Abstract In the context of minoritised languages, efforts to strengthen the use of these languages and to gain new speakers tend to offer interesting research topics. Linguistic mudas related to activating speakers are also located in this context. This study examines the linguistic mudas of university students. Participants in the study were pre-service primary school teachers at the Donostia/San Sebastián campus of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, and both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to gather the data (292 questionnaires and 15 focus group discussions). The results show that the university setting can be an ideal context for linguistic mudas to take place. The participants said that they did not notice any significant muda, but did note a tendency to use Basque more than they had prior to entering university. The findings, thus, indicate that specific plans must be designed and implemented in order to foster mudas towards Basque.

Abstract The present paper analyzes the Discourses underpinning the tracked secondary education system in Italy through the lens of sociolinguistic scales (Blommaert 2007. Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics 4(1). 1–19). Via an examination of education policy documents, historical accounts of policy discourse, classroom discourse data, ethnographic fieldnotes, ministerial websites, and literary texts, this paper considers how the Discourse of classism (with a capital D , á la Gee 1990. Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses, critical perspectives on literacy and education . London & New York: Routledge) which underlies the foundations of the tracked school system in Italy has gradually become naturalized and then ‘invisible’ (that is, hegemonic) as it has traveled through scales of political and social speech and texts ( discourse with a lowercase d ). This paper considers an alternative view of scales not as spatiotemporal spaces, places, or settings, but as types of metadiscursive labor (Carr 2006. “Secrets keep you sick”: Metalinguistic labor in a drug treatment program for homeless women. Language in Society 35(05). 631–653). This paper also discusses the role of critique, drawing on Pietikäinen’s (2016. Critical debates: Discourse, boundaries and social change. Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates ) concepts of emancipatory, ethnographic, and carnivalesque critique, in rendering visible and available for re-scaling the Discourses which become invisible over time.

Abstract The goal of the present study is to explore bilinguals’ intercultural style of requesting in a workplace setting and thereby contribute to the understanding of bilingual pragmatic competence. The relatively unexplored intercultural style hypothesis suggests that bilinguals show a unique pragmatic pattern related to but distinct from the contact languages. German-English bilinguals in the U.S., Germans in Germany, and Americans in the U.S. completed an oral discourse completion task. The bilinguals were tested in German and English. The scenarios were situated at the workplace and controlled for social distance and power. Results revealed bi-directional influence from both languages and that bilinguals differentiated their request strategies depending on language, accentuating cross-linguistic differences and thereby asserting their intercultural identity. This suggests that the pragmatic competence of the German-English bilinguals consists in the awareness, realization, and preservation of perceived cross-linguistic contrasts. However, perception ratings revealed that bilinguals’ German requests were perceived as significantly less polite and less effective than their English requests, suggesting that pragmatic norms of German requests are undergoing language change.

Abstract The paper applies language management theory to study the interactions of international with local workers (simple management) and language policies (organised management) in 10 Czech video game studios. By longitudinally interviewing foreign game developers from Central-Eastern and Western Europe, as well as North and South America, I identified the languages they reportedly encountered and used in their jobs. I distinguished 3 categories: Czech-dominant studios, dominant language mix, and English-dominant studios. In the first category, the Czech language was said to be the language of studio communication and to serve as an instrument of exclusion and glass ceiling for internationals’ promotion. In the second category, language use divided between English, Czech, and other Slavic languages, resulting in more inclusionary work practices but, Slavic versus English linguistic clusters in informal communication. In the third category, English was the lingua franca but Czechs’ insufficient English proficiency was identified as an issue on the micro level. Overall, a dichotomous thinking about languages was problematised. While Czech as the dominant language was detrimental for the hiring of internationals, companies managed to include workers using Slavic languages other than Czech. Thus, English was not the only language of inclusion but a one of several language choices in Czech game companies.

Abstract This article explores how candidates discuss cultural topics that overlap with their sociocultural background during the Cambridge undergraduate admissions interviews, an academic gatekeeping encounter. On the one hand, discussion of this kind can be a source of epistemic authority for these candidates. On the other hand, such an affordance does not insulate them from the intercultural phenomena we see attested in other encounters, such as job interviews. Candidates may attempt to signal likeminded sociocultural values to their interviewers, typically by disassociating themselves from the stigmatic aspects of their sociocultural background. Less commonly, interviewers may also engage in foreignizing behaviour. Interactional data from three interviews are used to exemplify how the imbrication of interculturality and institutional power patterns out in different ways, and how this impacts the evaluative outcomes of the candidates in question.

Abstract This article examines ambulant vendors’ labour on a Buenos Aires trainline. It explores how vendors employ a range of verbal and embodied resources to navigate the challenges of sustaining attention from commuters and manage the progressivity of their sales pitch as they achieve individual service encounters and deal with physical obstructions intrinsic to the local ecology of the train and the contingencies of earning a livelihood on the move. An interactional pragmatics analysis of vendors’ working practices as video-recorded by them coupled with ethnographic observations, reveals the complex interplay of verbal and embodied cues, spatial arrangements, and temporal constraints in relation to the progressivity of their sales pitch. The findings challenge long-held negative views of vendors’ presence in public space by highlighting the methodical approach, dexterity, and civility of their working practices, and how their labour fills a gap in the market. The article provides new insights into the dynamics of urban labour in public spaces and the intrinsicality of multimodality to manoeuvre round the unequal conditions these workers inhabit.

Abstract This paper investigates the role of English in voice assistant (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) use from the perspective of language ideology. Major commercial companies in the voice assistant market use English as a training language for their speech technologies and offer the most optimised support for standardised varieties of English. This affects the experiences with voice assistants of speakers of non-European languages, i.e., one of the non-target audiences. Drawing on qualitative interview data from Turkish-speaking users who migrated to Germany, the present study reveals that the participants iconize English as the “standard” language in digital contexts, constructing it as the “original” language of speaking computers. By conducting an inductive analysis, the article demonstrates that not only the lack of technological support, but also specific discourses about Artificial Intelligence, impact perceptions of English. These developments have implications for our understandings of prestige and digital literacy in human-machine interactions.

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