Indexicality, stance and fields in sociolinguistics

Jaffe, Alexandra

doi:10.1017/cbo9781107449787.005

Cited by 72 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Stancetaking is a useful framework within which to view language variation, social meaning, and concepts of style (e.g. Jaffe 2009Jaffe , 2016Kiesling 2009). Stance here refers to 'the processes by which speakers use language (along with other semiotic resources) to position themselves and others, draw social boundaries, and lay claim to particular statuses, knowledge and authority in ongoing interaction' (Snell 2010:631).…”

Section: Language Identity and Stancementioning

confidence: 99%

Maybe it's a grime [t]ing:th-stopping among urban British youth

Drummond

2018

Lang. Soc.

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This article examines how voiceless TH-stopping (e.g. ting for thing) is used by a group of adolescents in Manchester, UK. The data come from an ethnographic project into the speech of fourteen to sixteen year olds who have been excluded from mainstream education. Although TH-stopping is often strongly associated with black varieties of English, multiple regression analysis finds ethnicity not to be a statistically significant factor in its production. Instead, conversational context and involvement in aspects of particular social practices-grime (rap) and dancehall music-emerge as potentially more relevant. Subsequent interactional analysis adds support to this interpretation, illustrating how the feature is being used more or less strategically (and more or less successfully) by individuals in this context in order to adopt particular stances, thereby enacting particular identities that are only tangentially related to ethnicity. I argue that use of TH-stopping in this context indexes a particular street identity that is made more available through participation in grime especially. (TH-stopping, youth language, identity, ethnography, grime, hip hop)* I N T R O D U C T I O NAdolescence is a life-stage like no other in terms of the 'unequalled efflorescence of symbolic activity in all spheres' (Eckert 2000:5), not least the sphere of linguistic variation. Researching the language of young people allows us to witness the negotiation, construction, and performance of emerging identities at a point at which many of the mechanisms behind these processes are being tested for the first time. Often, such research is carried out in mainstream high schools (e.g. Eckert 2000; Moore 2003;Mendoza-Denton 2008;Lawson 2009;Bucholtz 2011;Kirkham 2013), tracking and comparing the linguistic and social behaviour of different groups of students. In contrast, this article reports on a project that focuses on a particular group of young people from the outset-those who have been excluded from mainstream education for behavioural/disciplinary issues or because they find it difficult to adapt to the requirements of a mainstream school environment. The research took place in two learning centres in Manchester, UK, each catering for

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Section: Language Identity and Stancementioning

confidence: 99%

Maybe it's a grime [t]ing:th-stopping among urban British youth

Drummond

2018

Lang. Soc.

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“…As Jaffe () has argued (cf. Coupland and Eckert ), indexical fields are never stable: When we use “indexicality” as a noun, we are essentially reifying what is in fact an ongoing process of indexicalization .…”

Section: Transient Multilingual Communities—proposals For a Research mentioning

confidence: 83%

“…So, as Jaffe rightly points out (2016: 109–110), in talking about “indexical fields” and “fields of indexicalities” we should really be talking “about the process of ‘fielding’ of indexes into supposed coherent complexes” of social meaning. Much recent work within sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology has taken an interest in such processes, emphasizing how indexes—and the linguistic processes they are part of—are not only context‐sensitive but also context‐creating (Jaffe : 86, Kiesling : 177). So, taking an interest in indexicality as a process, emphasizing its active role in emergent meaning making, is not a novel idea (though it is certainly not mainstream in all corners of sociolinguistic theorizing either), but by taking transient social configurations as the object of research, rather than relatively more “fixed” social settings, we are likely to see more clearly how indexicalization unfolds in “real time,” for instance through repeated stance‐taking and by means of metalinguistic discourse (see Lønsmann, this issue).…”

Section: Transient Multilingual Communities—proposals For a Research mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transient Multilingual Communities as a Field of Investigation: Challenges and Opportunities

Mortensen

2017

J Linguistic Anthropol

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A key assumption in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics has traditionally been that interaction within communities tends to proceed on the basis of some degree of shared understanding of social and linguistic norms. However, in transient multilingual communities, defined here as social configurations where people from diverse sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds come together (physically or otherwise) for a limited period of time around a shared activity, such shared assumptions cannot be assumed to be in place a priori. By examining the social and linguistic processes that characterize transient communities, researchers are invited to analyze and theorize meaning‐making in ways that hold the potential to enrich current work at the interface between sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. The article aims to take a first step in this direction by offering a definition and a discussion of the notion of transient multilingual communities, exemplified by data from an international student community in Denmark, and by discussing some of the general methodological challenges and opportunities involved in research that focuses on transient multilingual communities. The article is concluded by a brief discussion of how the notion of transient communities may be utilized in a research agenda concerned with sociolinguistic change.

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“…Six aspects are crucial for modelling indexicality at this point (see for detailed discussion: Auer 2017; Blommaert and Rampton 2015;Eckert 2008;Jaffe 2016;Ochs 1992;Silverstein 2003;Spitzmüller 2013b): First, the relationship between indexical elements and social evaluations is always mediated and tripartite; the discursive conceptualizations of the respective social meanings serve as a mediator. For example, in applying this concept to visual modality, e.g., to technical coding orientation, it is important to notice that the specific indexical assemblage (i.e., semiotic choices of modality markers) is not directly connected to the social evaluation "real": In the first instance, the semiotic elements as such are (only) evaluated as "useful" (measurable, functional, etc.).…”

Section: Central Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indexing authenticity in visual political (social media) communication: a metapragmatics-based analysis of two visual registers of the authentic

Blasch

2021

Multimodal Communication

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In this paper, I apply a metapragmatics-based approach to visual communication, combined with adapted concepts of Social Semiotics (“visual modality”) and CDA-oriented visual analysis (“canons of use”), to reconstruct two visual registers of authenticity which are prevailing within a social media photo sample of recent Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz (Facebook, Instagram; total of 84 photos), posted during the parliamentary elections in 2017. Triangulated with the discourse analysis of the marketing manager’s metapragmatic reflections on this social media campaign, the study shows how the partly intertwined registers of (1) “professional sensorism” (as a blended register comprising emblems of sensory modality and balanced composition, thereby drawing on the conceptualization of authenticity as sensory and affective experience of “now”) and (2) “voyeuristic fictionalization” (comprising indexicals associated with fiction genre, and based on the notion of authenticity as arising via “unnoticed observing”) are conceptualized and implemented as a—superior—visual stylization, acting as a social positioning, in mediatized political communication.

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Indexicality, stance and fields in sociolinguistics

Cited by 72 publications

References 12 publications

Maybe it's a grime [t]ing:th-stopping among urban British youth

Maybe it's a grime [t]ing:th-stopping among urban British youth

Transient Multilingual Communities as a Field of Investigation: Challenges and Opportunities

Indexing authenticity in visual political (social media) communication: a metapragmatics-based analysis of two visual registers of the authentic

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