{"title":"Horizontal Multilingualism: Interview with Shobha Satyanath","authors":"Jaspal Naveel Singh","doi":"10.1111/josl.12709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12709","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In this interview, Shobha Satyanath, one of India's premier sociolinguists, reflects on her career working on language variation and change in India and Guyana. The interview starts with a definition of what sociolinguistics is, namely, a social theory of language, and then continues to trace the development of Indian sociolinguistics. Satyanath also shares insights into the ideas behind the conference <i>New Ways of Analyzing Variation Asia-Pacific</i> and the associated journal <i>Asia-Pacific Language Variation</i>. From her and her students’ work on a range of Indian languages, it becomes clear that certain frameworks developed in Western sociolinguistics, such as diglossia, or what she also calls a hierarchical model of bilingualism, do not work to accurately account for the multicultural fabric of Indian and Guyanese societies. Satyanath proposes to understand multilingualism in a horizontal and harmonious way.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"285-293"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“You Have to Keep Fighting”: Interview with John R. Rickford","authors":"Lauren Hall-Lew","doi":"10.1111/josl.12710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12710","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In this interview, John R. Rickford reflects on his career working on sociolinguistics in Guyana and the United States. The interview focuses on sociolinguistics and social justice, with particular focus on the potential for linguistic expertise in legal contexts. He addresses the concept of the creole continuum, and the concept of the conflict theory of social class, advocating for the importance of both. The interview also touches on Rickford's stroke and his thoughts on disability and sociolinguistics. Rickford makes a strong case for a positive future for the field of sociolinguistics and its changing position relative to linguistics, more generally. Through personal stories both in and out of academia, Rickford's career is a shining example of how the intertwining of the personal and the political is central to a life in sociolinguistics.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"294-301"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sumud Pedagogy as Linguistic Citizenship: A World-Building Semiotics Where Languages Are Used “Otherwise”","authors":"Muzna Awayed-Bishara","doi":"10.1111/josl.12713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12713","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper responds to a recent call to develop a sociolinguistics of potentiality by examining how semiotic and multilingual practices may participate in processes of ethical world-building. It looks at contexts where minoritized language speakers who are subjected to colonial government use colonial languages (e.g., English) along with other semiotic resources to create spaces of potentiality where alternative social projects embody complex interplays of hope and despair. Employing the Southern notion of <i>sumud</i> pedagogy as a localized application of Stroud's notion of Linguistic Citizenship, I examine how Palestinian Arabic-speaking youth in Israel employ multilingual and semiotic resources to deconstruct social constructs and reject imposed subjectivities. Combining my voice as a Palestinian sociolinguist in Israel with the voices of Palestinian youth from Haifa, I illustrate how a horizontal movement from one language to another enables multilingual-minoritized speakers to disrupt English hegemony through constructing new modes of being, belonging, and knowing.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"250-267"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12713","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145051232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bill Labov: Looking Back, Looking Forward","authors":"Betsy Sneller, Laurel MacKenzie, Meredith Tamminga","doi":"10.1111/josl.12711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12711","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Bill Labov passed away peacefully at home on December 17, 2024, with his wife and fellow Penn linguist Gillian Sankoff by his side. He leaves behind a legacy so large that it is hard to put into words. All three authors were fortunate enough to have had Bill as our PhD supervisor (Laurel: 2012, Meredith: 2014, Betsy: 2018). We feel that the many hours we spent in his presence and with his work have given us a good insight into who and how he was. We also feel deep love and gratitude for him and for his imprint on the field and on us. As such, this piece is our reflection on Bill as a person, an advisor, and a scholar, from our perspective as three of his students from his later years.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"309-316"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12711","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145051107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Being and Understanding","authors":"Kristin Snoddon","doi":"10.1111/josl.12708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12708","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"302-308"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145051111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Need to Create a “Virtual Campus”: Translingual Practice and Community Building in Virtual Linguistic Landscape","authors":"Haowei Luo, Hua Yu","doi":"10.1111/josl.12706","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12706","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This study examines the role of virtual linguistic landscapes (VLL) in shaping a “virtual campus” through an analysis of the “985 Five (Rubbish/Loser) Recruitment Project” on Douban. Adopting Digital Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis (ELLA 2.0), we investigate how translingual parodies, marked by intertextuality, playfully create a “virtual campus.” Within this virtual space, university students share experiences of failure, emotional struggles, and desires for mutual support, thereby fostering in-group solidarity. The research demonstrates how students creatively and critically mobilize their semiotic repertoire to negotiate precarious identities and subtly resist the dominant narrative within the meritocratic system in Chinese higher education. Furthermore, the study reveals how transpositioning through translingual practices in online communities empowers struggling university students, allowing a dialogic space for humor, resilience, reflection, and criticism that challenges traditional power structures and envisions a more inclusive society.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"225-236"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145051254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Linguistic Hauntings at the Margins of China","authors":"Gegentuul Baioud","doi":"10.1111/josl.12707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12707","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examines emotional and material traces lingering in the aftermath of forced linguistic landscape transformations in Inner Mongolia following the implementation of a new assimilationist national language policy in 2022. Drawing on ethnographic and linguistic landscape data, the study specifically examines how the multilingual signs that have undergone invisibilization or changes in their layouts are accompanied by marginalized senses and excluded voices—linguistic hauntings—in the multilingual Mongolian borderlands. In this study, linguistic hauntings are animated by Mongolian linguistic anxiety and conditioned by the Chinese state's intensified language oppression in transitioning from a multinational and multilingual state to a unified Chinese nation with one singular language. The article suggests that linguistic haunting is a powerful lens for analysing the interlinked political, affective and temporal dimensions in drastically reconfiguring landscapes. The study contributes to the sociolinguistics of the specters, borderlands multilingualism, nationalism and its linguistic entailments.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"237-249"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12707","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Awareness of Grammatical Variability in Language Contact: The Case of Mano and Kpelle in Guinea","authors":"Maria Khachaturyan, George Moroz, Pé Mamy","doi":"10.1111/josl.12705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12705","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper contributes to research on the awareness of grammatical variability through a study of variation in reflexivity marking in Mano under the influence of Kpelle, both indigenous languages of Guinea. The speakers of these languages are found to be sensitive to contact-induced grammatical variation in reflexivity, which manifests via variation in comprehension patterns and, more specifically, in form-to-meaning correspondence, across different communities. We explain the patterns by hypothesizing that variation in comprehension is at least partially based on language experience in a particular environment and does not necessarily reflect a difference in grammatical representation. Such explanation underscores the importance of sociolinguistic considerations for employing acceptability judgments in syntactic analysis.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"268-284"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12705","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145051062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“You Speak Well for an Anglophone”: Resisting the Processes of Delegitimation and Developing Linguistic Security","authors":"Marie-Eve Bouchard","doi":"10.1111/josl.12704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12704","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores the ways that young French speakers from British Columbia, an English-dominant province of Canada, navigate different processes of linguistic delegitimation and how these processes are linked to linguistic insecurity. The findings are derived from interviews conducted with nine young French speakers from British Columbia who shared their most significant experiences of linguistic insecurity. The results, which are based on a thematic analysis, show how participants are being delegitimized by family members from dominant French-speaking contexts due to some of their linguistic practices that diverge from standard forms. They also indicate that participants have found ways to gain linguistic security by acquiring knowledge, participating in their communities, and accepting different linguistic practices that characterize their variety of French. However, this linguistic security work is limited by the existing ideologies in the French-speaking world that delegitimize the non-standard varieties.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 3","pages":"157-167"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12704","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Style Game: Control, Cues, and Anchors in Real Time Speech Accommodation","authors":"Devyani Sharma","doi":"10.1111/josl.12701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12701","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Theories of speech accommodation and audience design have tended to focus on social identity functions of convergence and divergence in interaction. In this article, I focus on additional interactional phenomena that are under-studied but systematic. I present real-time data to illustrate variable control of speech features in style-shifting. These cues give listeners a sense of the default style of a speaker and their range of divergence from it, forming an ‘anchor’ from which to interpret the intended meanings of a specific person's style shifts. Rather than seeing convergence as a simple rapport-building move, I propose a system of non-linear inferential schemas, whereby the payoff of a style shift diminishes when it exceeds a certain threshold, due more to considerations of sincerity and credibility than social group indexicalities. These Bayesian inferences can be modelled within recent game-theoretic frameworks, allowing us to account for social but also cognitive payoffs and costs as part of how speakers and listeners interpret each other's speech styles in real time.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 3","pages":"210-222"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12701","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}