When Positioning Mediates Social Judgements: Life-Stage, Gender, and Yeah-No in Australian English

Abstract

This study explores the correlation between social categories and linguistic variables, focusing on the perception of the discourse marker yeah-no in Australian English. Research suggests that these correlations reflect individuals’ recruitment of variables for the purpose of communicating social meaning. However, not all social categories which correlate with a variable in production are recognizable as social meaning. This study investigated how individuals’ positioning to a variable mediates their awareness to its social meaning by examining perceptions of gender and life-stage in yeah-no users and non-users. We found that individuals judged sentences including yeah-no as more likely to be said by a student, and this effect was stronger for individuals who did not self-report as yeah-no users. Furthermore, while there was no significant effect of gender, participants who did not self-report as yeah-no users were more likely to judge yeah-no sentences as said by a male speaker rather than a female speaker. The findings imply that the perception of social meaning is influenced by an individual’s positioning towards a variable. More broadly, the results provide support for using self-report techniques in the investigation of social meaning.