This collection of essays by the Linguistic Politeness Research Group represents the results of over a decade of the group's research, discussions, seminars and conferences on the subject of linguistic politeness. The volume brings together cutting edge essays reflecting the range of discursive approaches to the analysis of politeness and impoliteness.

This book comprehensively analyzes the development of interculturally blended third spaces by the second language learner, beginning with the linguistic and sociocultural imprints of the first language and culture on the mind and culminating in the proposal of a phase-model of the development of intercultural competence. The foundational analysis of L1-mediated constructs is followed by an analysis of forms interaction, concepts of identity and constructs of culture/interculture, thus shifting the object of analysis from the subjective to the intersubjective levels of construction and interaction. The focus of the book is on the gradual development of interculturally blended third spaces in the mind of the learner as genuinely new bases for construction. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research in cultural psychology, linguistic anthropology, critical theory, language acquisition and second language learning and shows how culture and interculture need to be emphasized as an integral part of second language learning.

It was traditionally assumed that having a single official language was a necessary condition for the wellbeing of the state, particularly in France and Britain. This assumption is now questioned, and the regional languages are making, in some cases, an impressive comeback. It is the story of their decline, their survival and, more recently their efforts to re-establish themselves as effective tools of normal communication which is tackled in this book. Each language is analyzed in terms of its development from the earliest times, through its period of decline to present-day efforts at regeneration.

Leading scholars in the field examine the role played by the English language in contemporary Japanese society. Their various chapters cover the nature, status, and function of English in Japan, focusing on the ways in which globalization is influencing language practices in the country.

Peter Trudgill looks at why human societies at different times and places produce different kinds of language. He considers how far social factors influence language structure and compares languages and dialects spoken across the globe, from Vietnam to Nigeria, Polynesia to Scandinavia, and from Canada to Amazonia. Modesty prevents Pennsylvanian Dutch Mennonites using the verb wotte ('want'); stratified society lies behind complicated Japanese honorifics; and a mountainous homeland suggests why speakers of Tibetan-Burmese Lahu have words for up there and down there. But culture and environment don't explain why Amazonian Jarawara needs three past tenses, nor why Nigerian Igbo can make do with eight adjectives, nor why most languages spoken in high altitudes do not exhibit an array of spatial demonstratives. Nor do they account for some languages changing faster than others or why some get more complex while others get simpler. The author looks at these and many other puzzles, exploring the social, linguistic, and other factors that might explain them and in the context of a huge range of languages and societies. Peter Trudgill writes readably, accessibly, and congenially. His book is jargon-free, informed by acute observation, and enlivened by argument: it will appeal to everyone with an interest in the interactions of language with culture, environment, and society.

In the thirty-year history of the study of language and gender, theory and application have branched incrementally like the reaches of a family tree. The study of language and gender has progressed from an eye-opening review of differences between the "language" of women and men to observations that language served to preserve "domination" of one sex over another and on to a cross-cultural approach which observes that the ritual styles of talk that are observed among even the youngest girls and boys at play remain with them as women and men. Language and gender has been studied in many institutional and organizational environments including medical, legal, law enforcement, academic, and business settings. While all of those settings have historically been marked by gender-based differentials in opportunity, pay, and power, one of the most metaphorically and demographically gender-differentiated institutions has remained unexamined in the sociolinguistic literature: the military. The military is particularly interesting for linguistic study because it is veritably synonymous with the socio-cultural construction of American masculinity, and therefore a fascinating venue for the study of language, gender, and power. With this innovative study, the author opens the door to considerations of power, gender dynamics, and language and ideology in a community that has not yet been studied using the techniques of discourse analysis. And while some have criticized the utility of examining "outlying cases," particularly in studies of gender or sexuality in language, the military community, though not studied, can hardly be considered an outlying case. On the contrary, American military identity ispart of American identity in that it influences the American masculine construct and has affected 26 million veterans and their families, as well as those who may not be in the military but work with and near military members and installations on a regular basis. Also unique to this study and the author's analysis of the usage of "ma'am" and "sir" is an approach which does not necessarily examine how women and men use language, but how those in their community use language to address them as women and men. This landmark book provides a refreshing perspective on gender and language dynamics in a setting not yet examined. Language and Gender in the Military, will be a vital resource for those in gender and language studies.

English is a global language which has spread historically through imperialism and more recently through communication networks throughout the world. In each location in which English is spoken it absorbs some of the idiosyncracies of the language native to that region, and one of the most fascinating areas of research for World Englishes is the African context. This research monograph examines English as it is spoken by the Xhosa people in South Africa, and is based primarily on an extensive spoken corpus of Xhosa English. Vivian de Klerk presents a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the historical development of this variety of English, and of English in South Africa more generally. The book outlines how the corpus of spoken Xhosa English was designed and compiled, and discusses the criteria relating to informants, the use of spoken rather than written data, and the codes and transcription conventions. The syntactic and pragmatic features of Xhosa English as demonstrated by the corpus are described in detail, and two chapters focus on the use of the discourse markers 'actually' and 'well'. The second section of this book examines the implications of the corpus findings.Vivian de Klerk looks at the implications of the use of this variety of English in educational, legal, social, cultural and everyday contexts. The final chapter of the book speculates as to the future of this fascinating variety of English in a globalised world. This cutting-edge study will be of interest to researchers in world Englishes, language variation and corpus linguistics.

The Haitian Creole Language is the first book that deals broadly with a language that has too long lived in the shadow of French. With chapters contributed by the leading scholars in the study of Creole, it provides information on this language's history; structure; and use in education, literature, and social interaction. Although spoken by virtually all Haitians, Creole was recognized as the co-official language of Haiti only a little over twenty years ago. The Haitian Creole Language provides essential information for professionals, other service providers, and Creole speakers who are interested in furthering the use of Creole in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Increased language competencies would greatly promote the education of Creole speakers and their participation in the social and political life of their countries of residence. This book is an indispensable tool for those seeking knowledge about the centrality of language in the affairs of Haiti, its people, and its diaspora.

This highly accessible book examines linguistic diversity in Galicia, one of the devolved regions of Spain. Its principal hypotheses are: that the Galician language is an intrinsic characteristic of Galician ethnic identity: that policy and planning impact on the behavioural practices of language users, reflected in loyalty and prestige factors: that whilst a reversal in traditional perceptions and attitudes is resulting in a reaffirmation of Galician as the autochthonous language, its sociolinguistic relationship with Castilian has not been resolved: that Galicians have to negotiate multiple identities, subject to constant change and adjustment. Through its innovative and in-depth analysis of Galician linguistic, sociolinguistic, ethnic and cultural revival and revitalisation processes, it also serves to emphasise the wider relevance of such studies to the case of minoritised languages in general.

Why do languages allow us to say 'the same thing' in so many different ways? One of the answers is that in saying what we want to say, we always position ourselves in social space as well, by speaking differently from relevant other social actors or groups. This volume explores how variability in language is exploited (and maintained) in order to perform this social identity work in interaction. It shows that variable features cluster together in socially meaningful ways when considered as social (communicative) styles linked to social identities.

The authors combine a theoretical reassessment of how we understand, study and analyze processes of identification with detailed case studies of the discourses of three-generation families living in split-border communities along the former Iron Curtain, talking about themselves and other social groups, about their way of life and their experiences past and present.

Examining identity in relation to globalization and migration, this book uses narratives and memoirs from contemporary authors who have lived 'in-between' two or more languages. It explores the human desire to find one's 'own place' in new cultural contexts, and looks at the role of language in shaping a sense of belonging in society.

Over several generations villagers of Dominica have been shifting from Patwa, an Afro-French creole, to English, the official language. Despite government efforts at Patwa revitalization and cultural heritage tourism, rural caregivers and teachers prohibit children from speaking Patwa in their presence. Drawing on detailed ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of video-recorded social interaction in naturalistic home, school, village and urban settings, the study explores this paradox and examines the role of children and their social worlds. It offers much-needed insights into the study of language socialization, language shift and Caribbean children's agency and social lives, contributing to the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of children's cultures. Further, it demonstrates the critical role played by children in the transmission and transformation of linguistic practices, which ultimately may determine the fate of a language.

Amy L. Paugh is Associate Professor of Anthropology at James Madison University. Her research investigates language socialization, children's cultures and language ideologies in the Caribbean and United States.

This volume presents evidence about how we understand communication in changing times, and proposes that such understandings may contribute to the development of pedagogy for teaching and learning. It expands current debates on multilingualism, asking which signs are in use and in action, and what are their social, political, and historical implications. The volume s starting-point is Bakhtin s heteroglossia, a key concept in understanding the tensions, conflicts, and multiple voices within, among, and between those signs. The chapters provide illuminating accounts of language practices as they bring into play, both in practice and in pedagogy, voices which index students localities, social histories, circumstances, and identities. The book documents the performance of linguistic repertoires in an era of profound social change caused by the shifting nature of nation-states, increased movement of people across territories, and growing digital communication.

Our thinking on language and multilingualism is expanding rapidly. Up until recently we have tended to regard languages as bounded entities, and multilingualism has been understood as knowing more than one language. Working with the concept of heteroglossia, researchers are developing alternative perspectives that treat languages as sets of resources for expressing meaning that can be drawn on by speakers in communicatively productive ways in different contexts. These perspectives raise fundamental questions about the myriad of ways of knowing and using language(s). This collection brings together the contributions of many of the key researchers in the field. It will provide an authoritative reference point for contemporary interpretations of heteroglossia and valuable accounts of how translanguaging can be explored and exploited in the fields of education and cultural studies. Professor Constant Leung, King s College London, UK.

"From rap and hip hop to taxi cabs, and from classrooms to interactive online learning environments, each of the chapters in this volume written by well-known and up-and-coming scholars provide fascinating accounts drawing on a wide diversity of rich descriptive data collected in heteroglossic contexts around the globe. Creese and Blackledge have brought together a compelling collection that builds upon and expands Bakhtin s construct of heteroglossia. These scholars help to move the field away from the view of languages as separate bounded system by providing detailed examples and expert analyses of the ways bilinguals and multilinguals draw upon their linguistic repertoires for effective and meaningful communication." Wayne E. Wright, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA."

Why are different varieties of the Japanese language used differently in social interaction, and how are they perceived? How do honorifics operate to express diverse affective stances, such as politeness? Why have issues of gendered speech been so central in public discourse, and how are they reflected and refracted in language use as social practice? This book examines Japanese sociolinguistic phenomena from a fascinating new perspective, focusing on the historical construction of language norms and its relationship to actual language use in contemporary Japan. This socio-historically sensitive account stresses the different choices which have shaped Japanese and Western sociolinguistics and how varieties of Japanese, honorifics and politeness, and gendered language have emerged in response to the socio-political landscape in which a modernizing Japan found itself.

This analysis of the rhetoric of nine successfully persuasive politicians explains how their use of language created credible and consistent stories about themselves and the social world they inhabit. It explores their use of metaphors, their myths, and how language analysis helps us to understand how politicians are able to persuade.

Each chapter of this book analyzes the rhetoric of speeches by major American and British politicians to show how metaphor is used to create political myths of monsters, villains and heroic leaders. Metaphors are shown to interact with other figures of speech to communicate subliminal meanings by drawing on the unconscious emotional association of words. An innovative study for students and researchers in discourse analysis, political communication, journalism and media studies.

As literature written in Latin has almost no female authors, we are dependent on male writers for some understanding of the way women would have spoken. Plautus (3rd to 2nd century BCE) and Terence (2nd century BCE) consistently write particular linguistic features into the lines spoken by their female characters: endearments, soft speech, and incoherent focus on numerous small problems. Dorota M. Dutsch describes the construction of this feminine idiom and asks whether it should be considered as evidence of how Roman women actually spoke.

Sociolinguistics in Ireland takes a fresh look at the interface of language and society in present-day Ireland. In a series of specially commissioned chapters it examines the relationship of the Irish and English languages and traces their dynamic development both in history and at present.

The Camorra trials in Naples involved more than a thousand people charged with belonging to a criminal organization, the Nuova Camorra Organizzata. After some key witnesses turned against their former associates and collaborated with the Justice Department, more than 800 people were convicted, but in the appeal their credibility was destroyed and the majority were acquitted. To investigate this dramatic reversal of the defendants' convictions, Jacquemet combines analysis of talk and power technologies with a reflection on truth and credibility as communicative representations.

This book presents a sociolinguistics of academic publishing from an historical and contemporary perspective. Using Swedish academia as a case study, it focuses on publishing practices within history and psychology. The author demonstrates how new regimes of research evaluation and performance-based funding are impinging on university life. His central argument, following the French sociologist Bourdieu, is that the trend towards publishing in English should be understood as a social strategy, developed in response to such transformations. Thought-provoking and challenging, this book will interest students and scholars of sociolinguistics, language planning and language policy, research policy, sociology of science, history and psychology.

This wide-ranging volume explores how gender and language are used and transformed to discuss, enact, and project social differences in light of global economic and political changes in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries. It presents analyses of language and gender from a broad spectrum of national contexts: Catalonia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Nigeria, Vietnam, Philippines, Tonga, and the United States. Cases studies consider language and gender in changing workplaces, schools and immigrant integration workshops, as well as in new and emerging sites for consumption and the production of identity. They also analyze the changing meanings of multilingualism, and the construction of ideologies about gender and language in colonial and postcolonial/national ideologies. The papers engage with and contribute to theoretical conceptualizations of globalization, cosmopolitanism, (post)colonialism, (trans)nationalism, and public spheres by drawing on a variety of sociolinguistic analytic strategies (variation analysis, media analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of speaking, sociology of language, colonial discourse analysis).

Freedom of speech is a tradition distinctive to American political culture, and this book focuses on the major debates and discourses that shaped this tradition. Today the American Bill of Rights, with its famous First Amendment, is generally taken for granted, but when James Madison proposed a Bill of Rights in 1789, the reaction among his colleagues in the first Congress was hostile. The book examines how Madison was able to prevail in spite of such opposition. It focuses on discourses connected to the Sedition Act of 1798, which represented a serious threat to freedom of speech and the first Amendment. The author sheds fresh light on key Congressional debates on the Bill of Rights and the Sedition Act by developing and applying an approach to fallacy theory that is suitable to the study of political discourse. He further focuses on criticism of the Madison administration in Federalist newspapers during the War of 1812, arguing that Madison's toleration of such criticism was important in shaping a tradition of free expression in the United States. Efforts to suppress free expression during the Wilson administration represented a serious challenge to this tradition, and the author goes on to employ fallacy theory in examining Congressional discourses for and against Wilson's policy of repression.

This collection is unique. It is a permanent record in English, of an experiment in cultural communication - a trilingual virtual symposium lasting five months, in which ten essays by internationally renowned thinkers on the impact of the Internet on texts, intellectual life, research, communication and culture were the core texts. Each one of the ten texts grapples with one of these themes, and they include personal accounts, provocative predictions, and original analyses. The essays and the text-e project, along with a selection of contributions from the online discussion, are introduced and contextualized by Gloria Origgi.

The Rhetoric of Religious Cults takes as its departure point the notion that 'cults' have a distinctive language and way of recruiting members. First outlining a rhetorical framework, which encompasses contemporary discourse analysis, the persuasive texts of three movements - Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and Children of God - are analysed in detail and their discourse compared with other kinds of recruitment literature. Cults' distinctive negative profile in society is not matched by a linguistic typology. Indeed, this negative profile seems to rest on the semantics and application of the term 'cult' itself.