Cover not available
Introduction published In:
Styles, Standards and Meaning in Lesser-Studied Languages
Edited by Uri Horesh, Jonathan R. Kasstan and Miriam Meyerhoff
[Language Ecology 4:1] 2020
► pp. 1–16
Introduction

Styles, standards and meaning

Issues in the globalisation of sociolinguistics

| University of Oxford
| University of Rochester
| Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
| Achva Academic College
| University of Westminster
| University of Auckland
| University of Canterbury

Style, in the study of variation and change, is intimately linked with broader questions about linguistic innovation and change, standards, social norms, and individual speakers’ stances. This article examines style when applied to lesser-studied languages. Style is both (i) the product of speakers’ choices among variants, and (ii) something reflexively produced through the association of variants and the social position of the users of those variants. In the context of the languages considered here, we ask “What questions do we have about variation in this language and what notion(s) of style will answer them?” We highlight methodological, conceptual and analytical challenges for the notion of style as it is usually operationalised in variationist sociolinguistics. We demonstrate that style is a useful research heuristic which – when marshalled alongside locally-oriented accounts of, or proxies for “standard” and “prestige”, in apparent time – allows us to describe language and explore change. It is also a means for exploring social meaning, which speakers may have more or less conscious control over.

Keywords: style variation, language standards, minority languages, sociolinguistic theory, superposed variety, indicators, markers, stereotypes
Article outline
  • Style and lesser-studied languages
  • Style as a heuristic tool
  • Meanings of styles
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.00006.mey
References
Agha, Asif
2007 Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Al-Wer, Enam, Uri Horesh, Deema AlAmmar, Hind Alaodini, Aziza Al-Essa, Areej Al-Hawamdeh, Khairia Al-Qahtani and Abeer Ab Hussain
2020 Probing linguistic change in Arabic vernaculars: A sociohistorical perspective. Language in Society. FirstView. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, Nigel
2013 Hyperstyle variation in French: Yet another exception culturelle? In Mari C. Jones and David Hornsby (eds.), Language and Social Structure in Urban France. Oxford: Legenda, pp. 81–91.Google Scholar
Barrett, Rusty
2017 From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, gender, and gay male subcultures. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan
1984 Language style as audience design. Language in Society 131:145–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Succeeding waves: Seeking sociolinguistic theory for the twenty-first century. In: Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 391–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Childs, Tucker, Jeff Good and Alice Mitchell
2014 Beyond the ancestral code: Towards a model for sociolinguistic language documentation. Language Documentation and Conservation. 81: 168–191.Google Scholar
Cormier, Kearsy, Adam Schembri, David Vinson and Eleni Orfanidou
2012 First language acquisition differs from second language acquisition in prelingually deaf signers: Evidence from sensitivity to grammaticality judgement in British Sign Language. Cognition 1241: 50–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang and Ruth Wodak-Leodolter
1977 Language preservation and language death in Brittany. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 121: 33–44.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope
2008 Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4): 453–476. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual Review of Anthropology 411: 87–100.
https://doi.org/
. DOI logo
2018 Meaning and Linguistic Variation: The third wave in sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope and William Labov
2017 Phonetics, phonology and social meaning. Journal of Sociolinguistics 21(4): 467–496. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet
2003 Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1981 Forms of Talk. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J.
1968 The speech community. International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, vol. 91, pp. 381–386. Reprinted as Ch. 7 of John J. Gumperz 1971 Language in Social Groups, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 114–128.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. and Dell Hymes
(eds) 1964a The Ethnography of Communication. Special edition of American Anthropologist 66 No. 6 Pt.2.Google Scholar
(eds.) 1964b Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Haeri, Niloofar
1987 Male/female differences in speech: An alternative explanation. In Keith M. Dennig, Sharon Inkelas, Faye C. McNair-Knox and John R. Rickford (eds.). Variation in Language: NWAV-X. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Department of Linguistics. 173–182.Google Scholar
2000 Form and ideology: Arabic sociolinguistics and beyond. Annual Review of Anthropology 291: 61–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M.
2016 Sociolinguistic Styles. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hymes, Dell
1974 Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Ibrahim, Muhammad H.
1986 Standard and prestige language: A problem in Arabic sociolinguistics. Anthropological Linguistics 281:115–126.Google Scholar
Laberge, Suzanne and Gillian Sankoff
1986 Anything you can do. In Gillian Sankoff (ed.). The social life of language. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 271–293.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1966 The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
1971 Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in Society 1(1): 97–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
2001 Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 2: Social factors. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
2015 The discovery of the unexpected. Asia Pacific Language Variation 1(1): 7–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Page, Robert B. and Andrée Tabouret-Keller
1985 Acts of Identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez and Isabelle Buchstaller
2015 Perception, cognition, and linguistic structure: The effect of linguistic modularity and cognitive style on sociolinguistic processing. Language Variation and Change 271: 319–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lim, Lisa and Umberto Ansaldo
2015 Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald K. S.
1999 Is sociolinguistics lacking in style? Cuadernos de Filología Inglesa 81:9–33.Google Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, Norma
2011 The semiotic Hitchhiker’s guide to creaky voice: Circulation and gendered hardcore in a Chicana/o gang persona. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21(2): 261–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam
2016 Methods, innovations and extensions: Reflections on half a century of methodology in social dialectology. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20(4): 431–452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam and James N. Stanford
2015 “Tings change, all tings change”: the changing face of sociolinguistics with a global perspective. In Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds.), Globalising Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge, pp. 1–15.Google Scholar
Nagy, Naomi
2018 Linguistic attitudes and contact effects in Toronto’s heritage languages: A variationist sociolinguistic investigation. International Journal of Bilingualism 221:429–446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2021 Prodrop in Heritage Cantonese and Korean is not influenced by English contact. Paper presented at NWAV Asia-Pacific 6, National University of Singapore, 17–21 February 2021.
Ochs, Elinor
1992 Indexing gender. In: Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 335–358.Google Scholar
Paul, Hermann
1891 Principles of the History of Language. [Trans. H. A. Strong] London: Longmans, Green & Co.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet
2000 The phonetic grounding of phonology. Bulletin de la communication parlée 51:7–23.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J.
2008 Three sources of stylistic meaning. Texas Linguistic Forum 511 (Proceedings of the Symposium about Language and Society – Austin 15), pp 1–14.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. and Penelope Eckert
2001 Introduction. In Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford (eds.), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–18.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso
Fc. The role of social meaning in contact-induced variation among new speakers of Basque. Journal of Sociolinguistics.
Sankoff, Gillian
2019 Language change across the lifespan: Three trajectory types. Language 95(2): 197–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian and Suzanne Evans Wagner
2020 The long tail of language change: A trend and panel study of Québecois French futures. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 651: 246–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Satyanath, Shobha
2017 Kohima: Language variation and change in a small but diverse city in India. In Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich (eds.) Urban Sociolinguistics: The city as a linguistic process and experience. London: Routledge, pp.121–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
2003 Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 231: 193–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Starr, Rebecca Lurie, Tianxiao Wang and Christian Go
2020 Sexuality vs. sensuality: The multimodal construction of affective stance in ASMR performances. Journal of Sociolinguistics 24(4): 492–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, James A.
2010 Variation in Linguistic Systems. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov, and Marvin I. Herzog
1968 Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Winfred P. Lehmann and Yakov Malkiel (eds.), Directions for Historical Linguistics: A symposium. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 95–195.Google Scholar
Yu, Alan C. L.
2013 Individual differences in socio-cognitive processing and sound change. In Alan C. L. Yu (ed.) Origins of Sound Change: Approaches to phonologization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 202–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Hui
2021 Enregisterment, variation and identity construction in Ningbo Putonghua. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation–Asia Pacific 6. National University of Singapore. 17–20 February 2021.