SALSA III Proceedings (1995)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The "Chiquitasication" of U.S. Latinos and their languages (or: Why we need an anthropolitical linguistics)
Ana Celia Zentella, C.U.N.Y.-Hunter College

No abstract available

Male lesbians and other queer notions in Hausa
Rudolf P. Gaudio, Stanford University

Hausa gay men's descriptions of their sexual relationships reveal a dialectic of adherence to and subversion of mainstream cultural norms regarding gender, age and socioeconomic status. In many gay relationships, feminine- and masculine-identified partners assume interactional roles with regard to sex, money and other symbolic forms which are modeled after traditional heterosexual institutions. But gay men also establish liaisons which disrupt the expected power arrangements conventionally associated with sex. This sort of sexual subversion is limited, however, by the fact that the discursive frames within which Hausa gay men discuss their sexual relationships share a common patriarchal basis with mainstream Hausa society.

The linguistic gendering of an alternative Japanese lifestyle: speech variation in the gay communities of urban Japan
Naoko Ogawa and Janet S. (Shibamoto) Smith, UC-Davis

The present proposal continues a study of the speech of gay men in urban Japan. Data drawn from the speech of six gay and/or transvestite men are analyzed for 1) pronoun use, 2) sentence final particles, 3) postposing, 4) intonation, and 5) rhetorical self-affirmation particle n 'um'. We demonstrate that the speech patterns of the gay male community in Japan, as the speech patterns of the better-studied heterosexual female- and male-sex classes, are complex, but begin to establish a framework within which the range of gay male speech patterns may be subsumed and to align this range with those of the more established sex classes.

Women managers and "local" metapragmatic knowledge in a Tokyo ccorporate office
Miyako Inoue, Washington University

The metapragmatic discourses of two women managers in a Tokyo corporate office are examined. The purpose is to question the prevailing image of Japanese "women's language" as an obligatory and unitary form correlated with a "female role" inescapable whenever a woman speaks. The metapragmatic discourses examined here reflect not the micro-situation of a woman communicating interpersonally, but rather the macro-structural factors of company organization, and variable life chances associated with class and gender positioning in an evolving Japanese economy. The paper also shows how creative and reflexive agency is reflected in the metapragmatics of these two women.

The affecting work of eyes: patterns of eye gaze in American Sign Language storytelling
Peggy Swartzel Lott, UT-Austin

In this paper I examine a few signed stories in order to track the shifting gaze of signers in relation to the overall rhetorical and aesthetic structures of their narratives. Videotaped excerpts illustrate particular patterns of eye movement as well as the affective intensity of a relentless gaze that insistently draws viewers' attention to particular points. The analysis is then used to speculate about the dynamics of viewer response to the compelling intersection of an outward engagement between eyes with an inwardly probing question strategically positioned at key points in ASL storytelling practice.

Authorial context and reported speech in Sierra Popoluca discourse performance
Kay Sammons, UT-Austin

With respect to a correlation between narrative construction and audience reception of messages disseminated through discourse performance identified by Russian scholar V.N. Voloshinov, traditional Sierra Popoluca narrative performances are shown to utilize an especially linear style in reporting speech that encourages dogmatic acceptance on the part of the audience, while other genres, such as recent historical narrative and conversational speech, demonstrate a much wider range of rhetorical construction that can vary from extremely linear to more subjective, pictorial styles. This variation with regard to generic constraints encourages dogmatic reception of traditional narrative performance while providing an important rhetorical tool that can be manipulated to influence audience reception of messages contained in performance of other genres.

The poetics & rhetoric of overlap in a sample of Yup'ik men's house speech
Anthony C. Woodbury, UT-Austin

In a 3-hour recording of elderly Yup'ik men conversing in a traditional men's house, conversational overlap is an extant but constrained phenomenon with specific rules of use, contrary to earlier work on both English and various arctic and subarctic Native American languages. It has these characteristics: (A) It occurs mainly among social equals; (B) It occurs in conversation and narrative; (C) It is restricted to utterances of agreement, including agreement expletives, repetition, ratifying completion of the other's utterance, and independent amplification; (D) It occurs within a potentially utterance- final word; (E) The first speaker ordinarily completes his utterances despite the second speaker's appearance; thereafter he is free to resume the floor. Otherwise, pauses between and within turns are relatively long.

Rhetorical organization of Chichewa discourse
Troi Carleton, UT-Austin

In analyzing oral text, "there are at least five potentially independent types of recurrent, hierarchic organization on which poetic representation has been based: pause phrasing, prosodic phrasing, syntactic constituency, global form-content parallelism, and adverbial-particle phrasing." (Woodbury, 1985:176). These components are autonomous to the extent that they interact but are neither dependent upon nor necessarily perfectly aligned with one another. This paper shows how several of these independent components manifest themselves in traditional Chichewa (Bantu: Malawi) narratives. In particular, it discusses the relationship between intonational form and its corresponding function as it interacts with the textual content of the narrative, showing how these two independent systems of organization align to convey meaning.

"Leaders," "farmers" and "ordinary Americans": A critical discourse analysis of Democratic and Republican speeches to the American public
Keller S. Mageneau and Gabriella Modan, Georgetown University

In this work we show how opposing parties strategically use language to shape public ideology, and we explore the intertexutality of public discourse, linking the speeches to mass-media accounts of election results. In post mid-term election speeches by President Clinton and Republican Governor Mike Levitt, each speaker uses person deixis, jargon, and syntactic roles to construct alignments with governmental bodies or `ordinary Americans'. Media coverage portrayed the elections as a massive blow for Clinton and huge victory for Republicans. Viewed within this context, Clinton's speech is process oriented (Fairclough 1989); using the aforementioned strategies, he focuses on social/ideological change by giving ordinary Americans an active position, as enthusiastic members of the Clinton team, in shaping the nation. Levitt's discourse is structure oriented, focused on naturalizing ideological assumptions; he highlights Republican leadership, in line with the media's vision of Republicans as the solution to problems.

Poetic intonation in English
G. Burns Cooper, University of Alaska-Fairbanks

Recordings of poetry readings have characteristics of both written and spoken language. Their intonation patterns are not explained well by current theories of intonational meaning, which were developed for more interactive discourse situations. Instead, the intonational contours are largely motivated by other performance objectives: creating the proper "poetic" atmosphere, highlighting parallelism, increasing the cohesion or rhythmicity of key passages, emphasizing particular words and phrases, emphasizing dialect differences, and perhaps others. Salience and (in)completion play their expected roles, but other suggested discourse influences do not appear well-motivated for these texts.

The poetics of Kuna radio broadcasts
Marta Lucia de Gerdes, UT-Austin

This paper gives an ethnographic context of radio broadcasts by the Kuna of Panama, and analyzes the use of language in these speech events. The emphasis is on the poetics of the grammar, in particular the organization and interaction of prosodic elements and the way in which such organization is meaningful in the structure of Kuna discourse. I conclude that Kuna radio broadcasts are more than a cut-and-paste of Kuna speech onto a "universal" standard format for radio news. They evidence verbal artistic features and dialogic patterning characteristic of well studied face to face Kuna genres.

Laissez le francais cadjin rouler
Sylvie DuBois, William Gautreaux, and Tracey Veler, Louisiana State University

No abstract available

The use of prepositions, articles and simplification in contact varieties of German
Claudia Kurz, Ohio State University

This study investigates the use of prepositions and definite articles in two contact varieties of German, one spoken by three foreign workers living in Berlin, the other by three Bosnian refugees in Munich. From a total of 150 utterances per speaker, the forms investigated are tabulated to show matches and mismatches with the norms of native German. The extent of restrictive simplification is higher in Foreign Workers' German than in the refugee speech. Since the first language is Serbo-Croatian for all speakers, interference is ruled out to account for the difference. Restrictive simplification, however, is inversely related to the degree of speaker motivation. The group with a lower degree of restrictive simplification in their grammars, Bosnian refugees, confesses a high motivation for integration into the German host community. The higher degree of simplification in the codes of the foreign workers reflects their low motivation for such integration.

"Espero que me disculpen": ethnic and gender norms in language choice
Jonathan Loftin, UT-Austin

This paper examines language choice conflicts at a political-cultural festival in rural highland Ecuador. Bilingualism in Spanish and Quichua is the norm in this community. Quichua is an important symbol of indigenous ethnic identity, and is also linked to women's roles. In this case one participant preferred Spanish; her choice was evaluated as conflicting with gender and ethnic roles. Cast by organizers in terms of making communication easier for indigenous women, the choice of Quichua for the event in effect limited their linguistic choices. It thus constrained the linguistic behavior of those whose behavior it was designed to reflect.

Affiliation & codeswitching among Latina gang girls
Norma Mendoza-Denton, Stanford University

The objective of my study is to investigate the relationship among ethnic identity, linguistic practice, and gang affiliation in a population of Latina girls in a northern California high school. I will employ the methodology of discourse analysis, coupled with ethnographic fieldwork, to test my hypothesis that patterns of discourse variation (specifically, patterns of codeswitching (CS) and especially differences in the matrix language) in this community are the product of three factors: (1) language dominance in Spanish or English, (2) Chicana or Mexicana ethnic identity, and (3) gang affiliation.

You can say you to me: German translations of second person pronouns in American films
Robin Queen, UT-Austin

This study examines the use of the formal/informal distinction in second person pronouns in German. Using descriptive data on the translation of American films into German, this paper demonstrates many of the ways in which prescriptive rules for the implementation of du and Sie may be in conflict with norms of usage. Based on the model first outlined by Brown and Gilman (1960), I thus show how formulaic guidelines for the dubbing of American films and television programs into German fail to reflect the complex interplay between language and social life found otherwise in the community.

When a homeless woman makes a burglary report: Ideologies of public and private language in sociolinguistics
Bonnie McElhinny, Washington University

In this paper I critically analyze the distinction between institutional and ordinary language often invoked in the tradition of conversational analysis. The empirical focus of this paper is a close analysis of an interaction between an African-American police officer and an African-American homeless woman who wants to make a burglary report. I analyze this interaction by using the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia as well as Black feminist social theory to understand the particular ways in which "ordinary/familiar" and "institutional/formal" spheres interpenetrate one another in the police officer's attempt to shape the outcome of this interaction, as well as to understand the ways in which the complainant's own interpretive efforts resist this shaping.

The validity and reliability of phonetic transcriptions for sociolinguistics and dialectology
Lisa Ann Lane, Jeannette Denton, and Daniel Susslak, University of Chicago

Are phonetic transcriptions a product of what the transcriber believes a sound should be or a product of what is actually produced? Since much of sociolinguistics and dialectology utilize transcriptions as the basis for derving data, it is crucial that we explore and understand the limitations of this tool. The validity and reliability of phonetic transcriptions (of 2 speech styles) by three linguists is being studied. An unfamiliar language was chosen to control for native speaker filtering and to control for the transcribers being phonologically influenced. This paper reports on the findings of inter- and intratranscriber reliability and validity comparisons with native speaker produced transcriptions.

Sound symbolism as an explanation for sex-based variation in language
Matthew Gordon, University of Michigan

Many explanations have been offered to account for the widespread phenomenon of sexual differentiation in language. Sociolinguists have been especially concerned with this issue but have had limited success finding comprehensive solutions. This paper suggests that one reason for the sociolinguists' difficulty in explaining sex differentiation lies in their fundamental belief in the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. Suspending that belief opens new avenues of explanation. Using evidence from diverse languages, I suggest that a non-arbitrary relationship exists between the social category "female" and certain sounds, namely palatal consonants and fronted and/or raised vowels. This hypothesis is discussed in the broader context of sound symbolism with a focus on its diachronic implications.

An emerging alternative to Spanish vowel linking
Felice Coles, University of Mississippi

Spanish sinalefa is a standard phonetic process in which adjacent vowels across syllables are pronounced as one long vowel in casual speech (Barrutia & Schwegler 1994): [es.ta:ki] 'he/she/it is here.' An alternative to sinalefa can be heard in recent Spanish soap operas, in which an [h] marks the separation of the two vowels: [mi.√i.∂a.ha.si] 'my life thus far.' This epenthetic aspiration appears when two identical vowels come into contact at word boundaries, when speaking Caribbean Spanish where [s] aspiration and deletion is already a dialect feature, and in longer narratives. This feature has been judged in a preliminary survey as a stylistic variant, used for emphasis or emoting in performances.

Reduplication in four languages: where formal grammar and speech play/verbal art meet
Joel Sherzer, UT-Austin

Reduplication is often cited as a grammatical/semantic process which is iconic, that is one which directly and obviously connects sound and meaning. There is considerable cross-linguistic consistency in the meaning and function of reduplication. Different patterns in the semantic and socio-cultural functioning of reduplication are illustrated with examples from Classical Nahuatl, Kuna, Balinese, and English. Reduplication can be seen as an important aspect of all languages when language is viewed in socio-cultural context and when the playful and esthetic functions of language are considered to be as important as the expression of reference.

Standard and vernacular persuasive discourse in conflict
John Taggart Clark, Georgetown University

This critical discourse analysis investigates linguistic accommodation and resistance (Giroux 1983) to Standard English in an urban American high school. Unlike most Standard English / Vernacular English studies, which focus on quantitative-based studies of variation of sentence-level syntactic features, this study looks at standard/vernacular language continuum as it pertains to persuasive (rhetorical) discourse. The data is taken from a high school class in which a law school student, in teaching a course about law, attempts to apprentice his students into using prestigious "standard" persuasive discourse registers.

Writing Mazateco: linguistic standardization and social power
Michael R. Duke, UT-Austin

This paper will explore the multifaceted challenges faced by indigenous linguists in creating a practical writing system for highland Mazateco, a Popolucan language spoken by approximately 77,000 speakers in southern Mexico. While indigenous intellectuals view the creation of a standardized writing system as the first step in promoting literacy in the Mazateco language, local debates about language and literacy are in fact strongly informed by the historically contentious social and political relations that exist both within and between Mazateco communities. Through ethnographic and linguistic examples, the paper will show the complex relationship between language and politics in the Sierra Mazateca.

"That terrible Saxon dialect": standard language ideology in post-unification Germany
Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain, University of Michigan

No abstract available

Representations of African-American Language in introductory linguistics texts
Keith Walters, UT-Austin

No abstract available