European Society of Anaesthesiology.

Staged performance involves the overt, scheduled identification and elevation of one or more people to perform, with a clearly demarcated distinction between them and the audience. It involves the agentive use of language, building on the foundation of existing social meanings. Staged performances tend to be linguistically stylized, pushing the limits of language creativity. They have the potential to trigger significant sociolinguistic effects, circulating novel forms and contributing to language change. The paradigms used in this theme issue for approaching language performance include Bakhtin's notion of Stylization, Bell's Audience and Referee Design, Silverstein's Indexicality, Agha's Enregisterment, and Bauman's construct of Discursive Culture. Themes that run through the articles include: a concept of identity that is part product, part process; the centrality of the audience; the reflexivity of staged performance; and the importance of non-linguistic modalities such as music and appearance. The language analysis in this collection of papers concentrates mainly on phonological features of varieties of English, finding instances of selectivity, mis-realization, overshoot and undershoot in their performances of a range of targeted dialects.The performance of language has burgeoned as an area of interest in recent sociolinguistics. This should not surprise us. Performance offers the opportunity to deal with frequently fascinating, multi-layered data where stylization of linguistic resources is rife. It invites us to theorize about the nature of language in society on the basis of analytically challenging and rewarding 'texts' which open up some of the most significant dimensions and issues of contemporary societies. Language in performance embodies cultural values and trends, and interacts with wider modalities of music and visuals to form the semiotic horizon of our world. Through all this, performed language is object as well as medium, the focus of reflexive comment and recycling that further layers its social significance.The five papers in this issue comprise a range of performance types, though comedy and popular music are two genres which appear in several of the pieces. Coupland's paper advocates a contextualised approach to investigating how place indexicalities and vernacularity are mediated by genres of popular

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bro'Town is a popular animated comedy whose language is that of stylized performance. It deals with the adventures of a group of five teenage Pasifika boys growing up in Auckland, New Zealand, and showcases performances of the Englishes spoken by Polynesian immigrants and their descendants. A range of varieties are performed on the show by a handful of actors. We analyzed several linguistic variables in the speech of three of the main characters -the 14-yearold twins Vale and Valea, and their father Pepelo. Pepelo produces high levels of the vernacular features of DH-stopping and TH-fronting, consistent with his biography as a second-language speaker whose pronunciation is influenced by his native language, Samoan. His sons, as second-generation speakers, have these features too but at lower frequencies. The twins also differ from each other, with the streetwise Valea, who is more aligned with Pasifika youth culture, producing higher levels of the variables than the studious Vale. Pepelo produces unaspirated initial /p/s, again a Pasifika language feature, while his sons do not. Linking-/r/, however, appears to index a youth identity but not adult immigrant status. We conclude that performed varieties can reflect the linguistic production of a community in their selection of specific features. The quantitative patterns can be quite variable, but here succeed in indexing salient identities for their audiences.* We acknowledge Elizabeth Mitchell (producer) and the cast of bro'Town for their openness in discussing this research with us. Earlier versions of this paper were presented

Background Hip fracture is a procedure with high mortality and complication rates, and there exists a group especially at risk of these outcomes identified by their Nottingham Hip Fracture Score (NHFS). Meta-analysis suggests a possible benefit to this patient group from intravascular volume optimisation. We investigated whether intraoperative fluid and blood pressure optimisation improved complications in this group. Methods Patients with a NHFS ≥ 5 were enrolled into this multicentre observer-blinded randomised control trial. Patients were allocated to either standard care or a combination of fluid optimisation and blood pressure control using a non-invasive system. The primary outcome was the number of patients with one or more complications in each group. Secondary outcomes included hospital length of stay (LOS), incidence of hypotension and fluid and vasopressor usage. Results Forty-six percent of patients in the intervention group suffered one or more complications compared to the 51% in the control group (OR 0.82 (95% CI 0.49–1.36)). Per-protocol analysis improved the OR to 0.73 (95% CI 0.43–1.24). Median LOS was the same between both groups; however, the mean LOS on a per-protocol analysis was longer in the control group compared to the intervention group (23.2 (18.0) days vs. 18.5 (16.5), p = 0.047). Conclusions Haemodynamic optimisation including blood pressure management in high-risk patients undergoing repair of a hip fracture did not result in a statistically significant reduction in complications; however, a potential reduction in length of stay was seen. Trial registration A randomised trial of non-invasive cardiac output monitoring to guide haemodynamic optimisation in high risk patients undergoing urgent surgical repair of proximal femoral fractures (ClearNOF trial NCT02382185 ).