FromTVPersonality to Fans and Beyond: Indexical Bleaching and the Diffusion of a Media Innovation

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of indexical social meaning in the adoption, circulation, and diffusion of a mass media innovation. The analysis is a case study of the phrase “lady pond,” a euphemism for women as objects of desire. The phrase's use was popularized by a television personality on the cable network Bravo and has spread beyond those who demonstrate recognition of its media origins. Through a detailed analysis of the phrase in use on Twitter, I investigate the properties of the phrase as it “travels” from Bravo to Bravo fans and beyond. I show that the phrase is used with the same form and meaning as on Bravo, and it is semantically and stylistically integrated into users' repertoires. However, it loses its indexical links to Bravo through “indexical bleaching,” which I argue is an outcome of the phrase's recontextualized circulation and a facilitator of its further diffusion.

Sloganization and the Political Pragmatics of Interdiscursivity: The Social Life of a Haitian Political Critique

“…This analysis is in contrast to that of Squires's (), which demonstrates how the process of indexical bleaching, or the loss of an indexical source, facilitates broader diffusion of a text.…”

On the Iconization of Simplified Chinese

“…By shedding the indexical linkage to its originator, the poem has become more shareable and has gained an air of authority. It has undergone what Squires () calls “indexical bleaching,” a process whereby, through repeated use in discourse, a linguistic form ceases to carry its original indexical associations, and the range of contexts and speakers for whom it can be used is broadened. The perception of joint production discussed in the previous section is further enhanced by detaching the poem from its originator.…”

On the Disassembly Line: Linguistic Anthropology in 2014

“…In 2014, some linguistic anthropological work turned from this oft‐studied accrual of social meaning to the loss of indexical meaning through the same processes of circulation. Lauren Squires (), for instance, explored this loss in terms of “indexical bleaching”—a parallel to “semantic bleaching” that shifts what is lost or overridden from the semantic content of a word to its indexical associations. Squires argued that for a media innovation (the phrase “lady pond” from Bravo TV, in her example) to be widely diffused, the social indexical linkage that made it compelling in the first place must, paradoxically, be lost or, at least, weakened.…”