Volume 2008, Issue 189

Working assumptions about what constitutes authenticity in language are crucially informed by prevailing notions of continuity and change. This preoccupation is central to questions of identity for language speakers. It is also central to the discipline of linguistics. Our experience of working alongside community members on language projects has raised our awareness of the degree of disjunction between ideas of authenticity commonly assumed within linguistics and the ideas we encounter within speech communities. In this article, we investigate types of continuity embraced by different stakeholders in language and language development. We trace the continuity narratives in two different language situations, identifying types of lineage, participant positions, and their relevance to notions of authenticity. We then examine the criteria for authenticity and lineage within linguistics, noting the disjunctions internal to the field, depending on the analyst's theoretical perspective, as well the disjunctions between lineages of authenticity as narrated within the discipline and those narrated in the wider community. Our aim is to develop a working model of language that recognizes and accommodates multiple narratives of authenticity, thereby better accommodating the full range of language and language research situations. This may in turn contribute to more productive collaborative relationships between communities and consultant linguists.

This article examines a recent shift in the choice between two singular forms of first person pronoun in Indonesian, namely, aku and saya . More specifically, it seeks to explain motivating factors behind the recent tendency to use aku in public where it was previously considered unacceptable. By contrasting two temporally disjunctive public renditions of this pronoun, the article demonstrates not only that these renditions invite two different interpretations, but also more importantly, that the social expectation associated with aku is shifting. It is argued that theoretical constructs such as intimacy and formality, when viewed as opposing concepts, are inadequate for explaining the choice between the pronouns. The recent use of aku by celebrities in television interviews suggests that a pronoun conventionally associated with intimacy and informality can also be used strategically to assert individuality; moreover, while celebrities are a modern social phenomenon, variation in their pronominal choice is not explicable solely by an appeal to modernity. The article proposes that the recent shift to aku and the variation between aku and saya can be sufficiently explicated by considering these pronouns as linguistic representations of personal and social self-categorizations, respectively.

The study examines attitudes of young tertiary educated Indonesians toward words borrowed from English (and formerly Dutch), referred to here as western loanwords (WLWs). Respondents' attitudes were investigated using both a matched guise instrument and overt questionnaire items. The matched guise instrument suggested a dislike of western loanwords, whereas the questionnaire items indicated strongly favorable attitudes to them. The latter measure of attitudes appears to be the more valid, and it is concluded that young highly educated speakers have a strong liking and acceptance of WLWs. As for factors affecting attitudes to WLWs, a good knowledge of these words was conducive to more favorable attitudes toward them. Two other factors, a liking for the donor language (English) and an absence of a strong liking for the receptor language (Indonesian), also appeared to incline people to regard loanwords more favorably. Lastly, it is concluded that the matched guise technique may be unsuitable as a tool for probing attitudes to purely lexical variation within a single speech variety.

This article examines the use of indigenous languages in Cameroon and the attitudes of their native speakers to these languages. The subjects are a group of highly literate young male and female Cameroonians doing Combined French–English studies at the University of Yaounde I. The data collected are responses to a 36-item questionnaire devised to check the contexts of use of these languages. The analysis reveals, among other things, that some use of the indigenous languages is reported in the home setting and that these languages are hardly used in the domains of education and the media, especially TV and newspapers. Although these youths are themselves illiterate in their mother tongues, they are prepared to encourage their children to learn their ancestral languages and, if they happen to be rich, they would not hesitate to finance the development of these ancestral languages.

Our comparison of French immigrants in the United States and American immigrants in France (based on extensive fieldwork in each case) first reveals similarities regarding their motives for emigration, demographic and sociocultural characteristics, and contacts with the homeland. However, some marked differences also emerge on closer examination, particularly in the area of language behavior, analyzed here in terms of family bilingualism. In an attempt to account for those differences, we systematically review a number of potential factors of language maintenance ranging from national context to family dynamics and the status of each of the two languages concerned. After a detailed presentation of our findings, we end with considerations on the emerging study of atypical immigrants (or “fortunate immigrants,” as we call them here) in the age of globalization.

The present study investigates how languages are used in interlingual families, where two or more languages are involved. In analyzing data collected from two different groups of interlingual families, Japanese-Filipino (J-Fi) and Japanese-English (J-E) families, some intriguing group differences are found: the J-Fi families use the societal language much more than the J-E families do; and the J-Fi families employ, either exclusively or complementarily, one or more languages not native to either of the parents (Lα), while none of the J-E families do. The analysis also found a significant group difference in assessing the general Japanese perception of bilingualism in their own native languages and in their bilingual child rearing. In line with the author's previous findings, the present findings suggest that how languages are used in interlingual families could be language sensitive, interrelating with the perceived prestige and possible merits of proficiency in a given language.

This article presents the research findings from a cross-cultural comparison of apology strategies written in English by two groups of college students. The study analyzed the e-mail correspondences for class absences from students to professors in two undergraduate classes, a technology class and a Chinese language class. It was found that the cultural background of the students and the course attendance policies were two major factors that caused different apology strategies. The differences are attributed to the different perceptions of social distance, politeness, severity of offense, and obligation for apology. It may be concluded that, although expressed in English and in the same given situation, the data present a great difference in the choice of apology strategies due to sociopragmatic and cultural interventions.