Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T16:18:20.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sociolinguistic Style: A Multidimensional Resource for Shared Identity Creation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Emma Moore
Emma Moore*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Traditional accounts of style isolate individual variables and situate their use along a formality scale. Because it abstractly represents speaker interaction, this approach imposes a taxonomic distinction between stylistic and social constraints. By focussing on single variables in isolation, such accounts wrench individual variables out of the context that defines them. Recent accounts of style recognise the context-dependency of social meaning. We must therefore consider how a particular combination of linguistic and extralinguistic resources interact to produce an overall style that subsumes the traditional style/social constraint distinction. I explore how the styles created by a community of girls function to produce a system of distinction (Irvine 2001) in their high school, by considering how each group uses morphosyntactic and discourse-related variables to define themselves in relation to other social groups. The analysis reveals that sociolinguistic meaning is never achieved by a single group in isolation, but is the consequence of a collaborative negotiation of available resources.

Résumé

Résumé

Traditionnellement, les analyses sociolinguistiques isolent les variables individuelles et situent leur usage sur une échelle de formalité. Puisqu’elle représente l’interaction entre interlocuteurs de manière abstraite, cette approche impose une distinction taxonomique entre les contraintes stylistiques et sociales. En se concentrant sur des variables simples en isolation, de telles analyses extirpent les variables individuelles hors du contexte qui les définit. Les analyses de style récentes ont tenter d’incorporer la dépendance de contexte dont témoigne la signification sociale. Nous devons donc considérer comment une combinaison particulière de ressources linguistiques et sociales interagit pour produire un style global qui transcende la distinction traditionnelle entre contrainte de style et contrainte sociale. J’explore la manière dont les styles créés par une communauté de filles fonctionnent pour produire un système de distinction (Irvine 2001) dans leur école secondaire, tout en considérant comment chaque groupe utilise des variables morphosyntaxiques et discursives pour se définir par rapport à d’autres groupes sociaux. L’analyse révèle que la signification sociolinguistique n’est jamais accomplie par un seul groupe pris en isolation, mais suit d’une négociation collaborative des ressources disponibles.

Type
Part III: From Dialect to Style
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 49 , Issue 3-4 , December 2004 , pp. 375 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2004

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

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Britain, David. 2002. Diffusion, levelling, simplification and reallocation in past tense BE in the English Fens. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6: 16–43.Google Scholar
The Californian Style Collective. 1993. Variation and personal/group style. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English 22. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, October 14-17, 1993.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 1989. Introduction. In Women in their speech communities: New perspectives on language and sex, ed. Coates, Jennifer and Cameron, Deborah, 3–12. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 1990. Demythologizing sociolinguistics: Why language does not reflect society. In Ideologies of language, ed. Joseph, John E. and Taylor, Talbot J., 79–93. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 1997. Performing gender identity: Young men’s talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. In Language and masculinity, ed. Johnson, Sally and Meinhof, Ulrike Hanna, 47–64. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah, McAlindan, Fiona, and O’Leary, Kathy. 1988. Lakoff in context: The social and linguistic functions of tag questions. In Women in their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex, ed. Cameron, Deborah and Coates, Jennifer, 74–185. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah and Coates, Jennifer. 1989. Some problems in the sociolinguistic explanation of sex differences. In Women in their speech communities: New perspectives on language and sex, ed. Coates, Jennifer and Cameron, Deborah, 13–26. London: Longman.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 1982. Variation in an English dialect: A sociolinguistic study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny and Milroy, James. 1993. Syntactic variation in non-standard dialects: Background issues. In Real English: The grammar of English dialects in the British Isles, ed. Milroy, James and Milroy, Lesley, 3–33. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. 1987. Epistemic modality and spoken discourse. Transactions of the Philological Society, 110–131. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. 2004. Women, men and language. 3rd ed. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 1980. Style-shifting in a Cardiff work-setting. Language in Society 9: 1–12.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. Language, situation, and the relational self: Theorizing dialect-style in sociolinguistics. In Style and sociolinguistic variation, ed. Eckert, Penelope and Rickford, John R., 185–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dubois, Betty Lou and Crouch, Isabel. 1975. The question of tag questions in women’s speech: They don’t really use more of them, do they?↓ Language in Society 4: 289–294.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity at Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2002. Constructing meaning in sociolinguistic variation. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. New Orleans, Louisiana. [Accessible at www.stanford.edu/~eckert/AAA02.pdf.]Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope and McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 1992. Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope and Rickford, John R., ed. 2001. Style and sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eisikovits, Edina. 1998. Girl-talk/boy-talk: Sex differences in adolescent speech. In Language and gender: A reader, ed. Coates, Jennifer, 42–54. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fishman, Pamela. 1983. Interaction: The work women do. In Language, Gender and Society, ed. Thorne, Barrie, Kramarae, Chéris, and Henley, Nancy, 89–101. Cambridge: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The meaning of style. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet. 1984. Hedging your bets and sitting on the fence: Some evidence for hedges as support structures. Te Reo 27: 47–62.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney and Pullum, Geoffrey K.. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Ways of speaking. In Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, ed. Bauman, Richard and Sherzer, Joel, 433–451. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 2001. “Style” as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In Style and sociolinguistic variation, ed. Eckert, Penelope and Rickford, John R., 21–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klima, Edward S. 1964. Negation in English. In The structure of language, ed. Fodor, Jerry A. and Katz, Jerrold J., 246–323. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972a. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972b. Negative attraction and negative concord in English grammar. Language 48: 773–818.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. The anatomy of style-shifting. In Style and sociolinguistic variation, ed. Eckert, Penelope and Rickford, John R., 85–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin. 1975. Language and woman’s place. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Lave, Jean and Wenger, Etienne. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 2002. Communities of Practice. In The handbook ofsociolinguistics, ed. Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie, 526–548. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma. 2003. Learning style and identity: A sociolinguistic analysis of a Bolton high school. Doctoral dissertation. University of Manchester, UK.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, and Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. and Eckert, Penelope. 2001. Introduction. In Style and sociolinguistic variation, ed. Eckert, Penelope and Rickford, John R., 1–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. 1984. The status of sociolinguistic models and categories explaining linguistic variation. Linguistische Berichte 90: 25–38.Google Scholar
Rose, Mary and Sharma, Devyani. 2002. Introduction: Ideology and identity in practice. In Gendered practices in language, ed. Benor, Sarah, Rose, Mary, Sharma, Devyani, Sweetland, Julie, and Zhang, Qing, 1–20. Stanford, California: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2002a. Investigating stylistic variation. In The handbook of sociolinguistics, ed. Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie, 375–401. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2002b. On the nature of isolated and post-isolated dialects: Innovation, variation and differentiation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6: 64–85.Google Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie and Wolfram, Walt. 1994. Convergent explanation and alternative regularization patterns: Were/weren’t leveling in a vernacular English variety. Language Variation and Change 6: 273–302.Google Scholar
Shorrocks, Graham. 1999. A grammar of the dialect of the Bolton area. Part II: Morphology and syntax . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer. 2001. Negative concord in the Old and New World: Evidence from Scotland. Language Variation and Change 13: 109–134.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. 1998. Was/were variation across the generations: View from the city of York. Language Variation and Change 10: 153–191.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 1990. You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: Marrow.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1974. The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wales, Katie. 1996. Personal pronouns in present-day English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt and Sellers, Jason. 1999. Ethnolinguistic marking of past be in Lumbee vernacular English. Journal of English Linguistics 27: 94–114.Google Scholar