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The article presents a study which investigated the role played by mediated intergroup contact in enhancing intergroup attitudes between German speakers and Italian ones in South Tyrol, Italy. The study examined the way German-language television (TV) consumption affected attitudes among Italian-speaking youth towards the German speakers. Results revealed that TV use's effect on attitudes was higher in those with personal intergroup contact.

Ageist humor is an everyday way that negative social attitudes (i.e., ageism) are circulated. Advances in the study of disparagement humor (prejudiced norm theory, the justification-suppression model) were utilized to examine responses to ageist humor in two studies. Study 1, comparing ageist and sexist comments, found no differences in perceived funniness between statements and jokes, though jokes were seen as less offensive and more confrontation-worthy. Participants believed they would be more offended by the statements than others. To the extent they found statements funny, participants believed the messages conveyed less offense to self and others, and that the statements were not worthy of confrontation, but thought others would believe they were. Older individuals found statements less funny and believed others would have negative reactions. Study 2 found no differences in funniness ratings for jokes targeting older and younger age groups. Two responses to the joke-teller emerged: challenge (including direct and indirect responses) and support (laughing or verbally expressing joke funniness). Funniness and joke-teller identification positively predicted both challenge and support, while experiencing negative emotion predicted more challenge and less support. Once again, age was associated with less funniness, as well as less identification, support, and challenge, but more negative emotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the origin of vitality theory, citing its historical patterns and discoursal dimensions. The notion of vitality was introduced into the ethnolinguistic arena in the late 1970s. Fifteen years on, a growing body of research as adopted differing features of the group vitality framework to address a broad range of issues related to language, ethnicity, bilingualism, and intergroup communication. The first part of the article provides a brief overview of the origin and development of the group vitality concept and its measurement. The second part presents a first attempt at a transactive model not only useful as a conceptual framework for synthesizing extant research but also as a heuristic for guiding future directions. This approach extends traditional work by focusing in part upon the nature of discourse concerning vitality issues in everyday life. It is proposed that discoursal analyses of vitality beliefs as manifest during interpersonal conversations and within the mass media can constitute a useful complement to current quantitative research. During the unfolding of this framework, a series of research propositions will be presented as an agenda for future work.

This paper examines the use of English in Greek fashion magazines. It assesses the frequency of the use of English in these media, uncovers its discourse forms and functions, and illustrates why English is being used in the first place. As it is shown, English mainly takes the form of naming and headings and what characterizes its use is creativity and innovation. Through language play, intertextual references, clips, deliberate spelling mistakes, and alternations of the intended meaning of idiomatic phrases, English has a variety of functions such as creating emphasis and attracting the reader's attention. Like other settings where English bears a non-official status, the use of English features capitalizes on the symbolic and indexical value of this language. English is used because it symbolizes progression, innovation, and success and because it indexes knowledge of and association with globalized fashion and beauty discourses and styles circulating worldwide in fashion magazines, on social networking sites, and platforms. The findings of this study can be used to examine the extent of the homogenization of the fashion discourse worldwide while similar studies can be conducted with different types of media to compare the way that English is used in a variety of contexts in Greece and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article analyses how caregivers use affective touch as a resource to facilitate interaction. Through touch, caregivers construct positive socio-emotional relationships with their residents. The analysis of micro-level interaction is based on an interactional sociolinguistic framework, and reveals how caregivers display affection and intimacy while assisting the residents in everyday situations in a care home. All of the examples involve touching a person's shoulder, stroking or giving half-embraces, typical resources used to construct affiliation between caregivers and residents. This article illustrates how affective touch facilitates interaction by regulating participation and calming down residents, by mitigating the controlling aspect of caring, and by fostering a positive interpersonal relationship. The care situations presented in this article contain crucial pauses within talk that are used to construct a peaceful atmosphere. During these crucial moments, embodied action effectively indicates an orientation to listening and establishes a presence to accomplish the actions in that situational talk. This analysis contributes to the studies on embodied interaction and on interpersonal relationships in care for older adults. I would like to thank Camilla Lindholm, an anonymous reviewer as well as Maria Frick and Hanna Lappalainen for valuable comments on the earlier versions of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how language laws favouring French improved the vitality of the Francophone majority relative to the declining Anglophone minority of Quebec. Part one provides a review of Canadian Government efforts to provide federal bilingual services to Francophones and Anglophones across Canada. Using the ethnolinguistic vitality framework, part two reviews key language policies adopted in Quebec designed to increase the status of French relative to English in the province, while part 3 assesses the impact of such laws on the demographic vitality of Francophones and Anglophones. Part 4 analyse how such laws succeeded in reducing the institutional vitality of the Anglophone minority especially their English schools. Pro-French laws did succeed in having 95% of the Quebec population maintain knowledge of French, keeping 82% of all its citizens as users of French at home, ensured that 90% of Francophone employees used French at work, increased to 70% French/English bilingualism amongst Anglophones and reduced the size of their English school system by 60 %. Nationalist discourse highlights threats to French, given that Quebec Francophones remain a linguistic minority in North America. Can Francophones accept a 'paradigm shift' by reframing their position from a fragile majority to that of a dominant majority in Quebec? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the ethnic self-perception of Greeks from Russia and Georgia (alternatively known as Pontic Greeks) is examined in the socio-political context of Cyprus. I analyze the concept of mother tongue and the potential (symbolic) role it plays within the multilingual community of Pontic Greeks in Cyprus. The study demonstrates that the majority of Pontic Greeks both from Russia and Georgia ethnically self-identify as 'Greeks' while speaking different languages. Language plays a vital role in ethnic self-identification of some Pontic Greeks while for others the link between language and ethnicity appears to be insignificant. Interestingly, the 'Greekness' of some Pontic Greeks is questioned by the local population, which appears to be sensitive to the language-ethnicity link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnolinguistic vitality has emerged as an important empirical framework to examine the linguistic identity of ethnic groups, especially small migrant ones. The likely survival of an ethnic group as a distinct linguistic entity is based on factors like demographic patterns, its status in inter-group setting and institutional support the group receives. Besides language use patterns of a group also contributes towards its vitality. The present article reports the findings of a survey undertaken to examine the ethnolinguistic vitality of a small immigrant ethnic group in the valley of Kashmir. During the study, it was observed that in intergroup setting where a large and prestigious group dominates a small group in almost every public domain, language use patterns of the latter can be a significant factor in contributing towards its vitality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex notion of the public/private distinction of social spheres has not been systematically investigated in sociolinguistics; particularly in the case of bidialectal kindergarten age children and how they construct their social lives around this distinction in a public environment such as that of school. No simple continuum can clearly illustrate the distinction between public and private since the dividing line between the two is discursively renegotiated and recreated. Hence, the distinction between the two is normally characterised by fluidity rather than stability. This is the case in educational settings where it is firmly institutionalised. In this study, the public/private distinction is analysed as a communicative phenomenon in kindergarten children's linguistic practices in two varieties. The data illustrate that young children separate their social spheres into 'public' and 'private' by skilfully employing linguistic variation. That said, the distinction children make between the two spheres is not always predictable, not only due to the instability in the boundaries that separate one sphere from the other but also due to differences in speakers' linguistic ideologies regarding the use of specific varieties in certain communicative practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that ethnolinguistic vitality depends on four crucial social psychological factors: perceived strength differential, intergroup distance, utilitarianism and intergroup discordance. The influence of these factors on the vitality of subordinate and dominant groups is outlined. It is proposed that the vitality of both types of groups could be measured on the same scale. The low end of this scale indicates group members' disposition to dissociate themselves from the in-group's cultural values and practices. The high end indicates a perception of cultural distinctiveness, superiority, closedness and derogation of out-groups, i.e. high level of ethnocentrism. A theoretical model is proposed explicating how the interaction of vitality profiles of the dominant and subordinate groups leads to different acculturation orientations of subordinate groups (assimilation, integration, segregation, or marginalisation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humor is a prevalent feature in many forms of interaction. Banter, teasing, irony and sarcasm frequently surface in everyday talk, and conversationalists often engage in telling funny stories if not outright joke-telling. Any complete theory of humor must include its exploitation in and effects on interaction, taking into account such matters as gender, power, solidarity, politeness and identity. Such an interactional theory of humor goes beyond a purely pragmatic description of jokes and joking. The data for an interactional analysis of humor can not be limited to joke texts in books. Humor competence must include knowing how to perform and how to receive and respond to humor and jokes, and this will encompass an account of timing for both the tellers and recipients. Research on humor in interaction has experienced a steady progression from the time that recordings and transcriptions of behavior became available in 1970s. Methods of analysis developed in Conversation Analysis, discourse analysis and interactional sociolinguistics allowed for the detailed examination of talk-in-interaction, and this enabled the description of humorous activities. Research has shown how joking can work as a strategy for enhancing intimacy, but also for controlling a conversation; an account of humor in conversation highlights the interactional achievement of puns, irony and sarcasm along with personal anecdotes and joke-telling between participants and the mutual construction of identity they accomplish in the process. Conversational joking - especially teasing and sarcasm - has a dual force: because it plays on relational identity, teasing directed at intimates can have the potential to hurt, even as it ratifies the bond between the interactants. Still, generally, humor facilitates friendly interaction and helps participants negotiate identity. Humor can be characterized as a gendered discourse resource on which both men and women regularly draw when negotiating their gender identities in interaction; Women and men deploy humor differently, just as those with more power or control in a particular interaction use humor differently than those who are one down. Researchers have noted significant differences in the characteristics of men's and women's self-targeted humor, and shown that women and men tell different kinds of stories illustrating different types of humor; The performance of a joke follows the pattern for storytelling generally; the major difference consists in the expectation of laughter at the conclusion. Jokes are told as 'understanding tests', since not everyone necessarily gets every joke, and getting jokes involves background knowledge and rational processing. This testing routinely aims to find common ground, rather than to embarrass the hearer, and both the teller and the hearer learn something about each other. Jokes allow group members to direct aggression at a third party, they can help create and enhance feelings of rapport. The conversational joke performance represents a particularly salient example of interaction between the teller and the listeners. Timing in the performance of a joke is compounded of elements depending upon both the teller and the recipient: there are standard joke prefaces, characteristic patterns of syntax and discourse organization in the areas of tempo, fluency and information flow, and customary reactions at the completion of the joke. Further, there are characteristic points where a teller and/or a listener may laugh before the punch line: both tellers and recipients of jokes sometimes laugh about problems in the telling of a joke, and listeners may laugh in response to the preface of a joke, and at various incongruities during the performance. All these features of joke-telling affect the overall timing of the performance: they guide the teller in how to construct and pace the performance, and they act as cues to the recipients of the joke, helping them respond to the performance in appropriate ways and to get the joke, so that they can laugh (or perhaps withhold laughter) at the right time. Our everyday talk thrives on all kinds of stories, especially humorous ones. In exchanging anecdotes about our personal lives, we present personal identities for ratification by the other participants in the conversation. Personal anecdotes present an amusing scene which invites listeners to laugh and offer comments of their own. A story by one of them may spawn collaborative narration, whereby two or more participants contribute to or comment on a story in progress Frequently the details, dialogue and comments tend to introduce humor to a serious story or to render an already humorous story even funnier. Humor makes any story more tellable, even a familiar story, and humorous stories have characteristic patterns of participation: in particular, co-narration is acceptable whenever it creates humor. Familiar humorous stories regularly appear, and co-narration of such stories occurs quite commonly as well. The tellability of familiar stories hinges not on their content as such, but on the dynamics of the narrative event itself, and humor makes communal retelling desirable. Personal narratives allow conversationalists to demonstrate group membership and present an identity on various levels; funny personal anecdotes add to these the introduction of entertainment and fun into the interaction and demonstration of a sense of humor as well as offering opportunities for active participation by others. One personal story often leads to another by a previous recipient, and two or more participants may co-construct a story about a shared experience: such collaborative narration serves to ratify group membership and modulate rapport in multiple ways, first because it allows participants to re-live pleasant common experiences, second because it confirms the long-term bond they share, third because the experience of collaborative narration itself redounds to feelings of belonging, and fourth because communal retelling serves to solidify shared stories and their significance for the members of the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swedish-language media landscape in Finland is exceptionally rich. It forms one of the institutions that underpin the cultural position of the Swedish-speaking Finns and the use of Swedish in Finland. This example has yet, however, been given only little attention in sociolinguistic research. Based on secondary data of mass-media audience research, this article analyzes the situation of Swedish media in Finland with regard to production and reception in relation to ethnolinguistic vitality and offers conceptual tools for linking the analysis of media consumption to sociolinguistic concepts. The nine daily newspapers, two radio stations, and Swedish-language television channel put at the service of this relatively small population provides an ideal test case for how extensive media supply interacts with linguistic vitality. The role of minority media has been rapidly and significantly changing over the past decades due to the fragmentation of media spaces and diversification of media reception. With the complexity of hybrid identities, factors such as age, gender, class, and regional and language identities are taking on increasing importance. In this new media environment, the viability and relevance of Swedish-language media will be determined by the degree to which the presence of Swedish language is a criterial attribute of the identity of the Swedish-speaking Finns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the level of maintenance of Danish in the Danish community of Melbourne and is based on 34 case studies drawn from a total of 89 interviews with people of Danish ethnic background carried out by Professor Bent Søndergaard in 1994. The informants fall roughly into four groups, the oldest consisting of people who migrated to Australia after the Second World War, and the youngest arriving in Australia in the late 1980s. The results indicate that the tendency to shift to English is more strongly pronounced among the earlier arrivals, while the more recent ones often report a strong wish to maintain Danish as the home language and transmit it to their children. However, the results also demonstrate considerable individual variation within generations, both with regard to the informants' linguistic goals and the actual outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of authors who have contributed articles on sociology, published in the January 02, 1996 issue of the periodical "International Journal of the Sociology of Language." Anvita Abbi has written the article "Language contact and language restructuring. A case study of tribal languages in central India." Hassan R. Abd-el-Jawad has contributed the article "The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban centres." Two articles, "Patterns of language acquisition and use in Kenya rural-urban differences," and "Factors in the development of modem Arabic usage," have been contributed by author Mohamed H. Abdulaziz. Frances E. Aboud and Donald M. Taylor have written "Review of: Language Attitudes: Current Trends and Prospects," which has been edited by R. W. Shuy and Ralph W. Fasold. Thomas Acton and O. Davies have contributed the article "Educational Policy and Language Use Among English Romanies and Irish Travellers (Tinkers) in England and Wales." The article "Are women innovators in the shift to a second language? A case study of Reindeer Sámi women and men," has been written by Marjut Aikio.