“It makes It the Market”

'Skipping' classes in high school was examined here as a cultural form of language behaviour among a group of high-school students. This ethnographic study focused on the analysis of 'skipping' as a 'text' or 'text-analogue' that was open to interpretation by fellow 'Skippers' by members of the school community, and by communication researchers. A major study finding was the the genre of skipping was a game, played by two subgroups within the Skippers' speech community: the Smart Skippers and the Don't Care Skippers. Thus defined, it was shown to have structure, style, and mode analogous to various components of games: i.e. players, objectives, rules, suggestions for better play methods of keeping score, and consequences for winners and losers. Drug use and abuse cooccurred as suggested by the cover term, skippin' an' gettin' high. Skippers' speech style had a restricted code one that revealed a 'play with words and actions' in their life at school and beyond. Skipping served three primary functions for Skippers: creating tension in play/work, belonging/not belonging, and power and control dimensions of their life at school and home. Other key players in the skipping game were teachers and parents. Implications of the study are drawn for the primary prevention of two major adolescent health and developmental problems: drug involvement and school dropout.

The short-a system, or the phonemic split of the TRAP vowel (i.e., /æ/), refers to the raised position of the vowel in pre-nasal and pre-velar phonological environments (Labov et al., 2006; Labov, 2007; Becker et al., 2010; Labov et al., 2015; Wagner et al., 2016). The present study builds upon these previous studies by examining the TRAP-system in rural, under-documented American English speech communities across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP). Previous work on this feature in reading passage data has revealed UP speech communities on the east- and west-sides of the peninsula have strikingly different systems (i.e., a two-way phonemic split in eastern UP, while a three-way split in western UP). The present sociophonetic talk examines the apparent-time change of the phonemic split of an 87-speaker sample as an interaction of task types (passage/word list/minimal pairs), area (east/west), age groups (18-39/40-59/60 + ), and self-gender (female/male). The three-way phonemic split of TRAP only occurs in informal speech styles in western UP; in contrast, the two-phonemic split is preferred in eastern UP irrespective of speech style. The two-way phonemic split is preferred in more formal speech styles and is stable in the eastern UP suggesting an external influence from outside Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Peter Garrett, Nikolas Coupland & Angie Williams, Investigating language attitudes: Social meanings of dialect, ethnicity and performance. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003. x + 251 pp. Hb $79.95. As its title suggests, this book focuses on attitudes to language and dialect production, perception, and use, and particularly on attitudes to language variation, dialect, speech style, language preference, and minority languages as well as their speakers. As we know, an important aspect of the complex social psychology of speech communities is the arbitrary and subjective intellectual and emotional response of a society's members to the languages and varieties in their social environment: Different language varieties are often associated with deep-rooted emotional responses – social attitudes, in short – such as thoughts, feelings, stereotypes, and prejudices about people, about social, ethnic and religious groups, and about political entities. These emotional responses and perceptions of language and dialect phenomena are biased by cultural, social, political, economic, or historical facts or other circumstances within the speech community. Sociolinguistically based research may build a more complete and accurate picture of the speaker's linguistic behavior, in the context of its complex social psychology, as well as of the regard for language use within the community, and may further understanding of the dynamics of speech communities as well as of the subjective life of language varieties.

The purpose of media programming is to inform and to entertain. Some programs can be classified as informative, others as entertainment, and others as both. The relationship between language and the media is particularly interesting in the Arabic context due to the diglossic nature of its speech communities. The media, particularly the broadcasting media, has a unique role to play in negotiating the relationship between the two varieties: spoken everyday language of communication and a literary variety. This chapter discusses the position that the broadcasting media represent 'hybrid' contexts, and focuses on the interview as a genre whose purpose is to inform and entertain, and whose context is appropriate for either or both varieties of Arabic. It examines two interviews aired over the Egyptian Satellite Channel. Three major styles are identified, corresponding roughly to Labov's reading, careful, and casual styles. Finally, it discusses 'hybridity' in relation to 'code-switching'. Keywords: Arabic; hybridity; language of communication; media programming; speech communities

Language is a tricky thing.On the one hand, it's a matter of convention, of speech communities and their shared communicative systems.On the other hand, it's a cognitive activity of individual speakers, and no two people talk alike.How do these two levels interact?What is the relationship between the macro speech community and its language, and the micro level of individual speakers and their language?For a long time, linguists have shunned that question and have concentrated on the conventionalized linguistic system, emphasizing the goal to achieve greatest possible generalizations with their findings.Notable exceptions are mostly found in sociolinguistic studies such as Bergs ( 2005), Johnstone (1996( ), or Milroy (1992)).Pentrel ( 2017) was among the first to highlight and investigate the cognitive mechanisms of individual language use in historyin that case the language of Samuel Pepys.The Mind Bending Grammars project 1 (initiated by Peter Petr) was probably the first large scale research project focusing on both the sociolinguistic and cognitive underpinnings of individual and communal language use, and Lynn Anthonissen's study Individuality in language change is the first book-length culminating point for these developments.Anthonissen singles out two particular case studies of constructional change in English that illustrate the interconnectivity of individual and community grammars.These two are the prepositional passive construction (The issue was frowned upon) on the one hand, and the nominative and infinitive construction (NCI; She is said to be a hero) on the other.She investigates these constructions and their changes on the basis of the Early Modern Multiloquent Authors corpus (EMMA).The EMMA corpus comprises about 90 million words from about 50 different, but interconnected seventeenth-century authors across five generations.This book is divided into two main parts and a concluding section.Part II (Chapters 2-4) focuses on the two special passive constructions at hand and their historical developments.Part III (Chapters 5-8) then concentrates on the relationship and interplay of individual speakers and the language community with regard to the findings of part II.Part IV (Chapters 9 and 10) offers some concluding remarks.

This paper discusses a common reality in many cases of multilingualism: heritage speakers, or unbalanced bilinguals, simultaneous or sequential, who shifted early in childhood from one language (their heritage language) to their dominant language (the language of their speech community). To demonstrate the relevance of heritage linguistics to the study of linguistic competence more broadly defined, we present a series of case studies on heritage linguistics, documenting some of the deficits and abilities typical of heritage speakers, together with the broader theoretical questions they inform. We consider the reorganization of morphosyntactic feature systems, the reanalysis of atypical argument structure, the attrition of the syntax of relativization, and the simplification of scope interpretations; these phenomena implicate diverging trajectories and outcomes in the development of heritage speakers. The case studies also have practical and methodological implications for the study of multilingualism. We conclude by discussing more general concepts central to linguistic inquiry, in particular, complexity and native speaker competence.

The present thesis is the first thorough grammatical description of Romeyka, i.e., the Muslim variety of Pontic Greek still spoken in the indigenous setting in Trabzon province in north-eastern Turkey. While the language of the Christian speech communities of Pontus has been featured in earlier research during the last hundred years – both in Pontus prior to the population exchange in 1923, and after that in Greece –, less research is available on the variety of Pontic Greek as spoken by Muslims in the area at present. As an unrecognized minority language in a Turkish-dominant majority society and due to ambivalent attitudes and identificational links of the speakers towards their language, Romeyka is currently undergoing language shift to Turkish. While the language has been in contact with Turkish for several hundred years – which arguably resulted in a number of lexical and structural contact influences albeit without leading to a mixed acrolect –, the influence of Turkish on domains where traditionally Romeyka used to be spoken has grown following labour migration from the Black Sea area to larger cities in western Turkey since the 1960s posing now – dependent upon the speech community – a threat to the vitality of Romeyka. On the other hand, Pontic Greek – and in particular the Muslim variety – is known to be a conservative representative of Asia Minor Greek preserving archaisms dating back via Hellenistic and Medieval Greek to Ancient Greek, among them so notorious grammatical features as the Romeyka infinitive, but also complex negators and pronominal forms. It is the aim of the present thesis to describe the synchronic grammar of Romeyka as currently spoken especially by elderly speakers in the Of valley, whose variety can be considered the most archaic. As a basis for profound grammatical research – and as a contribution towards language description and documentation at the same time –, a spoken language corpus has been compiled from the variety Romeyka of Of as spoken in Çaykara based on recordings of naturalistic oral texts produced by ten speakers mainly during fieldwork in the area in 2019. In order to contribute to further scholarly research, the corpus has been transcribed, translated and fully grammatically annotated and will be made publicly available upon the publication of the thesis. In the light of the ongoing language shift in Romeyka, the present thesis focuses on the actual use of the language by bilingual – and most often Turkish dominant – speakers. In order to disentangle the factors that led to the present grammatical shape of Romeyka, three research questions targeting potential causes for the grammatical developments have been considered: (I.) How strong is the Turkish influence on the grammar of Romeyka? (II.) Does the setting of Romeyka as a minority language in a Turkish-dominant society, namely the process of language shift, play a role in grammatical change? (III.) How persistent are the inherited Greek features and what is the role of language-internal changes? However, since the primary aim of the present thesis is the description and presentation of linguistic structures forming potential candidates for an ongoing language change compared to earlier varieties of Greek and to closely related varieties of Asia Minor Greek, the theoretical questions can only tentatively be answered at the present stage of research. It can be nevertheless stated that Romeyka seems to have preserved its Greek core with a Greek basic lexicon, albeit with considerable lexical influences from Turkish in both content and functional word classes, but probably to a lesser extent compared to its close relative Cappadocian. Furthermore, Romeyka appears to preserve indeed a number of archaic features as well as certain particularities of Pontic such as a complex system of spatial deixis. On the other hand, there are considerable Turkish influences on the structural domain such as for example in progressives, verb serialization, adjunct and relative clauses and clause combination, that have evolved under long-time contact and appear consistently across different speakers. In addition, certain contact-induced structural features especially at the syntactic domain have been found to be sensitive to the bilingual profile of the individual speaker, i.e., among others, the dominant language, namely the borrowing of the Turkish question particle mI, OV word orders in declarative clauses, and an increase in non-finite complementation strategies. This finding led to the assumption that – apart from long-term contact-induced changes which seem not to impair the grammatical integrity of Romeyka – language shift is a matter of individual multilingual speaker profiles with different degrees of Turkish dominance in both language competence and use. Finally, it is argued that the specific communicative setting in which Romeyka is spoken, and which determines the communicative practice of the speakers, is decisive to set the pragmatic frame for the language(s) used: in Turkish-dominant settings, speakers tend to be more inclined to apply multiple forms of code-switching and show stronger influences of Turkish structures.

This article reports on Bajjika, a minority language of the Bihari group of the Indo-Aryan language family. Bajjika is spoken by millions of speakers in the northern part of the north Indian state of Bihar and more than 200,000 speakers in Nepal. Although Bajjika is spoken by a significant segment of the population of Bihar, it has no institutional or educational role in the community or government. Little is known about this language in terms of demographic and ethno-linguistic details, not only to the world but also within India beyond the speech community. This article provides details about the speech community of Bajjika, its language status, functional role in the community and the revival efforts made by exponents of the language. Finally, suggestions for the maintenance of this language are made.

Both the timing (i.e., when) and amount (i.e., how much) of language exposure affect language-learning outcomes. We compared speech recognition accuracy across three listener groups for whom the order (first versus second) and dominance (dominant versus non-dominant) of two languages, English and Spanish, varied: one group of Spanish heritage speakers (SHS; L2-English dominant; L1-Spanish non-dominant) and two groups of late onset L2 learners (L1-dominant English/Spanish learners and L1-dominant Spanish/English learners). Sentence-final word recognition accuracy in both English and Spanish was assessed across three “easy” versus “difficult” listening conditions: (1) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR; +5 dB SNR versus 0 dB SNR), (2) sentence predictability (high versus low sentence predictability), and (3) speech style (clear versus plain speech style). Overall, SHS English recognition accuracy was equivalent to that of the L1-dominant English Spanish learners, whereas SHS Spanish recognition accuracy was substantially lower than that of the L1-dominant Spanish English learners. Moreover, while SHS benefitted in both languages from the “easy” listening conditions, they were more adversely affected by (i.e., they recognized fewer words) the presence of higher noise and lower predictability in their non-dominant L1 Spanish compared to their dominant L2 English. These results identify both a benefit and limit on the influence of early exposure. Specifically, the L2-dominant heritage speakers displayed L1-like speech recognition in their dominant-L2, as well as generally better recognition in their non-dominant L1 than late onset L2 learners. Yet, subtle recognition accuracy differences between SHS and L1-dominant listeners emerged under relatively difficult communicative conditions.

Code-switching has become a common social phenomenon governed by social conversational needs. Central to the use of code-switching is the way in which social norms, which are also called rights and obligations, are attributed to speakers and listeners of certain social categories. Studies on code-switching reveal that its occurrence is indicative of group membership in speech communities where the use of more than one language in communication is the norm. Code-switching is looked upon as the practice of altering elements of language in order to contextualise talk in interaction. The contextualisation referred to may relate to discourse practices or make information beyond the current exchange relevant, including knowledge of society. This article seeks to investigate and critically analyse the use of code-switching by Nhlapho (1996) in the novel, Imbali YemaNgcamane (The flower of the Ngcamanes). It also seeks to explore whether the use of code-switching benefits or has adverse effects on the speakers of the Siswati language.

The article attempts at defining one of the key concepts in phonetic studies known as speaking style which remains challenging and disputable at present. The paper focuses on the analysis of different approaches to interpret a linguistic value of this concept. The work puts forward grounds to classify speaking styles in the framework of experimental phonetic research. In this view speaking styles are classified into two big groups that reflect universal features of official and colloquial discourse. The proposed set of peaking styles is an attempt to the assays of contemporary phonetic studies into the synergy of stylistics, cognition, speech production and speech perception. The paper highlights the methodology of auditory research undertaken to attain the targets set. The auditory analysis is conducted at three stages involving different groups of interviewees summoned to solve a particular task. The experiment embraces an array of the auditory material that illustrates each substyle under consideration. The validity of the selected audio pieces is proven by perceptual analysis done by the group of native speakers. Besides, each stage of the experiment is grounded and described being illustrated by the examples of different sound segments that represent a particular speech style. The methodology and program of the experiment enable to single out and systemize suprasegmental units characteristic for a particular speech style.

In this chapter, we present three tasks from the rhetorical canon that all speechwriting must engage in order to compose a coherent and persuasive speech. The first, finding content and arguments, involves a structured method of researching, the topical system. The second task, organizing the speech, involves reflection on the function of the parts. Our focus is on the speech consisting of four parts: introduction, narrative, argument, and epilogue. Presenting the third task, creating persuasive language and style, we argue that style is vital to the construction and meaning. We outline the basic principles of rhetorical style and advice speechwriters to use rhetorical figures to structure the argument, enhance communion with the audience, and make the speech memorable.

The ultimate goal of transfer learning is to reduce labeled data requirements by exploiting a pre-existing embedding model trained for different datasets or tasks. The visual and language communities have established benchmarks to compare embeddings, but the speech community has yet to do so. This paper proposes a benchmark for comparing speech representations on non-semantic tasks, and proposes a representation based on an unsupervised triplet-loss objective. The proposed representation outperforms other representations on the benchmark, and even exceeds state-of-the-art performance on a number of transfer learning tasks. The embedding is trained on a publicly available dataset, and it is tested on a variety of low-resource downstream tasks, including personalization tasks and medical domain. The benchmark, models, and evaluation code are publicly released.

The development of terminology features heavily in language planning, and here the differences between planned and ethnic languages are much less pronounced. This is especially the case in languages with smaller numbers of speakers, or in indigenous and endangered languages such as Te Reo Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand that rely on language planning for their survival, and where conscious terminology planning is therefore commonplace. The present article compares the terminological principles that are applied in the creation of new terms in Te Reo Māori and the planned language Esperanto. Different preferences for endogenous versus exogenous ways of developing new words generate conflict in both language communities as they adapt to the demands of functioning in modern and international arenas. Long-term success in terminological planning can only be achieved by more comprehensive application of principles from terminological science to maximize the adequacy of the generated terms and their acceptance within the speech communities.

There seems to be nothing remarkable about the interaction between two interlocutors who have never been in contact with each other. These persons are able to understand themselves in contact situations because most times, a common language of communication is known that can sustain the exchange for the time necessary. However, when such exchange is between individuals with some level of contact or familiarity, the concept of speech community comes into play. The concept is useful but may be problematic at times and one cannot avoid applying this idea when trying to make sense of the process that takes place in the conversation, specifically a causal conversation. The aim of this sociolinguistic study is to explain how individuals are able to build social history, construct interactional talk, maintain relations with each other and reinforce solidarity from a two hour audio recorded conversation (ARC) between an ethnic Indian and a Nigerian in Marylebone, London using interactional socio-linguistic and conversation analytic. By doing so, the concept of a speech community as well as how a group can be identified as being members of a community is understood. A particular focus is paid to such linguistic features as the register of conversation, turn taking, discourse variation, phonological variation and grammatical variation characteristic of London, Nigerian and Indian English observed in the speech of the participants and how these features function to build and maintain relations.
 Keywords: Speech community, Casual conversation, Linguistic features, Sociolinguistics, ARC