Next Meeting: Wednesday (4/1)
Next Reading:
What is New?
- The next reading will be:
- "From TV Personality to Fans and Beyond: Indexical Bleaching and the Diffusion of a Media Innovation" (Squires, 2014) [abstract]
- If you want direct access to the readings or to place your vote on which reading we should tackle next, please e-mail Wil Rankinen at ur[dot]socioling[at]gmail[dot]com.
Did you miss the previous meeting?
2015/3/18:
- Our fourth article for discussion this semester, "The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Communication" (Tannen, Deborah) [abstract], encouraged a discussion on gender-linked linguistic differences and their implications in cross-cultural communication.
(Previous News)
2015 | MARCH
2015/3/4:
- Our third article for discussion this semester, "The Effect of Social Information on the Perception of Sociolinguistic Variables" (Niedzielski, 1999) [abstract] brought about a discussion of non-linguistic cueing and the socialinguistic implications.
- How does one's perception of social information affect how we might view others' linguistic features?
- We discussed the differences/similarities between this and the controversial white/gold and blue/black dress (read ``why our brains see the black and blue dress as white and gold'' article at: www.businessinsider.com/science-of-the-blue-and-black-white-and-gold-dress-2015-2
2015 | FEBRUARY
2015/2/4:
- Our first meeting of the Spring 2015 semester will be held this coming Wednesday, 2/4, from 5-6pm in 540 Lattimore Hall (Gender and Woman Studies’ Department). For this meeting, we’ll be discussing the recently published sociophonetic work of Kara Becker (2014) entitled "The social motivations of reversal: Raised BOUGHT in New York City English”; the article is available in the Blackboard site.
2015/2/18:
- Our second article for discussion this semester, "The role of social factors in the Canadian vowel shift: Evidence from Toronto" (Hoffman, 2010) [abstract], provoked an excellent discussion related to practical methodological concerns of sociophonetics and quantitative sociolinguistic research.
- If we try to go beyond imposed social categories, how might we address issues related to handling the multiple social attritutes that construct a ``social persona'' (i.e., see Zhang 2006)?
- Perhaps the social persona is closer to how language is utilized by the individual or groups of individuals, but how can we make it methodologically tractable?
2014 | NOVEMBER
2014/11/6:
- "The Limits of Awareness" (Silverstein, 1977) [PDF] | [abstract]
- Topics discussed:
- What insights can a native speaker bring to our understanding of language structure and use not offered by an observer? What barriers are faced by this perspective?
- Conversely, what insights can an observer bring to bear on the topic that a native speaker cannot? What barriers are faced by this perspective?
- What can we do to reconcile these different perspectives when conducting sociolinguistic research?
- We had a great discussion on linguistic profiling!
- Questions that came up:
- We had a great discussion on defining ideology and how this impacts perceptions about language and language development!
- "Language Idealogy and Linguistic Diffentiation" (Irvine and Gal, 2000) [abstract]
2014 | OCTOBER
2014/10/23:
- We had a great discussion on linguistic profiling!
- Questions that came up:
- We had a great discussion on defining ideology and how this impacts perceptions about language and language development!
- "Language Idealogy and Linguistic Diffentiation" (Irvine and Gal, 2000) [abstract]
2014/10/9:
- We had a great discussion on linguistic profiling!
- Questions that came up:
- How accurate are hearers at making decisions about racial/social categories based solely upon linguistic information?
- What factors play a role in a hearer's ability to be "better" or "worse" at identifying speakers' social characteristic (e.g., race, gender, heritage, socioeconomic status, etc.)?
- Are certain social characteristics more easy (e.g., gender) or more difficult (race) to perceptually identify than others (i.e., with only linguistic stimuli at your disposal)?
2014 | SEPTEMBER
2014/09/25:
- The first meeting of the Sociolinguistic Reading Group for the Fall 2014 semester went well!
- We surveyed the interests of those in attendence and noted three main areas of interest:
- Perceptual cues denoting social identity and issues related to linguistic profiling
- Variation between socially and culturally stratified groups; substrate and exogenous effects
- Code-switching, diaglosia and style/registrar, and the political/cultural tensions that arise in such situations
- We'll be narrowing down the reading list for the semester shortly (stay tuned!).