We examine shop signs in Brooklyn, New York, as sociolinguistic technologies of place-making that operate through specific language ideologies which represent class struggles for material wealth. We find two salient types of signs which we call Old School Vernacular and Distinction-making signage. The first indexes multiple inclusions in the neighborhood economy before gentrification and thus suggests a capitalism without distinction. These signs also challenge linguistic and literacy prescriptivism. In contrast, Distinction-making signs signal an exclusivity that for some readers also represents exclusion. We discuss how these data can reveal and disguise rent gap opportunities as both old and new signs co-inhabit the same space in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn.Examinamos los letreros de las tiendas de Brooklyn, New York como tecnolog ıas socioling€ u ısticas de place-making (producci on de lugares) que operan a trav es de ideolog ıas espec ıficas del lenguaje, las cuales representan las luchas de clase por el bienestar y la riqueza material. Identificamos dos tipos sobresalientes de letreros a los cuales hemos llamado Old School Vernacular [vern aculo de vieja escuela] y Distinction-making signage [productor de distincci on]. El primero enumera ideas de inclusiones m ultiples en la econom ıa vecinal antes de la gentrificaci on y por lo tanto sugiere un capitalismo sin distinci on. Estos letreros, que tienden a ser evaluados negativamente por algunos pr osperos reci en llegados, tambi en cuestionan las ideas del prescriptivismo ling€ u ıstico y del c odigo letrado. Por el contrario, los letrerosproductores de distinci on señalan una exclusividad que, para algunos lectores, tambi en representa exclusi on. Discutimos c omo estos datos pueden revelar y ocultar oportunidades de inversi on, porque ambos letreros, viejos y nuevos, cohabitan en el mismo espacio en una Brooklyn que se gentrifica con rapidez. [Spanish]

This study examines the types of interactional trouble that arise from narrative variation in institutional interviews. Specifically, we examine protective order interviews in which Latina women tell of domestic violence to paralegal interviewers charged with the duty of helping them obtain a protective order. Victims' narratives are shown to take different shapes, and paralegals respond to them in different pragmalinguistic ways, depending on how they diverge from institutional needs. The factors found most heavily to influence narrative outcomes are contextual ones, related to participant social roles, the type of communicative activity interlocutors perceive themselves to be engaged in, and their interactional goals. An additional finding is that when expectations of what constitutes appropriate speech behavior differ, the interlocutor holding greater institutional power will try to constrain the speech of the other, despite the fact that both appear to share an extralinguistic goal, in this case obtaining a protective order.

Within institutions that provide assistance to victims of domestic violence, professionals and volunteers work as advocates for their clients at the same time that they act as gatekeepers for their agencies. While the labor of advocacy consists of empowering clients and validating their concerns and feelings, the task of gatekeeping entails making judgments about them in order to dole out goods and services. Thirty protective order interviews and their resulting adavits form the data for this study. These interviews take place in a district attorney's oce and in a pro bono law clinic. This micro-level analysis of the verbal interaction between protective order application interviewers (both paid and volunteer) and their Latina clients investigates what positive politeness strategies can reveal about how interviewers construct the con¯icting discursive identities of advocate and gatekeeper. I examine what interviewers say to clients as well as how interviewers allow clients to give their accounts of abuse. The study points to speci®c linguistic techniques that may leave victims feeling unaccompanied in the sociolegal system. I suggest that one consequence of the gatekeeping required of interviewers is that victim-survivors may perceive a`second assault' by the institutions meant to serve them. Linguistic phenomena particular to Latina women in the United States are also brought to light.

This article provides a systematic analysis of the lexical variation surrounding the topic of sexual violence used by Latina women in a legal setting where they tell their stories of domestic abuse in order to make an ocial report. Twenty-two-protective order interviews in which Latina women co-construct their accounts of abuse with paralegal or volunteer interviewers make up the corpus of the study. By bringing to light the dierent lexical items used to discuss sexual violence, I suggest that cultural ways of speaking (where norms for discourse about this topic are arguably quite consistent cross-culturally) about taboo topics can be at odds with institutional needs. Utilizing anthropological and linguistic theories of sociocultural taboos as well as an interactional sociolinguistic approach to frame the analysis, I determine that Latina women have an array of linguistic resources with which to speak about sexual assault. However, in some instances, the victims' use of ambiguous and vague terms to refer to sexual violence, a taboo subject, though perhaps a culturally appropriate strategy for storytelling, puts the accuracy of an institutional record at risk.This study examines how the topic of sexual violence is negotiated and managed at the intersection of the US sociolegal system and the US Latino community. 1 Speci®cally, I focus on how Latina survivors of domestic abuse discuss sexual violence and marital rape with service providers in protective order application interviews. 2 Of interest here is the way the participants in the twenty-two protective order application 0165± 4888/01/0021±0567