Language naming systems are local ways of organising diversity, yet the language names used by linguists are sometimes incommensurable with the lived social reality of speakers. The process of assigning language names is not neutral, trivial or objective: it is a highly political process driven and shaped by understandings of group identity,…

This paper examines the ways in which the indexical meanings that attach to enregistered speaking styles are debated and contested in interaction by younger Japanese adults. Contested meanings include discourses of so-called "hyoojungo" 'Standard Japanese' and the speaking styles that are collectively described as 'Okinawan dialect',…

The present article introduces the Special Issue entitled "A Variational Pragmatic Approach to Regional Variation in Language," a collection of papers which celebrates the work of Klaus P. Schneider (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany) on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

In this article, I explore how language revitalization initiatives are rescaled as part of a local, historical and sociocultural revitalization project in which ethnonationalist aspirations emerge in Northeastern Italy's Veneto region. Through an analysis of political emblems, textual artifacts, and speech participants' stories, I examine how the…

The Gaelic language in Scotland presents a useful case study for the conceptualisation of minority languages. A key issue has been the extent to which Gaelic is understood as belonging to a discrete minority within Scotland and a bounded territory in the northwest of the country, or as a national language of significance to all of Scotland. Using…

The case study of the article is translanguaging as an educational strategy in preparation for the graduation exam in Romanian language and literature in a Hungarian school in Miercurea Ciuc/Csíkszereda, Romania. Romanian language competence scores are at the bottom of national rankings in this Hungarian-majority town in Szeklerland. Students who…

In this field note we discuss findings from pilot research on a variety of heritage German spoken in the Northeastern Province of Misiones of Argentina. Based on sociolinguistic field interviews with 25 consultants possessing varying degrees of proficiency in the language, we show that this variant of heritage German does in fact occasionally…

Lombard is one of the 12-15 non-recognized regional languages spoken in Italy. This article focuses on the new speakers of Lombard, i. e. people who have learned or are learning Lombard as a second language. Through an open questionnaire the author has probed into various aspects concerning these new speakers' competence and learning trajectories,…

Drawing on an ethnography in regional employment offices in a French-German canton in Switzerland, it is the aim of this article to articulate the complexities involved in the practices revolving around and geared towards the role of language competences in the process of professional reintegration, particularly so with regards to migrants who…

Descriptions of regional pragmatic variation in French are lacking to date the focus has been on a limited range of speech acts, including apologies, requests, compliments and responses to compliments. The present paper, a systematic analysis of invitation refusals across regional varieties of French, is designed to add to the research on…

This article examines the current situation of regional language bilingual primary education in Alsace and contends that the regional language presents a special case in the context of France. The language comprises two varieties: Alsatian, which traditionally has been widely spoken, and Standard German, used as the language of reference and…

From the early twentieth century to the present day, Transcarpathia has belonged to several states: the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and finally to Ukraine. The status of what counts as a minority and a majority language has changed each time the state affiliation has been changed. Based on…

This paper explores the role of mediated intergroup contact in improving intergroup attitudes between Italian speakers and German speakers in South Tyrol, Italy. Specifically, we examine how German-language television consumption affects attitudes towards the German-speaking group among Italian- speaking youth. The data ("N" = 229) were…

The thoughts on a language history within a European context sketched out here represent an attempt to extend the concepts of regional and particularly national language history by adding a third dimension: transnational language history in Europe. After a few general thoughts on the extended area of research, in which so-called external language…

Subjective and objective language data collected in a research project on language variation in north Germany not only reveal information on current linguistic trends in north Germany; they also show how language change in this region is represented in the consciousness of the speakers themselves and described in comments by them. This diachronic…