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?
- 2 Social Meaning and Sound Change
- 3 The Social Meaning of Syntax
- 4 The Social Meaning of Semantic Properties
- 5 Pragmatics and the Third Wave: The Social Meaning of Definites
- 6 The Cognitive Structure behind Indexicality: Correlations in Tasks Linking /s/ Variation and Masculinity
- Part II The Structure of Social Meaning
- Part III Meaning and Linguistic Change
- Index
- References
5 - Pragmatics and the Third Wave: The Social Meaning of Definites
from Part I - Where Is (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?
- 2 Social Meaning and Sound Change
- 3 The Social Meaning of Syntax
- 4 The Social Meaning of Semantic Properties
- 5 Pragmatics and the Third Wave: The Social Meaning of Definites
- 6 The Cognitive Structure behind Indexicality: Correlations in Tasks Linking /s/ Variation and Masculinity
- Part II The Structure of Social Meaning
- Part III Meaning and Linguistic Change
- Index
- References
Summary
Propelled by the third wave of variationist sociolinguistics, the present work argues that pragmatic and variationist inquiry are mutually enriching and fundamentally united. Relying on both traditions, I develop a general principle of language use and interpretation – briefly: utterances are evaluated according to not only their own semiotic character but also what sets them apart from that of alternative utterances that appear to offer a favorable mix of costs and benefits in context. I demonstrate that these principles underlie a wide range of phenomena observed in third-wave and pragmatics literature, with particular focus on two cases of social meaning rooted in semantically based inferences: (i) John McCain’s reference to Barack Obama as ‘that one’ in a 2008 US presidential debate; and (ii) the tendency for phrases of the form the Xs (e.g. the Democrats) to depict the referents as a bloc separate from the speaker in a way that bare plurals (e.g Democrats) do not (Acton 2019). As I will show, the perspective developed in this work makes principled predictions and leads us to expect to find complex and varied interactions across and within multiple dimensions of meaning.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Meaning and Linguistic VariationTheorizing the Third Wave, pp. 105 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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