Sociolinguistic Analysis Research Articles

Scripting Swiss smiles: a sociolinguistic analysis of affective-discursive practices in a Swiss call centre

AbstractRevisiting data from a sociolinguistic ethnography of an in-bound Swiss call centre (2010–2011), I will show how the scripted smile of agents is fused strategically with the use of the dialect in order to produce ‘affective-discursive practices’ that aim for a projection of quality of service. These practices include ‘scripted affective efficiency’ and the ‘stylization of Swiss authenticity’. Inherently embedded in and emblematic of the political economy, these particular affective-discursive practices are conducive to the company’s branding strategies of authenticity, directly linked to market distinction and profit generation. From today’s standpoint, i.e. 10 years later, transformations in ICT (Information and Communications Technology) have displayed the limits of these affective practices and their underlying discourses and ideologies in the face of cost-benefit analyses when the number of incoming calls dwindled due to the development of smartphones. This paper will discuss affective-discursive practices from a political-economic and critical sociolinguistic perspective.

Official new terms in the age of social media: the story ofhashtagon French Twitter

AbstractAs other chapters in this special issue demonstrate, social media proposes widely available data for sociolinguistic analysis. Twitter is an ideal resource to implement variationist approaches regarding regional differences, features specific to gender, and metrics of social media influence. At the same time, official intervention on language use, while somewhat studied in other corpora, is less explored on Twitter. French shows a long tradition of purist and prescriptive ideologies, embodied by the Académie française in France and the Office québécois de la langue française in Québec. The injection of recommended terminology aimed to eradicate foreign influence often has questionable success rate, especially in such an informal setting as Twitter. This article thus investigates lexical variation, in particular, the implantation of official new French translationsmot-dièseandmot-clicbetween 2010 and 2016 that are meant to replace the English wordhashtag. Results corroborate previous findings on the lacklustre implantation of the prescribed terms, while also revealing that users in Québec are more inclined to adapt them. Furthermore, diffusion online reflects face-to-face patterns that is cascading spread from large urban areas to smaller cities.

O-221 The concept of ‘family' in the era of assisted conception : a sociolinguistic analysis

Abstract Study question Should current societal concerns about how the application of ART has resulted in evolving family structures influence clinical and legislative practice Summary answer Concerns about the role of ART in ‘threatening' historical norms need to be addressed as they cause distress and fail to support valid life choices What is known already Techniques of assisted conception including gamete donation, cryopreservation and surrogacy have enabled many individuals to access unconventional and different family structures. ART modalities that were initially concerned with achieving a child for a hetero-normative couple are now widely accessed by individuals and couples with alternative family structures. Current societal concerns oscillate between anxieties about inappropriate access and recourse to fertility treatments, demographic evidence of declining fecundity and geo-political pressures to optimize social structures. Study design, size, duration A historical review was undertaken of family structures during the historical epoque since records are available of family size, maternal mortality, generational divergence and ‘un-official' family formation. Consideration of literary sources including foundlings, child ‘gifting', adoption and abandonment was involved. Assessment of current cultural norms including Census data information on household composition was accessed. Semi-qualitative interviews with individuals wishing to access fertility treatment with donor gametes.. Participants/materials, setting, methods On-line access to records, census data, historical reviews etc. Main results and the role of chance In the post-industrial era a significant proportion of children lived in families to which they had no genetic link. ‘Excess' children were ‘gifted' to relatives, ‘sent' to live with individuals who offered the opportunity of a ‘better' life or who simply required a servant, or a companion or an heir. Quantitatively this is no different from the current situation in the UK where half of all young children live in a household in which they are not genetically linked to one of the adults who care for them. Deferred marriage or coupledom and age-related subfertility have increased the use of donor eggs. Single women and same sex female partners can now freely access donor sperm. it could be concluded that the current ‘moral panic'about the status of ‘the family' is misguided and historically inaccurate.Contemporary family structures are not so different from what has preceded them, even though the ways in which these longed for children arrive may be nove.l Limitations, reasons for caution These data refer to UK sources and may not be universalisable Wider implications of the findings Practitioners of ART and allied professionals who support their work need to be aware of the needs and entitlements of individuals who seek to form families by accessing ART. Trial registration number Not applicable

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Cloth Names among the Ga and Dangme People of Ghana

Varied ways are used for communication which may either be verbal or non-verbal. Non-verbal occurs in different forms and one is kinesics which includes gestures, facial expression, touching, eye contact and mode of dressing. The paper focuses on the aspect of dressing by examining traditional cloth worn among the Ga and Dangme people. It investigates the cloth types and their name source. It further examines the choice of cloth worn among Dangme and Ga in relation to function or ceremony. Additionally, it did a brief morphosyntactic analysis of the cloth names. The paper employed the visual semiotic theoretical framework by de Saussure. The data were gathered from sellers of cloth in the Accra Business Centre and some markets in the Dangme speaking areas through photography, semi-structured interviews, observation and notetaking. The data was then subjected to a sociolinguistic analysis. It was revealed in the paper that the sources of the name were from events, occasions, requested names and names derived from the motifs. The paper revealed morphosyntactically that the names of cloth are derived from phrases, sentences, personal names, wise sayings, proverbs and others. The names are mostly misspelled because they are not written by experts of the language. Furthermore, the colour of the cloth also determines the event to which one can wear it. Insinuations, the act of thanksgiving and congratulatory messages are some of the information relayed to the public upon usage. Lastly, the paper shows that in contemporary times, most relatively young people do not have much ideas about names of cloths and how they impact their usage.

Une analyse de la régulation des communs scientifiques à partir des conventions et des imaginaires linguistiques

We aim to propose a typological analysis of the regulation of scientific creative commons from the linguistic codification activity. We analyze the commons since the point of view of the communities' work. We point the apparent homogeneity of the epistemic communities that support these commons. This leads to a questioning about the homogeneity of the community. We proceed, on the one hand, by means of a comparison between different research programs developed in the sociology of science and politics, on the other hand, by conducting a sociolinguistic analysis of the lexical statements resulting from the self-presentations of 23 creative commons. This critical analysis leads to segmenting all the groups that develop these commons into two families: communities with a stable and regular profile and scientific aims, and collectives with an abundant and unstable profile and with a view to social transformation.

Socio-linguistic appraisal of language of reprimand between lower and higher classes of the society

Language is a system of communication; it is a medium through which information is passed from one person or group to the other. Language is very crucial to the entire existence of man. This work mirrors the usage of language in the society, specifically it explores the language use in reprimanding /correction of some misdeeds by children/young adults in the society,using the insights from Dell Hymes Ethnography of communication as the theory. Works in this regards has been done using socio-linguistic analysis but the existing literature is not holistic and this necessitated the new drift to be explored. This therefore necessitated a new drift in socio-linguistic studies. The societal strata which comprise of the mainstream and non - mainstream of the society have different ways of using language in different ideal situations. The work discovered that language used is pari passu with class in the society and this affects and re-model the psyche of the individuals involved. The language of reprimand used was both loud and soft and was gathered through oral interviews and observation from the two classes. The language of reprimand for the upper class is discovered to be soft and mild while that of the lower class is loud and harsh.

Uneven success: automatic speech recognition and ethnicity-related dialects

Addressing racial bias in automatic speech recognition is an area of concern in fields associated with human-computer interaction. Research to date suggests that sociolinguistic variation, namely systematic sources of sociophonetic variation, has yet to be extensively exploited in acoustic model architectures. This paper reports a study that evaluates the performance of one ASR system for a multi-ethnic sample of speakers from the American Pacific Northwest (including Native American, African American, European American and ChicanX speakers). Using a sociophonetic approach to characterizing vocalic and consonantal variation, we ask which dialect features appear to be most challenging for our ASR system. We also ask which error types are particular to the four ethnic dialects sampled. Recordings of both conversational and read speech were coded for a common set of 18 sociophonetic variables with distinct phonetic profiles. Automatic transcription was achieved using CLOx, a custom-built ASR system created for sociolinguistic analysis. Normalized error frequency rates were compared across ethnic samples to evaluate CLOx performance. Nf error rates demonstrate clear differential performance in the ASR system, pointing to racial bias in system output. Specific predictions are made regarding approaches that might be taken to leverage sociophonetic knowledge to improve social dialect-recognition accuracy in ASR systems.

Eliminating Language Barriers in Public Health Communication via Machine-Aided Translation (MAT) and Sociolinguistic Analysis

COVID 19 has continued to evolve and become very dangerous to public health. The Philippine government was consistent in making efforts to remind the people about virus control using various forms of media and communication platforms. English was used in delivering messages which were generally foreign to some Filipino people. This research paper has attempted to translate pervasive words via Machine-aided Translation (MAT) and linguistically analyzed in terms of the relationship between language structure and use. Conceptualization of meanings in the fields of diglossia, phonology, morphology, and orthography involving two languages (English and Filipino) were used in different conditions. The phenomenological research design was utilized to generate essential data through online interviews and review of multimedia and non-formal narratives. Purposive sampling procedure was employed in the selection of respondents and words were identified based on the frequency of use in a day-to-day communication. Results suggest that the use of English in delivering messages has prevented individuals to perceive the meaning of pervasive words and being unable to interact and collaborate with others. Translation techniques and sociolinguistic analysis have eliminated language barriers and provided clear transmission lines in public health communication.

Translating COVID-19 information into Yiddish for the UK Hasidic community

Abstract This article documents a recent project translating COVID-19 information into Yiddish for the benefit of the Hasidic Jewish communities in London’s Stamford Hill and in Manchester in the UK. The translation work developed as a response to the urgent need for Yiddish-language resources specifically designed for the Hasidic community near the beginning of the pandemic. The translations were undertaken by a team consisting of linguists and native speakers of Hasidic Yiddish and took place within the framework of a research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, dedicated to linguistic and sociolinguistic analysis of contemporary Hasidic Yiddish worldwide. In this article we discuss the sociolinguistic background to the translations and investigate the reasons why they were so urgently needed, before going on to address the issues encountered during the course of the translation process and the decisions taken in order to resolve them. These issues include the type of Yiddish chosen for the translations, the translation of medical terminology, gender-based linguistic differences affecting the translations, and specific cultural considerations that needed to be taken into account.

Syntactic anomaly: "ot slova sovsem" ("from the phrase at all")

The article aims to present a comprehensive sociolinguistic and expressive-syntactic analysis of the phrase "ot slova sovsem" ("from the phrase at all") which has become widespread in the Russian language since the beginning of the XXIst century. Computer slang is a possible source of this fixed phrase scheme; its field structure consists of the core ot slova and the periphery zone sovsem. The article hypothesizes that it is feasible to consider this model as an agrammatism and a parcelled construction. The formation of this fixed phrase scheme was accompanied by semantic-pragmatic and grammatical shifts such as desemantisation of the core (the word form ot slova transformed into a signaling speech reference to the speaker’s emotional sphere) and the use of the polyfunctional adverb sovsem as an intensifying evaluative particle. The transition of this model to general usage (due to computer-mediated communication) caused further language transformations: the periphery zone enriched with diverse words of different parts of speech, which enables addressers to convey expressiveness and evaluation ambivalently, i. e. with both negative and positive connotations. The paper presents contexts of this construction usage in the Russian language space (sprachraum) and makes prognoses concerning its use in contexts characterised by hyperintense expressiveness. The research relies on the systemic, definition, classification, modelling, and prognostic methods.

WAYS OF GENERATING NEOLOGISMS IN MODERN ENGLISH

The article considers the problem of language development, in particular its lexical layer. The rapid development of all areas of modern human life is reflected in the language, the evolution of lexis is not just a change in the vocabulary. The authors study the modern paradigms of neology in terms of a functional approach to language, analyze the factors of the appearance of new words and correlate them with the pragmatic needs of society as a whole and of different social groups in particular. The article presents the pricipal nominative types and models of English-language neologisms over the past decades. Some factors contributing to the replenishment of the English lexical layer regarding the sociolinguistic aspect are given. Social spheres significantly influence the appearance of new words because they shape a person's attitude to the realities of the linguistic picture of the world. The relevance of this research is determined by the insufficient study of the processes of lexical formation, in particular neological units, which are intensively occurring at the current stage of society globalization and require an analysis of the ways of formation and definition of critical concepts that cause the need for the functioning of innovative non-standard, both structurally and semantically, lexical units in the modern English language, in particular their systematization and classification. The scientific novelty of the study consists in developing the theory of neology through the classification of borrowings as a particular group of neologisms, systemizing means of their penetration, and adaptation in the modern English language. The goal of the research is to study the sociolinguistic role of neologisms in the modern English language, to determine their functional and semantic features and ways of speech adaptation, of neologisms-borrowings in particular. The research methodology is based on the functional-semantic approach and is complex in nature using structural-semantic and sociolinguistic analyses, allowing to identify the most successful and popular universal methods and techniques for creating neologisms; the study also relies on the principles of systematization and classification, which helps to organize empirical material and contributes to a more thorough study of the process of neologization of English-language discourse as the basis of interlanguage communication in the world today.

Языковая репрезентация среднего уровня профессионализма говорящего в биографическом интервью (на материале английского языка)

The research is focused on identification of the language markers functioning in English oral spontaneous speech that correlate with the average level of professional knowledge in representatives of humanitarian professions and that may be detected by the recruitment commission during the employee selection process. The purpose of the study is to identify these speech signs, conduct their sociolinguistic analysis, and systematize them according to such parameters as syntax, vocabulary, grammar, speech strategy, type of speech culture, and etiquette. The research material is composed of modern video interviews with representatives of creative professions from English-language talk shows and television programs. Methodologically, the study is based on sociolinguistic categories method of Professor T. A. Ivushkina, as well as the methods of description, generalization, and interpretation. As a result of the study, the author has detected such speech markers of the middle level professionals as the predominance of complex sentences having a broken syntactic structure, an abundance of enumerations, clichéd media assertions, pseudo-connecting and discursive words, comparisons expressed by verbal and adjective metaphor, phrasal verbs with metaphorical meanings, speakers’ preference for nominative adjectives, sporadic use of abstract nouns, avoiding the usage of foreign words, phraseological units, terminology, pun, and irony. The speech strategy is characterized by softened unobtrusive modulation, hesitation, a large number of empty words and the lack of independence in judgments, double understatement in speakers’ remarks about themselves. The main type of speech is the literary-colloquial type of speech culture, the habit of dialogical communication.

Identity markers in the Internet usernames adopted by female users of a Persian public discussion forum: A sociolinguistic analysis

Abstract Drawing on the feminist poststructuralist perspective, the current study explored the usernames adopted by female users of Ninisite, that is, a Persian discussion forum, and aimed at identifying their identity markers. To this end, a corpus of 947 usernames in Ninisite was compiled. Using thematic analysis, the recurrent themes in the usernames were pinpointed, which led to the identification of six themes as identity markers, namely, gender, religion/ideology, ethnicity, occupation/profession, being humorous, and sense of uniqueness. With regard to the socioculturally unique context of Iran, a continuum of specificity versus generality can be observed in the usernames on Ninisite, with specificity emphasizing differences, sense of uniqueness, and individualization of the users, and generality highlighting neutrality, commonalities, and conventionality.

La fiaba: Morfologia, antropologia e storia

La fiaba: Morfologia, antropologia e storia

Sociolinguistic analysis of phraseology of English and Uzbek languages

Sociolinguistic analysis of phraseology of English and Uzbek languages

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Popular “Plastic Mandarin” Among Contemporary Chinese University Students

In recent years, some accented Mandarin Chinese words prevail among the youth in Chinese media, which are termed “Plastic Mandarin” or dialect-influenced Mandarin (DIM) words to indicate that they belong to a special variety of Mandarin characteristic of some regional accent or influenced by some Chinese dialects. This language variety used to be mocked as being nonstandard and thus subject to correction or improvement, for many scholars believed that it would hamper the national efforts for spreading the Standard Mandarin. Nowadays, however, DIM words like “Ya (Yang) Zi” and “zha (Zhang) Zha (Jia) hui” are on top of the searching list in Sina Weibo, and they are frequently used and widely broadcast from online to offline, especially among university students. In order to account for the popularity of such DIM words, this paper aims to first investigate the popularity of DIM words among the general public by conducting a questionnaire survey with the aid of Wenjuanxing, an online program, and then explore the social and psychological causes for the popularity of DIM among contemporary Chinese university students in light of some sociolinguistic theories, particularly the theories of Joseph Yendryès and Neil Postman. It is concluded that DIM words can be seen as a special type of neologism which not only reflects the technological progress in the Internet and mass media (especially we media) on the one hand, but are also a significant index of the development of the society and the social-psychological features of contemporary Chinese university students on the other hand.

A sociolinguistic analysis of intensifiers in Ammani Arabic

This study aims to identify the intensifiers used in Ammani Arabic (henceforth AA) and to explore whether or not their use is socially constrained by age, gender, and education. Furthermore, the study attempts to find whether the use of intensifiers throughout this dialect is internally constrained through the examination of the effects of a set of linguistic factors (i.e., the semantic class of adjectives, the function of adjectives [attributive vs. predicative], the position of intensifiers (after the adjective or before it), the polarity of adjectives, and emotionality of adjectives) on the distribution of the intensifiers under investigation. To this end, the study draws on the variationist approach proposed by Labov (1972) as a theoretical construct which focuses on sociolinguistic variations in dialects and investigates how variations can be structured. The corpus is based on just over 15 h of digitized recordings obtained from 32 speakers stratified by age, gender, and education. Then, all tokens including the intensifier (ʔikθi:r) and its variants [ʔikθi::r], [ʔikθi:r ʔikθi:r], and [dʒidan] are extracted and coded. The coded data are afterwards analysed using Goldvarb X, so as to obtain the distribution of the variants, their frequencies and significance regarding their variable use. The results show that the most used intensifier among AA speakers is the intensifier [ʔikθi:r], the social factors (age, gender, and education) have no significant effect on the use of intensifiers in AA, and the intensifier [ʔikθi:r] is found to significantly correlate with the semantic class of adjectives of ‘human propensity’ and to occur more often predicatively in the sentence.

Constructing the Character of Deadpool through Swearing Words Exploitation: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Deadpool 2 Movie

<p>This study is a qualitative research implementing sociolinguistics approach which aims to gain deeper insights on swearing words exploited in <em>Deadpool 2</em> movie by the main character of the film. Focusing on the analysis of types and functions of swearing words, the data of this study were taken in the form of utterances produced by Wade Wilson or Deadpool as the main character of the film containing swearing words. Using a conceptual framework of swearing words and their function proposed by Anderson & Trudgill (1990) and classification theory of types of swearing words suggested by Battistellla (2005), the result of the analysis of this study finds out that the use of swearing words by a character in the film as directed by the director provides a unique way to understand the basic characteristic of the character. In the case of this study, Wade Wilson through the analysis of this research, despite having traumatic background and producing more swearing words than any other characters in the film, can be considered somewhat of a good person worthy of the titlle ‘superhero’.lin</p>

Loanword Variation Pattern of Ayp, Ephul, Ayphullikheyisyen, and Ephullikheyisyen : A Follow-up Quantitative Sociolinguistic Analysis

Loanword Variation Pattern of Ayp, Ephul, Ayphullikheyisyen, and Ephullikheyisyen : A Follow-up Quantitative Sociolinguistic Analysis

Femininity and Masculinity in Arabic Words: Gender Marking in Muslim Cosmology

The Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) language strongly indicates the sociolinguistic phenomenon as it reflects gender marking in language use. This study aims to explore how the Arabic letters attributed to specific gender identities, how the gender ideology of Arab culture create gender biases, and how the biases influence Arab social structure. It uses aspects of masculinity and femininity of Arabic letters that affect gender inequality and order of values on language, tradition and culture. Masculine letters are letters that have the property of being able to hold and entail other letters, while feminine letters that have the nature can be attached with other letters but cannot be attached. In this study, Arabic letters were mapped by observing their use in written and oral interaction in the contexts of Arab as first and second language. This research is a qualitative in nature. The data on ideology's influence on social structure were collected through interviews with three key informants representing their areas of expertise on language anthropology, sociolinguistic, and applied linguistic. The morphological analysis was carried out to identify the internal structure of the words. The sociolinguistic analysis explored the linguistic construction that to social construction. The finding showed that their internal structures, these letters were classified as masculine or feminine. From the sociolinguistic point of view, gender issues following social construction that has already formed gender relations. In other words, Arabic letters affect the order of values that tend to be gender-biased in the Arabic context.