No abstract

This study provides an interpretive perspective on the linguistic landscape (LL) of ethnic Persian shops in the city of Sydney, Australia. Photographic data and ethnographic observations demonstrate how linguistic and cultural displays on ethnic Persian shops are organized in different frames which are driven by local symbolic markets. These frames are investigated through an analysis of linguistic and semiotic resources drawn on these ethnic premises. The study also illustrates that the trajectory of the Persian language and its semiotic resources as mediational tools frame the collective identity of the sign producers (social actors) and symbolic and cultural means that are activated in the LL of such ethnic shops. These framing devices promote minority languages, Persian in specific, as valuable resources and commodities in the multicultural context of Sydney, and point to the possible impact of those resources on the local political economy of language. In addition, the findings reinforce the view that patterns of multilingualism are not static and are influenced by a number of factors such as cultural, economic and linguistic resources which individuals and officials use in the public space.

AbstractService encounters are a fundamental activity in everyday life whereby commodities and/or information are exchanged between a service provider and a customer. A service encounter is by nature a goal-oriented speech event. However, goals at service encounters are not simply limited to achieving business transactions; on the contrary, they incorporate a range of social and discursive practices. The current study focuses on the intersection of social action, practices and discourses produced and reproduced by the shop owners (husband–wife teams) and the customers within a site of engagement in Persian ethnic shops in Sydney and the way they are interactionally realized. Unlike prior studies, which have tended to focus on verbal exchanges as units of analysis without paying much attention to the site of engagement, research on service encounters has recently shifted its focus toward an understanding of the social processes that underpin such verbal exchanges. The present study is situated within the framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis (

the contagion of modernity. This fear is further underscored in the final chapter that reveals that BTs may never fully pass as FFBs, may always have a degree of outsider status, and are even subject at times to FFBs' prejudice or discrimination. In this sense, ba'alei teshuva may be considered a term of relationality; it describes not simply an identity but a hierarchy that prioritizes biology over choice-though in fact, as this book demonstrates, both BTs and FFBs are continually engaged in performing and reaffirming their identities through social interactions. These reflections are not theorized in Benor's study, but her book sets the stage for future scholarship on BTs (and other religious novices) as mediating agents that not only legitimize and reproduce the traditional world but also transform it.Becoming Frum provides a wealth of ethnographic and linguistic data that will prove extremely useful in the study of adult language socialization and religious education. To be sure, this book has already impacted Jewish scholarship, as is attested to by the many accolades it has received from the field of Jewish studies. It deserves more attention in sociolinguistics and applied linguists in that it opens the door for a closer examination of the language socialization processes of missionization efforts in American society, and the bidirectional aspects of adult language socialization in religious communities. Written in an accessible and engaging tone, this book delivers an important contribution that should appeal to undergraduates, graduate students and scholars of linguistics, sociolinguistics, Jewish ethnography, and American religion.

No abstract