This book explores the Linguistic Landscapes of ten French and Italian Mediterranean coastal cities. The authors address the national languages, the regional languages and dialects, migrant languages, and the English language, as they collectively mark the public space.

This volume offers the reader a singular overview of current thinking on indirect reports. The contributors are eminent researchers from the fields of philosophy of language, theoretical linguistics and communication theory, who answer questions on this important issue. This exciting area of controversy has until now mostly been treated from the viewpoint of philosophy. This volume adds the views from semantics, conversation analysis and sociolinguistics. Authors address matters such as the issue of semantic minimalism vs. radical contextualism, the attribution of responsibility for the modes of presentation associated with Noun Phrases and how to distinguish the indirect reporter's responsibility from the original speaker's responsibility. They also explore the connection between indirect reporting and direct quoting. Clearly indirect reporting has some bearing on the semantics/pragmatics debate, however, there is much controversy on "what is said", whether this is a minimal semantic logical form (enriched by saturating pronominals) or a much richer and fully contextualized logical form. This issue will be discussed from several angles. Many of the authors are contextualists and the discussion brings out the need to take context into account when one deals with indirect reports, both the context of the original utterance and the context of the report. It is interesting to see how rich cues and clues can radically transform the reported message, assigning illocutionary force and how they can be mobilized to distinguish several voices in the utterance. Decoupling the voice of the reporting speaker from that of the reported speaker on the basis of rich contextual clues is an important issue that pragmatic theory has to tackle. Articles on the issue of slurs will bring new light to the issue of decoupling responsibility in indirect reporting, while others are theoretically oriented and deal with deep problems in philosophy and epistemology.

Applying critical kinship perspectives to the study of multilingual families, this book foregrounds family formation processes, gender, and sexuality in examinations of language use. Focusing on historically marginalized families (such as single parent, adoptive, and LGBTQ+), the analyses draw on data from private and public spheres including interviews and recorded interactions in homes, as well as memoirs, documentaries, news media, and even comedy. Lyn Wright addresses questions such as why single parents might be better at raising bilingual children, how multilingualism plays a role in constructing shared histories in adoptive families, and what translingual resources allow LGBTQ+ families to negotiate gender roles and family relationships. In addition, she examines the construction of monolingual, nuclear family norms in public discourse that potentially constrain families' everyday multilingual identities. Integrating related fields of family discourse, family language socialization, and family language policy unifies ways of understanding the intersections of kinship and language. The analyses in this book provide insight into multilingual family experiences, children's language development, and societal level language maintenance and shift.

This book examines how injustice based on social positioning is performed within the context of international schools. Drawing on the lived experiences of an international school teacher, it proposes and explores the notion that teachers, in being constituted and positioned as subordinate within the hierarchy that is the international school, leads to their being wronged on three counts: epistemically for being wrongfully mistrusted; ethically for being wrongfully excluded; and ontologically for being wrongfully positioned as a lesser human being. The book addresses the dearth of research currently available on conflict in international schools and how conflict between teachers and administrators is dealt with in and by such institutions. It will be valuable reading for students and teachers of education and sociology, and those interested in the workings of international schools.

This inter-disciplinary book is the first in an Irish context to address issues connected with the 'super-diversifying' of language and society engendered by recent and historical migrations. It analyses novel data from interviews with allochthonous and autochthonous groups of monolingual and plurilingual youngsters living in Northern Ireland. A key aim is to test models within second language acquisition and language variation and change research. Another goal is to examine the extent to which distinctive migratory trends generated changes in the language ecologies of communities on the island of Ireland as well as globally in regions where the Irish settled intensively from the 1700s. The book also compares contemporary migratory experiences with historical records to further our understanding of the dynamics of identification through language across time. The first-ever book devoted to all aspects of the sociolinguistics of globalization and migration in Northern Ireland will be welcomed by scholars interested in the consequences for ethnolinguistic vitality of large-scale population movements. It could not be more timely given the fact that 2.5 million sought asylum in Europe alone during 2016, greatly enhancing its diversity.

This intriguing book applies Critical Discourse Analysis to a range of South Asian women's lifestyle magazines, exposing the disconnection between the magazines' representations of South Asian women and the lived realities of the target audience. The author challenges the notion that discourses of freedom and choice employed by women's magazines are emancipatory, demonstrating instead that the version of feminism on offer is a commodified form which accords with the commercial aims of the publications. McLoughlin demonstrates that whilst British magazines present women in the East as the exotic and culturally superior 'Other', women in India are encouraged to emulate Western women to signify their engagement with globalization and modernity. She uses data from focus groups carried out in both countries to illustrate the interpretive frameworks and multivocality of participants' attitudes, experiences and beliefs. This thought-provoking book will appeal to students and researchers of Language and Linguistics, Women's Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies.

Researching Sociopragmatic Variability showcases a range of research approaches to the study of speech acts and pragmatic markers across different languages and varieties of a language, investigating native and non-native usages and variation across gender, situation and addressee.

This book presents a description and analysis of sociolinguistics written from a demographer's perspective. It synthesizes the data on the materials, methods, and issues of this interdisciplinary field, pulling together the scattered materials published in this area into a coherent whole. Drawing on a wide range of sciences in addition to demography and sociolinguistics, including sociology, anthropology, statistics, psychology, neuroscience, and public policy, the book treats theoretical and applied issues, links methods and substantive findings, covers both national and international materials, and provides prehistorical, historical, and contemporary illustrations. The book treats the theoretical issue of how the language we use develops socially on a base of linguistic genetic capacity and the practical issue of how the intervention of the state and public figures may profoundly alter the natural evolution of the language. As such, this book will appeal to a wide range of users, from students to teachers and practitioners of social demography, sociolinguistics, cultural anthropology, and particularly to those social scientists interested in ethnic studies and human migration.

How we address one another says a great deal about our social relationships and which groups in society we belong to. This edited volume examines address choices in a range of everyday interactions taking place in Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Italian and the two national varieties of Swedish, Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish. The chapter 'Introduction: Address as Social Action Across Cultures and Contexts' is oepn access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

This book is intended to introduce novice student researchers to second language acquisition in the study abroad learning environment. It reviews the existing literature and provides the emerging researcher an overview of the important factors to consider, informs them where to begin, and how to move forth an agenda for future research in this field. The book recognizes that aside from the academic advantages, study abroad programmes are an excellent tool for fostering extended and relevant interaction with native speakers. It provides reflection questions and activities, and guides the novice researcher in critically analysing existing research and to eventually carry out their own study. The book will be of use to beginning researchers who are new to linguistics in the areas of study abroad and second language acquisition.

Identity is a problematic concept in-as-much-as we recognise it now as non-fixed, non-rigid and always being co-constructed by individuals of themselves, or by people who share certain core values or perceive another group as having such values. This volume re-examines the analytical tools employed in the sociolinguistic research of 'identity' in order to assess their efficiency, establish the roles of language in the identity claims of specific communities of people, and determine the place of identity in a variety of social contexts, including work places and language classrooms. It will be of interest to academics researching sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and second language learning.

Translation is commonly understood as the rendering of a text from one language to another – a border-crossing activity, where the border is a linguistic one. But what if the text one is translating is not written in “one language;” indeed, what if no text is ever written in a single language? In recent years, many books of fiction and poetry published in so-called Canada, especially by queer, racialized and Indigenous writers, have challenged the structural notions of linguistic autonomy and singularity that underlie not only the formation of the nation-state, but the bulk of Western translation theory and the field of comparative literature. Language Smugglers argues that the postnational cartographies of language found in minoritized Canadian literary works force a radical redefinition of the activity of translation altogether. Canada is revealed as an especially rich site for this study, with its official bilingualism and multiculturalism policies, its robust translation industry and practitioners, and the strong challenges to its national narratives and accompanying language politics presented by Indigenous people, the province of Québec, and high levels of immigration.

This book details a study of sign language brokering that is carried out by deaf and hearing people who grow up using sign language at home with deaf parents, known as heritage signers. Child language brokering (CLB) is a form of interpreting carried out informally by children, typically for migrant families. The study of sign language brokering has been largely absent from the emerging body of CLB literature. The book gives an overview of the international, multi-stage, mixed-method study employing an online survey, semi-structured interviews and visual methods, to explore the lived experiences of deaf parents and heritage signers. It will be of interest to practitioners and academics working with signing deaf communities and those who wish to pursue professional practice with deaf communities, as well as academics and students in the fields of Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Interpreting Studies and the Social Science of Childhood.

William Labov (b. 1927) has been a driving force in linguistics for over four decades. Throughout North America, and in much of the rest of the world, his name is synonymous with sociolinguistics. This new Guide for the Perplexed summarizes Labov's work in a number of subfields, including historical linguistics, discourse analysis and not least sociolinguistics. It also sketches a broader context for appreciating Labov's major innovations. His considerable and growing legacy is discussed with comparative glances to other ways of approaching language within linguistics and in neighboring disciplines. Since the publication of The Social Stratification of English in New York City in 1966, Labov has pushed the boundaries of sociolinguistics decade after decade but there has been no one volume guide to his work. This is that guide.

This book provides a unique insight into negotiations around language investment for employability in the context of public employment services. Drawing on extensive ethnographical research carried out in Regional Employment Offices in Switzerland, the authors follow the stories of various job seekers. In doing so, they challenge the currently dominant assumption that investment in language competences leads to better employability. Arguing for a political economic perspective on these issues, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the connections between language and social inequality, as well as students and scholars of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.

PC or Political Correctness has received bad press, according to Choi and Murphy. Indeed, the body of ideas and concepts embodied in PC have been trivialized by conservatives seeking to defend their own positions and by a press catering to a public put off by philosophical discussions. Choi and Murphy seek to analyze the key facets of the debate over PC.

Starting with an examination of the key concepts of PC, Choi and Murphy review the essentials of neo-conservative social philosophy and the Postmodern Alternative as well as neo-conservative critiques of postmodernism. By providing a comprehensive examination of PC from its historical and philosophical underpinnings, Choi and Murphy show what is at stake in the controversy. This book is an important synthesis for researchers and students of contemporary philosophy and social policy.

This book examines the professional discourses produced in women's media in Malaysia and the subject positions that they make available for career women. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis, critical stylistics and feminist conversation analysis, it identifies a range of gendered discourses around employment and motherhood that are underpinned by postfeminism and neoliberal feminism. Through close linguistic analysis of magazine and newspaper articles and radio talk, the study reveals that these discourses substitute balance, individual success, self-transformation and positive feelings for structural change, and entrench the very issues hindering gender workplace equality. Chapters discuss topics such as sexism, work-family balance, extensive and intensive mothering, breadwinning, gender stereotypes, beauty work, 'synthetic sisterhood', media practices and gender equality policies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of language and gender, discourse analysis, and media, communication and cultural studies as well as policy-makers, media practitioners and feminist activists.

In the sociopolitics of language, sometimes yesterday's solution is tomorrow's problem. This volume examines the evolving nature of language acquisition planning through a collection of papers that consider how decisions about language learning and teaching are mediated by a confluence of psychological, ideological, and historical forces. The first two parts of the volume feature empirical studies of formal and informal education across the lifespan and around the globe. Case studies map the agents, resources, and attitudes needed for creating moments and spaces for language learning that may, at times, collide with wider beliefs and policies that privilege some languages over others. The third part of the volume is devoted to conceptual contributions that take up theoretical issues related to epistemological and conceptual challenges for language acquisition planning. These contributions reflect on the full spectrum of social and cognitive factors that intersect with the planning of language teaching and learning including ethnic and racial power relations, historically situated political systems, language ideologies, community language socialization, relationships among stakeholders in communities and schools, interpersonal interaction, and intrapersonal development. In all, the volume demonstrates the multifaceted and socially situated nature of language acquisition planning.

This book investigates the history of national disunity in Germany since the end of the Second World War from a linguistic perspective: what was the role of language in the ideological conflicts of the Cold War and in the difficult process of rebuilding the German nation after 1990? In the first part of the book, Patrick Stevenson explores the ways in which the idea of 'the national language' contributed to the political tensions between the two German states and to the different social experiences of their citizens. He begins by showing how the modern linguistic conflict between east and west in Germany has its roots in a long tradition of debates on the relationship between language and national identity. He then describes the use of linguistic strategies to reinforce the development of a socialist state in the GDR and argues that they ultimately contributed to its demise. The second part considers the social and linguistic consequences of unification. The author discusses the challenges imposed on east Germans by the sudden formation of a single 'speech community' and examines how conflicting representations of easterners and westerners - for example, in personal interactions, the media, and advertising - have hindered progress towards national unity. German division and re-unification were crucial to the development of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. This fascinating account of the relationship between language and social conflict in Germany throws new light on these events and raises important questions for the study of divided speech communities elsewhere. The book will interest sociolinguists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists.

This collection of original articles covers a range of research connecting with the work of the eminent linguist Ruqaiya Hasan. It contains contributions from M.A.K. Halliday, G. Williams, D. Butt, D. Miller and M. Berry among others, an interview with Ruqaiya Hasan, and notes from the contributors about their connection with Ruqaiya Hasan's work.

Language policies are increasingly acknowledged as being a necessary component of many decisions taken in the areas of the labor market, education, minority languages, mobility, and social inclusion of migrants. They can affect the democratic control of political organizations, and they can either entrench or reduce inequalities. These are the central topics of this book. Economists, philosophers, political scientists, and sociolinguists discuss - from an interdisciplinary perspective - the distributive socio-economic effects of language policies, their impact on justice and inequality at the national or international level, as well as the connection between language choices and an inclusive access to public services. The range of social and economic issues raised by linguistic diversity in contemporary societies is large, and this requires new approaches to tackle them. This book provides new input to design better, more efficient, and fair language policies in order to manage linguistic diversity in different areas. Topics covered include: theoretical models of linguistic justice and linguistic disadvantage; the assessment of the socio-economic consequences of language policies; the evaluation of the costs, benefits, and degree of inclusion of language planning measures; the politics of migrants' linguistic integration; as well as multilingualism and economic activities. These topics are discussed in different contexts, including the areas inhabited by linguistic minorities, cities receiving migrants, and supranational organizations.

This book attempts to discuss selected but thorny issues of humor research that form the major stumbling blocks as well as challenges in humor studies at large and thus merit insightful discussion. Any discourse is action, so the text-creation process is always set in a non-verbal context, built of a social and communicative situation, and against the background of relevant culture. On the other hand, humor scholars claim that humorous discourse has its special, essential features that distinguish it from other discourses. The pragmatic solution to the issue of potential circularity of humor defined in terms of discourse and discourse in terms of humor seems only feasible, and thus there is a need to discuss the structure and mechanisms of humorous texts and humorous performances. The chapters in the present volume, contributed by leading scholars in the field of humor studies, address the issues from various theoretical perspectives, from contextual semantics through General Theory of Verbal Humor, cognitive linguistics, discourse studies, sociolinguistics, to Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor, providing an excellent overview of the field to novices and experts alike.

Are contemporary art theorists and critics speaking a language that has lost its meaning? Is it still based on concepts and values that are long out of date? Does anyone know what the function of the arts is in modern society?Roy Harris breaks new ground with his linguistic approach to the key issues. He situates those issues within the long-running debate about the arts and their place in society which goes back to the Classical period in ancient Greece. Contributors to the debate included some of the most celebrated artists and philosophers of their day--Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo, Kant, Hegel, Wagner, Baudelaire, Zola, Delacroix--but none of these eminent figures or their supporters provided a reasoned overview examining the multilingual development of Western artspeak as a whole. Nor did they develop any explicit account of the relationship between the arts and language.The Necessity of Artspeak shows for the first time that what have usually been considered problems of aesthetics and artistic justification often have their source in the linguistic assumptions underlying the terms and arguments presented. It also shows how artspeak has been--and continues to be--manipulated to serve the interests of particular social groups and agendas. Until the semantics of artspeak is more widely understood, the public will continue to be taken in by the latest fads and fashions that propagandists of the art world promote.

Since the earliest days of our species, technology and language have evolved in parallel. This book examines the processes and products of this age-old relationship: a phenomenon we're calling technolingualism -- the mutually influential relationship between language and technology. One the one hand, as humans advance technology to master, control, and change the world around us, our language adapts. More sophisticated social-cultural practices give rise to new patterns of linguistic communication. Language changes in its vocabulary, structures, social conventions, and ideologies. Conversely-and this side of the story has been widely overlooked-the unique features of human language can influence a technology's physical forms and technical processes. Technolingualism explores the fascinating ways, past and present, by which language and technology have informed each other's development. The book reveals important corollaries about the universal nature of language and, most importantly, what it means to be human. From our first babbling noises to the ends of our lives, we are innately attuned to the technologies around us, and our language reflects this. We are, all of us, technolinguals.

Migration and the mobility of citizens around the globe pose important challenges to the linguistic and cultural homogeneity that nation-states rely on for defining their physical boundaries and identity, as well as the rights and obligations of their citizens. A new social order resulting from neoliberal economic practices, globalisation and outsourcing also challenges traditional ways the nation-state has organized its control over the people who have typically travelled to a new country looking for work or better life chances. This collection provides an account of the ways language addresses core questions concerning power and the place of migrants in various institutional and workplace settings. It brings together contributions from a range of geographical settings to understand better how linguistic inequality is (re)produced in this new economic order.