Book contents
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theoretical Foundations
- Part I Where Is (Social) Meaning?
- Part II The Structure of Social Meaning
- 7 Sociolinguistic Signs as Cognitive Representations
- 8 Perceptions of Style: A Focus on Fundamental Frequency and Perceived Social Characteristics
- 9 Features, Meanings, and Indexical Fields
- 10 Reconciling Seemingly Conflicting Social Meanings
- 11 Biographical Indexicality: Personal History as a Frame of Reference for Social Meaning in Variation
- Part III Meaning and Linguistic Change
- Index
- References
9 - Features, Meanings, and Indexical Fields
from Part II - The Structure of Social Meaning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2021
Book contents
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theoretical Foundations
- Part I Where Is (Social) Meaning?
- Part II The Structure of Social Meaning
- 7 Sociolinguistic Signs as Cognitive Representations
- 8 Perceptions of Style: A Focus on Fundamental Frequency and Perceived Social Characteristics
- 9 Features, Meanings, and Indexical Fields
- 10 Reconciling Seemingly Conflicting Social Meanings
- 11 Biographical Indexicality: Personal History as a Frame of Reference for Social Meaning in Variation
- Part III Meaning and Linguistic Change
- Index
- References
Summary
The chapter discusses the indexical field in the light of results from a series of listener-experiments. It is a well-established finding that the same linguistic variant may be associated with different indexical features. In three studies focusing primarily on the social meanings associated with fronted (s) in different styles of Copenhagen Danish, we have used the matched-guise technique to investigate how the social meaning ascribed by listeners to a specific linguistic variant is influenced by (1) the prosodic context in which it occurs, (2) the co-occurrence of other segmental features in the stream of speech, and (3) the gender of the speaker. The three experiments illustrate different aspects of the indexicality of fronted (s) in Copenhagen Danish, and they are designed to highlight how different social meanings are evoked, and how the indexicalities of different features influence each other. We show how ascription of indexical value to linguistic variation is a dynamic process, and we argue that the concept of the indexical field can help us understand the way meaning-making takes place, not only in experiments like these, but also in everyday interaction.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Social Meaning and Linguistic VariationTheorizing the Third Wave, pp. 203 - 221Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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