Affect and iconicity in phonological variation

Abstract

The study of iconic properties of language has been marginalized in linguistics, with the assumption that iconicity, linked with expressivity, is external to the grammar. Yet iconicity plays an essential role in sociolinguistic variation. At a basic level, repetition and phonetic intensification can intensify the indexicality of variables. Iconicity plays a further role in variation in the form of sound symbolism, linking properties of sounds with attributes or objects. Production studies have shown some phonological variables exhibiting sound symbolism, particularly in the expression of affect. In some cases, the observation of sound symbolism has been largely interpretive. But in others, stylistic variability as a function of speaker affect has provided empirical evidence of iconicity. This article examines the role of iconicity and performativity in transcending the limits of reference, reviews iconicity in production studies, and provides experimental evidence that sound symbolism influences how listeners attribute affect to linguistic variation. (Variation, iconicity, affect)

Feeling disabled: Vowel quality and assistive hearing devices in embodying affect

“…a back vowel) are iconic of largeness, and thereby powerfulness (Ohala 1983). Sociolinguists tend to see the iconicity of a linguistic feature as a product of ideologization (Eckert 2019;D'Onofrio & Eckert 2021). Recent sociolinguistic work has proposed that iconicity may stem from how we use the body (Podesva 2016;Pratt 2019).…”

Imprecision, personae, and pragmatic reasoning

“…More broadly, associations between precise speech and social features can be framed as part of a larger associative pattern between detail-orientedness in speech and detail-orientedness as part of one's identity -as extensively pointed out in work on the hyper-articulation of sounds. For instance, Bucholtz (2001) suggests a principled link between the act of resisting the phonological pressure to simplify the realization of a phoneme and the practice of resisting assimilation to the crowdan association that illuminates the central role of detail-orientedness for indexing personae such as nerds (see Eckert 2012;Podesva, Reynolds, Callier & Baptiste 2015;D'Onofrio & Eckert 2020 for other instances of links between phonetic detail and social meaning).…”

Book Review: Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theorizing the Third Wave

“…A consistent thread in Eckert’s work has been the role of more sound-symbolic, non-arbitrary meanings of certain variants (Eckert 2010; D’Onofrio & Eckert 2021), and two chapters in the volume engage substantially with the non-arbitrary meanings of sounds. Podesva (chapter 16) asks us to seriously consider the body as a source of language meaning and language change, showing how oral postures like smiling or an open-jaw setting correlate with pronunciation variation.…”