Sociolinguis5cs: a study of meaning • What is social meaning?
– What isn’t social meaning?
• What is the range of meanings that get associated with linguis5c variables?
• What is the range of linguis5c resources that func5on as sociolinguis5c variables?
What is a slx variable?
• An alterna5on of form becomes a variable when the alterna5on displays a paCern.
• It becomes a sociolinguis5c variable when social context is part of that paCern.
• At that point, the variable takes on meaning, becoming a sign.
Podesva, R., P. Eckert, J. Fine, K. Hilton, S Jeong, S. King, T. PraC. 2015. Social Influences on the Degree of Stop Voicing in Inland California. Penn working papers in linguis5cs.
An emergent sign
• Is varia5on part of pragma5cs? – From ye olde Wickedpedia: Pragma&cs is a subfield of linguis5cs and semio5cs that studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning.
• proposi5onal meaning? • where does denota5on leave off and connota5on begin?
What’s the difference?
(1) a. Americans need to pay off their debts. b.The Americans need to pay off their debts.
(2) a. Americans drink fluoridated water. b. The Americans drink fluoridated water.
Acton, Eric. 2014. Pragma5cs and the social meaning of determiners. PhD Disserta5on. Stanford University.
Acton, Eric. 2014. Pragma5cs and the social meaning of determiners. PhD Disserta5on. Stanford University.
“Americans are cravin’ that straight talk.”
(42) [. . . ] it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.
Acton, Eric K. and Christopher Potts. 2014. That straight talk: Sarah Palin and the sociolinguistics of demonstratives. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(1):3-31. Liberman, Mark. 2010. Sarah Palin’s distal demonstratives. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2240
Acton, E. (2011). On gender differences in the distribu5on of um and uh. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguis5cs, 17(2).
A construc5on We used to uh | put on like these skits for the cla- uh | me and her we won first prize in this talent contest cuz we uh | dressed up as sardines, you know.
Calder and Popova
D’Onofrio, Hilton and Pratt creak + uh p=0.01
We we got arrested before For uh | possession of alcohol
And uh | me and Jill we went in the john you know we had our first our first cigarette
Is uh a filler?
4/19 occurrences of um/uh precede pauses of over a second.
• 2 occurrences of um. • 2 occurrences of uh with no creak.
• before syntac5c restart • before long pause
The role of the 2nd genera5on
In cases of language contact, adults will bring substrate influences into the target language, but it is their kids who, as na5ve speakers of that target language, will (or won’t) select substrate features to index aspects of the second genera5on immigrant experience.
Roberts, S. J. (2000). Na5viza5on and the genesis of Hawaiian
Creole. Language change and language contact in pidgins and creoles. J. H. McWhorter. Amsterdam, Benjamins. 1-‐45.
Audrit, S. (forthcoming). “Non standard phone5c variants used as iden5ty markers by immigrated Moroccan adolescents in Brussels”. In /Proceedings of the ICLaVE 5th (University of Copenhaguen – June 2009). John Benjamins.
(th) stopping "• Mendoza-Denton, Norma. (1997). Chicana/Mexicana identity and linguistic variation: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of gang affiliation in an urban high school, Stanford University. !
• Rose, M. (2006). Language, Place and Identity in Later Life. PhD Dissertation. Stanford CA, Stanford University.!"• Dubois, S. and B. Horvath (1998). "Let's tink about dat: Interdental Fricatives in Cajun English." Language variation and change 10(3): 245-61."
Local or ethnic identity is never simply an association with a generic locale or ethnicity, but with a particular construction of that locale or ethnicity as distinct from some other.
Indexical Order (th) stopping
First Order
Latino Italian German Cajun
n+1 gang affiliate
tough guy hard worker entrepreneur
-‐1.00
-‐0.50
0.00
0.50
1.00
1.50
2.00
2.50
std. dev from
scho
ol m
ean
(ay) raising/backing nega5ve concord
Two girls at the local social extremes: Judy and Melody
Do Judy and Melody’s styles have meaning?
• Ques5on 1: – version a. what social group or clique do you think this person belongs to?
– version b. how well do you think this person does in school?
– version c. what do you think this person does for fun? • Ques5on 2:
– What do you think this person is like?
Calder, J., A. D’Onofrio, P. Eckert, E. King, G. Lee, D. Popova, T. PraC, J. Van Hofwegen, A. Venkatesh. Jocks and burnouts revisited. 2013. Panel presented at NWAV 24.
4 from the Northern Ci5es region
• Judy – how well do you think this person does in school?
• I think the person is probably a very poor student • not very well • badly, delinquent
– what do you think this person is like? • obviously doesn’t know how to speak correctly • likes to have a good 5me, not very serious • Probably a trouble maker, doesn’t do her school work
• Melody – what do you think this person does for fun?
• They socialize with their many friends, go on dates, play sports, and are ac5ve in their school's extra curricular ac5vi5es
– what do you think this person is like? • Friendly, sociable, easily distracted, slightly melodrama5c, ac5ve, and
asser5ve.
what social group or clique do you think this person belongs to?
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Judy Melody
geeks, gamers
athlete
vague
gangsta, par5ers
smart
popular, cheerleaders, preps
What do you think this person is like?
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Judy Melody
trouble
par5es
0
1
2
3
4
5
Judy Melody
low class
middle class
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Judy Melody
friendly, outgoing, energe5c
what do you think this person does for fun?
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Judy Melody
shopping
trouble
school ac5vi5es
go to par5es
friends
games, outdoor ac5vi5es
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Judy Melody
not smart
smart
how well do you think this person does in school?
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Judy Melody
badly
ok
well
Explicit volunteered judgments of intelligence (what is this person like?)
CONDRY, J. and CONDRY, S. 1976. Sex differences: A study in the eye of the beholder. Child development, 47.812-‐19.
adults watching a film of a crying infant were more likely to hear the cry as angry if they believed the infant was a boy, and as plain5ve or fearful if they believed the infant was a girl.
Interpella5on from the start
adults judged a 24-‐hour-‐old baby as bigger if they believed it to be a boy, and finer-‐featured if they believed it to be a girl
RUBIN, J.Z., PROVENZANO, F.J. and LURIA, Z. 1974. The eye of the beholder: Parents' view on sex of newborns. American journal of orthopsychiatry, 44.512-‐19.
Parents use more diminu5ves (ki1y, doggie) when speaking to girls than to boys
GLEASON, J. BERKO, PERLMANN, R.Y., ELY, D. and EVANS, D. 1994. The baby talk register: Parents' use of diminu5ves. Handbook of research in language development using CHILDES, ed. by J.L. Sokolov and C.E. Snow. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
ELY, R., GLEASON, J., NARASIMHAN, B. and MCCABE, A. 1995. Family talk about talk: Mothers lead the way. Discourse processes, 19.
People use more inner state words (happy, sad) when speaking to girls than to boys.
Adults use more direct prohibi5ves (don’t do that!) and more empha5c prohibi5ves (no! no! no!) to boys than to girls, regardless of the actual nature of the children’s ac5vity.
BELLINGER, D. and GLEASON, J. BERKO. 1982. Sex differences in parental direc5ves to young children. Journal of sex roles, 8.1123-‐39.
A study of thirteen-‐month-‐old children in day care (Fagot et al 1985) showed that teachers responded to girls when they talked, babbled, or gestured, while they responded to boys when they whined, screamed, or demanded physical aCen5on. Nine to eleven months later, the same girls talked more than the boys, and the boys whined, screamed and demanded aCen5on more than the girls.
FAGOT, B.I., HAGAN, R., LEINBACH, M.D. and KRONSBERG, S. 1985. Differen5al reac5ons to asser5ve and communica5ve acts of toddler boys and girls. Child development, 56.1499-‐505.
The developmental impera5ve Collabora5ve socializa5on
• Growing up is central to kids’ lives.
• Adults stress it (primarily in the insistence on behavior “improvement”)
• Nobody wants to be a "baby". • Older kids have more status. They know stuff, they have more liber5es.
• The unknown is exci5ng.
Kids know what they’re doing
Child society is a basic part of the social order; not unfinished business.
Kids are important agents of social – and linguis5c – change. They are not just people who make interes5ng mistakes, but people who, in the reproduc5on of language and society, make intelligent changes.
Linguistically …
• Kids learn early on the relation between linguistic
variability and social life. • They interpret variability in adult speech: - Social roles - Social types - Affective displays
• They embrace language as a free and portable resource for social action.
3 1/2 year olds doing ‘father’
• lowered pitch, decreased pitch variability, increased amplitude
• oven backed and lowered vowels in a manner that produced an almost sinister ‘accent’: – yes [jʌs] – bad [bɑ:d]
Andersen, Elaine S. (1990). Speaking with style: The sociolinguis5c skills of children. London, Routledge. pp. 147 ff.
Affect
• Kids first learn the meaning of variation through its affective use.
• Affect is social by virtue of the association of emotional proclivities with social groups.
• Eventually affect becomes separable from social groupings.
NYGAARD, L.C. and LUNDERS, E.R. 2002. Resolu5on of lexical ambiguity by emo5onal tone of voice. Memory and cogni5on, 30.583-‐93.
Affect and Iconicity
Language as Bodily Hexis
Language is a body technique, and specifically linguistic, especially phonetic, competence is a dimension of bodily hexis in which one’s whole relation to the social world, and one’s wholly social informed relation to the world, are expressed. […] The most frequent articulatory position is an element in an overall way of using the mouth (in talking but also in eating, drinking, laughing etc.) […] in the case of the lower classes, articulatory style is quite clearly part of a relation to the body that is dominated by the refusal of ‘airs and graces’ […] Bourgeois dispositions [esp. petit bourgeois] convey in their physical postures of tension and exertion … the bodily indices of quite general dispositions towards the world and other people, such as haughtiness and disdain. Bourdieu, Pierre and Wacquant, Loic J.D. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.1992. p. 149
Frequency Code���Association of high frequencies in f0, f2, and in consonant turbulence
with smallness; low frequencies with largeness.
������
• Sapir, Edward. 1929. A study in phonetic symbolism. Journal of Experimental Psychology 12, 225-239. • Newman, S. 1933. Further experiments in phonetic symbolism. American Journal of Psychology 45, 53-75. • Ohala, John. 1994. The biological bases of sound symbolism, 325-347. Sound Symbolism. L. Hinton, J. Nichols and J. J. Ohala, 222-236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silverstein, Michael. 1994. Rela5ve mo5va5on in denota5onal and indexical sound symbolism of Wasco-‐Wishram Chinookan. Sound Symbolism. L. Hinton, J. Nichols and J. J. Ohala., 40-‐60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• in5mate;dear vs. distanced;off-‐puyng • desirable vs. to-‐be-‐shunned • personal vs impersonal • pleasing;sa5sfying vs. gross;disgus5ng
Hamano, Shoko. 1944. Palataliza5on in Japanese sound symbolism. Sound Symbolism. L. Hinton, J. Nichols and J. J.
Ohala., 148-‐157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• instability, unreliability, uncoordinated movement, diversity, excessive energy, noisiness, lack of elegance, cheapness
ColeCe
One that I really know is Josh and we -‐ we give him rides aver school
We got in this mad because of Josh or something and um the next day ‘cause she was spending the night I’m all “wait a minute why should we get mad over a stupid boy”
Rachel’s (ow)
Like everybody usually goes on Joanna's and um Vanessa's side so I usually have like nobody but Chrissy.
“I apologize” She says “oh well, I mean that was really rude and our friendship is over” I said and I got so mad when she says that so I said “Fine. Our friendship’s over.”
Rachel’s (ay)
I wanna be nice and sweet like other teachers. And I don’t wanna be yelling at my kids all my life you know -‐ if I have any kids
He lies to me Don’t lie
I felt like I wanna cry
Phonological prodess as a variable: Some hypoar5cula5ons
He’s a jackass and everything
Cuz they said it was fucked up it wasn’t really fucked up she didn’t even fight back I don’t even know if she beat me up or nothing I think she did kick me I don’t know I didn’t feel it though you know
Cuz we kinda got other people to dance cuz then you know -‐ it doesn't maCer if you dance stupid
FÓNAGY, IVAN. 1971. The functions of vocal style. Literary style: A symposium, ed. by Seymour Chatman, 159-74. London and New York: Oxford University Press. p. 160
!
The gloCal stop appears in many unrelated languages, figuring neither as phoneme nor as contextual variant, but as an expression of anger, hatred, or a firm aytude. Tomographic traces show that a strong gloCal constric5on accompanies the expression of hatred. The biological func5ons of gloCal occlusion, and the transfer of the anal libido to the gloCal level seems associated with the “hard aCack” of anger and hatred.
Key proper5es of sociolinguis5c variables
• Implicitness. Conveying something stylis5cally is less of a commitment, less face-‐threatening than puyng it in the content of an uCerance, and it allows both speaker and interlocutor to leave things “unsaid”. This also allows the speaker to make small indexical moves, to try out the waters with less risk to face.
• Underspecifica2on. Underspecifica5on is a design feature of language more generally. It allows a small number of
forms to serve a large number of purposes, it binds language to social ac5on, and it lies at the core of language’s capacity for flexibility, nuance, crea5vity and change. In this sense, sociolinguis5c variables are like other linguis5c signs, as their specific meanings emerge only in context.
• Combina2veness. Variables do not occur alone, and are not interpreted on their own, but as components of
mquis5c styles. Styles are what connect to social meaning through their rela5on to types, personae, or characterological figures (Agha 2003). The underspecifica5on of variables allows them to bring meaning to styles, but only through a process of vivifica5on as they contribute to the construc5on of these figures. The deployment of individual variables across styles expands their indexical range.
Key proper5es of sociolinguis5c variables
• Implicitness. Conveying something stylis5cally is less of a commitment, less face-‐threatening than puyng it in the content of an uCerance, and it allows both speaker and interlocutor to leave things “unsaid”. This also allows the speaker to make small indexical moves, to try out the waters with less risk to face.
• Underspecifica2on. Underspecifica5on is a design feature of language more generally. It allows a small number of forms to serve a large number of purposes, it binds language to social ac5on, and it lies at the core of language’s capacity for flexibility, nuance, crea5vity and change. In this sense, sociolinguis5c variables are like other linguis5c signs, as their specific meanings emerge only in context.
• Combina2veness. Variables do not occur alone, and are not interpreted on their own, but as components of
holis5c styles. Styles are what connect to social meaning through their rela5on to types, personae, or characterological figures (Agha 2003). The underspecifica5on of variables allows them to bring meaning to styles, but only through a process of vivifica5on as they contribute to the construc5on of these figures. The deployment of individual variables across styles expands their indexical range.
Key proper5es of variables • Implicitness. Conveying something stylis5cally is less of a commitment, less face-‐threatening than puyng it in the
content of an uCerance, and it allows both speaker and interlocutor to leave things “unsaid”. This also allows the speaker to make small indexical moves, to try out the waters with less risk to face.
• Underspecifica2on. Underspecifica5on is a design feature of language more generally. It allows a small number of
forms to serve a large number of purposes, it binds language to social ac5on, and it lies at the core of language’s capacity for flexibility, nuance, crea5vity and change. In this sense, sociolinguis5c variables are like other linguis5c signs, as their specific meanings emerge only in context.
• Combina2veness. Variables do not occur alone, and are not interpreted on their own, but as components of styles. Styles connect to social meaning through their rela5on to stances, social types, or personae. The underspecifica5on of variables allows them to bring meaning to styles, but only through a process of vivifica5on as they contribute to the construc5on of personae. The deployment of individual variables across styles expands their indexical range.
Posi5vism vs. construc5vism ... the tradi5onal rela5onship between structure and ac5on, in which ac5on is treated as a reflec5on of a prior structure, is rejected in favor of one in which structure emerges through situated ac5on. Dialogism Loca5ng language, culture, and agency in the inters5ces between people, rather than within individuals themselves.
... meanings emerge in conversa5ons .... as meanings are coconstructed, social reality is also constructed.... language does not merely reflect an already exis5ng social reality; it also helps to create that reality.
Ahearn, L. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137.
Structure, constraint, power
Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. And “Power,” insofar as it is permanent, repe55ous, inert, and self-‐reproducing, is simply the over-‐all effect that emerges from all these mobili5es, the concatena5on that rests on each of them and seeks in turn to arrest their movement.
Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality. New York: Vintage Books.
Competence
Performance
?
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of a theory of syntax. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.