Journal of English Linguistics recent issues

Language and Vulnerable Witnesses across Legal Contexts: Introduction to the Special Issue

Luchjenbroers, J., Aldridge, M. — 2008-08-06

You Might Win the Battle but Lose the War: Multimodal, Interactive, and Extralinguistic Aspects of Witness Resistance

Matoesian, G. M. — 2008-08-06

In this study, the author considers several limitations in current research in the field of legal discourse: a static rather than interactive view of language, a focus on questioners/attorneys over answerers/witnesses, and a concern with verbal resources instead of an integration of verbal and visual or multimodal communicative practices (e.g., gaze, facial expression, body alignment, and realignment). Analyzing an excerpt from a crucial witness in a rape trial, the author considers the neglected role of multimodal and interactive legal discourse and how the witness implements numerous discursive and extralinguistic resources for manipulating, negotiating, and resisting the putative asymmetry of the trial speech exchange system. In the process the author provides a glimpse of not just intricate laminations of participation, but dynamic laminations of power as both attorney and witness negotiate epistemological relations and co-construct identity in the rape trial.

"Did They Really Say That?": The Women of Wenatchee: Vulnerability, Confessions, and Linguistic Analysis

Stygall, G. — 2008-08-06

This article analyzes the vulnerabilities of certain women in custodial interrogations in the United States through legal, linguistic, and discourse analysis. At special risk are the impoverished or working class, the ill educated or illiterate, those with disabilities, or those who are nonnative speakers of English. Placing custodial interrogation into its U.S. legal setting, the study examines linguistic and discourse aspects of Miranda-related decisions and confessions. Drawing on data from the 1990s "Wenatchee Sex Ring" investigation and trials, the study examines the language of four women arrested and prosecuted in the Wenatchee cases. The analysis addresses discourse-level aspects of the data, including topic management and threats during the interrogation; the production of narratives as well as statements of location, result, and duration; and the sexual language used in the confessions. The article concludes that discourse analysis may provide an additional check on rogue interrogations of vulnerable people and once again calls for consistent recording of custodial interrogations in the United States.

"Which Way?": Difficult Options for Vulnerable Witnesses in Australian Aboriginal Land Claim and Native Title Cases

Walsh, M. — 2008-08-06

For thirty years, Australian Aboriginal witnesses have been subjected to varying degrees of oppression in land claim and native title cases. Each legal arena requires Aboriginal witnesses to demonstrate their traditional connections to Aboriginal land. Some witnesses appear reticent or even inarticulate, despite their actual, considerable knowledge of Aboriginal traditions. However, there are also highly acculturated Aboriginal witnesses; ironically, such witnesses may be criticized by opposing counsel essentially for their Anglo-Australian cultural literacy, so that such witnesses will be depicted as not, or less, "traditional" than their less acculturated counterparts and, therefore, have their status as Aboriginal traditional owners of land discounted—or at least questioned. For these vulnerable witnesses, there is a Catch-22 cleavage: if you are articulate, you appear less traditional; if you are inarticulate, you may appear traditional, but it is difficult for the tribunal to assess your claim to traditional ownership of land.

Vulnerable Witnesses and Problems of Portrayal: A Consideration of Videotaped Police Interviews in Child Rape Cases

Aldridge, M., Luchjenbroers, J. — 2008-08-06

Through an analysis of a videotaped police interview with a child witness in an alleged rape case, we use conceptual frames and narrative analysis to illustrate how perceptions of co-conspirator and guilt are naively cultivated by (1) the child's relative inability to appropriately structure narrative responses to the police officer's questions and (2) the police officer's lack of attention to the cultural associations embedded in questions asked that draw on the rape myth. These observations illustrate that the videotaped police interview should not serve as both (1) police-produced information for the Crown prosecutors and (2) the witness's evidence-in-chief to be shown in court. Our analysis suggests that a great deal of damage can be done in an interview with a vulnerable witness due to the absence, criticized in earlier work, of lawyer direction, and that a child's testimony is weakened by the jury watching this video as the witness's evidence-in-chief.

Editors' Note

Curzan, A., Queen, R. — 2008-05-12

A Dialect Turned Inside Out: Migration and the Appalachian Diaspora

Hazen, K., Hamilton, S. — 2008-05-12

Migration to economically more prosperous areas has been an attractive choice for many Appalachians. This paper traces the effects of migration on language variation within one Appalachian family. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of phonological, morphological, and lexical variables, we draw distinctions between family members who remained in West Virginia and those who migrated to Ohio and Michigan. The data come from interviews with nine members of one southern West Virginia family. Aside from migration status, education is the most influential factor in language variation patterns for migrant and non-migrant speakers. Our findings indicate that Appalachian migrants negotiate their sociolinguistic identities by drawing on the norms both of their family members and of their adopted homes. This phenomenon is not isolated to one family; economic conditions have fostered the introduction of external sociolinguistic norms into Appalachian communities for at least seventy years.

Regional Phonetic Differentiation in Standard Canadian English

Boberg, C. — 2008-05-12

Taking as a point of departure the preliminary view of regional phonetic differentiation in Canadian English developed by the Atlas of North American English, this article presents data from a new acoustic-phonetic study of regional variation in Canadian English carried out by the author at McGill University. While the Atlas analyzes mostly spontaneous speech data from thirty-three speakers covering a broad social range, the present study analyzes word list data from a larger number of speakers (eighty-six) drawn from a narrower social range, comprising young, university-educated speakers of Standard Canadian English from all across the country. The new data set permits a more detailed view of regional variation within Canada than was possible in the Atlas, which focuses on differentiating Canadian from neighboring varieties of American English. This view adds detail to the established account in some respects, while suggesting a revised regional taxonomy of Canadian English in others. In particular, this article reports on several phonetic isoglosses that divide Canada's Prairie region from Ontario, thereby splitting the "Inland Canada" region of the Atlas into western and eastern halves. In fact, the data presented here suggest a division of Standard Canadian English into six regions at the phonetic level, rather than the three proposed by the Atlas: British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec (Montreal), the Maritimes, and Newfoundland. This taxonomy corresponds to the six major regions identified in the study of lexical data reported in Boberg (2005b).

Imperfectivity and Transience: The Two Sides of the Progressive Aspect in Simultaneity as- and while-clauses

Broccias, C. — 2008-05-12

Recent research into simultaneity as- and while-clauses has shown that they tend to be used differently. As-clauses usually code events with a high degree of susceptibility to change, whereas while-clauses tend to evoke more stable temporal configurations. Following this insight, the present article studies the interaction between the progressive aspect and as- and while-clauses. It is claimed that the progressive aspect in as-clauses is prototypically used as a slowing-down/stretching device (i.e., an imperfectivization mechanism). It is used to establish an aspectual contrast between a prolonged as-event and a (relatively) punctual main event. By contrast, progressive while -clauses seem to behave more similarly to main clauses. The progressive is primarily used as a transience marker, that is, to signal that the (relatively) stable event coded by a while-clause is a temporary state.

Book Review: Methods in Historical Pragmatics. By Susan M. Fitzmaurice & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007. vi + 313. ISBN 978-3-11-019041-0

Grund, P. — 2008-05-12

African American English: Connecting Linguistics' Message with a Mission

Queen, R., Baptista, M. — 2008-05-12

Editors' Note

Curzan, A., Queen, R. — 2008-02-11

Fleeing, Sneaking, Flooding: A Corpus Analysis of Discursive Constructions of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press, 1996-2005

Gabrielatos, C., Baker, P. — 2008-02-11

This paper examines the discursive construction of refugees and asylum seekers (and to a lesser extent immigrants and migrants) in a 140-million-word corpus of UK press articles published between 1996 and 2005. Taking a corpus-based approach, the data were analyzed not only as a whole, but also with regard to synchronic variation, by carrying out concordance analyses of keywords which occurred within tabloid and broad-sheet newspapers, and diachronic change, albeit mainly approached from an unusual angle, by investigating consistent collocates and frequencies of specific terms over time. The analyses point to a number of (mainly negative) categories of representation, the existence and development of nonsensical terms (e.g., illegal refugee), and media confusion and conflation of definitions of the four terms under examination. The paper concludes by critically discussing the extent to which a corpus-based methodological stance can inform critical discourse analysis.¹

A Corpus Analysis of (The) Last/Next + Temporal Nouns

WonHo Yoo, I. — 2008-02-11

Many reference grammars cover the use of last and next, but none pays overt attention to when and why those words combine with ø or the before temporal nouns; for example, (a) I came to Boston ølast year and (b) I've been in Boston for the last year. Based on three theoretical notions of predicated time, extensivity, and the null article, and a corpus analysis of the tokens of (the) last/next from the Brown Corpus, the 1996 LA Times Corpus, and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, this article presents a detailed account of when the determiners last and next combine with null or the; why last/next followed by singular temporal nouns occur with null, as in (a), or with the, as in (b); and why only singular temporal nouns, but not plural temporal nouns or non-temporal nouns, can combine with null + last/next.

The Normative North and the Stigmatized South: Ideology and Methodology in the Perceptual Dialectology of California

Bucholtz, M., Bermudez, N., Fung, V., Vargas, R., Edwards, L. — 2008-02-11

As part of a larger perceptual dialectology study of linguistic diversity within California, this article focuses on a survey of Californians regarding the evaluation of language use within the state. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of two open-ended survey questions regarding where Californians "speak the best" and "speak the worst" reveals that Southern California is stigmatized by a majority of respondents as having the worst speech within the state and Northern California is valorized as having the best speech, due to the perceived differential access of speakers to educational opportunities. A small but socially significant "political correctness effect" also emerges, whereby some respondents indicate reluctance to evaluate others' linguistic varieties. The findings demonstrate both the need for greater attentiveness to ideological issues in research design and the importance of combining different theoretical and methodological traditions in the study of language ideologies and attitudes.

Book Review: Brinton, Laurel J., and Arnovick, Leslie K. (2006). The English Language: A Linguistic History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

Dollinger, S. — 2008-02-11

Contrast in Language and Linguistics

Bauer, L. — 2008-02-11

Editors' Note

Curzan, A., Queen, R. — 2007-11-21

The Grammaticalization of Small Size Nouns: Reconsidering Frequency and Analogy

Brems, L. — 2007-11-21

This article discusses the grammaticalized status of low-frequency small size nouns (henceforth SSNs), such as jot of, scrap of, and flicker of, which cannot have engaged in the spiral routinization processes with attrition, decategorialization, and grammatical reanalysis characteristic of "default" grammaticalization. The proposal to account for the grammatical status of low-frequency complex prepositions in terms of grammaticalization by analogy is partially rejected. Corpus studies on nine SSNs show that mere analogy with one highly schematic construction, a+SSN+of, as instantiated by frequent a bit of, cannot be the sole factor involved in the grammaticalization of infrequent SSNs. Instead, more complex analogies with different quantifier models are involved which incorporate polarity sensitivity, similar to some and any, and which seem to serve as distant models in these analogies. However, in contrast to some and any, which can be used generally in quantifying contexts, the infrequent SSNs are further characterized by specific collocational and pragmatic values, and their appearance seems restricted to particular discourse contexts. More generally, the present article supports the claim that grammaticalization as such directly works on and results in (at least partially) substantive constructions, rather than schematic ones. It furthermore makes a claim for caution in describing what serves as a source for analogical extension, both in terms of describing all of the factors that come into play and deciding on the specific level of schematicity at which these need to be described.

Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Perceptual Dialectology of California

Bucholtz, M., Bermudez, N., Fung, V., Edwards, L., Vargas, R. — 2007-11-21

This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California's most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse sociolinguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).

Interview with Elizabeth Closs Traugott

Schwenter, S. A. — 2007-11-21

Book Review: A History of the English Language. Edited by Richard M. Hogg and David Denison. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiii + 478, index. ISBN: 0-521-66227-3

Moore, C. — 2007-11-21

Book Review: An Introduction to Language & Linguistics: Breaking the Language Spell. By Christopher J. Hall. London: Continuum, 2005. 344 pages. ISBN: 0826487343

Babcock, R. — 2007-11-21

Book Review: British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns. By John Algeo. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 939 pages. ISBN: 0-521-37137-6

Moon, R. — 2007-11-21

Perspectives on the Academic Job Search

Queen, R., Curzan, A. — 2007-11-21