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Article

Language of Social Media and Online Communication in Germanic  

Steven Coats

This article provides an overview of language practices that have emerged as a result of technological developments related to telecommunications and the internet, primarily in text-based modalities, and discusses research into social media and online communication in Germanic languages. It begins by providing a brief history of the communication technologies and platforms that underlie computer-based communication (CMC), then considers language features common to text-based CMC modalities that have developed since the 1970s such as email messages, mailing lists and message boards, chatrooms, SMS (Short Message Service), instant message (IM), and social media platforms such as Twitter/𝕏 or Facebook. For text communication in these modalities, features such as abbreviation, nonstandard orthography, use of emoticons and emoji, and performative marking of verbs are common in the Germanic languages, and new discursive practices have emerged for use of the hashtag (#) and the “at” sign (@). The article then reviews some of the findings of research into CMC for English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, and the Scandinavian languages, noting the diversity of theoretical approaches and analytical frameworks employed. Selected focus issues are discussed, including ethnographic and interactive studies of Germanic CMC and approaches to the study of multimodal online language on video-streaming and -sharing websites such as YouTube. The article concludes by noting some desiderata for research into Germanic language social media and online communication.

Article

History of the Catalan Lexicon  

Josep Martines

Catalan is a western Romance language closely related to the Gallo-Romance languages, especially to Occitan. Therefore, most words of the Catalan basic lexicon have a great affinity to Occitan. Throughout its history, Catalan inherited from Latin many words of non-Indo-European (Iberian and Old Basque) and Indo-European (Proto-Celtic and Celtic) origin. It had contacts and received borrowings from several languages, mostly Germanic (Gothic and Frankish), Arabic, Aragonese, Occitan, Italian, French, and more recently English. Eventually, the use of Catalan gained strength in formal contexts (literary, scientific, administrative texts, among others) during the Middle Ages, which in turn encouraged the development of varied lexical resources (popular vocabulary and learned words), norms of correct usage, and elaborate register variation. The progressive expansion of the Crown of Aragon toward the south and east of the Iberian Peninsula (13th century)—and its later integration into the Spanish monarchy at the end of the Middle Ages —prompted its contact with Spanish and a process of Hispanization of the Catalan lexicon. At the end of the Middle Ages, a change of its sociopolitical status provoked the beginning of a process of loss of social prestige and the interference of the Spanish lexicon. The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century witnessed a process of recuperation of the usage in all spheres of society, the elaboration of a linguistic norm, the depuration of interference, and the activation of the resources of lexical and terminological production.

Article

The Contribution of Romance Linguistics to the Development of Structuralism  

Pierre Swiggers

Romance linguistics, a discipline emerging and taking shape in the 19th century, was initially, and primarily, oriented toward linguistic-philological text study, historical-comparative grammar and etymology. Its (almost inherently) historical and particularistic orientation was rather incompatible with the systematizing and generalizing goals of structural linguistics developing in the first decades of the 20th century. As a consequence, Romance scholars were not among the founders or leading figures of the emergent schools of structural linguistics, either in Europe or in the United States. Apart from the rather dogmatic “holistic” claims of areal norms put forward by the Italian school of neolinguistica, Romance scholars for a long time were reticent to posit universal or general principles with reference to language structure or to the evolution of languages. After World War II, Romance scholars in Europe and the United States became increasingly interested in the methods, techniques, and concepts of (respectively) European and American structuralism. The impact of structuralism can be traced in the career of individual Romance scholars, ranging from authors who more or less consistently followed a structuralist approach in the diachronic and/or synchronic study of Romance languages, to scholars who developed theoretical concepts that refined or extended the structuralist framework. In line with its century-old tradition, Romance linguistics, focusing on the study of the history, function, and meaning of individual words (and of proper names), became a catalyst in the development of structure-oriented approaches in dialectology, etymology, semantics, lexicology, and onomastics. In addition, scholars active in Romance-speaking countries have contributed to structuralism in a broad sense: structuralism in literary and semiotic studies, in philosophy, in psychology and psychoanalysis, and in anthropology.

Article

Hip-Hop Language and Linguistics  

Andrew S. Ross and Elina Westinen

A significant sociopolitical event in New York City led to the emergence of the hip-hop musical genre, which is now a critical part of global popular culture and the performance landscape. In general terms, hip-hop, and in particular rap, can be understood as a form of spoken word or rhymed storytelling, accompanied by music. In the 1970s, the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway (1948–1972) effectively displaced many residents from the South Bronx, an area where residents were already faced with high levels of unemployment and poverty. These social conditions led to the birth of hip-hop as a performative genre that provided a space for the marginalized to express their voice. These non-mainstream origins and the limited political and societal power that accompanied these conditions led to hip-hop being seen as a form of resistance. Since these times, hip-hop has broken into the mainstream and is now a multi-billion-dollar part of the music industry. While hip-hop has grown as a genre of music and popular culture, so too has its reach on the global scale. Initially, this meant moving beyond New York, where different variations in African American English were incorporated along with more localized social and political concerns. Later, hip-hop began to spread around the world with a particularly unique ability to cross social, cultural, and geographic boundaries, as well as sociolinguistic boundaries. Emerging in various locations, it has proved its capacity to become translocal, taking on distinctly local features in a process of establishing authenticity inclusive of slang, dialect, accent, and phonological features as well as cultural markers and references to local political and social agendas. Hip-hop’s movement around the world has seen the emergence of important work on varieties of hip-hop. The underlying thesis here is that the localization of hip-hop is not merely global hip-hop adding in a few local features, but that it is always local, particularly in its linguistic features and general thematic and topical concerns.

Article

Morphologization and the Boundary Between Morphology and Phonology in the Romance Languages  

Paul O'Neill

This article analyses, from a Romance perspective, the concept of morphologization and seeks to answer the following question: At what point does a historically proven phonological cause-and-effect relationship, whereby phonological feature X causes and determines phonological feature Y, cease to hold and the dephonologized Y element stand as a marker of some morphological distinction? The question is relevant to cases in which the original phonological conditioning element is still present and where it has disappeared. I explain that the answer to this question depends entirely on one’s conception of morphology and phonology. I argue against theories that adhere to the principle of lexical minimization and have a static conception of morphology, which is restricted to the concatenation of idiosyncratic morphemes. These theories are forced by their theoretical underpinnings, which are often ideological and not supported by robust empirical evidence, to explain morphologized phenomena as being synchronically derived by phonology. This approach comes at a huge cost: the model of phonology is endowed with powerful tools to make the analysis fit the theory and which ultimately diminishes the empirical content and plausibility of the phonological hypotheses; such approaches also constitute serious problems for language acquisition and learning. I argue for more dynamic and abstractive models of morphology, which do not impose strict restrictions on lexical storage. I ultimately view morphologization as an instance of morphologically conditioned phonology and uphold that there is no strict boundary between the phonology and morphology but both systems overlap and interact. I analyze data and phonological explanations of metaphony in nouns and verbs in Italo-Romance, plural formation in Spanish and Portuguese, the distribution of velar allomorphy in the Italian and Spanish verbs, and the distribution of verbal stress in Surmiran Romansh and Spanish. With reference to the latter, the contribution dedicates significant space exploring the extent to which the diphthong/monophthong alternation in Spanish, and different types of allomorphy in Surmiran Romansh, is a matter of phonologically conditioned allomorphy or morphologically conditioned phonology.

Article

Construction-Based Research in China  

Xu Yang and Randy J. Lapolla

Research on construction-based grammar in China began in the late 1990s. Since its initial stages of introduction and preliminary exploration, it has entered a stage of productive and innovative development. In the past two decades, Chinese construction grammarians have achieved a number of valuable research results. In terms of theoretical applications, they have described and explained various types of constructions, such as schematic, partly variable, and fully substantive constructions. They have also applied the constructionist approach to the teaching of Chinese as a second language, proposing some new grammar systems or teaching modes such as the construction-chunk approach (构式-语块教学法), the lexicon-construction interaction model (词汇-构式互动体系), and trinitarian grammar (三一语法). In terms of theoretical innovation, Chinese construction grammarians have put forward theories or hypotheses such as the unification of grammar and rhetoric through constructions, the concept of lexical coercion, and interactive construction grammar (互动构式语法). However, some problems have also emerged in the field of construction grammar approaches. These include a narrow understanding of the concept of construction, a limited range of research topics, and a narrow range of disciplinary perspectives and methods. To ensure the long-term development of construction-based research in China, scholars should be encouraged to make the following changes: First, they should adopt a usage-based approach using natural data, and they should keep up with advances in the study of construction networks. Second, they should broaden the scope of construction-based research and integrate it with language typology and historical linguistics. Finally, they should integrate cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research findings and methods. In this way, construction-based research in China can continue to flourish and make significant contributions to the study of grammar and language.

Article

The History of Variationist Germanic Linguistics  

Frans Gregersen

The history of variationist linguistics (also known as variationist sociolinguistics or language variation and change) shows that over the years it has entered into competition and collaboration with a number of disciplines. It is in competition with Chomskyan theoretical linguistics, diverging from this hegemonic trend in methods, data, and types of analysis: variationist linguistics favors observation and dismisses introspection; it builds on everyday conversations with more speakers than one; and it uses quantitative methods in all analyses. Variationism collaborates with or is compatible with other types of analyses of language use and is sometimes seen as part of a larger sociolinguistic field also encompassing interactional linguistics, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and functional grammar, and systemic functional linguistics may complement or in other ways be used in otherwise mainly variationist enterprises. Indeed since one of the central variationist types of data is the sociolinguistic interview, variationist data may be analyzed by all of these disciplines. The article is organized along the following historical framework: It circumscribes three periods ranging from approximately 1960 to ca. 2010: The founder period establishes the approach at the various European universities by producing a number of exemplary studies, primary among them William Labov’s dissertation and later book, The Social Stratification of English in New York City. In focusing on an urban environment, Labov identified a moot point in the dialectological tradition, which otherwise is not only compatible with variationism but would also, gradually, be profoundly transformed by it. He also studied a community whose sheer size makes sampling and concomitant discussions of representativity necessary. These are central discussions for any urban sociology. The history of variationism in general plays out differently in the various countries or regions of Germanic-speaking Europe, but in the second period it is characteristic that variationist linguistics gets a more or less favored place in a broader canvas of disciplines studying spoken language in use. The disciplines may take their cue from sociology (ethnomethodology, conversation analysis), philosophy (speech-act theory), or social psychology (accommodation theory). Thus, we have labeled this period the period of fragmentation. The third period distinguished here is a period of larger corpora, when studies of variation may be carried out in tandem with, or indeed in collaboration with, other analyses; thus, in a way, modifying the previous period of fragmentation—at least institutionally. The three periods happen at various points in time in the various countries discussed, and it could be argued that the two later periods overlap, but the framework used here nevertheless makes it possible to organize their overall history.

Article

History of the Italian Lexicon  

Paolo D’Achille

The basis of the Italian lexicon is primarily Latin, with substrate features already existing in the languages spoken before the diverse population on the peninsula was Latinized, prior to the gradual conquest by the Romans, and with terms borrowed from Greek. In addition to the lexemes continued directly from Latin, Italian also shows a Germanic superstrate (Gothic, Lombard, Frankish) and an Arabic adstrate; many Germanisms, Arabisms and Hellenisms were borrowed in the Middle Ages. These were almost always in an adapted form, before the vernacular was given any recognition, and today form part of the “core vocabulary.” The Italian lexicon has also been supplemented by new learned Latin borrowings, exogenous lexemes, borrowings from the other languages with which Italian has been in contact, either directly or indirectly, and dialects (linguistic systems which developed independently of Tuscan/Florentine-based Italian). Similarly, there have been endogenous developments, mainly neologisms. As mentioned, the vocabulary of Latin origin can be divided into two categories. The first one includes the “inherited” vocabulary, that is words that Italian (like all other Romance languages and dialects) inherited from Latin directly through continued verbal use. Although their number is relatively limited, they have been attested for the longest period and make up the majority of the “core vocabulary.” The second category includes Latinisms, which entered the language through learned written use, from the earliest stages of the language right up to the early 21st century. As most of these were also adapted in the process, they cannot always be clearly distinguished formally from lexemes inherited through popular use. The influx of such forms is to some extent still ongoing. In some cases, in particular in the modern and contemporary eras, it has occurred via other languages, primarily French and English. Among the exogenous elements, that is borrowings, particularly noteworthy are the Gallicisms, Iberianisms, and Anglicisms, which entered Italian in the modern and contemporary era and were gradually integrated into the Italian lexicon (at least in writing) with adaptation by this stage no longer taking place (it was normal in earlier stages of the language). Calques remain frequent. Another remarkable phenomenon is internal loans or dialecticisms, that is lexemes once restricted to certain dialect areas or regions and that now form part of the common lexicon. Endogenous processes are represented primarily by the creation of neologisms, that is lexemes created within Italian via the normal means of word-formation (principally derivation and compounding). But attention should also be paid to semantic change: many terms already in use have developed new meanings, in some cases additional to the original meanings, and in other cases replacing them.

Article

Language Ideologies  

Susan Gal

Language ideologies are representations about the nature, structure, and use of linguistic forms in a social world. These understandings are never only about language. They are politically positioned, morally and aesthetically loaded evaluations of the situated linguistic practices to which a social group attends. Language ideologies are evident in practices and in embodied dispositions, or may be implicit in textual form and in material infrastructures. Sometimes they are explicit in discourse. Language ideologies are indispensable in social life because they mediate between aspects of language and other sociocultural phenomena such as identities, interactional stances, and hierarchies of cultural value.Speakers must draw on their presumptions about language and speech to interpret talk and thereby engage in everyday interactions, including child socialization, political debate, ritual speech, intellectual exploration, and governance. Language ideologies have considerable sociopolitical and historical consequences as metacommunications that frame the meaning of enregistered signs-in-use. Mediatingsemiotically between linguistic practices and social as well as linguistic structures, ideologies shape the direction of linguistic and social change. Semiotic concepts of indexicality, differentiation, rhematization, fractality, and erasure are essential in analysis. Language ideologies are evident in communities of all kinds. Scholars, too, have ideological presuppositions which orient their research and have political consequences. A study of a social group's language ideologies is indispensable in projects of language documentation, revitalization, poetics, and multilingual sustainability.

Article

Orthography and the Sociolinguistics of Writing  

Mirka Honkanen

Orthography is not a neutral tool for representing language in writing. Spelling is a linguistic variable capable of carrying social meaning, and orthographies are technologies embedded in larger societal structures. Spelling plays a role in the construction of national and other social identities, the delimitation of languages, the authentication and stigmatization of speaker groups, standardization, and the written representation of paralinguistic features. In these and further ways, orthography is a topic of high sociolinguistic relevance. After written language had long received less sociolinguistic attention than speech, there is now a growing body of sociolinguistic research into spelling variation and orthography as a socioculturally situated practice. Sociolinguists investigate the social role of orthographies and spelling choices. When orthographies are developed for previously unwritten languages, decisions have to be made not only regarding phonemic representation but also between creating distance from and closeness to related languages. Orthography becomes a highly debated topic also when spelling reforms are proposed; different ideological, aesthetic, financial, educational, and sociopolitical arguments are typically brought forth. Standardized spellings are seen by language users as granting languages and speakers authority. When non-standardized spellings are used in transcripts of speech, they have been shown to assign sociolinguistic stigma to the speakers represented. Non-standardized spellings are used in different less than fully regulated orthographic spaces, such as digital writing, company and personal names, literary texts, subcultural publications, advertising, and private writing. Sociolinguistic studies on spelling often rely on data from digital communication such as text messaging or social media interactions. Such studies not only describe and classify different kinds of non-standardized spellings but also increasingly establish quantitative tendencies, explore correlations with macro-level sociodemographic factors, and show the potential for respelling to construct identities, personae, and meaning at the micro level of the utterance. Spelling can index identities and stances, act as a contextualization cue, and represent prosodic and dialectal features.