Introduction

The Mouth is not about rotten teeth and dentures, and linguists only rarely become film stars, and probably do not figure prominently as dentists either. Yet, teeth are important in linguistics, cultural and social studies, and elsewhere. They are needed in order to produce interdental fricatives, and winning smiles while presenting an academic talk on the former. They can be mutilated and extracted, painted (black), whitened and neglected – all part of social performances of class and practices of indicating group membership. Teeth are shown to enemies in different ways than to friends when we smile. They can pain tremendously, but interestingly do not feel like anything at all when they are well. The cover theme of this issue of The Mouth is therefore used and to be understood in all of these manifold ways: teeth are a metaphor of speaking, of seeing oneself and being seen, and of society at large. Thus, this issue of The Mouth does not contain any contribution to the field of dentistry, forensics or phonetics. Instead, it offers a selection of sociolinguistic contributions which look critically at multilingualism, mobility, capitalism and academia.