Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6dbcb7884d-g628x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-14T08:45:57.879Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Sociolinguistic differentiation

from Part I - Theorising social meaning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2016

By
Susan Gal
Edited by
Nikolas Coupland
Susan Gal
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Nikolas Coupland
Affiliation:
University of Wales College of Cardiff
Get access

Summary

Introduction

Early work in sociolinguistics offered key insights for studying the social meanings of linguistic differentiation. Three of these remain strong inspirations for current research programs. First, there was a deep understanding that many apparently different disciplinary approaches were closely related and together would shed light on linguistic variation and change. Dialectology, ethnographies of communication, conversation analysis, and studies of standardization and of language politics sat comfortably side-by-side in the early edited collections (Hymes 1964; Bright 1966). In a second insight, researchers proposed that all social signaling occurs in interaction of some kind: Linguistic changes correspond to shifts in the social situation (Fischer 1958; Hymes 1962; Labov 1963; Gumperz and Hymes 1964). In studies of communication, a concern with reflexivity was present from the start. Anthropologist Bateson (1955) highlighted the necessity of metasignals that give cues to listeners about how they should understand or respond to utterances. Jakobson (1960) discussed the metalinguistic (i.e., reflexive) function of language. Both theorists recognized that many levels of linguistic structure can carry metamessages, and such signaling occurs in every kind of interaction and social group. A third insight followed: If the selective display of linguistic variants can signal the definition of situation, it can also reconstruct it. Linguistic variation does not simply reflect but also performatively creates social meaning that is a spur and enactment of social differentiation (Labov 1963; Blom and Gumperz 1972). In this way, linguistic variation participates in sociocultural as well as linguistic change.

In the sociolinguistics research that developed from these early insights, metasignaling has been understood as a semiotic process: A metasign is one that regiments how it itself and other signs are to be interpreted; it is a framing. Language ideologies in all their more-and-less explicit forms do just this work. Among all the many possible effects of metasignaling, this chapter focuses on the achievement of similarity and difference – between linguistic forms, speaker personae, social roles, situations, objects of talk. Similarity and difference are like two sides of a coin; they result from mutually implicated sociolinguistic processes. My question is: How are the resemblances and contrasts of sociocultural and linguistic practices actively constructed by framings and uptakes of signs? The sign relation of indexicality has been most thoroughly examined in sociolinguistics so far.

Type
Chapter
Information
Sociolinguistics
Theoretical Debates
 , pp. 113 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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.)

References

Agha, A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Ball, C. 2014. On dicentization. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 24, 2: 151–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateson, G. 1972 [1955]. Steps to an Ecology of Mind.: San Francisco: Chandler.Google Scholar
Bauman, R., and Briggs, C.. 2003. Voices of Modernity. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, R., and Sherzer, J. (eds.) 1974. Explorations in the Ethnography of Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blom, J.-P., and Gumperz, J. J.. 1972. Social meaning in linguistic structures: Codeswitching in Norway. In Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D. (eds.) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, 407–434.Google Scholar
Bright, W. (ed.) 1966. Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the 1964 UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, M. 2011. White Kids. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, M., and Hall, K.. 2008. All of the above: New coalitions in sociocultural linguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12, 4: 401–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chumley, L., and Harkness, N.. 2013. Introduction: QUALIA. Anthropological Theory. 13: 1–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, N. 2001. Dialect stylisation in radio talk. Language in Society 30, 3: 345–375.Google Scholar
Duranti, A., and Goodwin, C. (eds.). 1992. Rethinking Context. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, P. 1989. Jocks and Burnouts. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, P. 2012. Three waves of variation study. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 87–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenlohr, P. 2006. Little India. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S. 1972. Alternation and co-occurrence. In Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D. (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, 218–250.Google Scholar
Fischer, J. L. 1958. Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant. Word 14: 47–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gal, S. 2005. Language ideologies compared. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15: 23–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gal, S. 2013. The taste of talk. Anthropological Theory 13, 1–2: 31–48.Google Scholar
Gal, S., and Irvine, J. T.. 1995. The boundaries of languages and disciplines. Social Research 62, 4: 967–1001.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1967. Face-work. In Goffman, E., Interaction Ritual. Chicago, IL: Aldine.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1974. Frame Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, N. 1971. Seven strictures on similarity. In Goodman, N., Problems and Prospects. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 437–447.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. 1972. Introduction. In Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D. (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, 1–25.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. J., and Hymes, D. (eds.). 1964. Special issue of American Anthropologist.
Gumperz, J. J., and Hymes, D. (eds.). 1972. Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Harkness, N. 2012. Vowel harmony redux. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 16, 3: 358–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haugen, E. 1966. Language, dialect, nation. American Anthropologist 68, 4: 922–935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hebdige, D. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. 1962. The ethnography of speaking. In Gladwin, T. and Sturtevant, W. C. (eds.), Anthropology and Human Behavior. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. (ed.). 1964. Language in Culture and Society. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. T. 1990. Registering affect. In Abu-Lughod, L. and Lutz, C. (eds.), Language and the Politics of Emotion. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. T. 2001. “Style” as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In Eckert, P. and Rickford, J. (eds.), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 21–43.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. T., and Gal, S.. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Kroskrity, P. (ed.), Regimes of Language. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 35–84.Google Scholar
Jaffe, A. (ed.) 2012. Orthography as Social Action. Boston and Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, R. 1960. Closing remarks. In Sebeok, T. (ed.), Style in Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Johnstone, B. 2013. Pittsburghese: The Story of a Dialect.New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, B., Andrus, J., and Danielson, A. E.. 2006. Mobility, indexicality and the enregisterment of “Pittsburghese.” Journal of English Linguistics 34: 77–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, W. 2003. Semiotics and the social analysis of material things. Language and Communication 23: 409–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramer, E. 2011. The playful is political: The metapragmatics of internet rape joke arguments. Language in Society 40: 137–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuipers, J. 1998. Language, Identity and Marginality in Indonesia. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19: 273–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucy, J. 1993. Reflexive language and the human disciplines. In Lucy, J. (ed.), Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 9–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, P. 2012. Semiotics of Drinks and Drinking. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
McIntosh, J. 2005. Language essentialism and social hierarchies among Giriama and Swahili. Journal of Pragmatics 37: 1919–1944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, N. 2008. Homegirls. New York: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, N. 2011. The semiotic hitchhiker's guide to creaky voice. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21, 2: 261–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munn, N. 1986. The Fame of Gawa. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. 1955. Logic as semiotic: The theory of signs. In Buchler, J. (ed.), The Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover, 98–115.Google Scholar
Rampton, B. (ed.). 1999. Special issue on Styling the Other. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. 1972. Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In Sudnow, D. (ed.), Studies in Social Interaction. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G., and Sacks, H.. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language 50: 696–735.Google Scholar
Schieffelin, B. B., and Doucet, R. C.. 1998. The “real” Haitian creole: Ideology, metalinguistics and orthographic choice. In Schieffelin, B. B., Woolard, K., and Kroskrity, P. (eds.), Language Ideologies. New York: Oxford University Press, 285–316.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. 1979. Language structure and linguistic ideology. In Clyne, R., Hanks, W. F., and Hofbauer, C. L. (eds.), The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistics Society, 193–247.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23: 193–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlinson, M. 2012. God speaking to God: Translation and unintelligibility in a Fijian Pentecostal crusade. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 23: 274–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolard, K. 2008. Why dat now. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 12, 4: 432–452.Google Scholar
Woolard, K., and Schieffelin, B.. 1994. Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 55–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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
×