This study casts the code-switching patterns observed among Spanish-English bilinguals in Bayside, Texas within the framework of Bell’s (1984) theory of audience design, which is claimed to apply to both monolingual style-shifting as well as bilingual code-switching. The latter part of this claim has been little explored. The intent of this study, then, is to determine if the explanatory power of audience design, as demon¬strated in studies on style-shifting, does indeed hold when applied to cases of language alternation. Analysis of the data from Bayside generally supports Bell’s theory as it shows speakers adjusting their use of Spanish and/or English to suit their audience. The study will highlight a less frequently analyzed aspect of Bell’s model, i.e., the role of the auditor, and will call for the auditor to be classified as a primary influencer of lin¬guistic choice in bilingual contexts, alongside the addressee. The code selection patterns exhibited by a pair of Bayside residents in a series of interviews and in conversations videotaped at the local general store will be com¬pared to illustrate the effects of addressee and auditor. A qualitative analysis will dem¬onstrate that differing determinations regarding the linguistic repertoires of the auditors led to contrasting linguistic choices on the part of the study’s subjects. The data collected will show that, when selecting a language of communication, as opposed to a register, style, or dialect, a speaker may be more greatly affected by an auditor than by the addressee. The methods used in collecting the data will also support an expan¬sion of Bell’s model to include an additional participant category suitable for capturing the effect of the recording device, as per Wertheim (2006). / text

This thesis focuses on the issue of how language users refer to an entity during discourse production, by investigating representations and processes that underlie the choice between pronouns and repeated noun phrases. Past research has shown that the use of pronouns (relative to more explicit expressions) is affected by the referent’s salience in the prior linguistic context, but much less is known about how non-linguistic context affects the referent’s salience and the choice of expression. Recent research has suggested that the referent’s non-linguistic salience has no effect on the choice of pronouns and names (Arnold & Griffin, 2007). One of the major findings of the research reported in this thesis is that the referent's salience in the visual context plays an important role in the form of reference: Pronouns were less frequent (relative to repeated noun phrases) when the competitor was present than absent in the visual context. My second major finding is that similarity-based interference affects the choice of referring expressions. Pronouns are less frequent when discourse entities are similar in terms of their inherent conceptual properties as well as extrinsic properties, suggesting that the more similar the competitor to the referent, the stronger the interference, reducing pronoun usage. My third major finding is that contrary to many linguistic theories that assume that speakers choose referring expressions that are optimally helpful for their addressee (Ariel, 1990; Clark & Marshall, 1981; Givón, 1983), speakers do not choose expressions by adopting the addressee's discourse model: Pronouns are more frequent when the referent is salient to the speaker, not to the addressee. I argue that the explicitness of referring expressions is affected by the degree of conceptual access that is needed to initiate production processes: The more conceptual access is needed, the more elaborate expressions tend to be produced.

Despite its exceptional importance as a cultural performance event in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Conference has received little attention in Mormon studies, to say nothing of sociolinguistics. Situated within the larger question of how the public language of Mormon authorities has changed over time, this thesis seeks to discover style features of what impressionistically appears to be a unitary General Conference style since 1960 (the era of church "Correlation"). Statistical analysis is then used to determine which of five sociolinguistic factors and three pairwise interactions between four of the five sociolinguistic factors most saliently conditions the use of these style features in General Conference. Findings indicate that older male speakers are more likely to perform the majority of these style features, which opens the possibility that a new style may be emerging. Finally, this study attempts to give a theoretical account of style in General Conference by appealing to Alan Bell's (1984; 2001) "audience design" framework, and Nikolas Coupland's (2007) refinement of Bauman's cultural performance theory. The unique conditions of General Conference are best described as a "high performance event" in which speakers converge stylistically on an uncharacteristically present "in-group referee," namely the General Authorities of the church present in the LDS Conference Center during the live broadcast of General Conference.

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Discursive markers are a set of linguistic items that work in the cognitive, expressive, social, and textual domains, with two aspects of communicative knowledge closely related to one another: the expressive and the social, which are the speaker's ability to use language to show his personal and social identities, to convey attitudes and perform actions, and to negotiate relationships between self and other (SCHIFFRIN, 2001). Interactional discourse markers arising from speech in interaction and one of its functions is to attract for itself the or to draw closer to the attention of the interlocutor, maintaining the speaker/listener interaction in the discourse process. In this perspective and in the light of the Accommodation Theory (GILES; COUPLAND; COUPLAND, 1991) and Audience Design (BELL, 1984), the aim is to analyze how the speakers adjust their linguistic behavior during the interaction and makes use of discursive strategies to control differences, to approach or to move away from their listeners, and shift the speech style to get approval from the participants in the interaction. This research analyzes the interactional discourse markers of verbal nature entendeu?, sabe? e viu? [you understand?, you know?, you see?], from the observation of the speech in the interaction of young students in the State College Atheneu Sergipense speech community, taking into account that in a school community the social universe is culturally shared among its members that, to greater or lesser extent of participation, share communicative needs, as well as lexical and semantic structures. The samples used in this study are part of the Falares Sergipanos database (FREITAG, 2013). From this proposal, we investigate: (i) the uses, the functions and the distribution of frequencies of interactional discourse markers entendeu?, sabe? e viu? [you understand?, you know?, you see?] (ii) the relation of these interactional discourse markers in the process of linguistic accommodation and, (iii) the uses of these discursive markers as traces of social identity. The corpus investigations in this study point out that the specificities of linguistic variations arise from the social relation between the speakers, the nature of the speech community and the sharing of the discursive and social context, where the speaker recognizes himself as a member of a group and adjusts his linguistic behavior, according to their goals and objectives, to express their attitudes and beliefs. / Marcadores discursivos são um conjunto de itens linguísticos que funcionam nos domínios cognitivo, expressivo, social e textual, havendo dois aspectos do conhecimento comunicativo intimamente relacionados entre si: o expressivo e o social, que são a capacidade do falante de usar a linguagem para mostrar suas identidades pessoais e sociais, transmitir atitudes, executar ações e negociar relações entre o eu e o outro (SCHIFFRIN, 2001). Marcadores discursivos interacionais emergem na fala em interação e uma de suas funções é atrair para si a, ou aproximar-se da, atenção do interlocutor, mantendo a interação falante/ouvinte no processo do discurso. Nessa perspectiva e à luz da Teoria da Acomodação (GILES; COUPLAND; COUPLAND, 1991) e Audience Design (BELL, 1984), busca-se analisar como o falante ajusta seu comportamento linguístico durante a interação e faz uso de estratégias discursivas para controlar diferenças, se aproximar ou se afastar do seu ouvinte e alternar seu estilo de fala para obter a aprovação dos participantes da interação. Esta pesquisa analisa os marcadores discursivos interacionais de natureza verbal entendeu?, sabe? e viu?, a partir da observação da fala em interação de adolescentes escolares na comunidade de fala do Colégio Estadual Atheneu Sergipense, tendo-se em conta que em uma comunidade escolar o universo social é culturalmente compartilhado entre seus membros que, em maior ou menor grau de participação, compartilham necessidades comunicativas, além de estruturas lexicais e semânticas. As amostras utilizadas nesta pesquisa integram o banco de dados Falares Sergipanos (FREITAG, 2013). A partir dessa proposta, investiga-se: (i) os usos, as funções e a distribuição de frequências dos marcadores discursivos de base interacional entendeu?, sabe? e viu?; (ii) a relação desses marcadores discursivos interacionais no processo de acomodação linguística e, (iii) os usos desses marcadores discursivos como traços de identidade social. Investigações do corpus apontam que as especificidades das variações linguísticas decorrem da relação social entre os falantes, da natureza da comunidade de fala e do compartilhamento do contexto discursivo e social, onde o falante se reconhece como membro de um grupo e ajusta seu comportamento linguístico, de acordo com suas metas e objetivos, para expressar suas atitudes e crenças.

Compared to adults, children are less effective at designing their utterances to suit the informational needs of their audience. This listener-catering behaviour, known as audience design, has been hypothesized to rely on domain general cognitive mechanisms, such as working memory and cognitive flexibility. Considering that adolescence is an important period of sociocognitive growth, research on the development of audience design beyond childhood is surprisingly scant. The aim of this study was to trace the development of audience design in early and middle adolescence, and test its reliance on cognitive control function. Participants (11–12 and 15–16 years) performed two tasks assessing (1) the ability to adjust referential expressions to inferred knowledge of hearers and (2) cognitive control function. The findings suggest that the ability to take into account the informational needs of listeners during utterance formation develops considerably between early and middle adolescence. Although performance on both tasks was higher in the middle adolescent group, the study provides no evidence for a reliance of the measured audience design behaviour on cognitive control function. Future research should aim to determine whether the development of audience design in adolescence is facilitated by an increased efficacy of knowledge state attribution processes. / Förmågan att anpassa sina yttranden efter samtalspartnerns behov är mindre utvecklad hos barn än hos vuxna. Beteendet att ackommodera lyssnaren vid yttrandeformulering benämns ofta som mottargaranpassning. Mottagaranpassning i konversation har föreslagits vara avhängig exekutiva funktioner, såsom arbetsminne och kognitiv flexibilitet. Med tanke på att ungdomsåren är en viktig period för social och kognitiv mognad har anmärkningsvärt lite forskning genomförts på utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning under ungdomsåren. Målet med studien var att undersöka utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning i ungdomsåren och testa dess eventuella avhängighet av exekutiva funktioner. Deltagare (11–12 och 15–16 år) genomförde två tester som mätte (1) förmågan att anpassa referentiella yttranden till lyssnares förmodade omvärldskunskap och (2) exekutiva funktioner. Resultaten indikerar att förmågan att anpassa sina yttranden efter lyssnares förmodade omvärldskunskap utvecklas betydligt under ungdomsåren. Trots att den äldre åldersgruppen presterade bättre på testet som mätte exekutiva funktioner, predicerade inte exekutiva funktioner förmågan att mottagaranpassa referentiella yttranden. Framtida studier bör undersöka huruvida förmågan att tillskriva kunskapstillstånd till andra effektiviseras under ungdomsåren, och således främjar utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning.

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