Peter Auer – författare

Code Switching, the alternating use of two or more languages ation, has become an increasingly topical and important field of research.Now available in paperback, Code-Switching in Conversation brings together contributions from a wide variety of sociolinguistics settings in which the phenomenon is observed. It addresses not only the structure and the function, but also the ideological values of such bilingual behaviour. The contributors question many views of code switching on the empirical basis of many European and non European contexts. By bringing together linguistics, anthropological and socio-psychological research, they move towards a more realistic conception of bilingual conversation action.

Code Switching, the alternating use of two or more languages ation, has become an increasingly topical and important field of research.Now available in paperback, Code-Switching in Conversation brings together contributions from a wide variety of sociolinguistics settings in which the phenomenon is observed. It addresses not only the structure and the function, but also the ideological values of such bilingual behaviour. The contributors question many views of code switching on the empirical basis of many European and non European contexts. By bringing together linguistics, anthropological and socio-psychological research, they move towards a more realistic conception of bilingual conversation action.

This volume presents an interactional perspective on linguistic variability that takes into account the construction of social identities through the formation of social communicative styles. It shows that style is a useful category in bridging the gap between single parameter variation and social identity. Social positioning, i.e., finding one''s place in society, is one of its motivating forces.

Various aspects of the expression of stylistic features are focused on, from language choice and linguistic variation in a narrow sense to practices of social categorization, pragmatics patterns, preferences for specific communicative genres, rhetorical practices including prosodic features, and aesthetic choices and preferences for specific forms of taste (looks, clothes, music, etc.). These various features of expression are connected to multimodal stylistic indices through talk; thus, styles emerge from discourse. Styles are adapted to changing contexts, and develop in the course of social processes.

The analytical perspective chosen proposes an alternative to current approaches to variability under the influence of the so-called variationist paradigm.

This volume is an up-to-date, concise introduction to bilingualism and multilingualism in schools, in the workplace, and in international institutions in a globalized world. The authors use a problem-solving approach and ask broad questions about bilingualism and multilingualism in society, including the question of language acquisition versus maintenance of bilingualism.

Key features:

The dimensions of time and space fundamentally cause and shape the variability of all human language. To reduce investigation of this insight to manageable proportions, researchers have traditionally concentrated on the “deepest” dialects. But it is increasingly apparent that, although most people still speak with a distinct regional coloring, the new mobility of speakers in recently industrialized and postindustrial societies and the efflorescence of communication technologies cannot be ignored. This has given rise to a reconsideration of the relationship between geographical place and cultural space, and the fundamental link between language and a spatially bounded territory.

Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation seeks to take full account of these developments in a comprehensive, theoretically rich way. The introductory volume examines the concept of space and linguistic approaches to it, the structure and dynamics of language spaces, and relevant research methods. A second volume offers the first thorough exploration of the interplay between linguistic investigation and cartography, and subsequent volumes uniformly document the state of research into the spatial dimension of particular language groupings.

Key features:

This volume embarks on an exploration of the processual and dynamic character of grammatical constructions in emergence, both from an ‘emergent’ and an ‘emerging’ perspective. ‘Emerging’ constructions develop out of their discourse contexts. Talking of emerging constructions is compatible with a view of grammar as a stable system of rules and structures which may ‘emerge’ (i.e., come into existence) out of a pool of previously unordered elements. ‘Emergent’ constructions on the contrary are due to the on-line production of grammar in time. The term ‘emergent’ emphasises the fact that a grammatical structure is always temporary and ephemeral. In both senses, grammar is modelled as a highly adaptive resource for interaction.

On the basis of empirical studies on spoken English, German, Hebrew, Swedish and French, the volume addresses the following questions: How can what initially appears to be construction x end up being construction y in on-line syntax? What are the local interactional needs which such processes respond to in the process of their emergence? Does the on-line (re-)modelling of a construction concern its syntactic or semantic side ‑ or both? And finally: Should emergent grammatical structures as they unfold in real time be seen as stages in the emerging of grammar?

This book brings together three perspectives on language and space that are quite well-researched within themselves, but which so far are lacking productive interconnections. Specifically, the book aims to interconnect the following research areas:

The contributions in this book cover geographical language variation within and across languages, language use in stationary and mobile interactional spaces, computer-mediated communication, and spatial reasoning across languages. This range of issues showcases the thematic and methodological breadth of research on language and space. In order to identify interconnections, the respective contributions are accompanied by commentaries that highlight common threads.