Linguistic Practice in Changing Conditions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Rampton
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Guiding Principles

This book draws on 10 years of collaborative sociolinguistic work on the changing conditions of language use. It begins with guiding principles, shifts to empirically driven arguments in urban sociolinguistics, and concludes with studies of (in)securitised communication addressed to challenges ahead.

‘Smelling’ diasporic: bargaining interactions and the problem of politeness

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Family Member ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Communicative Skills ◽  
Mobile Populations ◽  
Religious Speech ◽  
The Right ◽  
Tension Analysis

Abstract While post-migrant generation Moroccans from Europe often are able to converse competently enough in Moroccan languages to bargain in shops during visits to Morocco, many report that they are not given the ‘local’, ‘right’ prices because they are ‘smelled’ as outsiders. During fieldwork following these diasporic visitors in Morocco, several participants strategically shopped for goods with a ‘local’ friend or family member who might negotiate on their behalf for the ‘right’ price. This strategy was seen as a way to circumvent or ameliorate the ways the diasporic client might be negatively categorized as an outsider, especially in terms of his or her language use. Yet, examining these events in recorded detail indicates that diasporic clients are often bargaining for themselves as competent speakers, but are sometimes not able to skillfully bargain politely. In these moments, proxy bargainers intervene when debate and tension increases during bargaining and diasporic visitors do not adequately perform politeness – specifically by deploying religious speech – to soften and minimize tension. Analysis of these interactions indicates how diasporic branching of linguistic practice contrasts communicative skills of mobile populations with subtle, place-based competences, and how the mismatch between these can negatively mark diasporic visitors.

scholarly journals THE ‘NARROW ROAD’ AND THE ETHICS OF LANGUAGE USE IN THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY

Ramus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 155-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Elmer
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
Narrow Road ◽  
Radical Revision

I begin this exploration of characteristically Iliadic and Odyssean attitudes toward the traditional language in which these poems are composed by treading again a well-rutted path in the field of mid-20th century Homeric studies. In formulating his radical revision of the aesthetics of Homeric poetry, Milman Parry took as one of his guiding principles Heinrich Düntzer's notion of a contradiction between the compositional utility of the fixed epithet and its semantic value: if an epithet could be shown to have been selected on the basis of its utility in versification—and Parry's detailed examinations of extensive and economical systems of noun-epithet formulae were aimed in part at demonstrating this point—then it would be proven by that very fact that the epithet's meaning was irrelevant to its selection. Moreover, Parry asserted that the success of poetry composed in such a manner would depend on a corresponding indifference on the part of the audience, an indifference that must be, by his reasoning, categorical and absolute.

Secret language and resistance to borrowing in Chini

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
Joseph Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Semantic Extension ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Degree Of Overlap ◽  
Do So

Abstract In Chini, a language of northeastern New Guinea, speakers rely on principles of semantic extension including metonymy, metaphor, and other types of association to create new terms using material from the vernacular. They do so in a special sociolinguistically marked register referred to here as ‘secret language’, a linguistic practice not unheard of in New Guinea. The same principles at work in secret language can also be seen in the creation of terms for new, modern concepts in the sociolinguistically unmarked register of the language. There is additionally some degree of overlap between the two registers, since what were originally secret language terms have entered into use in the unmarked register. This suggests that secret language has been a resource for resistance to borrowing and brings into focus the larger point that any understanding of borrowability should be rooted in the local sociolinguistic context, to the locally relevant ideologies at work and the particular creative principles of language use that speakers employ.

Linguistic Practice, Gaelic Use and Language Socialisation: Findings from Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-107
Author(s):  
Stuart Dunmore
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Consistent Relationship ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Home And School ◽  
At Home

Considering the overarching question of Gaelic language use, this chapter draws attention firstly to the varying degrees to which interview participants claim to use the Gaelic language in the present day. Three discernible categories or extents of use are apparent in interviewees’ accounts with respect to their present-day linguistic practices. The discussion subsequently considers two particular types of Gaelic use that are frequently reported within the interview corpus, relating to code-switching and use of Gaelic as a ‘secret’ language. As will be demonstrated, there exists a consistent relationship between higher levels of Gaelic ability and use in the present day, as there is between high levels of Gaelic use and past socialisation in the language at home and school. Triangulation of the qualitative and quantitative datasets thus produces a clear picture of limited ongoing Gaelic use among the majority of 130 Gaelic-medium educated adults who participated in the study, particularly in respect of the key domains of home and community.

Hilary Putnam’s Liberal Naturalism about Language Use, Reference, and Truth

The Monist ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-369
Author(s):  
Gary Ebbs
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Beech Tree ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Liberal Naturalism

Abstract Hilary Putnam observes that a typical competent English speaker who cannot tell an elm tree from a beech tree may nevertheless use the word “elm” to make assertions and ask questions about elm trees. Putnam also observes that scientists may be wrong about the phenomena they investigate, while still being able to use their words to identify and raise research questions about it. This prompts him to ask what “language use” means in these contexts. He proposes two closely related methods for answering this question. The first method is to investigate and clarify the uses of sentences and words in a given linguistic practice from the point of view of a participant in the practice. The second is to explain our applications of ‘is true’ and ‘refers’ to sentences and words whose uses are described in accord with the first method. In this paper I raise several problems for Putnam’s applications of these methods and sketch a different way of applying the methods that avoids the problems.

Language/sexuality/affect

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Leap
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Queer Space

Abstract The papers in this special issue examine the relationships between language, sexuality and affect. Using examples of language use from Argentine cinema, bounce music performance, a university classroom, a BDSM community, and Black women’s urban queer space, the papers show how various forms of linguistic practice allow affect to remain comfortably nested on “the cusp of semantic availability” (Williams 1977: 134), rather than being reduced to tightly defined categories or messages. The discussions of these examples also show how various forms of linguistic practice allow sexuality to unfold as a messy formation (Giffney 2009, Manalansan 2014), thereby remaining resistant to boundaries and precise definitions. The basis for these parallels between affect and sexuality are explored in these papers, as are their implications for future studies of language, affect, and sexuality.

Linguistic Competence in Aphasia

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-92
Author(s):  
Leonard L. LaPointe
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Feral Children ◽  
Performance Factors ◽  
Performance Loss ◽  
Linguistic Rules ◽  
Communication Goals ◽  
Aphasia Treatment ◽  
And Performance

Abstract Loss of implicit linguistic competence assumes a loss of linguistic rules, necessary linguistic computations, or representations. In aphasia, the inherent neurological damage is frequently assumed by some to be a loss of implicit linguistic competence that has damaged or wiped out neural centers or pathways that are necessary for maintenance of the language rules and representations needed to communicate. Not everyone agrees with this view of language use in aphasia. The measurement of implicit language competence, although apparently necessary and satisfying for theoretic linguistics, is complexly interwoven with performance factors. Transience, stimulability, and variability in aphasia language use provide evidence for an access deficit model that supports performance loss. Advances in understanding linguistic competence and performance may be informed by careful study of bilingual language acquisition and loss, the language of savants, the language of feral children, and advances in neuroimaging. Social models of aphasia treatment, coupled with an access deficit view of aphasia, can salve our restless minds and allow pursuit of maximum interactive communication goals even without a comfortable explanation of implicit linguistic competence in aphasia.

Review of Critical Essays on Language Use and Psychology.

1991 ◽  
Vol 36 (7) ◽  
pp. 641-641
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  
Language Use
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