1989 issue of "International Journal of the Sociology of Language." This issue focuses on the rich linguistic heritage of Latinos in the U.S. The Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. presents a complex sociolinguistic situation which should be the object of further study. It is precisely the growth and diffusion of the Spanish-speaking population throughout the U.S., coupled with increased use of Spanish in bilingual education programs, voting services, and the courts, that has caused the criticisms raised by supporters of the English-only movement in the last decade.

We have in this paper introduced SAT and indicated by recourse to the papers appearing in this issue avenues for further elaboration and interdisciplinary collaboration. We have also shown how further developments from SAT in terms of ELIT and IT may enhance our understanding of language-ethnicity relationships and SLA respectively. Once again, with regard to the intergroup theory of SLA, we have not been blind to many of its limitations but rather have attempted to extend it in order to take account of four important linguistic considerations. Obviously, much needs to be done in all these areas empirically, methodologically, and theoretically, but we hope that research of the type advocated herein will lead us closer to a coherent interdisciplinary theory not only of speech-accommodation-related issues but of other crucial sociolinguistic problems too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section comments on the article, Levels of Analysis in Sociolinguistic Explanation: Bilingual Code Switching, Social Relations, and Domain Therapy, by L. B. Breitborde. The paper is a scholarly and stimulating contribution to the sociology of language. At the same time, it does not quite achieve its ambitious aim. It was a pleasure to read, and it is at the same time by no means difficult to disagree with one or two fairly substantial points made by Breitborde. The paper is stimulating inasmuch as it raises a central issue in the sociology of language. It shows that a seemingly limited sociolinguistic problem cannot be properly understood, much less solved, without reference to a social theory of language and, indeed, to general social theory. It is unlikely that anyone would be inclined to disagree with this proposition in general principle. The difficulty lies in the application of the principle to concrete issues. Breitborde's paper has the great merit that it does not merely express laudable sentiments but proceeds to apply the principle to the discussion of bilingualism. Evidently there can be no sensible objection to Breitborde's assumption that bilingual code switching is a communicative act.

This article provides information on issues concerning sociolinguistics.

Home to a little over 120 million people, North Africa or the Great Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania) is a linguistically and ethnically diverse region where Arabic heteroglossia, former colonial languages, and indigenous languages have coexisted since the 19th century, but language contact and multilingualism in the area is centuries old. In sum, the abovementioned studies on prestigious Arabic vernaculars made clear that there exist vernacular norms functioning as new urban standards at the national and regional levels (e.g. Middle Eastern vernaculars are taken as the norm in the pan-Arabic speaking world for their perceived closeness to Standard Arabic; see [60] on the "Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology"). Benmamoun (2001: 100) In Mauritania, according to [95], the French colonial authorities sought to ideologically construct the local Arabic vernacular, I assaniyya i , as being closer linguistically to the local Berber language (Sanhaja) than to Standard Arabic "in order to cut it from standard Arabic and to cut the Bidhan community from the rest of the Arab world", while local sub-Saharan languages -Pulaar and Soninke- were considered primitive languages because they were not written (see [104]). What these recent changes show is that domains which were dominated by French, Standard Arabic, or Middle Eastern Arabic varieties are increasingly overtaken by North African vernaculars (e.g., in the case of the widely popular Turkish soap operas that were initially dubbed in Syrian Arabic and broadcast throughout the Arabic-speaking world via satellite TV). [Extracted from the article]

In this article, we reflect upon Wolfgang Klein's provocative suggestion, in Writing or reading, but not both or: a proposal to reintroduce cuneiform writing using the hammer and chisel, that "every scientist" at universities or other research institutions "may and must publish exactly thirty pages a year." In our view, Klein's proposal to limit the number of pages each author should be allotted in a given year is comparable to a pill that treats the symptom but not the disease. Instead, we draw upon the ideas of American political theorist Nancy Fraser to argue for the need for a more radical transformation of the structures upon which the academic enterprise rests. Such a transformation would require (1) overhauling the underlying political-economic structure of academic labour relations, and (2) reconsidering what counts as a legitimate form of knowledge production. In saying so, we are also inspired by current theoretical debates about radical humanism and southern/decolonial perspectives to the sociology of language. Ultimately, we advocate for the need to disinvest from (1) individualism as a key principle of the academic project, at least in the humanities and the social sciences; and (2) the written word as the only medium for the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Such a proposal is underpinned by an emphasis on orality, the usage of other forms of representation, and the need for recognizing alternative ways of producing and disseminating (Indigenous) ways of being, knowing, and feeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Em nossa celebração dos 50 anos do International Journal of the Sociology of Language, sugerimos alguns caminhos alternativos à política de incomunicabilidade na comunicação científica denunciada, em 1989, por Wolfgang Klein. De modo bem humorado, Klein endereçou cientistas de língua alemã, apontando que políticas científicas e tecnologias produziam uma "aceleração unilateral da produção". Isto é, ao passo que o regime de trabalho à época privilegiava a escrita, deixava pouco espaço para a leitura. Em nosso texto, apontamos para desigualdades que Klein não abordou, mas que intensificam esse cenário. Nossa perspectiva do sul global é um modo de questionar a hegemonia do inglês e o acesso pago à produção acadêmica. In our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, we suggest some alternative paths to the policy of incommunicability in scientific communication denounced in 1989 by Wolfgang Klein. In a humorous way, Klein addressed German-speaking scientists, pointing out that scientific policies and technologies produced a "unilateral acceleration of production". In other words, while the work regime at the time favored writing, it left little room for reading. In our text, we point to inequalities that Klein did not address, but which intensify this scenario. Our perspective from the global south is a way of questioning the hegemony of English and paid access in academic production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Klein's observation of almost 35 years ago of the disturbed balance between production and reception of academic knowledge as a starting point, we reflect on some of the tensions related to current reading practices in academic publishing. Specifically, we discuss two tensions that we encounter and try to resolve in our role as editors: 1) the tension between standardization and creativity, and 2) the tension between monologue and dialogue. Throughout, we also discuss a third more general tension, namely the gap between academic values of knowledge production embedded in the collegial work for scientific publications, and the profit driven publishing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper (Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain, Dialect use and discursive identities of migrants from the west in eastern Germany, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), we posited that attitudes toward language are not merely static thoughts in people's minds, but are constantly constructed in interaction. Following on this work, in this paper we investigate the ways in which German-speaking migrants and their descendants in urban Canada use language attitudes in interaction to construct a specifically German space within Canada. Our focus is on their attitudes toward each of the various languages and language varieties present in the participants' linguascape: German dialects, standard German and English, and code-mixing, and in our analysis, we observe the ways that these migrants negotiate who has authority over these forms, as well as how attitudes can shift when speakers' connection to their country of origin is interrupted through migration. Though the direct focus of the research questions we address in this paper is on what it means to be German in urban Canada, we also address broader issues of how urban minority groups construct and maintain minority identities after migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the termination of indigenous language classes at a small public elementary school in the United States, from the perspective of both nonindigenous school teachers whose classrooms were used to conduct the classes and the parents whose children participated in the classes. Interviews with both groups reveal general support for language teaching, but opposing views about the inclusion of such classes in the public school setting. I argue that their differing perspectives do not reflect negative attitudes on the part of the teachers about the language itself, but rather that teachers experience both national and local factors that do not favor indigenous language teaching. These factors include differences in expectations about student behavior and language class results, as well as federal and statewide pressure to produce improvement in student performance in English reading and math. This research demonstrates that general support for indigenous language teaching is not sufficient for the successful incorporation of classes into schools. A number of issues pertaining to national and local educational goals must also be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]