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This study examines physical aspects of place and how such visible aspects work to index a discourse of insecurity, including an insider-outsider binary, particularly through security signs in the linguistic landscape (LL). Our main focus is the relationship between policy and the uses of written language that appear in the LL in different census tracts in Palm Springs, California. Data includes community demographic and discourse data, geographical information systems maps, and comprehensive photography of the three census tracts, which include contiguous low income, middle-income, and high-income tracts. Findings demonstrate that the discourse of insecurity is indexed differently in each of the tracts as explicit and implicit policies are enacted in the LL based in the way that residents in each tract reproduce a discourse of insecurity. Implications include the effects that these different ways of indexing the discourse of insecurity through the LL may have on social inequality.

This article demonstrates how one woman's identity changed as she was empowered through her participation in a sewing cooperative community of practice. A community of practice framework allows examination of participation in ongoing negotiated interactions in which people construct expert and novice identities as they work together. Identity, as we define it here, is not static, but a constantly shifting set of identities, or aspects of identity, that are constructed in ongoing interaction. What this study adds to such an understanding of identity is that particular aspects of identity are also not static but show shifts over time as people negotiate place and gain the social capital associated with skills, expertise, and competencies. In the case of the woman, Diana, considered here, the multiple aspects of identity under negotiation shift as she becomes a more experienced, expert member of the sewing cooperative, and these shifts are illuminated in discourse. (Contains 7 figures.)

The purpose of this article is to examine local, interactional processes associated with the construction of power asymmetries in collaborative teamwork among engineering students. To explore the construction of power asymmetries at the micro-interactional level, this article examines a corpus consisting of about 150,000 words in which seven teams of engineering students engage in collaborative project design over an academic year. Findings demonstrate dominant-subordinate relationships are co-constructed and reconstructed in the ongoing process of face-to-face interaction. Dominant team members get their ideas ratified repeatedly by displaying technical explanations, assumptions, and opinions. Conversely, subordinate teammates tend to ask technical questions to seek information. Ultimately, dominant teammates are able to manage the direction that the conversation takes during the design process by gaining tacit consent to grab and maintain control over the project's design. (Contains 1 table.)

This article, based on a longitudinal, ethnographic study among engineering students, examines the interactional processes surrounding second language (L2) socialization. L2 socialization perspectives argue that the cognitive and the social are interconnected, and that learning an L2 is a process of coming to understand socially constructed meaning distinctions. Recent studies examining L2 socialization have demonstrated that L2 instruction, or L2 instruction in combination with participation in particular speech communities, serves to socialize nonnative speakers into the community's speech norms. This study, with its focus on naturalistic L2 socialization, demonstrates that particular interactional processes define expert, socialized participants, and that particular interactional processes work to socialize novice participants in the electrical and computer engineering team meeting. The study ultimately demonstrates that L2 socialization is part of a larger process of socialization in human development, which is dependent on the novice participants' access to opportunities for interaction with socialized members of the community.

This paper aims to explore advanced ESL learners' ability to make improvements in grammatical accuracy by autonomously noticing and correcting their own grammatical errors. In the recent literature in SLA, it is suggested that classroom tasks can be used to foster autonomous language learning habits (cf. Dam 2001). Therefore, it is important to consider classroom tasks that encourage autonomous language learning behaviour. Working with 13 advanced ESL composition students, we engaged the subjects in an explicit task in which they compared their own use of grammatical form in their own written output to the use of grammatical form as used in a text written by a native speaker. Based on the comparison between their own written output and the native speaker text, subjects subsequently corrected their grammatical errors. Results suggest that such a comparison task is beneficial in allowing learners to make gains in grammatical accuracy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the computer in medical consultations in which English- Spanish-bilingual medical providers interact with Spanish-monolingual patients. Following previous studies that have revealed that the presence of the computer in consultations detracts from direct provider- patient communication, we pay specific attention to how the use of the computer in Spanishlanguage medical consultations can complement or adversely affect the co-construction of the patient's health narrative. The data for the present study consist of 36 Spanish-language medical consultations in Southern California. Applying a conversation analytical approach to the health narratives in the corpus, we argue that the computer is essentially a third interactant to which medical providers orient through lowered volume, minimal responses, bureaucratic side talk, and, most importantly, codeswitching to English - all of which strip the patients of control over the co-construction of their health narrative with their medical provider. Because the patient does not have access to the computational task and the language, we posit that this exacerbates the already existing adverse effects that the computer has on provider-patient interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the construction of language normativity as medical providers interact with patients and animate stance within Spanish-language medical consultations. The context of the study is a clinic in which providers use Spanish to communicate with monolingual Spanish-speaking patients. This clinic is in the United States, an English-speaking macro-societal context. Findings indicate that providers who are second-language users of Spanish animate stance and interact with patients in ways such that English is constructed as normative and Spanish as marked. Implications include the need to consider how the construction of language normativity within medical consultations affects health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how politeness and prosody work in the construction of medical provider communicative styles. Data are taken from a corpus of audio-recorded and transcribed bilingual Spanish-English medical consultations in a community clinic in the United States. Through discourse analysis and prosodic analysis, we demonstrate that particular linguistic features contribute to the construction of stances associated with two medical-provider particular communicative styles that we identify as an egalitarian communicative style and an authoritarian communicative style. We also indicate ways in which these communicative styles may impact patient health outcomes in the local clinical context. Implications include the need for further research that engages in fine-grained linguistic analysis to understand provider styles and their relationship to patient health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the co-influential nature of macro-level power structures and micro-interactionally constructed relationships in the construction, co-construction and recon-struction of the powerful identity. Using a community of practice framework, which allows for an intricate look at hierarchy and power within groups, we will demonstrate that within the context of our data, a multilingual sewing cooperative, the powerful identity is not static. Rather, the powerful identity is co-constructed and reconstructed by participants depending on the participation framework and the topic of interaction. As interactants engage with one another, the powerful identity is contingent upon the construction of an expert identity within the local micro-interactional context and how that identity is indexed within the various participation frameworks that [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine patient-provider narrative co-construction of symptoms, diagnosis and treatment in the medical consultation. Narrative scholarship has demonstrated that conversational narratives, including those that take place in medical consultations, are typically co-constructed by all participants within the conversation. In the context of the medical consultation, this means that patient narratives are co-constructed with providers, and that at times, provider contributions to the patient narrative can hide patient contributions. The inherent power asymmetry that exists between patient and provider facilitates the possibility for provider contributions to obscure those of the patient. Based on audio-recorded data from medical consultations between two different nurse practitioners and one patient, findings from this study demonstrate that such narrative co-construction leads to differential information regarding the patient's symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. Implications include the need for providers to relinquish control over to the patient to allow the patient to fully articulate narrative accounts of their medical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine use of English discourse markers in otherwise Spanish language consultations. Data is derived from an audio-recorded corpus of Spanish language consultations that took place in a small community clinic in the United States as well as post-consultation interviews with patients and providers. Through quantification of the use of discourse makers in the corpus and discourse analysis of transcripts, we demonstrate that English-speaking dominant medical providers use English discourse markers more frequently and with a broader range of functions than do Spanish-speaking dominant medical providers and patients. We argue that such use of English discourse markers serves to exacerbate the power relationship between providers and patients even though the use of English discourse markers does not cause overt miscommunication in the ongoing interaction. Implications for providers who use a second language in their medical consultations are discussed.