Susan Ehrlich, Miriam Meyerhoff and Janet Holmes (eds.). The Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality (2nd edition). Chichester, U.K.: Wiley Blackwell. 2014. 664 pp. Hb (9780470656426) US$195.00.

Book review

Accounting and the emergence of care pathways in the National Health Service

This paper examines the effects of New Public Management reforms on the information infrastructure underpinning the work of public service professionals. Focussing on the case of the British National Health Service (NHS), the paper argues that hospital accounting reforms played a significant role in the emergence of standardised models of clinical practice. The paper moreover argues that, under the label “care pathways”, such standardised models of clinical practice became embedded in the information infrastructure of the NHS and concludes by discussing their implications for the work of doctors and hospital accountants.

Forensic linguistics : the application of language description in legal contexts

In this article I first divide Forensic Linguistics into three sub-disciplines: the language of written legal texts, the spoken language of legal proceedings, and the linguist as expert witness and then go on to give a small number of examples of the research undertaken in these three areas. For the language of written legal texts, I present work on the (in) comprehensibility of police cautions and of judges instructions to juries. For the spoken language of legal proceedings, I report work on the problems of interpreted interaction, of vulnerable witnesses and the need for more detailed research comparing the interactive rules in adversarial and investigative systems. Finally, to illustrate the role of the linguist as expert witness I report a trademark case, five different authorship attribution cases, three very different plagiarism cases and I end reporting briefly the contribution of linguists to language assessment techniques used in the linguistic classification of asylum seekers. © Langage et société no 132 - juin 2010.

Necessary conditions for the emergence of homochirality via autocatalytic self-replication

We analyze a recent proposal for spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking based on the coupling of first-order enantioselective autocatalysis and direct production of the enantiomers that invokes a critical role for intrinsic reaction noise. For isolated systems, the racemic state is the unique stable outcome for both stochastic and deterministic dynamics when the system is in compliance with the constraints dictated by the thermodynamics of chemical reaction processes. In open systems, the racemic outcome also results for both stochastic and deterministic dynamics when driving the auto-catalysis unidirectionally by external reagents. Nonracemic states can result in the latter only if the reverse reactions are strictly zero: these are kinetically controlled outcomes for small populations and volumes, and can be simulated by stochastic dynamics. However, the stability of the thermodynamic limit proves that the racemic outcome is the unique stable state for strictly irreversible externally driven autocatalysis. These findings contradict the suggestion that the inhibition requirement of the Frank autocatalytic model for the emergence of homochirality may be relaxed in a noise-induced mechanism.

The emergence of integrated private reporting

Purpose - This paper aims to provide evidence to suggest that private social and environmental reporting (i.e. one-on-one meetings between institutional investors and investees on social and environmental issues) is beginning to merge with private financial reporting and that, as a result, integrated private reporting is emerging. Design/methodology/approach - In this paper, 19 FTSE100 companies and 20 UK institutional investors were interviewed to discover trends in private integrated reporting and to gauge whether private reporting is genuinely becoming integrated. The emergence of integrated private reporting through the lens of institutional logics was interpreted. The emergence of integrated private reporting as a merging of two hitherto separate and possibly rival institutional logics was framed. Findings - It was found that specialist socially responsible investment managers are starting to attend private financial reporting meetings, while mainstream fund managers are starting to attend private meetings on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Further, senior company directors are becoming increasingly conversant with ESG issues. Research limitations/implications - The findings were interpreted as two possible scenarios: there is a genuine hybridisation occurring in the UK institutional investment such that integrated private reporting is emerging or the financial logic is absorbing and effectively neutralising the responsible investment logic. Practical implications - These findings provide evidence of emergent integrated private reporting which are useful to both the corporate and institutional investment communities as they plan their engagement meetings. Originality/value - No study has hitherto examined private social and environmental reporting through interview research from the perspective of emergent integrated private reporting. This is the first paper to discuss integrated reporting in the private reporting context.

Emergence of additional visible range photoluminescence due to aggregation of cyanine dye:astraphloxin on carbon nanotubes dispersed with anionic surfactant

Self-organization of organic molecules with carbon nanomaterials leads to formation of functionalized molecular nano-complexes with advanced features. We present a study of physical and chemical properties of carbon nanotube-surfactant-indocarbocyanine dye (astraphloxin) in water focusing on aggregation of the dye and resonant energy transfer from the dye to the nanotubes. Self-assembly of astraphloxin is evidenced in absorbance and photoluminescence depending dramatically on the concentrations of both the dye and surfactant in the mixtures. We observed an appearance of new photoluminescence peaks in visible range from the dye aggregates. The aggregates characterized with red shifted photoluminescence peaks at 595, 635 and 675 nm are formed mainly due to the presence of surfactant at the premicellar concentration. The energy transfer from the dye to the nanotubes amplifying near-infrared photoluminescence from the nanotubes is not affected by the aggregation of astraphloxin molecules providing important knowledge for further development of advanced molecular nano-complexes. The aggregation with the turned-on peaks and the energy transfer with amplified photoluminescence create powerful tools of visualization and/or detection of the nanotubes in visible and near-infrared spectral range, respectively, boosting its possible applications in sensors, energy generation/storage, and healthcare.

Interhemispheric differences of spectral power in expressive language:a MEG study with clinical applications

In the last decade we have seen an exponential growth of functional imaging studies investigating multiple aspects of language processing. These studies have sparked an interest in applying some of the paradigms to various clinically relevant questions, such as the identification of the cortical regions mediating language function in surgical candidates for refractory epilepsy. Here we present data from a group of adult control participants in order to investigate the potential of using frequency specific spectral power changes in MEG activation patterns to establish lateralisation of language function using expressive language tasks. In addition, we report on a paediatric patient whose language function was assessed before and after a left hemisphere amygdalo-hippocampectomy. Our verb generation task produced left hemisphere decreases in beta-band power accompanied by right hemisphere increases in low beta-band power in the majority of the control group, a previously unreported phenomenon. This pattern of spectral power was also found in the patient's post-surgery data, though not her pre-surgery data. Comparison of pre and post-operative results also provided some evidence of reorganisation in language related cortex both inter- and intra-hemispherically following surgery. The differences were not limited to changes in localisation of language specific cortex but also changes in the spectral and temporal profile of frontal brain regions during verb generation. While further investigation is required to establish concordance with invasive measures, our data suggest that the methods described may serve as a reliable lateralisation marker for clinical assessment. Furthermore, our findings highlight the potential utility of MEG for the investigation of cortical language functioning in both healthy development and pathology.

The pragmatic motifs of the Jespersen cycle: default, activation, and the history of negation in French

The purpose of this article is to delimit the role of pragmatic specialization in the evolution of negation in French. The change in the marking of sentential negation is believed to proceed in characterized stages that would together constitute the Jespersen cycle. As a marker becomes the default expression of negation, the other markers do not necessarily fade away, and are maintained with specialized roles that include pragmatic functions. One such pragmatic function is that of activation (Dryer 1996), by which a proposition is presented as accessible to the hearer. Activation is shown to motivate the use of preverbal non that competes with 'ne' for several centuries. The claims that the emergence of postverbal pas in early French and the loss of 'ne' in contemporary spoken French are associated with activation are considered on the basis of novel data. It is concluded that pragmatic functions contribute to language change by providing marked options that may be conferred the default status in a grammatical paradigm.

Solidarity and power in German : language as political action : a contribution to the socio-cultural history of the German language

Germany's latest attempt at unification raises again the question of German nationhood and nationality. The present study examines the links between the development of the German language and the political history of Germany, principally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining the role of language in the establishment and exercise of political power and in the creation of national and group solidarity in Germany, the study both provides insights into the nature of language as political action and contributes to the socio-cultural history of the German language. The language-theoretical hypothesis on which the study is based sees language as a central factor in political action, and opposes the notion that language is a reflection of underlying political 'realities' which exist independently of language. Language is viewed as language-in-text which performs identifiable functions. Following Leech, five functions are distinguished, two of which (the regulative and the phatic) are regarded as central to political processes. The phatic function is tested against the role of the German language as a creator and symbol of national identity, with particular attention being paid to concepts of the 'purity' of the language. The regulative function (under which a persuasive function is also subsumed) is illustrated using the examples of German fascist discourse and selected cases from German history post-1945. In addition, the interactions are examined between language change and socio-economic change by postulating that language change is both a condition and consequence of socio-economic change, in that socio-economic change both requires and conditions changes in the communicative environment. Finally, three politocolinguistic case studies from the eight and ninth decades of the twentieth century are introduced in order to demonstrate specific ways in which language has been deployed in an attempt to create political realities, thus verifying the initial hypothesis of the centrality of language to the political process.

The language of female leadership

Could language be a reason why women are under-representedat senior level in the business world? The Language of Female Leadership investigates how female leaders actually use language to achieve their business and relational goals. The author proposes that the language of women leaders is shaped by the type of corporation they work for. Based on the latest research, three types of ‘gendered corporation’ appear to affect the way women interact with colleagues: the male-dominated,the gender-divided and the gender-multiple. This book shows that senior women have to carry out extra ‘linguistic work’ to make their mark in the boardroom. In male-dominated and gender-divided corporations, women must develop an extraordinarylinguistic expertise just to survive. In gender-multiple corporations, this linguistic expertise helps them to be highly regarded and effective leaders.Judith Baxter lectures in Applied Linguistics at the University of Aston. She has written and edited many publications in the field of language and gender, language and education and the language of leadership. She won a government award to conduct a major research study in the language of female leadership.

Review of doctoral research in second-language teaching and learning in Australia (2003–2006)

This article reviews recent doctoral research in Australian universities in the area of language teaching and learning. Doctoral work in three main areas of research concentration is described: language teaching, language learning, and writing. The authors whose studies are reviewed are graduates of the Australian National University, Griffith University, Macquarie University, the University of Technology, Sydney, the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales, the University of Melbourne, Monash University, La Trobe University, Deakin University and Murdoch University.

The functional organisation of the fronto-temporal language system:evidence from syntactic and semantic ambiguity

Spoken language comprehension is known to involve a large left-dominant network of fronto-temporal brain regions, but there is still little consensus about how the syntactic and semantic aspects of language are processed within this network. In an fMRI study, volunteers heard spoken sentences that contained either syntactic or semantic ambiguities as well as carefully matched low-ambiguity sentences. Results showed ambiguity-related responses in the posterior left inferior frontal gyrus (pLIFG) and posterior left middle temporal regions. The pLIFG activations were present for both syntactic and semantic ambiguities suggesting that this region is not specialised for processing either semantic or syntactic information, but instead performs cognitive operations that are required to resolve different types of ambiguity irrespective of their linguistic nature, for example by selecting between possible interpretations or reinterpreting misparsed sentences. Syntactic ambiguities also produced activation in the posterior middle temporal gyrus. These data confirm the functional relationship between these two brain regions and their importance in constructing grammatical representations of spoken language.

An exploration of female leadership language:case studies of senior women in Bahrain

This is a multiple case study of the leadership language of three senior women working in a large corporation in Bahrain. The study’s main aim is to explore the linguistic practices the women leaders use with their colleagues and subordinates in corporate meetings. Adopting a Foucauldian (1972) notion of ‘discourses’ as social practices and a view of gender as socially constructed and discursively performed (Butler 1990), this research aims to unveil the competing discourses which may shape the leadership language of senior women in their communities of practice. The research is situated within the broader field of Sociolinguistics and the specific field of Language and Gender. To address the research aim, a case study approach incorporating multiple methods of qualitative data collection (observation, interviews, and shadowing) was utilised to gather information about the three women leaders and produce a rich description of their use of language in and out of meeting contexts. For analysis, principles of Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) were used to organise and sort the large amount of data. Also, Feminist Post- Structuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA) was adopted to produce a multi-faceted analysis of the subjects, their language leadership, power relations, and competing discourses in the context. It was found that the three senior women enact leadership differently making variable use of a repertoire of conventionally masculine and feminine linguistic practices. However, they all appear to have limited language resources and even more limiting subject positions; and they all have to exercise considerable linguistic expertise to police and modify their language in order to avoid the ‘double bind’. Yet, the extent of this limitation and constraints depends on the community of practice with its prevailing discourses, which appear to have their roots in Islamic and cultural practices as well as some Western influences acquired throughout the company’s history. It is concluded that it may be particularly challenging for Middle Eastern women to achieve any degree of equality with men in the workplace because discourses of Gender difference lie at the core of Islamic teaching and ideology.

Unresolved issues and new challenges in teaching English to young learners:the case of South Korea

The introduction of languages, especially English, into the primary curriculum around the world has been one of the major language-in-education policy developments in recent years. In countries where English has been compulsory for a number of years, the question arises as to what extent the numerous and well-documented challenges faced by the initial implementation of early language learning policies have been overcome and whether new challenges have arisen as policies have become consolidated. This article therefore focuses on South Korea, where English has been compulsory in primary school since 1997. The issues raised by the introduction of English into the primary curriculum are reviewed and the current situation in South Korea is investigated. The results of a mixed methods study using survey data from 125 Korean primary school teachers, together with data from a small-scale case study of one teacher are presented. The study shows that, while some of the initial problems caused by the introduction of early language learning appear to have been addressed, other challenges persist. Moreover, the data reveal the emergence of a number of new challenges faced by primary school teachers of English as they seek to implement government policy. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.