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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 167

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

Fine phonetic detail and sociolinguistic ethnography

Authors: Kirkham, Sam; Pharao, Nicolai
Submitted by: Kirkham, Sam (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom)

Ethnographic approaches are now well established in variationist sociolinguistics for their ability to capture local perspectives on language usage, social practice, and community dynamics. Studies employing ethnographic methods have been instrumental in the development of the community of practice construct (Eckert 2000; Alam 2007; Mendoza-Denton 2008), in facilitating a deeper understanding of the relationship between social practice and social categories (Moore 2010), and in enriching our knowledge of the social motivations behind linguistic variation (Labov 1963).

Concurrent with the increased focus on ethnographic research, there has been a growing interest in the role of fine-grained phonetic detail and the ways in which it is used to communicate social information (Foulkes et al. 2010). Sociophonetic studies generally focus on vowel variation, but an increasing body of work has begun to investigate phonetic detail in consonants (Stuart-Smith 2007), the suprasegmental aspects of speech (Podesva 2007), and the co-occurrence and perception of linguistic forms (Campbell-Kibler 2011). This has significantly expanded our perspective on the aspects of variation above and below the level of the segment that can be used for constructing identities and creating social meaning.

The convergence of socially sensitive and phonetically sophisticated approaches has much to offer to the study of variation. Approaches combining the two are vital in understanding the stylistic capabilities of human language use and the cognitive processing of linguistic variation. Ethnography has opened up sociolinguistic perspectives on the social uses of language and provided a way to model social behaviour in a more ecologically valid way. The phonetic findings from these studies also have serious implications for cognitive models of phonetic detail and how social and phonetic information are stored in tandem (Drager 2010). In this panel, we aim to bring together researchers working on fine phonetic variation in ethnographically-informed sociolinguistic research with the following aims and objectives in mind:

1.     To illustrate the benefits of combining ethnographically-informed social analysis with detailed analysis of the gradient phonetic properties of speech.

2.     To explore the range of phonetic parameters across which social meaning is made.

3.     To examine the advantages of combining ethnographic insights with production studies and perception experiments on the same groups of speakers.

 

Discussion questions

1.     How can we generalise from ethnographic research (which generally takes the form of specific case studies) to the broader processes of phonetic variation, social meaning, and cognitive processing?

2.     How can the study of fine phonetic detail inform our understanding of the social work being done with speech variation within communities of speakers?

3.     How can studies of fine phonetic detail be used to relate ethnographic studies to the study of on-going sound change in the surrounding speech community?

 

References

Alam, Farhana. 2007. Language and Identity in 'Glaswasian' adolescents. MLitt Dissertation, University of Glasgow.

Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2011. Intersecting variables and perceived sexual orientation in men. American Speech 86(1): 52-68.

Drager, Katie. 2010. Sensitivity to grammatical and sociophonetic variability in perception. Journal of Laboratory Phonology 1(1): 93-120.

Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Foulkes, Paul, James M. Scobbie & Dominic Watt. 2010. Sociophonetics. In: William J. Hardcastle, John Laver & Fiona Gibbon (eds) The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 703-754. 

Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19: 273-303.

Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Moore, Emma. 2010. Interaction between social category and social practice: explaining was/were variation. Language Variation and Change 22(3): 347-371.

Podesva, Robert J. 2007. Phonation type as a stylistic variable: the use of falsetto in constructing a persona. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(4): 478-504.

Stuart-Smith, Jane. 2007. Empirical evidence for gendered speech production: /s/ in Glaswegian. In: Jennifer Cole & José Ignacio Hualde (eds) Laboratory Phonology 9. Berlin: Mouton, pp. 65-86.