Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T12:04:09.044Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Acts of Citizen Sociolinguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2020

Betsy Rymes
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

This chapter develops an account of citizen sociolinguistic acts, as distinct from systemic social movements or organized social action. Citizen sociolinguistic acts are momentary ruptures that reveal tacit assumptions behind our everyday use of language. As such they may lead to change, but they may not. In any case, these acts of talking about language transform subjects into citizen sociolinguists. Acts, as idiosyncratic and situationally specific, have existential qualities of that remain outside typical top-down social theoretical explanations like Marxism’s theory of capital, or a Foucauldian system of discipline. Instead, acts of citizen sociolinguistics, like those we’ve been discussing throughout this volume – acts of sociolinguistic arrest or wonderment – consist simply of encounters with another person. These acts of citizen sociolinguistics do not, on their own, reconfigure systemic relations, ethics, or spoken language, any more than an act of kindness or an act of violence might. They are not large-scale curricular reforms or policy changes. However, they raise our awareness of our humanity and relatedness, and the role of language in it, in ways that can provoke further talk and have a societal impact.

Type
Chapter
Information
How We Talk about Language
Exploring Citizen Sociolinguistics
, pp. 170 - 184
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×