10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00374.x

Volume 12, Issue 4,  online: 24 AUG 2008

Note-card 

Background

1.       Sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology have several intersections  

2.       If “the social” is a fixed external structure that is only reflected in linguistic variability, the study of sociolinguistic variation shall remain safely within the bounds of linguistics as a cognitive science.  

3.       However, Sociolinguistics should be integrated into a more comprehensive understanding of language as social practice: linguistic anthropology. 

Keywords

Variation, style, indexical order, enregisterment AND social meaning.

Aims

1.       Penelope Eckert, Stanford University, tries to draw attention to more abstract aspects of variables such as fortition-lenition, hypo-hyperarticulation, or the differential stylistic potential of different phonetic classes; AND

2.       To discuss details of prosody and voice quality. This may also lead us to think about ‘edgier’ issues of emotional expression in language, following Fónagy (e.g. 1971). 

Methodology  

Sociophonetic analysis

Findings

1.       linguistic anthropology foregrounds the ongoing construction of meaning

2.       upon linguistic-anthropological theories of indexicality, and most particularly Michael Silverstein's (2003) notion of indexical order

3.       an indexical field, or constellation of ideologically related meanings, which can be activated in the situated use of the variable.

4.       The fate of meaning differs in variation studies

5.       Variables, style, and social meaning are interconnected

6.       Indexical order should be a subordinate of the coined term “indexical fields”.

Case study

1.       ING

2.       /t/ release in American English

Conclusion

1.       The relation of standard and vernacular language to Labov's view of the class hierarchy, is only the beginning of a theory of the social value of variation.

2.       A theory of variation ultimately must deal with meaning, and not only does a view of meaning in variation as predetermined and static seriously undershoot human capacity, it cannot even account in any principled way for the changes in correlations that have been observed over the lifetime of a sound change.

3.       While the larger patterns of variation can profitably be seen in terms of a static social landscape, this is only a distant reflection of what is happening moment to moment on the ground.

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