Carol M. Eastman

Language Display: Authenticating Claims to Social Identity.

Language display is a language‐use strategy whereby members of one group lay claims to attributes associated with another, conveying messages of social, professional, and ethnic identity. Examples from academia, politics, business and advertising reveal that language display functions as an artifact of crossing linguistic boundaries without threatening social boundaries or as a reaction to social boundaries which cannot be crossed. Via language display, people may either expand their social identity within a linguistic territory or make a sign of resistance where such expansion is unlikely. Whether invoking another language is interpreted favourably or not depends on the power relations between speaker(s) and hearer(s).

Establishing Social Identity Through Language Use

A method for describing patterns of language use that establish social group uniqueness is proposed. Language use as an aspect of social identity is described in terms of (1) culturally specific vocabulary, (2) context-sensitive topics and (3) shared attitudes. As people become members of a social group and learn to share that groups identity, they acquire this ‘group talk’. An understanding of group talk analysed on such a three-part model discoverable via participant observation may also be useful in leading toward an understanding of the process of social categorisation as it plays a role in intergroup communication. Examples of establishing social identity are drawn primarily from observations in an American Indian community with illustrations also from familial, professional, and other subcultural situations.

What is the Role of Language Planning in Post‐Apartheid South Africa?

The applied branch of linguistics known as language planning (LP) is traditionally seen as a way to provide governments with policy-level guidance regarding the choice of official and national languages. This paper examines LP as a concern of both political and sociolinguists in the context of a post-apartheid South Africa. For this context, I suggest a politically minimal approach to language planning.

Waungwana na Wanawake: Muslim ethnicity and sexual segregation in coastal Kenya

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to highlight a growing body of research showing that a different configuration of cultural attributes has evolved for males and females in Swahili‐speaking Islamic communities on the Kenya Coast such that the mens ‘culture’ follows the dictates of conservative Southern Arabian Islam while that of the women, in the absence of in situ Shafi‐ite female role models yet in constant association with each other, has evolved as a dynamic system of expressive culture within Islamic institutions—especially within the secularised institution and celebration of marriage. This point is made with reference to a number of recent studies of Swahili expressive culture (e.g. Parker, 1974; Russell, 1981; Campbell, 1983) and of Swahili society and social structure (e.g. Strobel, 1979; Swartz 1982a) that point out the importance of womens associations in Kenyan Coastal culture. The effect of Islam and sexual segregation on ethnicity is looked at in the context of the Swahili‐speaking co...

Language life or language death: A matter of perspective in an endangered linguistics

Lamb, Sydney M. and E. Douglas Mitchell, eds. Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. xii + 411 pages, hardcover

Book Reviews : Language Death. The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect. Dorian, Nancy C. 1981. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. i-xiv. Maps. 1-206. Appendix. US

45.00. Robins, R. H. and E. M. Uhlenbeck, eds. Endangered Languages. New York: Berg Publishers, 1992. xiv + 273 pages, hardcover

25 (cloth), US

39.50.

9.95 (paper)

Language Death is exemplary language and culture scholarship. It is the first work ever to follow the fate of a dying language and document the process of language replacement. Dorian has an excellent writing style and makes good use of historical, sociological and anthropological as well as sociolinguistic sources. With a current knowledge of each field she ties her ethnographic facts to the various scholarly literatures. This linguistic ethnohistory is so good that it kept this reader on the edge of her chair. Reading about how East Sutherland Gaelic (ESG) has fared since the 1200s, I could hardly wait to see what happened next. Though English will win out by the first decade of the next century, we are left with a faint glimmer of hope that the new semi-speakers of ESG could stem the