Large language models based on machine-learning technologies are reshaping linguistic contexts and understandings of language. We explore these reconfigurations by investigating discursive positionings of traditional institutional guardians of power in language in response to these changes. Focusing on the discourse of the Real Academia Española (RAE), we show how RAE’s social functions, ways of asserting authority, and the nature, function, and rightful ownership of RAE’s standard language have been reimagined. Crucially, RAE presents itself as a professional soft power that protects the rights of Spanish speakers. Drawing on tropes of authenticity and endangerment, it conceptualises language generated by machine-learning technologies as inauthentic and as destroying the authentic Spanish of human Spanish speakers. We argue that these discourses are indexical of a power struggle where the role of traditional language norming institutions is reshaped in the face of sociotechnical innovations that are in the hands of global commercial companies. (Standard language, AI technology, language academies, authority in language, big tech, Real Academia Española)*

In this article, I explore videogames, language ideologies, and vernacular theory. Specifically, I examine the politics of language in Sid Meier’s Civilization, with an emphasis on the representation of toponymy and the renaming of places after conquest. Civilization players lead quasi-imperial states, capture ‘cities’ from opponents, and rename them. Despite limitations in the game code, players use online forums to develop their understanding of the politics of toponymy. I argue that they participate in ‘vernacular theorising’ to critically engage with language-ideological premises coded into Civilization. In doing so, they sometimes make politically sophisticated and progressive observations, while also accepting problematic premises that structure their in-game engagement with language. I offer a deep engagement with theories of interpretation and ideology, which is vital for exploring how players negotiate ludic language ideologies, itself an important problem for the future of the field given the stature of videogames in popular culture. (Language ideologies, videogames, postcolonialism)*

How do Māori deaf people use and perceive variable features of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) to invoke ethnolinguistic identity? Previous research has documented motivation among Māori deaf people to signal ethnic identity linguistically within and outside the NZSL community (McKee, McKee, Smiler, & Pointon 2007), but how this plays out in situated language practices has not been explored. This study proceeds from Eckert's (2012:98) contention that local ideologies which imbue linguistic variants with social meaning ‘are part of the active—stylistic—production of social differentiation’. With a focus on social meaning, this study combines micro-analysis of two features (pronominal pointing variants, and mouthing with signs) with consideration of metapragmatic data to explore how these features are believed to index ‘Māori deaf’ identity. Usage data and signers’ metalinguistic accounts suggest that these features are deployed to construct Māori identity in particular interactional contexts and roles, rather than indicating ethnicity as a macro-social category in NZSL. (New Zealand Sign Language, Māori deaf, ethnicity, identity, variation)*

The current study provides a holistic analysis of voice quality and how it is employed via affective stancetaking through high performance of non-player characters on Critical Role, a popular Dungeons and Dragons digital media ‘actual-play’ series. Specifically, we ask how a character's moral stance is indexed through improvised performed speech. We show that current acoustic methods for voice quality have the potential for underrepresentation of sociolinguistically meaningful variation when relying solely on acoustic data. By incorporating both acoustic and auditory data, we find that constricted laryngeal settings (and whisperiness in particular) are used to signal evilness and negative moral stance, while unconstricted laryngeal settings (breathiness in particular) are employed to signal friendliness and positive moral stance. The two general vocal settings show nuanced variation linked to affective stancetaking, including one-off changes in characters’ stances as well as their habitual styles. (Voice quality, stance, methods, affect, morality)*

The concept of grafting—described by Gal (2018) as the use of authoritative discourses in distinct, inapposite arenas—is a significant contribution to understanding how individual speech events contribute to processes of enregisterment. While scholars thus far have concentrated on graftings in written and non-interactive texts, this focus occludes the emergent particulars of graftings as they are produced extemporaneously, within local contexts. In this analysis, I examine graftings in public comments during American public school board meetings held from March 2021 through January 2022, a period marked by contentious debates. A sequential analysis of graftings preceded by constructed dialogue contributes a novel view of graftings as interactional achievements. Their citation of prior talk within local contexts not only constructs sequences but also emphasizes that their authority is constructed locally. This analysis therefore expands our understanding of graftings as emergent interactional devices, used within the immediacy of ongoing discourse. (Interdiscursivity, intertextuality, constructed dialogue, reported speech, discourse analysis, sequential analysis, school board meetings)*

In the present study, we combine southern multilingualisms and linguistic governmentality frameworks to analyze the dominant framings of multilingualism in Pakistan and the subject positions they entail. Using critical policy studies and narrative analysis, we draw upon official policy documents (n = 6) and university students’ narratives (n = 2). Our analysis suggests that the dominant framings of multilingualism in Pakistan are informed by (post)colonial and neoliberal ideologies centered on bounded notions of language and commodification of linguistic competencies. They are characterized by hierarchization of named languages and their functions in relation to their political and economic value, otherization of indigenous languages, and compartmentalization of students’ linguistic competencies into economically privileged languages. These framings entailed subject positions that gradually erased their (students’) multilingual identities and instead morphed them into plurimonolingual subjects of/for the state and the market. We also discuss implications for scholars, teachers, and policy makers in this study. (Multilingualism, southern theory, governmentality, neoliberalism, language education, language policy)

Among language users, it is a commonplace that multilingual speakers switch between languages to make themselves intelligible. Yet, sociolinguistics has had surprisingly little to say about this. This neglect traces back to early efforts to carve out a niche for the field by focusing on contexts where social rather than semantic factors like intelligibility shape multilingual practice. As fruitful as this approach has been, here I argue that it has ironically obscured much that is of social significance in multilingual practice. Focusing on prominent practices of code-mixing in Papua New Guinea, I show how their social meanings—the roles and identities they index—are tied to the way they make speech in global languages intelligible to people unfamiliar with them. In the wake of European colonialism, postcolonial nationalism, and neoliberal globalization, contexts of unevenly distributed multilingualism like this are ubiquitous. And there, intelligibility is often a prime social factor shaping multilingual practices. (Multilingualism, codeswitching, intelligibility, social meaning, global languages)*

This study examines video recordings of activities within an elderly care home, particularly focusing on interactions involving people with dementia. The study presents instances where the relevance of the current conduct—and consequently the generation of a fitting response—appears indeterminate to the co-participant. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the mutually understood ‘constitutive expectancies’ (Garfinkel 1963) and a lack of shared understanding of ‘motivational relevancies’ (Schutz 1970), the participants continue to engage with one another. The analysis reveals that, in the face of an unrecognizable set of conduct and the indeterminacy of subsequent actions before closing down the activity, participants strive to maintain some degree of intersubjectivity by preserving or revisiting the constitutive order of their interaction. This commitment to the ‘co-operative’ nature of human actions (Goodwin 2018) is argued to be central to their interactions. (People with dementia, co-operative actions, conversation analysis, multimodality, ethnomethodology, intersubjectivity)*

This study adopts a raciolinguistic perspective to examine the portrayal and reception of Ruan Yuejiao, a Vietnamese female spouse character created by a Taiwanese male content creator. As a representative of the Taiwanese majority, this content creator utilizes linguistic features to perform a racialized Vietnamese accent and embody a Vietnamese spouse persona, which they believe counters racial stereotypes. This article introduces the concept of indexical hijack to describe how the racial majority imposes new indexical meanings on these mediatized linguistic features, disregarding the perspectives of the Vietnamese community. By highlighting a raciolinguistic listening mode embedded within Taiwan's multicultural discourse, this study reveals how anti-racist actions initiated by the Vietnamese community are reinterpreted by the Taiwanese majority as racist, reflecting the complexities of post-racial multiculturalism in East Asia. (Raciolinguistics, Taiwan, Vietnamese migrants, digital enregisterment, indexicality)*

Through analyzing Telemundo's Betty en NY (‘Betty in New York’, 2019), this study illustrates how insights from codeswitching contribute to sociolinguistic theories of stancetaking and style. Betty en NY features multiple characters that use Spanish-English codeswitching to invoke their epistemic rights, take stances, and craft distinct personae, thereby exploiting the agentive potential of linguistic boundaries. Thus, codeswitching serves as a key resource for signaling recursive recalibration—the process by which the alignment of individual stances connects to the repositioning of participant roles and personae. Drawing on data from multiple scenes, a discourse analysis of recursive recalibration at work demonstrates how stance alignment and personae are dialogically negotiated and constructed in interaction. (Stance, codeswitching, social meaning, epistemic rights, style, media)*

Examining regional variation across African American communities has advanced research on African American English beyond its treatment as a singular, uniform variety. While the earlier focus on inner-city, and often male, youth prioritized studying these speakers’ production of ethnolectal patterns, less attention was paid to other language practices of these speakers and their broader semiotic construction of identity. Drawing on ethnographic data and sociolinguistic interviews from African American speakers from Rochester, New York who identify as Hood Kids, I examine how the bought vowel can become a marker of a particular place-identity in Rochester. I argue that the Hood Kid is an adequation of an enregistered racialized NYC persona that reanalyzes bought while also drawing on other emblems of Black, street culture. Such variation suggests that speakers’ conceptualization of race and place ideologically scales beyond immediately local geographic boundaries. (African American Language, style, race and ethnicity, regional variation)*

Drawing from Erving Goffman's seminal work on face-to-face interaction, this article introduces the concepts of digital face-work and the digital interaction in order to make sense of digital interaction. The theoretical framework emphasizes the sociotechnical aspects of face-work, portraying digital platforms not merely as spaces for interaction but as active participants co-shaping users’ face-work. Focusing on the political arena, the study examines how politicians use digital platforms to construct and maintain their digital face in relation to ‘small scandals’. Through a case study of Flemish nationalist politician, Theo Francken, trying to save face after a scandal erupted, it illustrates the complexities of digital face-work in a hybrid media system. The article underscores the challenges of managing face in the digital landscape, where context collapse and platform directives complicate self-presentation strategies. It also explores the interplay between individual agency and platform dynamics in shaping the digital interaction order. (Digital face, digital interaction order, political scandals, small scandals)

This article focuses on the branding of Patriotic Alternative (PA), a British fascist organization and business, in three analytic steps: (i) branding as circulating ideologies as commodities; (ii) branding as creating—and selling—community, and (iii) branding as regimenting meaning. Building on work on the communicability of evil and language, nationalism, and political economy, we explore how PA uses the affordances of platform capitalism in a project that goes beyond ideological normalization: not just rebranding a message as acceptable but selling a product which builds a community aligned with this ideology. Looking at both brand and political websites, YouTube, as well as Telegram channels, we show how PA's branding functions to invest a wide range of mundane practices with racist meaning; they are imagined to forestall the great replacement. Rebranding racism as white community, every cup of tea sold brings back the world of your grandma, each bar of soap protects white skin. (Far-right semiosis, branding, platform capitalism)*

This article uses a dialogue between memory studies (MS) and ethnographic and interactional sociolinguistics (EIS) to explore the dynamics of interdisciplinarity. MS focuses on the social remembering of high-profile and often traumatic events, and this is relevant to EIS's growing interest in (in)securitization. MS is increasingly keen to explore everyday practices of remembering in interscalar analyses, and EIS’ expertise in the study of mundane communication can provide essential support. But there are major differences in their focal concerns and analytical cultures, as well as in their approaches to interdisciplinarity. This generates asymmetries in their exchange, which we illustrate with studies from Oświęcim/Auschwitz (MS) and Cyprus (EIS). By mapping these differences and highlighting collaborative data sessions as a practical arena for building relationships, the article seeks to deepen our understanding of interdisciplinarity and facilitate its practice. (Everyday practice, cultural memory, (in)securitisation, Mode 1 and Mode 2 interdisciplinarity)