Metalinguistic Activity of Wordplay Creator in Classroom Bilungual Dialogs

The article introduces the reader to the phenomenon of wordplay in the dialogues of classroom bilinguals with a high level of the English proficiency, who practice this foreign language either in classroom environment, or in real communication. It is emphasized that the dialogues around the facts of wordplay become the locus of metalinguistic utterances of the participants in this speech act. The purpose of this article is to identify the metalanguage utterances of the wordplay creator which open access to the creator’s metalanguage consciousness through the identification of his speech strategies. The novelty of the research is that a foreign language speech is used as the wordplay source, and the wordplay is equated with the phenomenon of the metalanguage nature. The author presents the concept of normema as a standard language unit of the target foreign language, which turns out to be a trigger for the creation of non-standard language units or igremas. It is noted that the wordplay creator uses both the purely formal and meaningful wordplay, and the non-standard language units created by him function as socially directed at a specific addressee. A detailed systematization of the creator’s metalanguage comments accompanying the wordplay input is given, namely, the linguistic and communicative comments, which demonstrates the metalanguage logic of constructing a speech act.

Eastern Polissian dialectal speakers’ metatextual utterances: dialectal speech

The article deals with the problem of the study of the dialectal personality phenomenon and analyzes Eastern Polissian dialectal material, which testifies about actualization of the dialectal speakers’ metalinguistic consciousness. It is noted that the territory of Eastern Polissia borders on Belarusian and Russian languages, on the border of which scholars notice a special “surge” of metalinguistic activity, although they indicate that dialectal speakers’ metatextual utterances are not frequent in everyday communication. The purpose of the study is to identify the metatextual utterances of the Eastern Polissian dialect that reflect their knowledge and evaluation of the dialectal speech. The source of the study is the dialectal material recorded by the author in Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts during 2009–2019 and recorded dialectal texts; metatextual utterances are fixed occasionally. It is established that metatextual utterances in the dialectal communication arise spontaneously in the condition of communicators’ / speakers’ language norm contravention, understanding the opposition “his own” — “foreign”, relocation of dialectal speakers to another language environment and explorer’s provocation with direct questions. Revealed manifestations of oppositions “the Ukrainian literary language (or dialectal speech, which, according to dialectal speakers’ opinion, is close to literary)” — “the dialectal speech”, “the town speech” — “the village speech”, “the speech of educated people” — “the speech of village people” reflect the folk classification of idioms. It is determined that Eastern Polissian dialectal speakers, comprehending the dialectal speech, define in general its locality, peculiarity (e.g. га|монитʼ па-с|войему, па-с|войему разга|варʼуйем, тара|торим па-с|войему), mixed character (e.g. |мʼешана |мова, |мова |путана, пе|ремис’) and the language belonging of dialectal words in particular (e.g. гово|ритʼ, кур|сʼіроватʼ, наж|раўсʼа). The negative and positive axiology of dialectal speech is determined, in particular negative estimation is prevalent. Pointing to a mixed type of the dialectal speech — a combination of the Ukrainian, Russian or Belarusian language elements, dialectal speakers identify themselves with the khokhols; also they identify themselves with Ukrainians. Neutral or negative dialectal speakers’ estimations of the name of khokhol are fixed partially. The study outlines vistas of further research into dialectal metatextual utterances.

Metalinguistic comments as a tool for bottom-up language policy

This article demonstrates that analyzing evaluative metalinguistic comments on linguistic features can be a valuable diagnostic tool in understanding how emergent varieties develop and conventionalize. The paper provides a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of metalinguistic activity as part of the diverse sociolinguistic research disciplines. It then discusses what constitutes an evaluative metalinguistic comment, and classifies metalinguistic comments. Subsequently, the paper discusses data of a developing variety (Turkish-Dutch mixed speech). These data suggest that insiders monitor implicit norms, and reprimand transgressors, and/or deliberately transgress these norms (mostly in a humorous way), which amounts to the same thing: a keen awareness of these norms. Outsiders notice linguistic elements which contrast with their own variety.