Mechanisms of sub-phonemic change in prescriptive bilingualism: The case of Mexican Plautdietsch

This paper investigates the relationship between loanword adaptation and phonological borrowing by looking at the Mexican Plautdietsch speech community. Plautdietsch borrowings from Mexican Spanish sometimes undergo loanword adaptation to fit the native phonological system (e.g. Spanish [peso] > Plautdietsch [pəɪzo] 'peso'), but some community members exhibit a borrowed pattern of deaffrication that targets native lexical items (e.g. [dit͡ʃ ]) 'German' > [diʃ]). I show that the output of /t͡ʃ/ deaffrication in Mexican Plautdietsch follows the phonological pattern of northern Mexican Spanish deaffrication, rather than an inherited pattern that adapts loanwords from High German and Russian. I propose that while some mechanisms of phonetic and phonological interpretation are similar for both loanword adaptation and phonological borrowing, the novel Mexican Spanish pattern could have only entered the community due to the unique structure of phonological representation associated with advanced bilingualism. This prediction is borne out in the social distribution of deaffrication wherein men, who are expected to become advanced bilinguals, exhibit the innovation more than women. By adding a dimension of phonological representation to our models of loanword adaptation, we can expand the model's behavior to also account for outcomes involving the restructuring of the heritage language.

Evidence of Variable Gender Role in Defining Language Change Leadership in Syrian Arabic

This study aims to present evidence of gender variability among leaders of language change across different sociolinguistic variables, five phonological variables (a consonant and four vowels) and a discourse variable in Syrian Arabic, within the same speech community. Employing a sociolinguistic variationist approach and comparing children to adults yielded different gendered linguistic behavior. Children show the same dramatic gendered linguistic difference as adults regarding the variable (q), with males using much more rural [q] than urban [ʔ] than females. Regarding the vowel variables, children dramatize their gendered linguistic difference much more than adults; boys show much higher use of the rural vowels than girls compared to the difference between men and women. This pattern is reversed in the discourse variable (yaʕni) ‘that is/I mean’; the gendered linguistic difference is more dramatic among adults than it is among children, and gender effect diminishes in the linguistic distribution of the variable. This multidirectionality in gender effects bears implications for sociolinguistic variationist research. Variables indexed to urban refinement/prestige and social meanings such as femininity/masculinity are more likely to be led by females than males. Conversely, variables that lack these types of social/gender identification indexicality, regardless of whether they are phonological or discursive, do not follow the same pattern of leadership.

Dame Edna and ‘the help’

‘Dame Edna Everage’, a persona originally created by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries in 1955, is a character designed to simultaneously shock and amuse. Dame Edna voices (and satirizes) the discourse of ‘average’, older, politically conservative Anglo-Australians who feel compelled to ‘tell it like it is’ – no matter how offensive their opinions might be. In the Anglosphere, Edna’s humour is well understood and sustained international success has followed Edna for more than 60 years in Britain, Canada, the US and Australia. However, Edna occasionally misfires. In 2003, for instance, Edna’s satire outraged Latinos across the USA, in fulfillment of Poe’s Law (Aikin, 2009). Simply put, Latinos assumed that Edna’s comments satirising negative mainstream attitudes towards them were expressive of Edna’s authentic racism. This paper investigates the Edna joke in the overall context of failed humour and then specifically for the offensiveness it generated amongst the Latino minority in the United States. It then tests whether this reaction was the result of a discursive frame specific to the US context, by conducting an exploratory study amongst a small sample of highly educated Australian bilingual Latin American immigrants and their adult children, to see whether they thought Edna’s joke was funny. These Australian individuals of Latin American heritage responded via an online questionnaire, and an analysis of their responses is presented here. The study’s main finding is that while these individuals generally demonstrated a high comedic literacy across both English and Spanish, including a prior awareness of Edna’s and Australian humour, they overall rejected the intention and humour of Edna’s joke. This paper asserts that, when it comes to humour, some transnational migrant speech community loyalties transcend other notions of identity and language competence.

Cultural Maintenance in the Face of Language Shift- Young Sindhi Muslims in Karachi, Pakistan

The Sindhi language, a descendent of a pre-Vedic Prakit language is the most widely spoken language in South Asia. Sindhi speech community comprises both Muslims, and Hindus which have distinct cultural and religious practices, yet they are socially connected because of the geographical link with their land. However, due to the partitioning of the Indian sub-continent, many Sindhi Hindus migrated to India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and many other countries. There has not only been an external diaspora but within Pakistan, there has also been an internal diaspora of younger Sindhi Muslims who have moved to cities like Karachi, Hyderabad, and Sukkur to pursue tertiary education. These young speakers have acquired and learned the dominant languages Urdu and English as their second and third languages while shifting away from their native Sindhi language. This study investigates the identity markers which have enabled them to retain their Sindhiness[1]. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 male and female young Sindhis and shadow observation of three participants in Karachi. The analysis shows that young Sindhi speakers have a high sense of group solidarity with their community and retain the use of culturally loaded identity markers which include naming patterns, cuisine, dressing, music, customs, rituals, social values, and networking. According to Fishman (1996), there is a deep relationship between language and culture. Despite a shift away from the habitual use of the Sindhi language these respondents have maintained their cultural values and norms. Keywords: cultural maintenance, language shift, Sindhi community, Karachi

Haagse Harry, a Dutch chav from The Hague?

This paper presents two remarkably similar characterological figures who are stereotyped embodiments of working-class personas: Haagse Harry in The Hague and chavs in England. The two figures have similar attires, class positions, attitudes, and associated attributes. We compare and contextualize the indexical links between their linguistic features and their social characteristics. Firstly, while chavs can be both men and women, the fictional persona Haagse Harry represents an all-male lower-working-class subculture. Secondly, while Haagse Harry consistently speaks Broad Haags, the language of chavs is not rooted in any single regional dialect but invariably indexes working-class features. Thirdly, Haagse Harry, and his sociolect, has a higher social status compared to the language and persona of chavs, who embody British class prejudice. We demonstrate that the repertoire of linguistic features deployed in the stylisation of characterological figures is strongly dependent on patterns of variation and ideas that are prevalent in the local speech community.

Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.

When Language Contact Says Nothing: A Contrastive Analysis of Queísta Structures in Two Varieties of Peninsular Spanish

Based on the existence of some structural conflict between Spanish and Catalan in certain points of the syntax, this study tests the hypothesis about the influence of the latter on the distribution of queísmo uses (‘Me alegro que vengas’ [‘I’m glad you come’]) in the Spanish spoken in an eastern peninsular variety in contact with Catalan. Using the tools of comparative sociolinguistics, and the analysis of three corpora of contemporary Spanish, the study exhaustively examines the conditioning of this variable. The starting hypothesis is that the influence of the contact can be inferred from the comparison between different magnitudes derived from a multivariable statistical analysis. In addition to several linguistic and extra-linguistic predictors previously analysed in the literature, we also take into account other factor groups that may be particularly informative about that potential influence. Thus, from a structural point of view, we consider the contrast between: a) conjunctive queísmo in verbal structures, in which the structural conflict with Spanish is more evident (‘me acuerdo (de) que vino con su mujer/em recorde Ø que va vindre amb la seua dona’ [‘I remember that he came with his wife’]; and b) pronominal queísmo in relative sentences, in which the coincidence between both languages is greater (‘el día (en) que nos conocimos / el día (en) què ens vam conéixer’). From an extralinguistic perspective, the incidence of two additional factors is also examined: a) the speech community (without contact (Madrid/Alcalá) vs. in contact (Castellón), and b) the main language of the speakers (Spanish/Catalan-Valencian). The results of several mixed-effect regression analyses performed do not support the hypothesis of contact. The distributional differences between the above-mentioned groups are minimal, and in no case significant. On the other hand, the variation is basically affected by the same structural and non-structural predictors, regardless of the speech community or the ethnolinguistic group examined. Even the few divergences that are observed point in a direction contrary to that expected by the contact hypothesis. The study concludes with some potential explanations about these results and the contrast with other cases of syntactic convergence with Catalan.

O le Aso Ma le Filiga, O le Aso Mata’igatila. A qualitative study looking at Samoan language maintenance within second generation households

<p>Samoan language within Aotearoa New Zealand has been labelled as “at risk” of becoming an endangered language if language shift continues (Hunkin, 2012; Wilson, 2017). Language shift or language loss is defined as when a speech community gradually stops using one of its two languages in favour of the other, in this case English (Ravindrantha, 2009). The Samoan population is the largest community of the Pacific diaspora living in Aotearoa New Zealand. However, the use and maintenance of the Samoan language is rapidly declining. Although community-led initiatives have led to establishing of Aoga ‘Amata (Samoan language and culture immersion preschool), Pacific Islands Early Childhood Association (PIECA) and the establishing of Samoan Studies departments within tertiary institutions, there continues to be an urgent need for government support and the implementation of Pacific language policies to ensure the continued use and protection of Samoan and other Pacific languages within the realm of Aotearoa New Zealand. The three research questions framing this investigation are as follows: 1. How do the second and third generation Samoans view language and culture as contributing to their identity? 2. Where are second and third generation Samoans using and learning Samoan? 3. Is there a relationship between wellbeing and language shift? O le Filiga Afa, a qualitative research methodology, was born out of this research in response to the need for a culturally responsive framework. Data was gathered through focus group and one-to-one discussions and included New Zealand - born Samoan - speaking and non-Samoan - speaking Samoan participants. Key findings from this study include: • All participants had a deep yearning for maintaining and revitalising their heritage languages; • Language, culture and identity are intertwined and cannot be separated from one another; • The role of elders, genealogy and the connection to culture contributes significantly towards the reinforcing and the maintenance of the Samoan language. • A strong connection can be found between language shift and one’s wellbeing</p>

O le Aso Ma le Filiga, O le Aso Mata’igatila. A qualitative study looking at Samoan language maintenance within second generation households

<p>Samoan language within Aotearoa New Zealand has been labelled as “at risk” of becoming an endangered language if language shift continues (Hunkin, 2012; Wilson, 2017). Language shift or language loss is defined as when a speech community gradually stops using one of its two languages in favour of the other, in this case English (Ravindrantha, 2009). The Samoan population is the largest community of the Pacific diaspora living in Aotearoa New Zealand. However, the use and maintenance of the Samoan language is rapidly declining. Although community-led initiatives have led to establishing of Aoga ‘Amata (Samoan language and culture immersion preschool), Pacific Islands Early Childhood Association (PIECA) and the establishing of Samoan Studies departments within tertiary institutions, there continues to be an urgent need for government support and the implementation of Pacific language policies to ensure the continued use and protection of Samoan and other Pacific languages within the realm of Aotearoa New Zealand. The three research questions framing this investigation are as follows: 1. How do the second and third generation Samoans view language and culture as contributing to their identity? 2. Where are second and third generation Samoans using and learning Samoan? 3. Is there a relationship between wellbeing and language shift? O le Filiga Afa, a qualitative research methodology, was born out of this research in response to the need for a culturally responsive framework. Data was gathered through focus group and one-to-one discussions and included New Zealand - born Samoan - speaking and non-Samoan - speaking Samoan participants. Key findings from this study include: • All participants had a deep yearning for maintaining and revitalising their heritage languages; • Language, culture and identity are intertwined and cannot be separated from one another; • The role of elders, genealogy and the connection to culture contributes significantly towards the reinforcing and the maintenance of the Samoan language. • A strong connection can be found between language shift and one’s wellbeing</p>

Cultural Norm Configurations in Acehnese Lullaby

This study is aimed to provide an overview of the cultural reality of lullaby, doda idi from Acehnese family habit. This study describes the cultural norms and values configuration viewed from an ethno-pragmatic perspective and the local wisdom identified from the discourse. This study presents the cultural script approach. This approach is a descriptive technique that has grown out of the cross-cultural semantic theory proposed. The cultural discourse analysis of norms and values on natural semantic meta-language theory. It is considering that cultural norms and values constituted rules and regulations in social communication interaction practices. This lullaby linked to particular ways of speaking in the family's private domain, in this case, from mother and her child. Generally speaking, most cross-cultural communication styles assume that within a particular speech community, there are certain shared understandings about how it is appropriate to speak in a particular and cultural situation. A certain methodological technique is adopted to describe speech patterns and identify the relevant cultural values of this speech pattern. The proposed Acehnese cultural script is linked with (1) Showing high respect, (2) patriotic spirit, and (3) giving advice. The configuration of these cultural norms and values is the understanding of knowledge and wisdom in terms of the lullaby system. The configuration is constructed in low-level scripts with lexicons in semantic primes.