Accomplishing marginalization in bilingual interaction: relational work as a resource for the intersubjective construction of identity

This paper examines the use of impoliteness by Spanish–English bilingual pre-adolescents as a resource for accomplishing identities in spontaneous conversational interactions in an elementary school setting. The theoretical approach employed integrates the concept of relational work (Locher 2004; Locher and Watts 2005), which is based on Goffman\u27s (1967) notion of face and which privileges participants\u27 evaluation of language behavior within the norms of the community of practice, with recent work in sociocultural linguistics (Bucholtz and Hall 2004a, 2004b, 2005). This approach views identity as an interactional achievement reached through the use of what they call tactics of intersubjectivity. In this analysis, negatively marked, non-politic behavior is viewed as an interactional resource, which, along with other resources such as codeswitching, bilingual speakers may employ for the purposes of alignment and stance-taking. Specifically, the paper examines how speakers use strategies referred to as impolite (cf. Culpeper 1996) in the performance of a variety of tactics of intersubjectivity to manage local identities (e.g., leader/follower, insider/outsider) as well as membership in broad social categories (e.g., gender, ethnic identities) in interaction, how they engage in conflict talk and what they gain from it, and how codeswitching is (and is not) used in interactions. This analysis is situated within the wider social context of language politics and immigration politics in the individual school, the region, and the US

[v]at is going on? Local and global ideologies about Indian English

ABSTRACTThis article examines local and global language ideologies surrounding a particular phonetic feature in Indian English, the pronunciation of /v/ as [w]. By focusing on how local and global participants – both individuals and institutions – imagine language variation through disparate framings of “neutral” and “standard,” it highlights how processes of globalization and localization are interconnected, dialogic, and symbiotic. Compared are (i) sociolinguistic constructions of Indian cartoon characters, (ii) American “accent training” institutes, (iii) Indian call center and language improvement books, (iv) American speakers’ interpretations of merged IE speech, and, (v) IE speakers’ attitudes about IE, “neutral,” and ”standard” language. The relative social capital of these populations mediates both how each constructs its respective ideology about language variation, and how these ideologies dialogically interact with each other. (Language variation, language ideologies, dialogic, standard language)1</jats:p

EU’s civil society bias in the neighbourhood : a case study on culture

This article attempts to analyse the European Union's (EU) financial and technical support to cultural actors in EU Neighbourhood countries. In particular, it enquires whether the boundaries of what cultural sector means for the EU are based on a Eurocentric understanding of civil society or rather on a more inclusive definition mediated with partner countries' societies. The work hypothesises that the EU tends to support cultural civil society organisations on the basis of their closeness to European standards, norms and values. Findings highlight a mixed picture. On the one hand. a Eurocentric understanding of civil society tends to prevail in EU discourses and is enforced by technical means addressing the status and capacity of the organisations involved, with some exceptions. On the other hand, the EU does not seem to impose strong prerequisites concerning the agenda of organisations and aims to be as inclusive as possible

Buying commercial law: Choice of law, choice of forum, and network externalities

Copyright @ 2009 Bryan DruzinThis paper applies network effect theory to transnational commercial law, arguing that commercial parties selecting law through choice of law and choice of forum clauses can be likened to consumers selecting a product, and thus equally susceptible to the effects of network externalities. The number of “consumers” who subscribe to the same legal norms is analogous to the number of consumers who use a product. As the number of “consumers” increases, so too does the inherent value of selecting that jurisdiction, inducing even more parties to “purchase” that body of law. This is a network effect. I argue that transnational commercial law is ideally calibrated so as to generate a network effect. This stems from the inherent nature of commerce. The discussion distinguishes between two kinds of externalities, direct and indirect network externalities, concluding that network systems that possess both kinds of network externalities (as is the case with law-selection decisions in commercial contracts), are the best candidates to produce a robust network effect. I then examine how the twin ingredients of fluid interaction and frequent choice present in commerce precipitate a network effect; expansive interaction places a higher premium on the need for synchronization, and frequent opportunities to select law in the contracts of fresh commercial relationships allow for an incremental drift towards a specific jurisdiction. The paper ultimately concludes that, as a result, network externalities indeed play an influential role in the ascension of particular jurisdictions over others in law-selection decisions, an important conclusion as it points to an unrecognized influence underpinning the current development of transnational commercial law

Universal Grammar: Wittgenstein versus Chomsky

Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, ‘Universal Grammar: Wittgenstein versus Chomsky’ in M. A. Peters and J. Stickney, eds., A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education: Pedagogical Investigations (Singapore: Springer Verlag, 2017), ISBN: 9789811031342The motivations for the claim that language is innate are, for many, quite straightforward. The innateness of language is seen as the only way to solve the so-called 'logical problem of language acquisition': the mismatch between linguistic input and linguistic output. In this paper, I begin by unravelling several strands of the nativist argument, offering replies as I go along. I then give an outline of Wittgenstein's view of language acquisition, showing how it renders otiose problems posed by nativists like Chomsky – not least by means of Wittgenstein's own brand of grammar which, unlike Chomsky's, does not reside in the brain, but in our practices.Peer reviewe

Mediating Multiculturally: Culture and the Ethical Mediator

This commentary on mediating multiculturally in a chapter of Mediation Ethics (edited by Ellen Waldman) suggests there are times when mediators should not mediate, because of their own ethical commitments. Commenting on a hypothetical divorce scenario (of Ziba, a 17 year old from her 44 year old husband, with two children aged 3 and 2, where the parties claim to want Shari’a principles to apply), the author (Carrie Menkel-Meadow) suggests that she would not mediate a case which might violate formal laws (American marriage and divorce laws) or infringe on rights that one of the parties might not be fully aware of. A variety of sources of ethics, including formal law, legal and mediation ethical rules, and personal ethical commitments may structure how mediators choose whether to take a case, educate the parties about their rights, make a referral, or how to mediate if complex (and different for each of the parties and/or the mediator) legal, moral, religious and cultural values are at stake. The chapter contains contrasting views expressed by two different mediators, with summary and commentary by the book’s editor

Finding Law

That the judge\u27s task is to find the law, not to make it, was once a commonplace of our legal culture. Today, decades after Erie, the idea of a common law discovered by judges is commonly dismissed -- as a fallacy, an illusion, a brooding omnipresence in the sky. That dismissive view is wrong. Expecting judges to find unwritten law is no childish fiction of the benighted past, but a real and plausible option for a modern legal system. This Essay seeks to restore the respectability of finding law, in part by responding to two criticisms made by Erie and its progeny. The first, positive criticism is that law has to come from somewhere: judges can\u27t discover norms that no one ever made. But this claim blinks reality. We routinely identify and apply social norms that no one deliberately made, including norms of fashion, etiquette, or natural language. Law is no different. Judges might declare a customary law the same way copy editors and dictionary authors declare standard English -- with a certain kind of reliability, but with no power to revise at will. The second, realist criticism is that this law leaves too many questions open: when judges can\u27t find the law, they have to make it instead. But uncertain cases force judges to make decisions, not to make law. Different societies can give different roles to precedent (and to judges). And judicial decisions can have many different kinds of legal force -- as law of the circuit, law of the case, and so on -- without altering the underlying law on which they\u27re based. This Essay claims only that it\u27s plausible for a legal system to have its judges find law. It doesn\u27t try to identify legal systems that actually do this in practice. Yet too many discussions of judge-made law, including the famous ones in Erie, rest on the false premise that judge-made law is inevitable -- that judges simply can\u27t do otherwise. In fact, judges can do otherwise: they can act as the law\u27s servants rather than its masters. The fact that they can forces us to confront, rather than avoid, the question of whether they should. Finding law is no fallacy or illusion; the brooding omnipresence broods on