Title: Speaker design in the context of Southern American English : process models and empirical evidence
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2011, vol. 37, iss. 1, pp. [125]-138
Extent
[125]-138
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2011-1-8
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/118126
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Current "Speaker Design" approaches to sociolinguistic variation investigate how speakers may pro-actively deploy the linguistic resources (variation) at their disposal to achieve certain communicative effects. In this paper, Speaker Design is investigated in the case of Southern American English, a regional variety that can reportedly be used specifically by women to project personal charm. An interactional as well as a cognitive sociolinguistic account of this process are provided. Furthermore, empirical evidence for its workings is presented. This evidence is derived from a speaker evaluation experiment, whose results are outlined. It is argued that this experiment demonstrates that Southern American English elicits certain social associations in listeners such that women using it sound socially attractive. Female Southern speakers can tap into this effect to contextualize their utterances accordingly, giving rise to communicative effects such as "charming" customers into buying products.
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[2] Bakhtin, Mikhail ([1952-53] 1986) 'The problem of speech genres'. In: Emerson, Caryl and Michael Holquist (eds.) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, transl. by Vern W. McGee. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 60–102.
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[4] Bell, Allan (2001) 'Back in style: Reworking audience design'. In: Rickford, John R. and Penelope Eckert (eds.) Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 139–169.
[5] Coolican, Hugh (2009) Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology. 5th ed. London: Hodder Education.
[6] Coupland, Nikolas (2007) Style: Language Variation and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[7] Dorrill, George (2003) 'The phonology of English in the South'. In: Nagle, Stephen J. and Sara L. Sanders (eds.) English in the Southern United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 119–125.
[8] Eckert, Penelope (2000) Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell.
[9] Geeraerts, Dirk, Gitte Kristiansen and Yves Peirsman (eds.) (2010) Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
[10] Gumperz, John J. (1982) Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[11] Gumperz, John J. (2001) 'Interactional sociolinguistics: A personal perspective'. In: Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden: Blackwell, 215–228.
[12] Hyrkstedt, Irene and Paula Kalaja (1998) 'Attitudes toward English and its functions in Finland: A discourse-analytic study'. World Englishes 17(3), 359–368.
[13] Johnstone, Barbara (1999) 'Uses of Southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women'. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(4), 505–522. | DOI 10.1111/1467-9481.00093
[14] Kristiansen, Gitte (2008) 'Style-shifting and shifting styles: A socio-cognitive approach to lectal variation'. In: Kristiansen, Gitte and René Dirven (eds.) Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Berlin: de Gruyter, 45–88.
[15] Labov, William (1966) The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
[16] Labov, William (1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[17] Nagle, Stephen J. and Sara L. Sanders (eds.) (2003) English in the Southern United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[18] Lambert, Wallace E. (1967) 'A social psychology of bilingualism'. Journal of Social Issues 23(2), 91–109. | DOI 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1967.tb00578.x
[19] Lambert, Wallace E., Richard Hodgson, Robert C. Gardner and Samuel Fillenbaum (1960) 'Evaluational reactions to spoken languages'. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60(1), 44–51. | DOI 10.1037/h0044430
[20] Osgood, Charles E., George J. Suci and Percy H. Tannenbaum (1957) The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
[21] Potter, Jonathan and Margaret Wetherell (1987) Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. London: Sage.
[22] Rietveld, Toni and Roeland van Hout (1993) Statistical Techniques for the Study of Language and Language Behaviour. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[23] Rosch, Eleanor (1975) 'Cognitive representations of semantic categories'. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 104, 192–233. | DOI 10.1037/0096-3445.104.3.192
[24] Schiffrin, Deborah (1994) Approaches to Discourse. Malden: Blackwell.
[25] Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2002) 'Investigating stylistic variation'. In: Chambers, J.K., Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden: Blackwell, 375–401.
[26] Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2004) 'Constructing ethnicity in interaction'. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(2), 163–195. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2004.00257.x
[27] Soukup, Barbara (2000) '"Y'all come back now, y'hear!?" Language attitudes in the United States towards Southern American English'. Mag. phil. Thesis, University of Vienna.
[28] Soukup, Barbara (2009) Dialect Use as Interaction Strategy: A Sociolinguistic Study of Contextualization, Speech Perception, and Language Attitudes in Austria. Vienna: Braumüller.
[29] Stevens, Liz (1996) 'It's the drawl, y'all'. Fort Worth Star-Telegram (May 25), El: 8.
[30] Tannen, Deborah (2004) 'Interactional sociolinguistics / Interaktionale Soziolinguistik'. In: Ammon, Ulrich, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier and Peter Trudgill (eds.) Sociolinguistics / Soziolinguistik, vol. 1, 2nd ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 76–88.
[31] Widdowson, H.G. (2004) Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis. Malden: Blackwell.