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The "alternative" methodological approach that I discuss in this paper is one that I suggest can be employed for exploring higher degree research student "becoming," that is, for exploring the relationship between learning, writing and identity or subject formation. This approach is informed by an unlikely amalgam of theoretical framings arising from the broad disciplinary home of sociolinguistics and postmodernist theorisings of subject formation. This apparently uncomfortable combination, however, incorporates a view of "alternative" that references Elizabeth Grosz' use of "difference" to mean elaboration, whereby something can become "more: than itself or "other" than its past while retaining a certain continuity with its past. The approach that I work with in this paper aims to provide such an elaboration--to provide a more nuanced view of what it means to become a postgraduate research writer than would be possible using either of its constitutive theoretical framings alone. (Contains 2 figures and 2 notes.)

The study of bullshit, what the author calls "taurascatics", has been making a splash of late. It was Harry Frankfurt who tossed the stone: his essay "On Bullshit" came out in "Raritan" in 1986, hit the "New York Times" best-seller list as a book in 1995, and has been adopted, adapted, and criticized across the academy since. The ripples spread from philosophy to sociology, psychology, economics, public policy, and even to college composition. Philip Eubanks and John Schaffer considered the implications of Frankfurt's text for academic prose and for the field of composition specifically, while Peter Smagorinsky and his coauthors more recently examined the student term paper subtype. The author argues that taurascatics includes a much broader field than that articulated by either Frankfurt or any of his disciplinary successors, and that it therefore should be of central concern to students of rhetoric. The study of bullshit should occupy an important place alongside rhetoric because taurascatics is the "antistrophe" of rhetorical theory, for both are concerned with the politics of semiotic interaction, and with the frameworks within which that interaction will be produced, interpreted, and judged. The author begins with a brief review of Frankfurt's text and its limitations, and then uses that review to construct a rhetorically informed taxonomy of approaches to bullshit. Finally, he returns to the question of how these two fields of study--rhetoric and bullshit--can inform each other. (Contains 11 notes.)

The paper represents a fragment of a multi-year project focused on everyday speech interaction and, particularly, on verbal mechanisms of granting speech efficiency and effectiveness. The introductory statement of the research is more precise the speaker organizes his/her message verbally, the easier it is understood by the listener. Special attention is paid to the methodological approach to verbal identification of literary characters' social strata. The paper also elicits how Gestalt analysis can be successfully applied to different practical linguistic tasks. Hence, the article deals with the advantages of Gestalt, used for unmasking the virtual speaker's social identity and his social status. Besides, a close study of speech situations has revealed some cases when the speaker tries to play a verbal trick on the audience, thus consciously or unconsciously imposing a false image and hiding his/her true identity. The phenomenon of speech imposters, discovered in literary dialogues termed "speech, or verbal mimicry," while the speakers who use such verbal masks are called "mimics." In the presented research, two types of mimicry are distinguished: progressive and regressive speech mimicry. Hence, the characters' speech was analyzed through the prism of his/her actual or imposed social status, which allowed to single out sufficiently reliable syntactic indicators of the speaker's real social profile.

The research question of the present paper is the following: to what degree (if any) is gender relevant as an explanatory factor in, firstly, the process of assimilation and later, the process of (re)vitalisation of indigenous and minority languages in northern Fenno-Scandia (the North Calotte)? The assimilation of the ethnic groups in question was a process initiated and lead by the authorities in the three different countries. Finland, Sweden and Norway. Nevertheless, members of the indigenous and minority groups also took part in practicing, though, not necessarily promoting, the official assimilation politics, for different reasons. (Re)vitalisation, on the other hand, was initially -- and still is -- mostly a process stemming from the minority groups themselves, though the authorities to a certain extent have embraced it. The paper thus addresses the question of whether gender played a role in the two different processes, assimilation and (re)vitalisation, and if that was the case, how and why.

Code-switching is especially common within the Southeast Asian region which is home to a large number of bilinguals and multilinguals. Over the years, code-switching has been studied extensively, both in and out of Asia, via sociolinguistics, structural linguistics, and psycholinguistics. From the psycholinguistic perspective, code-switching is said to be the result of the co-activation of languages during the process of speech production for bilinguals. Grosjean's Language Mode and Green's Control Process Model are two psycholinguistic frameworks focusing on the psycholinguistic as well as interactional factors behind code-switching. However, past studies in this area were mostly experimental in nature. It is necessary to consider authentic production data to develop a greater understanding of the code-switching phenomenon especially within the Southeast Asian context due to its bilingual and multilingual communities. This conceptual paper aims to demonstrate how the interactional and psycholinguistic factors behind code-switching can be examined using authentic production data. In particular, a review of the literature pointed to the Conversation Analysis (CA) approach to code-switching as well as the concepts of triggered code-switching and primed code-switching as being relevant. Accordingly, this paper describes each construct in detail and provides suggestions on how they can be brought together in a single study on code-switching based on authentic production data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: Although progress has been made since members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication passed the Students' Right to Their Own Language resolution (1974), there still remains a demand to examine youth perceptions of language. Such examinations can help teachers and researchers improve curricular choices, honor the lived experiences of students in classrooms, and address a systemic problem within a larger sociopolitical context: the continued failure of American public schooling to adequately educate Black students and other students of color. Purpose/Objective/Research Questions/Focus of Study: The primary purpose of this article is to detail how youth perceive language rights in their academic and community lives, particularly in relation to what they name "Black English" and "Academic English." To understand youth language perceptions, this article is guided by the following inquiry: Given the historically dichotomous relationship between Black English and Academic English, how do youth perceive language in their struggle to acquire academic success? Setting: Data for this ethnographic project, which derive from a larger ongoing multiyear study on youth representations of community and literacy, were collected from two African American teenage males who reside in or near New York City's Harlem community and who graduated from the Harlem High School of New York City and currently attend local colleges in the area. Research Design: The article uses a case study design to examine youth perceptions of language in their struggle to acquire academic success. Data for this study were collected from the following sources: researcher field notes, classroom observations, audio- and videotaped "rap" sessions, formal and informal interview meetings, participants' written responses to and verbal conversations on a series of 10 questions that we collaboratively designed over a 3-month period, and data member checking sessions. Conclusions/Recommendations: The findings presented in this article highlight the potential for additional research on youth perceptions of language in relation to success and survival. Given current debates in educational research on student achievement, multiple perspectives, and the intersections of students' lived experiences with pedagogical practices and teacher training, teachers and researchers should continue to identify the ways in which student voices, writings, and experiences are oftentimes excluded from schools. Students' Right to Their Own Language is an important policy statement that questions U.S. monolingualism in multicultural, multilingual contexts.

This paper forwards the notion that languages are an important resource for sustainable development for modern societies. Informed by theories from both sociolinguistics and language economics on the value of language skills, it is suggested that language(s) have different kinds of value in multilingual societies. Sociolinguists often emphasize the value languages have to their speakers and highlight the importance of social justice and equality between languages. Language economists argue that proficiencies in languages other than the dominant language are a form of human capital that can have a range of direct or indirect benefits. In language economics this is captured by the concepts of non-market and market value. Based on the example of the situation of languages in Australia, this paper argues that migration-induced multilingualism deserves more substantial support from both perspectives. Employing a theory-generating approach, this paper argues that multilingualism forms an important addition to Australia's human capital. For sustainable development, both on economic and social levels, it appears necessary to maintain and support languages in order to enable the country to cater for present and future linguistic needs. These linguistic needs include job market demands, but extend to other aspects of social participation and cohesion.

Drawing on the ethico-political framework of hospitality, this paper investigates the communicative practices of three administrative support staff as they attempt to manage the twin challenges of working in adherence to state and institutional language policies while communicating ethically in an internationalising workplace. Academic administrative staff rarely feature in studies on internationalisation yet are crucial to understanding the complex day-to-day realities of contemporary university life. Empirically, this study reports on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, including observations, interviews, and email records. The data demonstrate language work being carried out on an ethical basis, before the consideration of any particular languages, beyond the participants' political obligations, and in excess of institutional support. The current national and institutional responses to the multilingual realities of Swedish university life, I argue, are failing to do justice to and facilitate the ethically grounded, bottom-up language policy-making as practised by this study's participants. This paper thus promises to open up debate on hospitality within language policy and planning for internationalising Higher Education, and, in its re-evaluation of the ethical and political dimensions of hospitality, it emphasises the framework's critical potential within sociolinguistic research, more generally.

One of the products of globalization in sociolinguistics is the emergence of transnational regimes in language policy, in which power is exercised across boundaries of traditional nation states. This paper engages with audit culture, a transnational policy mechanism which involves the continuous evaluation of nation states' performance through the use of purportedly neutral, typically quantitative instruments. As achieving broader visibility in public discourse is a key part of how such evaluations enforce language policy regimes, the paper presents an analysis of how an audit instrument, the Education First English Proficiency Index, was recontextualized in media discourse in Thailand over a 6-year period. The findings highlight an apparent discontinuity, as much of the neoliberal rhetoric in the audit instrument was not taken up in Thai media. Rather, the recontextualization was selective, with elements of the audit texts being integrated into an already established language policy regime in Thailand, built on nationalism and developmentalism. These findings point to the need to consider how language policy mechanisms like audit culture can facilitate synergies between hegemonic ideologies, particularly when they are recontextualized across different scales.

With the expanding use of English around the world, it is important to understand various stakeholders' attitudes towards it from a Global Englishes (GE) perspective. The GE perspective has challenged native speakerism and recognized the multilingual nature of the English language. In particular, a GE perspective leads to the sustainable development of a language from both sociolinguistic and ecolinguistic perspectives. Echoing the diversity and complexity of the English language use and teaching, this paper investigates senior high school students' attitudes towards the local variety of English in China, and unpacks their negotiation and construction of identity through their English-language learning journey. Through a series of interviews, this study found that the students still perceive English as a school subject, and see themselves as perennial learners of English. As the GE perspective was not widely recognized, and that students have not developed their awareness of the global use of English, several implications of teaching English from the GE paradigm, from curriculum design and teaching materials, are provided to increase the awareness of the global use of English. This paper also highlights the importance of viewing the development of English from an ecolinguistic perspective for the sustainable development of the language.

Scholars have long critiqued points of view in which monolingual perspectives are seen as normative in research on multilingualism. In relation to this "monolingual orientation," however, in which monolingualism is perceived to be the implicit norm, less work has been dedicated to methodological challenges. As disciplinary perspectives on language in Linguistics and related fields move further towards the de-emphasizing and deconstructing of the boundaries between named linguistic varieties, this paper addresses some issues that come up in operationalizing this in our research. It does so through self-reflexivity, from a primarily Sociolinguistic and Applied Linguistic point of view, by addressing monolingual perspectives found in data on a project on multilingual practices in India. It focuses more narrowly on the ethnographic field notes from the research context. With discourse analysis, these are looked at through the lens of the monolingual orientation, with a particular focus on language ideologies and the compartmentalization of named-language varieties. Ideologies in the data are discussed in relation to their bearing on methodology in transcribing, coding, and the framing of research questions. This paper explores the tensions between evolving theoretical perspectives and on-the-ground research practice, concluding by proposing questions for reflection.

Linguistic plurality is a situation in which a speech community speaks more than one language. It is a complex sociolinguistic phenomenon that helps explain the complexity of human nature. Human beings cannot exist in isolation and are therefore inclined towards interaction and transaction. The need and desire to interact leads to language contact, where two or more languages co-exist and are constantly used by people who share definitive interests. Linguistic homogeneity is illusory, since there is hardly any linguistic community that is absolutely monolingual. Despite the complexity of linguistic diversity, the world has recorded tremendous developments in the arts, sciences, and technology. This highlights the strength that lies in diversity. The utilitarian nature of multilingualism can be explored for the growth and development of human society, as language is a key factor in development. Although multilingualism might pose a threat to nationalism, it is apparently the basis of nationhood in Nigeria, having existed even before colonization. The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of linguistic plurality for sustainable development. This study uses a descriptive and qualitative methodology, heavily relying on the nativist theory and the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) as its major underpinnings. Drawing from these frameworks, the paper observes that language acquisition occurs naturally with the presence of the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), and consequently, languages are used to perform functional roles. The scope of this work is limited to multilingualism and sustainable development in Africa, with particular emphasis on Nigeria.

The paper explores the "in situ" negotiation of in/exclusion in and through language in a multilingual professional setting, paying special attention to the relationship between language and space. We argue that multilingual practices and material space are co-constitutive; individuals enact group membership and professional roles spatiolinguistically and re/produce in/visible social and material boundaries. Despite the well-established literature on in/exclusion, the ways in which it is negotiated in asymmetrical, emplaced, workplace encounters is still underexplored. We introduce a "topographies of practice" framework and show how professional asymmetries are enacted in and through language choice and language use in the multilingual workplace. We take an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach and report on the analysis of 23 h of interactional data and 42 h of ethnographic observations from a professional, multilingual kitchen in Finland. We show patterns that are un/marked in the data and constitute the norms in this particular workplace. We argue that topographies of practice are topographies of in/exclusion enacted in and through situated encounters; we pay special attention to the role of employees who are legitimised to cross visible and invisible boundaries and we close the paper with recommendations for future research.

This paper examines how in-service teachers enrolled in an MA in TESOL program demonstrated critical language awareness (CLA) as they designed and implemented ethnographic action research projects anchored in funds of knowledge. The action research project aimed to introduce teachers to school-based ethnographic research and to provide an opportunity to incorporate community funds of knowledge into their unit plans. Drawing from program documents such as the in-service teachers' research proposals, papers, and unit plans, the study highlights how awareness of the intersections of language and local power dynamics in their schools informed their decision-making about their research and curricular designs. At each stage of the research process, the teachers narrated how they restructured their interactional roles within established classroom routines, school-playtime, community, and family-school events for purposes of inquiring about student and family funds of knowledge. By integrating theories of funds of knowledge and CLA, the analysis shows how teacher understandings of sociopolitical and sociolinguistic contexts shaped which, how, and whose knowledge became resources (or not) in their curricular plans. The study suggests the benefit of professional development that includes CLA for purposes of supporting teachers as they aim to incorporate and leverage funds of knowledge of students, families, and communities in their curricula.

This paper focuses on the linguistic evolution of the Tianjin speech community in Sabah, Malaysia. From the perspective of restructuring of speech community, the paper integrates both micro and macro levels of language change into the analysis. Several methods were adopted in this study. Interviews were conducted with community leaders and various families. Besides, an ethnographic approach is taken to observe language use in different activities within the community. In total, 17 Tianjiners were interviewed who were from four generations (G3, G4, G5, and G6) and several community activities were participated. Despite all the social changes within the community, the Tianjin people (also known as northern Chinese) still manifest a strong group identity which differentiate themselves from southern Chinese, such as Hakka in Sabah. The strong group identification goes well with its diversity, which is one of the characteristics of the Tianjin speech community.

This paper examines the impact of the local tea industry on the language ecology of the geographically remote Blang community in China. The paper takes an ecology perspective in language planning where all languages in the locality are given equal attention. These languages in the context of this paper include Blang, Putonghua, and English as the leading global lingua franca of international trade. The study used a qualitative approach and reports findings from semi-structured interviews collected in Yunnan Province. The discursive approach allows for the analysis of participants' attitudes and ideologies vis-à-vis the changing economic and linguistic ecology. The findings demonstrate that the local tea industry has increased the economic value of Putonghua and further marginalised Blang. Putonghua and English were ideated as capital in the domestic and global markets, while Blang was perceived as having no economic value. These findings point towards a weakening vitality of Blang and reflect the uneven power relations favouring Putonghua and English. While economic entrepreneurship was paired with linguistic entrepreneurship, this agentive behaviour was mainly directed towards learning the dominant languages by the Blang people, and it was related to the extent to which individuals themselves engaged with the tea business.

The paper reports on trends in language testing taking place over the years and aim at critical perspectives of testing and promoting inclusion, equity and justice. It begins with critical theories by Messick, Foucault and Bourdieu, leading to critical language testing (CLT) which focused on consequences and uses of tests. Given the power of tests and their detrimental effects questions were raised regarding the impact of language tests on individuals and society. Based on theories of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics it was realized that bi-multilingual students, especially immigrants in the first years of migration and beyond continue to use their first languages as resources for academic functioning, referring to it as their 'full language repertoire'. These languages are needed especially when processing academic school tests, presented in the new language which students have not yet acquired. The paper reports on studies where immigrant students are tested in multilingual tests and reach significantly high scores compared to those tested only in the new language. In experiments, using a variety of tools, students showed positive attitude to the procedure as they felt recognition and respect. Multilingual tests need to be practiced in schools to avoid language rights violations. Multimodal assessment methods are also proposed as additional ways for expanding the underpinnings of language construct. Lastly, it is recommended that language testing researchers and practitioners conduct research to identify cases of violate language rights and suggest new assessment models to overcome it, leading to increased social justice.

Suggests that using sociolinguistics as the subject of a semester-long course leads to real and exciting research rather than technically correct but lifeless "dummy runs" for real research in freshman composition courses. (MG)

This paper investigated the borrowing of lexical items into spoken Lukabaras due to the influence of Nandi language in a multilingual setting. The data was collected in Chepsaita Scheme in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. The scheme is that of a multilingual setting and presents a phenomenon in which the languages that come into contact apparently influence each other. The predominant language is Nandi, but other minority languages such as Lukabaras, Lutachooni, Luwanga, Lulogooli and Lubukusu are also spoken there. As a result, one of the outcomes of the contact is the transfer of linguistic features which occur at the lexical level. This paper therefore set out to identify and describe the lexical items that the speakers of Lukabaras borrow from the dominant Nandi language in the home and business domains of interaction. In this paper, the lexical items were collected through audio recording and analyzed descriptively. The findings of the study showed that lexical borrowing into spoken Lukabaras in Chepsaita was a communication strategy used by minority Lukabaras speakers to coexist with the dominant Nandi community. However, the borrowing constrained communication between Lukabaras speakers using the borrowed versions and the native Lukabaras speakers not residing in Chepsaita Scheme.

This paper attempts a pragmatic analysis of the interplay between social contexts of power and sociolinguistic device of aggravation strategies concerning dialogic discourses in Vikram Seth's novel "A Suitable Boy (ASB) (1993)." The paper attempts to validate that aggravation strategies have been an integral part of human discourse. It demonstrates how people use aggravation strategies to exercise power over others in different communicative contexts. It also exemplifies how power is vested in specific identities, and their role relationships in different power structures existing in the society based on their caste, age, sex, social standing, political or official identity, and how the power is exerted in the context of their social identities. The paper defines various aspects of aggravation, explains the dominant participatory identities, namely master identities, situated identities, and discourse identities and analyses how these social identities exercise power through aggravation strategies in the dialogic discourses in "ASB."

This paper attempts to establish that there is a correlation between the sociolinguistic identities of high school students and their productive English-speaking abilities. The paper initially explains the basic concept of sociolinguistic identity and refers to various aspects of research into Japanese national identity to analyse how these may influence the learning of English in Japan. Secondly, the participants' specific context is detailed and reasoning for the relevance of the two tasks that are put to them is provided. Following on from this, the methods of data collection and analysis are described. Results posit that learners with a greater interest in English-speaking cultures are more likely to interact competently, and in turn, having stronger productive skills correlates positively with the rejection of an anti-English sentiment. The paper ends with a brief discussion on how cultural constraints in Japan affect English expression and the importance of emerging trends such as "international posture" (Yashima, 2002).