Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives
Abstract
Metalanguage brings together new, original contributions on people's knowledge about language and representations of language, e.g., representations of dialects, styles, utterances, stances and goals in relation to sociolinguistic theory, sociolinguistic accounts of language variation, and accounts of linguistic usage. The book follows from and complements a great tradition of the study of metalanguage, reflexivity, and metapragmatics, and offers a new, integrating perspective from various fields of sociolingustics: perceptual dialectology, variationism, pragmatics, critical discourse analysis, and social semiotics. The broad range of theoretical issues and accessible style of writing will appeal to advanced students and researchers in sociolinguistics and in other disciplines across the social sciences and humanities including linguists, communication researchers, anthropologists, sociologists, social psychologists, critical and social theorists. The book includes chapters by Deborah Cameron, Nikolas Coupland, Dariusz Galasi?ski, Peter Garrett, Adam Jaworski, Tore Kristiansen, Ulrike Hanna Meinhof, Dennis Preston, Theo van Leeuwen, Kay Richardson, Itesh Sachdev, Angie Williams, and John Wilson.
... This realisation has so far had different resonance in different areas of linguistics, but has contributed to developing richer models of language as a contextualised and contextualising phenomenon, and as a set of strategic, often reflexive, socially imbued practices. Metalinguistic processes lie at the basis of all these models in one way or another (Jaworski et al., 2012). ...
... It also opens a more holistic view of language by linking the multiple contexts -discursive, cultural, technological, economic, political and historical -in which linguistic processes are embedded (Johnson & Ensslin, 2007). As Jaworski et al. (2012) put it, all concerns about language ideology are ultimately concerns over metalanguage, since much of what we can learn about the ideological underpinnings of language use is derived from what people actually have to say about language. ...
... Finally, the growth of digital media has contributed a specific slant in the interest in metalanguage. In many parts of the world, metalanguage discussions have ranged from popular anxieties over "the breakdown of communication" and supposedly declining language standards (Cameron, 2014;Bogetić, 2016;Garley, 2019), to a broader interest in the reflexivity of the digital media era, where metalinguistic sensitivity becomes a "hallmark of contemporary social life" (Jaworski et al. 2012). In practical terms, online media texts provide both a particularly useful and widely accessible source of data for observing and analysing such (language-) ideological processes (Johnson & Ensslin, 2006). ...
Growing interest in meta-language, in linguistics and other disciplines, has highlighted a gap in metalanguage corpora and analytical resources, which remain among the scarcest in corpus-linguistic developments so far. This paper is aimed at making a step towards filling this gap, both by presenting our own metalanguage corpus resource and using it in a short sample analysis to discuss the applications of such resources in linguistics and social sciences. Specifically, the paper presents for the first time MetaLangCORP, a multi-element corpus of contemporary media metalanguage in languages of three post-Yugoslav states, linguistically annotated and made available open-access at the CLARIN repository of linguistic resources. To put the corpus in context, the meaning and relevance of metalanguage research is outlined, the existing efforts at compiling corpora of metalanguage are reviewed, and a sample preliminary analysis of MetaLangCORP keywords is presented to open a broader discussion on the potential applicability of metalanguage corpora. More broadly, it is hoped that making this kind of data available will prompt more nuanced analyses of metalanguage, as well as more corpus-building efforts along similar lines in Slavic and other linguistic scholarship.
... A reflektív nyelvhasználat szociolingvisztikai vizsgálatához tartozik például a metanyelv, illetve a nyelvi ideológiák és a társadalmi gyakorlatok kapcsolatának vizsgálata (pl. Jaworski -Coupland-Galasiński 2004;Coupland-Jaworski 2004) és a népi metanyelv kutatása is (Preston 2004). A nyelvhez kapcsolódó metatevékenységek pragmatikai szempontú megközelítése érvényesül a különböző metapragmatikai kutatásokban (pl. ...
A tanulmány bemutatja a nyelvmenedzselés-elméletet mint a nyelvi problémák kezelésére al-kalmas átfogó elméleti keretet; emellett ebben a keretben írja le és értelmezi a szervezett nyelvi tanácsadás működését, funkcióit, illetve a nyelvi helyzetek kezelésében érvényesített stratégiáit. Az elemzés arra törekszik, hogy megmutassa, miként kapcsolódik egy hétköznapi nyelvhasz-nálati probléma is tágabb, összetettebb folyamatokba: például mi minden veendő figyelembe egy nyelvhasználati tanács megalkotása során, ha a kérdező egy pályázati anyagban le akarja írni a háttér know-how kifejezést, vagy egy termékleírásban meg szeretné nevezni, hogy mit is csinál egy robotporszívó, vagy éppen magyar megfelelőt keres az angolul micromobility szóval jelölt jelenségre. A dolgozat a Nyelvtudományi Kutatóközpont közönségszolgálati munkatár-sainak nézőpontjából, saját tanácsadói gyakorlatunkat elemezve, önreflektív módon tárgyalja a vizsgált kérdéseket. A tanulmány ismerteti a nyelvmenedzselés-elmélet alapkérdéseit (2.), majd a nyelvi közönségszolgálaton folyó munka leírásán keresztül (3.1.) rámutat a nyelvi tanácsadásnak-mint a szervezett nyelvi menedzselés fontos típusának-az összetettségére és adatalapú szemléletére (3.2.), kitérve a nyelvi tanácsadó szolgálathoz fordulók társadalmi megoszlására
... Consistent with the platform positioning, English was the main language for communication and point of comparison, and many TikTokers provided cross-linguistic and cultural reflections, and animated such discussions in the comments (Figures 5.7 and 5.8). Prolific user-generated and authentic language content exemplifies the view of folk linguistics (Jaworski et al., 2004). In other words, lay people participate in metalinguistic talk, engaging in the representation and evaluation of language. ...
This volume focuses on a range of topics and studies that address the notion of plurilingualism and multilingual identity in computer-mediated language learning (CALL) spaces. Interest in digital multilingual identity in the fields of applied linguistics and language education has been growing exponentially in recent years. New theoretical assumptions and recent global challenges have urged researchers to problematize the traditional notion of virtual identity in the face of increased virtual connectedness and the hybridization of transcultural and translingual practices. The chapters in this collection contribute to this fast-growing body of interdisciplinary research, featuring conceptual papers and research studies of identity performance and multilingual communication in highly complexified digitally mediated social platforms. The volume seeks to (a) contextualize digital multilingual communication as it pertains to language learning and teaching via a historical and conceptual overview of the multilingual movement in technologically mediated SLA; (b) offer in-depth explorations of multilingual practices and digital affordances that affect language learner identities beyond the classroom context, (c) fill the research void by exploring empirically the critical aspects of multilingual identity deployment in digital contexts where language learners actively participate in translingual and plurilingual practices, and (d) illustrate new ways of evaluating and adapting teaching practices to accommodate multilingual subjects, and reflect the increasingly hyperlingual nature of digital communication.
... Disturbing titles, expressive metaphors, ensuing reader arguments in online comments all give the issues of language a strangely sensationalist feel, particularly in contexts where the national language is in no way endangered. Such keen interest in language used to linger on the margins of research, but has recently been upheld as one of the "hallmarks of contemporary social life" (Jaworski et al., 2004), telling of broader social stances, especially if we understand that "ideologies about language are never about language alone" (Woolard, 1998, p. 202), but are symbolic of various moral, social and ideological matters. ...
The concept of ‘metaphorical framing’ is currently witnessing renewed interest in metaphor research, but for discourse-oriented work it remains a problematic analytical tool given the variety of senses it has been employed with. The present paper considers an approach to metaphorical frames in discourse, by proposing the notion of discursive metaphorical frames to capture the complex, systematic metaphorical representations prominent across discourse. The perspective follows the direction of recent integrated approaches to metaphor, frames and discourse (e.g., Burgers et al., 2016 ; Cameron et al., 2009 ; Semino et al., 2016 ) and is proposed as particularly suited to studying public discourses, as ideologically laden, multi-textual and multi-voiced. The approach is illustrated through an analysis of metaphorical representations of language in Serbian and British newspapers. The analysis reveals the deeper social ideologies underlying the newspaper discussions on language in Serbia and Great Britain, including similarities as well as notable differences, pointing to the diverse ideological processes shaping contemporary media metadiscourses. The results are also discussed in relation to the adopted approach, to frames of presentation, (sub)domain representations and the dynamics of metaphor use in public discourse.
... The concept was later refined and operationalized by scholars including Vande Kopple (1985), Crismore (1989), Williams (1997, and more recently Hyland (2005), as well as € Adel and Mauranen (2010). Metadiscourse has been frequently related to or understood as synonymous with other terms, including but not limited to metalanguage (Jaworski et al., 2004), metatalk (Schiffrin, 1980, discourse reflexivity ( € Adel, 2006;Mauranen, 2010) and metapragmatics (Caffi, 2006). Researchers utilizing these terms tend to focus on different aspects of metadiscursive analysis, and therefore, have not reached consensus on a single precise definition. ...
Writers interact with readers using explicit signals of textual organization (e.g., firstly; however) and stance (e.g., possibly, surprisingly), known as metadiscourse markers (MDMs). Most metadiscourse studies, however, focus on academic writing exclusively, with minimal efforts comparing MDMs usage across communicative contexts. The present study examines English-as-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners’ use of MDMs in academic and colloquial writing. Each participant produced two texts on the same topic: a personal email to a close friend (colloquial) and an academic report to school principals (academic). The corpus of 704 texts were coded using Hyland’s metadiscourse model (2005). Trained EFL teachers scored texts for overall writing quality. The study first presented a distributional map of MDMs used in the EFL academic and colloquial writing corpora. Then, multi-level models revealed both similarities and differences in the use of MDM subtypes to serve distinct communicative purposes (e.g., more code glosses in academic writing; more boosters and engagement markers in colloquial writing). Finally, the use of MDMs was analyzed in relation to overall writing quality within and across communicative contexts. The results highlighted the strengths and weaknesses in EFL learners’ use of MDMs and informed the design of pedagogical approach attuned to the pragmatic functions of MDMs.
La enseñanza del español va más allá de transmitir códigos y signos a los estudiantes, visto que ellos son sujetos entre “lenguas-culturas”, que transitan entre su lengua y la del Otro, materializado por la lengua extranjera. En ese proceso, se produce el discurso como acto de enseñanza-aprendizaje, una vez que se enseña lengua con la lengua. En ese caso, se busca encender la supervivencia y el renacimiento de las lenguas. Ese hilo de vida y de supervivencia incide en la deconstrucción como (re)lectura de la realidad a través de la inversión. Esa deconstrucción corresponde a la construcción del concepto de realidad, más real que la propia realidad, por medio de la crítica, del análisis y de la revisión de las palabras. Teniendo en vista eso, el discurso del aula de español puede tener tanto de hiperlectura como de hiperlenguaje, que revisan la soberanía de la Palabra y del Otro. Por esa razón, este artículo tiene como objetivo estudiar el uso de estrategias pragmáticas (atenuación e intensificación) de los estudiantes brasileños en el aula. Para examinar ese objeto, se desarrollaron los siguientes tópicos como marco teórico: discurso en el aula de español, competencia comunicativa, cortesía verbal, intensificación y atenuación. En relación con las herramientas metodológicas, nos basamos en el enfoque etnográfico, ya que esa herramienta metodológica presenta características de comprensión y descripción de realidades socialmente producidas por el grupo de estudiantes. Finalmente, se concluye que es muy importante el papel del profesor por dar muestras de la lengua para que los aprendientes construyan mentalmente a su interlocutor resultando, así, en las implicaturas de los enunciados y el juego de la cortesía verbal.
Artikkelissa tarkastellaan piirustusmetodin ja visuaalisen aineiston vahvuuksia ja heikkouksia perusopetuksessa vallitsevien kieli-ideologioiden tutkimuksessa ja sitä, kuinka metodilla tuotettu aineisto soveltuu luonnollistuneen ja itsestään selvänä pidetyn tavoittamiseen. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostuu 5.–6.-luokkalaisten koululaisten ja luokanopettajaopiskelijoiden piirustuksista suomen kielestä. Aineistona on 115 piirustusta, jotka on kerätty Oulun seudulta ja Helsingistä. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan piirustusmetodin käyttöä, sen vahvuuksia ja heikkouksia tutkimusstrategiana, sekä sitä, millaisen pohjan metodi aineiston analyysin valossa tarjoaa kieli-ideologisten prosessien tarkastelulle. Samalla selvitetään, millaisia visuaalisia elementtejä suomen kieleen piirustuksissa liitetään ja millaisia jaettuja suomen kielen representaatioita aineistossa esiintyy. Artikkelissa tarkastellaan piirustusten rakennetta ja luokitellaan niiden sisältöä laadullisen sisällönanalyysin keinoin. Tulokset osoittavat, että osallistujien visuaaliset representaatiot suomen kielestä ovat moninaisia. Aineistossa toistuvien elementtien ja tekstien avulla on mahdollista havaita toistuvia sosiaalisia ja kulttuurisia rakenteita, joihin osallistujat kielen liittävät. Vaikka piirustustehtävän tehtävänanto on abstraktiudessaan haasteellinen, piilee siinä myös sen toimivuus kieli-ideologioiden tarkastelun kannalta: vapaus piirtää mitä vain tuo esiin vallitsevien kieli-ideologioiden moninaisuuden sekä luonnollistuneet ja jaetut ajattelutavat. Tutkimus osoittaa, että piirustusmetodia voi soveltaa kieli-ideologioiden tutkimuksessa laajemmin kuin tähän asti. Tulokset osoittavat, että osallistujilla on jaettuja tapoja kuvata suomen kieltä. Representaatiot tuovat esiin kielen ja kansallisvaltion luonnollistuneen yhteyden. Koulujen kielitietoisen toiminnan ja niiden jatkuvasti moninaistuvan oppilasaineksen kannalta tulos on huomionarvoinen – visuaalisen aineiston valossa historiallisesti hyvin yksikielisessä ja kansallista yhtenäisyyttä ylläpitäneessä koulussa suomen kielen kuvaukset vaikuttavat edelleen voimakkaan kansallisilta. Drawn representations of Finnish: the drawing method as a method of investigating language ideologies This paper observes the strengths and weaknesses of the drawing method and the use of visual data in analysing language ideologies in the context of basic education. The data consists of 115 drawings of the “Finnish language” by primary school pupils and teacher trainees. The data is collected from Helsinki and the Oulu Region. The article examines the use of this method as well as the foundation which these drawings offer for an analysis of language-ideological processes. In addition, the article explores the different elements associated with the possible shared representations of Finnish. The structures of the drawings are observed and their contents analysed using Qualitative Content Analysis. The results show that participants’ visual representations of the Finnish language are manifold. Recurring elements enable one to observe the social and cultural structures associated with the language. Though challenging, this abstract assignment gives participants the freedom to draw anything at all, which highlights the sheer multiplicity of language ideologies and shared perceptions. This paper demonstrates that when examining language ideologies, the drawing method can be applied more broadly than until recently has been the case. The results show that participants share many views regarding the Finnish language, and their representations reveal the naturalised relation of language and nation state. The traditionally monolingual educational system in Finland has played an important role in maintaining national unity and, based on the visual data in this study, visual representations of the Finnish language still appear bound to the idea of the nation state.
Sociolinguistics is a dynamic field of research that explains the role and function of language in social life. This book offers the most substantial account available of the core contemporary ideas and arguments in sociolinguistics, with an emphasis on innovation and change. Bringing together original writing by more than twenty of the field's most influential international thinkers and researchers, this is an indispensable guide to the newest and most searching ideas about language in society. For researchers and advanced students it gives access to the field's most pressing issues and debates, as well as providing a platform for new initiatives in sociolinguistic research.
Spanish is spoken as a first language by almost 400 million people in approximately 60 countries, and has been the subject of numerous political processes and debates since it began to spread globally from Iberia in the thirteenth century. A Political History of Spanish brings together a team of experts to analyze the metalinguistic origins of Spanish and evaluate it as a discursively constructed artefact; that is to say, as a language which contains traces of the society in which it is produced, and of the discursive traditions that are often involved and invoked in its creation. This is a comprehensive and provocative new work which takes a fresh look at Spanish from specific political and historical perspectives, combining the traditional chronological organization of linguistic history and spatial categories such as Iberia, Latin America and the US, whilst simultaneously identifying the limits of these organizational principles.
Spanish is spoken as a first language by almost 400 million people in approximately 60 countries, and has been the subject of numerous political processes and debates since it began to spread globally from Iberia in the thirteenth century. A Political History of Spanish brings together a team of experts to analyze the metalinguistic origins of Spanish and evaluate it as a discursively constructed artefact; that is to say, as a language which contains traces of the society in which it is produced, and of the discursive traditions that are often involved and invoked in its creation. This is a comprehensive and provocative new work which takes a fresh look at Spanish from specific political and historical perspectives, combining the traditional chronological organization of linguistic history and spatial categories such as Iberia, Latin America and the US, whilst simultaneously identifying the limits of these organizational principles.
Mit sprachlicher Reflexivität ist die Möglichkeit von Sprache und Sprachgebrauch gemeint, sich in vielfachen Formen und mit unterschiedlichen Graden der Explizitheit auf sich selbst zu beziehen. Die Erforschung sprachlicher Reflexivität steht in vielfältigen und langen Traditionen. Von der Sprachphilosophie über die Anthropologie bis zur Linguistik ist sprachliche Reflexivität aus unterschiedlichen, gleichermaßen aber überlappenden Perspektiven in den Blick genommen worden. Vor diesem Hintergrund versucht der Sammelband, diese Partikularisierung insofern für eine mehrschichtige Perspektivierung fruchtbar zu machen, als aktuelle Ansätze und Schwerpunkte zusammengeführt und kontrastiert werden. Die Einleitung skizziert den aktuellen Forschungsstand zu sprachreflexiven Praktiken entlang zentraler Forschungstraditionen, beschreibt die Perspektiven des Bandes und gewährt einen Überblick über die einzelnen Beiträge.
The radical democratic theorist Chantal Mouffe has long criticized the moralization of politics in its neoliberalized Third Way form. The argument informs her analysis of the rise of the far right, which she suggests has partly been enabled by moralizing antagonisms that inhibit a culture of agonistic political contestation. This paper uses Mouffe to think about the current condition of mediatized public discourse, extending her critique of moralized politics to a wider set of targets. I illuminate the argument through an analysis of a BBC Newsnight report that thematizes the ‘toxic’ nature of public debate about the science of COVID-19. I show how the report internalizes sedimented ‘culture war’ discourses about the polarized nature of today’s public culture and, in the process, offers oblique insights into how far-right discourses are normalized. I end by considering some of the limitations of Mouffe’s work as a resource for thinking about how to counteract the far right.
A number of sociocultural phenomena have been explored in Yoruba through the pragmatics lens. However, metapragmatic disclaimers, which also provide deep insights into the cultural dynamics regarding the use of the language, have not been given much scholarly attention. Thus, this study investigates metapragmatic disclaimers in Yoruba to establish their forms and contextual use. Data comprised excerpts generated from a corpus of naturally occurring conversations in Yoruba in different communication contexts. Mey’s pragmatic acts theory (as modified) served as the analytical tool. Two forms of metapragmatic disclaimers were identified in Yoruba: status-bound and non-status-bound, riding on shared cultural knowledge (SCK) among the people. Beyond serving as a tool for (re)creating a positive identity by the user(s), they also serve as face-management devices in the language and culture.
This paper critically examines the construction of ‘supradialects’ (BCMS narječje) in Central South Slavic (CSS) dialectology. The concept is unique because it is usually placed in the hierarchy of varieties above ‘dialect’ and below ‘language’, also because supradialects are indicated as the ‘dialectal bases’ of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian (BCMS) languages (and their predecessor, Serbo-Croatian). Despite that, the definition of supradialects in CSS literature is paradoxical: they are not fully described varieties, but sets of old isoglosses, reconstructed by dialectologists by comparing remote village speech varieties to *proto-Slavic. This poses the question of how they can act as a “base” of a contemporary standard language. To explore this issue, I analyse the CSS dialectological literature of the past two centuries and inspect the metalanguage used to define and construct supradialects. I also illustrate how the use of the “base” metaphor in authoritative publications on BCMS languages creates an understanding of supradialects as homogenous, contemporary varieties, concealing their (re)constructed nature. Theoretically, the paper offers and alternative perspective on dialects as discursive constructs in their own terms rather than by-products of linguistic standardization, as they are most often treated in sociolinguistics.
This chapter reviews studies related to the teacher talk through grammar instruction that occurs naturally with learners. It attempts to portray the impact of teacher talk in English grammar acquisition. It focuses on the manner learners acquire grammar verbally from their teachers' conversation. Teacher talk is the crux of grammar instruction, and the manner teachers handle it in their classroom is the main purpose of this chapter. This chapter also highlights the role of techniques, strategies, and procedures used during teacher talk in the learning process. It contributes to improving the grammatical rules acquisition through the post-method pedagogy. The conversation analysis method was used for the transcription and analysis of the data. Consequently, this chapter focuses on the issues related to grammar, grammar instruction, techniques, and strategies used in teacher talk through grammar explanation. This was done with reference to the interaction procedures used by the teacher to improve and extend the learning space.
In this paper, we conduct a critical discourse analytical study of asylum interviews in order to contribute to knowledge and awareness of (a) how asymmetrical power relations are discursively (re)produced as well as manoeuvred and negotiated during the interaction and (b) what this means in terms of positioning of the participants. Focusing on a number of metacommunicative sequences characterised by a notably high degree of interpersonal complexity, we examine how participants are positioned and how positioning is discursively realised. We draw on eight observed and recorded asylum interviews conducted in Sweden 2018-2021. Metacommunicative positioning is analysed mainly with a focus on speech functions and modality. We show that metacommunication is used by all participants largely as a means of constructing an asylum narrative within the framework of an institutional discourse. The participants can position each other in (dis)advantageous ways in their attempts to deny, or sometimes claim, responsibility for miscommunication. The applicants generally obey the metacommunicative instructions given by other, more powerful participants. However, we also show an example of an applicant who makes resistance to the institutional discourse. Furthermore, all participants use metacommunication as a tool to guide each other in the conversation, thereby positioning themselves as responsible for the co-construction of the asylum narrative. Finally, we underline the benefits of conducting critical discourse analysis in the study of asylum interviews, although such studies can barely change the fact that the asylum determination process is unequal and asymmetrical in its core.
Technology has enabled new ways of meaning-making in the digital age, incidentally bringing with it inequities in education as a result of the differing access, resources, and experiences of students. These inequities may be rendered invisible if society and schools neither recognize, value nor set out to include in formal education the meaning-making practices from students' lifeworlds. Such neglect can perpetuate the digital divide among students from diverse home backgrounds. The reform agenda of multiliteracies is to bring about educational justice through a pedagogy of access. In this paper, we discuss how this agenda can be operationalized in the frontline of education-the classroom. We propose a pedagogic metalanguage of transpositional grammar for the learning of multimodal literacy. "Transposition" refers to the process of moving between different forms of meaning (text, image, space, object, body, sound and speech), and changes of attention to their functions (reference, agency, structure, context and interest). In particular, we show the value of having a common shared conceptual framework with which to reflect upon and unpack multimodal meaning in terms of its forms and functions. We also describe how a repertoire of knowledge processes, rebalancing the cognitive and the socio-material, affective and embodied, can support teachers in their design for students' multimodal literacy learning. We argue that attention to multimodal literacy in the curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment can be productively supported with a pedagogic metalanguage of transpositional grammar and discuss how this can be a step towards mediating the invisible inequities in education in the digital age.
Drawing on the example of the French-speaking world, this article makes the case for the valuable contribution of a systematic ethics-based approach to understanding linguistic pluricentricity. Following a critical review of three key definitional dimensions of the concept - political, linguistic and representational/attitudinal - it argues for the inclusion of a fourth ethical dimension to assess whether there are moral arguments which might also favour the recognition of distinct national standards. It builds on the recent linguistic justice literature in the fields of political theory and political philosophy to propose the notion of “pluricentric linguistic justice” as a framework for evaluating the ethics of local norm-setting and enforcement in pluricentric contexts. To demonstrate how pluricentric linguistic justice might be assessed, it examines a series of valued-based arguments discussed in the linguistic justice literature relating to the instrumental and identity functions of language, considering how they might apply to specific contexts in the French-speaking world. Besides contributing to existing theory, the notion of pluricentric linguistic justice has the potential to help advance social equality, by drawing attention to some of the social and political injustices associated with diatopic variation in spatially diffused languages more generally.
In the communications of modern organizations, text sharing and knowledge management are mainly digital. The digital systems that frame many types of communication consist of, e.g., intranets and document sharing software that are occasionally exchanged for new systems. Employees have to adjust to modified routines and learn new systems, and management has to make decisions about digital systems and how these are to be integrated with work processes and knowledge management. In this article, we contribute to research on work-life literacies by highlighting the increasingly frequent issue of digital text sharing in modern workplaces through the study of commercial companies, mainly through ethnographic observations and interviews. The theoretical framework comes from New Literacy Studies where literacy practices, i.e., common patterns of using reading and writing, form a key concept. Moreover, the sociolinguistic concept of metadiscourse is applied in order to uncover the reflexive orientation of participating professionals towards digital text sharing. The results show that these professionals relate the combination of digital text sharing and technological and organizational change to problems, obstacles and potential risks; ambitions of enhancing digital text sharing may exclude certain groups, and changes in digital text sharing systems per se may cause professionals to lose control. These risks are often associated with access to information: a person who cannot access information in their organization has a lower degree of agency or power over their situation. The results are discussed in light of theories concerning modern work life from New Literacy Studies.
RESUMO A ficção seriada audiovisual, produzida nos Estados Unidos, Jane, the virgin, está em exibição desde 2014. Sua narrativa, com diferentes estruturas polissêmicas, torna o uso da metalinguagem uma constante. É dentro deste contexto, portanto, que o presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar as práticas de metalinguagem presentes no seriado Jane, the virgin. A pesquisa direcionada às práticas audiovisuais de metalinguagem possibilita a oportunidade de compreender como ocorre esse processo que assume essa linguagem dentro da já existente narrativa. A metodologia constitui-se de abordagem qualitativa, do tipo descritiva, com técnica de análise de conteúdo. A partir de um universo de vinte e dois episódios, que pertencem a primeira temporada da série (2014-2015) foram selecionados três deles nos quais analisou-se, por meio de três dimensões de metalinguagem: a linguagem da telenovela, a figura do narrador e a utilização da rede social digital Twitter. Os resultados alcançados demonstram que a narrativa do seriado possibilita um jogo de textos metalinguísticos ao tecer uma espécie de narrativa peculiar que mistura a linguagem da telenovela latina com as dos seriados estadunidenses.
The emergence of the Web 2.0 profoundly changed the tourist experience and its modes of interaction and communication. Among the most pervasive forms of contemporary tourism discourse we find online reviews posted on social media platforms as TripAdvisor. Previous research on online travel reviews focused almost exclusively on negative reviews and mostly considered monolingual English dataset. In the present study we will explore positive reviews and we will add a cross-linguistic analysis comparing reviews written in English, Italian and Dutch. In this contribution, we first explore the move structure of reviews, and then delve into their different linguistic realizations, paying particular attention to potential cross-linguistic similarities and divergences. Our results show that positive reviews are generally formed by four main moves: positive and negative evaluations, offering extra/background information and future-oriented recommendations. These moves represent stable and recurrent features in reviews written in all three languages under examination. Further, also the topics of the reviews display a cross-linguistic tendency towards similarity, with the preferred topics being the accommodation, its services and the staff. The findings also highlight some divergences among the three language groups, especially not on what is said but on how it is said. For instance, in reviews written in Italian we found expressions of thankfulness and congratulations to the staff, while these are practically absent in the other languages. Moreover, we observed that Italian reviewers tend to realize positive evaluations in a more intensified way (e.g. through the use of superlative lexical expressions) while these strategies are used far less frequently in British and Dutch reviews. With this study we seek to contribute to research in the field of (digital) tourism discourse providing one of the first discourse-oriented analyses on reviews of positive polarity. Moreover, performing a comparative analysis, we aim at gaining a deeper insight on the issue of multilingualism within (online) tourism communication.
This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study on a group of mainland Chinese students’ multilingual experiences during their cross-border studies in a Hong Kong university from a language ideological perspective. Drawing on in-depth interviews as the primary dataset, the study investigated the language ideologies held by the participants about Cantonese, Putonghua and English. Findings indicated that while the participants espoused a distinct set of language ideologies about Cantonese, Putonghua and English underlying their multilingual experiences in the university, the ideology of language as identity and the ideology of language as commodity emerged as the two major language ideologies. It was also revealed that the ideological tensions arising from the co-existence of the multiple and competing language ideologies resulted in the participants’ ambivalences in their use of, and/or investment in, particular languages. Findings also point to the role of the participants’ language ideologies in maintaining the social hierarchy of languages within the local language ecology and reproducing the group boundaries between local and mainland Chinese students.
In this study, we focus on a specific form of metacommunication found in an emerging digital genre: Hotel reviews posted on TripAdvisor. In particular, we investigate how tourists represent their service encounter interactions. The main goal of the present study is to identify what these digital metacommunicative practices reveal about communicative norms and expectations among groups of reviewers writing in three different languages. We analyzed a multilingual dataset of 1800 reviews written in English, Dutch, and Italian. The results reveal that reviewers commented upon a broad range of aspects when evaluating service encounters interactions, for instance, describing the quality of the interaction (e.g. polite, correct), or a lack of communication when a specific type of communication is expected (e.g. absence of greetings, or apologies after a service failure). Further, we found similar cross-linguistic patterns, such as appreciation for being able to communicate in one’s mother tongue during the hotel-guest encounter. At the same time, a few differences across languages emerged, such as the preference for precise and correct information within British reviews. Since service interactions are of fundamental importance for customer satisfaction, our findings contribute not only to the current research on metacommunication in digital contexts, but may also be significant for service providers in the hospitality industry.
The influence of social knowledge on speech perception is a question of interest to a range of disciplines of language research. This study combines experimental and qualitative approaches to investigate whether the various methodological and disciplinary threads of research on this topic are truly investigating the same phenomenon to provide converging evidence in our understanding of social listening. This study investigates listeners’ perceptions of Spanish and Quechua speakers speaking Spanish in the context of a contact zone between these two languages and their speakers in central Bolivia. The results of a pair of matched-guise vowel discrimination tasks and subsequent interviews demonstrate that what people perceive , as measured by experimental tasks, is not necessarily what they believe they hear, as reported in narrative responses to interview prompts. Multiple methodological approaches must be employed in order to fully understand the way that we perceive language at diverging levels of sociolinguistic awareness. (Perception, sociophonetics, sociolinguistics, awareness, Andean Spanish)
Este artículo tiene por objeto contribuir al cuestionamiento de las políticas consensuales que presidieron el periodo transicional en España empleando para ello un ángulo de análisis glotopolítico. Para ello, toma como caso de estudio el metalenguaje desplegado en las celebraciones y efemérides transicionales relacionadas con las famosas glosas custodiadas en San Millán de la Cogolla. Este revela su apropiación nacionalista por parte de distintos poderes académicos, políticos e institucionales.
Intergenerational practice (IP) is an increasingly popular community development tool which brings younger and older people together to participate in mutually beneficial activities. It aims to reduce negative attitudes and promote community cohesion. Previous research has examined the benefits of IP though much of this has focused on its potential to increase positive attitudes (and other individual level outcomes). In doing so, previous research has neglected broader social issues, the social nature of social change and the broader community and societal context within which IP takes place. As a result little was known about how IP works and its capacity for micro, meso and macro level social change. Within a social constructionist frame, this thesis argued that to understand the relationship between IP and social change, the role of different social agents in its production needed to be explored more critically. Social representations theory and mixed qualitative methods were used to explore how different social representations were engaged with, circulated or resisted in text, talk and action. Three studies examined practice guidelines, community facilitators and an intergenerational initiative. The latter study adopted an action research framework and aimed to both promote positive social change as well as explore the nature of this change. Mixed traditional and creative qualitative data were collected and analysed through thematic analysis. ii Findings revealed two competing systems of knowledge underpinned by themata individualism/collectivism and us/them. On the one hand, IP was characterised as an intervention targeted at problem individuals. On the other hand, IP was understood as a tool for collective action towards wider social issues. Between the push and pull of these systems of knowledge, IP was actualised in a middle ground, as a community mobilisation tool with the potential to foster community cohesion through the empowerment of older and younger people.
Language contact phenomena of English use in global advertising are usually analysed within the framework of world Englishes or linguistic hybridity for an examination of language contact and change, borrowing, hybridization, bilingual creativity, language attitudes, functions, and others. The insights of postcolonial performativity, however, suggest reconsidering the theoretical grounding for studying English use at the transnational level in diverse genres of different sociolinguistic communities around the world. This article posits a new direction for studying the use of English in global advertising. The high level of variation and complexity observable in many aspects of English use is assumed to be germane to, and constantly mediated through language ideologies that are often diverse, complex, unstable and even conflicting.
Dieser Artikel diskutiert die gesellschaftliche Reflexion von Sprache und sprachlichem Handeln vor dem Hintergrund des Phänomens der ‚sprachlichen Reflexivität‘, der Möglichkeit, mit Sprache auf Sprache Bezug zu nehmen. Er stellt Termini und Konzepte zur Beschreibung sprachlicher Reflexivität vor und ordnet sie erkenntnisgeschichtlich ein. In diesem Zusammenhang wird auch die Bedeutung sprachlicher Reflexivität für Sprache und sprachliches Handeln diskutiert. Es wird argumentiert, dass Sprache ohne Reflexivität nicht denkbar ist, weshalb diese einen zentralen Gegenstand der Sprachwissenschaft darstellt. Auf dieser Basis werden Praktiken sozialer Reflexion von Sprache und sprachlichem Handeln - die metasprachlichen/ metapragmatischen ‚Urteile der Öffentlichkeit‘ - als Praktiken sozialer Positionierung charakterisiert. Es wird gezeigt, dass sprachliche Urteile mehr sind als ‚Sprechen über Sprache‘ und dass ihre Beschreibung komplexe soziopragmatische Zusammenhänge berücksichtigen muss. Der Artikel stellt Mittel aus der Soziolinguistik und Linguistischen Anthropologie dafür vor.
A tanulmány a funkcionális kognitív pragmatika azon alapvetéséből indul ki, miszerint a nyelvi tevékenységben megvalósuló közös jelentésképzést mindig kíséri bizonyos metapragmatikai tudatosság, amelynek jelei a nyelvi megformálásban is megjelennek. Tanulmányunk alapgondolata, hogy a metapragmatikai tudatosság nyelvi jelzései nemcsak végigkísérik a nyelvhasználatot, hanem egyben a közös jelentéslétrehozást segítő eszközként is működnek,
és fontos szerepet kaphatnak a társas és mentális interakciók szervezésében és feldolgozásában. Ennek a reflexív tudatosságnak a nyelvi megvalósulásait és a közös nyelvi tevékenységben betöltött szerepét mutatjuk be egy speciális diskurzustípusban, az orvos-beteg konzultációkban. Az elemzések anyagát háziorvosi és fogászati rendelések során elhangzott 34 diskurzus adja, amelyekben társalgáselemzési és funkcionális pragmatikai megközelítésben vizsgáljuk az orvos-beteg konzultációkban megjelenő metapragmatikai reflexiókat, ezek fő típusait tárgyuk szerint, valamint legfontosabb funkcióikat, összefüggésbe hozva ezeket az orvos-beteg interakciók legfontosabb jellemzőivel: a központi cselekvéstípusokkal, a diskurzusműfajjal és az itt megjelenő társas, kognitív és érzelmi aspektusokkal.
Kulcsszavak: metapragmatikai tudatosság, orvos-beteg konzultáció, reflexivitás, közös projekt, cselekvéstípusok, társas és mentális interakció
A tanulmány elkészítését az NKFIH 129040 számú (A magyar nyelv igei konstrukciói. Használatalapú konstrukciós nyelvtani kutatás) pályázat, valamint a Bolyai János kutatási ösztöndíj támogatta.
While much research has proved the benefits of subtitled audiovisuals for foreign language learning, few studies address such practices in out-of-classroom settings or focus on Asia-based video-sharing platforms. This study bridges this gap by introducing an increasingly popular viewing-commenting system in Japan and China, known as danmu or danmaku, which displays viewers' timeline-synchronized comments on video content. We analyse the metalinguistic comments which entail viewers' knowledge of the language, their comprehension issues and sociolinguistic attitudes toward its use. Adopting an inductive or data-driven methodology, we extracted and manually coded 390 comments that are related to the Spanish language, Spanish-Chinese translation and learning Spanish. Results show that viewers are mostly interested in linguistic features that differ from Chinese or English (e.g. the complex grammar) and they use danmu to access sociolinguistic issues that are central to daily communication such as the fast speech rate, language varieties, and frequent use of vulgarisms.
This chapter reviews studies related to the teacher talk through grammar instruction that occurs naturally with learners. It attempts to portray the impact of teacher talk in English grammar acquisition. It focuses on the manner learners acquire grammar verbally from their teachers' conversation. Teacher talk is the crux of grammar instruction, and the manner teachers handle it in their classroom is the main purpose of this chapter. This chapter also highlights the role of techniques, strategies, and procedures used during teacher talk in the learning process. It contributes to improving the grammatical rules acquisition through the post-method pedagogy. The conversation analysis method was used for the transcription and analysis of the data. Consequently, this chapter focuses on the issues related to grammar, grammar instruction, techniques, and strategies used in teacher talk through grammar explanation. This was done with reference to the interaction procedures used by the teacher to improve and extend the learning space.
From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness - edited by Eva Ogiermann July 2019
This article investigates YouTube metalinguistic comments about language varieties in Ukraine as a “light” practice to demonstrate how knowledge and identities are negotiated online against the backdrop of larger sociopolitical discourses that circulate in and about Ukraine. This work adds to our understanding of online, or “light”, identity construction by suggesting that taking up epistemic stances and overtly asserting epistemic statuses are often a part of such identity work. Furthermore, deliberate linguistic choices not only serve to index identities but also create (dis)affiliations and thus can be deployed as a means of inclusion or exclusion from a particular online group, often shifting between (and integrating) local and global themes and audiences. The analysis shows how by drawing on repetition, deixis, pronouns, and lexical choices, YouTube commenters police, reify, and contest the extant language practices and underlying ideologies and in so doing create a foundation for grassroots ideological and political mobilization.
This article applies the concept of metasociolinguistic stance specifically to investigate and analyse how identities and competing discourses can be (re)constructed in metalinguistic talk. In particular, the article analyses how stancetaking can serve as a vessel for constructing language ideologies and identities in metalinguistic talk between a Polish teenager based in Norway and her followers on a social media platform. Inspired by online ethnography, this study combines the observation of online activities, the analysis of screendata, as well as data obtained through direct online and offline discussions with the profile owner. The study showed that the focal participant and her predominantly Polish followers took different metasociolinguistic stances towards the use of Polish and Norwegian in communication between people of Polish origin. While the homeland-based followers constructed an indexical link between ethnic origins and obligatory practice of speaking Polish, the focal participant contested these ideological assumptions and oriented towards a more flexible understanding of the relationship between language and belonging. This contribution shows how social media can serve as a rich research site where the members of diasporic communities and the members of the homeland societies come into contact and interact with each other bringing in different discourses and ideologies into the conversations.
Dieser Artikel diskutiert die gesellschaftliche Reflexion von Sprache und sprachlichem Handeln vor dem Hintergrund des Phänomens der ‚sprachlichen Reflexivität', der Möglichkeit, mit Sprache auf Sprache Bezug zu nehmen. Er stellt Termini und Konzepte zur Beschreibung sprachlicher Reflexivität vor und ordnet sie erkenntnisgeschichtlich ein. In diesem Zusammenhang wird auch die Bedeutung sprachlicher Reflexivität für Sprache und sprachliches Handeln diskutiert. Es wird argumentiert, dass Sprache ohne Reflexivität nicht denkbar ist, weshalb diese einen zentralen Gegenstand der Sprachwissenschaft darstellt. Auf dieser Basis werden Praktiken sozialer Reflexion von Sprache und sprachlichem Handeln-die metasprachlichen/metapragmatischen ‚Urteile der Öffentlichkeit' als Praktiken sozialer Positionierung charakterisiert. Es wird gezeigt, dass sprachliche Urteile mehr sind als ‚Sprechen über Sprache' und dass ihre Beschreibung komplexe soziopragmatische Zusammenhänge berücksichtigen muss. Der Artikel stellt Mittel aus der Soziolinguistik und Linguistischen Anthropologie dafür vor.
This study examined the term oplakvane in Bulgarian discourse. It refers to a communication practice – similar to complaining – and a range of associated cultural meanings for ways to construct a socio-economic and political reality. Data for this study included naturally occurring talk recorded during social events, interview responses from 50 participants, and a range of media postings from newspapers and online sources. These were examined through the lens of ethnography of communication and studies of terms for talk. By examining the term's context, potency, use, messages, meanings, and enactments, a larger cultural landscape is made available, illustrating how oplakvane not only describes negative talk, but references a communication ritual that serves to: (1) release the frustrations of everyday life, (2) celebrate and reinforce feelings of fate and despair, and (3) identify and locate a national Bulgarian character.
Hur kan kritik förstås i ett språkvetenskapligt sammanhang? Vad in-nebär det att inta en kritisk forskarposition som språkvetare? Vad kan man som text-och diskursanalytiker rikta sin kritik mot? Denna antologi tar ett samlat och bredare grepp om konceptet kritik inom språkvetenskaplig text-och diskursanalys med ett särskilt fokus på en svenskspråkig kontext. Boken innehåller såväl teoretiska diskussioner av kritikbegreppet som kritiska empiriska analyser. De teoretiska diskussionerna tar sig an kritikbegreppets innebörd, dess historia och vetenskapliga implikationer. Här bidrar bokens artiklar också med teoretiska utvecklingar av kritikbegreppet i relation till exempelvis genre, motdiskurser, tystnad och frånvaro. I de empiriska bidragen analyseras sociala och samhällsrelevanta fenomen såsom feminism, nyliberalism, rasism och propaganda utifrån kritiska perspektiv. De empiriska analyserna bygger på vitt skilda skriftspråkliga såväl som multimodala material. Bland annat presenteras kritiska analyser av nationella prov för gymnasiet, rek-lam för banker, IKEA-kataloger, vårdprogram för ätstörningar och synen på samiska barns språkundervisning. Boken ger en samlad bild av aktuell kritisk text-och diskursanalytisk forskning och avser även att bidra till den teoretiska utvecklingen av fältet.
This paper explores two different methods of tracing a specific speech act in a historical corpus. As an example, the development of apologies is investigated in the two hundred years covered by the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA, 1810–2009). One method retrieves apologies through their typical illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs), such as sorry, excuse, apologise and pardon, while the other retrieves passages in which apologies are explicitly mentioned (metapragmatic expression analysis). Both methods require a considerable amount of manual analysis of retrieved hits, which has to be verified through elaborate inter-rater reliability testing. The searches are restricted to fictional texts because they show a greater frequency of apologies than the alternative genres available in COHA, and they often allow the identification of behaviour as apologetic because it is discursively described as such by the fictional characters or the narratorial voice. The results show that the frequency of apologies increased considerably throughout the period covered by COHA. In the earliest period the IFID sorry was no more frequent than pardon and forgive. In the most recent period its frequency has multiplied almost six-fold and is more than three times larger than all the others taken together. The metapragmatic expression analysis allows an analysis of the development of strategies used to perform apologies. IFIDs have become more important while Taking on Responsibility and Explanation receded somewhat in their frequencies. On the basis of these results it is speculated that the force of apologies has decreased. What used to be sincere requests for exoneration has in many cases turned to token displays of regret.
This article applies the concept of metasociolinguistic stance specifically to investigate and analyse how identities and competing discourses can be (re)constructed in metalinguistic talk. In particular, the article analyses how stancetaking can serve as a vessel for constructing language ideologies and identities in metalinguistic talk between a Polish teenager based in Norway and her followers on a social media platform. Inspired by online ethnography, this study combines the observation of online activities, the analysis of screendata, as well as data obtained through direct online and offline discussions with the profile owner. The study showed that the focal participant and her predominantly Polish followers took different metasociolinguistic stances towards the use of Polish and Norwegian in communication between people of Polish origin. While the homeland-based followers constructed an indexical link between ethnic origins and obligatory practice of speaking Polish, the focal participant contested these ideological assumptions and oriented towards a more flexible understanding of the relationship between language and belonging. This contribution shows how social media can serve as a rich research site where the members of diasporic communities and the members of the homeland societies come into contact and interact with each other bringing in different discourses and ideologies into the conversations.
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