Sociolinguistics Styles Dr Emma Moore

Contents What does it mean to talk about ‘style’ in sociolinguistics? What frameworks have been developed for studying style? How is the latest ‘style’ research undertaken?

What we know about style already: Style & attention to speech Eliciting tokens of /r/ A: “Where is ….?” B: “On the fourth floor.” A: “Excuse me?” B: “The fourth floor.” Unconscious response Careful articulation (more attention paid to speech) Labov (1972): NYC department stores

More /r/ in more careful speech styles Labov (1972) NYC results More /r/ in more careful speech styles

Attention to speech as a continuum of style Formal to informal styles Based upon the type of speech event Word list Reading Careful (interview) Casual (friends)

Is type of speech event the only thing that affects style? Cheshire (1982) Reading adventure playgrounds Groups of ‘delinquent’ children (WC) Considered style shifting Language used with peers Language used with the teacher in school Style shifts according to setting and audience

More evidence for the importance of setting and audience… Coupland (1984) Travel agency corpus Travel agent in conversation with clients Analysed several variables, including the voicing of intervocalic /t/: [bʊtə] – [bʊtə] The voicing of the travel agent was affected by the level of voicing used by her client ˇ

Links to social psychology & accommodation theory Giles & Powesland (1975): Speech Accommodation Theory Speakers accommodate their speech to their addressee in order to gain approval

Speech accommodation Convergence: movement towards one’s addressee Divergence: movement away from one’s addressee Noddy and Barney in Cheshire’s study?

Audience Design as an approach to style Bell (1984): Speakers style shift as a response to their listeners Studying a radio newsreader’s pronunciations on 2 different stations Newsreader’s ‘style’ is determined by his audience

Audience Design as an approach to style “Speakers show a fine-grained variability to design their style for a range of addressees, and to a lessening degree for other audience members such as auditors and overhearers” (Bell 2007: 97). “Style shifts according to topic or setting derive their meaning and direction of shift from the underlying association of topics or settings with typical audience members” (Bell 2007: 98).

The latest work on style… Approaches which view style as the product of type of speech event, context/setting and/or audience may be limited Suggests that all styles are pre-existing

Style as creative Speakers don’t just use language to express pre-existing styles but can use language to create new styles Speakers may not just be accommodating to an audience but designing their own talk to determine how they are perceived Linguistic variables are dynamic and can be used to create a range of meanings…

How do things mean?: The case of the Mickey Mouse watch What does the wearing of a Mickey Mouse watch say about someone’s style? Depends whose wearing it! What is it worn with?

Style and its meaning Eckert (2000): (ay) in the Detroit suburbs The raising of the nucleus of (ay) is an urban feature, and is favored by kids who are alienated from school, and who resist adult domination Tends to be used by Burnouts rather than Jocks

Audience design interpretation? Burnouts use raised (ay) more, so this feature probably means ‘burnout’ Traditional accounts might say that a non-burnout using raised (ay) is accommodating to burnout style, or associating themselves with burnout status

Judy = the most burned-out burnout Is it that simple? Connie = a working class jock who prides herself in being more authentic & independent than her peers. Judy = the most burned-out burnout Jock, Burnout

The meaning of (ay): a linguistic Mickey Mouse watch? Is Connie trying to be a burnout (Audience designing her talk to converge towards her burnout peers)? Or is she using (ay) to create a new identity as an ‘independent’ jock? (ay) raising’s association with resistance serves as a useful resource for Connie

Style as bricolage (Hebdige 1979) We ‘decode’ linguistic variables according to their context Sociolinguistic style is no different to style in any other other realm of life (Irvine 2001) Style is a socially meaningful clustering of features, within and across different linguistic levels and modalities (The Half Moon Bay Style Collective 2006)

Styles and ethnography The understanding of speakers’ styles requires ethnography Who do speakers hang around with? What practices do they engage in? What repertoire of linguistic features do they use? How do they dress? How do all of these things make language meaningful?

Linguistic features and styles Linguistic features can be intimately tied to social practices Eckert (2000): vowels & jean width

Modelling style: Communities of Practice Community of Practice (CofP): “an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992:464). “The people at the Jones’s breakfast table, in Mrs. Constock’s Latin class, or in Ivan’s garage band get together fairly regularly to engage in an enterprise. Whether the enterprise is being a family, learning (or not learning) Latin, or playing music, by virtue of engaging over time in that endeavour, the participants in each of these groups develop ways of doing things together. They develop activities and ways of engaging in those activities, they develop common knowledge and beliefs, ways of relating to each other, ways of talking – in short, practices. Such a group is what Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) have termed a community of practice” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003: 57).

Findings from CofP studies The meaning of nonstandard were in a Bolton high school (Moore 2004) Townie Anti-school rebellious behaviour Sporty/OTT style Popular Anti-school attitude Sporty/ Feminine Style

Findings from ‘speaker-design’ style studies The social meaning of word-final /t/: Bucholtz (1996) - adolescent geeky girls Ashburn (2000) - science fiction fans Benor (2001) - Orthodox Jews after Yeshiva Podesva et al. (2001) - gay activist lawyer for mainstream audience Campbell-Kibler (2003) - perceptions of undergraduate students Sclafani (2007) - parodies of Martha Stewart

Attention to speech Determined by levels of formality Informal style Casual style Reading style…

Audience design Determined by audience School/teacher style Vernacular culture style WC style Female style…

Speaker design/creative styling Determined by the wider ‘style’ of the speaker Independent jock style Townie style Geeky girl style Gay lawyer style …

Summing Up… Style has always been an important concept in Sociolinguistics Style can defined as: Attention to Speech (Labov 1972) Audience Design (Bell 1984) Speaker Design/Creative Styling (Eckert 2000, Moore 2004)

Selected References Bell, Allan (2007) “Style and the linguistic repertoire”. In: Carmen Llamas, Louise Mullany & Peter Stockwell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge. Coupland, Nikolas (2007) Style: Language Variation & Identity. Cambridge: CUP. Labov, William (1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Eckert, Penelope (2000) Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell. Moore, Emma (2004) “Sociolinguistic style: A multidimensional resource for shared identity creation”. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 49 (3/4): 375-396. Required Reading: Meyerhoff 2006 (Chapter 3)