Abstract
We are pleased to feature three articles showcasing the range of research interests served by JEngL as well as the latest contribution to the “In the Profession” column, in which Andreas H. Jucker shares his experiences organizing academic conferences.
In the first article Heiko Motschenbacher examines patterns in the ordering of elements in binomials, conjoined pairs of nouns or pronouns (e.g., ladies and gentlemen, his and hers). Drawing on data from the British National Corpus, Motschenbacher argues that semantics plays a stronger role than formal and other factors in determining the order of gendered binomials resulting, with very few exceptions, in a preference for male before female referents. By digging deeper into a particular set of binomials, Motschenbacher’s study offers a fruitful complement to Sandra Mollin’s research on diachronic trends related to binomials, which appeared in our last issue (see Mollin, Sandra. 2013. Pathways of change in the diachronic development of binomial reversibility in Late Modern American English. Journal of English Linguistics 41(2). 168-203).
With the second article the focus shifts to developments in one of the newer Englishes as Ulrike Gut and Robert Fuchs explore verbal aspect in Nigerian English. They focus on uses of the progressive and work with the International Corpus of English-Nigeria to identify several patterns suggesting that this verb form has been extended into new semantic territory. To explore awareness of such innovative usages, they report on a questionnaire study that sought grammaticality judgments from Nigerian teachers and students of English. In discussing their findings, the authors consider the wider sociolinguistic context of English in Nigeria including its contact with other languages.
The final article represents innovative research in the area of perceptual dialectology as Betsy Evans examines how residents of Washington conceive of speech variation within their state. Incorporating digital tools for geographic analysis, Evans identifies patterns of perceived dialect differences that reflect stereotypes common in many regions as well as more localized ideologies. Her analysis highlights the value of surveying nonlinguists’ views of linguistic variation at the state and regional level as well as on a wider scale.
Finally, in our December 2012 issue we featured an interview with Geneva Smitherman conducted by H. Samy Alim. In their conversation, Dr. Smitherman mentioned work by Vershawn Young on “code meshing.” For readers interested in this research, we offer the following reference, which did not appear in the published interview: Young, Vershawn A. 2010. Nah, we straight: An argument against code-switching. JAC 29. 49-76.