Transcript ELL217 Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics
Styles
Dr Emma Moore
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Contents
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What does it mean to talk about ‘style’ in
sociolinguistics?
What frameworks have been developed for
studying style?
How is the latest ‘style’ research undertaken?
What we know about style already:
Style & attention to speech
Eliciting tokens of /r/
A: “Where is ….?”
B: “On the fourth floor.”
A: “Excuse me?”
B: “The fourth floor.”
Labov (1972): NYC department stores
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Unconscious
response
Careful
articulation (more
attention paid to
speech)
Labov (1972) NYC results
More /r/ in
more
careful
speech
styles
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Attention to speech as a continuum of
style
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Formal to informal styles
Word list
Reading
Careful (interview)
Casual (friends)
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Based upon the type of speech event
Is type of speech event the only thing
that affects style?
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Cheshire (1982)
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Reading adventure playgrounds
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Considered style shifting
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Groups of ‘delinquent’ children (WC)
Language used with peers
Language used with the teacher in school
Style shifts according to setting and audience
More evidence for the importance of
setting and audience…
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Coupland (1984)
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Travel agency corpus
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Travel agent in conversation with clients
Analysed several variables, including the voicing
of intervocalic /t/: [bʊtə] – [bʊtə]
ˇ
The voicing of the travel agent was affected by
the level of voicing used by her client
Links to social psychology &
accommodation theory
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Giles & Powesland (1975): Speech
Accommodation Theory
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Speakers accommodate their speech to their
addressee in order to gain approval
Speech accommodation
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Convergence: movement towards one’s
addressee
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Divergence: movement away from one’s
addressee
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Noddy and Barney in Cheshire’s study?
Audience Design as an approach to
style
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Bell (1984): Speakers style shift as a
response to their listeners
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Studying a radio newsreader’s pronunciations on
2 different stations
Newsreader’s ‘style’ is determined by his
audience
Audience Design as an approach to
style
“Speakers show a finegrained variability to design
their style for a range of
addressees, and to a
lessening degree for other
audience members such as
auditors and overhearers”
(Bell 2007: 97).
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“Style shifts according to
topic or setting derive their
meaning and direction of
shift from the underlying
association of topics or
settings with typical
audience members” (Bell
2007: 98).
The latest work on style…
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Approaches which view style as the product
of type of speech event, context/setting
and/or audience may be limited
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Suggests that all styles are pre-existing
Style as creative
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Speakers don’t just use language to express
pre-existing styles but can use language to
create new styles
Speakers may not just be accommodating to
an audience but designing their own talk to
determine how they are perceived
Linguistic variables are dynamic and can be
used to create a range of meanings…
How do things mean?: The case of the
Mickey Mouse watch
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What does the wearing of a Mickey Mouse
watch say about someone’s style?
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Depends whose wearing it!
What is it worn with?
Style and its meaning
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Eckert (2000): (ay) in the Detroit suburbs
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The raising of the nucleus of (ay) is an urban
feature, and is favored by kids who are alienated
from school, and who resist adult domination
Tends to be used by Burnouts rather than Jocks
Audience design interpretation?
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Burnouts use raised (ay) more, so this
feature probably means ‘burnout’
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Traditional accounts might say that a non-burnout
using raised (ay) is accommodating to burnout
style, or associating themselves with burnout
status
Is it that simple?
Connie = a working
class jock who prides
herself in being more
authentic &
independent than her
peers.
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Judy
Jock, Burnout
Connie
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Judy = the most burned-out
burnout
The meaning of (ay): a linguistic
Mickey Mouse watch?
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Is Connie trying to be a burnout (Audience
designing her talk to converge towards her
burnout peers)?
Or is she using (ay) to create a new identity
as an ‘independent’ jock?
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(ay) raising’s association with resistance serves
as a useful resource for Connie
Style as bricolage (Hebdige 1979)
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We ‘decode’ linguistic variables according to
their context
Sociolinguistic style is no different to style in
any other other realm of life (Irvine 2001)
Style is a socially meaningful clustering of
features, within and across different
linguistic levels and modalities
(The Half Moon Bay Style Collective 2006)
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Styles and ethnography
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The understanding of speakers’ styles
requires ethnography
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Who do speakers hang around with?
What practices do they engage in?
What repertoire of linguistic features do they use?
How do they dress?
How do all of these things make
language meaningful?
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Linguistic features and styles
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Linguistic features can be intimately tied to
social practices
Eckert (2000): vowels & jean width
Modelling style: Communities of
Practice
Community of Practice (CofP): “an aggregate of people who come together
around mutual engagement in an endeavor” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992:464).
“The people at the Jones’s breakfast table, in Mrs. Constock’s
Latin class, or in Ivan’s garage band get together fairly regularly
to engage in an enterprise. Whether the enterprise is being a
family, learning (or not learning) Latin, or playing music, by virtue
of engaging over time in that endeavour, the participants in each
of these groups develop ways of doing things together. They
develop activities and ways of engaging in those activities, they
develop common knowledge and beliefs, ways of relating to each
other, ways of talking – in short, practices. Such a group is what
Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) have termed a community
of practice” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003: 57).
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Findings from CofP studies
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The meaning of nonstandard were in a
Bolton high school (Moore 2004)
Townie
Popular
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Anti-school
attitude
Anti-school
rebellious
behaviour
Sporty/
Feminine Style
Sporty/OTT
style
Findings from ‘speaker-design’ style
studies
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The social meaning of word-final /t/:
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Bucholtz (1996) - adolescent geeky girls
Ashburn (2000) - science fiction fans
Benor (2001) - Orthodox Jews after Yeshiva
Podesva et al. (2001) - gay activist lawyer for
mainstream audience
Campbell-Kibler (2003) - perceptions of
undergraduate students
Sclafani (2007) - parodies of Martha Stewart
Attention to speech
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Determined by levels of formality
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Informal style
Formal style
Casual style
Reading style…
Audience design
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Determined by audience
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School/teacher style
Vernacular culture style
WC style
Female style…
Speaker design/creative styling
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Determined by the wider ‘style’ of the
speaker
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Independent jock style
Townie style
Geeky girl style
Gay lawyer style …
Summing Up…
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Style has always been an important concept
in Sociolinguistics
Style can defined as:
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Attention to Speech (Labov 1972)
Audience Design (Bell 1984)
Speaker Design/Creative Styling (Eckert 2000,
Moore 2004)
Selected References
Bell, Allan (2007) “Style and the linguistic repertoire”. In:
Carmen Llamas, Louise Mullany & Peter Stockwell (eds.),
The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics. London:
Routledge.
Coupland, Nikolas (2007) Style: Language Variation & Identity.
Cambridge: CUP.
Labov, William (1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Eckert, Penelope (2000) Linguistic Variation as Social
Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.
Moore, Emma (2004) “Sociolinguistic style: A
multidimensional resource for shared identity creation”.
Canadian Journal of Linguistics 49 (3/4): 375-396.
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Required Reading: Meyerhoff 2006 (Chapter 3)