Hablamos Los Dos We Speak Both

This volume presents an interactional perspective on linguistic variability that takes into account the construction of social identities through the formation of social communicative styles. It shows that style is a useful category in bridging the gap between single parameter variation and social identity. Social positioning, i.e., finding one's place in society, is one of its motivating forces. Various aspects of the expression of stylistic features are focused on, from language choice and linguistic variation in a narrow sense to practices of social categorization, pragmatics patterns, preferences for specific communicative genres, rhetorical practices including prosodic features, and aesthetic choices and preferences for specific forms of taste (looks, clothes, music, etc.). These various features of expression are connected to multimodal stylistic indices through talk; thus, styles emerge from discourse. Styles are adapted to changing contexts, and develop in the course of social processes. The analytical perspective chosen proposes an alternative to current approaches to variability under the influence of the so-called variationist paradigm.

In the past 30 years, the study of bilingualism processing has been conducted independently by two fields, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This volume merges these two fields, addressing one of the tough problems dividing researchers in bilingualism, conceptually as well as methodologically. Joel Walters proposes a new approach to bilingualism processing--the Sociopragmatic-Psycholinguistic (SPPL) Model--which presents language as a social phenomenon. The author accomplishes this by identifying and organizing evidence from a wide range of linguistic disciplines, merging sociopragmatics, discourse analysis, and ethnography with social cognition, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. By extension, the author offers convincing explanations of how related fields can profit from a comprehensive bilingual processing model. As a result, Joel Walters delivers a well-organized, comprehensive model that is thought through at every level. This book appeals to graduate students, scholars in the fields of linguistics, bilingualism, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. It is useful to researchers for its comprehensiveness and methodological acumen and may be appropriate as a supplementary textbook for graduate-level courses in bilingualism or for seminars on similar topics.

In a series of studies specially written for this volume, Studying Speaking to Inform Second Language Learning offers the applied linguist research on spoken interaction in second and foreign languages and provides insights as to how findings from each of these studies may inform language pedagogy. The volume offers an interweaving of discourse perspectives: speech acts, speech events, interactional analysis, pragmatics, and conversational analysis.

Making linguistics accessible and relevant to all teachers, this text looks at language issues in the classroom through an applied sociocultural perspective focused on how language functions in society and in schools—how it is used, for what purposes, and how teachers can understand their students’ language practices. While touching on the key structural aspects of language (phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax), it does not simply give an overview, but rather provides a way to study and talk about language. Each chapter includes practical steps and suggests tools for applying different kinds of linguistic knowledge in classrooms. The activities and exercises are adaptable to elementary or high school settings. Many examples focus on the intersection of math, science, and language. Teacher case studies show how real teachers have used these concepts to inform teaching practices. Given the increasing use of multimedia resources in today’s schools, multiple mediums are integrated to engage educators in learning about language. The Companion Website provides a multitude of relevant resources that illustrate the diversity of language functions and debates about language in society.

This book offers a sociolinguistic study of the Chinese community in Britain. It focuses on generational changes in language choice and code-switching patterns of Chinese immigrant families. The social network model developed in the study is intended to account for the relationship between community norms of language use and conversational strategies of individual speakers, and for the relation of both to the broader social, economic and political context.

Code-switching - the alternating use of several languages by bilingual speakers - does not usually indicate lack of competence on the part of the speaker in any of the languages concerned, but results from complex bilingual skills. The reasons why people switch their codes are as varied as the directions from which linguists approach this issue, and raise many sociological, psychological, and grammatical questions. This volume of essays by leading scholars brings together the main strands of current research in four major areas: the policy implications of code-switching in specific institutional and community settings; the perspective of social theory on code-switching as a form of speech behaviour in particular social contexts; the grammatical analysis of code-switching, including the factors that constrain switching even within a sentence; and the implications of code-switching in bilingual processing and development.

This collection of essays deals with the interplay of language and social change, asking the question: How can language and society be made gender equal? The contributors examine the critical role of language in the lives of white women and women of color in the United States. Since language pervades many dimensions of women's lives, this study takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the issues considered. The volume is divided into three sections. The first, "Liberating Language," focuses on the active role women had in altering the extent of linguistic sexism in English during the 1970s. A second section, "Identity Creation," deals with the alteration of that portion of language which serves to name women and their experiences. The final section, "Women of Color," offers a rare and timely look at the particular problems confronted by minority women. It argues that women of color have different problems and different links to language than white middle-class women.

Code Switching, the alternating use of two or more languages ation, has become an increasingly topical and important field of research. Now available in paperback, Code-Switching in Conversation brings together contributions from a wide variety of sociolinguistics settings in which the phenomenon is observed. It addresses not only the structure and the function, but also the ideological values of such bilingual behaviour. The contributors question many views of code switching on the empirical basis of many European and non European contexts. By bringing together linguistics, anthropological and socio-psychological research, they move towards a more realistic conception of bilingual conversation action.