Volume 29, Issue 2

This paper aims to reveal mechanisms of language maintenance and shift in the rural post-colonial multilingual island community of Palau in the Western Pacific, using social networks as an explanatory framework. I explore the usefulness of social networks from three perspectives, investigating whether and how social networks can explain changes in the use of former colonial languages in a post-colonial community; the functions of strong and weak ties in a multilingual community; and the social characteristics of communities in which social network as an analytical tool may have an explanatory force. Methodological and theoretical issues involved with the concept of social network are also scrutinised. With some cautions about the limits to the explanations made possible by network analysis, I conclude that the social network is indeed a valuable and important social variable in sociolinguistic investigations, alongside other factors, such as sex and identity.

The widespread use of cell phones has led to the proliferation of messages sent using the Short Messaging Service (SMS). The 160-character limit on text messages encourages the use of shortenings and other shortcuts in language use. When bilingual speakers use SMS, their access to multiple sources of vocabulary, sentence structure, and other language devices would appear to provide additional resources for addressing the character limits imposed on SMS, perhaps by increasing the available pool of short phrases and words. In two studies, the benefits of having multiple languages to draw on during text messaging was evaluated. Study 1 was an archival study in which a corpus of text messages from English–Spanish speakers was analyzed for message length. The results showed that individual messages involving code switching were longer than messages written in only one language. Study 2 was an experimental study in which English–Spanish speakers and English-only speakers played a texting game devised to encourage efficiency in SMS communication. The results from the game revealed that messages from English–Spanish players were no shorter than messages from English-only players. Overall, the data from the two studies provide no evidence that bilingual users of SMS draw upon their multiple languages to increase communication efficiency. Language switching during SMS does not appear to be a means of dealing with character limits.

This study provides an empirical examination of how American learners of German accomplish the social action of requesting in L2 conversation, demonstrating how L2 learners use their linguistic and interactional resources to orient to preference structure in their talk. The data illustrate the sequential contingencies surrounding requests and their demonstrable impact on participants' interactional behavior. It is argued that it is insufficient to rely solely on an analysis of lexis and morpho-syntax as deployed by speakers within one turn to describe the sociopragmatic abilities of L2 learners. Furthermore, preference structure as it is revealed in L2 learner talk is discussed in the context of pragmatic transfer and considered as a meaningful concept to complement existing research on pragmatic regularities across languages.

The paper argues that ethnolinguistic vitality depends on four crucial social psychological factors: perceived strength differential, intergroup distance, utilitarianism and intergroup discordance. The influence of these factors on the vitality of subordinate and dominant groups is outlined. It is proposed that the vitality of both types of groups could be measured on the same scale. The low end of this scale indicates group members' disposition to dissociate themselves from the in-group's cultural values and practices. The high end indicates a perception of cultural distinctiveness, superiority, closedness and derogation of out-groups, i.e. high level of ethnocentrism. A theoretical model is proposed explicating how the interaction of vitality profiles of the dominant and subordinate groups leads to different acculturation orientations of subordinate groups (assimilation, integration, segregation, or marginalisation).