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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 422

Part of Session 191: Language variation, identity and urban Space (Other abstracts in this session)

Mixed methods for multiple meanings: Understanding language variation in urban north-east England and beyond

Authors: Snell, Julia
Submitted by: Snell, Julia (King's College London, United Kingdom)

Within the UK, a growing body of sociolinguistic research has focused on the language practices of adolescents in multicultural London (e.g. Rampton 2006, 2011; Cheshire et al. 2011). In this paper, I move away from the capital and into the urban conurbation of Teesside in the north-east of England, one of the least ethnically diverse regions of the country. Where do young speakers in this area stand in relation to recent developments in research on stylization practices among adolescents in multicultural contexts (e.g. Rampton 1995, 2006; Jaspers 2006)? I consider this question through analyses of radio-microphone recordings of children in two schools which are ethnically homogeneous (predominantly white European heritage), but which are differentiated according to the socioeconomic profile of the areas they serve.

I argue that some local dialect forms (such as ‘howay’) have become ‘enregistered’ (Agha 2003; Johnstone et. al. 2006) as indexes of north-east identity, especially white working-class male identity, but in local contexts of use, speakers (regardless of class or gender) exploit the much wider potential these forms have for social meaning-making (Snell 2010). This is because indexical forms can both evoke pre-existing identities and construct new identities, and they always potentially do both (Johnstone 2011: 31; Eckert 2008); in fact the common sociolinguistic finding that the same linguistic features can simultaneously index multiple social categories (such as region, class and gender) suggests that their meanings are not directly related to these categories at all but to the social values, acts and stances implicated in the construction of these categories (Eckert 2008: 455; Ochs 1992). I thus argue that understanding processes of indexicalisation and enregisterment in contemporary urban contexts (whether ethnically homogeneous or ethnically diverse) is best done through a combination of methods: (1) variationist analyses of the distribution of forms across speakers, which reveal community-wide patterns; and (2) ethnographically informed interactional analyses, which reveal the processes through which linguistic forms become tuned to the exigencies of the local social order.

References:

Agha, Asif. 2003. The social life of cultural value. Language and Communication 23: 231-273.

Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Where do ethnolects stop? International Journal of Bilingualism 12:  25-42.

Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4): 453-476.

Johnston, Barbara. 2010. Locating Language in Identity.  Language and Identities. Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press, 29-36.

Johnstone, Barbara, Jennifer Andrus and Andrew E. Danielson. 2006. Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese’. Journal of English Linguistics 34: 77-102.

Rampton, Ben. 1995. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. New York: Longman.

Rampton, Ben. 2006. Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ben Rampton. 2011.  From ‘Multi-ethnic adolescent heteroglossia’ to ‘Contemporary urban vernaculars’ Language & Communication, 31(4): 276-294.

Snell, Julia. 2010. From sociolinguistic variation to socially strategic stylisation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(5): 618-644.