Individuals employ general, cognitively grounded categorization processes to form expectations for interactions with members of other social groups. Such categorizations sometimes surface in the form of racial, ethnic, or other stereotypes. But although much literature describes and/or tests the cognitive nature of stereotyping and categorization, less investigates how stereotypes and categories are formed in casual interaction, through casual discourse. This article analyzes data from 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with restaurant servers to investigate how they categorize customers by drawing on racial stereotypes and stereotypes related to class and/or cultural capital to produce two types of discriminatory discourse: ‘racetalk’ and what we term ‘regiontalk’. Our analyses suggest potential differences in the servers’ processes of categorization according to patron type, which we interpret with regard to the larger context of racism and classism in contemporary U.S. society.

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A substantial body of research examines volunteerism via surveys of individual volunteers or volunteer organizations. The authors argue that researchers must expand this conceptualization of volunteering to include the interactive process between the volunteer and the organization. Using structuration theory as a guiding framework, the authors examine how volunteers' behavior is both shaped by and also affects the way in which two organizations are structured. In this comparative case study, the authors utilize participant observation, interviews, and archival analysis to illustrate this interaction in two organizations, a no-kill cat shelter and a resource organization for women who partner with women. They find that the character of the labor process, and specifically whether it entails the expenditure of emotional labor, leads to either burdensome or rewarding volunteer experiences. The authors further underscore the importance of examining emerging trends in “episodic volunteering” and shifts in nonprofit organizations toward more bureaucratized business forms.

The investigation of isolated African American enclave communities has been instrumental in reformulating the historical reconstruction of earlier African American English and the current trajectory of language change in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This case study examines a unique enclave sociolinguistic situation – a small, long-term, isolated bi-ethnic enclave community in the mountains of western North Carolina – to further understanding of the role of localized dialect accommodation and ethnolinguistic distinctiveness in the historical development of African American English. The examination of a set of diagnostic phonological and morphosyntactic variables for several of the remaining African Americans in this community supports the conclusion that earlier African American English largely accommodated local dialects while maintaining a subtle, distinctive ethnolinguistic divide. However, unlike the situation in some other African American communities, there is no current movement toward an AAVE external norm for the lone isolated African American teenager; rather, there is increasing accommodation to the local dialect. Contact-based, identity-based, and ideologically based explanations are appealed to in describing the past and present direction of change for the African Americans in this receding community.

Recent studies of bi-ethnic enclave dialect communities in the American South suggest that earlier versions of African American speech both accommodated local dialect norms and exhibited a persistent substratal effect from the early African-European contact situation. We examine this hypothesis by considering the sociolinguistic situation in Texana, North Carolina, a small African American community in the Smoky Mountain region of Appalachia. Though its population is only about 150 residents, it is the largest African American community in the Smoky Mountains. This study considers diagnostic sociolinguistic variables for Texana residents in order to examine the extent to which the members of this African American community align their speech with local dialect norms as the basis for evaluating the status of earlier and contemporary African American English (AAE) in Appalachia. Morphosyntactic variables examined are 3rd pl. -sattachment, 3rd sg. -sabsence, copula absence, and past tensebeleveling; phonological variables include rhoticity, syllable coda consonant cluster reduction, and /ai/ glide weakening. When compared to cohort white Appalachian speakers, data from older Texana residents confirm the regional accommodation of earlier AAE and at the same time point toward substrate influence in the historical development of AAE. However, unlike AAE in other enclave regional contexts, we find that the dialect of younger residents is not moving toward a supraregional norm of AAE. Instead, young speakers are accommodating several key features of Southern American English, specifically the Southern Appalachian English (AppE) variety that is characteristic of the Smoky Mountain region of North Carolina. Explanations for the attested diachronic changes as well as future trajectories of change for Texana speakers must appeal to sociopsychological factors such as regional identity and orientation to explain local community language norms.

We provide a conceptual framework for promoting linguistic and educational change by describing partnerships that bring together linguists’ and educators’ views on language and school success. From fall 2008 through fall 2010, we held workshops based on the professional development principles of co‐constructed knowledge, experiential learning, and collaboration with approximately 200 educators. These workshops integrated sociolinguistic information into approaches to multicultural education with which educators were familiar. Fourteen educators participated in our study of how they integrated workshop material into their pedagogy and their views on language variation and education. Data collected from interviews with the participants, reflective essays, journal entries, and curricular materials revealed three themes. The educators expressed the need to view language as a key component of multicultural education, the need to bring the perspective on language awareness back to their schools and classrooms, and the realization that knowledge of language variation was critical to assessing linguistically and culturally diverse student populations. We advocate for building collaborative partnerships between educators and linguists that integrate cultural and linguistic knowledge. Such partnerships expand linguists’ and educators’ knowledge base about language and culture and enable linguists and educators to work more effectively to address educational issues facing culturally and linguistically diverse student populations.

In this paper, we examine the identities of eight women who share similar demographic profiles but exhibit different language practices. These middle-aged and older women belong to two social groups, which, we argue, constitute two communities of practice within a small black Appalachian community in the Southern United States. From interview data, we analyze six diagnostic sociolinguistic variables (third singular -s absence, copula absence, rhoticity, consonant cluster reduction, habitual be) and also examine productions of /u/ and /o/. The groups differ significantly in their use of the morphosyntactic and syntactic variables and in their vowel productions, but not the consonantal features. Combining our quantitative findings with qualitative data, we suggest language is one of several vehicles the women use to transmit symbolic messages to others and thereby construct identities for themselves and their groups, whose members adhere to different language ideologies, religious norms, notions of feminine decorum, and educational standards.