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Within the study of language and social interaction, in which this book is situated, the concept of “accountability”—including related concepts, such as “account” or “motive,” “accounting,” and “being accountable”—has been of longstanding interest in terms of how interactants in both ordinary and organizational contexts manage their image or reputation, as well as how they achieve mutual understanding. However, these concepts are polysemous, with different senses being rather dramatic, such as accountability as “moral responsibility” and accountability as “intelligibility.” Even today this fact is not always remembered or fully recognized or appreciated by scholars, which has arguably slowed the development of these concepts. This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing accountability, with the goal of re-exposing its multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing new pathways for future research. Chapters advance our understanding of central theoretical issues, including turn taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, membership categorization, action formation and ascription, social solidarity and affiliation, and the relevance of context. Chapters range contextually, canvassing interactions between friends and family members, and during talk shows, broadcast news interviews, airline reservations, and medical visits. Chapters also range culturally, including English, Japanese, and Korean data.

Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a disproportionately low amount of research and funding is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. More regrettably, even less has been done to create a community of Africanists and concerned linguists who might work on rectifying this situation. This book puts some of Africa’s many endangered languages in the spotlight in the hope of reversing this trend. Both documentary and theoretical perspectives are taken with a view toward highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and exploring its consequences for research on and preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. The articles that comprise this volume collectively advocate nurturing synergistic partnerships between documentary and theoretical linguists researching endangered African languages in order to stimulate and enhance the depth, visibility, and impact of endangered African language research in the service of altering the landscape of scholarship and activism in this field.

This book shows how Internet and mobile technologies — including instant messaging (IM), cell phones, multitasking, social networking Web sites, blogs, and wikis — are profoundly influencing the way we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. The book looks at language in an online and mobile world. It reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back “whatever” attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to the book, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. The book argues that our ability to decide who to talk to is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information and communication technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are “always on” one technology or another — whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games — we have to ask what kind of people do we become, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?

This book, by a group of leading international scholars, outlines the history of the spoken dialects of Arabic from the Arab conquests of the seventh century up to the present day. It specifically investigates the evolution of Arabic as a spoken language, in contrast to the many existing studies that focus on written Classical or Modern Standard Arabic. The volume begins with a discursive introduction that deals with important issues in the general scholarly context, including the indigenous myth and probable reality of the history of Arabic; Arabic dialect geography and typology; types of internally and externally motivated linguistic change; social indexicalization; and pidginization and creolization in Arabic-speaking communities. Most chapters then focus on developments in a specific region—Mauritania, the Maghreb, Egypt, the Levant, the Northern Fertile Crescent, the Gulf, and South Arabia—with one exploring Judaeo-Arabic, a group of varieties historically spread over a wider area. The remaining two chapters in the volume examine individual linguistic features of particular historical interest and controversy, specifically the origin and evolution of the b- verbal prefix, and the adnominal linker –an/–in. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of the linguistic and social history of Arabic as well as to comparative linguists interested in topics such as linguistic typology and language change.

The first introduction to the field of Arabic sociolinguistics, this book discusses major trends in research on diglossia, code-switching, gendered discourse, language variation and change, and language policies in relation to Arabic. In doing so, it introduces and evaluates the various theoretical approaches, and illustrates the usefulness and the limitations of these approaches with empirical data. The book shows how sociolinguistic theories can be applied to Arabic and, conversely, what the study of Arabic can contribute to our understanding of the function of language in society.

Language is not just a means of communication but also a powerful symbol of identity in society at the individual, Self, and group levels. This symbolic role of language comes to the fore under conditions of war, conflict, displacement, and persistent cultural anxiety in society. Using autoethnography and autobiography, the book provides a novel way of investigating these issues in the Middle East using Arabic as a paradigmatic case. A study of personal names, the linguistic landscape, place names, and code-names further links language to war, conflict, displacement, and diasporisation at the level of the group and the individual. In the process issues of trauma and globalization are woven into this array of themes, revealing the complexity of the language-identity link in society. The book frames its findings against a wide-ranging critique of the dominant, correlational approach in Arabic sociolinguitics. It argues that this approach does not exploit the link between language and the major narratives of identity and conflict in the Middle East. The book argues for combining this approach with qualitative studies that are nevertheless aware of the limits of interpretation and the positionality of the researcher. The book further argues that through this combined endeavour a richer and more complex understanding of the socio-political underpinnings of language can be generated to help bridge the gaps between the various disciplines and areas of study that converge on language a a field of investigation and analysis.

This book proposes a radically new approach to argument structure that has the potential to unify data from a wide range of different language types in terms of a simple and universal syntactic structure. In many ways, the proposed theory is the natural extension of three leading ideas in the literature: The minimalist approach to Case theory (particularly Noam Chomsky’s idea that Case is assigned under the Agree function relation); the idea of introducing arguments in specifiers of functional categories rather than in projections of lexical categories; and the neo-Davidsonian approach to argument structure represented in the work of Parsons and others. The book pulls together these strands in the literature and shapes them into a unified theory. These ideas, together with certain basic assumptions—notably the idea that the initial order of merge of the three basic argument categories of Agent, Theme, and Affectee is just the opposite of what has been almost universally assumed in the literature—lead to a fundamental rethinking of argument structure. The book argues that every argument is merged as the specifier of a particular type of light verb category and that these functional argument categories merge in bottom-to-top fashion in accordance with a fixed Universal Order of Merge. In the hierarchical structures that result from these operations, Affectee arguments will be highest, Theme arguments next highest, and Agent arguments lowest—exactly the opposite of the usual assumption.

This book is about media, mediation, and meaning. It focuses on a set of interrelated processes whereby seemingly human-specific modes of meaning become automated by machines, formatted by protocols, and networked by infrastructures—that is, the way computation replaces interpretation, information effaces meaning, and infrastructure displaces interaction. The book asks: what does it take to automate, format, and network meaningful practices; what difference does this make for those who engage in such practices; and what are the stakes? Reciprocally it questions how can we better understand computational processes from the standpoint of meaningful practices; how can we leverage such processes to better understand such practices; and what lies in wait. In answering these questions, this book stays very close to fundamental concerns of computer science as they emerged in the middle part of the twentieth century. Rather than foreground the latest application, technology, or interface, it tries to account for processes that underlie each and every digital technology being deployed today. And rather than use the tools of conventional social theory to investigate such technologies, it leverages key ideas of American pragmatism—a philosophical stance that understands the world, and our relation to it, in a way that avoids many of the conundrums and criticisms of twentieth-century social theory. It puts this stance in dialogue with certain currents and key texts in anthropology and linguistics, science and technology studies, critical theory, computer science, and media studies.

This book examines issues of language, identity, and culture among the rapidly growing Asian Pacific American (APA) population. The distinguished contributors—who represent a broad range of perspectives from anthropology, sociolinguistics, English, and education—focus on the analysis of spoken interaction and explore multiple facets of the APA experience. The book covers topics such as media representations of APAs; codeswitching and language crossing; and narratives of ethnic identity. The collection examines the experiences of Asian Pacific Americans of different ethnicities, generations, ages, and geographic locations across home, school, community, and performance sites.

When two or more languages are part of a child’s world, we are presented with a rich opportunity to learn something about language in general and about how the mind works. This book examines the development of bilingual proficiency and the different kinds of competence that come together in making up its component parts. In particular, it explores problems of language ability when children use two languages for tasks related to schooling, especially in learning how to read and write. It considers both broader research issues and findings from an ongoing investigation of child bilingualism in an indigenous language-speaking community in Mexico. This special sociolinguistic context allows for a unique perspective on some of the central themes of bilingualism research today, including the distinction between competence and proficiency, modularity, and the Poverty of Stimulus problem. The book proposes that competence (knowledge) should be considered as an integral component of proficiency (ability) rather than something separate and apart, arguing that this approach allows for a more inclusive assessment of research findings from diverse fields of study. The bilingual indigenous language project illustrates how the concepts of modularity and the competence-proficiency distinction in particular might be applied to problems of language learning and literacy. Few investigations of indigenous language and culture approach bilingual research problems from a cognitive science perspective. By suggesting connections to broader cognitive and linguistic issues, this book points the way to further research along these lines.

Research in code-switching, undertaken against the backdrop of very negative attitudes towards the concurrent use of two or more languages within the same conversation, has traditionally been geared towards rehabilitating this form of language use. From being seen as a random phenomenon reflecting the user’s lack of competence, code-switching is currently seen as sign of an advanced level of competence in the languages involved and as serving different interactional functions. However, as a result of its success, the research tradition now faces an entirely new challenge: Where to from here? How can research in code-switching continue to be relevant and interesting now it has largely achieved its original purpose? This books seeks to answer this programmatic question. The author argues that, in order to overcome this challenge, the notion of bilingualism (multilingualism) itself must be redefined. Bilingualism must be seen as consisting of multiple interactional practices. Accordingly, research in bilingualism and in code-switching in particular must aim to describe each of those practices in its own right. In other word, the aim should be an empirically based understanding of the various interactional practices involving the use of two or more languages. In the book, this new research direction is illustrated by means of three case studies: language choice and speech representation in bilingual interaction, language choice and conversational repair in bilingual interaction and language choice and appositive structures in written texts in Rwanda.

Syntax is arguably the most human-specific aspect of language. Despite the proto-linguistic capacities of some animals, syntax appears to be the last major evolutionary transition in humans that has some genetic basis. Yet what are the elements to a scenario that can explain such a transition? In this book, experts from linguistics, neurology and neurobiology, cognitive psychology, ecology and evolutionary biology, and computer modeling address this question. The book follows through on a growing consensus among researchers that language can be profitably separated into a number of related and interacting but largely autonomous functions, each of which may have a distinguishable evolutionary history and neurological base. The chapters argue that syntax is such a function. The book describes the current state of research on syntax in different fields, with special emphasis on areas in which the findings of particular disciplines might shed light on problems faced by other disciplines. It defines areas where consensus has been established with regard to the nature, infrastructure, and evolution of the syntax of natural languages; summarizes and evaluates contrasting approaches in areas that remain controversial; and suggests lines for future research to resolve at least some of these disputed issues.

In virtually every bilingual situation empirically studied, borrowed items make up the overwhelming majority of other-language material, but short shrift has been given to this major manifestation of language contact. As a result, scholars have long been divided over whether borrowing is a process distinct from code-switching, leading to long-standing controversy over how best to theorize language mixing strategies. This volume focuses on lexical borrowing as it actually occurs in the discourse of bilingual speakers, building on more than three decades of original research. Based on vast quantities of spontaneous performance data and a highly ramified analytical apparatus, it characterizes the phenomenon in the speech community and in the grammar, both synchronically and diachronically. In contrast to most other treatments, which deal with the product of borrowing, this work examines the process: How speakers incorporate foreign items into their bilingual discourse, how they adapt them to recipient-language grammatical structure, how these forms diffuse across speakers and communities, how long they persist in real time, and whether they change over the duration. It proposes falsifiable hypotheses about established loanwords and nonce borrowings and tests them empirically on a wealth of unique datasets on a wide variety of typologically similar and distinct language pairs. A major focus is the detailed analysis of integration, the principal mechanism underlying the borrowing process. Though the shape the borrowed form assumes may be colored by community convention, we show that the act of transforming donor-language elements into native material is universal.

This book looks at brevity as an important topic for interdisciplinary study. It studies the diversity of ways in which brevity is achieved in conversation and examines the psychological, philosophical, and linguistic problems associated with the subject. When people make a contribution to a conversation, they tend towards brevity: they use elliptical constructions, exploit salient features of the environment in which the conversation is situated, make gestures, take account of what has been said before, either in the present conversation or in previous ones, and tailor their words to what they know of the beliefs and the personalities of the others taking part. In doing all this they generally make no obvious or unusual mental effort, and interpretation and comprehension are not hindered. Some of the problems of explaining this phenomenon are philosophically complex, and invite new explorations in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science. The book is the culmination of a multidisciplinary research project: it discusses psycholinguistic interpretations of the mechanisms at play in conversation, and takes full account of the latest developments in all the disciplines involved.

The main goal of this book is to demonstrate that the languages and dialects of Europe are becoming increasingly alike. This unifying process — that goes at least as far back as the Roman empire — is accelerating and affects every one of Europe’s 150 or so languages, including those of different families such as Basque and Finnish. The changes are by no means restricted to lexical borrowing, but involve every grammatical aspect of the language. They are usually so minute that neither native speakers nor trained linguists notice them. But they accumulate and give rise to new grammatical structures that lead, in turn, to new patterns of areal relationship. The book describes linguistic transfer from one language to another in terms of grammatical replication, using grammaticalization theory as a framework. The linguistic domains covered in more detail are definite and indefinite articles, possession, case marking, and the relationship between questions and subordination.

This book probes how jurors make the ultimate decision about whether another human being should live or die. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Texas and interviews with jurors who served on capital trials, this book explores the means through which language helps to make death penalty decisions possible. Close analyses of trial language, written legal language, and the language of jurors’ interviews reveal how specific linguistic choices mediate and restrict jurors’, attorneys’, and judges’ actions and experiences while serving and reflecting on capital trials. The book uncovers a conflict inherent to death penalty trials: jurors literally face defendants during trial and then must distort, diminish, or negate these face-to-face interactions in order to sentence those same defendants to death. This process, made possible through the physical and linguistic management of distance, dehumanizes defendants. It in turn allows jurors to avoid empathy with defendants, thereby justifying their death sentences. In addition, the book probes how jurors’ linguistic choices can create distance between themselves and the reality of their decisions, which also aids jurors in sentencing defendants to die. In the end, the book argues that these distancing practices constitute a form of discursive violence that occurs well before the literal taking of the convicted defendant’s life. By revealing communication strategies integral to capital trials, the book provides innovative material for understanding how the death penalty operates in the United States.

The Pacific is historically an area of enormous linguistic diversity, where talk figures as a central component of social life. Pacific communities, from Polynesia to Melanesia, also represent diverse contact zones—between indigenous and introduced institutions and ideas, between local actors and outsiders; and involving different lingua francas and colonial and local language varieties. Contact between colonial and post-colonial governments, religious institutions (including Christian missions), and indigenous communities has spurred profound social and linguistic change, simultaneously and irrevocably transforming language ideologies, reflexive sensibilities about languages, and language use and practices. Drawing on ethnographic, historical, and linguistic analyses, this volume examines situations of intertwined linguistic and cultural change unfolding in specific Pacific locations in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Its overarching concern is with the multiple ways that processes of historical change have shaped and been shaped by linguistic ideologies held by Pacific peoples and other agents of change. The chapters demonstrate that language and linguistic practices are linked to changing consciousness of self and community, through notions of agency, identity, morality, affect, authority, and authenticity.

Contact discusses the ways in which linguistic contact between closely related varieties differs from contact between fully discrete varieties. Particular focus is given to the development of English. Case studies are taken from recent contact of this type – such as the creation of New Zealand and Australian English. These are then compared with similar contact areas, such as Irish English, Ulster Scots and the Scots dialects of Orkney and Shetland. Finally, the rapid breakdown of inflection in late Old English and early Middle English will be considered as an example of near-relative contact. Throughout, the concept of koine is used as a means by which near-relative contact can be understood. Near-relative contact between varieties perceived to be dialects of the same language and similar contacts between closely related varieties perceived as being discrete languages are postulated to be of highly similar types.

Contact Linguistics is a critical investigation of grammatical structures when bilingual speakers use their two or more languages in the same clause. Myers-Scotton examines major contact phenomena, such as lexical borrowing, convergence, attrition, mixed languages, and creole formation, but especially codeswitching. She argues that different contact phenomena result from the same grammatical principles and processes. They provide a set of limited options so that predictions are possible about expected outcomes, even if social milieux differ. She extends her earlier analysis of codeswitching under the Matrix Language Frame model and develops further the role of asymmetry and the Uniform Structure Principle in contact phenomena in general. Two new models make analyses more precise. The 4-M model of morpheme classification recognizes the abstract basis of four types of morphemes and their differential distribution across contact phenomena. The Abstract Level model proposes that new lexical elements are formed by splitting and recombining levels of abstract structure.

This book describes and illustrates eleven powerful conversational strategies used by undercover police officers and cooperating witnesses who secretly tape-record targets in criminal investigations. Twelve actual criminal case studies are used as examples. These strategies creating illusion of guilt include the apparently deliberate use of semantic ambiguity, blocking the targets’ words (by creating static on the tape, interrupting them, speaking on their behalf, and manipulating the off/on switch); rapidly changing the subject before targets can respond (the “hit and run” strategy); contaminating the tape with irrelevant information that can make targets appear to be guilty; camouflaging illegality by making actions appear to be legal; isolating targets from important information that they need in order to make informed choices; inaccurately restating things the target has said; withholding crucial information from targets; lying to targets about critical information; and scripting targets in what to say on tape. These conversational strategies gain power from the fact that the targets do not know that they are being recorded, and often let things go right by them during the discourse. Nor do they know that the real audience of the conversations consists of later jury listeners, who do not know the full context of these conversations. Unlike everyday, unrecorded conversation, the most critical listening takes place at a future time and under very different circumstances. It is shown that undercover officers and their cooperating witnesses make use of essentially the same conversational strategies.