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This introductory chapter reviews research on the language(s) of CMC in a variety of linguistic/sociocultural contexts, focusing on constraints of writing systems; linguistic and discourse features of communication online, with special attention to Japanese and Greek; gender and culture; language choice and code switching; and linguistic diversity on the Internet, compared with linguistic diversity worldwide. Specific issues addressed include how speakers of languages not using the Roman alphabet improvise creative ways to represent their languages online, online language choice in multilingual European contexts, and the status of English vis-à-vis minority languages on the Internet. The eighteen chapters in the book are then described and classified according to the CMC mode(s), linguistic phenomena, and user demographics analyzed in each. The review of literature includes a sampling of publications in European languages.

English is the dominant language on the Internet, but as more people access the Internet, more nationalities and languages meet. This study examined language encounters in the Internet-based shared virtual environment (SVE) ActiveWorlds. The aim of the study, based on participant observations, was to discover whether language minorities are accepted or rejected by the language majority in SVE conversations, and how different conditions affect the outcome of the language encounter. It has been hypothesized that English would be the dominant language, but that minority languages would be common and well accepted by majority language-speaking users. The results showed strong English dominance. Shifts to minority languages introduced by participants were rarely accepted by English speakers and were fully accepted only in language-specific worlds.

This chapter pursues the twin themes of language ideology and cultural politics by considering issues of textual identity and language choice in hybrid texts. As understood here, hybrid texts (prose fiction) are texts written by authors of Arab origin – descent or heritage – not in Arabic, but in another language, such as French, English or Hebrew, among Palestinians in Israel. These texts are assigned to different cultural locations, which may be defined by the dominant language of the text, the background of the author or in a third space or twilight zone between these two worlds. One of the main arguments of this chapter revolves around the dialogic nature of these texts in the linguistic sphere, in the sense that the overt/present language of the text always recalls its covert/absent language. The interplay between languages, their ideologies and cultural politics is enacted through this dialogism. Language symbolism and language as proxy are used as the main tools for investigating the above issues. This chapter reveals that hybrid texts are another rich site for exploring language in the social world and never more so than when conflict, whether in reality or as memory, is simmering in the background.

This chapter examines a few of the more important themes, issues, and parameters in recent and current research on bilingualism. The focus is on corpus languages rather than ancient or classical languages because examples are drawn from, and apply to, medieval, early modern, and prehistoric as well as ancient languages, oriental as well as western, and substandard as well as standard — classical — varieties. The term ‘corpus language’ is preferred over ‘dead language’ because the latter need not arise through language death, and language death often yields not a dead language but no language at all. This chapter looks at bilingualism and diglossia, as well as bilingualism and biculturalism, language choice, interference, and bilingualism and language change.

This chapter examines language planning and policy in Singaporean late modernity. It discusses Singaporean language policy's attempts to manage the tension between modernity and tradition and argues that a sociolinguistic ordering around notions of ethnicity and nation does not fit easily with the multilingual dynamics of late modern societies. It contends that Singapore's language policy needs to appreciate that patterns of multilingualism are increasingly constructed around the dynamics of language choice and change in terms of a logic of lifestyle consumption.

This chapter is concerned with the question of the choices individuals make from among the ways of speaking available in their environment, with the focus on the political motivations and ramifications of their choices. It discusses the denial of heteroglossia; the role of education; linguistic imperialism; language rights; and the linguistic performance of minority identities.

This chapter examines bilingualism in Roman Egypt from a historical rather than linguistic perspective. In particular, the problems of functioning in a society where administration was officially confined to the language of the minority are discussed to see how far up or down the social hierarchy individuals were likely to remain monolingual (that is, at what points translation standardly took place), and also to look briefly at the cultural implications of language use and choice. An understanding of how far Rome’s subjects were prepared to use the language of their conquerors, and in what ways they did so, may contribute to the ongoing debates about cultural change and resistance in the Roman empire.

In the second century BC, a substantial number of Italian and Greek traders of comparable status came together on the island of Delos, setting up a potential competition between the two public languages on a roughly equal footing. This chapter deals with questions of linguistic identity, that is, the perception which the negotiatores had of themselves and the part played by bilingualism and language choice in the establishment of identities. Other issues, more technical or linguistic, are also considered, such as the distinction between interference, code-switching, and accommodation. Code-switching is a speaker’s switch from time to time into another’s language as an act of solidarity or politeness. There are inscriptions in which the adoption by a Greek of the Latin pattern of filiation may be seen as a form of accommodation.

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. Now that code-switching has been rehabilitated, the research tradition faces an entirely new challenge, namely that of its continued relevance. This book argues that, in order to overcome this challenge, research should aim to describe specific interactional practices involving the use of two or more languages and outlines a methodology for doing so. This chapter illustrates this methodology by means of a specific case study. In the chapter, the interaction practice of speech representation in talk in two languages is described. It is shown that, in talk in two languages, language choice in the interactional site of speech representation follows a three-path map: language choice may be an incidental aspect, it may be as a supportive aspect and it may be the depictive element in speech representation.

After briefly introducing the concepts of sociolinguistics and language ecology, this chapter looks at the nature of speech communities and communities of practice, especially professional communities, and the role of language use in these communities. It then concentrates on the relationship between academic and professional discourse and extends the analysis to domain-specific communities and domain-specific discourse. Each of these areas is dealt with as ecologically separate, although of course there are many commonalities between them. The chapter shows how notions of communicative competence and of the related sociolinguistic areas of language inequality and deficit link to the ways language choice plays an important gatekeeping role in professional communities.

This chapter studies the writing of Sasson Somekh, Anton Shammas and Sayed Kashua through the lens of their personal biographies, their background and their language choice. All three are native speakers of Arabic, albeit, from three different generations and three different faiths, but they all choose to write in Hebrew. The language choices of these authors help us understand the asymmetrical relationship between Israelis and Arabs, as well as the global linguistic homogenisation and perhaps the effects of collective traumas on the individual. The chapter concludes with a section on the ‘Arab Jew’, and the challenges of maintaining both constructs of this identity in Israel, in the case of the documentary of the ‘Ethnic Devil’ broadcast on Israeli television in summer 2013, and the case of the sociologist and poet, Sami Chetrit, an Arab Jew who does not speak Arabic.

This chapter introduces the major topics of the book, its methodology, and its theoretical background, focusing on the language choice of immigrant litigants in small claims court. These litigants vary between speaking in L2 English and speaking in another language that is translated by a court interpreter. Analyzing meta-pragmatic comments by other participants during courtroom interaction, it is shown that representatives of the court discourage the use of L2 English, whereas other participants may criticize the use of the other language. These practices are related to language ideologies about multilingualism and translation. In particular, an implicit policy requires litigants to speak only one language throughout the hearing but causes their language choice to be seen as indexical of their credibility or of their willingness to cooperate with the institution.

This chapter explores how text-worlds develop in the human mind. It is particularly concerned with how we conceptualise the actions, events, and other processes described in a discourse. It explores the relationships that exist between these discourse elements and the background of world-builders against which they take place. It examines three different reports of a football match taken from three contrasting sources in order to demonstrate the basic mechanics by which text-worlds evolve. These analyses also investigate how the manner in which an action is described in the discourse-world can affect the participants' perception of the relationships between enactors in the text-world. The range of possible language choices available to the reports' varying speakers and writers are compared and the effects of their final selections on the overall texture of the text-world are discussed. The chapter also explores how the text-worlds related to different genres of discourse advance in distinct ways.

This chapter investigates how the pragmatics of court interpreting affect communication between the participants. In a detailed analysis of two separate hearings about the same dispute, interpreter-mediated testimony is compared to testimony given in L2 English (L2 narration), and interpreter-mediated comprehension to L2 comprehension. It is found that consecutive interpreting causes narrative testimony to be fragmented, less coherent, and prone to interruptions by impatient arbitrators. By contrast, testimony given in English is not subject to such fragmentation, and participants are found to check each other’s understanding using response tokens and confirmation questions. Moreover, when testimony in English is translated into another language, this is done in simultaneous mode, which is cognitively more demanding and may lead to incomplete translation. Participants who rely on interpreters are thus disadvantaged compared to their English-speaking opponents, experiencing narrative inequality, particularly if their language choice is constrained and stand-by interpreting is not permitted.

Everyone-not just nurses-can take steps to improve understanding of nursing. These range from undertaking major public initiatives to reconsidering everyday speech. We should look closely at the role nurses play in the healthcare system and consider whether our language reflects that role; for instance, many use the word “nurse” to refer to any untrained caregiver. The media can convey a sense of what nursing really is. The news media should consult nurses when they have the expertise it needs. Hollywood should include characters to reflect the nurses who actually provide the compelling health care it has shown physicians providing. Hospital managers should promote nursing as they do medicine. Governments and foundations must recognize the value of nursing. More physicians should learn about the skills nurses have, for instance through interprofessional education and shadowing programs, and then use physicians’ social power to communicate that information to the public.