Every language has its own key words, which reflect the core values of the culture. Consequently, cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key words. But to be able to study, compare, and explain cultures in terms of their key words, we need a culture-independent analytical framework. A framework of this kind is provided by the natural semantic metalanguage developed by the author and colleagues over the last two decades. In the present article, the author explores and analyzes six Japanese concepts widely regarded as being almost more that any others culture-specific and culturally revealing – amae, enryo, wa, on, giri, and seishin – and shows how the use of the natural semantic metalanguage (based on universal semantic primitives) helps to make these concepts clear and how it facilitates better insight into Japanese culture and society (Japanese language, Japanese culture, cross-cultural semantics, key words, core values)

Newspaper reports, political policy papers, and investigations by social scientists concerning issues related to the presence of a community of migrant workers in Belgium are subjected to a systematic, pragmatic analysis. The analysis reveals an eminently coherent world of beliefs and attitudes with respect to (1) perceptions of the “other,” (2) the self-perception of majority members, (3) formulations of “the problem,” and (4) proposed solutions. This world of beliefs and attitudes is shown to be centered around stable – even if vague – notions of culture, nation and state, democracy and human rights, and around related recipes for “integration” that reveal a collective psyche profoundly troubled by the very idea of diversity in society (linguistic or otherwise). Homogeneity appears to be a strict norm for average members of Belgian society, irrespective of the specific political positions they take. (Minority politics, language and ideology, pragmatics, political rhetoric, news reporting, ethnicity)

Based on the bilingualism literature, the author's recent experiences in Austrian German, and a discourse analysis perspective, a way of looking at biculturalism is hammered together to enable an understanding of how adult L2 acquisition proceeds in more and less cultural ways. (Bilingualism, biculturalism, discourse, ethnography, Whorf)

This article examines the language use of drunken speakers in a bilingual community of the Southern Peruvian Andes. When drunk, speakers are less constrained in their linguistic choices by considerations of individual linguistic competence and of differential status between speaker and addressees. Cultural norms of heightened potency and diminished responsibility allow drunken speakers to extend their linguistic repertoires and to challenge established social relations. Spanish and Quechua carry very complex and ambiguous meanings related to local conceptions of power and evaluations of an Hispanic and a pre-Hispanic past. Drunks exploit the ambiguities in implicit social meanings that normally function to maintain the status quo as they use their extended communicative competence to present alternative views on the nature of social relations. (Bilingualism, language and power, social anthropology, South America)

A comparison is presented of Indian urban and rural sign languages of the deaf. The structures of both languages are designed for efficient communication but have developed differently in response to different sociolinguistic environments. The urban form transmits information primarily by means of appeal to a shared linguistic code; the rural form mainly by appeal to communal nonlinguistic knowledge. Both languages employ effective and appropriate means given their environments. The relationship between language usage and structure is explored. (Sign language, deafness, India)

Dyirbal was probably originally spoken by about 5,000 people across its 10 dialects. In 1963, the northern dialects had just a few speakers (now all dead save one), but two southern dialects had formed a language community with several score speakers, including a number of children. Over the past quarter-century, younger people have switched to English, while among the older ones a new “merged dialect” has developed. The social situations and attitudes of speakers are described, in addition to changing language identifications. The writer has seen Dyirbal contract in lexical and grammatical complexity as it has moved toward an inevitable extinction. (Sociolinguistics, language death, Australian Aboriginal languages, field methods)

Christian churches are central to modern social and political organization in the Pacific islands, yet little research has been conducted on their role in intrasocietal diversity in language attitudes and use. We examine church affiliation and its impact on language use, identity, and change among Kwara'ae speakers in the Solomon Islands, where intense competition for converts and the association of particular churches with modernization and development is having a significant impact on language choice and change. We show that members of different sects signal their separate identities not only through linguistic code but also through discourse patterns and nonverbal aspects of communication. The characteristics we identify are illustrated in transcripts from four speakers, and the social outcomes of these characteristics is discussed. (Ethnography of speaking, discourse analysis, nonverbal communication, language change, language attitudes, Melanesia, Solomon Islands)

The address terms in China are largely based on the two-class distinction (the two classes being the proletariat and the bourgeoisie). The rules governing the use of address terms in China were strictly followed before the Cultural Revolution and are still followed to a certain extent now The Cultural Revolution has brought about the “depreciation” of certain address terms, and the new situation that has appeared since China opened its doors has changed some people's mental outlook and has caused some other address terms to “go up in value.” The author shows that the use of address terms and cultural values are closely interrelated. (Sociolinguistics, address terms, cultural values)

Several sociologists have noted the emergence of syncretic multiracial youth cultures in Britain and addressed its political significance. Most discussion has focused on Afro-Caribbean influences, but this article considers Asian involvement by analyzing the use of Panjabi by black and white adolescents in a mixed peer group. Informant reports suggested that Panjabi crossing was common, though assessments varied according to its contexts of occurrence. Analysis of spontaneous speech reduced these to two: agonistic interactions, where Panjabi played an auxiliary role in familiar playground practices (primarily among males); and bhangra, in which predominantly white females looked toward a nascent youth culture with Panjabi at its core. Despite major differences, bilingual sponsors and nonconversational structures were crucial in both settings. Opposition to establishment hierarchy might be more a part of the interracial meaning potential of Creole, but Panjabi was important, both in managing the divisions that cross-cut youth community and in extending horizons beyond the confines of local neighborhood experience. (Ethnography of communication, ethnic relations, adolescent multilingualism, language contact, code-switching, second language learning)

The anonymous telephone public opinion survey is supposed to be invariant. Interviewers' individual linguistic styles are supposed to be suppressed. However, transcripts of interviews show that no two interviewers perform the task alike. Interviewers make changes in the scripted introduction and add unscripted answer-acknowledgments and commentary throughout the interviews, the effect of which is to point up their identities as individuals rather than merely fillers of the interviewer role. Much of the deviation can be explained by the heightened requirement for politeness in the “cold call,” for Americans one of the most egregious of interactional impositions. But no two interviewers fulfill this requirement in quite the same way. This may be because Americans value individuality in discourse, so that in order to be polite it is necessary to perform a differentiated, individual self. Such an understanding of personhood, and its linguistic ramifications, conflicts with the positivistic understanding of language on which survey research is based. In light of the amount of individual variation where one might not expect to find it, I suggest that linguists focus attention on the individual voice. (Individual variation, individual voice, interviewing, public opinion polls, survey research, politeness)

This article reports on one aspect of an ongoing study of language contact in the American deaf community. A kind of signing that results from the contact between American Sign Language (ASL) and English exhibits features of both languages. The ultimate goal of the study is a linguistic description of contact signing and a reexamination of claims that it is a pidgin. Ten dyads and two triads of native ASL signers (6 white dyads, 4 black dyads, 2 black triads) were videotaped with a deaf interviewer, a hearing interviewer, and alone with each other. The different interview situations induced switching between ASL and contact signing. This article (1) reviews the pattern of language use during the interviews with the white dyads and describes the judgments of selected videotaped segments by 10 native signers; (2) examines the role of demographic information in judgments. For each segment, half of the judges were given one set of demographic information, and the other half were given another set. Indications are that this information does affect judgment, even though the linguistic forms viewed were identical. (American Sign Language, language contact, language judgments, deaf community)

This study explores the correlation between notions of language and territory in the ideology of a present-day Ultraorthodox Jewish group, the Hasidim of Satmar, in the context of Jewish Ultraorthodoxy (Haredism) in general. This involves the present-day role of Yiddish vis-à-vis Hebrew, particularly in Israel. We first address the relative sanctity of a space that accommodates a closed Haredi lifestyle and of a language in which it is expressed, then contrast this with the absolute sanctity of the land of Israel and the language of Scripture both in their intensional (positive) and in their extensional (negative) dimensions, and finally examine the quasi-absolute sanctity with which the Yiddish language and Jewish habitat of Eastern Europe have been invested. Our conclusion is that three such cases of a parallel between linguistic and territorial ideology point to an intrinsic link. Indeed, the correlation of language and territory on the plane of quasi-absolute sanctity betokens an ongoing, active ideological tie, rather than a set of worn, petrified values evoking mere lip-service. These notions of quasi-sanctity find many echoes in reality: in the use of Yiddish and in the creation of a surrogate Eastern European lifestyle in the Haredi “ghettos.” (Cultural geography, sociolinguistics, Judaism, Hasidism, religion, Israel, sociology of language, Yiddish, sacred land, Hebrew, territory)

Conversational narratives of 17 Japanese children aged 5 to 9 were analyzed using stanza analysis (Gee 1985; Hymes 1982). Three distinctive features emerged: (1) the narratives are exceptionally succinct; (2) they are usually free-standing collections of three experiences; (3) stanzas almost always consist of three lines. These features reflect the basic characteristics of haiku, a commonly practiced literary form that often combines poetry and narrative, and an ancient, but still ubiquitous game called karuta, which also displays three lines of written discourse. These literacy games may explain both the extraordinary regularity of verses per stanza and the smooth acquisition of reading by a culture that practices restricted, ambiguous, oral-style discourse. The structure of Japanese children's narratives must be understood within the larger context of omoiyari “empathy” training of Japanese children. Empathy training may account for the production, comprehension, and appreciation of ambiguous discourse in Japanese society. (Cultural differences in discourse style, the relationship among oral language, literacy, and literature)

Scollon and Scollon (1979) claimed that the consonantal system of Chipewyan in Fort Chipewyan has been reduced to 16 segments from 39 influenced by Cree, a case of linguistic convergence. This conclusion was based on their incoherent and indiscriminate admixture of variable data. While there is no Chipewyan speaker whose consonantal inventory includes only 16 phonemes, there is ample evidence for the merger of two series of coronal affricates in an innovative system like in other Athapaskan languages that have had no intimate contact with Cree. That is, there is evidence for intralinguistic divergence, but not for interlinguistic convergence. Neither is there any evidence to support another major claim by the Scollons that the sibilant alternations in Chipewyan are correlated with “world views.” All the changes, including sibilant alternations and coronal mergers, recorded in Fort Chipewyan are those frequently observed in other Athapaskan communities. (Language contact, change, convergence, divergence, variability, obsolescence, register, sociolinguistic variable)

The creation of a large artificial lake in 1968 that flooded a large part of the Sekani homeland has led to change in the political outlook of the reorganized Sekani villages. In particular, there has been a reemergence of a universalist social–political philosophy, pan-Indianism, that had as its precursor the cultural–political category of phratry. The association between disruption and the emergence of this system of categorization is historically grounded. The particular problem addressed is why the Sekani speak English when there is little direct contact with Euro-Canadians and no particular advantages, in terms of adaptation to the new economic regime, in doing so. Changes in Sekani English in the political sphere and in relationship terms are examined within the context of maintaining a commitment to pan-Indianism/universalism. (Language loss, bilingualism, political culture, ways of speaking, British Columbia, Athapaskan languages)

This article reports on the application of the concept of social network to the process of language usage among Yoruba-speaking city dwellers in Ile-Ife, Southwestern Nigeria. The study, modeled on L. Milroy (1980), focuses mainly on phonetic/phonological variation within Common Spoken Yoruba (CmSpY). The analysis of the data gathered mainly within face-to-face interviews shows that, whereas we can claim that there is stratification within CmSpY on the basis of sociodemographic factors, the variable of social network manifests a powerful influence on variation in Yoruba language usage and potential change within CmSpY in Ile-Ife. (Linguistic variation, social networks, linguistic focusing)

This article describes how it could be possible for two participants engaged in conversation to jointly produce a single syntactic unit such as a sentence. From an inspection of sentence types that are achieved through such joint production, it was determined that participants have available a single utterance construction format. This format, the compound turn-constructional unit format, may be a component of a socially construed syntax-for-conversation. It can be constituted by a wide range of interactionally relevant features of talk in interaction that reveal an emerging utterance as a multiple component turn-constructional unit. The compound turn-constructional unit format is primarily a resource for turn-taking. It can be used to project the next proper place for speaker change. However, it concomitantly provides the resources needed to complete the utterance-in-progress of another participant, thus allowing for the construction of a single sentence across the talk of two speakers. (Conversation, interaction, recognizable activity)

Adult–child interaction and linguistic input in relation to oral culture were investigated in 13 traditional settlements of Romāni-speaking Gypsies in Hungary. Many of the typical modifications found in the childdirected speech (CDS) register of other languages are also found in the speech addressed to children acquiring Romāni. In addition, CDS in these communities is deeply influenced by living traditions and properties of the Gypsies' oral culture. Phenomena of input language closely related to these features are, for example, a specific way of modeling dialogue to infants, the extended use of test questions, and the use of folk genres specially modified for babies and children. Early introduction of children into these ways of speaking reflects their importance for Gypsy culture and Gypsy identity. Children's games reflecting the highly creative uses of the same features of traditional oral culture are also presented. (Gypsies, Romani, child-directed speech, language acquisition, socialization, pragmatics)

The present study concerns itself mainly with Shakespeare's use of thou forms to individual ghosts, witches, and spirits. All of Shakespeare's 37 plays were examined; 10 were systematically searched for stretches of discourse that occur between human beings and supernatural beings. The proposition is advanced that there is a role-governed rule in the use of this pronoun to individual supernatural beings. The illustrations, statistical results, discussion, and citations from other sources support the proposition forcefully; unique exceptions are taken into consideration. Instances that indicate the possibility of a reciprocal use from and between such beings are given as well, together with possible reasons for the usage. (Pronouns of address, Shakespearean studies, supernatural beings)