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This paper investigates the nonstandard use of first‑person singular pronouns (myself and I) in coordinate constructions, such as John and I or John and myself. Native English speakers frequently disregard prescriptive grammar rules by using subject or reflexive forms in place of object forms in sentences like Give those papers to John and I. The frequency of such nonstandard usage raises questions, such as when and why speakers substitute nominative or reflexive pronouns for object pronouns in coordinate constructions, and what evidence exists for the existence of fixed constructions like X and I or X and myself. To address these questions, the study analyzes data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Findings provide strong evidence for the existence of an X and I construction in that the nonstandard form is common after the coordinator but not before. Evidence for an X and myself construction is weaker, since untriggered reflexives also appear outside coordinate constructions. First‑person singular forms are more likely to appear in hypercorrect and untriggered forms that other pronouns. The research suggests that X and I may be stored in a chunk, possibly due to overgeneralizations resulting from prescriptive corrections during language acquisition.
This article presents a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of collective remembering of the American War in Vietnam, also known as the Vietnam War, as embodied in forty-nine photographs taken during the war and published in the digital edition of The New York Times on the Vietnam War’s forty-second anniversary commemoration. Collective memory and commemoration are understood as political and discursive practices that make up a site of contestation (Milani & Richardson 2022). This research attempts to unveil The New York Times’ semiotic control in presenting and recontextualizing a historical narrative of the Vietnam War to sustain a necropolitical architecture in the making of collective memory. Three major themes emerging from the data—dehumanized death, gendered death, and paternalized death—are discussed in the context of what we call necropolitical discourse of collective remembering of the Vietnam War. (Necropolitical discourse, Vietnam War, CMDA, collective remembering, lieu de dispute)
In a close replication study of Darcy et al., (2016), Huensch (2024) reported a lack of clear relationships between inhibitory control (IC) and phonological processing, contrary to the initial findings. Given the general unreliability of response-time differences, which are often the basis of IC measures and could potentially mask small effects, we performed secondary analyses on Huensch’s (2024) open data set to investigate (a) the extent to which the reliability of IC measures could be improved using model-based approaches (Hui & Wu, 2024), (b) the correlations between the different IC tasks, and (c) their predictive power for phonological processing, based on the more reliable indices. Results showed that model-based approaches generally improved reliability, and particularly for the Stroop and Simon tasks to acceptable levels. Yet, correlations between IC tasks remained low, and partial correlation and hierarchical regression still failed to reveal significant relationships between IC and phonological processing, further confirming Huensch’s (2024) findings.
This study examines Taiwanese netizens’ metapragmatic debates on tonal variation in Taiwan Mandarin, focusing on the pronunciation of 企業 qìyè ‘company/enterprise’ by two government officials during a nationally broadcast press conference. It investigates how the non-standard variant qǐyè, a relic feature historically present in Taiwan, becomes enregistered as a linguistic emblem of imported Chinese influence through the processes of clasping and semiotic differentiation. The study highlights the ideological stakes in linguistic boundary-making and explores how tonal variation functions as a site for negotiating national identity. It further connects this linguistic debate to broader ideological projects such as democratization, Taiwanization, and shifting Taiwan-China relations. By integrating variationist and metapragmatic approaches, this study contributes to discussions on the indexical field and the role of explicit metapragmatic commentary in shaping linguistic change. (Indexicality, language ideology, tonal variation, enregisterment, language policing, metapragmatics, Taiwan)
The proliferation of smartphone cameras and other portable recording devices has enabled the rise of so-called ‘copwatching’, people filming police-citizen encounters with the primary aim of increasing police accountability. Interactions between copwatchers and police officers generally take place under conditions of mutual mistrust and regularly lead to heated arguments over the recording activity and its precise modalities. Using conversation analysis, this article examines video recordings of encounters between police and copwatchers, focusing on how disalignment concerning the recording activity regularly manifests between them already during the opening phases of their interactions. We describe the interactional work that goes into organizing the pre-beginning and opening phases of these encounters and take stock of actions that recurrently engender disagreement and contention between law enforcement officers and videographers. Data come from recordings made by copwatchers and police officers’ body-worn cameras during public police operations in the US and the UK. (Conversation analysis, openings, police, copwatching, video recording, disalignment, disagreement)
Using institutional conversation analysis, this article develops an account of the organisation of other-language recalibration repair in broadcast news interviews in Rwanda. Initial observation shows that the structure of other-language recalibration repair is significantly reduced compared to that of repair in everyday conversation. The study argues that this difference is due to the interactional use of the repair practice. To develop this argument, the article draws on the well-documented fact that, in institutional talk, repair can be deployed to serve relevant institutional goals. Analysis of the data not only confirms that, in broadcast news interviews in Rwanda, other-language recalibration is used as a device for relating to the overhearing audience, but it also reveals that this interactional use is consequential to the shape of the repair practice. Notably, analysis reveals that the structure of the repair practice is even more reduced than it was initially thought to be. (News interviews, other-language recalibration, repair, overhearing audience, structural organisation)*
This article introduces the blueprint model of production (BMP), which characterises the phonetics–phonology interface in terms of typed functions. The standard modular feed-forward view to the interface is that the phonetic form of a lexical item is the output of a phonetic module which takes the output of a phonological module as its input. The central idea of the BMP is that the phonetic form is instead the output of a higher-order phonetics function which takes the phonological function as one of multiple inputs. We explain how understanding the production process this way can account for systematic fine-grained variation in phonetic forms while maintaining a discrete phonological grammar. We present one possible instantiation of the model that simulates incomplete neutralisation, some cases of near-merger, and variation in homophone duration. Consequently, these types of systematic fine-grained phonetic patterns do not necessarily provide evidence against discrete, symbolic phonology.
Bilinguals with aphasia routinely experience anomia in one or both of their languages that may be ameliorated by language treatment. Traditionally, treatment response has been captured by binary scoring systems that measure the presence or absence of improvement without examining how word retrieval attempts may change over time as a function of treatment. This study analyzed word retrieval errors and subsequent treatment outcomes for a group of 48 Spanish-English bilinguals with aphasia to determine if longitudinal error patterns could capture language recovery. Results revealed naming improvement for trained words in the treated language and translations of trained words in the untreated language. Specific types of word errors at baseline were associated with overall improvement in both languages; furthermore, patterns of responses changed over time as a function of lexical-semantic treatment. These results demonstrate that error analyses may characterize bilingual treatment outcomes and provide new evidence for mechanisms of impaired word retrieval.
In the introduction for their recent state-of-the-art volume on English at the grassroots, Meierkord and Schneider (2021) point out the recurrent problem of Creolistic study not being fully incorporated into the World Englishes paradigm, arguing, like Mufwene (1997; 2001) and others, that English-based Creoles are best viewed as varieties of English ‘and, as such, require their integration into existing models and theories, too’ (11). Further work which seeks to overtly integrate Creole varieties within studies of English at the grassroots – the ‘new player in the World Englishes paradigm’ (Buschfeld 2001, 25) – has not been quickly forthcoming, though, with most of the work in the field focusing on ‘typical’ multilingual settings. In an attempt to remedy this, the current paper discusses the language situation in Trinidad, the last island in the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles. In Trinidad, Trinidadian English Creole (TEC) and Trinidadian English (TE) interact in a complex where English might be best viewed as a second dialect (ESD), rather than in one of the prototypical ENL, ESL, or EFL situations of acquisition or use (cf. Deuber 2014). After an exploration of the limited research that has been done on language use and social class in Trinidad, this paper compares those previous findings on morphosyntactic features with new data from short semi-structured interviews conducted with speakers who can be described as grassroots.
This article examines the use of fuck and fucking in Danish, with a focus on their interactional functions for assessing. Data consist of 76 cases found in informal Danish conversations, analyzed within the framework of Interactional Linguistics. Fuck functions as a reactive interjection that prefaces various types of clauses. However, fuck followed by a copula clause develops an assessment out of a telling. Followed by hvor ‘how’ and an adjective, fuck performs agreeing assessment. Hvad fuck ‘what the fuck’ may occur in questions. Fucking is commonly used in copula clause assessments but also within noun phrases when no response is elicited. The study concludes that the use of fuck and fucking in Danish differs from their use in English, but also from the Danish swearword fanden ‘the devil, damn’. The conclusions indicate that interactional functions and constructions are an important factor for understanding the pragmatics of borrowing and swearing.
Understanding high-variability speech is particularly challenging for second-language (L2) learners due to difficulties with extrinsic normalization, a perceptual strategy utilizing contextual cues to overcome speech variability. This study investigates the neural correlates of these difficulties among Mandarin speakers learning Cantonese, using EEG. Behaviorally, Mandarin learners demonstrated a significant yet considerably reduced ability to normalize Cantonese tone variability with contexts compared to native Cantonese speakers. EEG analysis showed that while native speakers engage multiple neural components (N1, P2, and LPC) for acoustic, phonetic/phonological, and cognitive adjustments in extrinsic normalization, Mandarin learners only activated P2, focusing on phonetic/phonological adjustments. This discrepancy underscores the multi-faceted nature of successful extrinsic normalization, which L2 learners fail to fully engage. L2 immersion significantly improves extrinsic normalization, particularly at the cognitive-adjustment stage. Overall, this study illuminates the intricate nature of poor extrinsic normalization in L2 learners and the importance of L2 immersion for effective L2 speech perception.
We investigated the interactive effects of bilingualism and sleep on executive functioning at the behavioral level. We conducted two experiments using two independent samples of bilingual young adults, the Flanker task to assess executive performance, the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index to measure retrospective sleep quality over a one-month period and the Insomnia Severity Index to assess insomnia-related symptoms. In Experiment 1, we registered bilingualism effects on executive performance in poor, but not in good sleepers. In Experiment 2, the magnitude of bilingual effects increased with increasing severity of insomnia symptoms. We conclude that when poor sleep quality and insomnia negatively affect cognitive resources, bilingualism-related cognitive effects emerge more prominently. This suggests higher degrees of bilingualism may compensate detrimental effects of poor sleep quality and insomnia on executive functioning. We suggest that cognitive research in bilingualism and sleep could benefit from controlling for interindividual variability in sleep quality and vice versa.
The emergence of ChatGPT as a leading artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI has sparked substantial interest in the field of applied linguistics, due to its extraordinary capabilities in natural language processing. Research on its use in service of language learning and teaching is on the horizon and is anticipated to grow rapidly. In this review article, we purport to capture its nascency, drawing on a literature corpus of 71 papers of a variety of genres – empirical studies, reviews, position papers, and commentaries. Our narrative review takes stock of current research on ChatGPT’s application in foreign language learning and teaching, uncovers both conceptual and methodological gaps, and identifies directions for future research.
Speakers frequently (perhaps always) have only partial knowledge of the meanings of the words they use, and may have demonstrably wrong information about them. When it comes to morphologically complex words, we must therefore expect the same to be true, and ‘meaning’ of a new word to be more specific than the linguistic structure of that word indicates. The meaning conveyed by inflection is more precise than the meaning conveyed by derivational affixes.
This chapter discusses how UX writers claim elite status through discursive processes of professionalization and skilling. In this case, I am specifically interested in how UX writers as members of a relatively new and emerging professional group define and legitimize their (language) work. The chapter draws on critical sociolinguistic research on language work as well as scholarship in the sociology of professions to examine how UX writers discursively legitimize and professionalize their own work. In my analysis, I observe the construction, codification, and indexing of ’writing-as-designing’ as a (supposedly) unique skill in UX writing, arguing that it is the (dis)avowal of skills through which UX writers can establish their professional field, a practice that is always also connected to particular value judgements. Ultimately, I connect this case study to broader questions of language work, suggesting that in order to understand not just the elite language work of UX writers but also hierarchies of language work more generally, it can be fruitful to broaden such scholarship with a view to professionalization and skilling.
A number of word-formation patterns, no longer productive in modern English, have nonetheless left traces in the form of words which are no longer perceived as being morphologically complex. The factors that cause the individual patterns to die away illustrate what is needed for a word-formation pattern to remain productive.