The sociolinguistic variant as a carrier of social meaning

Abstract

Traditionally used as a "heuristic device" (Labov, 1978), the sociolinguistic variable has taken on a new role as a primitive of speaker/hearer mental models in third-wave variation work (Eckert, 2005(Eckert, , 2008. Results from a sociolinguistic perception study suggest that at least in some cases, variants of the same variable function independently as loci of indexically linked social meaning. Listener responses were collected to three matched guises of the English variable (ING): -in, -ing, and a neutral guise with no audible (ING) tokens. The results counter the study hypothesis that listener expectation, triggered by speaker regional accent, would shape (ING)'s impact. Instead, the two variants showed distinct social associations: the -ing guises were rated as more intelligent/educated, more articulate, and less likely to be a student than either the -in or neutral guises, which did not differ significantly. In contrast, -in guises made speakers sound less formal and less likely to be gay than the -ing and neutral guises, which did not differ. These results suggest that third-wave work needs to more closely examine the role of the variable in theorizing the relationship between linguistic and social structures.

Good looks and good practice: the attitudes of career practitioners to attractiveness and appearance

“…The unfairness inherent in accent-based discrimination may well be unpalatable to many career practitioners, and this may have an impact on their worldview. An alternative explanation could lie in the fact that this cognitive processing takes place below the level of consciousness (Campbell-Kibler, 2010;Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Practitioners may therefore not be aware of the extensive impact that accent has within society, nor indeed be fully cognisant of their own responses to accent.…”

Regional diversity in social perceptions of (ing)

“…Thus, based on these findings, it is likely that results for the US and (different areas within) Britain may differ-certainly on the professionalism scale, but (ing) is associated with a variety of different attributes. Campbell-Kibler (2007, 2011 in research on the perceived social meanings of the variants of (ing) in the US found that [ɪŋ]-guises were rated as significantly more educated, intelligent, articulate-sounding and less likely to be a student, while [ɪn]-guises were rated as sounding significantly more informal and less likely to be gay-sounding. In her (2009) We are interested in these meaning constellations, but we also wish to explore an additional layer of meaning in this study: one based on respondent background.…”

“At least I’m not Chinese, gay, or female”: Marginalized voices in World of Warcraft

“…Language is one oftused resource for showing membership in certain demographic categories through the use of enregistered linguistic variables such as (ING)/(IN) variation, shifted vowels, or lexical choices (Agha 2006;Campbell-Kibler 2011). Some language features that index identity features cannot be changed or hidden easily if they are connected to an identity that a speaker does not want to reveal -for example, the pitch of one's voice and the amount of politeness are indicators of gender (Herring and Matinson 2004) and different sets of pronunciations index a speaker's location, ethnicity, or native language.…”