Search Results (188)

This study investigates how second language (L2) learners of Spanish identify the regional origin of native Spanish speakers and whether specific phonetic cues predict dialect identification accuracy across proficiency levels. Situated within a growing body of work on sociolinguistic competence, this research addresses the development of learners’ ability to use linguistic forms not only for communication but also for social interpretation. A dialect identification task was administered to 111 American English-speaking learners of Spanish and 19 native Spanish speakers. Participants heard sentence-length stimuli targeting regional phonetic features and selected the speaker’s country of origin. While L2 learners were able to identify regional dialects above chance, accuracy was low and significantly below that of native speakers. Higher-proficiency learners demonstrated improved identification, especially for speakers from Spain and Argentina, and relied more on salient phonetic cues (e.g., [θ], [ʃ]). No significant development was found for identification of Mexican or Puerto Rican varieties. Unlike native speakers, L2 learners did not show sensitivity to broader macrodialect groupings; instead, they frequently defaulted to high-exposure varieties (e.g., Spain, Mexico) regardless of the phonetic cues present. Findings suggest that sociophonetic perception in L2 Spanish develops gradually and unevenly, shaped by cue salience and exposure. Full article

This paper creates a global similarity network between city-level dialects of English in order to determine whether external factors like the amount of population contact or language contact influence dialect similarity. While previous computational work has focused on external influences that contribute to phonological or lexical similarity, this paper focuses on grammatical variation as operationalized in computational construction grammar. Social media data was used to create comparable English corpora from 256 cities across 13 countries. Each sample is represented using the type frequency of various constructions. These frequency representations are then used to calculate pairwise similarities between city-level dialects; a prediction-based evaluation shows that these similarity values are highly accurate. Linguistic similarity is then compared with four external factors: (i) the amount of air travel between cities, a proxy for population contact, (ii) the difference in the linguistic landscapes of each city, a proxy for language contact, (iii) the geographic distance between cities, and (iv) the presence of political boundaries separating cities. The results show that, while all these factors are significant, the best model relies on language contact and geographic distance. Full article

Research on language contact outcomes, such as code-switching, continues to face theoretical and methodological challenges, particularly due to the difficulty of comparing findings across studies that use divergent data collection methods. Accordingly, scholars have emphasized the need for publicly available and comparable bilingual corpora. This paper introduces the El Paso Bilingual Corpus, a new Spanish–English bilingual corpus recorded in El Paso (TX) in 2022, designed to be methodologically comparable to the Bangor Miami Corpus. The paper is structured in three main sections. First, we review the existing Spanish–English corpora and examine the theoretical challenges posed by studies using non-comparable methodologies, thereby underscoring the gap addressed by the El Paso Bilingual Corpus. Second, we outline the corpus creation process, discussing participant recruitment, data collection, and transcription, and provide an overview of these data, including participants’ sociolinguistic profiles. Third, to demonstrate the practical value of methodologically aligned corpora, we report a comparative case study on diminutive expressions in the El Paso and Bangor Miami corpora, illustrating how shared collection protocols can elucidate the role of community-specific social factors on bilinguals’ morphosyntactic choices. Full article

This study compares complaints in Korean and Chinese, focusing on how they are expressed explicitly or implicitly. Complaints are potentially face-threatening, yet they frequently appear in conversations among native Korean and Chinese speakers who are characterized as upholding Neo-Confucian values and emphasizing social harmony. Although some contrastive studies have examined complaints across languages, none have specifically investigated the explicit and implicit strategies employed in Korean and Chinese complaint discourse. Given the growing intercultural contact between Korean and Chinese speakers, this gap calls for closer attention. To address this, the present study explores how native Korean and Chinese speakers articulate complaints in the Korean and Chinese versions of the travel reality show Sisters Over Flowers. Sixteen episodes were analyzed using interactional sociolinguistic methods, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The analysis uncovered both explicit and implicit strategies (e.g., expressions of annoyance or disapproval, overt grievances, questions, advice, teasing, and hints). Notably, the Korean participants produced significantly fewer complaints than their Chinese counterparts. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights. Theoretically, the results challenge overly broad notions of East–West pragmatic distinctions by demonstrating meaningful variation within East Asian cultures. Practically, a better understanding of explicit and implicit complaint strategies in Korean and Chinese can enhance intercultural communication, promote culturally sensitive responses, and bridge misunderstandings in increasingly globalized settings. Full article

This study investigates reformulation in a substandard variety of Italian, italiano popolare, from the early 20th Century, focusing on a collection of letters and postcards from semi-literate Sicilian peasants during World War I. The analysis identifies three reformulation markers: cioè, anzi, and vuol dire. These markers are affected by hypercorrection, interference, and structural simplification, reflecting the sociolinguistic dynamics of italiano popolare. Additionally, the study of these markers sheds light on the relationships between reformulation and related discourse functions, namely paraphrase, correction, addition, and motivation. By positioning occurrences of reformulation along a continuum between the spoken and written mode, the findings suggest that this discourse function is employed more as a rhetorical strategy that characterizes planned written texts, rather than as a feature of disfluency that is typical of unplanned speech. Ultimately, examining reformulation in italiano popolare provides valuable insights into the relationship between sociolinguistic variation and language change in the beginning of the 20th Century, a key phase in the spread of Italian as a national language. Full article

Studies that have examined /s/ weakening as a social practice have found that L1 Spanish speakers perceive this cue as an indicator of lower status, region of origin, and greater friendliness, and even L2 Spanish learners have been found to associate /s/ weakening with lower status. The question remains, however, whether L2 learners who use /s/ weakening are perceived as having these same social attributes or whether their nonnative status interrupts said assessment. The present study examines the attitudes of 30 beginning and intermediate-level L2 learners of Spanish towards L1 and L2 speech that was digitally modified to contain /s/ deletion in coda positions, a regionally and stylistically variable sociophonetic cue in Spanish that is often not adopted by L2 learners. Participants rated the speech samples on Likert scales of perceived status, solidarity, and nativeness. Results revealed that learners rated L1 speech with /s/ deletion significantly lower for status and L2 speech with /s/ deletion significantly higher for nativeness. Full article

T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has long been examined through the lenses of modernist alienation and psychological paralysis. While previous scholarship has emphasized the poem’s existential themes and innovative form, it has often overlooked the central role of gendered discourse in shaping Prufrock’s communicative anxieties. This article argues that Eliot critiques patriarchal norms by portraying Prufrock’s paralysis as a product of masculine performance anxiety—his fear of miscommunication, emasculation, and judgment in interactions with women. Drawing on contemporary sociolinguistic frameworks by Deborah Tannen and Jennifer Coates, the analysis reveals how Prufrock’s internal monolog reflects early 20th-century anxieties around shifting gender roles and expectations. By situating Prufrock within both the literary traditions and sociocultural tensions of Eliot’s time, the article offers a new interpretation of the poem as a subtle but powerful commentary on the constraints of patriarchal communication. This reading not only deepens our understanding of Eliot’s engagement with gender but also reframes Prufrock’s alienation as a socially constructed and gendered crisis. Full article

People in multilingual societies develop complex and interconnected food-making and food-discussing networks. On the basis of an experimental course titled “Food at Home, Food on the Move: Globalization and Regionalism in Modern Food Culture” taught at the University of Helsinki, we will show how the acquisition of culinary terminology puts forward the interconnectedness of languages and the dynamics between them in several sociolinguistic contexts. The lectures were grouped geographically: Eating with the Neighbors (Finnish cuisine and Swedish, Russian, Karelian and other influences); From the Baltic to Central Europe (Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, German, and Hungarian food cultures); Formative Cuisines of the Mediterranean (French, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern cuisine, etc.); and Eating Outside Europe (food culture influences from the US, Mexico, China, Japan, and India). The assignments included a critical lecture diary, an essay about eating experiences, or additional reading, a conversational analysis of a culinary show, or fieldwork in an ethnic restaurant. Raising awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity, motivating course participants to discuss the role and interaction of languages in their repertoire, makes them reflect on their multilingual identities. It allows educators to explore individuals’ DLCs in different contexts while navigating diverse global and local environments based on the principles of fairness and equality in education. Full article

Research in Loanword Phonology has extensively examined the adaptation processes of Anglicisms into recipient languages. In the Tijuana–San Diego border region, where English and Spanish have reciprocally existed, Anglicisms exhibit two main phonetic patterns: some structures exhibit Spanish phonetic properties, while others preserve English phonetic features. This study analyzes 131 vowel tokens drawn from spontaneous conversations with 28 bilingual speakers in Tijuana, recruited via the sociolinguistic ‘friend-of-a-friend’ approach. Specifically, it focuses on monosyllabic Anglicisms with monophthongs by examining the F1 and F2 values using Praat. The results were compared with theoretical vowel targets in English and Spanish through Euclidean distance analysis. Dispersion plots generated in R further illustrate the acoustic distribution of vowel realizations. The results reveal that some vowels closely match Spanish targets, others align with English, and several occupy intermediate acoustic spaces. Based on these patterns, the study proposes two phonetically based corpora—Phonetically Adapted Anglicisms (PAA) and Phonetically Non-Adapted Anglicisms (PNAA)—to capture the nature of Anglicisms in this contact setting. This research offers an empirically grounded basis for cross-dialectal comparison and language contact studies from a phonetically based approach. Full article

This study is the first to scrutinize the rates of, and the lexical diversity in, adjective intensification in second language (L2) German. We additionally attend to the issue concerning whether sociodemographic variables (i.e., length of residence, age, and gender) and individual learner differences (i.e., L2 proficiency, intensity of exposure to the L2, and L2 socioaffect) can predict (a) the inter-individual variation in syntactic adjective intensification, and (b) the observed intra-individual variation based on a weighted measure of intensifier lexical diversity. We analyzed spoken data collected via virtual reality (VR) elicitation tasks from 40 learners of L2 German (first language [L1] English). We found that learners engaged in adjective intensification at similar rates as those reported in the literature, despite some cases of overshooting the target; learners also preferred markers of intensification consistent with the lexical choices of L1 German speakers. Sociodemographic variables did not predict different rates of adjective intensification; rather, individual learner differences such as those relating to L2 proficiency and L2 exposure correlated with more target-like use of intensifiers, though the correlations were weak. The diversity in adjective intensification was also only marginally related to demographic factors and individual learner differences. Our findings suggest that L2 learners indeed engage in similar intensification practices as do L1 speakers; however, systematically predicting more ‘successful’ adoption of target-like sociopragmatic norms among L2 learners remains challenging. Full article

Amidst increased global migration and the close geographic proximity of Poland and Ireland, there exists a significant number of Polish speaking families in Ireland today. This study examines family language policy (FLP) within Polish transnational families in Ireland and addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the influence of forces outside of the family domain on children’s language socialisation and FLP negotiation. These forces include children’s peer groups, school, and societal dominance of English in Irish society. Data were gathered through a combination of a focus group with parents, semi-structured interviews with parents and children, and children’s reflective language diary entries. The findings reveal that, over time, Polish speaking children’s engagement with education, society, and their peers contributes to their English language socialisation. We argue that family members demonstrate an acute awareness of children being socialised into English language use and, as a result, engage in FLP negotiation and language use adaptation within the home. This study demonstrates the significance of the wider sociolinguistic context within which the families are situated, and highlights the influence of multiple forces, outside of the home, on FLP formation and negotiation within the home. Full article

The adverb anymore is standardly a negative polarity item (NPI), which must be licensed by triggers of non-positive polarity. Some Englishes also allow anymore in positive-polarity clauses. Linguists have posited that this non-polarity anymore (NPAM) carries a feature of negative affect. However, this claim is based on elicited judgments, and linguists have argued that respondents cannot reliably evaluate NPAM via conscious judgment. To solve this problem, we employ sentiment analysis to examine the relationship between NPAM and negative affect in a Twitter corpus. Using two complementary sentiment analytic frameworks, we demonstrate that words occurring with NPAM have lower valence, higher arousal, and lower dominance than words occurring with NPI-anymore. Broadly, this confirms NPAM’s association with negative affect in natural-language productions. We additionally identify inter- and intra-regional differences in affective dimensions, as well as variability across different types of NPI trigger, showing that the relationship between negative affect and NPAM is not monolithic dialectally, syntactically, or semantically. The project demonstrates the utility of sentiment analysis for examining emotional characteristics of low-frequency variables, providing a new tool for dialectology, micro-syntax, and variationist sociolinguistics. Full article

Despite its demographic relevance, Spanish as an Immigrant Minority Language (IML) remains understudied in Europe. In Brussels, approximately 46,500 residents have Hispanic heritage, but their linguistic practices have largely remained unexplored in sociolinguistic research. This paper presents a pilot study on the language practices of the Hispanic communities in the city in order to assess language maintenance and vitality. Through an online survey among 125 adults with Hispanic heritage in Brussels, primarily first-generation immigrants, a highly multilingual sample was revealed, with most participants competent in at least four languages. While Spanish usage declines across generations, language competence remains high, with 60% of third-generation speakers still considering it one of their dominant languages. Findings challenge traditional minority–majority language maintenance perspectives, advocating for a multilingual approach to linguistic vitality. Patterns of language transmission, home language use, and integration highlight the communities’ adaptability while maintaining a connection to Spanish. Results point to unexplored sociolinguistic phenomena within the language minority, underscoring the need for further research on the Hispanic communities in Brussels. Full article

Anti-immigrant rhetoric has intensified under the Trump 2025 administration, reinforcing linguistic discrimination and fostering a climate of fear for Spanish speakers in public spaces. In this essay, I examine the linguistic and historical relevance of Spanish in the U.S., the consequences of linguistic profiling on minority language speakers, and the implications of the 2025 executive order designating English as the official language. I argue that such policies erode linguistic rights and deepen social inequalities. Additionally, I consider the role of schools and churches, which are critical spaces for language preservation and cultural expression and are being increasingly threatened by immigration enforcement. In advocating for sociolinguistic justice, this essay calls for policies that recognize and protect the linguistic rights of Spanish and other minority language speakers, framing multilingualism as a societal strength rather than a threat. Full article