SUMMER  SCHOOL  OF  SOCIOLINGUISTICS,    

GLASGOW  2011  PROGRAMME  and  BOOK  

OF  ABSTRACTS  

 

2

SSS3  GLASGOW  2011    

We  are  delighted  to  welcome  you  to  the  third  annual  Summer  School  of  Sociolinguistics  held  this  year  at  The  University  of  Glasgow!      Hosted  previously  by  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  the  bar  has  certainly  been  set!  We  hope  we  can  reproduce  some  of  the  elements  that  made  these  events  so  successful.  We  would  like  to  extend  our  thanks  to  the  previous  organisers  Miriam  Meyerhoff,  Agata  Szymanczak,  Anna  Strycharz  and  Chie  Adachi  whose  advice  and  support  have  made  this  year’s  summer  school  possible.    We  have  a  fantastic  panel  of  experts  to  lead  the  school  this  year.  Dr  Devyani  Sharma  (QMU,  London)  will  talk  about  Ethnicity  Contact  and  Change,  Dr  Jane  Stuart-­‐Smith  (University  of  Glasgow)  on  Language  and  the  Media,  Dr  Daniel  Johnson  (Philadelphia)  on  the  Statistical  Analysis  of  Speech  Data,  Dr  Lauren  Hall-­‐Lew  (University  of  Edinburgh)  on  Sociophonetics  and  Indexicality  and  Dr  Erez  Levon  (QMU,  London)  will  lead  Friday  focussing  on  Perception  and  Identities  in  Interaction.  We  are  also  very  pleased  to  welcome  back  Glasgow  graduate  Dr  Robert  Lawson  who  will  facilitate  our  Careers  Session  on  Wednesday  afternoon.  This  session  will  be  introduced  by  Robert  with  a  short  presentation  on  aspects  and  issues  involved  in  Early  Career  Research  followed  by  a  round  table  discussion.  Please  come  along  with  any  questions  you  have  surrounding  careers  or  the  PhD  process  such  as  how  to  survive  your  viva  or  writing  a  successful  grant  application.      As  well  as  a  packed  academic  programme  we  have  also  organised  a  number  of  social  events.  On  Wednesday  there  is  a  planned  excursion  on  the  Glasgow  City  Tour  Bus.  The  tour  company  is  offering  delegates  from  the  Summer  School  a  discounted  rate  of  £7.  There  is  a  voucher  in  your  welcome  packs,  present  this  to  the  driver  when  you  get  on  to  claim  your  discount.  The  University  of  Glasgow  is  part  of  the  tour  which  means  we  can  take  the  bus  from  outside  the  main  gate.  We  can  join  the  tour  directly  after  the  school  on  Wednesday  at  4.50pm.  We  will  then  carry  on  to  Dr  Jennifer  Smith’s  flat  where  she  has  kindly  offered  to  host  a  cheese  and  wine  reception.  Your  bus  tour  ticket  is  valid  for  two  days  which  means  you  may  also  use  the  ticket  on  Thursday.      On  Friday  we  have  organised  the  Summer  School  Dinner  at  Tiki  Bar  and  Kitsch  Inn,  Bath  Street,  Glasgow (www.tikibarglasgow.com).  Tiki  Bar  are  offering  a  two  course  meal  plus  a  cocktail  for  £20  per  person  (unfortunately  students  will  have  to  cover  the  cost  of  the  meal  themselves).  If  you  would  like  to  come  to  the  meal  please  let  Sophie  Holmes  know  no  later  than  Tuesday  5th  July.  Please  also  provide  your  money  along  with  your  choice  of  starter  and  main  course.  The  menu  can  be  found  along  with  directions  to  Tiki  Bar  at  the  back  of  the  programme.      

3

The  Summer  School  will  be  providing  lunch  everyday  (including  vegetarian  and  gluten  free  options)  except  Wednesday  where  students  are  free  to  make  their  own  arrangements.  You  are  welcome  to  join  Sophie  and  Cassie  who  are  planning  to  take  a  party  down  to  Scotland’s  celebrated  Indian  restaurant,  Ashöka.  The  restaurant  is  on  Ashton  Lane  a  short  walk  from  university  and  offers  a  £6  thali  box  meal  deal.      We  are  looking  forward  to  getting  to  know  you  and  hearing  about  your  research  and  we  hope  you  have  a  fantastic  week  at  Glasgow!      All  the  best  from  the  Summer  School  Organisers:    Sophie  Holmes,  Cassie  Smith-­‐Christmas,  Jennifer  Smith          Acknowledgements:  The  Summer  School  would  not  have  been  possible  without  the  generous  support  of  various  funds  from  the  University  of  Glasgow:    The  College  of  Arts  Graduate  School  Chancellor's  Fund  New  Initiatives,  Collaborative  Research  Training  Initiative  Scheme    Contacts:  If  you  need  any  help  or  have  any  urgent  enquiries  please  get  in  touch  with  one  of  the  organisers:    Sophie  (+44)  7925  437  343  Cassie  (+44)  7868  254  217  

4

ABSTRA

CTS  

5

The  acquisition  of  the  Manchester  dialect  by  adolescent  non-­‐native  speakers  of  English  

 Gerry  Howley  

University  of  Salford    Recent  studies  have  shown  that  non-­‐native  English  speaking  immigrants  to  the  UK  acquire  the  dialect  of  the  area  to  which  they  move  (Drummond  2010;  Schleef  et  al.  f.c.).  However,  it  is  unclear  why  the  extent  to  which  non-­‐native  speakers  acquire  the  local  dialect  varies  greatly  between  individuals,  and  why  non-­‐native  speakers’  patterns  of  variation  do  not  always  mirror  those  of  their  native  speaking  peers.  This  study  sets  out  to  examine  which  factors  may  impact  upon  differences  in  dialect  acquisition,  specifically  in  relation  to  the  hypothesis  put  forward  in  Schleef  et  al.  (f.c.)  that  acquisition  of  local  variants  may  be  due  to  social  mixing  between  different  ethnic  groups  within  non-­‐native  speakers’  social  network  structures.  

 An  ethnographic  study  of  a  Manchester  high  school  is  conducted  in  order  to  identify  the  social  network  structures  of  non-­‐native  speakers  within  the  school.  It  is  hypothesized  that  non-­‐native  speakers  whose  networks  consist  of  strong  and  multiplex  ties  with  native  speakers  of  Manchester  English  acquire  more  native-­‐like  patterns  of  local  variants  than  non-­‐native  speakers  whose  networks  consist  of  loose  and  uniplex  ties  with  native  speakers  (Milroy  1980).  A  comparative  analysis  between  the  two  groups  will  determine  the  role  of  social  network  structure  in  the  acquisition  of  local  variants  and  native-­‐like  patterns  of  linguistic  variation.  The  variables  examined  are:  the  STRUT  vowel,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  Manchester  dialect;  the  stable  linguistic  variable  (ing);  and  the  rapidly  diffusing  variant  of    th-­‐fronting.    Previous  studies  into  non-­‐native  dialect  acquisition  have  typically  examined  the  non-­‐native  speakers  in  isolation,  removed  from  the  native  speaking  community  in  which  they  acquire  local  patterns  of  variation.  Ethnographic  methodology  has  been  applied  to  good  effect  in  the  study  of  native  speakers.  By  taking  an  ethnographic  approach,  and  studying  non-­‐native  speakers’  participation  within  the  local  school  community,  this  research  will  provide  fresh  insights  into  L2  dialect  acquisition.  Thus,  the  current  study  also  tests  the  applicability  of  the  social  network  approach  to  dialect  contact  situations.    References  Drummond,  R.  (2010)  Sociolinguistic  variation  in  a  second  language:  the  influence  of  local  accent  on  the  pronunciation  of  non-­‐native  English  speakers  living  in  Manchester.  Unpublished  PhD,  University  of  Manchester,  Manchester.    Milroy,  L.  (1980).  Language  and  social  networks.  Oxford,  Blackwell.    Schleef,  E.,  Meyerhoff,  M.  and  Clark,  L.  (forthcoming)  ‘Teenagers'  acquisition  of  variation:  a  comparison  of  locally-­‐born  and  migrant  teens'  realisation  of  English  (ing)  in  London  and  Edinburgh.’  English  World-­‐Wide.  32,  2.  

6

Varieties  of  English:  What  Foreign  Learners  Believe,  Know  and  Practise    

Erin  Carrie  University  of  St  Andrews  

   It  is  a  well-­‐established  fact  that  the  English  language  has  been  expanding  rapidly  throughout  the  world,  acquiring  greater  status,  and  generating  in  the  process  so  much  variation  that  some  linguists  have  pluralized  its  name  by  employing  the  designation  ‘world  Englishes’  (see,  for  example,  Kachru  2006).  Undoubtedly,  native  speakers  of  English  have  had  to  grapple  with  the  ever-­‐increasing  diversity  of  their  language  and  with  the  stereotypes  associated  with  such  variation.  It  becomes  self-­‐evident  that  there  should  be  similar  implications  for  foreign  learners  of  English,  given  that  language  learning  is  ‘socially  and  culturally  bound’  (Dornyei  2003:  4).  These  implications  are  likely  to  manifest  themselves  particularly  in  terms  of:  (a)  learners’  knowledge  of,  and  ability  to  recognize,  the  major  varieties  of  English,  (b)  the  extent  to  which  learners’  attitudes  towards  varieties  of  English  (and  their  speakers)  influence  their  use  of  the  language,  and  (c)  the  variety  of  the  language  that  learners  would  prefer  to  adopt  and  imitate,  were  they  given  the  choice.      Drawing  on  major  works  from  the  fields  of  sociolinguistics  and  the  social  psychology  of  language,  the  present  research  is  designed  to  test  the  extent  to  which  insights  already  provided  about  intra-­‐linguistic  attitudes  (focusing  on  native  speakers’  attitudes  towards  varieties  of  their  own  language)  might  apply  to  cross-­‐linguistic  attitudes  (with  a  focus  on  foreign  learners’  attitudes  towards  varieties  of  the  L2),  and  the  implications  thereof.  Overall,  the  investigation  focuses  on  what  foreign  learners  believe  and  know  regarding  standard  and  non-­‐standard  varieties  of  English,  and  attempts  to  ascertain  the  choices  that  they  make,  consciously  or  otherwise,  when  faced  with  such  an  increasingly  diverse  language.  Since  human  beings  are  probably  more  conscious  of  the  concept  of  word  than  of  any  other  unit  of  language,  I  considered  lexical  variation  to  be  the  most  salient  indicator  of  non-­‐native  speakers’  leanings  towards  preferred  varieties.  Data  were  collected  by  means  of  structured  interviews,  consisting  of  four  main  stages:  flash  card  test,  matched  guise  experiment,  word  choice  test  and  open  questions.  Moreover,  some  personal  details  were  elicited,  including  information  regarding  the  learners’  motivations,  influences  and  use  of  language-­‐learning  materials.    Preliminary  findings  from  fieldwork  undertaken  with  young  Spanish  natives  living  and  studying  in  Edinburgh  would  indicate  that  gender,  learner  motivation/orientation  and  length  of  time  in  the  learning  environment  are  significant  factors  in  determining  foreign  learners’  knowledge  of,  attitudes  towards  and  practice  of  English.  Furthermore,  the  data  have  shown  that  cross-­‐linguistic  attitudes  generally  reflect  intra-­‐linguistic  attitudes  towards  variation  in  the  language.  There  are  also  observable  similarities  in  native  speakers’  and  non-­‐native  speakers’  practice  of  English,  particularly  in  terms  of  gender.  On  a  larger  scale,  the  findings  may  allow  inferences  to  be  made  regarding  the  status  of  competing  world  Englishes  in  a  global  context.  For  example,  though  the  economic  status  and  demographic  strength  of  the  US  appears  to  be  more  highly  recognized  by  instrumental  than  integrative  learners,  it  is  interesting  that  95%  of  my  informants  were  aware  of  and/or  practised  American  English  variants.  This  would  suggest,  perhaps  unsurprisingly,  that  American  English  is  the  variety  with  the  most  clout  on  the  world  stage.  

7

Ethnicity  and  stop  realisation  in  Sheffield  English    

Sam  Kirkham  University  of  Sheffield  

 This  paper  reports  on  an  acoustic  phonetic  analysis  of  ethnic  differences  in  /t/-­‐realisation  in  Sheffield  English.  Prior  research  suggests  that  /t/-­‐realisation  is  a  salient  characteristic  of  some  ethnic  varieties  of  English,  such  as  British  Asian  English,  where  it  often  often  realised  with  a  ‘postalveolar’  or  ‘retroflex’  articulation  (e.g.  Lambert  et  al.  2007;  Alam  2009;  Sharma  &  Sankaran  forthcoming).  However,  whilst  prior  comparisons  between  Asian  and  White  speakers  show  differences  in  /t/-­‐realisation,  the  phonetics  of  /t/  in  other  English-­‐speaking  ethnic  minority  groups  is  less  well  attested.  This  paper  examines  /t/-­‐realisation  in  the  speech  of  three  different  ethnic  groups  in  Sheffield:  White  British,  British  Pakistani,  and  British  Somali  speakers.  In  doing  so,  I  investigate  the  relationship  between  phonetic  variation,  ethnic  identification  and  heritage  language  usage  in  order  to  explore  the  motivations  behind  ethnically-­‐stratified  language  use.    Sociolinguistic  interviews  were  conducted  with  adolescent  Sheffield  English  speakers  of  White  British,  Pakistani,  and  Somali  ethnic  origin.  Acoustic  measurements  of  /t/  included  voice  onset  time,  relative  burst  intensity,  and  the  first  four  spectral  moments  of  the  burst  spectrum  (Forrest  et  al.  1988).  A  range  of  social  factors  were  also  analysed  to  reveal  influences  on  stop  realisation,  including  gender,  social  class,  a  self-­‐reported  bilingualism  index,  a  quantitative  measure  of  heritage  language  competency,  and  a  parental  bilingualism  index.    The  results  show  that,  compared  to  White  and  Somali  speakers,  Sheffield  Pakistani  /t/  exhibits  shorter  voice  onset  times,  greater  burst  intensity,  lower  overall  spectral  energy,  and  a  more  compact  burst  spectrum.  This  suggests  a  shorter  and  louder  burst  with  a  more  retracted  place  of  articulation.  In  explaining  these  patterns,  I  explore  two  hypotheses  with  respect  to  the  phonetic  data:  (i)  that  distinctive  patterns  in  Sheffield  Pakistani  /t/  represent  an  influence  from  the  phonologically  retroflex  stops  of  Panjabi/Urdu;  (ii)  that  ethnicity  as  a  relational  construct  exerts  a  strong  influence  on  social  identification  (Harris  2006)  and,  consequently,  on  the  indexical  properties  of  /t/-­‐realisation  in  the  local  social  matrix.  I  also  explore  the  differences  between  Somali  and  Pakistani  speakers  and  between  Somali  and  White  speakers,  in  order  to  investigate  the  patterning  of  fine-­‐grained  phonetic  variation  along  ethnic  lines.  In  doing  so,  I  outline  some  ways  in  which  sociophonetic  variation  interacts  with  ethnicity,  bilingualism  and  regional  identity.    References  Alam,  F.  2009.  Does  community  of  practice  affect  /t/-­‐realisation  in  adolescent  Glasgow-­‐Pakistanis?  

UKLVC7,  Newcastle  University,  September  2009.  Forrest,  K.,  Weismer,  G.,  Milenkovic,  P.  &  Dougall,  R.N.  1988.  Statistical  analysis  of  word-­‐initial  voiceless  

obstruents:  preliminary  data.  Journal  of  the  Acoustical  Society  of  America  84(1):  115—123.  Harris,  R.  2006.  New  Ethnicities  and  Language  Use.  Basingstoke:  Palgrave  Macmillan.  Lambert,  K.,  Alam,  F.  &  Stuart-­‐Smith,  J.  2007.  Investigating  British  Asian  accents:  studies  from  Glasgow.  

Proceedings  of  the  16th  International  Congress  of  Phonetic  Sciences  1509-­‐1512.  Sharma,  D.  &  Sankaran,  L.  forthcoming.  Cognitive  and  social  factors  in  dialect  shift:  gradual  change  in  

British  Asian  speech.  Language  Variation  and  Change.  

8

National  Identity  and  Sound  Change:  English  on  the  Quebec-­‐Vermont  Border    

Laura  Baxter  York  University,  Toronto  

 This  paper  reports  on  change  over  time  in  the  dialect  of  English  spoken  in  and  around  the  town  of  Stanstead,  Quebec,  a  small  Canadian  municipality  located  directly  across  the  border  from  the  American  town  of  Derby  Line,  Vermont.    Although  it  is  located  in  a  historically  English-­‐speaking  region  of  the  majority  French-­‐speaking  province  of  Quebec,  Stanstead  is  one  of  few  communities  in  which  Anglophones  continue  to  form  a  majority  of  the  population.  The  location  of  Stanstead  on  the  American  border  and  its  close  association  with  the  English-­‐speaking  population  of  Derby  Line  has  undoubtedly  played  a  significant  role  in  the  preservation  of  English  in  this  community.  However,  while  residents  of  Stanstead  and  Derby  Line  have  traditionally  thought  of  themselves  as  members  of  one  community  with  an  arbitrary  line  running  through  it,  over  time  the  policies  of  the  American  and  Canadian  governments  with  regard  to  policing  the  border  have  become  increasingly  strict.  This  has  essentially  divided  the  community  against  itself,  escalating  physical  and  psychological  barriers  and  decreasing  interaction  and  communication  between  the  two  sides.    An  analysis  of  the  dialect  of  English  spoken  by  different  generations  of  residents  on  the  Canadian  side  reflects  these  changes  in  the  community.  The  speech  of  older  residents  displays  features  characteristic  of  the  adjacent  American  dialect  region  of  Eastern  New  England  such  as  r-­‐vocalisation  and  fronted  /ah/  (Labov,  Ash  and  Boberg  2006).  Data  from  younger  generations  of  speakers,  however,  shows  virtually  no  presence  of  these  American  dialect  features.  Rather,  young  speakers  in  this  community  speak  a  dialect  of  English  very  close  to  the  Canadian  Standard,  suggesting  that  despite  proximity  to  models  of  American  English  and  isolation  from  models  of  Canadian  English,  these  younger  speakers  clearly  identify  as  Canadian  and  are  expressing  this  identity  through  their  speech.  Thus,  as  the  border  is  strengthened  politically  and  physically,  we  also  see  the  creation  of  a  linguistic  border  effect.    References  Labov,  William,  Sharon  Ash  and  Charles  Boberg.  2006.  The  atlas  of  North  American    English  :  phonetics,  phonology,  and  sound  change  :  a  multimedia  reference  tool.  New  York:  Mouton  de  Gruyter    

9

Cross-­‐language  socioindexicality    

Anita  Szakay  University  of  British  Columbia  

   

The  main  goal  of  this  dissertation  is  to  investigate  whether  socio-­‐indexical  labelling  is  shared  across  languages,  in  particular  languages  of  a  bilingual  perceiver.  Socio-­‐indexical  features  in  speech  are  those  aspects  of  linguistic  structure  which  correlate  with  non-­‐linguistic  factors  (Abercrombie,  1967).  These  factors  include,  for  example,  speaker  differences  in  age,  gender,  socio-­‐economic  status,  ethnicity,  group  affiliations,  regional  background,  and  individual  identity.    The  study  examines  the  effect  of  ethnic  dialect  on  bilingual  language  processing  and  representation  using  a  novel  cross-­‐language/cross  dialect  priming  paradigm  in  the  New  Zealand  English  context.  New  Zealand  English  comprises  two  main  ethnic  dialects,  namely  Māori  English  and  Pākahā  English.  Māori  English  is  predominantly  spoken  by  the  indigenous  Māori  population,  while  Pākahā  English  is  mainly  spoken  by  people  of  European  descent.  The  differences  between  the  two  ethnic  dialects  include  both  segmental  and  suprasegmental  features.  Differences  generally  mentioned  in  the  literature  are  th-­‐fronting,  final  z-­‐devoicing,  GOOSE-­‐fronting,  and  GOAT-­‐onset-­‐fronting  (e.g.  Maclagan,  Watson,  Harlow,  King  &  Kegan  2009),  with  Māori  English  speakers  being  significantly  more  syllable  timed,  and  having  a  higher  mean  pitch  than  Pākahā  English  speakers  (Szakay,  2006).  English-­‐Māori  bilingual  speakers  are  exposed  to  both  ethnic  dialects  of  New  Zealand  English.  This  provides  an  excellent  testing  ground  for  the  effect  of  dialect  variants  on  bilingual  speech  processing.    Previous  research  has  examined  the  effect  of  dialect  variation  on  monolingual  spoken  word  recognition.  For  example,  Summer  &  Samuel  (2009)  conducted  a  series  of  primed  auditory  lexical  decision  tasks,  where  primes  and  targets  came  from  two  different  regional  dialects  of  American  English.  In  the  present  study  a  cross-­‐language  dimension  is  added  to  the  cross-­‐dialect  short-­‐term  auditory  lexical  decision  paradigm  where  critical  prime  and  target  pairs  are  made  up  of  all  possible  combinations  of  Māori,  Māori  English  and  Pākahā  English  translation  equivalents.  For  example,  a  target  can  be  the  Māori  word  /mea/  (thing),  with  either  the  Pākahā  English  prime  [ɪŋ],  or  the  th-­‐fronted  Māori  English  prime  [fɪŋ].    The  main  prediction  is  that  a  Māori  word  primes  a  Māori  English  target  more  than  it  would  prime  a  Pākahā  English  target.        

10

Lexical  Variation  and  Change  in  British  Sign  Language  (BSL):  Evidence  for  dialect  levelling?  

 Rose  Stamp  

University  College  London    In  this  paper,  we  report  the  results  from  the  first  corpus-­‐based  study  to  investigate  lexical  variation  and  change  in  BSL.  This  study  will  report  on  regional  variation  in  the  signs  for  numbers,  colours,  countries  and  UK  cities  and  considers  the  relationship  with  the  following  social  factors:  age,  gender,  school  location,  social  class,  ethnicity,  teaching  experience  and  language  background  (whether  the  signer  has  deaf  or  hearing  parents).  Results  from  a  previous  study  in  BSL  suggested  that  there  has  been  a  reduction  in  regional  differences  since  the  introduction  of  BSL  on  television  (Woll,  Allsop  &  Sutton-­‐Spence,  1991).  This  paper  investigates  whether  there  is  evidence  of  dialect  levelling  taking  place  in  BSL.  

 For  this  study,  data  was  analysed  from  the  lexical  elicitation  task  as  part  of  the  BSL  Corpus  Project  (Schembri,  2008).  This  project  elicited  101  lexical  items  from  249  native,  near-­‐native  and  early  learner  deaf  signers  filmed  in  eight  UK  cities.  The  results  from  41  lexical  items  suggest  that  dialect  levelling  may  be  taking  place  with  younger  signers  using  a  decreasing  variety  of  regionally  distinct  variants.  This  change  appears  to  be  happening  faster  in  particular  sub-­‐groups  of  the  deaf  community  (e.g.  signers  from  hearing  families)  and  semantic  categories  (e.g.  signs  for  countries).  These  results  need  to  be  understood  in  light  of  the  dramatic  changes  to  the  British  Deaf  community  in  the  late  20th  century,  including  the  closure  of  residential  schools  for  deaf  children  and  an  emergence  of  a  national  and  international  Deaf  identity  (Ladd,  2003).  Also,  results  for  some  UK  cities  (e.g.  Cardiff)  show  an  in/out-­‐group  effect  with  signers  from  outside  the  region  using  different  signs  to  those  who  live  in  the  region.  Finally,  this  paper  will  discuss  the  methodological  validity  of  different  sociolinguistic  data  by  investigating  the  same  lexical  variants  produced  in  conversational  data  and  also  consider  whether  any  linguistic  factors  account  for  lexical  variation.    References  Ladd,  P.  (2003).  Understanding  Deaf  Culture:  In  search  of  Deafhood.  Clevedon:  Multilingual  Matters.  

Schembri,  A.  (2008).  British  Sign  Language  Corpus  Project:  Open  access  archives  and  the  Observer’s  Paradox.  In:  Proceedings  of  the  Sixth  International  Conference  on  Language  Resources  and  Evaluation,  May  26-­‐June  1,  2008,  Marrakech,  Morocco.  European  Language  Resources  Association.  Retrieved  from  http://www.lrec-­‐conf.org/proceedings/lrec2008/.  

Woll,  B.  (1987).  Historical  and  Comparative  Aspects  of  British  Sign  Language.  In  J.  G.  Kyle  (Ed.),  Sign  and  School:  using  signs  in  deaf  children's  development.  Clevedon:  Multilingual  Matters  Ltd.  12-­‐34.  

Woll,  B.,  Allsop,  L.,  &  Sutton-­‐Spence,  R.  (1991).  Variation  and  Recent  Change  in  British  Sign  Language:  Final  Report  to  the  ESRC.  Bristol:  University  of  Bristol.  

11

A  Variationist  Study  of  Future  Temporal  Reference  in  Hexagonal  French    

Nick  Roberts  University  of  Newcastle  

   

This  study  is  the  first  quantitative  variationist  investigation  of  Future  temporal  reference  in  Continental  French.  In  all  varieties  of  French,  future  temporal  reference  can  be  realised  via  three  different  variants:  the  inflected  future  (je  mangerai  ‘I  will  eat’),  the  periphrastic  future  (je  vais  aller  ‘I  am  going  to  go’)  and  the  futurate  present  (je  pars  ‘I  leave’).  Prescriptive  grammarians  have  long  posited  that  the  principle  conditioning  factor  motivating  variant  selection  is  the  temporal  distance  between  the  speech  act  and  the  time  at  which  the  verbal  action  is  to  occur  (see  Fleischman  1982).  Variationist  studies  –  all  of  which  are  based  on  Canadian  French  data  –  have  set  out  to  test  this  claim  quantitatively.  Poplack  and  Turpin  (1999)  show  that  whilst  the  inflected  future  occurs  almost  exclusively  in  negative  contexts,  the  periphrastic  form  seems  to  have  become  the  default  variant  in  Montreal  French.  However,  in  contrast,  King  and  Nadasdi  (2004)  have  demonstrated  that  temporal  reference,  certainty  and  the  presence  of  the  wh-­‐term  quand  affect  variation  in  Acadian  French,  whereas  other  intralinguistic  factors,  like  contingency,  grammatical  person/number  and  negation,  do  not  constrain  variant  selection  to  the  same  degree.    It  is  widely  accepted  that  the  grammar  of  spoken  European  French  differs  markedly  from  that  of  Canadian  French  (Hewson  2000  and  Coveney  2007).  Consequently,  a  study  examining  strategies  of  encoding  future  time  in  European  French  warrants  scholarly  attention.  The  present  study  reports  on  variation  in  the  Beeching  Corpus,  an  online  database  containing  spontaneous  Hexagonal  French  speech  recorded  between  1980  and  1990.    A  sub-­‐sample  of  80  informants  stratified  by  age,  educational  level  and  gender  was  identified  and  quantitative  variationist  analysis  of  433  tokens  of  future  temporal  reference  was  undertaken  with  a  view  to  addressing  three  main  research  questions:  (1)  How  variable  is  the  future  temporal  reference  in  Hexagonal  French?  (2)  What  significant  linguistic  and  extralinguistic  constraints  affect  variability?  (3)  To  what  extent  do  the  results  corroborate  findings  reported  in  the  extant  French  Canadian  literature?    The  results  of  this  investigation  suggest  that  the  inflected  future  is  used  with  greater  frequency  in  Hexagonal  French  than  in  its  Canadian  counterpart.  Chi-­‐square  and  multinomial  regression  analyses  furthermore  reveal  a  complex  set  of  constraints  which  only  partially  overlap  with  the  results  reported  for  Canadian  French.  Thus,  while  certain  constraints  governing  variation  are  operative  in  both  Canadian  and  Hexagonal  varieties,  a  range  of  other  factors  also  condition  future  temporal  reference  variability  in  the  French  language.      

12

A  town  between  dialects:  accent  levelling,  psycho-­‐social  orientation  and  identity  in  Merseyside,  UK.

 Helen  Faye  West  

Lancaster  University    Speakers’  psycho-­‐social  orientation  and  social  knowledge  have  often  been  identified  as  having  an  important  role  in  linguistic  change.  We  know,  for  example,  that  speakers’  adoption  of  linguistic  features  from  a  neighbouring  region  often  correlates  with  their  positive  social  orientation  towards  that  region  (Llamas  2007),  and  that  their  social  orientation  can  be  discussed  with  reference  to  their  interpretation  of  physical,  political  and  social  ‘boundaries’  (Llamas  2010).  This  paper  examines  how  the  perceived  presence  of  such  boundaries  may  be  seen  to  affect  language  use  in  Southport,  a  town  which  lies  near  the  border  of  Merseyside  and  Lancashire  in  the  north-­‐west  of  England.        Southport,  located  17  miles  north  of  the  large  industrial  city  of  Liverpool,  is  historically  part  of  Lancashire  but  was  absorbed  into  Merseyside  in  1974.  Southport  and  Liverpool  are  well  connected  by  frequent  transport  links  and,  given  the  high  levels  of  contact  between  people,  it  has  been  predicted  that  phonetic  features  of  the  Liverpool  accent  will  diffuse  into  the  traditional  Lancashire  accent  of  Southport  (Grey  and  Richardson  2007).  However,  a  complicating  factor  is  Liverpool’s  negative  stereotype  (Montgomery  2007),  which  may  be  predicted  to  act  as  a  barrier  to  the  diffusion  of  Liverpool  features.    The  first  aim  of  this  paper  is  to  analyse  the  diffusion  of  two  local  Liverpool  features  –  the  lenition  of  intervocalic  and  wordfinal  /t/  and  /k/  –  in  speech  from  a  corpus  of  40  speakers  stratified  by  age,  gender  and  socio-­‐economic  status.  I  show  that  despite  the  links  between  the  two  locations,  the  features  of  Liverpool  are  not  diffusing  into  Southport  speech  as  rapidly  as  originally  hypothesised.    The  second  aim  is  to  investigate  whether  there  is  a  correlation  between  speakers’  language  use  and  their  spatial  patterns  by  mapping  their  external  (contact)  and  extra-­‐linguistic  (attitudinal)  behaviour  onto  their  linguistic  production.  Adopting  a  ‘linguistics  of  contact’  based  model  (Rampton  2009)  I  interview  several  communities  of  practice  within  Southport  (e.g.  choirs,  sports  teams)  to  identify  speaker  affiliation  and  subsequent  spatial  zones  on  both  the  micro  and  macro-­‐scales  (friendship  groups,  and  associations  within  the  town  and  region).  I  show  that  varying  patterns  of  contact  could  provide  an  explanation  for  the  reduced  level  of  diffusion  of  Liverpool  features.    In  conclusion,  I  argue  that  understanding  speakers’  psycho-­‐social  orientations  and  social  awareness,  in  conjunction  with  correlative  patterns  of  speech  production  is  crucial  for  explaining  language  change.      References:  Grey,  C.  &  Richardson,  B.  (2007)  ‘Our  Friends  in  the  North:  Relic  Dialects  in  the  area  between  Southport  and  Preston’.  In:  Grant,  A,  Grey,  C.  (eds)  The  Mersey  Sound:  Liverpool's  Language,  People  and  Places.  Liverpool:  Open  House  Press.  Llamas,  C.  (2007)  'A  place  between  places':  language  and  identities  in  a  border  town'  Language  in  Society.  36(4):  579-­‐604.    Llamas,  C.  (2010),  ‘Convergence  and  Divergence  Across  a  National  Border’.  In:  C.  Llamas  and  D.  Watt  (eds.)  Language  and  Identities,  Edinburgh:  Edinburgh  University  Press,  pp.  227-­‐236.    Montgomery,  C.  (2007)  'Perceptions  of  Liverpool  English'.  In:  Grey,  C.  and  Grant,  A.  (eds.),  Liverpool  English.  Liverpool:  Open  House  Press.  Rampton,  B.  (2009),  ‘Speech  Community  and  Beyond’,  in  N.  Coupland  and  A.  Jaworski  (eds.)  The  New  Sociolinguistics  Reader,  London:  Palgrave  Macmillan,  pp.  694-­‐713.  

13

Dialect  levelling  and  the  spread  of  supralocal  features    

Sophie  Holmes  University  of  Glasgow  

 Recent  research  suggests  that  many  UK  accents  are  losing  their  characteristic  regional  features  and  becoming  levelled  (e.g.  Kerswill  et  al,  2007;  Foulkes  &  Docherty,  1999).  These  lost  regional  forms  are  often  replaced  by  supralocal  features.  This  research  examines  the  process  of  levelling  through  an  investigation  of  two  supralocal  features  in  the  speech  of  ten  adolescents  from  Hastings,  East  Sussex.        One  national:  

1. TH-­‐fronting:       I  think  [fiŋk]  she  wants  to  run  the  Marathon  [marafəәn]    

One  global:  2. Quotative  be  like:     she  was  like  "I  just  wanna  go  to  bed"  and  we're  like  "ok“  

 Thought  to  have  originated  from  London  (Milroy,  2006:  210),  TH-­‐fronting  has  received  a  great  deal  of  attention  in  sociolinguistics  due  to  its  spread  through  many  separate  urban  centres  across  the  UK  (e.g.  see  Foulkes  and  Docherty  (ed.s),  1999).  In  contrast,  quotative  be  like  is  said  to  have  originated  in  the  USA  (e.g.  Blyth,  Rectenwald  &  Wang,  1990;  Ferrara  &  Bell,  1995)  and  is  rapidly  increasing  in  the  speech  of  young  speakers  throughout  the  English  speaking  world  e.g.  Canada,  UK,  New  Zealand  etc  (Buchstaller  &  D’Arcy,  2009).      There  has  been  evidence  to  suggest  that  while  national  supralocal  forms  may  reorganise  within  a  new  variety,  global  features  may  ‘travel’  with  their  linguistic  constraints  in  tact  (Buchstaller  &  D’Arcy,  2009:  315).  Through  comparison  with  previous  findings  for  both  features  I  examine  this  claim  directly  and  ask:    

-­‐ What  are  the  factors  that  constrain  these  variables  in  Hastings?  -­‐ Is  there  a  difference  in  the  level  of  linguistic  reorganisation  for  either  feature?  

 A  total  of  760  tokens  of  (th)  and  420  quotatives  were  analysed.  As  expected,  while  TH-­‐fronting  showed  local  patterning  for  factors  such  as  word  position  and  lexical  item,  quotative  be  like  preserved  the  hierarchies  of  its  so-­‐called  ‘classic’  constraints  including  grammatical  person  and  content  of  the  quote.  This  lends  support  to  the  claim  that  one  characteristic  of  globalising  trends  may  be  their  tendency  to  preserve  internal  constraints.    References  

Blyth,  C.  Jr.,  Recktenwald,  S.  &  Wang,  J.  (1990)  I’m  like  ‘say  what?!’:  a  new  quotative  in  American  oral  narrative.  American  Speech    65:  215  –  227  

Buchstaller,  I.  &  D’Arcy,  A.  (2009)  Localised  globalization:  A  multi-­‐local,  multivariate  investigation  of  quotative  be  like  Journal  of  Sociolinguistics  13/3  291  –  331  

Ferrara,  K.  &  Bell,  B.  (1995)  Sociolinguistic  variation  and  discourse  function  of  constructed  dialogue  introducers:  The  case  of  be  +  like.  American  Speech  70:  265  -­‐  290  

Foulkes,  P.  &  Docherty,  G.  (eds.),  Urban  Voices.  Accent  studies  in  the  British  Isles.  London:  Arnold       Kerswill,  P.  et  al  (2007)  Linguistic  Innovators:  The  English  of  Adolescents  in  London:  Full  Research  Report  ESRC  End  of  Award  Report,  RES-­‐000-­‐23-­‐0680.  Swindon:  ESRC     Milroy,  J.  (2006)  When  is  a  sound  change?  On  the  role  of  external  factors  in  language  change.  In  Britain,  David  and  Cheshire,  Jenny  (eds.),  Social  Dialectology,  In  honour  of  Peter  Trudgill  209  –  222     Singler,  J  &  Woods,  L.  (2002)  The  use  of  be  like  quotatives  in  American  and  non-­‐American  newspapers.  Paper  presented  at  NWAVE  32  

14

Code-­‐switching  in  Scottish  Gaelic    

Cassie  Smith-­‐Christmas  University  of  Glasgow  

 This  paper  looks  at  the  code-­‐switching  patterns  of  a  group  of  older  bilingual  Gaelic-­‐English  speakers  living  on  the  Isle  of  Skye  and  Isle  of  Harris,  Scotland.    Situtated  within  a  larger  framework  of  three  generations  of  a  bilingual  family,  the  paper  focuses  on  two  main  concepts:  the  use  of  first  generation  speakers'  code-­‐switching  in  the  stance-­‐taking  process  and  the  role  of  code-­‐switching  in  using  reported  speech,  or,  as  it  will  referred  to  in  this  chapter,  ‘constructed  dialogue’  (cf.  Tannen,  1995).    The  discussion  following  will  show  how  these  two  concepts  can  be  related  to  the  over-­‐arching  idea  of  indexicality;  that  is,  how  the  meaning  of  a  linguistic  form  is  context-­‐dependent  and  has  the  potential  to  signal  a  wide  range  of  macro  and  micro  social  phenomena.    The  choice  to  use  one  language  over  another  is  in  and  of  itself  may  be  used  to  index  a  speaker’s  identity;  for  example,  it  has  been  argued  elsewhere  (Smakman  and  Smith-­‐Christmas,  2009),  that  these  speaker’s  use  Gaelic  as  a  way  of  indexing  their  local  (i.e.  Skye  and  Harris),  historical,  and  familial  identity.    However,  this  chapter  looks  beyond  the  macro-­‐social  relationship  between  speaker  identity  and  language  to  uncover  the  role  code-­‐switching  plays  in  the  interactions  of  the  first  generation  speakers,  concluding  that  ultimately,  code-­‐switching  plays  an  important  role  in  the  indexing  process  in  these  speakers’  discourse,  and  consequently,  how  the  meaning-­‐making  process  of  conversation  is  achieved.    References  Smakman,  D.,  &  Smith-­‐Christmas,  C.  (2009).  Gaelic  on  the  Isle  of  Skye:  older     speakers’  identity  in  a  language  shift  situation.  International  Journal  of  the  Sociology  of  Language,  

200,  27-­‐48.  Tannen,  D.  (1995).  Waiting  for  the  Mouse:    Constructed  Dialogue  in  Conversation.  In       D.  Tedlock  &  B.  Mannheim  (Eds.),  The  dialogic  emergence  of  culture  (pp.  198-­‐                              217).  Chicago:  University  of  Illinois  Press.  

15

A  Sociolinguistic  Study  on  Multilingualism:  Kurdish  as  an  Iranian  Language    

Javid  Fereidoni  Université  Paris  Ouest  

 Language  as  a  social  and  cultural  phenomenon  cannot  be  studied  without  the  social  context  in  which  communication  takes  place.  The  way  society  members  choose  varieties  of  a  language  or  switch  toward  another  code  can  determine  the  influence  of  social  factors  on  language  choice.  Iran  as  a  multilingual  society  is  a  suitable  community  in  which  the  different  varieties  of  language  are  used  to  serve  different  functions.West  Azarbayjan,  one  of  the  Iranian  provinces,  is  a  good  representative  of  multilingualism  in  Iran.  The  study  tries  to  analyze  the  linguistic  structure  of  Orumiyeh  in  a  domain  analysis  perspective.  Three  languages  are  spoken  in  Orumiyeh.  As  mentioned  earlier,  three  ethnic  and  linguistic  populations  (Armenians,  Kurds,  and  Turks)  are  living  in  the  city  who  speak  Armenian,  Kurdish,  and  Turkish  respectively.  In  this  study,  the  researcher  will  try  to  focus  on  the  frequency  of  Kurdish  language  spoken  inside  Orumiyeh,  the  capital  of  West  Azerbaijan  in  Iran.    Since  in  the  census  taken  in  Iran,  only  religious,  ethnic  populations  such  as  Armenians  and  Zoroastrians  are  included,  so  the  researcher  has  accesses  to  the  number  of  Armenian  Population,  but  the  number  of  Sonny  Kurds  as  a  linguistic  population  is  neglected.  “Kurds  are  a  group  of  Iranian  ethnic  colonies  that  have  a  lot  of  commonalties  with  the  others  with  respect  to  the  language,  religion,  customs,  the  life-­‐style,  etc.  However,  geographical  situations  and  historical  events  had  great  influences  on  their  ethnic  and  racial  characteristics;  so  that  considerable  differences  emerged  in  their  dialect,  religion,  and  customs”  (Sanandaji,  1987/1366:8).  It  is  worth  mentioning  that  mass  media,  Persian  instruction,  and  immigration  have  a  great  impact  on  the  dialects.  Kurdish  spoken  in  Iran  has  a  few  varieties  such  as  Kormanji,  Sorani,  Mukri,  etc.  Mukri  dialect  is  spoken  in  the  extreme  west  of  Iran,  south  of  Lake  Orumiyeh  where  this  study  was  carried  out.  Most  of  Kurds  in  Orumiyeh  are  Sunni  Muslims.    This  study  follows  a  threefold  objective:    1)  to  discover  which  language  variety  Turkish,  Kurdish/Armenian  or  Persian  is  used  mostly  in  which  social  domain?  That  is,  to  find  out  the  correlation  between  bilingualism  of  Turks  and  trilingualism  of  Kurds  and  Armenians  and  seven  social  domains.  The  domains  are  family,  religion,  friendship,  transaction,  neighborhood,  education,  and  government  and  employment.  Discussing  the  underlying  forces  behind  people’s  choice  of  language  in  each  domain  is  a  matter  of  interest.  This  study  seeks  to  find  out  how  domain  analysis  can  be  related  to  the  triglossic  situations  in  the  area.  That  is  to  say,  the  researcher  wants  to  know  if  there  is  sufficient  evidence  that  Orumiyeh  community  tends  to  be  triglossic  with  determining  the  High  and  Low  languages.  3)  The  study  concerns  itself  with  looking  for  the  nonnative  speaker’s  views  with  regard  to  Turkish.  That  is  an  attempt  is  made  to  see  if  non-­‐Turkish  speaking  individuals  namely  Kurds  and  Armenians  have  any  attitude  whether  positive  or  negative  toward  using  Turkish  in  one  of  the  above-­‐mentioned  social  domains.    This  study  is  based  on  the  hypothesis  that  people’s  choice  of  language  in  different  social  contexts  is  determined  by  or  correlated  with  their  level  of  education,  age,  sex,  etc.  So  the  hypotheses  of  the  study  can  be  presented  as  follows     H1:  The  more  a  domain  is  formal,  the  more  Persian  is  used  by  the  speakers.     H2:  People  with  high  levels  of  education  use  Persian  in  most  situations.     H3:  Persian  is  used  by  females  much  more  frequently  than  males  in  most  situations.     H4:  Young  people  use  Persian  more  frequently  than  old  people.      As  far  as  the  researcher  knows  the  study  of  domain  analysis  in  multilingual  society  has  not  been  carried  out  in  Iran.  This  study  can  be  a  guideline  for  those  who  are  eager  to  find  out  the  social  aspect  of  languages.  Determining  the  dominant  language  can  be  a  good  criterion  in  language  planning  in  trilingual  communities  like  Orumiyeh.  

16

Monophthongisation  of  [ai]  by  rural  Virginia  store  employees    

Grace  Reynolds  University  of  Virginia  

 This  paper  details  the  preliminary  phase  of  an  investigation  into  language  shift  and  attitudes  in  the  context  of  the  changing  demographics  of  Virginia,  specifically  in  speech  observed  at  “general  stores”  in  two  counties  in  rural  Virginia.    Research  I  conducted  in  these  areas  reveals  that  at  least  one  feature  of  a  regional  variant  thought  to  be  specific  to  areas  further  south  or  west  is  more  often  present  here  than  was  hypothesized.    A  defining  characteristic  of  all  regional  varieties  of  Southern  American  speech  is  the  monophthongization  of  [aɪ]    (Labov,  Ash  and  Boberg  2006).    Studies  conducted  elsewhere  in  the  American  South  on  this  speech  characteristic  suggest  that  the  trend  is  moving  away  from  use  of  the  regional  variation  [aː]  towards  the  “standard”  (Bowie  2001;  Thomas  1997;  Feagin  2000).  However,  the  data  collected  for  the  Atlas  of  North  American  English  (2006)  suggests  that  the  Southern  variant  remains  common  in  this  area,  especially  in  certain  phonological  contexts  (Bowie  2001).    The  large  number  of  people  who  have  moved  into  the  neighboring  Northern  Virginia/Washington,  D.C.  region,  from  elsewhere  in  recent  years  has  made  that  area  one  of  great  linguistic  diversity.    Bowie  (2001)  suggests  that  language  change  in  the  direction  of  a  more  standard  model  and  away  from  regional  variations  can  be  a  result  of  a  large  migration  to  an  area.    This  phase  of  the  project  investigated  the  degree  to  which  speakers  at  “general  stores”  in  two  Virginia  counties  still  use  the  monophthongization  of  [aɪ],  and  attempted  to  shed  some  light  on  how  much  linguistic  influence  the  spread  of  urbanization  from  Northern  Virginia  and  Washington  may  have  on  the  speech  communities  in  this  region.    The  results  I  expected  to  find,  that  speakers  a  greater  distance  from  the  urban  area  were  more  likely  to  use  the  regional  monophthongal  variation  in  natural  speech,  were  in  fact  not  illustrated  in  the  study;  a  slightly  larger  percentage  of  informants  in  the  county  closest  to  the  urban  area  used  the  variant,  and  although  the  majority  of  all  informants  used  the  regional  variation,  they  also  tended  to  use  them  in  phonological  contexts  that  were  typical  of  variants  used  in  regions  further  to  the  South  or  in  Appalachia.        Informants  closer  to  areas  of  urbanization  were  using  the  regional  variant  more;  this  is  inconsistent  with  theories  of  language  contact  and  shift  (Bowie  2001),  but  relatively  consistent  with  relationships  of  overt  and  covert  prestige  in  a  dialect  region  (Trudgill  1972).    Rural  Virginians  in  contact  with  a  dominant  dialect  may  be  displaying  “covert  prestige”  as  assertions  of  regional  solidarity  by  using  the  stigmatized  regional  variant  in  larger  volume  and  in  broader  phonological  contexts  than  considered  the  norm.    A  strong  attachment  to  and  identification  with  this  community  and  hence  its  dialect  appears  to  be  significant  enough  to  confound  the  normative  phonological  predictions  of  regional  speech  patterns.      

17

A  contrastive  study  of  Chinese  and  British  stereotypes  in  cross-­‐cultural  interaction    

Chunyao  Zhao  University  of  Huddersfield  

 Stereotyping,  as  a  cultural  and  ideological  phenomenon,  has  been  a  key  issue  in  social  psychology  and  sociolinguistics.  The  traditionally  held  view  has  focused  on  negative  values  of  stereotyping  and  viewed  it  as  a  static  factor  in  social  perception.  In  this  view,  stereotypes  are  considered  to  be  inaccurate  assumptions,  overgeneralisations  and  the  cognitive  roots  of  prejudice  and  even  discrimination.  Allport  (1954)  draws  our  attention  to  the  cognitive  aspect  of  the  functions  of  stereotyping  as  he  puts  in  The  Nature  of  Prejudice,  a  stereotype  is  an  exaggerated  belief  associated  with  a  category  and  its  function  is  to  justify  (rationalise)  our  conduct  in  relation  to  that  category.  He  offers  some  very  modern-­‐sounding  ideas  but  he  also  views  it  as  the  ‘prejudiced-­‐personality  approach’.  In  1977,  with  the  awareness  of  its  social  significance,  Oliver  Stallybrass,  used  the  term  ‘share’  as  a  core  of  his  statement,  which  implies  stereotypes  are  not  static  phenomena  but  rather  serve  important  social  functions  in  the  process  of  their  creation  and  diffusion.  Stereotypes  are  finally  back  where  they  belong  -­‐-­‐-­‐  at  centre  stage  in  social  life.  With  the  rapid  development  of  globalisation,  a  number  of  scholars  have  moved  to  approach  stereotyping  from  a  dialectical  perspective  by  placing  it  into  the  dynamics  of  cross-­‐cultural  interaction  and  have  provided  new  insights  into  cultural  stereotyping.  One  such  example  is  that  of  Yihong  Gao  (1995),  who  has  proposed  ‘a  Paradox  of  Cross-­‐cultural  Interaction’.  In  her  view,  cultural  stereotyping  can  serve  both  as  the  “bridge”  to  promote  interaction  and  as  the  “gap”  impeding  it.      This  study  intends  to  contrast  Chinese  and  British  cultural  stereotypes  from  the  other’s  perspective.  Due  to  different  value  systems  and  attitudes  of  different  cultures,  misunderstandings,  even  bad  feelings  can  often  occur.  The  objective  is  to  find  ways  in  which  the  difference  between  self-­‐stereotyping  and  others-­‐stereotyping  might  be  bridged,  so  that  Chinese  stereotypes  of  themselves  and  British  stereotypes  of  Chinese  people  can  correspond  better  and  vice-­‐versa.  Ultimately,  therefore,  it  is  to  find  ways  in  which  communication  between  the  Chinese  and  British  can  be  more  harmonious  and  mutually  beneficial.      The  research  is  practically  significant  in  that  it  provides  overviews  both  of  the  subjective  thinking  about  stereotypes’  roles  and  effects  from  the  perspective  of  Chinese  English  majors  and  British  learners  of  Chinese  with  no  cross-­‐cultural  experiences  and  also  of  the  objective  practice  of  Chinese  and  British  students  who  have  already  had  cross-­‐cultural  experiences  in  the  other’s  cultures.  On  such  a  basis,  those  ‘inexperienced’  in  cross-­‐culture  may  benefit  from  either  knowledge  or  information  from  the  ‘experienced’  and  identify  information  sources  which  influence  and  shape  their  perceptions.  This  approach  provides  an  opportunity  to  explore  the  role  of  cultural  stereotyping  in  cross-­‐cultural  interaction,  which  can  eventually  shed  light  on  interactants’  endeavours  to  achieve  successful  cross-­‐cultural  communication.    References  Allport,  G.  W.  (1954).  The  Nature  of  Prejudice.  Cambridge,  Mass.:  Addison-­‐Wesley.  Stallybrass,  O.   (1977).  Stereotype.   In  A.   Bullock,  O.Stallybrass   (Eds.).   The   Fontana  Dictionary  of  Modern  Thought.  London:  Fontana/Collins.  

18

Perceptions  of  European  and  Brazilian  Portuguese  speakers  among  French  undergraduates  

 Caio  César  Christiano  University  of  Poitiers  

In  this  study,  I  will  present  the  results  from  a  survey  conducted  between  2006  and  2011  amongst  undergraduate  students  taking  Portuguese  as  a  foreign  language  classes  both  at  the  University  of  Poitiers  and  at  the  Institute  of  Political  Sciences  of  Paris.      Portuguese  courses  at  the  aforementioned  institutions  are  specific  in  the  sense  that  they  require  students  to  have  contact  with  instructors  coming  from  Portugal  and  Brazil,  in  an  effort  to  familiarize  learners  with  both  varieties  of  Portuguese  Language.    Taking  into  account  the  recent  academic  debates  on  the  differences  that  actually  separate  the  two  varieties,  with  some  scholars  holding  that  they  could  easily  be  considered  two  different  languages,  I  tried  to  verify  if  learners,  after  over  a  year  of  contact  with  teachers  coming  from  both  nationalities,  were  aware  of  these  differences  and,  if  so,  whether  such  differences  represented  an  obstacle  for  their  mastering  of  the  language.  The  questionnaire  was  designed  so  as  to  also  include  information  regarding  the  perceptions  students  have  of  the  language,  i.e.,  cultural  and  sentimental  elements  learners  attribute  to  each  one  of  the  varieties.      Results  show  that,  even  at  a  relatively  basic  learning  level,  students  were  able  to  perceive  many  differences  between  both  varieties  and  that  they  associated  certain  cultural  activities,  such  as  music  or  poetry,  to  only  one  of  the  varieties.    This  study  represents  a  first  effort  in  the  field  of  linguistic  perception  in  Portuguese  language,  a  domain  yet  to  be  further  explored  and  developed  by  both  Portuguese  and  Brazilian  researchers.  

19

A  variationist  account  of  plosives  in  a  contact  situation:  Spanish  and  Creole  English  in  Panama  City  

 Delano  Lamy  

University  of  Florida  

The  extent  to  which  language  contact  can  affect  or  promote  language  change  is  a  theme  of  contentious  debate  in  linguistics  today.  While  contact-­‐induced  change  has  been  found  in  all  areas  of  language,  the  demand  for  scientific  rigor  in  making  such  claims  has  increased.  Variationist  linguists  studying  contact  have  argued  that  the  key  to  providing  convincing  empirical  evidence  for  such  change  lies  in  the  identification  of  a  conflict  site,  "a  form  or  class  of  forms  which  differs  functionally,  structurally,  and/or  quantitatively  across  comparison  varieties"  (Poplack  &  Meechan,  1998:132;  Poplack  &  Tagliamonte  2001:101).  It  is  well  known  that  standard  English  and  Spanish  differ  in  Voice  Onset  Time  (VOT),  or  the  duration  of  the  time  interval  between  the  release  of  a  stop  and  the  glottal  vibration  of  plosives  /p  t  k  b  d  g/  (Lisker  &  Abramson,  1964).  If  this  is  also  the  case  at  the  local  level  in  Spanish-­‐English  contact  communities,  VOTs  provide  an  ideal  site  for  the  examination  of  the  potential  effects  of  contact  on  phonological  systems.      My  dissertation  project  is  concerned  with  language  contact  between  Spanish  and  Creole  English  in  the  Republic  of  Panama.  The  approach  of  this  study  is  to  examine  the  speech  patterns  of  monolinguals  of  Spanish  and  Creole  English  and  Spanish-­‐Creole  English  bilinguals  in  the  local  communities  of  this  region,  by  employing  the  comparative  method.  A  statistical  comparison  of  the  factors  contributing  to  VOT  in  the  three  speech  modes  will  address  the  possibility  of  phonological  convergence  due  to  contact  in  this  region.  A  total  of  3000  occurrences  are  to  be  included  in  the  analysis,  with  a  balanced  sample  extracted  from  monolingual  Spanish,  monolingual  Creole  English,  and  Spanish  and  Creole  English  of  bilingual  speakers.  The  measurements  will  be  done  using  Praat  (Boersma  &  Weenink,  2010).  Only  through  the  comparison  of  local  norms  can  change  be  substantiated  (Torres  Cacoullos  &  Aaron,  2003),  as  linguistic  patterns  of  different  sets  of  data  are  pinpointed  through  statistical  analyses  using  GoldVarb  X.  These  patterns  are  then  later  compared  side-­‐by-­‐side  to  determine  whether  or  not  speakers  use  the  languages  similarly,  based  on  criteria  such  as  the  factors  that  influence  variation,  the  relative  magnitude  of  effect  of  these  factors,  and  the  direction  of  effect  of  factors  (Tagliamonte,  2004).      This  study  will  be  one  of  the  first  to  apply  the  comparative  method  to  address  the  possibility  of  contact-­‐induced  change  in  Spanish  outside  the  United  States  (on  New  Mexican  Spanish,  see  Torres  Cacoullos  &  Aaron  2003;  on  French-­‐English  contact  in  Canada,  see  e.g.  Sankoff  1980).  In  addition,  this  study  will  facilitate  debates  on  the  permeability  of  phonology  in  language  contact  situations  in  general,  and  in  Spanish  sociolinguistics  in  particular.  Finally,  since  previous  studies  in  the  region  have  focused  primarily  on  Creole  English  (Aceto,  1995;  1998;  Herzfeld,  1983;  Snow,  2000),  this  study  will  contribute  significantly  to  Spanish  dialectology,  as  the  first  to  analyze  the  speech  of  bilinguals  and  monolinguals  in  this  particular  community,  providing  a  rich  source  of  new  data.  

20

Approaching  the  acrolect:  the  expanding  prestige  of  mesolectal  phonetic  variant  [a]  in  Trinidadian  English  

 Glenda-­‐Alicia  Leung  

Albert-­‐Ludwigs  Universität  Freiburg    

In  the  Anglophone  post-­‐colonial  territory  of  Trinidad,  the  language  situation  is  such  that  a  creole  continuum  exists.  While  the  official  language  is  English,  an  English  based  mesolectal  creole  is  widely  spoken  on  the  island.  Given  its  socio-­‐historical  development  and  structural  features,  Winford  (2001)  classifies  Trinidadian  creole  as  an  intermediate  creole.  This  nomenclature  suggests  that  the  mesolect  is  the  most  creole  form  extant  in  the  Trinidadian  speech  community.  Despite  the  absence  of  a  basilect  in  contemporary  Trinidadian  English,  there  is  much  variation  in  the  phonetic  realization  of  [-­‐high]  vowels  within  the  system.  Many  mergers  occur  amongst  lexical  sets  such  as  the  merger  of  BATH-­‐TRAP-­‐START  towards  [a]  and  STRUT-­‐NURSE-­‐THOUGHT-­‐  LOT-­‐CLOTH  towards  [ɒ].  Mergers  in  Trinidadian  English  have  been  treated  in  the  literature  primarily  as  a  characteristic  of  the  local  vernacular  or  mesolect  (Solomon  1993;  Wells  1982;  Winer  1993;  Winford  1978;  Youssef  &  James  2004).  While  this  is  a  fair  purport  of  the  status  of  these  mergers,  in  reality  mergers  in  Trinidadian  English  are  far  more  complex  as  we  hypothesize  that  phonetic  realizations  which  have  been  deemed  as  belonging  to  the  mesolect  are  now  being  accepted  into  the  acrolect.  As  such,  a  more  detailed  analysis  of  the  status  of  mergers  in  Trinidadian  English  is  desirable,  if  not  warranted.  Given  the  cline  of  phonetic  realizations  within  the  Trinidadian  creole  continuum,  this  paper  investigates  the  expansion  of  prestige  variant  [a]  within  this  postcolonial,  creole  speech  community.  Findings  revealed  that  the  BATH-­‐TRAP  merger  [a]  was  evaluated  quite  positively  though  the  traditional  BATH  variant  [ɑ]  is  still  more  highly  regarded.  However,  the  START-­‐TRAP  merger  [a],  which  involves  the  same  potential  phonetic  realization  as  BATH-­‐TRAP,  was  evaluated  quite  negatively.  From  2  these  preliminary  findings  one  may  conclude  that  the  BATH-­‐TRAP  [a]  merger  is  moving  towards  being  a  prestige  variant  within  the  acrolect  while  START-­‐TRAP  [a]  merger  is  still  stigmatized  and  more  likely  to  be  perceived  as  a  mesolectal  feature.        References  Solomon,  Denis.  (1993).  The  Speech  of  Trinidad:  A  Reference  Grammar.  St.  Augustine,  Trinidad:  School  of  Continuing  Studies,  University  of  the  West  Indies.    Wells,  John  C.  (1982).  Accents  of  English.  Cambridge,  England:  Cambridge  University  Press.    Winer,  Lise.  (1993).  Varieties  of  English  Around  the  World:  Trinidad  and  Tobago.  Amsterdam,  Holland:  John  Benjamins.    Winford,  Donald.  (1978).  Phonological  hypercorrection  in  the  process  of  decreolization:  The  case  of  Trinidadian  English.  Journal  of  Linguistics,  14(2),  277-­‐291.    -­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐.  (2001).  Intermediate  creoles  and  degrees  of  change  in  creole  formation:  The  case  of  Bajan.  In  I.  Neumann-­‐Holzschuh  &  E.W.  Schneider  (Eds.),  Degrees  of  restructuring  in  Creole  Languages  (pp.  215-­‐245).  Amsterdam,  Holland:  John  Benjamins.    Youssef,  Valerie,  &  James,  Winford.  (2004).  The  creoles  of  Trinidad  and  Tobago:  Phonology.  In  B.  Kortmann,  K.  Burridge,  R.  Mesthrie,  E.  W.  Schneider  &  C.  Upton  (Eds.),  A  handbook  of  the  varieties  of  English:  Phonology  (Vol.  1,  pp.  508-­‐524).  Berlin,  Germany:  Mouton  de  Gruyter.  

21

 Phonetic  variation  in  Scottish  Gaelic  vowels

 Claire  Nance  

University  of  Glasgow    

Scottish  Gaelic  is  an  endangered  language  as  discussed  by  Dorian  (1981),  but  is  now  undergoing  intense  revitalization  efforts.  Although  several  studies  report  on  the  linguistic  outcome  of  obsolescence  (e.g.  Jones  1998)  there  is  little  work  on  the  phonetic  and  phonological  outcome  of  language  attrition  and  revitalisation.  This  paper  examines  apparent-­‐time  variation  and  change  in  the  Scottish  Gaelic  vowel  system  from  an  acoustic  phonetic  perspective.  

As  noted  by  Babel  (2009:23),  the  changes  occurring  in  the  sound  systems  of  obsolescent  languages  may  be  categorical  loss  or  substitution  of  a  phoneme,  or  changes  at  the  gradient  phonetic  level.  Previous  auditory  studies  of  Gaelic  (e.g.  Borgstrøm  1941)  report  a  vowel-­‐length  contrast  and  nine  different  vowel  qualities  including,  unusually,  four  high  back  vowels:  /ɤoɯu/.  Although  analysed  in  part  by  Ladefoged  et  al.  (1998),  no  other  acoustic  study  has  examined  the  vowels  of  Scottish  Gaelic.  This  paper  focuses  on  the  oral  vowel  system  and  examines  two  research  questions:  [1]  what  are  the  acoustic  characteristics  of  the  Scottish  Gaelic  vowel  system?  [2]  is  apparent-­‐time  change  occurring  either  at  the  categorical  phonemic  level,  or  at  the  gradient  phonetic  level?  

A  word  list  was  designed  to  include  examples  of  all  the  reported  vowels  in  Scottish  Gaelic  as  well  as  minimal  pairs  where  possible.  Data  were  elicited  from  six  native  speakers  of  Lewis  Gaelic:  three  aged  45-­‐55  and  three  aged  20-­‐22.  These  data  were  supplemented  by  participant  observation  of  community  life  on  the  Isle  of  Lewis.  The  data  were  labelled  for  vowel  onset/offset  in  Praat  and  analysed  in  Emu-­‐R.  Vowel  durations  were  measured  from  the  waveform  to  test  for  maintenance  of  length  distinctions  in  both  speaker  groups.  In  order  to  investigate  spectral  characteristics  and  differences  in  the  vowel  system,  static  measures  of  Bark-­‐scaled  F1/F2  were  taken  at  vowel  midpoint.  Formant  values  were  normalized  using  the  Watt  and  Fabricius  (modified)  method  (Fabricius  et  al.  2009).  

Results  indicate  that  the  vowels  previously  reported  as  high  back  unrounded  /ɤ  ɯ/  are  not  back,  but  are  in  fact  acoustically  central.  Unlike  Ladefoged  et  al.  (1998),  all  speakers  in  these  data  produce  short  /ɯ/.  Comparisons  between  older  and  younger  age  groups  suggest  robust  length  distinctions  in  both  speakers  groups,  but  varying  degrees  of  change  in  quality  contrasts.  Similar  to  Ladefoged  et  al.  (1998),  the  distribution  of  /u/  tokens  patterned  into  two  very  distinct  allophones:  a  high  central  variant,  and  a  retracted  variant  preceding  velarised  sonorants.  For  younger  speakers  the  central  variant  is  more  front,  and  the  retracted  variant  has  merged  with  /o/.  Results  are  discussed  with  reference  to  sociophonetic  variation  and  change  in  situations  of  language  obsolescence  and  revitalisation,  with  particular  attention  to  change  from  a  gradient  phonetic  point  of  view.  

22

Dublin  English:  An  acoustic  study    

John  Lonergan  University  College  Dublin  

Previous  research  on  Dublin  English  has  distinguished  markedly  different  working  class  and  middle-­‐class  varieties  (Bertz,  1975,  1987;  Wells,  1982).  Recent  work  (Hickey,  2005)  describes  a  chain  shift  affecting  the  low  and  back  vowels  of  middle-­‐class  forms  of  Dublin  English.  Hickey  argues  that  this  shift  is  intended  to  maximise  the  differences  between  middle-­‐class  and  working  class  forms  of  Dublin  English.  In  Hickey's  view  this  shift  is  motivated  by  an  aspiration  for  'urban  sophistication'.    All  previous  work  on  Dublin  English  has  been  based  on  auditory  analysis.  The  sociolinguistic  observations  of  this  work  are  also  unsupported  by  statistical  analysis.  My  project  aims  to  supplement  this  work  with  acoustic  analysis  of  Dublin  English  vowels  and  consonants.  It  also  aims  to  further  explore  the  sociolinguistic  reasons  for  variation  and  change.    This  paper  will  include  a  brief  review  of  the  literature  on  Dublin  English,  focusing  in  particular  on  the  reported  differences  between  working  class  and  middle  class  forms  of  Dublin  English,  as  well  as  Hickey's  descriptions  of  a  chain  shift.  The  methodology  of  the  project  will  be  outlined,  including  subject  selection  and  data  elicitation  techniques.    References  Bertz,  S.  (1975).  Der  Dubliner  Stadtdialekt.  Freiburg:  Albert  Ludwigs  Universitat.  Bertz,  S.  (1987).  Variation  in  Dublin  English.  Teanga,  7,  35-­‐53.  Hickey,  R.  (2005).  Dublin  English:  Evolution  and  Change.  Amsterdam:  John  Benjamins.  Wells,  J.  C.  (1982).  Accents  of  English.  Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press.      

 

23

TRAP  vowel  raising  and  backing:  Latinos  in  the  D.C.  metropolitan  area    

Amelia  Tseng                  Georgetown  University  

 This  paper  applies  quantitative  and  qualitative  methodology  to  /ae/  (TRAP)  raising  and  backing  by  Latino  speakers  in  the  Washington,  D.C.  metropolitan  area.  Since  Labov’s  (1972)  controversial  claim  that  minority  groups  do  not  participate  in  majority-­‐group  phonological  shifts,  numerous  studies  have  documented  this  adaptation,  relating  it  to  (among  other  factors)  majority-­‐group  exposure  and  interaction;  ethnic  affiliation  and  segregation;  monolingual  contact;  gender;  and  social-­‐group  membership  (Fought,  2003;  Mendoza-­‐Denton,  2008;  Roeder,  2010;  Wolfram,  Carter,  &  Moriello,  2004).  Despite  evidence  that  changing  U.S.  demographic  patterns  may  be  leading  to  the  development  of  Latino  English(es)  in  the  American  South  (Wolfram,  Carter,  &  Moriello,  2004),  however,  Latino  speakers  have  not  been  studied  in  Washington,  D.C.      Throughout  the  United  States,  TRAP  raises  in  pre-­‐nasal  environment  (Labov,  Ash,  &  Boberg,  2006).  Chicano  English  (CE),  however,  typically  displays  a  low,  backed  TRAP  realization  (Fought,  2003;  Gordon,  2000;  Thomas,  2001).  While  this  pronunciation  originated  in  Spanish  phonological  transfer,  as  a  feature  of  an  emergent  native  English  dialect  it  is  available  as  a  stylistic  resource  (Eckert,  2008b;  Fought,  2003;  Sharma,  2005)  for  bilinguals  and  monolinguals  alike.  In  D.C.’s  contested  social  space,  where  immigration  and  gentrification  bring  “old-­‐timers,”  new  residents,  and  ethnic/regional  groups  into  contact  (Modan,  2009),  TRAP  realization  is  anticipated  to  carry  social  meaning  for  Latino  speakers  as  they  negotiate  their  imagined  (Anderson,  1991)  environment.  Crucially,  meaning  is  not  limited  to  ethnicity  (Eckert,  2008a;  cf  Silverstein  2003),  but  may  encompass  political  affiliation  (Hall-­‐Lew,  Starr,  &  Coppock,  2010)  and  locally-­‐negotiated  attributes  such  as  “toughness”  (Eckert  2008b).    Data  were  6  digitally-­‐recorded  sociolinguistic  interviews,  each  approximately  40  minutes  long,  from  the  Language  and  Communication  in  the  Washington,  D.C.  Metropolitan  Area  (LCDC)  database.  Participants  were  3  male/3  female  Latinos,  ages  25-­‐40.  All  self-­‐identify  as  bilingual,  and  use  English  in  the  majority  of  daily  interactions;  all  are  fluent  English  speakers,  and  three  show  native-­‐like  pronunciation.  5  immigrated  to  the  U.S.  from  South  America  as  adolescents  or  young  adults;  1  is  native-­‐born.  All  were  college-­‐educated  in  the  United  States  and  have  resided  in  the  DC  metropolitan  area  since  at  least  that  time.    Vowels  were  coded  by  the  researcher  using  PRAAT  acoustic  analysis,  with  F1/F2  measured  at  vowel  midpoints.  Tokens  with  preceding  rhotics  or  glides  (“grass,”  “wack,”),  and  following  approximants  /r  l/  (“marry,  “rally”)  were  discarded.  Following  nasal  environment  was  accepted  for  TRAP  (“hand”)  but  not  other  vowels  (“bend”).  After  establishing  vowel  space  for  each  speaker  (>10  tokens/vowel),  a  total  of  1459  TRAP  tokens  were  analyzed  by  pre-­‐nasal/non-­‐nasal  environment.  In  contrast  to  previous  findings  on  CE  (above),  preliminary  results  show  pre-­‐nasal  TRAP  raising  for  all  speakers.  A  gender  pattern  was  observed,  with  male  speakers  showing  a  more  backed  realization.  Finally,  inter-­‐speaker  variation  in  both  backing  and  raising  was  found.    Building  on  these  observations,  multivariant  statistical  analysis  (RBRUL)  and  regression  modeling  will  next  be  applied,  with  close  discourse  analysis  based  on  stancework  (DuBois,  2007;  Kiesling,  2009)  and  meta-­‐discourse  used  to  interpret  findings.  Inter-­‐speaker  variation  in  raising  and  backing  indicates  that  F1  and  F2  may  serve  different  stylistic  purposes  (Eckert  2008b)  in  nuanced  identity  performance  that,  in  the  D.C.  context,  may  range  from  local  discourses  of  residency,  authenticity,  and  “correctness”  to  more  widely  circulated  discourses  (Agha,  2003;  Bucholtz,  2009)  of  ethnicity  and  immigration.  However,  these  meanings  remain  to  be  uncovered  as  research  progresses.  

24

Emotions  in  identity  building:  indexing  socio-­‐cultural  meanings  through  affective  language  

 Irena  Dimova  

Sofia  University  “St.  Kliment  Ohridski”  

Traditionally  significant  scholarly  endeavours  in  the  sphere  of  linguistics  and  anthropology  have  focused  on  the  referential  meanings  of  emotional  language  by  investigating  whether  emotions  are  universal  phenomena  or  socio-­‐culturally  constructed  categories  (Besnier  1995).  This  emphasis  on  the  debate  over  universalism  versus  relativism  has  led  to  a  preoccupation  with  the  semantics  of  emotional  talk  and  has  encouraged  attempts  to  come  up  with  plausible  definitions  of  emotional  terms  (Rosaldo  1980,  Wierzbicka  1999,  Kövecses  2000).  However,  foregrounding  referentialism,  this  perspective  obscures  to  a  certain  extent  the  ways  in  which  emotions  arise  in  concrete  social  contexts  as  well  as  the  uses  to  which  they  are  subjected.  As  a  result,  a  number  of  anthropologists  have  turned  their  attention  to  the  pragmatic  meaning  of  emotional  language,  i.e.  what  it  accomplishes  rather  than  what  it  denotes  or  refers  to  (Ochs  and  Schieffelin  1989,  Besnier  1995,  Wilce  2009).  In  this  way  they  have  tried  to  shed  better  light  on  the  social  emergence  of  emotions  in  specific  contexts  of  situation.  In  the  present  paper,  I  suggest  that  the  time  is  ripe  for  a  similar  shift  to  take  place  in  the  realms  of  linguistic  research  on  language  and  emotions.  Focusing  on  the  pragmatics  of  affective  talk  will  provide  a  new  angle  from  which  to  approach  emotional  categories,  thus  offering  new  material  to  draw  conclusions  about  the  nature  of  emotions  and  a  means  of  going  beyond  the  never-­‐ending  argument  between  essentialism  and  constructionism.                Assuming  this  new  perspective,  the  current  presentation  examines  the  pragmatic  use  of  emotional  language  in  both  written  and  oral  interactional  contexts.  I  draw  on  data  from  personal  confessional  narratives  occurring  in  women’s  and  men’s  popular  magazines  and  internet  forums,  field  recordings  of  naturally  occurring  speech  in  face-­‐to-­‐face  interaction  between  native  speakers  of  Bulgarian  as  well  as  one-­‐to-­‐one  linguistic  interviews.  Based  on  the  extracted  linguistic  and  ethnographic  data,  I  propose  that  emotional  language  plays  a  key  role  in  identity  construction  processes.  To  achieve  my  objective,  I  pursue  a  semiotic  approach  to  affective  talk  and  a  procedural  one  to  acts  of  identification.  I  go  beyond  the  referentialist  meanings  of  emotional  language  and  focus  on  its  indexical  and  performative  functions—I  view  this  type  of  talk  as  a  phenomenon  directly  indicative  of  certain  stances  and  social  acts  and  indirectly  indexing  socio-­‐cultural  meanings  (such  as  belonging  to  a  particular  group).  These  indexical  processes  appear  to  facilitate  the  presentation  of  self  as  well  as  identity  construction  in  interaction.  Additionally,  I  argue  that  such  lower-­‐order  emotional  indexicalities  tend  to  be  perceived  as  related  to  certain  socio-­‐cultural  identities  by  signaling  higher-­‐order  units—linguistic  ideologies,  i.e.  metapragmatic  reflections  on  lower-­‐order  emotional  indexicalities.  The  emphasis  on  the  indexical  relationship  between  emotional  language  and  processes  of  identification  is  to  a  great  extent  made  possible  by  taking  a  procedural,  anti-­‐essentialist  approach  to  identity.  In  the  current  investigation,  I  regard  identity  not  as  some  kind  of  core  essence  of  the  individual,  static  and  given  once  and  for  all,  but  as  something  which  is  dynamically  constructed  in  specific  contexts  of  interaction,  more  often  than  not  collaboratively  and  intersubjectively.                                

25

“Well,  I  don’t  think  it’s  true.”  vs.  “That’s  bullshit!”:  Gender  differences  in  the  use  of  disagreement  strategies  

 Helga  Vanda  Koczogh  

 University  of  Debrecen,  Hungary    

Since  the  publication  of  Robin  Lakoff's  groundbreaking  book,  Language  and  Woman's  Place  (1975),  the  study  of  gender  and  politeness  has  become  an  extensive  field  for  research,  but  until  recently,  the  relationship  between  gender  and  impoliteness  has  received  much  less  attention.  This  paper  aims  to  contribute  to  this  neglected  field  of  research  through  the  investigation  of  the  interrelationship  between  impoliteness  and  gender  in  face-­‐to-­‐face  spoken  interaction  of  native  speakers  of  Hungarian.  In  the  central  strand  of  my  investigations,  I  set  out  to  reveal  the  specificity  of  female  and  male  discourse,  with  particular  attention  to  the  gender-­‐related  disagreement  patterns  of  language  use.      Until  now,  very  little  empirical  research  concerning  the  act  of  disagreement  per  se  appears  to  have  been  done,  especially  in  mixed-­‐sex  setting.  Moreover,  the  majority  of  studies  to  date  has  predominantly  focused  on  the  linguistic  manifestation  of  disagreement  and  has  ignored  its  functional  spectrum.  More  significantly,  a  gap  is  observed  in  the  relevant  literature,  as,  to  my  best  knowledge,  research  on  the  act  of  disagreement  has  never  been  carried  out  in  Hungarian.  This  study  is  an  attempt  to  fill  these  gaps  by  exploring  the  functions  of  disagreement  in  mixed-­‐sex  dyadic  verbal  interaction  of  Hungarian  university  students  within  a  task-­‐based  framework  using  both  qualitative  and  quantitative  methods.  An  additional  aim  of  the  paper  is  to  test  the  claims  of  the  bulge  theory  (Wolfson,  1988)  –  holding  that  the  linguistic  behaviour  of  those  standing  at  the  extremes  of  social  distance  is  very  similar  -­‐  by  examining  and  comparing  the  impolite  linguistic  behaviour  of  strangers  and  couples.  Thus,  my  overall  research  purpose  in  this  paper  is  to  examine  what  impact,  if  any,  gender  and  social  distance  have  on  the  preferred  disagreement  strategies  and  linguistic  markers  used  by  Hungarian  university  students.  The  research  findings  reveal  that  the  women  participating  in  this  study  in  general  used  a  higher  number  of  disagreements  compared  to  men.  The  results  also  suggest  that  certain  disagreement  strategies  are  preferred  by  men  while  others  are  used  more  freqently  by  women.  In  general,  the  research  findings  confute  previous  claims  on  women’s  politeness  and  non-­‐assertiveness,  and  question  the  universal  applicability  of  Wofson’s  bulge  theory.    References:  Brown,  P.  and  S.  Levinson  (1987).  Politeness:  Some  universals  in  language  usage.  Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press.    

Culpeper,  J.,  et.  al.  (2003).  Impoliteness  revisited:  With  special  reference  to  dynamic  and  prosodic  aspects.  Journal  of  Pragmatics  35,  1545-­‐1579.    

Georgakopoulou,  A.  (2001).  Arguing  about  the  future:  on  indirect  disagreements  in  conversations.  Journal  of  Pragmatics  33,  1881-­‐1900.    

Haugh,  M.  (2010).  When  is  an  email  really  offensive?:  Argumentativity  and  variability  in  evaluations  of  impoliteness.  Journal  of  Politeness  Research.  Language,  Behaviour,  Culture  6,  7–31.  

Holmes,  J.  (1995).  Women,  Men  and  Politeness.  London:  Longman.    Koczogh,  H.V.  (2010).  Hungarian  Perceptions  of  Gender  Differences  in  English  Conversations  

Reconsidered.  The  Round  Table,  3.    Available  at  http://www.theroundtable.ro/pages/language_studies.html  

Lakoff,  R.  (1975).  Language  and  woman's  place.  New  York:  Harper  and  Row.  

26

Endangered  Languages  and  the  Museum:  An  Area  of  Support,  Revitalization  and  Maintenance  in  Dingle,  Ireland  

 Jean  Price  

University  of  Newcastle    This  presentation  will  examine  how  endangered  language  communities  can  use  the  specific  resources  and  skills  museum  and  heritage  organizations  possess  to  assist  with  revitalization  and  maintenance  efforts.  The  case  study  to  be  examined  will  be  the  use  of  the  Irish  language  in  the  Dingle  Peninsula  as  exemplified  in  the  West  Kerry  Museum  and  the  Blascaod  Centre  contexts.  Data  presented  will  include  the  initial  findings  of  observations  and  interviews  at  both  sites,  as  well  as  supplementary  material  obtained  from  the  National  Museum  of  Ireland  and  the  Galway  City  Museum.      One  of  the  primary  aims  of  this  research  is  to  place  the  micro-­‐level  activities  being  undertaken  by  these  museums  in  the  context  of  macro-­‐level  policies  affecting  language,  as  well  as  their  impact  on  the  museum  and  heritage  organizations.  The  case  study  data  will  be  examined  within  this  larger  framework  of  policy  surrounding  the  language  support  activities  being  undertaken.  Additionally,  ‘best  practice’  in  both  language  revitalization  and  maintenance,  and  specific  areas  of  museum  and  heritage  practice  will  be  discussed  with  the  results  of  the  initial  phases  of  the  case  study  examined  within  those.  The  specific  museum  and  heritage  practices  to  be  discussed  are:  (i)  community  engagement;  (ii)  interpretation;  and  (iii)  non-­‐classroom  based  education.  Each  of  these  offers  a  specific  set  of  methods  and  practices  relevant  to  the  support  of  an  endangered  language  community.  The  connections  and  significance  of  these  practices  for  endangered  language  communities  will  be  demonstrated.    As  already  noted,  the  data  presented  arise  from  on-­‐site  interviews  and  observations  of  a  range  of  stakeholders  including:  managerial  level  staff  members,  other  staff,  the  general  visiting  public,  volunteers  and  language  officers.  I  also  intend  to  mine  data  from  relevant  in-­‐house  policies  and  publications  (so  called  ‘grey  literature’).  The  questions  this  will  answer  include:  What  type  of  information  generates  the  choice  of  language  as  Irish  or  English?  How  did  Irish  or  English  come  to  be  the  working  language  of  the  organization  in  question?  What  types  of  material  are  produced  in  Irish,  including  interpretive  material  and  educational  programming?  What  is  the  historical  reason  why  one  language  is  favoured  over  another  in  the  surrounding  community?  What  consequences/compromises  are  there  for  a  museum  working  in  Irish,  even  in  a  Gaeltacht  area?  What  types  of  attitude  towards  Irish  and  English  do  people  working  in  the  organizations  have  towards  the  respective  languages?  How  do  Irish  and  English  interact  within  the  organization  and  what  consequences  does  this  have  for  the  status  and  use  of  these  languages  within  the  organization  as  well  as  the  wider  community  setting?  What  policies,  both  internal  micro-­‐level  and  higher  macro-­‐level,  are  at  play  in  constructing  the  linguistic  landscape  of  the  organization?  Is  it  viewed  as  a  sacrifice  by  the  organization  to  forgo  English  in  order  to  support  and  promote  Irish  or  vice  versa?  How  do  these  practices  feed  into  language  maintenance  practices?  How  can  these  contribute  to  language  promotion  within  the  wider  Gaeltacht  communities  in  which  these  organizations  are  situated?    This  paper  constitutes  research  and  data  gathered  during  my  first  year  as  a  PhD  student  in  the  School  of  English  Literature,  Language  and  Linguistics  and  at  the  International  Centre  for  Cultural  and  Heritage  Studies  at  Newcastle  University.    

27

Gender  branding  identity  construction  and  hygiene  a  sociolinguistic  perspective    

Ellen  Osterhaus  Purdue  University,  Indiana  

 This  project  presents  an  analysis  of  naming  trends  from  a  corpus  of  common  hygiene  products  that  are  marketed  based  on  simple  gender  distinctions:  antiperspirant,  hand  soap,  and  shampoo.  The  brand  names  (e.g.  Sure)  and  model  designations  (e.g.  Glacier  Mist)  of  hygiene  products  employ  distinctive  linguistic  patterns  to  appeal  to  consumers  on  the  basis  of  socially  constructed  gender  rather  than  biological  sex.  The  function  of  these  name  and  model  designations  is  ostensibly  referential;  that  is,  simply  to  differentiate  items  with  unique  features  from  a  wide  range  of  similar  products.  However,  consumers  interact  regularly  with  the  names  of  products  in  their  daily  lives,  to  the  extent  that  the  name  is  encountered  in  isolation  from  media  commonly  identified  as  “advertising.”  The  pervasive  linguistic  patterns  in  product  naming  trends  play  an  important  role  in  our  collective  cultural  lexicon,  identity  construction,  and  can  serve  to  reinforce  a  cultural  heteronormative  gender  dichotomy.      The  three  types  of  hygiene  products  under  analysis  here  are  explicitly  categorized  as  “men’s,”  “women’s,”  and  “gender-­‐neutral.”  One  motivating  question  was  to  determine  whether  scent-­‐specific  model  designations  on  otherwise  gender-­‐neutral  products  follow  the  same  naming  patterns  as  products  that  are  overtly  labeled  as  “women’s”  or  “men’s.”  Are  gender-­‐neutral  products  marketed  in  a  truly  “neutral”  way?  The  deep-­‐seated  cultural  assumptions  inherent  in,  for  instance,  an  antiperspirant  that  promises  silky  underarms  (e.g.,  Secret)  or  sexual  prowess  (e.g.,  Axe/Lynx)  can  be  explored  through  the  language  of  persuasion  and,  more  specifically,  the  language  used  in  naming  common,  everyday  products.        The  analytical  paradigm  applied  by  Ingrid  Piller  in  American  Automobile  Names  provides  a  basis  for  interpreting  the  data.  A  small  corpus  of  US-­‐based  product  names,  along  with  their  supplementary  model  designations,  are  addressed  at  the  levels  of  lexical  categories,  syntactic  phrases,  and  semantic  connotations.  This  interdisciplinary  research  draws  on  studies  in  fields  from  sociolinguistics  to  marketing  in  order  to  address  this  conjunction  of  culture,  language,  and  identity.  The  findings  suggest  that  products  marketed  to  women  favor  longer  model  designations,  with  combinations  of  at  least  two  words  (e.g.,  Arctic  Apple),  whereas  products  marketed  to  men  tend  to  use  names  of  a  single  word  (e.g.,  Swagger).  Initial  findings  also  suggest  that  men’s  products  tend  to  draw  from  a  more  limited  range  of  semantic  categories  than  women’s.  The  gender-­‐neutral  soap  product  names  that  were  analyzed  also  use  longer  names,  and  share  more  common  semantic  categories  with  feminine  product  names  than  with  masculine.  The  data  suggest  that  parallels  may  be  drawn  between  trends  in  ostensibly  gender-­‐neutral  hygiene  product  names  and  women’s  product  names.  

28

A  study  on  the  Relationship  between  Apologizing  strategy  and  Gender  differences  in  Chinese  college  students  

 Lingyu  Fu  

Peking  University    The  gender  difference  in  languages  has  always  drawn  attention  from  anthropologies,  historians,  and  linguists.  Since  1970s,  many  linguists,  such  as  Lakoff,  Trudgill,  Zimmerman,  Bolonger,  Holmes,  Coates,  have  done  research  on  the  relationship  between  gender  differences  and  language  speaking.  Many  researchers  have  studied  apology,  one  of  the  most  common  speech  acts.  Goffman  has  determined  a  definition  for  apology  in  the  year  1971.  According  to  Brown  and  Levinson,  apology  threatens  speaker’s  positive  face.  Olshtain  and  Cohen  divided  apology  into  five  sub-­‐types.  However,  these  researches  seldom  focus  on  any  particular  speaking  community  or  any  special  group  of  speakers.  Based  on  the  questionnaire  analysis  plus  triangulation  analysis  of  field  notes  from  observations  as  well  as  informants’  dialogues  on  Facebook  and  Renren  (Chinese  Facebook),  the  present  qualitative  study  aims  to  describe  gender  differences  in  the  realization  of  apologetic  acts  from  a  key  comprehensive  university  in  China.      Three  research  questions  are  proposed.  1. What   are   the   typical   realization   patterns   of   the   speech   act   of   apologizing   by   male   and  

female  students?  2. To  what  extent  do  the  strategies  used  by  the  two  genders  differ  from  each  other?  3. The   correlation   between   gender   differences   in   apologizing   and   five   dimensions:   social  

position,  occasion,  social  relations,  the  listener’s  attitude  and  the  listener’s  gender.    Two  groups  of  college  students  are  enrolled  in  the  study—male  and  female  students.  A  5-­‐item  questionnaire  is  distributed  to  the  78  participants.  Data  are  also  collected  from  Facebook  and  Renren,  which  are  two  of  the  most  popular  communication  websites,  and  interviews.  Related  findings  are  listed  as  following.    1. The  gender  differences  exist  in  the  realization  of  apologizing,  in  terms  of  strategy  use.  2. Both   of   the   two   genders   share   some   similarities   of   strategy   distribution.   However,   the  

female   compared   to   the   male   are   more   apt   to   select   complex   strategies   to   realize   the  speech  act  of  apologizing.    

3. Under  the  five  occasions,  listener’s  gender  is  the  most  influential  factor,  which  means  male  tend   to   select   more   complex   strategies   to   realize   the   speech   act   of   apologizing   to   the  opposite  gender.  Other  factors  do  not  cause  differences  as  much  as  the  previous  one.  

29

West  End  Glasgow  Guide  to  Eating,  Drinking  and  Merriment    There  are  tons  of  bars,  cafes  and  restaurants  in  the  West  End.    Here  are  just  a  few  suggestions…..    

Food:    Mimmo’s  Bistro  (Ashton  Lane)  Cozy  restaurant  with  very  tasty  Italian  food  at  reasonable  prices,  highly  recommended!    Brel  (Ashton  Lane)  They  do  a  good  early  bird  menu  (ending  at  7)  for  meals  under  £7.    The  mussel  pots  are  particularly  good.    Ketchup  (Ashton  Lane)  2-­‐4-­‐1  gourmet  burgers  for  students;  Monday  –  Thursday  and  12  –  5  on  Fridays    Hillhead  Bookclub  (17  Vinicombe  Street,  off  Byres  Road,  Great  Western  Road  end)    Good  food  in  the  price  range  of  £5-­‐£10  with  many  veggie  and  salad-­‐type  options.  Lots  of  nice  touches,  retro  gaming  area,  indoor  ping-­‐pong  table,  cocktail  bowls  out  of  old  gramophones  –  well  worth  a  visit!    Tony  Macaroni  (Dumbarton  Road  end  of  Byres  Road)  Basic  but  delicious  Italian  food;  pizza/pasta/risotto,  if  you  order  before  6.30,  you  can  get  a  good  hearty  meal  for  under  a  fiver,  large  range  of  options.    Tribeca  (Dumbarton  Road)  NYC  styled  cafe,  great  for  lazy  breakfast/brunch  offering  pretty  authentic  NYC  delights  such  as  French  toast,  short  stack  pancakes  etc.  Worth  a  visit  for  the  bathroom  alone!    Bar  Gambrino  beer  hall  and  pizzeria  (372  –  374  Great  Western  Road)  A  hit  with  students  on  account  of  its  2-­‐4-­‐1  pizzas  (delicious  stone  baked,  thin  crust)  and  its  huge  selection  of  beers,  they  offer  a  decent  ‘beer  of  the  moment’  for  about  £2.50.      

Coffee:    Smug  (right  next  to  M&S  off  Byres  Road)  Coffee  shop  with  free  wifi,  they  do  a  great  nachos  plate  for  under  £7  which  can  easily  fill  you  up.    Artisan  Roast  (Gibson  Street)  Best  coffee  in  Glasgow  bar  none  

30

 Naked  Soup  (Kersland  Street,  just  off  top  of  Great  Western  Road)  Fantastic  coffee  and  brilliant  lunch  deal:  freshly  made  soup,  sandwich,  drink  and  piece  of  fruit  all  for  a  fiver.  Also  does  great,  good  value  breakfast.    Biblocafe  (262  Woodlands  Road)  Coffeehouse  and  second-­‐hand  bookshop,  pop-­‐in  for  a  brew  and  a  browse.      

Beers:    Captains  Rest  (185  Great  Western  Road)  Traditional  ‘pub’  turned  hipster  hangout.  Good  for  pints,  chat  and  has  a  cool  gig  venue  downstairs.  Also  serves  cheap  and  decent  pub  grub  (burgers,  nachos,  pizzas  etc),  if  it’s  too  busy  go  next  door  to  The  Liquid  Ship  for  a  beer  or  a  glass  of  (good)  wine.    The  Belle  (617,  Great  Western  Road)  Small  but  perfectly  formed  this  cozy  bar  is  great  for  a  quiet  drink  –  good  selection  of  beers.    The  78  (Kelvinhaugh  Street)  Right  next  door  to  Cairncross  House  (student  halls)  The  78  offers  a  large  selection  of  local  and  domestic  brews  as  well  as  a  good  vegetarian  and  vegan  menu.  Famous  for  Thursday’s  hugely  popular  Dub’n’Grub  night  -­‐  cheap  and  tasty  vegan  food,  loud  dub  and  friendly  vibe.    The  Ben  Nevis  (1147,  Argyle  Street)  Just  round  the  corner  from  The  78  the  Ben  Nevis  is  a  traditional  whisky  bar  with  live  Celtic  music  sessions  Wednesdays,  Thursdays  and  Sundays.  Try  their  ‘malt  of  the  month’  for  around  £2.50    Nice  ‘n’  Sleazy’s  (Sauchiehall  Street)  Made  famous  for  being  the  painfully  cool  Mogwai’s  watering  hole  of  choice,  Nice  ’n’  Sleazy’s  is  now  the  go-­‐to  bar  of  every  Glasgow  scenester.    Good  fun,  great  jukebox  and  some  tasty  cocktails  (try  the  Buckfast  based  Buckaroo  if  you’re  feeling  brave!)          

31

 

Dinner Menu Starters Chicken Satay Ayam £5.00 Skewers of marinated chicken grilled and served with peanut sauce and cucumber relish Crying Tiger Beef Salad £5.40 Grilled marinated beef served cold with a Thai style green salad (Beef is cooked medium rare) King Prawn Tempura £6.00 Lightly battered king prawns served with a sweet chilli sauce Salt and Pepper Squid £5.40 Salt and pepper squid served with a green mayo sauce Crispy Golden Spring Rolls (v) £4.80 Crispy spring rolls stuffed with grass noodles, onion and coriander, served with cucumber relish and sweet chilli sauce

Chicken Tom Yam Soup £3.50 Hot and sour soup with fragrant aromas and flavours. Served with prawn crackers. Fish Cakes £6.00 Traditional home-make Thai fishcakes served with cucumber relish & sweet chilli sauce Corn Fritters £4.20 Lightly battered fritter of sweetcorn, onion and coriander with Thai flavouring / red curry spice Main Courses Thai Green Curry £10.20 Classic Thai green curry in coconut milk with chicken or king prawns, served with jasmine rice Thai Red Curry £10.20 Classic Thai red curry in coconut milk with chicken or king prawns, served with jasmine rice Massaman Beef Curry £10.80 A Southern Thai dish, Muslim in origin. Succulent slow cooked beef, potatoes and peanuts, served with jasmine rice

32

Pork Fil let £11.40 Whole pork fillet sliced and served with garlic and pepper sauce, with jasmine rice (mild option) Rendang £10.80 Dry Indonesian style curry with beef or pork & potatoes, served with jasmine rice Chicken with Chill i Jam £9.85 Sliced chicken & vegetables stir-fried with chilli jam & holy basil, served with jasmine rice Coley with Three Flavoured Sauce £10.20 Lightly battered coley (white fish) topped with onions, chilli and tamarind sauce giving a slightly sweet taste, served with Asian vegetables and jasmine rice Phat Thai £9.60 Classic Thai fried noodle dish cooked with king prawns, vegetables and egg and topped with ground peanuts Vegetable Phat Thai (v) £9.60 Classic Thai fried noodle dish cooked with wild mushrooms, Chinese cabbage and chow sum, topped with ground peanuts Tofu and Vegetable Red Curry (v) £9.00 Fresh tofu, potato, broccoli and cherry tomatoes served in Thai red curry sauce with jasmine rice Mild Thai Yellow Curry £10.20 Mild Thai yellow curry in coconut milk with coley (white fish), served with jasmine rice Egg Fried rice is available instead of jasmine rice for an extra 50p Do you like it hot?? Why not ask for extra spice when ordering? Sharing Platters Thai Platter £10.00 Combination of chicken satay, king prawn tempura, spring rolls and prawn crackers served with dips Thai Vegetarian Platter (v) £8.00 Combination of spring rolls, vegetable tempura, corn fritters, tofu and Thai salad served with dips Desserts Coconut & Mango Panna Cotta £2.50 Chocolate Mousse £2.50 Vanilla & Lime Cheese Cake £2.50

33

Our desserts are small but perfectly formed. Good value so have a couple!

     

Tiki  Bar  directions: