You know, like the tag question and the parenthetical I think, has been regarded as a linguistic hedging device, and consequently as a “women's language” form. This paper describes a range of forms and functions expressed by you know, as well as its use by women and men in a corpus of spontaneous speech. While there is no difference in this corpus in the total number of occurrences of you know produced by women and men, there are interesting contrasts in the most frequent functions expressed by you know in female and male usage. Finally, the possibility that negative stereotypes may distort perceptions of women's usage is briefly discussed. (Sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, contextual styles, women's and men's speech)

Many speakers of current Australian English often use a high-rising intonation in statements. This usage, which has been termed Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI), has a nonpropositional, interactive meaning (checking for listener comprehension) and interacts with the turn-taking mechanism of conversation. A quantitative study of the use of AQI in Sydney reveals that it has the social distribution characteristic of a language change in progress: higher rates of usage among working-class speakers, teenagers, and women. Real time data confirm this, showing that the form was almost nonexistent in this speech community two decades earlier. The social motivations of this innovation are examined in terms of local identity and the entry of new ethnic groups into the community, and possible linguistic sources are discussed. The utility of quantitative methods in studying meaningful linguistic variables is demonstrated. (Australian English, language change in progress, intonation, sociolinguistic variation, social class, social motivation)

The paper applies the methods of conversational analysis to investigation of the social organisation of industrial negotiation. The activities of negotiators are viewed as “locally managed,” and the paper shows how constituent entities of the negotiation setting, such as “issues” and “parties,” are interactionally accomplished in and through talk. Two dimensions of negotiation talk are focussed upon: the organisation of topicality and the production of “team” talk. It is shown that the methods by which negotiators manage the tasks of talking topically and talking as a team are context-specific modifications of the methods by which “ordinary conversation” is accomplished. (Conversational analysis, organizational settings, British English)

Black deaf adults have been said to have “poor communication skills” at least partly because of difficulties interviewers have had in obtaining information from them. Apparently, however, at least in some regions, blacks' sign language has been different from whites' sign language. This paper will present some differences between the sign language of black deaf. persons educated before and since racial integration of the schools and relate these differences to educational policies. Evidence is also provided as to the awareness of these differences and of educational policies on the part of teachers before and after integration. (Sociolinguistic variation, sign languages, minority group language, language death, racial integration)