Sociocultural Linguistics Research Articles

Intersecting inequalities: towards a critical discursive approach

ABSTRACT This introduction to the Special Issue delves into the intersection of critical discursive approaches and intersectionality in the study of language, gender, and societal inequalities. It traces the evolution of gender and language studies, with a focus on how discursive methodologies have facilitated the examination of the material consequences of discourse, particularly in relation to power, gender, and social structures. The aim of this Special Issue is to foster academic synergy by merging discursive and intersectional frameworks to analyze how socio-cultural categories—such as gender, race, and class, among others—intersect to produce inequalities. Furthermore, the issue incorporates a decolonial perspective, critically engaging with the Eurocentric foundations of existing methodologies and advocating for a more inclusive analysis of global power dynamics. The articles within this issue adopt interdisciplinary approaches, including Critical Discourse Studies and Sociocultural Linguistics, to explore diverse experiences and social structures. By integrating these frameworks, the issue offers a multifaceted understanding of how intersecting identities shape discourse and social power relations, underscoring the importance of critical praxis and self-reflexivity in academic research.

Is the throne still for the people? A sociocultural linguistic analysis of Menanam adalah Melawan

Tahta untuk Rakyat ‘Throne for the People’, which is the principle that the highly respected Hamengkubuwono IX lived by as a democratic and nationalist King of Kesultanan Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat, embodies the concept of the people, by the people, for the people. Under his rule, Kesultanan Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat (Yogyakarta Sultanate in Indonesia) was committed to placing the people first. Nevertheless, the book Menanam adalah Melawan, or ‘Planting is Resisting’, challenges the very principle and questions the commitment of the present-day sultanate. The article explores the activist book, which contains the notes of an activist farmer who reflected on and wrote about his journeys and experiences as a farmer-turned-activist after the village where he farmed was claimed by the authorities, including the sultanate, and was planned to be made into a mining site. Fairclough’s sociocultural linguistics frames the analysis, and more specifically through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The results indicate that at the micro level, Widodo’s writing uses emotive and technical language to construct a collective identity of marginalized farmers, opposing powerful entities like the sultanate and corporations. At the meso-level, the text challenges dominant power structures and neoliberal policies, advocating for social justice and a responsive monarchy, while emphasizing the need for transparency and genuine community partnership. The article indicates that the concern about the marginalized should take into account non-mainstream texts such as those produced by the marginalized so that social injustice can be minimized.

Occasionalisms in Social Networks During the Pandemic

Background: This study explores and analyses occasionalisms that were created by social network users during the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical framework of this research is based on observing the concepts of occasionalism, neologism and nonce word. 
 Purpose: To indicate occasionalisms in the Russian and English languages and compare them in terms of word-formation, frequencies, part of speech and meanings, thus making a contribution to the understanding of how occasionalisms emerge in these languages.
 Method: A qualitative and quantitative content analyses are used for data collection. The sample is obtained from different social networks (‘Facebook[1]’, ‘Twitter[2]’, ‘Reddit’ and ‘VK’). Results: Occasionalisms are created mostly through blending, compounding, and affixation. Mixed word-formation methods are also used. The most used parts of speech appear to be nouns and adjectives. The most Russian occasionalisms are ironic, expressive and attract attention, while English occasionalisms are not that expressive as they refer to medical or political concepts. Borrowings from English in the Russian occasionalisms are also indicated. The glossary of 106 occasionalisms in the Russian and English languages is introduced at the end of the study.
 Conclusion: The results might expand the knowledge of new vocabulary items in the field of lexicology and stylistics, and have practical implications in language teaching and translations, as occasionalisms may frequently create obstacles for foreign language students and translators. They also may serve as a basis for further studies on neologisms, occasionalisms and nonce words generated during the pandemic and cover the gap in comparative studies of the Russian and English occasionalisms. In addition, the obtained results might be beneficial for future research in sociolinguistics and sociocultural linguistics providing greater awareness of the linguistic and sociocultural factors that impact the adoption and use of occasionalisms in both languages.

The use of taboo language in quarrels: The difference between men and women: A cross-cultural perspective

The present study falls within the realms of sociocultural linguistics and pragmatics. It focuses on the exploration of the intersection of taboo language, culture and the social index of gender in contemporary British and Russian drama. Thirty conflict episodes comprise the materials for the present study. The investigation aims at (1) establishing the taboo repertoire (both semantic and functional) employed by men and women having a row in the context of the aforementioned cultures; (2) establishing the correlation between the employment of taboo language and the observation of the politeness constraint.
 On the basis of the analysis carried out in the study the following conclusions can be drawn: (1) despite different cultural contexts, the personages demonstrate similar semantic and functional patterns; i.e. the personages (both men and women) involved in conflicts, or quarrels, employ a similar repertoire of taboo items; (2) a wide spectrum of negative emotions experienced by the personages in the quarrels is rendered through the extensive use of taboo language, whose function is non-interactive, i.e. intended to mirror the speaker’s emotional involvement; (3) it can be claimed that face as the most valuable personal possession is devalorized in both cultures under analysis, politeness as a constraint ensuring communicative concord and comity is not observed.

‘Go home to the second wave!’: Discourses of trans inclusion and exclusion in a queer women’s online community

As the visibility of trans movements has increased in recent years, so too has the antagonism between trans rights supporters and some sections of the feminist and lesbian communities (Phipps, 2016; Hines, 2017, Pearce et al., 2020). This antagonism is especially pronounced in digital spaces, where online discussions have fuelled an increasing polarisation of the debate (Hines, 2017). This paper examines the representation of trans identities on Autostraddle: a popular entertainment, news and lifestyle website for lesbian and bisexual women. It focuses on the longest and most controversial comment thread in the 2-million-word Queer Women’s Advice Corpus. The thread is a response to a guide to dating trans women for cis women. Using a combination of critical discourse analysis, sociocultural linguistics and corpus linguistics, I unpack the argumentation strategies (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012) that commenters use to construct stances on the inclusion of trans women in the queer women’s online space. The major strategies include persuasive definitions of lesbian, imaginaries about trans women’s hypothetical bodies and the illegitimation of trans-exclusionary commenters as bad feminists and community outsiders. I find that that trans inclusion is successfully negotiated on a community level, but that trans women are still problematised on an intimate level due to their (imagined) genitalia. Trans women are ‘hyperembodied’ in the data, with the presence or absence of a penis acting as the focal point for inclusion and desirability.

Specifics of interdisciplinary borrowing as a source of the Anglo-American education terminology enrichment

The given article reports on a study of the peculiarities of interdisciplinary borrowing as a source of the Anglo-American education terminology enrichment. Special focus is given to the terms built as a result of interdisciplinary borrowing that contain the cultural component of meaning in their semantic structure, since the given study was carried out in the framework of the concept of the cultural component of term meaning developed by V.A. Ikonnikova. Despite the fact that the most productive way of building education terms is syntactic, semantic term-formation is of great interest while studying terms in the socio-cultural aspect. This is due to necessity of using historical, etymological and cultural data for their analysis. In the paper the peculiarities of interdisciplinary borrowing as a source of education terminology replenishment is considered on the basis of the terminological units with the cultural component of meaning belonging to the British and US education terminological systems. Dictionary entry analysis and historical and etymological analysis of borrowed terminological units with the cultural component of meaning belonging to the terminological systems mentioned above let us make a conclusion that such units were borrowed from terminologies of the following fields: law, religion, public administration, business, geography, psychology etc. The proposed framework may be useful for studying and teaching sociocultural linguistics, linguistic and cultural studies, cross-cultural communication. The research findings may contribute to compiling special dictionaries of education terms.

Language and Social Justice in US Climate Movements: Barriers and Ways Forward

Climate movements increasingly conceptualize the climate crisis as an issue of social injustice, both in terms of its root causes and its present and future effects. Climate justice calls for participatory decision-making within climate movements, which, as communication scholars have pointed out, necessitates inclusive and accessible communicative practices. Within sociocultural linguistics, a growing body of research has explored sociolinguistic justice, or marginalized groups' struggle for self-determined language use. This analysis interweaves these two research areas, applying the theory of sociolinguistic justice to climate communication in organizing contexts. Drawing on 67 semi-structured interviews and 112 online surveys with climate activists from organizations across the United States, the analysis finds that sociolinguistic injustice impedes frontline community members' participation in climate movements. Specific barriers include: (1) English-only communications; (2) the combination of incomprehensible jargon with a dry, emotionless register; (3) the use of Dominant American English in prescriptive climate communication materials such as phonebanking scripts; (4) language policing of discourses of environmental justice and environmental racism; and (5) a form of linguistic ventriloquism in which adult organizers pressure youth to express climate grief in their stead. Climate activists' insights are synthesized to propose countermeasures to each of these problems of sociolinguistic injustice. The results suggest that sociolinguistic justice can be a useful lens for understanding climate justice communication within climate movements, and provide guidance to climate organizers and educators who wish to align their communications with the inclusive, anti-racist, and decolonial values of climate justice.

Not theirs, but ours: South Texas superintendents take a stance on immigrant students

ABSTRACT This article explores how five school superintendents in south Texas construct their professional identity and positionality around immigration and immigrant students during interviews with academics researching social justice advocacy ofsuperintendents. Situated in south Texas on the frontline of migration flowsand faced with a conservative state political climate, these savvy political actors carve out a professional identity that makes sense in the south Texas context. This ethnographic study uses sociocultural linguistics and critical discourse analysis to find that that superintendents position themselves by actively resisting political labels with discursive moves and stance-taking while advocating for students. This study also contributes to our understanding of the research interview as a contested site for the co-constructed formation of personal and professional identities.

Rubbish? Envisioning a sociolinguistics of waste

Abstract(English) As the opening statement in a curated dialogue on Language and Waste, this paper considers what a sociolinguistics of waste might look like. In the first two parts, I provide some general rationale and academic context for starting to notice waste. By avoiding the dirty places and raw lives of waste, sociolinguists obscure two important relations: first, the social worlds of people who live and work with/in waste; second, the social connection between “us” (as makers of waste) and those left to pick up the pieces. I briefly review the isolated precedents in sociocultural linguistics for attending to waste. In the third and fourth parts, I propose at least two ways sociolinguistics can contribute usefully and distinctively to discard studies. I start by offering two empirical vignettes concerned with the discursive creation and destruction of value. In this vein, and orienting to economic sociology, I argue that scholarship on stancetaking can helpfully pinpoint the processes of (e)valuation and valuation by which things are declared unworthy or “waste‐able.” Against the backdrop of these initial propositions, the dialogue continues with commentaries by Jillian Cavanaugh, Annabelle Mooney, and Joshua Reno who contribute their own ideas about approaching waste from a decidedly (socio)linguistic angle.

Being Sophia Burset: Communicating Trans Identity in Orange is the New Black

This article discusses the creation of a discursive space for trans identity in the TV series Orange is the New Black. It explores the ways in which the character of Sophia Burset is defined discursively and through the linguistic choices made by the scriptwriter in designing the script. The analysis compares the original English dialogue and its dubbed Italian adaptation. It highlights two major patterns which reveal how cisgender characters in the series talk about trans identity and how self-representation is achieved. The study offers a close discourse analysis of selected scenes from the seven Seasons the series is comprised of, drawing from the framework of Sociocultural Linguistics and from studies in the field of Audiovisual Translation, offering itself as a further brick in the construction of a trans linguistics.

THE NORTHERN THAI DIALECT USED IN CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

Thailand has main four dialects spoken as the mother tongue in each region. This article will explore how the Northern dialect is used in Chiang Mai. The data was collected from the daily conversation at four public places: local markets, shopping malls, public transportation, and university cafeterias. The mixed method is the sample's non-participation observation and unstructured interview in the four research areas. The research concept is sociocultural linguistics. The research findings disclose that the local people still speak the Northern dialect in public places in the Chiang Mai centre. It is also found that they use the Northern dialect interspersed with the Bangkok language. The topics of conversation were food, travel, costume, study, entertainment, and sports. These issues were related to the place. All places found a large number of Bangkok language speakers. The findings also imply that the Northern dialect has less used than Bangkok in shopping malls and universities. Chiang Mai is an important tourist city, so people all over the country visit or move to this city with their different languages. It would appear in linguistic phenomena of code-mixing or code-switching between the Northern and Bangkok languages in this area, which should be a different research topic.

Polymedia in interaction

AbstractThis Special Issue on “Polymedia in interaction” theorizes and empirically investigates practices and ideologies of digitally mediated interaction under conditions of polymedia. We argue that the proliferation of mobile interpersonal communication in the 2010s calls for, and is reflected in, conceptual and methodological shifts in empirical research on digital language and communication in pragmatics and sociocultural linguistics. In this introduction, these shifts are crystallized in five interrelated themes: (1) a turn from ‘computer-mediated communication’ to ‘digitally mediated interaction’ as a bracket category; (2) a move beyond the on/offline divide and focus on the integration of mediated interaction in everyday communication in micro-units of social structure (e.g. transnational families, business or academic communication); (3) an empirical downscaling towards private and small-scale public data; (4) a shift from the study of single modes of digital communication to polymedia; and (5) a focus on semiotic repertoires and registers of digital mediation. Research that orients to (some or all of) these focal points is compared with other trends in digital language research, including computational methods. The papers in this issue flesh out these five dimensions with findings from qualitative research, based on multi-sited linguistic and digital ethnographies in various sociolinguistic settings.

Agentive Roles and Metalinguistic Negotiations: The Linguistic Capital in Interactions between Parents and Children from Mexican Immigrant Backgrounds

ABSTRACT This qualitative case study examined the interactions between four Mexican parents from immigrant backgrounds and their children during the process of creating two biliteracy family projects that centered on their experiential knowledge. Informed by a theoretical lens of sociocultural linguistics and community cultural wealth, this study examined the kinds of linguistic capital in parent-child interactions that present a contrastive micro analysis within the macro context of a school district with a history of linguistic oppression and discrimination. The main data sources were the recorded interactions between parents and children that took place in their homes and classroom workshops. Findings demonstrate the ways that children’s agentive roles were produced through discursive patterns, and how parents and children engaged in metalinguistic negotiations and co-constructions from oral to written descriptions that followed a gradual increase in complexity. Findings revealed how these linguistic resources supported children’s learning, literacy and identities, a dire contradiction to the oppressive and racist structures and policies in the school district.

Beyond the managed heart? Seduction, subjugation and the symbolic economies of sleep

ABSTRACT Sleep appears to have been of no interest to sociocultural linguistics or communication studies. This is in spite of growing attention to the “ignored third” from sociologists and anthropologists, especially in response to rising public, medical and commercial concerns. Having said which, these cognate fields side-step the classist representational politics of sleep which are exposed nicely by a social semiotic intervention like the one reported here. In this regard, the empirical basis of my paper is an archive of promotional materials from some thirty international airlines touting their latest “premium” sleeping services, a key component of current marketing strategies. Through a largely visual, iconographic analysis, I examine the staging of sleep as a sensuous experience and as a deeply affective, intimate encounter between (often male) passengers and (often female) flight attendants. Sleep emerges as a semiotic resource for producing, circulating and normalizing relations of entitlement – a symbolic economy which exceeds and/or intensifies established forms of emotional labour. These highly seductive ways of organizing and envisioning sleep generate the kind of desire necessary for subjugating an otherwise privileged few, and, thus, for exploiting many others.

AGEISM FIRST AID: AN ONLINE COURSE DESIGNED TO ADVANCE GERONTOLOGY AND COMBAT AGEISM WITHIN THE HELPING PROFESSIONS

Ageism First Aid is an online course designed to combat ageism, advance Gerontology, and generate revenue for Gerontology programs and GSA/AGHE activities. The project was funded by a grant from the Retirement Research Foundation and sponsored by the AGHE Academic Program Development Committee. The AFA course content is informed by developmental, social, and cognitive psychology, sociocultural and cognitive linguistics, speech-language science, and geriatrics. The content cultivates ageism awareness by replacing the common misconceptions about aging that underlie ageism with facts. The content also cultivates cultural consciousness and uses concise common language accessible to learners of diverse backgrounds. During this symposium, participants will be introduced to the course content and explore the benefits of this multidisciplinary approach to curriculum development. The results summary of the AFA course pilot will be presented as evidence of the course efficacy. Participants will leave able to utilize AFA within their institutions and local Aging Networks.

Accompanying as accomplices: Pedagogies for community engaged learning in sociocultural linguistics

AbstractAs a field, sociocultural linguistics has a long legacy of public scholarship that has worked to counter linguistic prejudices and inequalities perpetuated through language. Today, current community engagement within sociocultural linguistics increasingly takes a collaborative approach that includes students. In this article, I therefore explore how the field prepares both students and faculty for this work. In particular, I focus on courses with a service learning component, suggesting that these constitute key spaces for developing the commitments and capacities necessary for engaged work that advances sociolinguistic justice. I highlight the insights of existing scholarship on service learning in linguistics before turning to a more detailed discussion of pedagogical practice, drawing on current critical pedagogy literature that emphasize the importance of language and culture. Synthesizing two social movement perspectives, I propose a pedagogical framework that supports faculty and students in learning to accompany as an accomplice. I demonstrate the application of this model by discussing specific pedagogical strategies enacted in a community engaged course I taught on Language and Migration at a university in the United States. Ultimately, I suggest that developing social justice pedagogies is a crucial endeavor if we are to counter the ways that language has been used to justify inequalities and motivate violence towards racialized communities, both in the past and in the present.

Citizen sociolinguistics: A new method to understand fat talk.

Fat talk and citizen scienceFat talk is a spontaneous verbal interaction in which interlocutors make self-disparaging comments about the body, usually as a request for assessment. Fat talk often reflects concerns about the self that stem from broader sociocultural factors. It is therefore an important target for sociocultural linguistics. However, real-time studies of fat talk are uncommon due to the resource and time burdens required to capture these fleeting utterances. This limits the scope of data produced using standard sociolinguistic methods. Citizen science may alleviate these burdens by producing a scale of social observation not afforded via traditional methods. Here we present a proof-of-concept for a novel methodology, citizen sociolinguistics. This research approach involves collaborations with citizen researchers to capture forms of conversational data that are typically inaccessible, including fat talk.Aims and outcomesThis study had two primary aims. Aim 1 focused on scientific output, testing a novel research strategy wherein citizen sociolinguists captured fat talk data in a diverse metropolitan region (Southwestern United States). Results confirm that citizen sociolinguistic research teams captured forms of fat talk that mirrored the scripted responses previously reported. However, they also capture unique forms of fat talk, likely due to greater diversity in sample and sampling environments. Aim 2 focused on the method itself via reflective exercises shared by the citizen sociolinguists throughout the project. In addition to confirming that the citizen sociolinguistic method produces reliable, scientifically valid data, we contend that citizen sociolinguist inclusion has broader scientific benefits which include applied scientific training, fostering sustained relationships between professional researchers and the public, and producing novel, meaningful scientific output that advances professional discourse.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE VARIATIONS IN WRITTEN AND ORAL TYPES OF COMMUNICATION

Цель. В статье рассматриваются особенности функционирования вариантов английского языка в устной и письменной коммуникации. На сегодняшний день существует большое количество вариантов английского языка в связи с явлением глобализации, что подчеркивает актуальность исследования. Авторы исследования рассматривают теоретические вопросы проблемы, анализируют практический материал, выявленный в устной и письменной коммуникации, выявляют лингвокультурулогическую специфику языковых вариантов. Особое внимание уделяется исследованию вопросов социокультурной лингвистики, анализу норм родного языка и степени его влияния на применение английского языка в качестве международного средства коммуникации. Авторы исследования рассматривают особенности функционирования в речи стратегии вежливости и риторические стратегии в языке носителей разных вариантов английского языка в зависимости от стиля или жанра коммуникации.Метод или методология проведения работы. В ходе исследования авторы применяют теоретические и эмпирические методы. Теоретическая методика подразумевает исследование исторических аналогий, анализ, моделирование теоретических данных. В рамках эмпирической методологии применялись конкретизация, сравнение, обобщение, систематизация и интерпретация полученных данных по полученным фактам.Результаты. Основываясь на обширном материале теоретических исследовании и практических данных, авторы исследования приходят к выводу, что специфика коммуникативного процесса в многонациональных странах зависит от особенностей культурной идентичности. Авторы подчеркивают необходимость применения нового подхода в рамках теории речевых актов, в зависимости от стиля речи и принципа вежливости, характерного соответствующему типу культурной идентичности. В ходе исследования в работе описываются особенности функционирования вариативности английского языка в устной и письменной коммуникации и раскрываются их основные характеристики.Область применения результатов. Результаты исследования могут быть применены в области контактной лингвистики, языковой вариативности, межкультурной коммуникации.

‘They just had such a sweet way of speaking’: Constructed voices and prosodic styles in Kodiak Alutiiq

Research in sociocultural linguistics has increasingly focused on the interplay of prosodic style, interactional stance, and personahood. This analysis investigates the prosodic stylization of constructed dialogue in Kodiak Alutiiq, an endangered Aleut-Yupik-Inuit language. Conceptualizing prosodic styles as comprised of multiple variables, I analyze each speaker's average F0, F0 range, voice quality, speech rate, and intonation contour across excerpts of constructed dialogue and non-constructed dialogue speech. The results emphasize the importance of considering interactional stance in conjunction with personahood and of examining the interactions of prosodic variables. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the important role narrative has to play in language revitalization efforts.

A Sociocultural Approach to Style

Common definitions of style have tended to treat it as an artifact controlled by the producer, overlooking two features afforded attention in sociocultural linguistics: dynamism and co-construction. Although some scholars have highlighted style’s interactivity, their accounts have not yielded a comprehensive theory. This essay advances and illustrates a more rigorous definition of style as a fluid activity in which meaning is often contested, continually negotiated, and necessarily informed by interlocutors’ beliefs. Ultimately, in integrating and expanding on theories of style’s interactivity and contingency, it provides guidance for style researchers and demonstrates the value of cross-disciplinary conversation around style.