The complexity of everyday language

2009 ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Allan Ramsay
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Language

How a Lingua Franca Spreads

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Mc Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Speakers Of Other Languages ◽  
Realistic View ◽  
Atlantic Language ◽  
The City

This chapter considers how Wolof, an Atlantic language spoken in Senegal, has become an important lingua franca, and how French has contributed to the ascent of Wolof. The nature of social relations between Africans and French in cities along the Atlantic coast in the 18th and 19th centuries were such that a prestigious urban way of speaking Wolof that made liberal use of French borrowings became the language of the city. As an index of urban belonging, opportunity, and modernity, Wolof was viewed as a useful language, a trend that has continued up to the present. Four case studies illustrate how the use of Wolof facilitates mobility for speakers of other languages in Senegal. By drawing a distinction between the formal and informal language sectors, this chapter offers a more realistic view of everyday language practices in Senegal, where Wolof is the dominant language.

Convivial linguistic practices: lived togetherness through language in the United Arab Emirates

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Robert Amilan Cook
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Small Story ◽  
Small Stories ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
The City

Abstract This paper takes up conviviality as an analytical tool to investigate everyday language choices made by foreign residents living in Ras Al Khaimah, a small city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It draws on recent work in human geography and cultural studies to understand conviviality in terms of practices rather than outcomes. Specifically, it investigates some of the linguistic dimensions of conviviality deployed by residents of the city in everyday situations of linguistic contact and negotiation of difference. The paper focuses on participants’ “small story” narratives (Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2015. Small stories research: Methods – analysis – outreach. In Anna De Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis, 255–272. Malden: John Wiley & Sons) that exemplify everyday language choices in the face of a highly ethnolinguistically diverse as well as racially and economically stratified society. Considering the multitude of ethnolinguistic and socioeconomic divisions in the city and the country as a whole, the paper unpacks how such cross-border contact is negotiated through everyday language practices. The paper identifies four types of convivial linguistic practices described by my participants: language sharing, benevolent interpretation, language checks and respectful language choices. In the process, I also probe the limits of what studying conviviality can tell us about everyday linguistic togetherness in highly segregated societies marked by stark inequalities.

scholarly journals What is a firm? A reply to Jean-Philippe Robé

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Simon Deakin ◽  
David Gindis ◽  
Geoffrey M. Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of The Firm ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Common Parlance ◽  
The Law ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Way

Abstract In his recent book on Property, Power and Politics, Jean-Philippe Robé makes a strong case for the need to understand the legal foundations of modern capitalism. He also insists that it is important to distinguish between firms and corporations. We agree. But Robé criticizes our definition of firms in terms of legally recognized capacities on the grounds that it does not take the distinction seriously enough. He argues that firms are not legally recognized as such, as the law only knows corporations. This argument, which is capable of different interpretations, leads to the bizarre result that corporations are not firms. Using etymological and other evidence, we show that firms are treated as legally constituted business entities in both common parlance and legal discourse. The way the law defines firms and corporations, while the product of a discourse which is in many ways distinct from everyday language, has such profound implications for the way firms operate in practice that no institutional theory of the firm worthy of the name can afford to ignore it.

scholarly journals Navigating the London-French Transnational Space: The Losses and Gains of Language as Embodied and Embedded Symbolic Capital

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Saskia Huc-Hepher
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Conversion Rates ◽  
Transnational Space

In this article, an interdisciplinary lens is applied to French migrants’ reflections on their everyday language practices, investigating how embodied and embedded language, such as accent and London-French translanguaging, serve as both in-group and out-group symbolic markers in different transnational spaces. Key sociological concepts developed by Pierre Bourdieu are deployed, including field, habitus, hysteresis and symbolic capital, to assess the varying symbolic conversion rates of the migrants’ languaging practices across transnational spaces. A mixed-methodological and analytical approach is taken, combining narratives from ethnographic interviews and autobiography. Based on the data gathered, the article posits that the French accent is an embodied symbolic marker, experienced as an internalised dialectic: a barrier to inclusion/belonging in London and an escape from the symbolic weight of the originary accent in France. Subsequently, it argues that the migrants’ translanguaging functions as a spontaneous insider vernacular conducive to community identity construction in the postmigration space, but (mis)interpreted as an exclusionary articulation of symbolic distinction in the premigration context. Finally, the article asks whether participants’ linguistic repertoires, self-identifications and spatialities go beyond the notion of the ‘cleft habitus’, or even hybridity, to a post-structural, translanguaging third space that transcends borders.

Socialisation écrite et rédaction épistolaire de scripteurs moins expérimentés – lettres des soldats de la Grande Guerre

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-129
Author(s):  
Sybille Große ◽  
Lena Sowada
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
Written Language Acquisition

AbstractJust recently, documents written by less skilled writers constitute an object of investigation in linguistics of different philologies. This contribution valorizes private letters as testimonies from writers of varying social status, as opposed to the elite, and furthermore describes the process and the context of their production. In this perspective, it is important to distinguish the process of acquisition of the written language and the complex cognitive and social process of writing. Dealing with private correspondence of writers with less experience, we focus on circumstances of the writing production in a familial and individual context. We investigate different influences on these texts: the writers’ specific writing socialization, an interrupted process of written language acquisition, specificities of colloquial everyday language as well as a lack of epistolary and writing experience. In order to realize the different writing tasks and to evoke intimacy, less-skilled writers acquire an inventory of creative tricks by following oral representations, by imitating strategies from the immediate communication and by using different linguistic and discursive routines.

Citizen sociolinguists scaling back

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Betsy Rymes ◽  
Gareth Smail
Keyword(s):  
Social Meaning ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Multilingual Communication ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis paper examines the different ways that professional experts and everyday language users engage in scaling practices to claim authority when they talk about multilingual practices and the social significance they assign to them. Specifically, we compare sociolinguists’ use of the term translanguaging to describe multilingual and multimodal practices to the diverse observations of amateur online commentators, or citizen sociolinguists. Our analysis focuses on commentary on cross-linguistic communicative practices in Wales, or “things Welsh people say.” We ultimately argue that by calling practices “translanguaging” and defaulting to scaled-up interpretations of multilingual communication, sociolinguists are increasingly missing out on analyses of how the social meaning of (cross)linguistic practices accrues and evolves within specific communities over time. By contrast, the fine-grained perceptions of “citizen sociolinguists” as they discuss their own communicative practices in context may have something unique and underexamined to offer us as researchers of communicative diversity.

The Personality Inventory Scales: A Self-Rating Clinical Instrument for Diagnosis of Personality Disorder

1991 ◽  
Vol 69 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1235-1246 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Wesley Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Personality Disorders ◽  
Diagnostic Interview ◽  
Personality Inventory ◽  
Personality Structure ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Clinical Assessments ◽  
Standardized Interview ◽  
Test Retest Reliability ◽  
Clinical Instrument

A personality inventory was developed as an aid in securing history and beliefs relevant to the assessment of personality structure and the diagnosis of personality disorders. The inventory was developed by restating DSM diagnostic criteria in everyday language, rewording the resulting statements in the form of True/False questions, and placing these questions in a short, self-paced booklet which subjects could complete in about 15 minutes. The following assessments were made and discussed: construct validity, split-half reliability, test-retest reliability, comparison with a standardized interview, and comparison with actual clinical assessments. The personality inventory is discussed as a useful accompaniment to the diagnostic interview in clinical settings and for research into personality structure and personality disorders.

scholarly journals Good, bad and ugly genes? Science matters, also in terms of terminology and word usage

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-49
Author(s):  
Claus-Christian Carbon
Keyword(s):  
Belief System ◽  
Good Genes ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Moral Perspective ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
Specific Medication ◽  
Scientific Terms ◽  
Scientific Arguments

Abstract Our words shape our thinking, our thinking creates action. Scientific terms can be particularly influential when used in everyday language in terms of allegedly scientific arguments that back certain views or actions. Such use can be especially toxic when the terms refer to concepts that are ill-defined, outdated or questionable themselves. The term “good genes” represents an exemplary case in this regard. It refers to the belief system of eugenics and implies a moral perspective. The latest political debates demonstrate how easily such terms and concepts are employed to induce racist thinking and action; in the end it may even result in specific medication, selective investment in medical treatment, and so ultimately impacting the life and death of patients. Science has the obligation to explicitly opt-out from such lines of argument, and to routinely check and re-think its theories, concepts and vocabulary.

scholarly journals Unsupervised Type and Token Identification of Idiomatic Expressions

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Afsaneh Fazly ◽  
Paul Cook ◽  
Suzanne Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Specific Property ◽  
Identification Task ◽  
Lexical Status ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Actual Usage ◽  
Statistical Measures ◽  
Idiomatic Expressions ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
How People Learn

Idiomatic expressions are plentiful in everyday language, yet they remain mysterious, as it is not clear exactly how people learn and understand them. They are of special interest to linguists, psycholinguists, and lexicographers, mainly because of their syntactic and semantic idiosyncrasies as well as their unclear lexical status. Despite a great deal of research on the properties of idioms in the linguistics literature, there is not much agreement on which properties are characteristic of these expressions. Because of their peculiarities, idiomatic expressions have mostly been overlooked by researchers in computational linguistics. In this article, we look into the usefulness of some of the identified linguistic properties of idioms for their automatic recognition. Specifically, we develop statistical measures that each model a specific property of idiomatic expressions by looking at their actual usage patterns in text. We use these statistical measures in a type-based classification task where we automatically separate idiomatic expressions (expressions with a possible idiomatic interpretation) from similar-on-the-surface literal phrases (for which no idiomatic interpretation is possible). In addition, we use some of the measures in a token identification task where we distinguish idiomatic and literal usages of potentially idiomatic expressions in context.

scholarly journals Sustainable development in the light of the philosophy of science and ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (01) ◽  
pp. 370-378
Author(s):  
Victor Andreevich Kanke ◽  
Vladimir Korotenko ◽  
V.N. Remarchuk ◽  
Mikhail Viktorovich Kibakin ◽  
Maria Mikhailovna Kryukova
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Ethics

The present article provides a substantiation of the need to use the potential of the philosophy of science in designing a sustainable development project. Along with mathematics and informatics, the philosophy of science is viewed as an auxiliary science designed to help clarify the conceptual and methodological nature of scientific theories. New provisions of science philosophy are presented. The proposition that all axiological theories culminate in ethics is proved. It is also substantiated that natural sciences demonstrate ethical relativity. The project, i.e. both the concept and conception (theory) of sustainable development was designed with no consideration of the achievements of science philosophy including scientific ethics. As the project developed its content became not clearer but, on the contrary, more obscured. The project of sustainable development is reevaluated in light of the philosophy of science. It turns out to be nothing more than a paraphrase of the need for the proper development of the ethical relativity of ecology and its place in the system of balanced scientific ethics. The project of sustainable development presents a paraphrase of certain scientific content that has to be properly addressed. Without this, it has no scientific meaning and should be attributed to the field of everyday language. Thus, the time to put the sustainable development project on a scientific track has come.

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