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-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T13:25:01.349Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The Social Meaning of Syntax

from Part I - Where Is (Social) Meaning?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2021

By
Emma Moore
Edited by
Lauren Hall-Lew ,
Emma Moore  and
Robert J. Podesva
Lauren Hall-Lew
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Emma Moore
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Robert J. Podesva
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Get access

Summary

The study of syntactic variation has lagged behind the study of phonological variation in sociolinguistics, despite early claims that ‘[t]he extension of probabilistic considerations from phonology to syntax is not a conceptually difficult jump’ (Sankoff 1973: 58).1 Documented challenges to the study of syntactic variation include the increased difficulty in circumscribing a linguistic variable when dealing with levels of the grammar above phonology (Tagliamonte 2012: 206–7), and problems of convincingly quantifying syntactic variables which occur less frequently than phonological variables (Rickford et al. 1995: 106). Added to this, it has been argued that syntactic variables are less subject to social evaluation than phonological variables (Labov 1993, 2001: 28; Levon & Buchstaller 2015) and, even when they are, they tend to have ‘quite fixed social meanings associated with external facts like class and particularly education’ (Eckert 2018: 190).

Keywords

sociosyntaxadolescencenegative concordcommunities of practicestyle
Type
Chapter
Information
Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
Theorizing the Third Wave
 , pp. 54 - 79
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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

Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2005. Negative concord in British English dialects. In Iyeiri, Y. (ed.), Aspects of English Negation. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 113–37.Google Scholar
Beltrama, Andrea. 2016. Bridging the Gap: Intensifiers Between Semantic and Social Meaning. Ph.D. dissertation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle. 2009. The quantitative analysis of morphosyntactic variation: Constructing and quantifying the denominator. Linguistic Compass 3(4), 1010–33.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2011. The sociolinguistic variant as a carrier of social meaning. Language Variation and Change 22(3), 423–41.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2016. Toward a cognitively realistic model of meaningful sociolinguistic variation. In Babel, A. (ed.), Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 123–51.Google Scholar
Carter, Ronald, and McCarthy, Michael. 1999. The English get-passive in spoken discourse: Description and Implications for an Interpersonal Grammar. English Language and Linguistics 3(1), 41–58.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 1982. Variation in an English Dialect: A Sociolinguistic Study. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 1987. Syntactic variation, the linguistic variable, and sociolinguistic theory. Linguistics 25(2), 257–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 1999. Taming the vernacular: Some repercussions for the study of syntactic variation and spoken grammar. Cuadernos de Filologia Inglesa 8(1), 59–80.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 2000. The telling or the tale? Narratives and gender in adolescent friendship networks. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(2), 234–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 2005. Syntactic variation and spoken language. In Cornips, L. and Corrigan, K. P. (eds.), Syntax and Variation: Reconciling the Biological and the Social. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins, 81–106.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Kerswill, Paul, and Williams, Ann. 2005. Phonology, grammar and discourse in dialect convergence. In Auer, P., Hinskens, F. and Kerswill, P. (eds.), Dialect Change: The Convergence and Divergence of Dialects in Contemporary Societies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 135–67.Google Scholar
Childs, Claire. 2017. Variation and change in negation: A cross-dialectal perspective. Ph.D. dissertation. Newcastle, UK: University of Newcastle.Google Scholar
Dines, Elizabeth R. 1980. Variation in discourse – ‘and stuff like that’. Language in Society 9(1), 13–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity at Belten High. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4), 453–76.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2016. Variation, meaning and social change. In Coupland, N. (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 68–85.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2018. Meaning and Linguistic Variation: The Third Wave in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, and Labov, William. 2017. Phonetics, phonology and social meaning. Journal of Sociolinguistics 21(4), 467–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisikovits, Edina. 1991. Variation in subject-verb agreement in Inner Sydney English. In Cheshire, J. (ed.), English Around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 235–55.Google Scholar
García, Erica C. 1985. Shifting variation. Lingua 67(2), 189–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giora, Rachel. 2006. Anything negatives can do affirmatives can do just as well, except for some metaphors. Journal of Pragmatics 38(7), 981–1014.Google Scholar
Greenbaum, Sidney, and Quirk, Randolph. 1990. A Student’s Grammar of the English Language. Essex, UK: Longman Group UK.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Sebastian. 2004. Are low-frequency complex prepositions grammaticalized? On the limits of corpus data – and the importance of intuitions. In Lindquist, H. and Mair, C. (eds.), Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 171–210.Google Scholar
Hughes, Arthur, Trudgill, Peter, and Watt, Dominic. 2005. English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles, 4th ed. London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra M. 2010. Indeterminacy and regularization: A process-based approach to the study of sociolinguistic variation and language ideologies. Sociolinguistic Studies 3(2), 229–51.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2003. Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English. In Britain, D. and Cheshire, J. (eds.), Social Dialectology. In Honour of Peter Trudgill. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 223–43.Google Scholar
Klima, Edward S. 1964. Negation in English. In Fodor, J. A. and Katz, J. J. (eds.), The Structure of Language. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 246–323.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972a. Negative attraction and negative concord in English grammar. Language 48(4), 773–818.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972b. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972c. The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 354–96.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1978. Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop: A response to Beatriz R. Lavandera. Working Papers in Sociolinguistics 44.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1984. Intensity. In Schriffrin, D. (ed.), Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Georgetown Roundtable in Linguistics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 43–70.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1990. The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2(2), 205–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1993. The unobservability of structure and its linguistic consequences. Paper presented at New Ways in Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 22. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, Ravindranath, Maya, Weldon, Tracey, Baranowski, Maciej, and Nagy, Naomi. 2011. Properties of the sociolinguistic monitor. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(4), 431–63.Google Scholar
Lavandera, Beatriz R. 1978. Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? Language in Society 7(2), 171–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawson, Robert. 2009. Sociolinguistic Constructions of Identity Among Urban Adolescent Males in Glasgow. Ph.D. dissertation. Glasgow, UK: University of Glasgow.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez, and Buchstaller, Isabelle. 2015. Perception, cognition, and linguistic structure: The effect of linguistic modularity and cognitive style on sociolinguistic processing. Language Variation and Change 27(3), 319–48.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald K. S. 1989. ‘He was some man him’: Emphatic pronouns in Scottish English. In Walsh, T. J. (ed.), Synchronic and Diachronic Approaches to Linguistic Variation and Change. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 179–87.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald K. S. 1991. Locating Dialect in Discourse: The Language of Honest Men and Bonnie Lasses in Ayr. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Maltz, Daniel N., and Borker, Ruth A.. 1983. A cultural approach to male–female miscommunication. In Gumperz, J. J. (ed.), Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 196–216.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam, and Walker, James A.. 2013. An existential problem: The sociolinguistic monitor and variation in the existential constructions on Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines). Language in Society 42(4), 407–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Emma. 2003. Learning Style and Identity: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of a Bolton High School. Ph.D. dissertation. Manchester, UK: University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma. 2012. The social life of style. Language and Literature 21(1), 66–83.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma, and Podesva, Robert. 2009. Style, indexicality, and the social meaning of tag questions. Language in Society 38(4), 447–85.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma, and Snell, Julia. 2011. ‘Oh, they’re top, them’: Right dislocated tags and interactional stance. In Gregersen, F., Parrott, J. K. and Quist, P. (eds.), Language Variation – European Perspectives III. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 97–110.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor. 1992. Indexing gender. In Duranti, A. and Goodwin, C. (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as and Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 335–58.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, and Schieffelin, Bambi. 1989. Language has a heart. Text 9(1), 7–25.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J. 2011. Salience and the social meaning of declarative contours: Three case studies of gay professionals. Journal of English Linguistics 39(3), 233–64.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R., Wasow, Thomas A., Mendoza-Denton, Norma, and Espinoza, Juli. 1995. Syntactic variation and change in progress: Loss of the verbal coda in topic-restricting as far as constructions. Language 71(1), 102–31.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. 1984. On the problem of syntactic variation and pragmatic meaning in sociolinguistic theory. Folia Linguistica 18(3–4), 409–38.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. 1973. Above and beyond phonology in variable rules. In Bailey, C. J. and Shuy, R. (eds.), New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 42–62.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23, 193–229.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer. 2001. Negative concord in the Old and New World: Evidence from Scotland. Language Variation and Change 13(2), 109–34.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, and Holmes-Elliott, Sophie. in preparation. Mapping syntax and the sociolinguistic monitor.Google Scholar
Snell, Julia. 2010. From sociolinguistic variation to socially strategic stylisation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(5), 630–56.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, and Timmins, Claire. 2010. The role of the individual in language variation and change. In Llamas, C. and Watt, D. (eds.), Language and Identities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 39–54.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Timmins, Claire, and Tweedie, Fiona. 2007. ‘Talkin’ Jockney’? Variation and change in Glaswegian accent. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(2), 221–60.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. 2012. Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Weiner, E. Judith, and Labov, William. 1983. Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics 19(1), 29–53.Google Scholar
Williams, Ann, and Kerswill, Paul. 1999. Dialect levelling: Change and continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull. In Foulkes, P. and Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London, UK: Arnold Publishers, 141–62.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. 1996. The problem of syntactic variation. In Arnold, J., Blake, R., Davidson, B., Schwenter, S., and Solomon, J. (eds.), Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory and Analysis. Selected papers from NWAVE 23. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 177–92.Google 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
×