Last week we discussed ideologies and attitudes about language, questioning in some ways how reliable speakers’ explicit statements about their own language ideologies and attitudes can be. This week those explicit statements, or “talk about talk,” (Johnstone 2006: 80) are our focus. I will start with a summary, with a focus on relevant terminology, and then reflect upon my personal relationship to the accents, particularly Received Pronunciation. 

SUMMARY

Three types of ‘meta’ talk are introduced and discussed by the authors: 

metadiscourse The explicit discussion of language by language users that “[calls] attention to how utterances are functioning in a particular context…. language referring to language.” (Rymes 2014: 3).

metapragmatics The “activities that point to a feature’s appropriate context of use” (Johnstone 2006: 80) or conversational tools used to “signal the function of any communicative act” in an implicit way (Rymes 2014: 3 discussing Silverstein 1993). 

metacommentary Linguistic or non-linguistic commenting that “signals an understanding of what a sign means without necessarily arbitrarily systematizing communicative elements, but by pointing to that sign’s situated communicative value” (Rymes 2014: 3).  It includes both explicit metadiscourse, as well as implicit metapragmatic functions. 

Rymes (2014: 5-14) categorizes metacommentary into six types and the second type, “Marking the Sounds of Language” or commentary about pronunciation (Rymes 2014: 7), is the focus of our other three articles. Rymes’ use of the term ‘marking’ connects this type of metacommentary to a long history of sociolinguistic thought about ‘marked’ speech. 

Barbara Johnstone (2006) investigates ‘marking’ as a term of art in sociolinguistics in her article about Pittsburghese and thoroughly contextualizes the term. Johnstone renames traditionally used jargon with streamlined titles, incorporating the term ‘indexicality’ from third-wave variationism. She creates a large table to compare jargon and here are some main points from her table (following quote from Johnstone 2003: 82-83) : 

Indicator / nth-order / First Order Indexicality: Labov = “…Speakers are not aware of the variable…” Silverstein = “a feature can be correlated with a sociodemographic identity…” Johnstone = “…everybody speaks that way.”

Marker / n+1th-order / Second Order Indexicality: Labov = “…the use of one variant or another is socially meaningful.” Silverstein = “…the features have been enregistered…” Johnstone = “Regional features become available for social work…”

Stereotype / Third Order Indexicality: Labov = “A variable feature that is the overt topic of social comment” Johnstone = “People noticing… link regional variants…with…identity”

Silverstein (2003) is above quoted as using the same procedural term as Asif Agha, “enregisterment” or the “processes through which a linguistic repertoire becomes differentiable within a language as a socially recognized register of forms” (Agha 2003: 231). Enregisterment is the process by which sound become ‘marked,’ connecting it clearly with Rymes’ second type of metacommentary. Agha argues that in the case of RP, or Received Pronunciation, the process of enregisterment occurred over a few hundred years through a “speech chain” (2003: 245) comprised of millions of people engaged in speech events and shared metacommentary. His view is opposed to the notion of a ‘top-down’ creation of standard language, such as Bourdieu’s concept of “‘the legitimate language’” as coming from governmental authorities (Agha 2003: 269). 

Agha (2003), Johnstone (2006), and Rymes (2018) all assume a level of speaker agency, arguing that when a feature has been marked by metadiscourse, there is possibility for an agentive response from speakers. This agentive response is available regardless of whether the feature in question is associated with a burgeoning standard or non-standard variety of pronunciation. Agha writes about how speakers positioned themselves in relation to the metadiscourse about pronunciation of British English in the 19th century. Many speakers took on the attitudes and ideologies of that discourse, opting for the practices marked as ‘correct’ to be enforced as normative, leading to the enregisterment of RP. Johnstone shows the same process can be used to enregister a covert prestige associated with locality and solidarity. Features once considered to mark class in south-western Pennsylvania are subsequently linked to an ideology in which language is inherently tied to region, producing the enregisterment of a Pittsburghese accent. Rymes follows the use of metadiscourse into its new home, online social media, and relates enregisterment to narrative practices of identity assertion through online accent performance with Philly accents.

REFLECTIONS

I have a relationship with all three of these accents and with the YouTube Accent Challenges. Previously, I have coached actors on each of these accents, sometimes using YouTube Accent Challenges as source material. I actually own a copy of Sam McCool’s New Pittsburghese: How to Speak Like a Pittsburgher, which was a gift from an actor friend of mine from Pittsburgh. Many actors I work with complain about the difficulty in making the distinctions between Philly and New York accents, something that the YouTube users in Rymes’ research explicitly noted (2018).  In my personal life, my family is from eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, with extended family from Philadelphia, and I lived in the UK while completing my first MA and was explicitly taught ‘traditional’ Received Pronunciation. To me, all of these accents are enregistered, and are salient to me as registers of speech.

RP is the accent I’m asked to teach most often, along with so-called ‘General American.’ I own more than ten books that describe or prescribe the features of RP (a lot of metadiscourse!). My collection includes one text for actors that enregistered historical styles, or perhaps communities of practice under the umbrella of RP.  This handbook, How to do Standard English Accents by Edda Sharpe and Jan Haydn Rowles (2012), introduces contemporary RP as “Neutral Standard English” and then categorizes “Upper-Class Varieties” and “New Wave Varieties” giving exemplary speakers (term from Agha 2003: 265) for each type. Here are some clips of exemplary speakers that Sharpe and Rowles (2012) suggested for each type of RP they enregistered (it is worth noting that these speakers are very homogenous, though that is never explicitly mentioned in this book) : 

Neutral Standard English “Although clearly a southern English accent, it lacks strong local accent features, and is a useful tool that has the convention of being non gender, race, age, class, or region specific.” (Sharpe & Rowles 2012:129)

exemplary speaker: Janet McTeer

Traditional RP “…fairly standard, old-fashioned, upper or upper middle class, but not overly eccentric accent. Here we will describe a ‘generic’ sound, free form overt indicators of character…” (ibid. 137)

exemplary speaker: Judi Dench

Imperial Lords and Ladies “…archetypal accent of the older upper classes.” (ibid. 149)

exemplary speaker: Virginia Woolf

exemplary speaker: Harold Macmillan

Military, Matrons, and the Landed Gentry “..an off-shoot of the Imperial Lords and Ladies, these are the unromantic ‘stuff and nonsense’ brigade.” (ibid. 161)

exemplary speaker: General Mike Jackson

Debs, Dandies and Bright Young Things “…a sound that may be heard in British actors during the ‘Hollywood’ years of the 1950s, but its origins were in a generation before that.” (ibid. 170)

exemplary speaker: Glynis Johns

Wartime Wendies and BBC Berties “…like a newsreader…” (ibid. 181)

exemplary speakers: Six different British Pathé narrators (particularly Bob Danvers-Walker)

The Original Sloane Rangers “In 1982 British writer Peter York and co-writer Ann Barr coined the term ‘Sloane Ranger’. It combines the name of the character the Lone Ranger with the Chelsea location of Sloane Square, and was used a s a label for the young and fashionably wealthy who frequented that area.” (ibid. 191)

exemplary speaker: Princess Diana, 1981

The New Wave “…what of the 21st century?” Three types below:

The Regular Set: “…no airs and graces…” exemplary speaker: Emma Watson

The Chelsea Set: “… the younger adults still attached to the up-market style of West London… proud of their class…” exemplary speaker: Tara Palmer-Tompkinson

The Shoreditch Set: “… young adults who are trying to blend in, who consciously or unconsciously hide their class, and who may have discovered the apparently cool alternative of London’s East End scene.” exemplary speaker: Prince Harry, 2013

(all above quotes in the New Wave Section are from ibid. 201)

Something that seems to be happening with RP today is the marking through metadiscourse of anything that deviates from the descriptions of RP by Daniel Jones in the early 20th century.  Now that recording technology exists, people can more easily assert that RP is an object, and sounds a particular way. Deviation can suggest a ‘new accent’ rather than a change in RP, particularly for individuals who hold an ideology in which language change is believed to be language decay. In this vein, I have heard people claim that RP is no longer used at all, as no one sounds like Virginia Woolf. I’ve heard others claim RP has simply changed with the times and it is still the standard, educated, class based accent. Agha takes part in this discourse at the end of his article, discussing comments on Estuary English, and mentioning Rosewarne’s suggestion that, “Estuary English may be tomorrow’s RP” (2003: 268). This continuation of enregisterment of varieties of RP, both historical and style based, is very interesting to me. Even one or two very slight phonetic or prosodic changes seem to create second-order indexicality and open up the possibility of metacommentary and metadiscourse, leading into third-order indexicality.  

Sharpe and Rowles are the most noteworthy accent coaches for actors in the UK, and their metadiscourse on RP and its 20th/21st century evolution is very influential in the entertainment industry. I would argue the performance of accent is a type of metacommentary: accent performance comments on markers and stereotypes through the performance of salient features. Films can greatly assist and speed up the enregisterment of ‘new’ accent varities. So Sharpe and Rowles’ enregisterment of these varieties of RP is interesting because actors will use these varieties, performing them back to audiences, perhaps solidifying the registers through their metacommentary.

Cited: How to do Standard English Accents. Sharpe, Edda, and Rowles, Jan Haydn. London: Oberon
Books. 2012. 

Language with an Attitude – Preston (Winnie Yan) 

1. Across a few studies mentioned in the paper, and in other widely accepted social stereotypes, it appears that in many areas, southern dialects seem more “laid-back”, “warm”, and “improper”, whereas northern dialects are seen as more “proper” and “educated”. Is this phenomenon purely by coincidence or is there an underlying geopolitical reason for how these attitude ideas came to be across many different locations?  
2. “On the one hand, speakers of “correct” dialects do not believe they speak dialects at all, and educational and even legal repercussions arise from personal and institutional devaluing of “incorrect” varieties (Lippi-Green 1997). On the other hand, speakers of devalued varieties (like prejudiced-against groups in general) derive solidarity from their distinctive behaviors, in this case, linguistic ones” (p. 177).  During a computational linguistics talk last week, the guest speakers (Jones & Kalbfeld) presented their research entitled “Testifying While Black: African American English in the Judicial Linguistic Marketplace”, discussing how speakers of AAE frequently get mistranscribed by court reporters during legal court proceedings and discussing the implications of such mistranscriptions. While there is currently not enough data to make definitive statements on the how severely these mistranscriptions can affect the population, researchers are working on studies to document and quantify these effects. How could data from the attitude studies that Preston looked at be used in studying mistranscription effect to help develop studies quantifying impact/effect?  
3. As mentioned in the example provided on p. 178, television (and media) are providing a sort of nationwide understanding of what a “standard”/”correct” English is, and establishing ideas of where this “standard” is prominently spoken. Considering the expansion of media since the study in 1999, how much of the United States has transitioned away from stereotyped regional accents towards this “standard” variety? Already, I’ve noticed most native New Yorkers I know do not have the stereotypical “New York accents” observed in the Labov’s studies (p. 160-163) ranging from the 1960s-1980s. Is this attributable to New York’s prevalent immigrant population (and subsequent incorporation of accents/dialects) or is this something occurring nationwide?  

Discussion Questions for “Language with an Attitude” – Preston (2002)

1. Preston notes that, contrary to language ideologies based in “folk theories,” “linguists… find the structure of language everywhere complex and fully articulated.” He goes on to say that “nevertheless, understanding the relationship between group stereotypes and linguistic facts…appears to be particularly important in accounting for the social identities we infer and respond to.” Languages do not exist in a vacuum; our ideologies about them can still be influenced by stereotypes and social constructs. What do you think our approach as linguists should be then in combatting negative language/dialect attitudes? Do you think changing these attitudes should be the goal of future language attitude research?
2. In a discussion of Labov’s work in the 1960s on New York City inhabitant’s pronunciation of “r,” Preston writes that New Yorkers are “aware of the low regard in which their variety is held” and as a result have “rather severe linguistic insecurity.” To what degree do you think sociolinguistic research bringing certain speech patterns to light could be hurting speakers of the studied varieties and making them self-conscious?
3. Preston cites a study by Purnell et al. (1999) in which respondents were asked to identify the ethnicity of a single speaker saying the word “hello” in Chicano-English, AAVE, and Standard American English. The results showed that sometimes the AAVE-voice was misidentified as a Standard American English voice. What makes a voice “AAVE,” “Standard English,” or any other variety based on the pronunciation of a single word?

Blog Post for 10/28 – Language Attitudes and Language Ideologies

The readings for this week focused on attitudes and ideologies towards different languages and dialects. A theme I noticed all the articles sharing was that they all looked at language attitudes from a hearer-centric point of view. That is, the focus was predominantly on what a hearer’s attitude was towards a variety that was not necessarily their own. The abstract of Preston’s article opens with this exact notion, that the study of language attitudes “focuses on the linguistic clues that both guide a hearer to a speaker’s group membership and trigger the hearer’s beliefs about the group” (Preston 2002:157).

Early on in the course, we discussed the consequences of “naming languages;” the drawing of linguistic distinctions based on culture-specific notions of who speaks what “language” can have effects ranging from stereotyping to discrimination. The naming practice entails an outsider’s view of what is a language and what is a dialect, overlooking the ideologies of the speakers themselves who, especially case of speakers of Creoles or endangered languages, have Westernized notions of “purism” and “language” forced onto them. These notions of purism are present in this week’s readings: D’Arcy addresses the lament of older generations that language is “degenerating” and that the media and teenagers are to blame. (D’Arcy 2007:386-387). Preston’s studies bring to light that the idea of a certain region of the United States having a spoken variety that is closest to the “standard,” something associated with constructs of “purity” and “correctness,” is a cognitively real phenomenon. Woolard and Schieffelin emphasize that Western ideologies of the most “pure” and “authentic” versions of the mother tongue, while initially appearing well-meaning in the maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages, are actually counterproductive. A “pure” language documentation free of outside influence might be valued in the fieldwork process, but this could be counterproductive in saving endangered languages in societies where multilingualism is more typical and even valued (Woolard & Schieffelin 1994:61). As a result, the ideologies of the speakers themselves can get disregarded in the process.

The naming phenomenon has consequences that are evident from these articles; they have given rise to many of the language attitudes we are familiar with today. Qualifying a spoken variety as a “language” or “not a language” can birth ideologies that either positively or negatively affect the people associated with those varieties. Woolard and Schieffelin note that our beliefs about what constitutes a language and the notion that “languages can be isolated, named, and counted,” can qualify or disqualify speakers of those languages from “access to domains of privilege.” (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994:63). The creation of a standard for a language is a double-sided coin, especially in the case of marginalized languages. On the one hand, a group’s association with a single standard language of their own can strengthen claims to nationhood; on the other hand, if too strong an importance is placed on upholding a standard, this can bleed into a nation’s politics and negatively affect speakers who speak a variety different from the standard. (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994:60). A similar problem can arise from creating an orthography for an endangered language; while this may strengthen a spoken variety’s status a “language,” orthographies typically are used as a basis for a “standard,” putting varieties deviating from those standards at risk of further discrimination.

The effects of the concept of a “standard language” are also evident in Preston’s evaluation of people’s attitudes towards regional American dialects. These ranged on a continuum from most to least “correct” or “pleasant.” The studies discussed were only from the perspective of speakers in Michigan and Alabama, but here we actually see a glimmer of what speakers from those states value in their own respective varieties. Speakers from Michigan ranked their variety of English as the most “correct” in the United States, while speakers from Alabama ranked their variety as the most “pleasant.” We see a return to the concept of linguistic capital in these results, which Preston uses to make the claim that Michiganders are invested in using their variety as a vehicle for “correctness,” while Alabamians are more concerned with sounding “pleasant.” When ideologies are examined from the point of view of the speakers of the variety in question, it becomes clear how people choose to spend their linguistic capital. (Preston 2002:173-176).

D’Arcy’s article analyzed the various uses of “like,” but this, too, focused on perception of the interjection in general rather than studies prompting a reflection of one’s own use or avoidance of the variable. On a particular note, I was unsure of D’Arcy’s goal in debunking the stereotypes associated with “like.” She provides plenty of evidence supporting its multifunctional properties and use by people outside of the “valley girl” category. But after stating the general feeling that it is an overused interjection, mostly used by women, and associated with a “less educated, intelligent, or interesting” individual, she goes on to say that “it is not the aim of this article to change such attitudes…” (D’Arcy 2007:388). What should the goal of sociolinguists be if it is not to use our so-called ability to see all language, as Preston puts it, as “complex and fully articulated,” to combat these negative attitudes? (Preston 2002:158). Even with all the results presented in her article, negative ideologies tied to this variable still persist, along with negative attitudes towards variables more recently associated with the speech of young women (the (over)use of “literally” and vocal fry also come to mind). Her debunking of the myth that women use “like” all the time by showing that men often deploy the form too is not all that impactful to me. The presentation of evidence that “like” is commonly present in male speech, contrary to the stereotype, does not do much to change the much larger systematic devaluing of women’s speech.

The main thought I am left with after reading these articles is that there is value in shifting the study of language attitudes away from the perceptions of outsiders towards an insider’s reflection of their values and thoughts on their language use. This would be a more empowering, interesting approach to see in future research, especially research involving speakers of endangered languages and the varieties that have come to hold negative stereotypes in the minds of outsiders.

In this week’s readings, the articles focused on language attitude and ideology. All three articles demonstrated how different variations of language are perceived by “society” and how variety threatens language ideology.

Preston[2013] discusses how the perception of people’s language has an effect on what the listener thinks of the speaker and makes assumptions which leads to beliefs about the speaker’s community. I thought it was interesting that in Lambert’s experiment on language attitude of standard vs regional/variation language, speakers of the “standard”language were rated as more competent than those regional speakers however, “nonstandard” speakers had higher ratings for integrity and attractiveness. These perceptions have major effects in many aspects of life. Purnell et al demonstrate how language attitudes of inquiries for apartment rentals over the phone can affect whether the speaker of “nonstandard” english are able to secure a viewing of the apartment. Only 30 percent of African American English and Chicano English speakers were given an appointment for the apartment viewing. This shows how language attitude solely based on language can affect “nonstandard” speakers in housing opportunities. This is only one example of how language ideology and language attitudes are active factors for people in certain communities. This also supports the reason for translanguaging from “nonstandard” to standard english in order to have social mobility.

The geographical mapping of language was also quite interesting. The language attitudes of the stereotypes of speakers of different regions in the United States is interesting but not surprising. What was surprising though was that the Michigan “standard” english speakers felt that they were superior to those of the south for every attribute of the “standard” factor group. This demonstrates sociological issues that may be deeper than language and language attitude.

Woolard and Schieffelen[1994] explain what linguistic ideology is and how it came to be such an integral part of society.

“Examples from the headlines of United States newspapers include bilingual policy and the official English movement; questions of free speech and harassment; the meaning of multiculturalism in school and texts; the exclusion of jurors who might rely on their own native-speaker understanding of non-English testimony; and the question of journalists’ responsibilities and the truthful representation of direct speech.” (pg. 72)

These examples, again demonstrate some of the aspects where language ideology can affect “real life” situations. How language ideology is present in politics, power and through society. Woolard and Schieffelen explain the historical significance of language ideology and colonial linguistics.

“Perceived linguistic structure can always have political meaning in the colonial encounter. Functional or formal inadequacy of indigenous languages and, therefore, of indiginoues mind or civilization was often alleged to justify European tutelage (89). On the other hand, a sixteenth

century grammar asserted that Quechua was so similar to Latin and Castilian that it was “like a prediction that the Spaniards will possess it””(pg. 68)

What?! This is absurd, the “similarity” of Quechua to Latin (which I don’t believe exists but okay), is “like a prediction that the Spaniards will possess it”. I am surprised of how linguistically creative this justification of colonialism is (not really). However, this shows how those with language ideology impose themselves onto others, although it may be observed differently today, it is obvious how it was done during colonial encounters.

D’Arcy explains how language change is perceived as language degeneration although language is always changing and the ones that usually bring this change are adolescents.

D’Arcy debunks the myth of “​like”​ and all the syntactic forms it can take. Some of the common misconceptions of the term ​like,​ are that women use it more often than men do, the term stems from the California Valley Girl talk and that younger people use it more often than older generations. D’Arcy debunks these misconceptions by doing an experiment in Toronto, where she interviewed people of different ages, which she was the first to do so. With the results of her experiment, she found that women do use the term more often but when the term is used in the quotative sense, as an adverb and marker. As men use it more often than women when it is in the particle DP, particle vP and the particle AP syntactic positions. She also found that the marker and the particle use of the term developed in the 1950’s in New York City and that the term was also used in the U.K. some 10-20 years earlier. This also helps the conclusion that older generations use the term in her sample. What’s more interesting is that the older generation and males do not realize how often they actually use the term. I wonder how or why we believe that this term came from the California Valley Girl speech.

Blog Entry 10/21/19

The readings for this week discuss topics on variationistsociolinguistics, quantitative methods, and largely on the facts that variables are not static.

Eckert introduces the notion of the Indexical Field– “meanings of variables are not precise, or fixed but rather constitute a field of potential meanings”. She goes on to cite examples of how variables are not only associated with macro-level categories like race and gender, but can be associated with different communities of practice, like “Jocks” and “Burnouts” – and even within these categories there are layers. A great example was mentioned that there is a generalization that women are often placed into a macro-level category and make connections with sound change, but this is a well-known fact that “women use advanced variants more than men” (Eckert 1990). Acts of Identity is the idea that people don’t outright think of themselves as claiming membership to a group when speaking a certain way, but it’s about many other smaller acts that fit a sociolinguistic category. The paper ends by stating that Labovintroducing Class as a category tied to sociolinguistic change was monumental, but only the beginning. It shouldn’t be seen as a simple model, but a more complex model with other and changing meanings. 

Campbell-Kimbler looks at the ING variable – and how the constitute reference to a “Southern” accent, “Gay accent”, or thirdly, a “non” accent. The paper extensively talks about the different accent categories, mainly stating that the Southern accents (-in) are tied to “lack of education, the country, and the term “redneck” and the Gay accent (-ing) to “lowered masculinity, the city, and the term “metrosexual”.

The study used a Matched Guise Technique where the manipulation was done on the vowels using a Cut and Paste method on Praat. This study not only used quantitative methods, but group interviews to elicit some qualitative findings. An interesting outcome was the finding of the “non” accent, where in the study was referenced to the “might be from anywhere” speakers, in the group interviews these people could not be pinpointed to where they were from, maybe California (Stanford) but importantly that they sounded standard or non-accented. This touches on Lippi-Greens notion of The Non-Accent.

I found it interesting that for Jason (the gay accent) they didn’t control the audio recording to be more standard. They had his conversation a lot to do with shopping, which I believe could index “gay”. It would have been nice to see them use the Cut and Paste technique still, but with each speaker reading the same or similar passage from a book.

The connection the Eckert came when it was mentioned that the accents were not perceived to be part of a continuum, or to simply mean or mark one thing. “but rather as a multidimensional landscape arrayed around a central norm”.

For Zhang, the connections were immediate with the discussion that varitionist sociolinguistics should “look beyond strictly local contexts and to go beyond treating variation as locatedalong a linear dimension of standard and vernacular”.

The study focuses on two groups of Chinese business people – one group who works with foreign companies and the other who work for state-owned businesses. The key aspect was that a new variety of Mandarin was constructed, “The study shows that variation does not just reflect existing social categories and social change, but is a resource for constructing those categories and participates in social change”.

As mentioned by Eckert – it’s important to try and find out whya variable is connected to social categories – not just simply noticing that a variable is associated with that category. Zhang asked that same question about why some linguistic features are preferred, and how they becomes markers of being part of in this case, a foreign business or state. Another connection I noticedwas that macro-level categories aren’t “enough”. The participants in this study can be seen as some same macro-level category as they are all business professionals, high up in their companies and have the same high education level, yet, they are still different in their linguistic form usage.

The results were as expected in that the “yuppies” used the local variants much less that the state-business employees. 

Importantly it was mentioned that “While exposure is a condition for speakers to pick up a linguistic form, however, it does not entail consequent usage; speakers who are exposed to certain linguistic features may or may not use them”. I thought this was great to mention because it showed the “yuppies” that were exposed to the Full-tone variant (tied to foreign and cosmopolitan life) are choosing to sound like this, it is not simply because of language contact.

All the articles mention the importance to look beyond a static variable, and to look pass the notion that something is simply standard, or non-standard. Zhang stated “The less frequent useof some local features may be far more complex than a simple implication of closer proximity to the “standard” variety”.

1. Campbell-Kibler briefly discusses the interaction between content and accent on page 52 when teasing apart alternative explanations for why Jason was perceived as “gay.” The incident she notes is that he is most frequently rated as “gay” when participants heard his recording on his love of shopping. Though, as she notes, his recordings across the board still were rated as “gay” more frequently than any other speaker suggesting that there is more at work here than content. Expanding on this interaction, how can we manipulate the use of content to challenge what stereotypes and social readings listeners take away? If we use a speaker with a southern accent who discusses something typically associated with intelligence (a medical procedure or physics, etc.) how might we expect listeners to perceive them? Would listeners still rank them lower on intelligence or education or would they rank them higher? How much influence does content have over accent and vice versa? Which would we expect to have the greater influence over perceptions?
2. On page 44, Campbell-Kibler brings up Lippi-Green’s (1997) theory of the Myth of the Nonaccent. How can we challenge the idea that people exist who are unaccented? Is that part of our responsibility as linguists? How damaging is it to individuals and society at large that some parts of the population are perceived as standard, while the rest are “other?”
3. How reliable is our knowledge of accents and thus our deductions of where people come from and the social information we associate with those areas? Certainly people from the South must perceive other Southerners differently than how someone from California might perceive them. Could we ever say that one interpretation of a speaker carries more weight and is a more valuable reading than another?
4. How much of the social information attributed to an accent is based on media, that may or may not be a flawed presentation?

The three readings discuss the topic of linguistic variation, including dialects and vernacular accents, and how these variables carry ideological significance and meaning-making functions in society. Judith Irvine and Susan Gal’s notion on language ideology was referenced in all three papers; specifically, the semiotic process that demonstrates local language ideology through the association of linguistic features and users that belongs to certain social groups. Zhang referred to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the linguistic market to illustrate that linguistic symbols function to give meaning to the construction of work-place identity. Campbell-Kibler demonstrated that accent (and nonaccent) variables are perceived not as a continuum but as “a multidimensional landscape” that carry ideological weight, which has an effect on the perception of the accentedness and characteristics of the speaker (55). Eckert, drawing both papers as examples and discussing works by William Labov on the social class hierarchy and the relationship of the standard and vernacular dialects, delved more deeply into the process of meaning-making and started the scholarly conversation about variation and its social significance. By claiming that the social “is a meaning-making enterprise,” she directly linked linguistic variations and the indexical field to style construction and language ideology (472).

Both Zhang and Campbell-Kibler used quantitative methods to analyze their data and come up with a conclusion. According to Campbell-Kibler, qualitative data such as interviews can act as a pilot, complement, and check to quantitative analysis (35). This leads to a question: is a purely qualitative method possible to study and analyze topics in variational linguistics?

1. Can the notion of linguistic market be thought of as a capitalist way of thinking, and is deeply rooted in the capitalist social structures (See pages 432 & 452)?
2. Is identity-construction possible without being influenced by the sociocultural environment and language ideology? Can we discuss identity in idiosyncratic ways?
3. Is identity construction as easy and surface-level as “picking and choosing” linguistic features and making a bricolage of stylistic “ensemble”? (456 & 457) 

1. On page 455, Eckert denied the possibility of identity-claiming when speakers use certain features that are inductive to language change: “clearly, women (and men) are not saying ‘I’m a woman’ when they use a ‘female-led’ change, nor are they saying ‘I’m not a woman’ when they do not.” This claim seems to be unproved and easy to falsify. In some cases, speech pattern adoption can be a salient marker for identity expression. What do other speakers think?

2. Most of the work being done in sociolinguistics on variables and social change is in phonology and prosody. Are there semantic shifts that we can draw on to form ideas about the indexical field? Or is the study about semantics inherently ideological, thus making no need for the discussion about the semantic field? (See note 4 and page 454)

3. Is it only from variation that we can study the indexical field? What about meanings that don’t change, or ones that haven’t changed for an extended period of time? Do they exist? If so, can they complement the study of meaning-making and ideological connections?

This week’s readings focused on various aspects of language contact and bilingualism, with a special emphasis on codeswitching, codemeshing and translanguaging.

It is a common habit to think of language as something unique. It is expected to say that there is only one language, just as one has only one soul. However, multilingualism should be considered as a linguistic phenomenon intrinsic to the language itself. Although multilingualism is quite widespread and the theme of language contact has been of great interest to scholars since ancient times, before Weinreich (in the 1950s) few have dealt with it. One of the reasons why this occurred is politics. Countries based on a clearly nationalistic ideology would have had no interest in encouraging plurilingualism, in the mistaken belief that respect for linguistic diversity was an obstacle to the authority of central power. Over time language has been identified with the State and therefore there is a tendency to conceal the presence of multiple languages rather than considering it as a richness. Languages come into contact and influence each other thanks to a natural tendency of human beings, who seek ways to get around communication barriers by finding a compromise between two different languages (Winford, 2003: 2).

Garrett (2004) states that bilingualism and multilingualism are the most common outcomes of language contact. Bilingual and multilingual situations, though, vary considerably in terms of intensity and stability. An example of that, are diglossic communities. The notion of diglossia was introduced by Charles Ferguson (1959) to describe the situation in which two languages are used in a complementary way under different circumstances. In diglossic communities one of the varieties, indicated as language High (H), is used in official and public domains, while the other variety, designated as Low (L) is used in private and informal domains. Among the factors that make a language H for the bilingual are its usefulness, its role in social advancement and its literary and cultural value, all aspects that are transmitted to the individual from the environment in which they find themselves (Winford, 2003: 112). It is therefore very likely that in an undifferentiated environment, the status related to languages is the same for most bilingual speakers, but there are many other factors to keep into account, including the order and age at which languages are learned, the extension of written use, relative knowledge and emotional involvement in languages. Furthermore, the environment can make certain types of linguistic situation prevail over others.

Sankoff (2002) questioned the extent to which “external” social factors produce different linguistic outcomes. Contact among languages is certainly influenced by social forces, often consequence of conquests and migrations. In the first case, we generally see the imposition of the language that belongs to the dominant group.
When two languages are in contact because of migration, the most common outcome is assimilation. Although there are exceptions, immigrants find themselves at the center of social pressures, aimed at rapid cultural and linguistic adjustment. Therefore, the attitude towards one’s own language is controversial: on the one hand there is the will to preserve it, but at the same time there is a growing need to feel part of the new society by assimilating to the language of the host country. (Milroy and Muysken, 1995: 141-142).

Even though these external factors are important, they’re not the only important aspect determining language change. As Sankoff (2002) shows with her literature review, both internal and external constraints play a role in shaping language contact outcomes.
While phonological and lexical interference are very common, morphological and syntactical borrowings are less spread. According to Sankoff, “it is clear that individual strategies, individual practices in bilingual discourse, add up to community-level change” (2002: 659).

The concept of individual strategies used by bilinguals is discussed also by Otheguy et al. (2015) where the idea of idiolect is introduced. Otheguy et al. underline that each one of us speak a “personal language”: a speaker can have more phonemes than other, use a different morphology or lexicon. While two idiolects are never exactly the same lexically or structurally, there are large areas of overlap among the idiolects of people who communicate with each other, and this gives us the illusion that we speak the exact same language. The idea of language, which can be seen as a social/political convention, is deconstructed. What we actually speak is our own idiolect rather than our language, something that no one else speaks. The difference between monolinguals and bilinguals is that the first ones can use most of their lexical and structural repertoire more or less freely, whereas bilinguals can do so only in certain environments. Translanguaging refers to using one’s idiolect, that is, one’s linguistic repertoire, without regard for socially and politically defined language labels or boundaries.

Bilingual education tends to separate languages, according to Otheguy et al., resulting in the schools’ inability to truly develop the multilingual capacity of students.
I am not sure about this point. Even though it is common practice to separate languages in a “formal” environment, this doesn’t seem to affect code-switching or translanguaging in the bilingual communities (or monolingual ones for that matter). Is it really possible to allow free translanguaging to speakers? Is the compartmentalization of languages really preventing bilinguals to code-switch?

Nowadays, code-switching is no longer stigmatized as it used to be. As Woolard (2004) writes, since the mid-twentieth century the dominant characterization of conversational codeswitching changed from one of linguistic deviance, corruption and incompetence to that of systematicity, meaning and skill. It is used to confirm and establish identity and can be situational and metaphorical. It can be used in an indexical way, even though not all researchers agree that codeswitching always signals a macrosocially informed contrast in identities. Nevertheless, much remains to be done before a more complete understanding of code-switching and its boundaries is accomplished.

Questions on Otheguy’s reading:

1. How can bilingual schools promote or simply avoid sanctioning code-switching?
2. What would the consequences to that be?
3. Is it really possible to allow free translanguaging to all the speakers?