A B S T R A C TWe observe that MEDIATIZATION (Agha 2011b) creates and maintains the conditions by which some messages and uptake formulations remain unavailable to larger audiences while others are continuously recycled and increasingly accessible. We argue that the maintenance of the unequal divisions of semiotic labor in ways that mirror socioeconomic inequalities at an increasingly global scale can be facilitated by mediatization as currently practiced. An analysis of the way that the uptake formulations of a mediatized fragment of a register-shifting event varied in its pre-and postmediatized contexts reveals how premediatized value projects can be systematically replaced during mediatization, limiting the availability of premediatized value projects for wider uptake. We observe that value projects attached to mediatized fragments work to maintain the hierarchy of perduring semiotic registers (Goebel 2010) in US public discourse in which Standard English repertoires continue to dominate all others. (Mediatization, Standard, semiotic register-shifting, black preaching style)
I N T R O D U C T I O NTo ignore the performativity of value projects, their felicity conditions and fragility under conditions of uptake, is to allow anxieties about hegemony to infect moments of decontextualized reflection, even as our actual conduct remakes what we fear. (Agha 2011a:28) In the spring of 2007, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were contending for the nomination of the Democratic Party during the US presidential campaign that ended
