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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1441

Part of Plenary lectures (Other abstracts in this session)

“He thinks he’s gang:” Indexicality at the border.

Authors: Eckert, Penelope
Submitted by: Eckert, Penelope (Stanford University, United States of America)

The call for abstracts for this conference includes the claim that the social diversity of the city leads to complex indexical fields. This raises interesting questions such as how an indexical field expands in the everyday, and where an indexical field lives in the vast fluidity of a diverse linguistic landscape. This talk, based on long-term ethnographic work among preadolescents in a Northern California city, will examine the complex indexicalities that arise at the fluid ethnic border between Latinos and Anglos. Ethnic groups and their linguistic varieties are not inward-looking, but take on salience in the course of  participation in a diverse linguistic and cultural landscape. The Latino and Anglo kids in this study participate in different ethnic communities and practices, but they are also moving through the same life stage in the same communities and institutions, with many of the same practices and concerns. As part of each other’s landscape, their indexical practices engage their similarities and differences, so that features of their “ethnolects” take on meanings that are only indirectly related to ethnicity.