Self‐presentation in sociolinguistic interviews: Identities and language variation in Panambi, Brazil

This paper contributes to recent work examining the role of identity, and in particular the uses of language for self‐presentation and the expression of individual identity, through the analysis of two sociolinguistic interviews from a community of German origin in southern Brazil. Drawing from a quantitative study of variation in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, we conducted a detailed analysis of the interviews of two women of different ages and social backgrounds. We first describe the social, cultural and historical context of the interviews, and then discuss how our two speakers use their linguistic resources to express varied, and at times conflicting, aspects of their identities. More specifically, we show how our participants seem to maintain certain in‐group, German‐linked features, yet also use out‐group or Brazilian features in order to index both the (local) German and (regional) Brazilian aspects of their identities. Our data and analysis highlight how participants' identity and language use patterns can be better understood through close analysis of the content of their discourse.     

Identity,accent aim,and motivation in second language users: New Scottish Gaelic speakers’ use of phonetic variation

This paper examines the use of phonetic variation in word‐final rhotics among nineteen adult new speakers of Scottish Gaelic, i.e. speakers who did not acquire the language through intergenerational transmission. Our speakers learned Gaelic as adults and are now highly advanced users of the language. We consider variation in their rhotic productions compared to the productions of six older, traditional speakers. Previous approaches to variation in second language users have either focussed on how variable production will eventually result in native‐like ‘target’ forms (Type 1 study), or have investigated the extent to which second language users reproduce patterns of variation similar to ‘native speakers’ (Type 2 study). We additionally draw on sociocultural approaches to Second Language Acquisition and apply notions of accent aim, identity construction, and learning motivation in order to fully explore the data. In doing so, we advocate a ‘Type 3’ approach to variation in second language users.     

An analysis of Montréal's Quartier Chinois and sense of self: Une Loi peut faire mal au dragon,mais La Loi ne peut pas tuer le dragon

In 1976, the provincial parliament in Québec ratified the Charter of the French Language, or La Loi 101. The Charter is a collection of linguistic laws meant to promote the French language in Québec. Since its ratification, supporters of the Charter have called it a protection of “French‐Canadian identity”. The Charter has also come under scrutiny from Anglophones (English speakers) and Allophones (non‐native English or French speakers) in Québec. This paper analyzes one group of Allophones, Chinese‐Canadians, in Québec's largest city, Montréal. In particular, this analysis examines how the Chinese‐Canadian community in Montréal perceives their self‐identity as threatened by La Loi 101 and believes this law is a form of forced assimilation.     

Gentlemanly gender?Japanese men's use of clause‐final politeness in casual conversations1

Much of the Japanese language and gender literature discusses the differential use of polite language by women and men. The exchange of non‐reciprocal clause‐final speech levels is typically taken as a sign that interlocutors are of unequal social status. Cook (1998) has shown how Japanese speakers manipulate the use of clause‐final politeness in order to index particular stances in specific moments of ongoing verbal interaction. Using naturally occurring all‐male informal conversations, this paper examines the use of clause‐final politeness as marked by the presence or absence of the verb ending ∼masu[+politeness] by Japanese men in the Kansai (Western) region. The data provide a deeper understanding into how men exploit linguistic structures such as politeness, at the everyday local level, to create, maintain, and manage particular identities and/or stances.     

Work that –s!: Drag queens,gender, identity,and traditional Newfoundland English

Making use of three data sets of Newfoundland English, this paper uncovers the linguistic and social motivations and strategies used by young speakers to reclaim and re‐shape a traditional, local, relic language feature (verbal –s attachment, as in I goes). While each group that we discuss (young females, drag queens, and a sample of the Newfoundland population) is differently situated with respect to the broader local culture (i.e. they each have their own social identities), similarities and parallels in the reclamation and use of verbal –s indicate important processes that occur in the enregisterment and reappropriation of a salient, traditional linguistic form. Results indicate that the local social and linguistic reconstruction of a speech feature can change a path of decline and prove fertile ground for creating a unique identity that moves toward the global while still motioning to the past of a community.     

Youth,slang, and pragmatic expressions: Examples from Brazilian Portuguese1

This article draws on an ethnographic study of the stigmatized speech style of poor black male youth in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These youth are said to speak gíria (‘slang’), and their speech is often described as incomprehensible to the Brazilian middle class. Speakers and listeners point to a wide range of pragmatic expressions as some of the most salient linguistic features associated with this speech style. This article presents examples from Brazilian Portuguese slang, in which youth draw on sound words, obscenities, address forms, and addressee‐oriented tags to create new pragmatic markers and forms of indefinite reference. It is argued that these pragmatic expressions offer multiple opportunities for speakers to convey stance, novelty, and style, social goals long associated with slang. This data suggests that we broaden the purview of slang beyond the lexicon to investigate the ways in which speakers actively innovate within the area of pragmatics.     

Appropriation of African American slang by Asian American youth1

This article explores the ways in which Asian American teenagers creatively appropriated two African American slang terms: aite and na mean. While some teens racialized slang as belonging to African Americans, other teens authenticated identities as slang speakers. Through close analysis of slang‐in‐use and particularly of the metapragmatic discussions such uses inspired, this article examines how the teens specified relationships between language, race, age, region and class, while achieving multiple social purposes, such as identifying with African Americans, marking urban youth subcultural participation, and interactionally positioning themselves and others as teachers and students of slang. As slang emerged with local linguistic capital, the teens used slang to create social boundaries not only between teens and adults, but also between each other. The discursive salience of region implicitly indexed socio‐economic status and proximity to African Americans as markers that teens drew on to authenticate themselves and others as slang speakers.     

Ritualizing the Routine: Collective Identity Affirmation

Groups use rituals to create and preserve collective identities. Separation of sacred practices from customary activities has long been considered a key property of ritual. However, customary activities form the basis of some ritual celebrations. We explain how a different process of identity creation results: identity affirmation. We find that groups affirm their customary practices on ritual occasions when they intend to celebrate practices already associated with the sacred, and we explain the structure of such rituals using a case study of a university centennial celebration. We argue that attention to variation in ritual casts light on the values and collective identity of groups.     

“Sassy Queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE

Recent computational sociolinguistic analyses of social media have emphasized the potential of using orthographic variation as a proxy for speech, thereby permitting macro‐level quantitative studies of regional and social variation (e.g. Eisenstein, 2015). However, the extent to which stylistic variation may affect these analyses remains largely unexplored. In this paper, I explore how authors use variant spellings stylistically to deploy personae and characterological figures (Agha, 2003), by examining the presence of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) features in a corpus of 15,804 tweets extracted from the timelines of 10 gay British men. I argue that the stylization of AAVE signals the development of a very specific persona—the “Sassy Queen”—which relies on an essentialized imagining of Black women as “fierce” and “sassy.” Concluding, I emphasize the value of micro‐level analyses in complementing quantitative analyses of linguistic variation in social media.     

Complicating categories: Personae mediate racialized expectations of non‐native speech

This paper examines how American listeners’ expectations of non‐native English speech from speakers of East Asian descent can be modulated by the persona invoked by a speaker's visual display. While prior work has typically linked expectations of non‐native speaker status with East Asian‐ness broadly construed, this study indicates that US listeners’ expectations can be tied to more particular manifestations of this racialized identity, themselves informed by raciolinguistic ideologies. In a lexical recall task with persona‐based photographic primes, different visual styles embodied by the same Korean individual induced contrasting expectations of “foreign accented” speech, which corresponded to significant differences in how well the speech was remembered. Ultimately, I argue that models of sociolinguistic perception should include cognitive representations of social constructs like personae, not only to better capture the detailed nature of listeners’ sociolinguistic expectations, but also to avoid perpetuating homogenizing treatments of racialized groups’ language practices.     

Styling the periphery: Linguistic and cultural takeup in Bangladesh and Mongolia

Focusing on online interactions among young adults in Bangladesh and Mongolia – two countries located politically, culturally and economically on the Asian periphery – this paper looks at how young adults use linguistic and cultural resources in their online interactions as part of a complex and emergent stylization of place. On the one hand, they appropriate the cultural and linguistic flows according to their locations and engage in a playful stylization and reconfiguration of what the local means. On the other hand, they engage in stylization and reflexive language use, often involving exaggerated linguistic variation, mixing, and other semiotic resources in order to produce and perform a range of social and cultural identities. The paper hence shows how the circulation and takeup of popular cultural flows around Asia can involve diverse processes of linguistic and cultural stylization.     

Discourse marker ‘oh’ as a means for realizing the identity potential of constructed dialogue in interaction1

This research explores how discourse marker oh works with constructed dialogue (quoted speech), identifying a use of oh not discussed in previous research in which it can serve to signal speaker stance towards quoted material. While both discourse markers and constructed dialogue have been widely discussed as identity resources in the discourse analytic and interactional‐sociolinguistic tradition, there has been little work considering how these linguistic features may work together. In this paper, I address this gap by illustrating how Bakhtin's (1984) notions of uni‐directional and vari‐directional double voicing articulate with information display and evaluation functions of oh identified by Schiffrin (1987) , suggesting that oh (when occurring as a preface to constructed dialogue), works both to display and evaluate quoted material for the purposes of identity construction in interaction. Such uses of this discourse marker provide illustration of how footing works together with related concepts of evaluation, positioning, and alignment as part of a process of stancetaking in interaction ( Du Bois 2007 ). Examples are taken from ethnographic interviews collected as part of a larger study of the linguistic style of a community of improv performers in Washington, D.C. focusing primarily on examples contributed by one speaker, Josh.     

Legal discourse and the cultural intelligiblity of gendered meanings1

This paper considers the methodological challenges that ‘post-modern’ approaches to gender ( Cameron 2005 ) pose for the field of language and gender. If we assume that gender cannot be ‘read off’ the identities of speakers, but rather is a social process by which individuals come to make cultural sense, then how do we best investigate this process? As Stokoe (2005) and Stokoe and Smithson (2002) have argued, it is problematic within such frameworks to conduct research that pre-categorizes individuals as women and men, since it is individuals' constitution as women or men that should be the issue under investigation. Indeed, for Butler (1990: 145), to understand ‘identity as a practice … is to understand culturally intelligible subjects as the resulting effects of a rule-bound discourse’ (emphasis in original). This suggests that we attend to cultural norms of intelligibility (i.e. the ‘rule-bound discourse’) and their effects. Following Blommaert (2005) and Woolard (forthcoming) , in this paper I investigate a speech event, a courtroom trial dealing with sexual assault, where understandings of social identities and categories (i.e. ‘norms of intelligibility’) are not only evident in the local talk of speakers and hearers, but also in the recontextualizations of this local talk by powerful institutional representatives (i.e. judges). By examining such recontextualizations of courtroom talk, gender is not ‘read off’ the identities of individuals (i.e. courtroom participants) but rather investigated as it appears in the cultural sense-making frameworks of judges. Moreover, given that judges are the ultimate interpreters of the linguistic representations of courtroom talk, this paper also demonstrates some of the social consequences associated with the performance of culturally intelligible and unintelligible gendered identities.     

‘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.     

Gender norms and styling in Japanese conversation: A multilevel analysis

The observation that gender differences in Japanese language use are becoming less prevalent as women increasingly use ‘men's language’ appears in popular media from time to time. Some empirical studies support this view. However, such observations are usually based on the consideration of only one or two linguistic features, especially sentence-final forms and personal pronouns. In contrast, this study analyzes the use of multiple linguistic and paralinguistic features related to gender, regarding them as resources for styling identity. According to our analysis of eight same-gender and mixed-gender dyadic conversations of college students, these speakers’ use of features other than sentence-final forms, which we found to vary little by gender, is normatively gendered to a large extent. The study thus demonstrates that the analysis of multiple and multilevel variables enables us to better understand the complex process of styling through the speaker's negotiation of linguistic gender norms in actual practice.     

The World According to Bakhtin: On the Description of space and Spatial Forms in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Works

This paper focuses on questions of Macedonian standardization at the most micro-level, i.e., within the individual. Through examination of archival materials of Macedonian writers of the early twentieth century, questions of language shift and standardization are addressed. While much research has been conducted on the state processes of language standardizing, on access to the media in newly standardized linguistic codes, and on access to education, this work refocuses discussion of language standards on individual speakers and writers: how and why they shift their language to the emerging norm. Two writers from this period, Anton Kavaev and Radoslav Petkovski, serve as models and provide the first step in a larger study of processes of standardization in the early decades of the twentieth century leading to codification in mid-century. The written works of the authors under study demonstrate that language codification is not an act, nor a series of acts, but a process, a process that takes place within individual speakers who are committed to the project of language standardization while subject to external political and linguistic pressures.     

What makes a Gael? Identity,language and ancestry in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd

Scholars know far less about ‘national identity’ than ‘nations’ and ‘nationalism’. The authors argue that the concept is sociologically important and briefly discuss its relationship with language. They examine empirically how people living in the Gàidhealtachd, the area of Scotland associated with Gaelic language and culture, whether they are Gaelic speakers or not, whether incomers or not, go about their territorial identity business. The article shows how respondents’ Gaelic identity relates to their British and Scottish identity; how people living in the Gàidhealtachd assess putative claims to a Gaelic identity based variously on language, residence and ancestry; and how they see the balance between ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ elements in Gaelic. The authors argue that to study ‘what makes a Gael?’ highlights the key role territorial identity plays in connecting social structure to social action, and also that identity provides a set of meanings and understandings through which people experience social structure and feel empowered to act.     

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’.     

‘A ondi queras’: Ranchero identity construction by U.S. born Mexicans on Facebook

This study describes how transnational second‐generation Mexican bilinguals use a stigmatized variety of Mexican Spanish to communicate on Facebook and construct an identity. The stereotyped features of this variety index a ranchero identity. Historically, ranchero is an ambivalent identity for Mexican society in general. On the one hand, ranchero culture is a positive reminiscence of Mexico's agrarian past, while on the other, rancheros, along with indigenous Mexicans, are at the bottom of the hierarchy in Mexican society. A discourse‐centered, ethnographic analysis of digitally mediated conversations demonstrates how language use allows participants to reminisce about their collective past, maintain Mexican identities tied to their ancestors, fit their identities to contemporary U.S. Mexican culture, and distance themselves from the stigma associated with the ranchero background.     

It don't go both ways: Limited bidirectionality in sociolinguistic perception

This article explores the sociolinguistic perception of morphosyntactic variation, using sociolinguistic priming experiments. Two experiments tested participants' perception of the connection between social status and variation in two English subject‐verb agreement constructions: there's+NP and NP+don't. Experiment 1 tested sentence perception and found that exposure to non‐standard agreement boosted the perception of non‐standard agreement, but only for there's+NP. Social status cues had no effect on sentence perception. Experiment 2 tested speaker perception and found that participants were more likely to believe that non‐standard agreement was produced by low‐status than high‐status speakers. Results suggest that, especially for heavily stigmatized variables, non‐standard sentences strongly constrain the social judgments made by speakers, yet social cues do not necessarily constrain linguistic perception. The results suggest that the perceptual relationship between linguistic and social knowledge may be one of only limited bidirectionality. Implications for sociolinguistic perception and exemplar‐theoretic accounts of sociolinguistic competence are discussed.