Texas Linguistics Forum Vol. 49 (2005)

Mercia Flannery
Discrimination in Service Encounters: A Case-Study of Brazilian Narratives

The analytical focus of this paper is the language used in narratives of racial discrimination in service encounters in Brazil. Specifically, it provides an analysis of the language in narratives of overt discrimination -- those describing episodes in which a racial insult is uttered; and narratives of covert discrimination -- in which tellers conclude that they were discriminated by interpreting the events against their background of similar situations. To convey the sense that they experienced prejudice, tellers rely on the sequential description of verbal actions, or speech acts, during the encounter and on how the perpetrators of discrimination willingly break away from accepted rules of politeness for a typical service encounter in their society. This study adds to the current research on race and language and to the research on narrative analysis and linguistics in Brazilian Portuguese, contributing with an analysis of the language used to describe prejudice and discrimination in narratives.

Simeon Floyd
The Cash Value of Style in the Andean Marketplace

This paper examines code and style shifting during sales transactions based on two market case studies from highland Ecuador. Bringing together ideas of linguistic economy with work on stylistic variation and ethnohistorical research on Andean markets, I study bartering, market calls and sales pitches to show how sellers create stylistic performances distinguished by contrasts of code, register and poetic features. The interaction of the symbolic value of language with the economic values of the market presents a place to examine the relationship between discourse and the material world.

Maria Luz García
Weaving Words: Metaphor in Ixil Mayan Women’s Discourses about Literacy

This paper focuses on the emergent literacy program of the Grupo de Mujeres por la Paz, an Ixil Mayan women’s organization of Nebaj, Guatemala, and the discourses which surround this project. Through a combination of ethnographic approaches to naturally produced language and the methodologies of discourse analysis, I examine the structuring metaphor of the huipil, traditional woven blouses, in the group’s discourses about literacy. The discourses the women produce contribute to discussions about the political implications of literacy in indigenous languages, both in the case of Mayan languages and for endangered indigenous languages in general. This paper also builds on the idea that significant aspects of thought and language arise from, and are grounded in, embodiment. Thus the physical experience of weaving huipiles can be used to create meaning in emergent discourses. During a time when Guatemala’s political and cultural norms are being reconstructed, the women’s words offer a significant opportunity to see the creative and productive power of language through metaphor in redefining social life.

Inmaculada M. García Sánchez
More than Just Games: Language Socialization in an Immigrant Children's Peer Group

Social success through interaction and participation in the activities of the peer group is crucial to immigrant children's healthy development and evolving membership in society. Research on child-to-child interaction has stressed the importance of language practices in the peer group for the elaboration of children's cultures, for second language acquisition, and for children's cognitive development. This paper focuses on the socializing, interactional, and linguistic embodied practices that immigrant non-native speaking (NNS) children engage in when undertaking socio-cultural activities, namely a game of hopscotch, and it explores how immigrant children become mentors in facilitating cultural learning, competent pragmatic use of language, as well as in co-constructing norms of social conduct in their community. The conclusions underscore the importance of immigrant children's linguistic practices in their peer groups in order to understand larger developmental processes of socialization into a second language and culture.

Mie Hiramoto and Andrew Wong
Deconstructing 'Japanese Women's Language': A Prosodic Analysis

Given Japanese women's frequent use of high F0 and wide pitch ranges, researchers have claimed that these are features of Japanese women's language. However, the performative turn has discouraged scholars from assuming a one-to-one mapping between language and gender identity. Viewed from this perspective, Japanese women's language--an ideological construct made up of linguistic resources with gendered meanings -- is available to both men and women for the construction of different personae. This paper examines the production and perception of stereotypically masculine and feminine speech styles in Japanese. Our study results imply that gender norms are enforced differently for Japanese men than for Japanese women. Men who adopt masculine styles may sound impolite, but at least, they conform to gender norms. On the other hand, women who adopt masculine styles--which are already perceived as impolite--are even more impolite because they flout gender norms.

Jennifer Jackson
To Be a Developed Nation is to Speak as a Developed Nation: Constructing Tropes of Transparency and Development Through Syntax, Register, and Context in the Political Oratory of Imerina, Madagascar

This paper discusses ongoing stylistic and contextual variations in the everyday oratorical performance of Malagasy national politics in urban Imerina. It looks to the ways in which these variations over time reflect and shape shifting social dynamics of political engagement and emerging social formation, shaping political process and modes of public participation in democratic process. Working specifically from recordings and transcriptions of conversations concerning writing campaign and presidential speeches for the country's current president, the performance of those speeches known as political <<kabary>>, and talk about those speeches by other political genres such as political cartoonists, this paper furthers other studies in language, society, and interaction concerning how stylistic and contextual variations of an otherwise highly presupposed oratorical form are emblematic of larger social processes inculcated in localized projects of global modernity.

Andrea Jacobs
Innovative Language Practices and the Sociolinguistic Dimension of Israeli Feminist Social Change Work

In this paper, I will argue that language variation among women in the Israeli feminist community can best be understood as both a natural outcome of feminist consciousness and an integrated aspect of feminist culture and social change within Israeli society. I will present an analysis of narratives from two Israeli feminists about their strategic use of language in different social interactional contexts. The analysis will focus on how a comparison of their metalinguistic discourse with their observed linguistic behavior can provide valuable insight into the manner in which these speakers use language to unite aspects of their social identities while engaging in feminist social change work. I will also argue that understanding how speakers make use of language to negotiate their social identities in complex multi-layered societies can lead to better understanding of the social meaning of inter-speaker and intra-speaker variation within a community of practice

Anu Klippi
Nonverbal Behavior as Turn Constructional Units in Aphasic Conversation

This presentation will focus on the interactive organization of verbal and nonverbal behaviors (gestures, head movements, facial expressions, gaze, posture) in conversations involving a person with aphasia. Conversation Analysis will be used to examine how different types of nonverbal behaviors may serve as turn constructional units, either as such in the turn, or as combined with verbal turn constructional units. With the help of videotaped examples from aphasic conversations, it will be demonstrated how a person with aphasia may take different kinds of nonverbal behaviors in use during turn construction activity. The analysis reveals many systematic nonverbal behaviors used by aphasic speakers while constructing turns. Of special interest are extended conversational sequences where participants co-construct understanding on turn-by-turn basis, in a way that a person with aphasia recruits several nonverbal acts with or without lexical elements and the interlocutor produces candidate understandings. The presentation will display, how the participants build conversational context in order to constitute shared meanings, and how they in this way jointly co-construct a conversation.

Dale April Koike
Co-constructing Meaning in Socio- and Applied Linguistics

The co-construction of meaning, following Jacoby and Ochs' (1995:171) broad definition of a "joint creation of a form, interpretation, stance, action, activity, identity, institution, skill, ideology, emotion, or other culturally meaningful reality," makes several assumptions regarding collaboration, shared knowledge, and creation over time. This paper pursues these assumptions, focusing especially on the third assumption of creation over time in relation to talk. Drawing on work by Arundale (1999) and van Dijk (1997; 1999), the co-constructive model of talk discussed here incorporates the notions of expectation-based discourse processing and context models by both participants of a dialogue. Arguing for the advantages of using a co-constructive approach to interaction analysis, we then explore the emergent aspect of dialogic meaning and meaning construction in the context of the presence and the absence of collaboration.

The connection of co-constructing meaning to co-constructing identity is discussed, again using the factors of collaboration, shared knowledge, and creation over time. Finally, a brief application of these notions to the field of applied linguistics concludes this presentation.

Patricia G. Lange
Getting to Know You: Using Hostility to Reduce Anonymity in Online Communication

Identity and language have been exhaustively examined, yet anonymity remains under theorized. Studies assert that because computer-based communication lacks social cues, it will be hostile. Yet, this position underestimates identifying information in talk and fails to account for countless anonymous, non-hostile, Internet interactions. This paper argues that hostility often results from interlocutors attempts to reduce anonymity. Based on an online ethnographic study, this paper examines real-time conversation to see how speakers use linguistic resources to reveal themselves as technical experts. Maintaining Internet anonymity is possible. However, actual levels of anonymity must be investigated in specific contexts. This study analyzes the interplay between identity and anonymity and provides a more nuanced approach to anonymity theorization. Further, it contributes to computer-based communication research by questioning how unspecified levels of anonymity cause hostility. Instead this research shows that hostility is used to reduce anonymity during interactive identity displays.

Matthew McGlone, Heather Bortfeld, & Diane Kobrynowicz
Using Idioms to Invoke Implicit Analogical Framing in Decision Making

Framing research has demonstrated that seemingly trivial cues can compel people to unwittingly employ historical and conceptual analogies in their judgments and decisions. The reported research explores phrasal idioms' potential as an unobtrusive means of analogically framing decision scenarios. We asked undergraduates to read different versions of a managerial decision scenario and to choose between two response options. The scenario versions differed in the number of business-as-sports idioms (e.g., "sales team") used to describe situational attributes. People's preference for analogically consistent response options was significantly influenced by the number of idioms present. However, those who preferred the consistent option rarely referred to the analogy when explaining their choices, instead referring to scenario attributes that did not differ across scenario versions. These results suggest that idioms can exert an implicit influence on decision-making, compelling people to strive for analogical consistency without subjective awareness.