396 PLENARY SPEECHES Excerpt 3 31 estamos de paseo con=maestra we're out walking with the teacher por eso yo no Nvine that's why I didn't come 33 Clerk: ah/ 34DF: 35 36 Clerk: (to AW))my Spanish is really but I try to understand him 38 @@@@@l 39 AW: that's good] 40 41 DF [siah ha] Excerpt 4 74DF: mucho trabaio a lot of work. 75 Older lady ah 76DF: this is the teacher Clerk: ((TO OLDER LADY:IN CHINESE) 78 Older lady: h @aa 79AW: hi In excerpts 2,the Chinese clerk plays with the languages available in her store.Sh alternately speaks Chinese with her older relative,Spanish with putative 'Mexicans'like DE,and English with Anglos like AW.These three languages index respectively:her ethnic or cultural identity as a Chinese,the accommodating role that she wants to assume and cultivate with Spanish-speaking customers,and the public voice she feels a iate to opt with Anglos.But she clearly us power in her store.For her Chinese is the anguage with fellw customers,family and friends;Spanish is the useful service language of local transactions, but it also indexes for her the stigma of non-assimilated immigrants;English is her public transactional language but she can also use it as a way of distancing herself from Mexican Viewing thes exchanges from an ecological perspective enables us to see the various languages used by the participants as part of a more diversified linguistic landscape with various hierarchies of social respectability among codes,and added layers of foregrounding of the code itself rather than just the message.To the multiplicity of languages we must now add their subjective resonances in the speakers'embodied memories. 3.2 The ecology of embodied time DE,who hardly understands any English at all,uses Spanish with the Chinese clerk and her older relative,thus forcing the clerk to respond in Spanish(excerpt 3)and the older lady,who doesn't know Spanish,to chuckle politely (excerpt 4).In excerpt 5,DF persists in speaking396 PLENARY SPEECHES Excerpt 3 31 DF: estamos de paseo con = maestra we’re out walking with the teacher 32 por eso yo no ∧vine that’s why I didn’t come 33 Clerk: ah/ 34 DF: si\ 35 ah 36 Clerk: ((to AW)) my Spanish is really limited 37 but I try to understand him 38 @[@@@@] 39 AW: [that’s good] 40 41 DF: [si ah ha] Excerpt 4 74 DF: mucho trabajo. a lot of work. 75 Older lady: ah @@@@ 76 DF: eso es el ticher. this is the teacher. 77 Clerk: ((TO OLDER LADY: IN CHINESE)) 78 Older lady: hi @@@ 79 AW: hi In excerpts 2–4, the Chinese clerk plays with the languages available in her store. She alternately speaks Chinese with her older relative, Spanish with putative ‘Mexicans’ like DF, and English with Anglos like AW. These three languages index respectively: her ethnic or cultural identity as a Chinese, the accommodating role that she wants to assume and cultivate with Spanish-speaking customers, and the public voice she feels appropriate to adopt with Anglos. But she clearly uses these languages to align herself symbolically with the shifting centers of power in her store. For her, Chinese is the language of intimacy with fellow customers, family and friends; Spanish is the useful service language of local transactions, but it also indexes for her the stigma of non-assimilated immigrants; English is her public transactional language but she can also use it as a way of distancing herself from Mexican newcomers. Viewing these exchanges from an ecological perspective enables us to see the various languages used by the participants as part of a more diversified linguistic landscape with various hierarchies of social respectability among codes, and added layers of foregrounding of the code itself rather than just the message. To the multiplicity of languages we must now add their subjective resonances in the speakers’ embodied memories. 3.2 The ecology of embodied time DF, who hardly understands any English at all, uses Spanish with the Chinese clerk and her older relative, thus forcing the clerk to respond in Spanish (excerpt 3) and the older lady, who doesn’t know Spanish, to chuckle politely (excerpt 4). In excerpt 5, DF persists in speaking https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444808005065 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Connecticut, on 01 Nov 2018 at 16:55:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at