Journal of Sociolinguistics最新文献

{"title":"We /r/ Tongan, not American: Variation and the social meaning of rhoticity in Tongan English","authors":"Danielle Tod","doi":"10.1111/josl.12664","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12664","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The current paper argues that speakers of Tongan English, an emergent variety spoken in the Kingdom of Tonga, may use rhoticity to construct a cosmopolitan and globally oriented local social identity. A variationist analysis of non-prevocalic /r/ in a corpus of 56 speakers reveals a change in progress towards rhoticity led by young females, whereas an affiliation with Liahona High School, a Mormon secondary school, predicts advanced adoption of the feature. I argue that rhoticity carries a positive ideological load for younger speakers as an index of globalness, modernity and Western cultural values, whereas for Liahona-affiliated speakers, an additional indexicality of rhoticity is Mormonism. Linguistic constraints on variation mirror patterns found in previous studies on L1/L2 varieties and are thus more universal, whereas social constraints on variation are best examined through a local lens.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 4","pages":"3-23"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12664","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141189102","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":"Decolonising trans-affirming language in Aotearoa","authors":"Julia de Bres","doi":"10.1111/josl.12657","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12657","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;I thank Lal Zimman for his thought-provoking piece on trans language activism (TLA) and sociolinguistic justice. Heeding his call for intersectional coalitions, I focus my comments on colonisation and decolonisation in trans-affirming language in Aotearoa (New Zealand).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Aotearoa is a settler colonial society, where Māori, the Indigenous people, have continuously resisted non-Māori dominance. Pākehā (non-Māori of European origin) are the largest population group at 70%, compared to Māori at 17% (2018 Census). Pākehā have imposed their social and cultural norms, resulting in the devastating loss of Māori language and culture. Although language revitalisation is occurring, most Māori mainly speak English. Issues relating to gender and language mirror those in other colonised countries, with Western gender discourses supplanting Indigenous ones (Clark, &lt;span&gt;2016&lt;/span&gt;). Each cultural context remains specific, and I will focus on what I see as the most pressing issues in Aotearoa. I am Pākehā, cisgender and queer. I offer my perspective as a sociolinguist and activist working in trans-affirming spaces, but my views do not hold the same weight as those of Indigenous trans people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will address three issues: problems associated with the use of Western-origin terms to refer to groups with experiences of colonisation, the challenge of de-centring whiteness in trans-affirming spaces and the rise of Indigenous efforts to decolonise language and gender.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The use of Māori gender terms in English contrasts with the low linguistic prominence of gender in the Māori language, which has no grammatical gender and uses the non-gendered pronoun ia for he/she/they. When Māori gender terms are used in English, binary or non-binary pronouns appear around them and speakers operate in a colonised linguistic context. This reflects the colonisation of Māori gender norms more generally. Christian ideas were imposed on Māori, including restrictive Victorian norms of gender and sexuality. These were internalised, so that, despite a tradition of openness to gender and sexual fluidity (Kerekere, &lt;span&gt;2017&lt;/span&gt;), homophobia and transphobia exist among Māori today. As Zimman observes, ‘it is important to remember that transphobia is a cultural force, not something that (only) belongs to or lives within individuals’. When non-Māori criticise Māori for being transphobic, they are really criticising the effects of colonisation on Māori. Addressing transphobia requires addressing its structural causes, including the gendered history of colonisation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similar issues arise among Pacific people, who constitute 8% of the population and have experienced colonisation in the Islands and racism in Aotearoa. Pacific societies also have histories of gender and sexual fluidity that were suppressed through colonisation and a range of traditional terms referring to gender and sexuality. Pacific advocate Phylesha Brown-Acton developed a Pacific version of the LGBTQ+ a","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"30-34"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12657","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141146865","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":"Theorizing trans language activism for euphoric transmutation and our collective liberation*","authors":"Tulio Bermudez Mejía,&nbsp;Anyel Marquinez Montaño","doi":"10.1111/josl.12662","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12662","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;In his piece, Lal Zimman tells us that while discourse is changing about trans communities, they are still killing us, so trans language activism (TLA) needs to focus on sociolinguistic justice. Sociolinguistic justice is defined as self-determination about our language and redistribution of resources (Bucholtz et al., &lt;span&gt;2014&lt;/span&gt;). Zimman argues that sociolinguistic justice for trans people should be more aligned with coalitional social justice for all marginalized people who suffer from interlocking systems of oppression. How does TLA play a role in the liberation for all people? Historically, TLA challenges oppressive power dynamics that are misogynistic (Cameron, &lt;span&gt;1998&lt;/span&gt;; Lakoff, &lt;span&gt;1973&lt;/span&gt;), heteronormative (Livia, &lt;span&gt;2000&lt;/span&gt;; Queen, &lt;span&gt;1997&lt;/span&gt;), and transphobic (Zimman, &lt;span&gt;2017&lt;/span&gt;). As Zimman suggests in this issue, we want TLA to not only challenge misogyny, heteronormativity, and transphobia. We are looking for liberation from all systems of oppression, including ableism, capitalism, colonialism, fatphobia, HIV status, (English language) imperialism, incarceration, Islamophobia, poverty, racism, sexism, Survivorship, transphobia, and xenophobia. In this paper, we argue that euphoric transmutation is a strategy for liberating us through language. Euphoric transmutation refers to practices of language play where the play/juxtaposition/inversion/innovation/resignification of lexicon functions to call attention to hegemonic power and destroy it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;TLA is dependent on a community supportive of change and willing to hold people accountable for their use of politically correct forms (Ehrlich &amp; King, &lt;span&gt;1992&lt;/span&gt;). Because of this, it is necessary to work collectively within and across safe(r) communities of practice (Eckert &amp; McConnell-Ginet &lt;span&gt;1992&lt;/span&gt;) in dialogic intersubjectivity (Bucholtz &amp; Hall, &lt;span&gt;2005&lt;/span&gt;) to identify how language relates to our political conditions and to set up shared language that challenges this. We do this through political education. Political education involves connecting forms of oppression across geographies, identities, and identifications. For example, we connect how oppressors use stereotypes and controlling images (Collins, &lt;span&gt;1986&lt;/span&gt;) like “swarms of animals,” both to xenophobically dehumanize people crossing the border between Mexico and United States and also to Islamophobically dehumanize Palestinians who are waiting for food aid from trucks and planes in the midst of Israel's genocide. TLA requires communities of practice to engage in discussion of these topics to collectively process systems of oppression and our reactions to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collective discussion requires shared community spaces in which people can produce language play. But in order to produce more language play in our everyday lives, we need safe(r) spaces.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spaces to hold conversations to understand each other and how we (people in powerless posi","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"25-29"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12662","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141146896","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":"Beyond “correctness”","authors":"Shu Min Yuen","doi":"10.1111/josl.12656","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12656","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;While browsing my Facebook feed on an early summer day in May 2017, a post with the trigger warning “inconsistent use of pronouns” grabbed my attention. The post, shared within a private Facebook group for (foreign) LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies living in Japan, featured an article recently published in &lt;i&gt;The New York Times&lt;/i&gt;. Titled “Japanese Transgender Politician is Showing ‘I Exist Here’,” the article focuses on Hosoda Tomoya, a Japanese trans man who recently won a seat in the local city council in a suburb just outside of Tokyo (Rich, &lt;span&gt;2017&lt;/span&gt;). Hosoda made history as the first trans man in the world to be voted to public office, and the near-full-page article delved into Hosoda's life history, his journey into politics, and the challenges that he faced as a trans person living in Japan. What the author and the subsequent commenters of the Facebook post found “baffling” about the article was the use of the pronoun “she” when referring to Hosoda's childhood years as a girl named Mika, whereas throughout the remainder of the article, “he” was used to refer to Hosoda. This inconsistency was deemed by some as “poor etiquette,” particularly from a reputable outlet like &lt;i&gt;The New York Times&lt;/i&gt;. What the readers were not aware of, however, was that Hosoda himself had approved the use of the pronoun “she” in that specific section of the report. The reason he provided was that it is an undeniable fact that he had “publicly lived as a woman before &lt;i&gt;chiryo&lt;/i&gt;” (transition, literally medical treatment) and therefore did not see anything wrong with using the feminine third-person pronoun (private communication). If Hosoda himself did not find the pronouns “inconsistent” or offensive, should the general readers take issue with them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the middle of 2020, I received an email from a graduate student based in the United States who had recently read one of my articles. The student took issue with my use of the term “FTM,” pointing out that by using it to refer to my research informants, I am perpetuating the “linguistic violence” associated with the term. In that article, I drew on my fieldwork in what I term the Japanese FTM community in Tokyo to show how seemingly mundane social events, such as drinking parties that are organized by and for trans men, can function as a site for my informants to negotiate inclusion and belonging as trans without undermining their male public selves. Within this community, “FTM” (the English acronym for female-to-male transgender) is the preferred term of self-reference, both in written form and in speech (transliterated as &lt;i&gt;efu-tii-emu&lt;/i&gt; in Japanese). Although I was aware of the debates surrounding this term in English-speaking contexts, where it is considered outdated and criticized for emphasizing a notion of change that contradicts the experiences of many trans individuals who have always identified as such, I chose to use it to refer to my informants because they have consistently used i","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"35-39"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12656","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141166246","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":"Tongues of abstraction – Intentionality in trans language activism","authors":"Katlego K Kolanyane-Kesupile","doi":"10.1111/josl.12663","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12663","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"15-19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141146922","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":"Trans language activism and intersectional coalitions","authors":"Lal Zimman","doi":"10.1111/josl.12661","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12661","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"3-8"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141166584","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":"Practical steps toward making trans language activism better","authors":"Kirby Conrod","doi":"10.1111/josl.12660","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12660","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"40-44"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141146919","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":"Trans language activism from the Global South*","authors":"Rodrigo Borba,&nbsp;Mariah Rafaela Silva","doi":"10.1111/josl.12658","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12658","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"9-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141146918","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":"Trans* of color im/possibilities in trans language activism","authors":"Andrea Bolivar","doi":"10.1111/josl.12659","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12659","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;In “Trans Language Activism and Intersectional Coalitions,” Lal Zimman offered a compelling account of the complexities and challenges of trans language activism in the current political moment. Zimman urged that “trans people's linguistic issues are best addressed as part of coalitions built on intersectional models of sociolinguistic justice” because “transphobia's impacts are felt most intensely when coarticulated with other axes of oppression.” However, Zimman importantly demonstrated that “the most visible and well-resourced types of trans (language) activism tend to represent the perspectives of relatively privileged trans people, in which racism, colonialism, ableism, classism, and other kinds of subjugation can easily manifest.” Indeed, we find ourselves in the middle of many binds, and the stakes are high. How do we carefully critique dominant trans language activism when all trans people are under attack? How do we contest invisibilization without falling into the many traps of visibility? How do we advance activist efforts without prioritizing the most privileged activists? How can we center the most marginalized without objectifying and exploiting them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although I alone cannot answer all of these questions (here or elsewhere), I offer something that I believe Zimman sets the foundation for and gestures to in this piece: the possibility that in the pitfalls and failures of dominant trans language activism lie queer, radical, and liberatory possibilities. In a conversation between Green and Bey about the relationship between Black feminist thought and trans* feminism, Green (&lt;span&gt;2017&lt;/span&gt;, p. 447) stated, “The fear of losing categories isn't the trap. The trap is believing that these categories have the capacity to deliver us to ourselves fully and wholly.” Green continued: “Identities like language help to bring us closer to a thing or a being, but we never fully arrive at the materiality, the flesh of the matter, and I don't know if we should try to remedy that.”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The youngest interlocutor in my ethnographic research with sex working transgender Latinas in Chicago exemplifies Green's wise words. Mercury is 18 years old and disabled. To describe her gender identity, she uses the words “transgender,” “transgender woman,” “trans femme,” “demi-girl,” “non-binary,” and “woman” interchangeably. To describe her racial identity, she uses the words “Black,” “Black Latina,” “Afro-Latina,” “Afro-Puerto Rican,” and “Puerto Rican” interchangeably. How she articulates her race and gender changes depending on how she feels and who she is speaking to. Yet, she explains that “no one word fits me perfectly.”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mercury lives in a homeless shelter that is lauded as a model of queer progressiveness, inclusivity, and “intersectionality” in Chicago. The staff, however, construct Mercury as “difficult” and “complicated.” She expresses rage, slips between race and gender categories, and pushes the boundaries around taken-for-granted unde","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"20-24"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12659","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141146920","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":"Puerto Rican welfare queens and the semiotics of respectability: The language of race, class, and gender","authors":"Mary Elizabeth Beaton,&nbsp;Whitney Chappell,&nbsp;Ashlee Dauphinais Civitello","doi":"10.1111/josl.12655","DOIUrl":"10.1111/josl.12655","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, we explore how raciolinguistic parody functions in a society that hegemonically denies racial divisions. Through an analysis of Puerto Rican comedian Natalia Lugo's YouTube portrayals of her character, Francheska the <i>Yal</i> ‘welfare queen,’ we argue that covert racialization operates through a semiotics of respectability, whereby disreputable forms of femininity, class expression, and nonstandard language are co-indexical with the <i>yal</i>’s failure to normatively “whiten” herself. We contend that US colonial narratives that scapegoat poor women of color for the island's poverty are reconstructed in Lugo's parodies by depicting the <i>yal</i> as provincial and excessive. Lugo's performative choices underscore the interplay of linguistic, material, and discursive elements that marginalize the <i>yal</i>, enabling parody without challenging structural inequalities. Our analysis sheds light on the ways in which semiotic practices reify such social hierarchies where they are systemically denied.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"28 3","pages":"71-93"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12655","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141146917","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}