That straight talk: Sarah Palin and the sociolinguistics of demonstratives

Drawing on previous analyses of the social meaning of demonstratives and other function words, we argue that the semantics of demonstratives facilitates affective uses that can be characterized as attempts by the speaker to foster a sense of shared perspective and common ground with other discourse participants. We present large‐scale quantitative evidence that this strategy is widely used and communicatively effective. We then conduct a focused case study of the demonstrative use of U.S. politician and public figure Sarah Palin, situated in the wider context of Palin's persona, style, and place in the social landscape. An analysis of television interview data shows that Palin is a distinctive and prolific user of affective demonstratives. Palin's usage highlights the context‐dependence of demonstratives’ social meaning and leads to a deeper understanding of her rhetorical strategies and the polarized reactions they have received.     

Shaping Perceptions of Sarah Palin’s Charisma: Presentations of Palin in the 2008 Presidential Election

Research has shown that male politicians are often stereotyped as stronger leaders than female politicians. This research, however, has taken a fairly narrow view of leadership. In the business organization literature, a leadership style called charismatic leadership is treated as a multidimensional concept, with feminine and masculine attributes. While scholarship has considered factors that shape perceptions of charisma, it has not looked at the effect of media presentations. This question became especially timely during the 2008 election. Using data from an experiment with voters in Los Angeles County, we show how media presentations impact the feminine and masculine components of Sarah Palin’s charisma. In our analysis, we show that media presentations that highlight stereotypically feminine traits increase perceptions of Palin’s feminine charisma, while those that highlight masculine traits have null effects on perceptions of Palin’s masculine charisma. Partisanship moderates these effects. Moreover, as one might expect, increased perceptions of Palin as a charismatic figure increase positive feelings toward her as a candidate.     

Obama,Palin, and Weber: Charisma and Social Change in the 2008 U.S. Election

Barack Obama et Sarah Palin sont tous les deux souvent étiquetés en tant que charismatique par le public. Pour évaluer si oui ou non, Obama et Palin démontrent une forme de charisme tel que définit par Weber, leurs rhétoriques et leurs actions sont examinées dans le contexte d'élections passées et dans celui où règne une stagnation politique mise en scène par la guerre des cultures. Là où la connexion entre Palin et le public émerge de son rôle de défenderesse dans la guerre des cultures, Obama a articulée une vision d'une communauté partagée, et se faisant, a réorganisé l'électorat en incorporant dans sa coalition la jeunesse désenchantée qui n'avait pas voté durant les dix dernières années. Both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are commonly labeled “charismatic” by the public. To assess whether or not Obama and Palin exhibit charisma in the Weberian sense, their rhetoric and actions are examined in the context of past elections and the political stagnation brought about by the politics of the culture wars. Where Palin's connection with the public flows from her role as a fighter in the culture wars, Obama articulated a vision of shared community and, in doing so, reorganized the electorate by incorporating disenchanted youth who had not voted over the past decade into his coalition. Thus, in Weberian terms, only Obama manifests charisma.     

“White Men Are This Nation:” Right‐Wing Militias and the Restoration of Rural American Masculinity*

Abstract The appearance of right‐wing militias was a much‐discussed phenomenon during the past decade. Commentators rightly pointed out their rural origins, their lower‐middle‐class and middle‐class composition, and their ideology rooted in racism, sexism, anti‐Semitism, and homophobia, but few, if any, have commented on the most salient aspect of all: that these are movements of men, who use narratives about masculinity as an analytic prism through which to understand their own situation and to problematize the identities of “others,” and as a rhetorical strategy to recruit and sustain their own membership. In this paper we undertake this analysis, exploring the rural origins of the militia movement, its social composition, ideology, and organization, and its articulation with other white supremacist groups. We argue that their vision of masculinity, particularly a self‐reliant, self‐made masculinity endemic to American history, is the theme unifying both the ideology and the organization of rural militias with the militant right‐wing continuum of which they are only a part.     

'Pitbulls' and Populist Politicians: Sarah Palin,Pauline Hanson and the Use of Gendered Nostalgia in Electoral Campaigns

Abstract

Sarah Palin and Pauline Hanson were charismatic and populist politicians, whose home states of Alaska and Queensland became central to their political narrative. Both women gained political influence at times of intense debate regarding their respective countries' national identities. Voters perceived the states to be locales that evoked antiestablishment authenticity, and which echoed the historical dynamism of frontier society. The women used this association to consolidate their call for social renewal that would return politics to sections of the citizenry who felt themselves to be marginalized. The women's authority was augmented by gendered stereotypes that directed attention to their apparent vulnerability and honesty in attempting public service. Although their messages were calibrated differently, Palin and Hanson both demanded moral and political renewal, and generated intense support through their sexualized rhetoric of economic security and social nostalgia.     

Doing Black Christianity: Reframing Black Church scholarship

The Black Church is the oldest social institution in the Black community and has played a significant role in the Black American experience by offering a space to develop Black oppositional consciousness. Despite the strong Black Christian tradition, a comprehensive review of the sociological literature on Black Christianity has yet to be conducted. The present article surveys extant literature and finds that two major frames are utilized when analyzing Black Christianity: (a) the Institutional‐level frame, which focuses on the Black Church as a social and cultural space, and (b) the Ideological‐level frame, which sees Black Christianity as a set of racialized attitudes, values, and beliefs. I rely on Avishai's concept of “Doing Religion” to argue the case for a new approach in framing this research and propose the use of an Individual‐level frame, which considers the agency of Black Christian actors by examining how they construct identity and embody faith. To illustrate the usefulness of the new frame, I provide an exemplar of Black Christian activist Bree Newsome Bass, highlighting the ways her faith informs her activism. By shifting the focus away from the Black Church as an institution and Black Christianity as an ideology, and instead centering the mechanisms Black Christian actors use to incorporate their faith into their everyday lives, sociological research on Black Christianity will be better equipped to provide insights into how religion informs racialized experiences in society.     

Women watching together: An ethnographic study of Korean soap opera fans in the US

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic of American cultural–legal studies, and it offers in Atticus Finch an iconic hero who, as Stephen Lubet suggests, is popular culture's most important embodiment of lawyerly virtue. As other scholars have noted, however, To Kill a Mockingbird is not just, or primarily, a law story. Rather, Scout Finch's portrait of Atticus as a father is regarded by many as the key to the text's cultural resonance. Told as a daughter's memory of her father, her brother, and the town in which she grew up, the text frames the era's conflicts over race, gender, and justice through the lens of Scout's admiration for Atticus. From our perspective, however, it is the conjunction of lawyer and father that fuels To Kill a Mockingbird’s appeal and importance, and in this paper we argue that such a conjunction, particularly in its filmic incarnation, provides an opportunity to explore the role that fathers and fatherhood play in cultural imaginings of law and in exemplifying the various faces of law's power. We argue that Atticus Finch is a father/lawyer committed to a particular vision of fatherhood and law, one in which both can transcend, if not transform, the context in which they exist, one in which orienting oneself to the future takes precedence over controlling the present, one in which the temporal horizon of law and fatherhood is kept firmly in view. In the figure of Atticus, To Kill a Mockingbird suggests that law and fatherhood are powerful and yet limited in their power, and that both exist in the present but are oriented towards an as yet unrealized future.     

In pursuit of a living wage: The ethical and economic thought of father John A. Ryan from the late 1890s until the new deal

Abstract

Father Ryan frequently cited Pope Leo XIII's major encyclical, Rerum novarum (On the Condition of Labor) to lend the support of traditional Catholic social teaching to social and labor reform. Advocating “sane individualism,” Ryan was the first American to argue convincingly that employers were bound in strict justice to pay employees at least a living wage, and his ethical influence gained wide appeal due to his conservative yet fair‐minded approach to distributive justice. Ryan supported labor unions and economic planning as means to gain fair wages and stock ownership for all workers and emphasized income redistribution to reduce depressionary underconsumption.     

Narratives and self-identity in later life: Two rural American older women

Older adults often draw on memories to construct stories about themselves that help them to retain and validate their self-identities, doing this within the cultural contexts that have shaped their lives. In this paper, we examine the life history narratives of two working class, rural American older women and the ways in which those narratives are similar despite one major difference: one has dementia. In both cases, major themes that are consistent with gender-based, working class, rural American cultural values are dominant, including closeness of family, hard work, ties to the land, and religious faith. In the first case, she reconstructs memories of her life in accordance with dominant cultural and personal values, downplaying the ways in which her experiences were “out of step” with these values. In the second case, her sense of identity remains and is expressed through her co-constructed memories although she is experiencing cognitive loss.     

Where Do Female Conservatives Stand? A Cross-National Analysis of the Issue Positions and Ideological Placement of Female Right-Wing Candidates

ABSTRACT

Many right-wing parties have attempted to increase their share of female representatives to appeal to women in the electorate. Underlying this is the assumption that women will offer a distinct perspective to the party. Using a comparative dataset of male and female candidates of Conservative and Christian Democratic parties across 21 European and Anglo-Saxon countries, we show this is the case. Female candidates in right-wing parties are less right wing than male candidates, both in terms of their overall ideology and their issue positioning. Perhaps as a consequence, female candidates perceive a greater distance to their own party than male candidates.     

Labor‐Environmental Coalition Formation: Framing and the Right to Know1

This article examines the formation of a cross‐movement coalition between elements of the labor and environmental movements in New Jersey. We explain the successful formation and initial political campaign of the New Jersey Work Environment Council with an expansion of the theoretical perspective of frame analysis. We propose a model of a coalition collective action frame that offers several important insights into the active role coalition actors play in the construction of a common frame uniting union and environmental activists. Using qualitative data gathered from interviews, observations, and document analyses of two major campaigns, we argue that the coalition frame allowed new political opportunities to be created, leading to the establishment of the most sweeping right‐to‐know laws in the United States. We conclude the discussion of coalition framing by examining political constraints on the framing possibilities of coalitions, specifically by exploring how the discursive shift from the right to know to the right to act failed to expand the influence of the cross‐movement coalition as originally expected by its members.     

The Risk of Partner Violence Among Low‐Income Hispanic Subgroups

Women with few social resources are at elevated risk of partner abuse. Certain evidence suggests that African American and Hispanic women, who are overrepresented in the lower socioeconomic strata, are at particularly high risk. We compare women's risk of partner violence, defined as moderate and severe, among 2,400 low‐income African American, Hispanic, and non‐Hispanic Whites from “Welfare, Children and Families: A Three City Study” and find that these groups differ in their risk of degrees of violence. Specific nation‐of‐origin Hispanic subgroups also manifest important differences in their violence risk profiles. We argue that a better understanding of victimization requires more detailed ethnic categorization and a more refined understanding of the meaning of domestic violence for different groups.     

The tyranny of the moral majority: American religion and politics since the pilgrim fathers

Abstract

Americans claim to be the most religious people in the Christian world. Religion has informed their politics ever since the Pilgrim Fathers, who began the tyranny of the majority which Tocqueville outlined in Democracy in America (1985), his version of Aristotle's ‘ochlocracy’. In recent times this has taken the form of the ‘moral majority’ institutionalized by Jerry Falwell and the fundamentalists who set out to capture the Republican Party under Nixon and Reagan. In fact, it was never a majority: ‘born again’ Christians, not all of the right‐wing in politics, were less than one fifth of a national sample in 1980 ‐ a third of African Americans, who voted ten to one against Reagan. Nonetheless they influenced every President from Eisenhower to Bush, and they are the major force behind the move to impeach Clinton. Since they failed, they may now give way for a more moderate politics of Christian forgiveness.     

Is organizational behavior in U.S. Muslim nonprofit institutions religious?

Several researchers argue that religion influences organizational behavior in nonprofit institutions (Lotfy, 2004; Brinckerhoff, 1999). This article examines this claim by outlining major organizational values embraced by the leadership of twenty‐eight American Muslim nonprofit institutions. Two surveys were distributed to a random sample of 224 board members and 416 constituents in the southern and southeastern United States. Findings indicate that American Muslim nonprofit institutions remain religious even when they provide nonreligious services. Exhibiting religious organizational behavior is not random or accidental. Rather, it can be a reflection of the role of faith in nonprofits. Exploratory factor analysis reveals nine religiously important values that characterize managerial leadership in American Muslim nonprofit institutions. These values and their implications are discussed.     

“My God Wants Me to Live Simply”: The Constructed Selfhood of Faith‐Based Simple Livers

This study examines how participants in the faith‐based voluntary simplicity movement, referred to here as “Simple Livers,” draw on the complex interactions of ideology and emotions as they construct a moral identity focused on social change. Drawing on qualitative data from participant observation and interviews, I examine the use of moral repertoires—combinations of principles, practices, and feelings, including guilt, pride, and frustration, grounded in both the Christian faith and the tenets of voluntary simplicity. I engage with the new literature on lifestyle movements to argue that the moral repertoires of Simple Livers reinforce these ideologies, resulting in the construction of an over‐conforming moral self.     

Resistance Is Not Futile: Liberating Captain Janeway from the Masculine‐Feminine Dualism of Leadership

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Schulman's Urban Lesbian: A HoboSexual Pedestrian Rhetoric

The following article reads the protagonist in Sarah Schulman's Girls, Visions and Everything as not only lesbian, but as hobosexual—a concept representative of anti-capitalist practices in both sex and labor. The hobosexual is developed as an extension of the lesbian flâneur, as a concept that requires reading Schulman's urban lesbian at the intersection of class and sexuality. Lila Futuransky's sexual identity is suspended and complicated through an emphasis on her desire for queer mobility; her urban movements connect her to hobo history, but also expose the effects of capitalism that thwart her urban movement.     

The nightmares of the heteronormative

Abstract

Race and sexuality have always intersected in African‐American racial formation. In this article, I argue that this intersection has inspired certain epistemological, political, economic and cultural formations. In terms of epistemology, American sociology and African‐American literature have historically addressed the connections between race and sexuality. Both were interested in the ways that African‐American racial formation transgressed ideal heterosexual and patriarchal boundaries. As far as cultural formations were concerned, such transgressions materially and symbolically aligned African‐American racial formation with homosexuality. Attending to the political and economic effect of this alignment, I maintain that it helped to articulate African‐American racial difference and worked to exclude African‐Americans from the privileges of state and capital. Thus, the article argues that African‐American racial subordination can best be understood as it converges with heteronormative and patriarchal modes of regulation and exclusion. After showing how the most prominent sociology during the 1940s (Gunnar Myrdal's American Dilemma: The Negro and American Democracy) marked African‐Americans as pathologically heterosexual, I go on to read James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain to determine how the alignment between blackness and homosexuality suggests alternative and oppositional epistemological, cultural and political practices.     

Girlz II women: Age‐grading,language change and stylistic variation

Informed by abstract models of language change or stability over time, we present a longitudinal study of two African American females, first interviewed as teenagers, and re‐recorded twenty years later. As teenagers, they used morpho‐syntactic features of AAVE voraciously. But as working adults, these women distance themselves from their teenage activities and social networks, and display a considerably reduced vernacular usage that accords with their articulated concern to get ahead. The diachronic interpretation that best characterizes their transformation is age‐grading rather than generational change, since change at the individual level is accompanied by stability at the community level. The picture is complicated by intermediate recordings showing that one of the speakers is a stylistic chameleon, capable since her teenage years of varying copula absence rates depending on addressee, topic, and projected persona. But the age‐grading interpretation of change at the individual level remains valid based on the evidence of her reduced use of habitual be2, and third singular present tense –s absence. The case highlights the importance of paying more attention to stylistic variation and including more than two time points in sociolinguistic studies of change in real and apparent time.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Information and Communication Technologies in Rural Society, edited by Grete Rusten and Sarah Skerratt Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture, by John E. Ikerd Workforce Development Networks in Rural Areas: Building the High Road, by Gary P. Green Niagara Falling: Globalization in a Small Town, by Carol D. Miller The Treadmill of Production: Injustice and Unsustainability in the Global Economy, by Kenneth Gould, David Pellow, and Allan Schnaiberg