The paper delves into the situated usage of mixed speech produced by adult Lithuanians at work, the environment hardly ever sociolinguistically researched in Lithuania. By mixed speech, Lithuanian speech interspersed with occasional insertional elements from other languages is meant. The study aims to see how more diverse linguistic resources that are now available in Lithuania are used to construct and negotiate social relations and social identities in the talk at work. The case study, which is a part of an ongoing larger scale project on Lithuanian workplace discourse, draws on digital audio recordings of naturally occurring spontaneous conversations between employees collected by a volunteer in a media-related company in Vilnius. The recordings containing elements of languages other than Lithuanian (English and Russian) have been transcribed and analysed using Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS), an in-depth qualitative approach that combines the application of the interpretive methods of discourse analysis with insights into social and cultural issues. The paper argues that mixed speech in Lithuanian workplace discourse is creatively used as group or individual stylistic choice to construct certain social images and to perform various functions: for instance, mixed speech containing Russian insertions, slang and swear words serves as an index of belonging to the group (or a community of practice), whereas English is a necessary tool for doing well in a contemporary work environment and presenting oneself as an expert in one’s professional field; English insertions tend to be employed when things need to be quickly and efficiently done while Russian is still used more extensively for off-task talk, such as small talk, gossiping, humour and jokes, which constitute an integral part of the talk at work. It can be hypothesised, however, that the range of functions performed by English insertions is gradually expanding as the command of Russian among co-workers is decreasing. The study depicts mixed speech as a means of negotiating social identities of a friendly and supportive colleague, a skilled and experienced professional, a creative, playful and adaptive communicator, and an open-minded, educated and sophisticated person.

Students learn languages through talking and there is a documented need for more student talk in the classroom. Through talk we learn not only structural components of a language but also the communicative application of it. Can standard classroom speaking strategies, embodied in typical predictable patterns, successfully serve these functions? And to which extent should those traditional patterns allow predictability and control in managing classroom interaction? In this paper the focus is driven towards the ways the classroom teacher can orchestrate and support a kind of classroom discourse that engenders more active student talk that leads to foreign language learning. A particular emphasis is put on the use of the Triadic Dialogue, known as IRF (initiation-response-follow-up) pattern, the value of which has been debated in writings on language education. It has attracted criticism for being ritualistic and restrictive, although recent research has pointed to the range of functions that may be fulfilled by the follow-up move. The paper examines the constituents and possible sub-genres of the three-part classroom exchange and aims to prove that a certain degree of freedom is possible within the constraints of the Triadic Dialogue. Drawing on recorded episodes of teacher-students interaction in adult EFL classroom, the paper will show that the three-part pattern allows spontaneous variations and extensions initiated both by teachers and students. The variety of forms that the basic IRF structure can take enriches the linguistic repertoire of choices in the co-constructed classroom reality.

This paper qualitatively examines mixed speech styles within the context of two single-gendered white-collar Lithuania-based workplaces situated in Vilnius: an IT company and a company producing cosmetics (COSM). In Lithuanian contexts, mixed speech styles could be broadly defined as a flow of speech consisting of linguistic resources from languages other than Lithuanian (mainly English and Russian) incorporated into otherwise Lithuanian talk. The paper focuses on situated usage of mixed speech styles employed in talk at work. It aims to see how the linguistic enactment of mixed speech styles varies according to the working team and how such variation may influence the construction of participants’ complex identities. The research is based on naturally occurring recorded speech, and the method applied could be determined as ethnographically informed Interactional Sociolinguistics. The analysis shows that the two single-gendered communities of practice examined do not draw on the same non-native linguistic resources and that such dissimilar speaker choices and identity work can be predetermined by an intricate interplay of social and situational factors.

Le fait que le dictionnaire soit une institution linguistique en même temps qu’une institution culturelle et sociale empêche le lexicographe de rester seulement linguiste; chaque fois il est obligé d’exercer le rôle du porteur des normes de la société et il n’est pas donc libre de faire apparaître n’importe quel mot dans son dictionnaire. Comme le soulignent de différents métalexicographes européens, les tabous les plus connus sont ceux qui concernent les processus physiologiques, les gestes amoureux, les organes sexuels. Pourtant un dictionnaire général qui se veut objectif ne peut pas faire semblant que de tels mots n’existent pas du tout. Pour rester fidèle aux faits de la langue qu’il décrit, il est obligé de dépasser ce que Benveniste appelait « le français du dimanche » et fixer les mots les plus répandus qui circulent dans la société, même s’ils sont parfois scandaleux. Le but de cet article est d’analyser si les mots-tabous restent toujours une brebis galeuse de la lexicographie bilingue lituanienne. Ayant choisi comme l’objet de l’analyse six bilingues actifs et passifs, réalisés après l’an 2000, nous allons étudier si ces dictionnaires sont ouverts au lexique de ce type (en guise d’exemple nous allons étudier l’article consacré au lexème merde) et comment celui-ci est traité au niveau macrostructurel et microstructurel.