| 文章名 | Age and speaker skills in receding languages: how far do community evaluations and linguists' evaluations agree? |
| 作者 | Nancy C. Dorian |
| 摘要 | The assumption that age will show a correlation with proficiency in the verbal performance of receding-language speakers often has a general validity where group profiles are considered, but exceptions on the individual level can be striking. Individual speaker profiles offered by Aikhenvald for a contemporary Tariana-speaking community and by Bloomfield for the Menomini-speaking community of his time are reviewed in this light and compared with several speaker profiles representing a contracting Gaelic-speaking community in Scotland. Community evaluations of speakers' abilities are shown to reflect local conceptions of speaking well and do not always accord with linguists' assessment of speaker skills. Linguists may need to be more cautious when attaching importance to the role of age as a correlate of proficiency |
| 文章名 | Language choice and code switching of the elderly and the youth |
| 作者 | Maya Khemlani David, Wendy Yee Mei Tien, Ngeow Yeok Meng, Gan Kah Hui |
| 摘要 | The language of the aged has not been given as much attention as that of the youth. Hence, the aim of this research is to compare the language choices and discoursal features of the aged with that of the youth. This study focuses on the Chinese community from Tangkak, Johor, in Peninsular Malaysia, who use the Hokkien dialect. The older informants preferred to speak in their dialect while the younger informants preferred Mandarin. Older informants seldom code-switched but when they did, the codes in their mixed discourse were Hokkien and Mandarin, while that of the younger informants were Mandarin, Malay, and/or English. On the basis of an analysis of the audio recordings, observations, field notes, and informal interviews, the features are identified in the discourse of the aged, i.e., off-target verbosity (OTV), painful self-disclosure (PSD), and self-handicapping talk. The study shows that the discoursal features of the aged are clearly different from that of the youth. |
| 文章名 | Intergenerational phonological change in the Famagusta dialect of Turkish Cypriots |
| 作者 | İdil Menteşoğlu |
| 摘要 | There have been countless speculations about the phenomenon of languages changing in time from generation to generation. As the age difference between generations increases, changes in the language passed down from the older generation to the younger become much more noticeable. Over time, Cypriot Turkish (i.e., the variety of Turkish used by the Turkish Cypriot community in Northern Cyprus) has been exposed to a variety of internal and external changes through contact with Standard Turkish. The main purpose of this article is to explore the intergenerational phonological shift over apparent time in the city of Famagusta in Northern Cyprus. The focus is on the competition between the traditional non-standard Turkish Cypriot voiced obstruent stop variants [g], [d], and [b] and the Standard Turkish voiceless variants [k], [t], and [p]. The results show sociolinguistic variation depending on age and gender, and point to the possibility of a long-term decline in Cypriot Turkish in favor of Standard Turkish. |
| 文章名 | Beyond stereotypes of old age: the discourse of elderly Japanese women |
| 作者 | Yoshiko Matsumoto |
| 摘要 | As with other socially categorized groups of people, the elderly do not escape being stereotyped by the more dominant groups in society. Old age is often perceived as a less significant stage of life after the peak of adulthood, one that represents decline from full physical, social, and linguistic competence. A question that presents itself is whether such stereotypical perceptions of the elderly are consistent with their actual lives and linguistic behavior. I consider this question by examining naturally occurring, informal peer conversations among the elderly, a type of conversational data that has rarely been studied. I focus on such conversations by elderly Japanese women, comparing the content and the manner of their conversations with commonly held perceptions about elderly women and their verbal behavior, such as the images of being depressed, submissive, and unconcerned about physical attractiveness. The examination reveals that the elderly women in the present study do not display such images; in fact, they can be lively and humorous even when presenting painful experiences, and they exhibit an image of being independent and conscious of their physical appearance. |
| 文章名 | Age categories as an argumentative resource in conflict talk: evidence from a Greek television reality show |
| 作者 | Apostolos Poulios |
| 摘要 | Drawing on tools from ethnomethodological conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, this article shows how age identities are constructed through talk-in-interaction. The data analyzed come from a Greek television reality show and involve two participants: a 53-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man. Although their chronological age would not strictly classify them as old people, the identity old person actually becomes relevant for them on various occasions. This identity is either invoked by the two participants themselves or by younger participants and is argumentatively exploited as a means to various ends: to construct their own arguments or have arguments with other participants, and in defending themselves or accusing others of certain behaviors. The data analysis shows how speakers can distance themselves from an age category (most often the category old person) and, on a di¤erent occasion, endorse the same category if this is required by the context of the interaction or helps them evoke specific identity features. Broadly, this article will show that chronological age alone does not determine a speaker's age identity: age identities are collaboratively negotiated or resisted by conversationalists and/or attributed to them in specific contexts during social interaction. Thus, aging is largely a socially established process, a contextualized interactional achievement. |
| 文章名 | Language politics and policy in the United States: implications for the immigration debate |
| 作者 | April Linton |
| 摘要 | Is there a role for language policy in immigration policy? This article examines recent attempts to legislate language in light of historical and contemporary debates about immigration and immigrant assimilation. It chronicles U.S. language politics and policy, and then appraises national language and official English bills recently introduced in Congress in view of data on language usage and preferences, suggesting ways that the current resurgence of a national debate about language could and should impact the larger debate about immigration. |
| 文章名 | Polish Canadians and Polish immigrants in Canada: self-identity and language attitude |
| 作者 | Joanna Lustanski |
| 摘要 | This article examines the ethnic identity of the Polish minority group living in Canada in the last two decades, that is, after 1989 when Poland got rid of the Communist system and Poles were allowed to freely leave the country. On the basis of the survey distributed among representatives of two generations of Poles in Canada, I examine how the participants position themselves with respect to core values of ethnicity — language, religion, and culture (Smolicz, Minority languages as core values of ethnic cultures, John Benjamins, 1992). The results of my study show that respondents themselves break the stereotypical vision of Polish identity in which language matters are central. They explicitly indicate respecting Polish traditions and customs as the most fundamental token of Polish ethnic identity, placing the value of the Polish language — identified by speaking Polish and teaching children Polish — in second and third positions. The ethnocultural orientation which they present can be accounted for in two fundamental ways: 1) the socio-historical past of the community and 2) the specific characteristics of Canada as a country of settlement. |
| 文章名 | Codeswitching and ethnicity: grammatical types of codeswitching in the Afrikaans speech community |
| 作者 | Gerald Stell |
| 摘要 | Codeswitching in its function as a marker of ethnicity within the same speech community has so far mostly been illustrated with case studies involving closely related codes (e.g. dialect/standard) rather than distinct standard languages. The purpose of this article is to show in how far Afrikaans-English codeswitching reflects in its grammatical forms ethnic divisions within the Afrikaans speech community. In order to answer this question, Muysken's threefold taxonomy of insertions, alternations and congruent lexicalization is used to categorize and quantify forms of Afrikaans-English codeswitching in the informal speech of three age cohorts distributed across seven samples of White and Coloured Afrikaans speakers from South Africa and Namibia. The analysis reveals that codeswitching patterns differ across the ethnic divide not only in terms of relative proportions of insertions, alternations and congruent lexicalization, but also in terms of specific grammatical or syntactic characteristics which these codeswitching types may assume. On the basis of some of these specific characteristics the conclusion is drawn that codeswitching practices remain to some degree conditioned by perceptions of ethnic group membership rather than by histories of language contact or typological distance between Afrikaans and English. |
| 文章名 | Language policy in post-Soviet Azerbaijan: political aspects |
| 作者 | Jala Garibova |
| 摘要 | This article addresses the politics of language planning in post-Soviet Azerbaijan by reflecting upon the trends and challenges inherent in the “language movements” in developing nations. Language policy in general tends to reflect the stages of national priority formation, the level of democratic development in a nation, the vulnerability of national identity feelings, and external factors impacting national language policy formulation. In developing nations, language policy and politics are so inseparably interwoven that language policy can often be relied upon as a mirror reflecting political and social tendencies occurring within these nations. From this point of view, language policy programs of developing nations reveal, in many cases, common aspects of nation-building aspirations as well as possible mistakes involved. |
| 文章名 | The linguistic construction of gender in Azerbaijan: sociodemographic factors influencing Russian language choice |
| 作者 | Kenneth Zuercher |
| 摘要 | On the basis of data collected from September 2002 to June 2003, this article examines the influence of sex, language of instruction in secondary school, and age on overall reported Russian use by speakers in Azerbaijan. Russian-educated subjects reported higher Russian use than those educated in Azerbaijani, and women reported higher Russian usage than men. The latter is attributed to prestige assigned to Russian, the association of Azerbaijani with a rural/agrarian lifestyle, and with cultural values tending toward the limitation of women's choices. Competing forces account for the changes in Russian use with age: Azerbaijani linguistic nationalism, the breakdown of Russian-speaking friendship networks acquired through Russian language education, and a shift in female gender roles shortly after graduation from university.Through a close analysis of survey data and a review of the sociolinguistic literature, building on an extensive discussion of this data (Zuercher, Language choice in Azerbaijan: A Soviet legacy, University of Texas M.A. thesis, 2004), this article suggests a four-dimensional model for language choice in Azerbaijan, with prestige/formality, cultural traditions, and socioeconomic factors interacting. It also demonstrates that women's language choices change over time as Russian-speaking friendship networks deteriorate and women take on the role as keepers and purveyors of Azerbaijani cultural traditions. |
| 文章名 | The issue of plurilingualism and language policy in Azerbaijan |
| 作者 | Azad Mammadov |
| 摘要 | In the last decades, increasing attention has been devoted to the role of socio-cultural identity in the language-learning process. What issues have taken the stage throughout this discussion? What is the relationship between individual, community, and socio-cultural identity in the language-learning process? This article will explore the role of social space and cultural identity in the development of plurilingualism.The emphasis on successful communication skills, motivated by increasing opportunities for interaction and mobility in Azerbaijan and in the rest of the world, remains important, but globalization and internationalization pose new challenges to social cohesion and integration. Language skills remain essential if individuals are to benefit from opportunities in employment leading to economic mobility, but they are also necessary to participate actively in the social processes. This increasing focus on language policies is reflected in the goals of education for plurilingual and intercultural citizens capable of interacting in a number of languages across linguistic and cultural boundaries.In this context, this article recalls the main developments in language education policy and practice in Azerbaijan from the early 1990s to the present. |
| 文章名 | Cross-generational bilingual strategies among Azerbaijanis in Tehran |
| 作者 | Helena Bani-Shoraka |
| 摘要 | In this article I explore three interactional strategies in which language choice and code switching frequently occur in the management of interaction. These bilingual practices are used as both inclusive and exclusive social strategies. The focus of this study is Azerbaijani families experiencing ongoing language shift from bilingualism in Azerbaijani and Persian to monolingualism in Persian. The data are drawn from ethnographic research and informal conversations audio recorded in these bilingual and multigenerational Azerbaijani families resident in Tehran, the capital city of Iran. The methods of analysis integrate a sequential analysis with ethnographic information. |
| 文章名 | Dialects in Norway: catching up with the rest of Europe? |
| 作者 | Unn Røyneland |
| 摘要 | Norway has sometimes been described as a sociolinguistic paradise with its abundant linguistic heterogeneity — both written and spoken. Dialect diversity has been and is still considerable and dialects are used in practically all social domains. However, dialects in Norway are changing. In this article I will discuss the historical background for the linguistic situation in Norway, and I will take a closer look at present-day developments and discuss the structural, sociocultural, and psychological mechanisms behind them. The question is whether the dialect situation in Norway remains very different from most other parts of Europe, or if at least some areas of Norway may be experiencing similar developments。 |
| 文章名 | Dialect loss and dialect vitality in Flanders |
| 作者 | Reinhild Vandekerckhove |
| 摘要 | Dialect loss is a relatively new but by now quite general phenomenon in Flanders (i.e., Dutch-speaking Belgium). Although the processes of dialect change and dialect loss have proceeded with great regional differences in speed and intensity in the past decades, there is a general tendency toward replacing primary dialect features of a relatively local scope by secondary dialect features that have a wider distribution and/or bear stronger resemblance to the standard Dutch equivalents. Some urban dialects, especially the dialect of the city of Antwerp, play a prominent role in this process. The implication is that the old local dialects have not made way for a generalized use of (Belgian) Standard Dutch. Present-day Flanders is evolving toward a new diglossia: Standard Dutch was and still is reserved for formal domains, but for the younger generations in many regions the dominant variety for informal colloquial speech is no longer the local dialect but a “regiolectal” variety. Every region has its own regiolect but the so-called tussentaal (literally ‘language in between’) of the Brabant–Antwerp dialect region is clearly dominating the linguistic scene in present-day Flanders. |
| 文章名 | Regional languages in Romance Belgium: the point of no return? |
| 作者 | Michel Francard |
| 摘要 | Wallonia (Romance Belgium) is the Oïl region where French today is most exposed to regional languages. This situation is all the more remarkable because this same Wallonia took part very early in the development of French beyond its original geographical area. This article addresses, firstly, the question of the relationship between the regional endogenous languages of Wallonia, on the one hand, and French, on the other, from the expansion of the latter in the Middle Ages until today. It aims, secondly, to analyze the present vitality of Wallonia's vernacular languages, examining the clear decline relative to the situation at the start of the twentieth century, several decades of indifference or even hostility, and more recently the marked renewal of interest by Walloons in their ancestral languages. |
| 文章名 | One foot in the grave? Dialect death, dialect contact, and dialect birth in England |
| 作者 | David Britain |
| 摘要 | I survey here some of the recent evidence of dialect attrition from sociolinguistic and variationist studies carried out in England. In doing so, and by highlighting the origins of some of the ongoing changes in English dialects, I hope to make three claims in particular: firstly, that dialect death is inextricably linked to dialect contact — in order to understand how dialect death has changed the dialectological landscape of England, we need to appreciate the linguistic consequences of contact more generally; secondly, and apparently in contrast with some other speech communities, the attrition process has not led to a widespread shift toward RP or standard English. I argue, thirdly, that while some dialects are undoubtedly undergoing attrition, new varieties are emerging, driven by both expansion and relocation diffusion, and shaped by contact between local, regional, interregional, and other, including standard, varieties. Although the developments currently affecting English dialects in England are not necessarily particularly new, they are proceeding on an unprecedented spatial scale, a scale that has resulted from some rather wide-ranging social and economic developments that have accelerated contact between speakers of structurally distinct dialects. |
| 文章名 | Dedialectalization in France: convergence and divergence |
| 作者 | David Hornsby |
| 摘要 | This article challenges the received view that geolinguistic variation in France is both imminent and inevitable. It is certainly true that France's ancestral dialects and regional languages are in terminal decline, and that a combination of late industrialization and the dominance of an oversized capital conurbation has engendered regional dialect leveling of a particularly extreme kind. But we will argue that new varieties are emerging, and that these represent independent vernacular norms rather than an ephemeral dialect residue as is generally assumed. While these regional French varieties are often embryonic, they are distinguishing themselves via a number of processes, including notably the creation of interdialect forms, differential adoption of urban variants and/or divergent norms for supralocal variables, the retention of archaisms, and local phonological divergence. Francophone Europe is seeing profound changes to the nature of geolinguistic variation, not the end of diversity. |
| 文章名 | Standardness and nonstandardness in Spain: dialect attrition and revitalization of regional dialects of Spanish |
| 作者 | Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy, Juan Andrés Villena-Ponsoda |
| 摘要 | In any process of linguistic standardization, the promotion of one variety to the status of standard triggers the devaluation of the other linguistic varieties present within the boundaries of the nation state and impinges upon their domains. Diachronically speaking, this process is a constant struggle between the standard and the nonstandard varieties either to reach uniformity and invariance, or to avoid compliance and maintain local values and customs, always under the pressures of prestige of different kinds. The present study accounts for certain aspects of the dialect contact maintained between the standard Castilian Spanish and nonstandard varieties in Spain. This ongoing contact situation normally yields cases of, more often, dialect obsolescence together with standardization and leveling, on the one hand, or, conversely, and less often, survival processes of dialect maintenance, on the other. Particular attention is paid here to dialect attrition and revitalization with reference to innovative regional dialects in Spain, including, among others, Andalusian and Murcian varieties. |
| 文章名 | Code switching and the future of the Welsh language |
| 作者 | Margaret Deuchar, Peredur Davies |
| 摘要 | In this article we argue that Alan Thomas's (1982) ideas about the linguistic conditions for language death were ahead of his time, and in fact anticipated those of a prominent code-switching theorist, Myers-Scotton (1998). Both scholars postulated similar stages representing language shift, and both could be interpreted as presenting a scenario for language shift in Welsh–English bilinguals towards monolingualism in English. The ideas of the two scholars are tested empirically by our analysis of a sample of Welsh–English data in order to determine whether or not the linguistic conditions favouring language shift or language death can be found. Our analysis shows that the data are clearly at the first stage, classic code-switching in Myers-Scotton's (1998) terms, with Welsh providing the main grammatical frame, while English provides some content words and phrases. We argue that this stage is associated with stable bilingualism, especially if the socio-political circumstances favour that stability. We then present evidence that the recent socio-political climate has favoured the revitalization of Welsh, and suggest that there is no cause for pessimism about the future of Welsh, although “eternal vigilance” is necessary. |
| 文章名 | Language attitudes and identity in a North Wales town: “something different about Caernarfon”? |
| 作者 | Eddie Williams |
| 摘要 | This article focuses on attitudes to language and identity in Caernarfon, a town in the Welsh language “heartland” county of Gwynedd. While the salience of language in attitude and identity varies, it plays an important role where different language groups come into contact. We argue that diglossia, far from indicating social consensus with respect to code alternation, indicates conflict, especially in cases of colonisation, with the attendant language dominance of the colonising group, such as occurred in Wales. Although current language attitudes (in terms of cognitive, affective, and behavioural components) are fragmented in Wales generally, critical historical events remain salient in Gwynedd. Against this background, we examine attitudes through analysing three recent episodes where language is implicated, together with a set of interviews. The conclusion is that while the role of the Welsh language in Welsh identity is equivocal, Welsh speakers in Caernarfon are (in line with conflict theory) contesting hitherto English domains. The implications of these findings for the Welsh Assembly Government's language policy are examined. |
| 文章名 | Accommodating “new” speakers? An attitudinal investigation of L2 speakers of Welsh in south-east Wales |
| 作者 | Elen Robert |
| 摘要 | This article presents the main findings of a study investigating common linguistically defined stereotypes of speakers of Welsh who have acquired Welsh through Welsh-medium education in south-east Wales (second-language speakers). In the sociolinguistic contexts of language shift and language conflict in Wales, which have heightened purist attitudes towards an idealised standard variety and towards the traditional dialects, some negative attitudes towards second-language speech and second-language speakers have come to the fore in Welsh-language public discourse and among the general Welsh-speaking population. Eighty-five respondents, representing a reasonable cross-section of the Welsh-speaking population, evaluated the spontaneous speech of four female second-language speakers from south-east Wales and two first-language speakers from less Anglicised areas. Data were collected on scales relating to perceived language competence, perceived ethnicity, and evaluations of social attractiveness and prestige. Results suggest that Welsh speakers stereotype south-eastern second-language speakers of Welsh according to their perceived language competence. |
| 文章名 | Issues of gender and parents' language values in the minority language socialisation of young children in Wales |
| 作者 | Kathryn Jones, Delyth Morris |
| 摘要 | In Wales, there is considerable concern that an inadequate proportion of young children are being brought up speaking Welsh in the home, particularly in homes with only one Welsh-speaking parent, to ensure the future vitality of Welsh as a language of the home, family, and community. This article investigates to what extent young children's Welsh language socialisation in “mixed-language” families depends on whether the mother or the father is the Welsh speaker. On the basis of the first stage of a longitudinal ethnographic study, we found that Welsh-speaking parents who valued Welsh highly were more likely to create opportunities for their children's Welsh language socialisation in the home. This would appear to be true for both Welsh-speaking mothers and fathers in mixed-language households. |
