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Intro -- Address Variation in Sociocultural Context -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Theory behind address practices -- 1.1 Key concepts -- 1.1.1 Image -- 1.1.2 Common ground and closeness -- 1.1.3 Social distance -- 1.1.4 Power -- 1.1.5 Respect -- 1.1.6 Enhancing the interlocutor's image -- 1.1.7 Accommodation principle -- 1.1.8 Cultural context and situational context -- 1.1.9 Community of practice -- 1.2 Common practice -- 1.2.1 Competing practices in interactional contexts -- 1.2.2 Evolving practices in cultural changes -- 1.3 Practices as expression of identity -- 1.3.1 Personal and community preferences -- 1.3.2 Style and identity -- 1.3.3 Images, roles, and identity -- 1.4 An account of identity from sociocultural linguistics -- 1.4.1 Basic demographic level -- 1.4.2 Cultural and linguistic level -- 1.4.3 Situational and interactional level -- 1.5 Conclusions -- 2. Cultural and linguistic context of Italy -- 2.1 Regional cultures and identities -- 2.1.1 Development of Italian regional identities -- 2.1.2 What are Italian regions? -- 2.1.3 Some cultural models in post-war Italy -- 2.1.4 Macro-regions: North and south (and centre) -- 2.1.5 Italian regions in this study -- 2.2 Languages and dialects in Italy -- 2.2.1 Relationship between language and dialect in contemporary Italy -- 2.2.2 The case of the Sardinian language -- 2.2.3 Official data on reported dialect use -- 2.2.4 Regional varieties of Italian -- 2.2.5 Social prestige attached to varieties of Italian -- 2.3 Geography in studies on Italian address -- 2.3.1 Italy presented as one geographical area -- 2.3.2 Italy presented in macro-regions -- 2.3.3 Italy presented in smaller regions -- 2.3.4 Information about one geographical location -- 2.3.4.1 Survey-based studies.

This study looks at the sociocultural context of five Italian regions and at the situational context of restaurant encounters (a sub-type of service encounters) to examine address variation in spoken Italian—with a focus on singular address pronouns tu, voi and lei. It offers a thorough examination of distance and power dynamics between waiters and customers in a wide range of restaurant types. This book marks the introduction of Italian to the field of regional pragmatic variation and it will be of interest to linguists, Italianists and researchers more broadly working on service encounters. The author offers a new dimension to the understanding of social interaction and language use in contemporary Italy, uncovering cultural and linguistic differences between even adjacent geographical areas within a modern European nation state.

Political scientists have spent decades providing explanations for political support of policy proposals. On the one hand, individuals appear to concern themselves with the personal risks or benefits of a project; on the other, their appraisals appear to be more ideologically based, ultimately aligning with one's party. While many argue this is a product of an unknowing and uninterested public, simply swaying one direction and then the other, this research promotes a different stance: perceived psychological distance helps to explain variation in political attitude formation, accounting for which considerations an individual will turn to in one instance and which they will rely on in another when developing their stance of communicating the issues.This dissertation asks how perceived psychological distance relates to energy perceptions and political communication. According to the Construal Level Theory (CLT) of psychological distance, from social psychology, evaluations and behaviors differ based on the extent to which something is perceived as psychologically "proximate" or "distant" (Trope & Liberman 2010). Psychological distance has yet to be applied to political attitudes and communication and yet its utility is intuitive — 1) politicians strategically communicate to make issues more "proximate" or "distant" and 2) political perceptions and actions likely vary depending on the extent to which they are viewed as "proximate" or "distant." To investigate this question, this research maps psychological distance onto energy politics across two domains, public opinion and communication.The first study relies on a survey of residents along the proposed Keystone XL route. Half of the respondents are asked about their attitudes toward Keystone XL (the proximate issue) and half are asked about their attitudes toward offshore oil drilling (the distant issue). Each of the respondents is given objective information about the issues, with half of the sample also receiving a pro-development frame emphasizing the benefits of the project. Results indicate that distance serves to moderate attitudes, with those asked about the proximate issue exhibiting a significant framing effect compared to those asked about the distant issue who were unmoved by the frame. The second study assesses the extent to which online communications reflect the expectations of CLT. Analysis of over a million tweets related to Keystone XL finds little difference between how those living more proximate to the issue frame it compared to those living further away. In general, both appear to prefer concrete frames related to jobs, local economy, spills and environmental risk. Similarly, manual coding from the Linguistic Category Model (LCM) suggests the abstractness of the tweets also do not vary due to distance. However, the expectations from CLT do appear to apply to retweets. In this case, individuals more proximate to the pipeline were more likely to retweet concrete tweets and those further from the pipeline more likely to retweet abstract tweets. This suggests the persuasiveness of a tweet varies by distance. The final study applies CLT to political advocacy groups, arguing they should recognize differences in persuasiveness due to the location of the target audience and adjust their strategies accordingly. I identified local and national advocacy groups in favor of or opposed to the pipeline and analyzed their Twitter communications as well as the effectiveness of these communications. According to the results, local and national groups rely on a mix of frames in order to appeal to a broad section of the U.S. public (those living closer or further from the pipeline). However, this is less so the case for the pro-Keystone XL groups, likely due to the fact that they have fewer resource constraints and are therefore not as reliant on broad public support. The study also finds that in general these frames tend to be more concrete than abstract, contrary to the expectations of CLT. At the same time, the public appears to prefer concrete frames, retweeting these more often than abstract frames. This work examines the relationship between physical proximity and public opinion in order to better understand some of the previously unexplained variation in environmental public opinion. Together, the studies suggest that distance matters to public opinion and political communication, but the relationship is highly context dependent. In the media effects setting, distance moderates framing effects. Similarly, when exposed to online communications from elites, members of the public are more or less persuaded by these based on their geographic proximity to the policy issue. However, this is not similarly reflected other communication settings, such as political advocacy group activities and within network online communications. Thus, other facets of the political environment appear to influence the role of distance in public opinion and political communication. The messiness of politics requires additional investigation into when distance helps us account for political variability.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of contributors -- Epigraph -- Acknowledgements -- The coherence of linguistic communities: Orderly heterogeneity and social meaning -- Part I Theoretical perspectives in the study of coherence -- 1 False oppositions in the study of coherence -- 2 Coherence across social and temporal scales -- 3 Indexicality and coherence -- Part II Methodological advances in the study of coherence -- 4 What's in a lect? Coherence in phonetic and grammatical variation -- 5 Measuring change in lectal coherence across real- and apparent-time -- 6 Looking for covariation in heritage Italian in Toronto -- 7 Measuring distance-based coherence -- Part III Social dimensions of coherence -- 8 How social salience can illuminate the outcomes of linguistic contact: Data from Spanish in Boston -- 9 Mapping social and sociophonetic changes: Gender in Auckland English -- 10 Coherence and implicational hierarchies in the speech of the very old -- Part IV Perceptual approaches to the study of coherence -- 11 Not anything goes: On implicational coherence and the penalty for being incoherent -- 12 Coherent patterns in nonstandard inflection in modern colloquial Standard Dutch? -- 13 Coherence in a levelled variety: The case of Andalusian -- Part V Effects of standard language ideologies on coherence -- 14 Identifying language varieties: Coexisting standards in spoken Italian -- 15 Language change in real-time: 40 years of lectal coherence in the Central Bavarian dialect-standard constellation of Austria -- 16 Coherence and language contact: Orderly heterogeneity and social meaning in Namibian German -- Index.

In Şanlıurfa, Syrians and residents have a historical background and cultural similarities such as language and kinship. Nevertheless, the number of Syrian refugees is very high in the city and residents are distant to Syrians. Şanlıurfa case study aims to analyze the variation in social distance of residents toward Syrian refugees. This study argues that the number of migrants in a country (or in a neighborhood) is more important than cultural similarities when explaining social cohesion. In addition, based on multiple regression analysis, the study suggests that under such circumstance, there are mainly three determinants to explain variation in social distance, which are related to the perception and/or beliefs of Şanlıurfa residents, such as perceived crime and social disorder; their beliefs about Syrian refugees' personalities; and their linguistic (in)tolerance ( increase in criminality (perceived crime) and erosion in identity (and maybe norms, that is social disorder)).

This paper provides new evidence on how the presence of immigrant peers in the classroom affects native student achievement. The analysis is based on longitudinal administrative data on two cohorts of vocational training students in Italy's largest region. Vocational training institutions provide the ideal setting for studying these effects because they attract not only disproportionately high shares of immigrants but also the lowest ability native students. We adopt a value added model, and exploit within-school variation both within and across cohorts for identification. Our results show small negative average effects on maths test scores that are larger for low ability native students, strongly non-linear and only observable in classes with a high (top 20%) immigrant concentration. These outcomes are driven by classes with a high average linguistic distance between immigrants and natives, with no apparent additional role played by ethnic diversity.

Multiple-criteria or multiple-attribute group decision-making is a sub-field of operations research that seek to find a common and representative solution given the preferences elicited by a pre-defined group, over a set of alternatives and with respect to a set of coherent criteria (or attributes). Recently, the modelling of natural language in these processes has captured the attention of many researchers. Most of the evaluations in a group-decision making context are inherently imprecise, incomplete or vague, and therefore, experts feel more comfortable using their language rather than numerical values. The use of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets is one of the recent tools that enables the modelling of linguistic assessments in multiple-criteria decision-making. Nonetheless, advances in hesitant linguistic multi-attribute group decision making require the development of structures flexible enough to deal with unbalanced and multi-granular linguistic information. More tools are needed in order to really grasp the differences in the qualitative reasoning processes of each individual. This thesis, firstly, introduces a perceptual-based distance able to capture differences between unbalanced linguistic assessments, which is based on a lattice structure of hesitant fuzzy linguistic terms. Secondly, this distance is used to define a perceptual-based centroid or central opinion which, in turn, is used to define a consensus measure or degree of agreement within the group. Thirdly, with the aim to deal with multi-perceptual group decision-making contexts, where each decision maker has its own qualitative reasoning approach, a perceptual-based transformation function and a projected algebraic structure are defined. The developed tools can deal with different multi-granularity linguistic environments. Two applications are presented to demonstrate the utility, relevancy and feasibility of the methods. On the one hand, a specific perceptual-based classification and ranking method is introduced and applied to a real group decision making problem in an educational setting. This framework is used to classify and rank a set of secondary students according to their degree of entrepreneurial competency, which is based on real data provided by the Andorra Government. On the other hand, an extended fuzzy multi-perceptual linguistic TOPSIS is designed and applied to a real group decision making problem in the context of smart city governance. This perceptual extension is used to assess the criteria governing the strategic decision making process of energy multinational companies when deciding where to expand its sustainable services and products. ; El multiple-criteria o bé multi-attributte group decision-making (MCGDM / MAGDM) és una branca del camp de OR (operations research) l'objectiu del qual és buscar solucions comunes i representatives donades unes preferències d'un grup d'experts definit, sobre un conjunt d'alternatives i en relació a un conjunt coherent de criteris o atributs. L'objectiu d'aquesta tesis és contribuir específicament en l'àrea lingüística de MCGDM / MAGDM millorant les metodologies i marcs matemàtics existents amb l'objectiu de poder modelar qualsevol tipus de situació de presa de decisions en grup que impliqui multi-granularitat i raonament qualitatiu molt heterogeni entre el grup (ús d'etiquetes lingüístiques no balancejades). En concret, la tesis es basa en l'ús de l'eina dels hesitant fuzzy lingüístic term sets (HFLTSs) que fou introduïda per Rodriguez et al (2012) amb l'objectiu de permetre als experts poder donar opinions i preferències lingüístiques usant el seu llenguatge habitual (i no, números) capturant també la incertesa, ambigüitat i manca d'informació característica en aquest tipus de decisions. La majoria d'estructures matemàtiques existents basades en l'ús de HFLTSs en problemes de MCGDM/MAGDM fan la hipòtesis que tots els experts han d'expressar-se usant el mateix set d'etiquetes lingüístiques i/o bé el pes que cada expert dona a cadascuna de les etiquetes ha de ser el mateix. Aquests estructures no són suficientment flexibles per modelar situacions de GDM de multi-granularitat que també incloguin diversitat de raonament qualitatiu amb etiquetes lingüístiques no balancejades de forma simultània. En primer lloc, la present tesis desenvolupa un nou concepte, el perceptual-map, definit sobre l'estructura algebraica de HFLTSs no balancejats i introdueix una nova distància basada en aquesta mètrica. Aquesta distància és utilitzada per definir un centroide (opinió central) i una mesura de consens per a qualsevol situació de MAGDM que necessiti de l'ús d'un set d'etiquetes lingüístiques no balancejat. En segon lloc, una funció de transformació basada en el perceptual-map es defineix per tal de poder modelar simultàniament situacions lingüístiques amb multi-granularitat i poder així, realitzar operacions en un espai projectat. A nivell pràctic, la tesis presenta dos aplicacions reals per demostrar la utilitat i rellevància de les eines matemàtiques desenvolupades. D'una banda, la tesis introdueix un nou mètode de classificació i rànquing, que és aplicat en l'àmbit de l'educació. El nou mètode és utilitzat per classificar i ranquejar els alumnes de secundària de l'escola Andorrana d'acord amb el seu grau de desenvolupament de la competència emprenedora. D'altra banda, s'ha desenvolupat un nou model de TOPSIS anomenat fuzzy multi-perceptual lingüístic TOPSIS, que s'ha aplicat en el context d'avaluació de smart cities. La nova versió de TOPSIS s'ha aplicat amb èxit per avaluar els criteris que governen la decisió estratègica de localització, en el context de ciutats europees, de les multinacionals del sector energètic. ; Postprint (published version)

Abstract
Drawing on branded tweets that linguistically appropriate slang, African American Language, and hip hop lyrics, this article examines how corporations rework black culture to create "corporate cool" as part of their advertising strategy on social media. We examine three processes that corporations engage in to associate themselves with "coolness" while managing levels of racial contact and proximity for their audience: 1) racially ambiguous voicing, 2) "bleaching" black bodies out of images, and 3) the forging of "racially tinged" intertextual connections. While previous scholarship has analyzed how acts of cultural and linguistic appropriation reap profit for white people and continue to stigmatize already racially marginalized groups, we describe how these seemingly innocent cultural and linguistic references harness a corporately constructed black cool to produce a sense of white comfort. We argue that white comfort is generated not only through the avoidance of overt references to racial conflict, as the term "white fragility" suggests, but also through well-worn, familiar, and comfortable reminders of racial difference and domination that are offered at a safe distance from actual black people and contexts of racial violence.

The impact of the mother tongue on the acquisition of Dutch as a destination language: The case of 13 West-European first languages .This study reports on the impact of 13 West-European first languages spoken in 18 different language regions on the acquisition of Dutch. Results
based on data from approximately 5,500 first-generation migrants, showed that the mother tongue had a considerable impact on the scores for two language skills as measured by the State Exam Dutch as a Second Language, namely oral and written proficiency in Dutch. Multilevel analyses revealed
that the effect of the mother tongue could adequately be modeled by means of the cognate linguistic distance measure, adopted from McMahon and McMahon (2005). The explanatory power of the genetic linguistic distance measure (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994) was rather poor. In addition, migrant
characteristics (age of arrival, length of residence, number of hours of Dutch lessons, education, and gender) and the contextual characteristic quality of schooling in the country of origin contributed to the explanation of the variation in Dutch speaking and writing skills.

We assemble a set of methodologies using theories in variationist linguistic and GIScience, and tools used in historical GIS to analyse spatial variation in Japanese dialectal lexicon. Based on historical dialect atlas data, we calculate a linguistic distance matrix across survey localities. The linguistic variation expressed through this distance is contrasted with several distance based measurements utilised to estimate the potential of language contact across Japan historically and at present. Besides, administrative boundaries are tested for their separation effect. Aggregate association measures within linguistic variation can challenge previous notions of dialect area formation. Depending on local geographies in spatial subsets, great circle distance, travel distance and travel times explain a similar proportion of the variance in dialectal variation despite the limitations of the latter two. While they explain the majority, two further contact estimations have lower explanatory power: least cost paths implemented to model contact before the industrial revolution, based on DEM and seafaring, and a linguistic influence index based on the law of gravity. Historical domain boundaries and present day prefecture boundaries are found to have a substantial effect on dialectal variation. However, the interplay of boundaries and distance is yet to be identified. We claim that a similar methodology can address spatial variation in other digital humanities, given a similar spatial and attribute granularity.

This study aims to determine the request strategies employed by Jordanian Bedouin Arabic (JBA) native speakers in their interactions in diverse social situations by examining how they realize requests in speech. The study also explores the effect of social power (high, equal, low) and social distance (familiar and unfamiliar) on the realization patterns of requests by highlighting young JBA male speakers' linguistic choices. Data from 25 young male speakers of JBA were gathered using an Oral Discourse Completion Test (ODCT). The collected data were analyzed based on Brown's and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory and following the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Research Project (CCSARP) request strategy coding scheme. The results showed that the participants employed various request strategies according to their occurrences in different contexts. Furthermore, it was found that there is a correlation between perceptions of (im)politeness and social power and distance controlled by the context. The results also showed that the participants employed different sequences of strategies and demonstrated different preferences for context-dependent strategies in their requests.

The comprehensive description of the Russian language consciousness fragment, which is associated with the feeling of happiness, is introduced in conformity with the psycholinguistic approach to the analysis of linguistic facts. The article describes the associative field of the happiness lexeme in the Russian language. Some culturally rich cognitive features that form the content of the happiness as the feeling in the Russian linguistic consciousness have been identified with consideration of associative dictionaries. The analysis has resulted in determining some basic cognitive categories in the Russian language consciousness: emotion and feeling, belonging, object, evaluation, being, volume, space, time, state, action, characteristic, quality, expression, subject-person, reason, light, distance, goal, animals, desire, weight, color, place, food, value, attitude, degree, plant, others. The metaphorical models of the Happiness concept realization have been observed: happiness is a living being; happiness is light; happiness is a place to be; happiness is food; happiness is an object. They are characteristic and significant for the mentality of the Russian language native speakers. The algorithm suggested for the linguistic analysis of Happiness concept may be applied to the description of other emotive concepts. All the results obtained during the analysis, are relevant for the development of psycholinguistics and emotive linguistics.

This compilation thesis engages with practices that in some way place stakes in the social existence of Övdalsk (also älvdalska, Elfdalian, Övdalian), a marginal form of Scandinavian used mainly in Sweden's Älvdalen municipality. The practices at hand range from early 20th century descriptive dialectology and contemporary lay-linguistics to language advocacy and language political debate. The four studies focus on the logic by which such practices operate, on the historically produced visions that they bring into play, as well as on the symbolic effects that they have produced. Study I provides a zoomed-out account of the ordering of Övdalsk in Sweden's linguistic market. Focusing on a relatively recent debate over the institutional regimentation of Övdalsk, it analyses the forms of agreement upon which the exchange in question has come to rest. The contention has mainly developed over the classification of Övdalsk, percolating in the question of whether Övdalsk 'is' a 'language' or a 'dialect'. Analysing this debate, the study takes interest in the relationship between state power and metapragmatic exchange. Study II deals with the history of linguistic thought and research on Övdalsk. It analyses the genesis of some durable visions of the relationship between Övdalsk and linguistic authenticity, focusing on the research practice of the Swedish dialectologist Lars Levander (1883–1950), whose work on Övdalsk commands representative authority to this day. By engaging with Levander's techniques of scholarly objectivation, as well as with their language theoretical fundaments, the study seeks to create some perspectives on, and distance to, the canonical representations of Övdalsk that have precipitated from Levander's research. Study III looks into the reuse and reordering of such representations. It provides an ethnographic account of a metapragmatically saturated exchange over Övdalsk grammar, in which descriptivist artefacts play an important part. Through an analysis of texts, in situ interaction, and interviews, the study seeks to grasp the ways in which textual renditions of grammar interrelate with practically sustained, socially recognized models of language and language use (i.e. registers). Study IV tracks the ways in which such visions of authenticity have been drawn into institutionally and politically invested metapragmatic exchanges. It looks into a process of naming of roads in Älvdalen, in which ideas about the contrast between Swedish and Övdalsk played a central part. In all studies, various visions of Övdalsk authenticity and authentic Övdalsk constitute a central theme. The thesis maintains that such visions must be understood in relation to the practices in which they hold currency. Following Silverstein, this epistemological stance entails an engagement with the dialectic between historical formations and situated exchange. Through this analytical orientation, the studies seek to account for the visions of authenticity that have been at the forefront of various symbolic struggles over Övdalsk. Thus, in addition to their respective analytical accounts, the separate studies seek to add shifting temporal horizons to the superordinate heuristic, combining a deep historical backdrop with accounts of protracted institutional processes and analyses of situated linguistic interaction. Ultimately, this mode of analysis provides an in-depth understanding of the object of inquiry. ; At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Submitted.

Within the framework of the leading communicative method of language teaching, the center of the lesson is communication. However, researchers and practical teachers note the specific properties and limitations of the distance form of language teaching, in particular, the format of synchronous online lessons, such as insufficient volume of students' speech. The article argues for the need to use special pedagogical strategies as a key way to implement a communicative approach in online RFL classes. It describes the main characteristics of the facilitator's competence in the aspect of RFL training. The concept of pedagogical facilitation strategy is introduced as a way to overcome difficulties in online communication and create a productive communicative environment in an online lesson. Its main components are described: didactic and linguistic, as well as the functional language of the communicative strategy of interaction, which should be learned by students, is presented. The didactic component is illustrated by specific pedagogical techniques within the framework of that strategy, contributing to the formation of a communicative environment. In addition, a list of learners' language functions and their corresponding language is provided, the teaching of which is necessary for successful interaction in educational synchronous online communication. The article shows first results of a qualitative study aimed at improving the effectiveness of online communication in RFL classes. The research aims to contribute to the digital linguodidactics of RFL and to increase the success of designing a productive educational environment in RFL online learning.

This study uses institutional theory, which suggests that groups of organizations within the same field, such as the press, develop shared characteristics and unique tendencies that reflect their particular social and political systems, to advance empirical understanding of non-Western media organizations. This research uses word frequency comparison to examine word use across two newspapers representative of press systems in different political and social environments. The news styles show evidence of norms shared across significant cultural and geographic distances and of influences unique to particular cultural and regulative contexts—suggesting that news organizations adapt to both shared global standards and institutional constraints unique to surrounding cultures and that, despite the globalization of journalism culture, local context still matters.