Robin Queen

Bilingual intonation patterns: Evidence of language change from Turkish-German bilingual children

This article discusses Turkish-German bilingual childrens intonation patterns as they relate to processes of contact-induced language change. Bilingual speakers use two distinct rises in both Turkish and German. One rise (L*HH%) resembles a characteristic German rise, while the other (L%H%) resembles a characteristic Turkish rise. The rises pattern pragmatically in ways that are non-normative for both Turkish and German. Although this pattern is not clearly attributable to language interference (either borrowing or shift-induced language change), it is certainly the result of language contact. Fusion is proposed to account for the two-way influence between the two languages.

‘Stay queer!’‘Never fear!’: building queer social networks

In this paper, I present evidence in support of the hypothesis that gay men and lesbians may use similar linguistics strategies in order to build and maintain queer social networks. Such social networks rely on an assumption of shared queerness that goes beyond gender-exclusive groups. The primary strategies discussed here are the incorporation of cultural understandings that are assumed to be shared, the appropriation of gender stereotypes for humorous effect, the use of covert communication strategies, and the use of co-narration. Taken together, these strategies help index both unique social networks as well as a broader sense of queer community.

Women and the World of Dog Rescue: A Case Study of the State of Michigan

In the wake of the considerable cultural changes and societal shifts that the United States and all advanced industrial democracies have experienced since the late 1960s and early 1970s, one can also observe a dramatic change in how humans in these societies have come to relate to nonhuman animals, dogs in particular. One of the new institutions created by this change in attitude and behavior toward dogs is the canine rescue organization, examples of which have arisen all over the United States beginning in the 1980s. While the growing scholarship on the changed dimension of the human-animal relationship attests to its social, political, and intellectual salience to our contemporary world, the work presented here constitutes the first academic research on the particularly important institution of dog rescue. This paper presents some key findings from a survey of canine rescue workers in the state of Michigan, with a concentration on the dynamics of gender within canine rescue work.

Sociolinguistic Horizons: Language and Sexuality

In this essay, I examine the current state of research on the connections between language and sexuality and argue that the time has arrived for such research to adopt a more vigorous use of the scientific method, which will allow for testing the predictions made by the various theoretical interventions that have been proposed since the 1990s. I begin by outlining the major theoretical debate within the field, namely, the question of the place of social identity within a theory of language and sexuality and then detail several areas and trends in the research, including research focused on lexical and grammatical variation, language and sexual identity, language and heterosexuality, language and eroticism, and finally experimental approaches to language and sexuality. I conclude with a call for more integration of deductive and inductive approaches within the field.

If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages

The increasing prevalence of social media means that we often encounter written language characterized by both stylistic variation and outright errors. How does the personality of the reader modulate reactions to non-standard text? Experimental participants read ‘email responses’ to an ad for a housemate that either contained no errors or had been altered to include either typos (e.g., teh) or homophonous grammar errors (grammos, e.g., to/too, it’s/its). Participants completed a 10-item evaluation scale for each message, which measured their impressions of the writer. In addition participants completed a Big Five personality assessment and answered demographic and language attitude questions. Both typos and grammos had a negative impact on the evaluation scale. This negative impact was not modulated by age, education, electronic communication frequency, or pleasure reading time. In contrast, personality traits did modulate assessments, and did so in distinct ways for grammos and typos.

I think your going to like me: Exploring the role of errors in email messages on assessments of potential housemates

Abstract Two experiments explored reader reaction to written errors that were either typographic or grammatical. Errors were embedded in short texts presented as email responses to a housemate ad. In the first experiment, readers evaluated the writer and message on several dimensions (e.g., Was the writer trustworthy? Did the email flow smoothly?). Those dimensions were divided into a “social” scale (e.g. “This student seems similar to me”) and an “academic” scale (e.g. “This email reads well”). Both kinds of error correlated with lower ratings on the academic scale while only grammatical errors correlated with lower ratings on the social scale. In the second experiment, readers were asked to edit the emails. In Experiment 1, paragraphs with either typographical or grammatical errors were both evaluated more negatively than fully correct paragraphs and the cost was mitigated by high levels of electronic communication, such as texting and using Facebook. In Experiment 2, typos were more likely to be corrected than either homophonous grammatical forms or hypercorrected forms. These results suggest that written errors, when they are salient, contribute to the social meaning of text. Furthermore, this contribution is modulated by at least some characteristics of the reader.

Describing, analysing and judging language codes in cinematic discourse

In this short commentary piece, we want to stand back from many of the specific details in the seven papers which constitute the special issue, and offer some observations which attempt to identify and assess points of similarity and difference amongst them, under a number of different general headings. To the extent that the ‘sociolinguistics of cinematic discourse’ is an emergent suband inter-disciplinary specialism, it is not yet altogether clear what its overall ambitions might be, or how it might fit into the broader landscape of sociolinguistic study on the one hand, or film/television studies on the other. By organising the commentary along thematic lines, we hope at least to have indicated some of the contours of the current landscape, as represented in these particular contributions. For reasons of space limitations we have had to be selective in the themes that we have foregrounded. It is vexatious for research in this area that the default verb for referring to the consumption of audiovisual drama in either medium is watch ‘Did you watch that movie?’, and one of the commonest nouns for referring to its consumers is as ‘viewers’. In the world of mass communication, the verb listen tends to be reserved for practices of radio and music consumption. ‘Watching’ movies and TV shows mostly also includes listening/hearing, yet the verb does not semantically acknowledge the aural dimensions of the experience, let alone the specifically linguistic aural dimensions which are of interest to the contributors in this special issue (Petrucci’s account of subtitled versus dubbed translations here reminding us that for some consumers the linguistic part of the textual experience is visual rather than aural). If ‘watching’ is too narrow, then more general terms like ‘consuming’ or ‘receiving’ are too broad. We also consume goods and services generally, not to mention food, whilst ‘receiving’ and ‘reception’ are as often used for technological processes as for human ones. Thus, different items in this lexical reper-

Prosodic orientation in English conversation

literacy that oppose the concept of autonomous literacy. She also brings in genre theory, activity theory, and theories of distributed cognition to underscore the social and situated nature of literacy. For those who are searching for a novel and deeply complex theoretical framework to situate adult second language learners’ literacy journeys, this may not be the place to search. But as I mentioned earlier, those who are looking for a detailed and engaging portrait of the journeys will be extremely satisfied. Leki’s strength lies here. It also lies in the strong and convincing argument that she makes about the ideological indoctrination in academic programs and the necessity of accounting for this when discussing students’ academic literacies. This was a highly fascinating read, in which there was much to learn.