This article explores an underappreciated pragmatic constraint on the expression of opinions: When expressing an opinion on a topic that has been previously discussed, a speaker should correctly indicate the cultural standing of that view in the relevant opinion community. This Bakhtinian approach to discourse analysis is contrasted with conversation analysis, politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and analysis of epistemic modality. Finally, indicators of four points on the cultural standing continuum (highly controversial, debatable, common opinion, and taken for granted) are illustrated with examples from American English usage.I am grateful for helpful comments from Jane Hill and two anonymous reviewers for Language in Society as well as Justin Beck, Paul Ireland, Ronald Macaulay, Naomi Quinn, Daniel Segal, James Van Cleve, other students in Methods of Discourse Analysis (spring 2001) and Language and Power (spring 2003), and other colleagues who commented on the paper when I presented it at Pitzer College in February 2000.

This study places conversational performance, or speakers' attempts during everyday talk to draw attention to the aesthetic form of their utterances, at the center of an analysis of linguistic ideology. It examines, in particular, the ways in which two white, middle-class, U.S. university students use performance strategies to construct as Other an English-speaking man whom one student encounters on a flight from Saudi Arabia. Drawing on a socially and ideologically situated theory of verbal art, this article proposes five interconnected relations between performance and ideology. Together, these relations constitute a step toward an integrated theory of an inextricable link between the ideological structure of performance and the potential for performance in ideological discourse.I wish to thank Jane Hill, Kimberly Jones, Douglas Adamson, and two anonymous reviewers for their perceptive and helpful comments on earlier versions of this article and on the dissertation from which it comes. I also greatly appreciate Jane McGary's careful editing.

A number of studies have been conducted on “dominance” as reflected in spoken interactional features, most of which deal with English. Many of these studies adopt a quantitative approach, examining the amount and distribution of interactional features such as amount of talk, interruptions and overlaps, turn-taking, questions, and topic initiations, and they have drawn conclusions on “dominance” accordingly. The present study explores gender dominance in conversation by analyzing conversational data from eight Japanese dyads by integrating quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis of two dimensions of conversational dominance, sequential dominance and participatory dominance, does not show any obvious gender dominance; however, the qualitative analysis of three of the dyads finds a clear pattern of male speakers' self-oriented conversational style, which is manifested in their storytelling and claiming expertise, and this is supported by female speakers' other-oriented conversational style. Gender dominance therefore is seen as a mutual construction. The conclusion discusses the importance of integrating findings from both quantitative and qualitative analyses in situated contexts to deepen understanding of the complexity of gender dominance.The authors wish to thank Dwight Atkinson, Andy Curtis, Jane Hill, and two anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and valuable comments on earlier drafts of the paper. They also wish to thank Simon Lai, senior research assistant, for his help in conducting the statistical test.

For indigenous Tzotzil Protestants in Chiapas, the emergence of a new discourse about God is restructuring social interactions. Discourse data point to an arresting intersection of Protestant beliefs, discourse strategies, and gender. This case study supports recent theorizing in language and gender concerning the need to attend to shifting identities and contexts where gender can become less salient. The performance of a Protestant identity in which gender is transcended opens up new possibilities for agency, particularly for women who otherwise lack sanctioned authority. Strategic manipulation of Protestant discourse in verbal performances allows one woman to enact a position of moral authority that empowers her to pursue an innovative plan. As an important means through which Tzotzil Protestants dictate and create their lives, praying in the evangelical world provides a useful site for the study of unusual kinds of performative utterances.This article benefited greatly from pointers and suggestions from Laada Bilaniuk, Anne Curzan, and John Haviland. I am deeply grateful for all their encouragement. Heartfelt thanks to Lourdes de León for sharing her connection to and past knowledge of my Tzotzil family with me; without her prior friendship there, I would never have met them. Kami Ahmad unfailingly reads my work with the exacting eye of a scientist; his endurance makes miracles happen. All translations were aided by consultation of Laughlin, 1975. This work was supported by NSF grant #SBR-9222394 and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This volume contains the contributions presented at the first plenary conference on Integrational Linguistics held in London in 2000, an event at which I participated. The basic tenets of Integrational Linguistics were developed by Roy Harris at Oxford in the 1980s and 1990s; while many aspects of this approach remain a matter of debate, its assumptions and practices have become sufficiently firm to be the subject of a couple of introductory texts (Harris 1998, Toolan 1996). Harris's agenda has been “to challenge the monumental complacency of mainstream linguistics” (p. 3) by pointing out that the discipline is no more than an elaborate edifice built on a myth.

Since graduate school, I have seen applied linguistics (AL) treated by too many of my professors and colleagues as the bastard child of “real” linguistics – accused of being too interdisciplinary, too pedagogically oriented, and lacking in an all-encompassing theoretical framework. Sadly, even those practicing AL are sometimes apologetic or defensive about their supposed faults. In some ways, this book represents a coming-out party, a celebration of accomplishments and directions for future research and involvement.

Discourses in search of members is a festschrift presented to Ron Scollon on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in May 1999. The volume is so titled, writes Li, in order to “reflect and unify all of Ron's research endeavors to date, namely, the dynamic, dialectical relationship between, on the one hand, how members of a myriad of overlapping Discourses (to follow James Gee's convention) acquire legitimacy of their memberships, consciously or otherwise, and on the other hand, how such Discourses maintain their vitality and viability through self-perpetuating social practices of their members from day to day” (p. ix). The editor has reached his goal, compiling 25 contributions that address a number of related topics in four core sections: educational discourses, critical and media studies, intercultural/interdiscourse communication, and language learning and comparative poetics.

Many scholars and researchers doing sociolinguistics will agree that “Every language is a social product, and every society constitutes itself through language” (Coulmas 2001:563). In other words, many sociolinguists share the conviction that language should be accounted for in its social context for the simple reason that we live in reality instead of virtually. And Roger W. Shuy has set us an excellent example. Throughout his whole life, Shuy, “a living monument to the power of language in everyday life” (p. x), has attached great importance to investigating language issues in real-life encounters, insightfully claiming “that possibilities for linguistic research are everywhere, as language is used wherever we turn” (2). What is more important and more admirable is that Shuy has shown that sociolinguists can and should contribute to advancing social progress in various areas through their own research work. In other words, sociolinguistic researchers should have a social commitment to use their “linguistic ‘tool bag’ (his well-known term) to shed some light on real-world problems” (577). This finds expression in the volume under review, in which many chapters are contributed by his former students. The diversity of the topics covered provides insight into how language and various aspects of social life are closely linked together. This book should be of much interest and great value to those interested in language in society.

What is unique about education for the “indigenous” children, those who belong to colonized ethnic groups? Given its special limitations and opportunities, how can indigenous education effectively address the needs of these children and their communities? With an overall focus on this second question, Francis & Reyhner address the first question in Part 1, laying a foundation for both the practical classroom strategies and the curriculum and materials suggestions elaborated in Part 2. Their preface states: “The idea that language learning and literacy can be enriched with the inclusion of indigenous languages is what this book is about.”

Outlining potential applications of their politeness model toward the end of their seminal essay, Brown & Levinson wrote:

[Our] analysis focusing on the non-arbitrary order evident in linguistic styles allows for the relationship between language styles and social structure to be spelled out in detail. It is along these lines that we hope to be able to use our model of the universals of linguistic politeness to characterise the cross-cultural differences in ethos, the general tone of social interaction in different societies. (1987 [1978]:252–3)

In a response to this invitation that may well be seen, in a broader context, as a statement as political as it is scientific, the 12 original contributions to this volume begin to chart this terrain for two neighboring societies/cultures/languages: Greek and Turkish.

An edited, modern edition of the Jesuit Horacio Carochi's Arte de la lengua Mexicana con la declaracion de los adverbios della from 1645 has been eagerly awaited by scholars with an interest in Mesoamerican culture in general, and by those interested in the Nahautl language in particular. Carochi's grammar on what nowadays is called “Classical Nahuatl” is undisputedly the finest of all grammars produced in the centuries following the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards in 1521. Its clear and concise explanations of all aspects of Nahuatl grammar are in many respects unparalleled even to this day. The problem up until now has been to get hold of a copy of either the 1892 edition or the facsimile edition of 1983. They are both out of print and somewhat hard to read because they require some familiarity with older Spanish. The volume under review remedies all this.

Publications received.

In Bernard Spolsky's article “Reassessing Maori regeneration”, Language in Society 32(4), endnote 48, p. 569, there is a reference to “Spolsky 1999”. This should read “Spolsky & Shohamy (1999).”