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Copyright of Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal (LL) is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. 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.)

Aims: This research aims to examine cross-linguistic interaction and intra-linguistic variation in the Welsh and English of bilingual speakers in two areas of north Wales. Specifically, I present an analysis of fundamental frequency range (FFR) and examine both cross-linguistic and intra-linguistic differences in speech production between bilinguals from Welsh-speaking and English-speaking homes. Design: Data were collected from Welsh–English bilinguals aged 16–18 in the areas surrounding the Welsh-dominant town of Caernarfon (Gwynedd) and the English-dominant town of Mold (Flintshire). The sample was equally stratified by speaker gender and home language. Data: The data were elicited from a reading passage task and were analysed acoustically. Measures of level and span were taken. Data were analysed using conditional inference trees and random forests. Findings: The results of the analysis of FFR in Caernarfon and Mold revealed no significant differences between English and Welsh. In Mold, gender was the only significant predictor of FFR across all measures. In Caernarfon, home-language differences in level were found in female speakers' data only, and gender differences in span were found in the speech of those from English-speaking homes. Originality: The study contributes to previous studies of traditional and new speakers in minority-language contexts by examining both languages in the speakers' repertoires. Specifically, it is the first study to examine the regional and home-language variation in FFR of bilingual speakers. Implications: The results highlight (1) the importance of community-specific patterns in minority-language contexts and (2) the way in which linguistic background might interact with other social factors in situations of long-term language contact. The results imply that a more holistic approach to examinations of variation in such contexts will be fruitful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The goal of this special issue is to anchor an understanding of language variation and change in a relatively newly adopted framework for researching 'new speakers' of minoritized languages. Approach: This paper first reviews basic principles of variationist sociolinguistics as they apply to new-speaker contexts before critically engaging with the notion of speakerhood. Conclusions: We frame our discussion of new speakers as mobile bilinguals in contexts of sociolinguistics change. We call into question traditional ideals of speakerhood that have been couched in studies of bilingualism and language variation and change, and we emphasize the need to understand variation as part of the new social conditions that these speakers must navigate. This approach enriches approaches to measuring key factors in bilingualism (e.g. input, peer identity, language dominance), that are better adapted to the sociolinguistic ecologies of new speakers. Originality: This is the first special issue dedicated to the bi-/multilingual repertoires of minoritized language speakers that more readily encapsulates both a new speaker framework and standard principles of language variation and change. This introduction discusses important theoretical and methodological advancements in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the sociolinguistic and social semiotic transgression enacted by a group of political signs in a public university in Hong Kong. It demonstrates how the signs break normative/stabilized social, cultural and political boundaries and order by mixing up multifarious stylistic and generic resources, resulting in a heteroglossic blending of diverse, often incongruent identities, voices and ideologies predominantly rooted in the modern history of Greater China. The article suggests that this heteroglossia ideologically distances the university away from the state, defends its historical, Western‐style autonomy and aligns it with the local pro‐democracy civil society amid the escalating sociopolitical tensions in Hong Kong particularly after the Umbrella Movement in 2014. It shows the value of linguistic and semiotic landscape research on institutions as dynamic and complex communities and discursive spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism Tribune / Lvyou Xuekan is the property of Tourism Institute of Beijing Union University 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.)

A growing body of literature has addressed the 'complex layers and nuances of today's multilingual, mobile and global society' [Barakos & Selleck, 2019, Elite multilingualism: Discourses, practices, and debates. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 40(5), 361]. Heller [2010. The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 101–114] argues that the globalised new economy is bound up with transformations of language and identity in many different ways [e.g. Bauman, 1997. Postmodernity and its discontents. London: Routledge; Castells, 2000. The information age: Economy, society and culture (3 vols). Oxford: Blackwell; Giddens, 1990. The consequences of modernity. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University California Press]. This paper examines how these themes play out in Wales, in the relative value placed on Welsh and English by 'new' or 'learner' speakers of Welsh. These 'new' or 'learner' speakers have learnt a minority language often through non-traditional routes and this article seeks to understand what linguistic varieties are capitalised by these learners, how they characterise their own language knowledge, and how these 'new speakers' position themselves in relation to mobility and the new globalised economy. Additionally, the paper seeks to explore how disparities in terms of access to resources can impact on new speakers' trajectories – in other words, how different routes to bilingualism are perceived as opening or closing metaphorical doors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal (LL) is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. 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.)

Together with its fascinating narrative of the creation of the Hebrew, Arabic, and English ceramic street signs featured in his earlier work on the languages of Jerusalem ([30]), Spolsky's meditations on Linguistic Landscape (henceforth LL) in this article bring to light one of the persistent tensions of the field. On the one hand, pointing back to "the study of linguistic and non-linguistic signs" (page) in the tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles W. Morris, and others, Spolsky argues for the field of LL to "be seen as a branch of Semiotics" (p. 11). Clearly, a semiotics fit for LL must be I social i , since collective processes of sense-making are at the core of the field's interests. Indeed, these are at the core of the geosemiotic framework, which "analyzes the semiotic systems among which we take actions in the world" ([27], p. 13) - systems comprising the (social) interactive order, visual semiotics, and place semiotics. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores the intersection of new speakers in conditions of globalisation led mobility and it investigates the implications the phenomena may have for language policy making. It first describes two historical phases in language policy development that are closely related to a sociolinguistics of stability. In this, it criticises how present-day language policy is attached to specific time and space constraints whose focus is a by now outdated concept of language and of speaker as its prescriptive objects—thus leading institutional language policies to not being 'in sync' with contemporary new speakers' socio- and geo-political movements and developments. This proposition is illustrated in two case studies, both located in the Netherlands and dealing with the language practices and connected policies of two types of new speakers. The first case deals with the experiences of asylum seekers being engaged with 'techno-literacies'. That is asylum seekers being part of ICT assisted classes for civic integration through the learning of Dutch (new speakers of a new language, learning through new means of language learning). The second case deals with Chinese students who are fully proficient in Dutch, attending language heritage classes for learning Mandarin through book based lessons (new speakers of an old language, learning through old means of language learning). In both cases, the observed language practices and meta-pragmatic judgements of the individual language users elect them as initiators of bottom-up sociolinguistic change that, while offering grassroots solutions for local challenges, also plays a role as local evidence for informing future top-down language policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of new speaker parents who have made a conscious decision to bring up their children in Galician, a language which they themselves did not acquire in the home. Although intergenerational transmission has for long been considered a crucial part of linguistic vitality, new speakers bring complexity to this paradigm and in particular prompt questions about their role as parents and as potential agents of sociolinguistic change in the process of language revitalization. Through their individual as well as collective linguistic practices, new speaker parents have the potential to generate visible and/or invisible language planning on the ground, influencing their children's language learning and creating future generations of speakers. As such, these parents, through their own linguistic behaviour, can play a potentially significant role in the revitalization and maintenance of Galician outside the school through their family language policies in the home. Drawing on two focus group discussions involving seven families in two of Galicia's urban centres, Santiago de Compostela and Vigo, we investigate how these new speaker parents exercise their agency and become policy makers in their homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the web comments to two video clips posted on YouTube in 2014. One video features the song ‘Sangre Maya’, by Pat Boy and El Cima, two Maya rappers from the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico. The other song is called ‘Rap de la Tierra’ and is performed by Luanko, a Mapuche rapper from Santiago in Chile. First, I discuss significant developments of institutional language policy and planning aiming at the recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity in Mexico and Chile as well as micro-level grassroots initiatives that exploit new technologies and rap for language revitalisation purposes. Drawing from the field of language ideologies, I then look at a selection of YouTube comments generated by these two relatively successful songs and discuss the prevailing discourses triggered by these video clips. I argue that the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the songs, strengthens the ongoing revalorisation process of Yucatec Maya and Mapudungun and works towards their destigmatisation, especially among youths. Furthermore, I show how the discursive space generated by these web comments and the language ideologies expressed therein become an arena for broader social debates which index the subordinated sociopolitical position of indigenous peoples in Latin American societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on topics related to language policy. Topics mentioned include the importance of language policy to society, the relation of language and multilingualism, and the perspective on commodification and language that analyze policies and decisions with several types of private and public organizations. Also mentioned are the development of linguistic economy and the social aspects of language.

In the globalized economy, old metadiscursive regimes have been challenged by new conditions which are often considered to be more favourable to heteroglossic practices. In Flemish Belgium, the liberalization of the TV market is said to have transformed the broadcaster VRT from a public service aiming at educating viewers into a competitive corporation eager to commodify nonstandard language use to attract viewers. The broadcast media, traditionally a stronghold of the standard language, thus appear to have become a key site for the valorization of traditional vernaculars and hybrid linguistic practices drawing on both standard and vernacular speech forms. This paper confronts these impressions with empirical data and investigates the sociolinguistic impact of the deregulation of the Flemish TV market in detail. It does so by analyzing the discourses produced by the VRT’s policy makers and the actual linguistic practices on the VRT during the monopolist and the commercial era. It points out how during the monopolist era the genre of comedy already provided a discursive space where the VRT’s standard language policy could be subverted, and shows how a market discourse may have colonized the VRT’s current language policy, but has left its original standardization ambitions by and large intact. The VRT is shown to nowadays commodify both standard and nonstandard speech forms, but in ways that do not fundamentally challenge the traditional order of high (standard) and low (nonstandard) speech styles. New corporate logics can thus be seen to reproduce rather than drastically alter linguistic hierarchies traditionally attributed to state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting an online ethnographic approach, we examine the linguistic/semiotic practices and ideologies of “purism” among Tatar and Iranian Azerbaijani Facebook users. We argue that purification practices can be understood as identity work, the outcome of which is often not an etymologically “purer” language but a (perceived) “purer” and more “authentic” identity. We show that top-down standardization in Tatar has resulted in more homogenized ideologies regarding “pure” language and “authentic” identity, compared to the more heterogeneous ideologies among Iranian Azerbaijanis. Furthermore, we argue that since these communities rarely use the written form of their languages in off-line contexts, their purification practices are profoundly limited to metapragmatic discourses; however, social media provides a unique venue to also exercise these ideologies linguistically/semiotically. Finally, unlike previous scholarship that has focused on theinformalityof language use on social media, we illustrate how social media turns out to be a platform to practiceformallanguage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigatesde factolanguage policy in Estonia. It investigates how language choices at the micro (or individual) level are negotiated within the macro (or social and historical) context: how official language policy and other features of the discursive environment surrounding language and its use in Estonia translate into real-world language behaviour and practices at a local level. This is achieved through the monitoring of language use in daily interactions of a group of university students with staff members in public and private organisations. This research also engages with the concept of practices as a meso-level of repeated activity, recently introduced into applied language studies, linking individual instances of (linguistic) behaviour with the macro social and historical context within which they occur. Such practices allow us a more complete understanding of how macro translates into micro (as in traditional top-down language planning), but also how the micro can resist the macro, and thus how behaviours in local contexts reshape wider perspectives on language issues (bottom-up language planning). This picture of language use “on the ground” forms part of a wider critical analysis of how “doing language” is managed in contemporary Estonian society, and how this management of language can be improved in order to achieve both the maintenance of (linguistic) diversity and the reduction of social inequality. In addition to contributing knowledge in language policy and planning (LPP) by offering a study on Estonia with a critical focus on local contexts, this article also moves the field forward by incorporating the latest thinking about language and its social contexts. Not only is this the first study to focus on the micro in Estonian in LPP, it is the first to apply a micro–meso–macro model specifically to LPP, overall. This multilayered approach, which includes the meso-political level of practices, allows us to advance LPP studies in powerful and productive ways. It provides a way of arriving at aninformedunderstanding of why people use language in particular ways in multilingual contexts, thus permitting the formulation of LPP that can be effective and ethical in its outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A bibliography of books and articles on sociolinguistics is presented, including the books "Didaktik für eine gelebte Mehrsprachigkeit," edited by Peter Cichon and Ludmila Cichon, "Plurilinguismo, multiculturalismo e apprendimento delle lingue: Confronto tra Giappone e Italia," edited by Silvana Ferreri, and "Språkvård och språkpolitik: Svenska språknämndens forskningskonferens i Saltsjöbaden 2008," edited by Lars-Gunnar Andersson, Olle Josephson, and Mats Thelander, volume 11 in the book series Språkrådets skrifter.

This article will examine the potential for language change from the bottom-up given the new domains in which minority languages are present as a result of the process of language mobility. Drawing on a theoretical notion of sociolinguistic scales, this article aims to discuss how the position of the Irish language has been reconfigured. From this position, the article traces how the domain of the Irish language in contemporary Irish society has been reformed through increased presence of the language in performative genres such as comedy and rap music. The principle aim of this article is to examine the domain of Irish-language comedy produced by the Irish-American comedian Des Bishop in his television series In the Name of the Fada and in his subsequent stand-up comedy show Tongues in terms of bottom-up language planning. The article will discuss what is seen under the gaze of the comic lens and highlights the achievements of such a scrutiny in terms of Irish language maintenance. By identifying Bishop as a bottom-up language-planning actor, the potential for such initiatives to boost top-down language planning is revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BBC ALBA is the first dedicated Gaelic-medium television channel in history. It launched in September 2008 and, in late 2010, announced that it would be carried on Freeview, in addition to Sky, Freesat, and BBC iPlayer, thereby widening access to Gaelic throughout Scotland. The channel is a BBC-licensed service that is presently operated as a partnership between the BBC and MG ALBA1. It combines three media (television, radio, and the internet) with an annual content budget of £14m while targeting a weekly viewership of 250,000 persons. In this article, we discuss the channel in the context of language planning for Gaelic in Scotland. We begin with a brief discussion of the policy framework out of which the channel arises, then analyse the kinds of economic impacts it is making, and finally consider its social importance for reversing language shift goals. The media have previously been critiqued in terms of their importance to the RLS for minoritised languages, but more recent criticism suggests that the advent of Web 2.0 means that media provision that is able to connect to its audience through multiple platforms (e.g. BBC ALBA) may, in fact, be a strong contributor to a language's present and future linguistic vitality. We argue that BBC ALBA is able to make a tangible economic contribution that is in line with broader RLS efforts for Gaelic in Scotland, but question the limits of media in terms of their ability to foster the acquisition and usage of minoritised languages, a key goal for language planning for minoritised languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the increased potential for language change from the micro-level, given the new domains in which minority languages are present in the global era. Drawing on the theoretical notion of sociolinguistic scales this paper presents a comparative account of the changing positions of the Irish and Inari Sami languages. Specifically, this paper is centred on a comparative study of two media personalities, namely an Irish language stand-up comedian, Des Bishop, and an Inari Sami rap artist, Amoc, whose success as language-planning actors stems from their use of the mediated space to influence micro-level language planning. By identifying both Bishop and Amoc as micro-level language-planning actors, this paper will examine the potential knock on effects of such initiatives for macro-level language-planning agencies, such as the educational domain, thereby pointing to the potential for increased minority language recovery when such languages achieve new values and functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses sociolinguistics in Ireland, examining the disciplines of sociolinguistics and linguistics, the sociolinguistics of Gaeilge, the Irish language, and research on topics including Irish-English, multilingualism, and sociolinguistics of the media. The author examines work by sociolinguists including Tadgh Ó hIfearnáin, Muiris Ó Laoire, and Elaine Uí Dhonnchadha on subjects such as language policy, attitudes towards Irish language, and language revitalization. Other topics include the Irish Corpus of English (ICE-Ireland), part of the International Corpus of English, codeswitching, and net inward migration in Ireland.