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Despite being an official language of several countries in Central and Western Europe, German is not formally recognised as the official language of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, in certain situations the use of the German language, including the spelling rules, is subject to state regulation (by acts of Federal Parliament orby administrative decisions). This article presents the content of this regulation, its scope, and the historical context in which it was adopted.
This paper discusses contemporary societal roles of German in the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania). Speaker and learner statistics and a summary of sociolinguistic research (Linguistic Landscapes, language learning motivation, language policies, international roles of languages) suggest that German has by far fewer speakers and functions than the national languages, English, and Russian, and it is not a dominant language in the contemporary Baltics anymore. However, German is ahead of ‘any other language’ in terms of users and societal roles as a frequent language in education, of economic relations, as a historical lingua franca, and a language of traditional and new minorities. Highly diverse groups of users and language policy actors form a ‘coalition of interested parties’ which creates niches which guarantee German a frequent use. In the light of the abundance of its functions, the paper suggests the concept ‘additional language of society’ for a variety such as German in the Baltics – since there seems to be no adequate alternative labelling which would do justice to all societal roles. The paper argues that this concept may also be used for languages in similar societal situations and, not least, be useful in language marketing and the promotion of multilingualism.
Sexual harassment severely impacts the educational system in the West African country Benin and the progress of women in this society that is characterized by great gender inequality. Knowledge of the belief systems rooting in the sociocultural context is crucial to the understanding of sexual harassment. However, no study has yet investigated how sexual harassment is related to fundamental beliefs in Benin or West African countries. We conducted a field study on 265 female and male students from several high schools in Benin to investigate the link between sexual harassment and measures of ambivalent sexism, gender identity, and rape myth acceptance. Almost half of the sample reported having experienced sexual harassment personally or among peers. Levels of sexism and rape myth acceptance were very high compared to other studies. These attitudes appeared to converge in a sexist belief system that was linked to personal experiences, the perceived probability of experiencing and fear of sexual harassment. Results suggest that sexual harassment is a societal problem and that interventions need to address fundamental attitudes held in societies low in gender equality.
Rules of behavior are fundamental to human sociality. Whether on the road, at the dinner table, or during a game, people monitor one another’s behavior for conformity to rules and may take action to rectify violations. In this study, we examine two ways in which rules are enforced during games: instructions and reminders. Building on prior research, we identify instructions as actions produced to rectify violations based on another’s lack of knowledge of the relevant rule; knowledge that the instruction is designed to impart. In contrast to this, the actions we refer to as reminders are designed to enforce rules presupposing the transgressor’s competence and treating the violation as the result of forgetfulness or oversight. We show that instructing and reminding actions differ in turn design, sequential development, the epistemic stances taken by transgressors and enforcers, and in how the action affects the progressivity of the interaction. Data are in German and Italian from the Parallel European Corpus of Informal Interaction (PECII).
There has been a long-standing interest in projection and the resources on which participants rely to produce and recognize the import and organization of turns at talk. Less attention has been paid to the character of the activity in which utterances form part and the ways in which embodied action enables the intelligibility, coordination, and in some cases, coproduction, of particular actions. In this article, we focus on specialized forms of embodied, institutional activity and focus in particular on simultaneity and the ways in which bodily action enables the progressive formation and reformation of an activity in the light of the (co)participants’ emerging contributions. We address how the routine structure of particular tasks enables participants to anticipate, prepare for, and even initiate actions in advance of the relevant activity and in turn, how participants may seek to ameliorate the interactional import of potentially premature action. The articles explores the interplay of technical practice and interactional organization and points to the distinctive character of embodied action in understanding anticipation and coordination in complex forms of institutional interaction.
The human ability to anticipate upcoming behavior not only enables smooth turn transitions but also makes early responses possible, as respondents use a variety of cues that provide for early projection of the type of action that is being performed. This article examines resources for projection in interaction in three unrelated languages—Finnish, Japanese, and Mandarin—in sequences where speakers make evaluative assertions on a topic. The focus is on independently agreeing responses initiated in early overlap. Our cross-linguistic analysis reveals that while projection based on the ongoing turn-constructional unit relies on language-specific grammatical constructions, projection based on the larger context seems to be less language-dependent. A crucial finding is that in the target sequences, stances taken toward the topic already during earlier talk, as well as other structural patterns, are among the resources that recipients use for projecting how and when the ongoing turn will end.
This article explores the relation between word order and response latency, focusing on responses to question-word questions. Qualitative (multimodal) and quantitative analyses of naturally occurring conversations in French—where question-words can occur in initial, medial, or final position within the question—show that variation in word order affects the timing of responses. It is argued that this is so because word order provides a differential basis for action ascription, creating different temporal opportunities for projecting the recipient’s next relevant action. The frequent occurrence of early responses to questions with an initial question-word, in particular, stresses the importance of the recognition point of an action under way for response timing and shows respondents’ pervasive orientation to sequential progressivity. Findings highlight how lexico-syntactic trajectories of emergent turns, prior talk and actions, material and bodily features of interaction, and participants’ shared expectations conspire in shaping the time-courses of action ascription and action projection.
This study examines head nods produced as embodied and silent answers to polar questions before a transition relevance place has been reached. It discusses the notion of “response” and the ways in which the literature conceptualizes head nods. The analysis of video recordings of ordinary and institutional multiparty interactions shows that answer-nods rely on mutual gaze and that affirmative head nods may co-occur with other facial expressions (e.g., eye blinks). By replying with a silent head nod, respondents may complete an unfolding adjacency pair without claiming speakership, thereby enabling the questioner to extend their turn-in-progress. Alternatively, respondents may expand their answer-nod with talk, in which case silent nodding may contribute to organizing the smooth transition of turns-at-talk. Head nods produced while a question is unfolding are described as a microsequential phenomenon that may affect the questioner’s turn-in-progress. Data are in French and Italian.
Focusing on request sequences, this article explores dynamics of projection and anticipation, enabling participants to produce early responses to requests. In particular, the analyses highlight the importance of multimodal formatting and the specific temporalities of multiple multimodal resources for the emergence of projections and the possibility to anticipate an ongoing action. Moreover, the analyses pinpoint the relevance of the local ecology and the praxeological context for the participants, enabling them to anticipate the next relevant action. These features characterizing the temporality of multimodal Gestalts, the relevance of the local ecology, and the details of the praxeological context make it possible for participants to produce very early responses and also to accomplish an action even before it has been actually requested.
This special issue investigates early responses—responsive actions that (start to) unfold while the production of the responded-to turn and action is still under way. Although timing in human conduct has gained intense interest in research, the early production of responsive actions has so far largely remained unexplored. But what makes early responses possible? What do such responses tell us about the complex interplay between syntax, prosody, and embodied conduct? And what sorts of actions do participants accomplish by means of such early responses? By addressing these questions, the special issue seeks to offer new advances in the systematic analysis of temporal organization in interaction, contributing to broader discussions in the language and cognitive sciences as to the social coordination of human conduct.