Dimensions of style: Context,politics and motivation in gay Israeli speech1

Sociolinguistic research has traditionally examined stylistic variation as a way of understanding how speakers may use language indexically. Quantitatively, research has sought to correlate observed patterns of variation across such external parameters as context or topic with the ways in which speakers linguistically orient themselves to their immediate surroundings or to some other socially‐salient reference group. Recently, this approach has been criticized for being too mechanistic. In this paper, I present a new method for examining stylistic variation that addresses this critique, and demonstrate how an attention to speakers' motivations and interactional goals can be reconciled with a quantitative analysis of variation. I illustrate the proposed method with a quantitative examination of systematic patterns of prosodic variation in the speech of a group of Israeli men who are all members of various lesbian and gay political‐activist groups.     

From sociolinguistic variation to socially strategic stylisation1

This article investigates the indexical relation between language, interactional stance and social class. Quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of a linguistic variable (the first person possessive singular) is combined with interactional analysis of the way one particular variant (possessive ‘me’, as in Me pencil's up me jumper) is used by speakers in ‘stylised’ interactional performances. The aim of this analysis is to explore: (1) how possessive ‘me’ is implicated in the construction and management of local identities and relationships; and (2) how macro‐social categories, such as social class, relate to linguistic choice. The data for this analysis comes from an ethnographic study of the language practices of nine‐ to ten‐year‐old children in two socially‐differentiated primary schools in north‐east England. A secondary aim of the article is to spotlight the sociolinguistic sophistication of these young children, in particular, the working‐class participants, who challenge the notion that the speech of working‐class children is in any way ‘impoverished’.     

Cans and cants: Computational potentials for multimodality with a case study in head position

As the study of embodiment and multimodality in interaction grows in importance, there is a need for novel methodological approaches to understand how multimodal variables pattern together along social and contextual lines, and how they systematically coalesce in communicative meanings. In this work, we propose to adopt computational tools to generate replicable annotations of bodily variables: these can be examined statistically to understand their patterning with other variables across diverse speakers and interactional contexts, and can help organize qualitative analyses of large datasets. We demonstrate the possibilities thereby with a case study in head cant (side‐to‐side tilt of the head) in a dataset of video blogs and laboratory‐collected interactions, computationally extracting cant and prosody from video and audio and analyzing their interactions, looking at gender in particular. We find that head cant indexes an orientation towards the interlocutor and a sense of shared understanding, can serve a ‘bracketing’ function in interaction (for speakers to create parentheticals or asides), and has gendered associations with prosodic markers and interactional discourse particles.     

‘I'm Mexican,remember?’ Constructing ethnic identities via authenticating discourse1

This paper examines how an ideology of cultural authenticity emerges in the casual but playful conversations of a bilingual Mexican American friendship group. Authenticating discourse, as illustrated here, is part of an ongoing, ordinary interactional routine through which speakers take overt (authentication) stances, which I call authenticating moves, to display, impugn, vie for, and enact forms of ethnic identity. In the data, issues of authenticity in relation to Mexicanness emerge as a result of the interactional exploitation of three ideological constructs: purity of bloodline, purity of nationality, and Spanish linguistic fluency.     

Post‐socialist language ideologies in action: Linking interview context and language ideology through stance

Changes associated with the post‐socialist period in Albania have complicated the legacy of language ideologies grounded in Ottoman‐era and socialist‐era politics. In this article, I analyze two metalinguistic interviews with young adults in the Albanian capital of Tirana in order to investigate the status of standardizing and anti‐standardizing language ideologies while also raising a methodological question regarding interview context and researcher role as persistent issues in sociolinguistic research. As acts of evaluation, language ideologies can be linked to interactional positionings and alignments via stance, which is significant for understanding aspects of identity and context in the interview. I argue that this framework provides a better understanding of interview dynamics than previous style shifting approaches, as any explanation of differences in interview interactions must simultaneously consider macro‐level influences of ideology and micro‐level interactional developments.     

‘You tell all the stories’: Using narrative to explore hierarchy within a Community of Practice1

Recent discussion of the Community of Practice (CofP) ( Davies 2005 ) has suggested that there are certain limitations to the approach with regard to how it accounts for internal hierarchy and community membership. Eckert and Wenger (2005: 588) have suggested that the only way to evaluate such criticism (and avoid building an inappropriately rigid conception of power into CofP theory) is to explore how hierarchies operate within CofPs. This paper offers such an exploration. Using data from a long‐term ethnographic study of a high school in the north‐west of England, this paper will use narrative analysis (drawing upon the work of Labov and Waletsky [1967] 1997 amongst others) to explore the interactional space in which speakers actively negotiate their personal and community behaviour. The analysis focuses upon the role individuals play as narrators of community practice and illustrates that status inequalities between individual CofP members do not necessarily result in inequitable allocation of control within the CofP.     

Intonation,identity and contact‐induced change among Polish‐speaking migrants in the U.K.

This article examines intonational variation in a language contact situation. The study contributes to sociolinguistic research on the social meaning of intonational variation (Podesva 2006 ; Levon 2014 ). Intonation is studied in a multilingual context of global mobility: within a group of Polish‐speaking migrants in Britain who, thanks to cheap transportation and new channels of communication, could make use of linguistic resources unlimited by territorial boundaries from the beginning of their transnational experience. The study shows that speakers with seemingly similar linguistic and cultural profiles make use of intonation patterns in different ways in the context of the narrative of the self: speakers oriented towards the global economy and the English‐speaking world incorporate a mainly English intonational pattern, the fall‐rise, with increased frequency to do interactional work that it does in English, while other groups maintain Standard Polish norms. As shown, intonational variation participates in the creation of fluid identities that blur linguistic and sociocultural boundaries.     

For a Social Psychology of Prayer

Prayer is one of the most common religious activities practiced by Americans. In this review, I make the argument that prayer is a social psychological phenomenon that scholars should treat as such. After a discussion of the use of prayer as a proxy for overall religiosity and a brief excursus on current typologies of prayer, I provide three main arguments for the claim that prayer is a social psychological phenomenon. First, I review evidence that prayer is a legitimate social interaction with “imagined others” that shares many characteristics with and involves the same cognitive and interactional processes as human‐human interactions. Second, I review evidence that shows that individuals’ social positions influence the frequency of prayer. Third, I review evidence that prayer influences social action through psychological and interactional processes.     

Manipulating honorifics in the construction of social identities in Japanese television drama1

This study examines culturally‐based ideologies concerning the use of Japanese honorifics in the construction of social identities through an analysis of dialogues in a Japanese television drama. The study assumes that the underlying or encoded meaning of Japanese honorific forms is social/psychological distance and considers ways in which speakers utilise differences in the encoded meanings of honorifics to construct a variety of social identities, including those that reflect membership within particular communities of practice. It also looks at how implicatures that arise through marked use of honorific forms are used to achieve specific interactional goals such as the expression of (im)politeness and the marking of change in the speaker's attitude toward the addressee/referent.     

Igbo professional migratory orders,hometown associations and ethnicity in the USA

In this article I examine ethnographically the discursive means by which Igbo speakers in hometown associations in the USA are crafting lives and communities abroad to express a territory‐bound sense of ethnic group membership. I contend that Igbo speakers living abroad are undergoing a process of ethnic formation or ethnification that is structured by increased rates of immigration and recent historical and political change in Nigeria. In response to these events, shifting representations of self and group identity incur an essentialist quality from abroad. Such essentialism is a paradoxical earmark of globalization for the brain‐drain Igbo professional.     

Accommodation or rejection? Teenagers’ experiences of tensions between traditional and new speakers of Irish

This article analyses narratives presented by teenage Irish‐speakers about encounters between new speakers of Irish and locals in Gaeltacht (traditionally Irish‐speaking) areas. It demonstrates how two conflicting ideologies of legitimate language promoted by the state in the establishment and maintenance of Irish as ‘the national language’ alienate young new speakers of Irish and young Gaeltacht‐based Irish‐speakers from each other and from the language by construing the Gaeltacht as a resource for the nation, generating unrealistic expectations from new speakers and corresponding resentment from their Gaeltacht peers. The analysis of this case contributes to wider debates about the impact of language revitalisation policies on young people, and explores the tension that may arise between the aim of increasing the number of a language's speakers and the desire to retain its traditional functions in the communities where it has been best maintained.     

Microstructures of economic action: talk,interaction and the bottom line

This paper contributes to an expanding body of research that has analysed the interactional foundations of economic activity, and price determination, by quantifying the financial implications of different micro‐interactional practices. Drawing on video recordings of naturalistic interaction the paper analyses a simple consumer choice, whether to pay one of two prices, the lower ‘standard’ price (£8.00) or the higher ‘gift aid’ (£8.80) price, to enter an arts institution. Utilizing resources from conversation analysis, the paper analyses different ways of posing this choice. It describes how, as interactional constraints tighten, standard prices become less socially desirable and customers increasingly ‘volunteer’ to pay the higher price. The paper contributes to sociological understandings of economic activity, demonstrating how simple one‐off choices, and prices, are accountably responsive to micro‐interactional structures.     

Measuring the Dynamics of Interactional Synchrony

Past research has revealed that natural social interactions contain interactional synchrony. The present study describes new methods for measuring interactional synchrony in natural interactions and evaluates whether the behavioral synchronization involved in social interactions is similar to dynamical synchronization found generically in nature. Two methodologies, a rater-coding method and a computational video image method, were used to provide time series representations of the movements of the co-actors as they enacted a series of jokes (i.e., knock?Cknock jokes). Cross-spectral and relative phase analyses of these time series revealed that speakers?? and listeners?? movements contained rhythms that were not only correlated in time but also exhibited phase synchronization. These results suggest that computational advances in video and time series analysis have greatly enhanced our ability to measure interactional synchrony in natural interactions. Moreover, the dynamical synchronization in these natural interactions is commensurate with that found in more stereotyped tasks, suggesting that similar organizational processes constrain bodily activity in natural social interactions and, hence, have implications for the understanding of joint action generally.     

The Emergent Organization: Improvisation and Order in Gulf Coast Disaster Relief

This article employs the interactionist concept of emergence to explore volunteer behavior in organizational settings after natural disasters. Through a several‐year ethnographic study of volunteer relief groups in the Post‐hurricane Gulf Coast, I examine how emergent social groups navigate situations where interactional norms, practices, and procedures are ambiguous, unclear, or in continual flux. Grassroots volunteer groups improvised organizational decision‐making and leadership structures to develop timely and appropriate responses to the post‐disaster environment. In particular, I focus on two distinct groups of volunteers whose response to these emergent interactional structures: improvisers embraced the ambiguity of group norms as an opportunity to innovate and express their creativity, whereas ritualists rejected the lack of structure and order characterized by the volunteer organizations.     

Activating Controlling Images in the Racialized Interaction Order: Black Middle‐Class Interactions and the Creativity of Racist Action

This paper investigates the link between the racial hierarchy and the racialized interaction order, questioning how controlling images of blackness are mediated in interactions. I explore this through interviews with thirty‐two black British middle‐class individuals, examining their interactions in the professional workplace. I argue that white people often draw on a practical knowledge of “white ignorance” to activate controlling images in their interactions with black professionals. This white ignorance allows for white people to find creative ways to irrationally deploy controlling images, and to adapt controlling images to specific interactional settings.     

Paradoxes of Sexuality,Gay Identity,and the Closet

In this project, I illustrate how eight premises of sexuality, gay identity, and the closet contribute to the existence of paradox, an interactional situation constituted by contradiction. I first outline the following premises: gay identity is (1) inextricably tied to the metaphor of the closet; coming out is necessary when gay identity (2) is invisible; the closet draws meaning (3) only in relation to heteronormative contexts; gay identity, as a (4) stigmatized identity, makes coming out a (5) potentially dangerous act; coming out is conceived of as a (6) necessary and important, (7) discrete and linear, (8) inescapable and ever‐present process. I then use autoethnography to describe and analyze the lived experience of paradox in terms of these premises. I conclude by formulating ways a gay person can negotiate paradox in, and by way of, interaction.     

Displacement and Identity Discontinuity: The Role of Nostalgia in Establishing New Identity Categories

I examine how displacement affects identity continuity by studying the disruption experienced by a group of employees when their organization moved to a new site. Data on the organization (a university campus restaurant known as the “Coffee House”) included participant observation and interviews. I argue for the importance of examining identity continuity and discontinuity in relation to specific interactional experiences in and attachment to the built environment. I expand on the analysis of nostalgia as a means of creating identity continuity in the face of discontinuity by adding an explicit focus on identity discontinuity in relation to the experience of displacement, and on the generation‐delineating abilities of nostalgia, specifically in relation to shared spatial experience.     

“Those foreigners ruin everything here”: Interactional functions of ethnic labelling among pupils in the Netherlands

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of ethnic labelling practices by examining their interactional functions among secondary school pupils in Venlo, the Netherlands. Pupils with migration backgrounds often labelled themselves and others “Turk,” “Moroccan,” or “foreigner,” and labelled others “Dutch.” The paper highlights that ethnic labelling can be understood not only as identity construction, but also as interactional work. I build on membership categorization analysis (MCA), complemented by conversation analysis (CA), to analyse how pupils’ use of ethnic labels evoked an expert role which altered interactants’ power positions; and how, often, pupils engaged in jocular mockery with ethnic labels and in that way mitigated the effects of exclusionary and stigmatizing discourses about people with migration backgrounds. Finally, I argue that pupils’ labelling practices had locally occasioned meanings and functions, but that they ultimately reflect wider‐spread systems of categorization and marginalization of people with migration backgrounds in the Netherlands.