Sociolinguistics Test 3

Intersectionality

the interconnected nature of social categories; no single category is enough to account for individual experience

What are the three tenets of intersectionality? (Levon’s reading)

1. There is a multiplicity of categories underlying any social phenomenon

2. Intersections are dynamic and emerge in specific social/historical/interactional circumstances

3. Categories intersect but also constitute one another (i.e. a categories relationship to other categories is what gives it meaning)

What is the principle of multiple causes?

A statistical approach in Young and Bailey’s research that prioritizes interaction over intersection. They’re less concerned about which individual categories are associated with variation and more concerned about to what degree each of the categories are associated

Why does sociolinguistics need intersectionality?

1. To explore HOW identity is linguistically realized

2. To understand WHY those linguistic variables can serve that purpose, in that situation, for that individual

Deborah Cameron

Focuses on gender, sexuality, and desire as sociolinguistic variables

Feminist literature on disproving the biological disparity in communicative abilities

How political parties control social reform through language

Life stages as an extralinguistic variable

Alternative to chronological age that is meant to capture how a speaker’s language changes over their “life course” (how does being in high school affect them? college? the work force?)

What are the stages of a linguistic life course?

Childhood (models = adults during the baby age, friends during the toddler age)

Adolescence (transition from childhood to adulthood; purposeful divergence from adult norms? construction of style/identity)

Late teens/early 20s (more involvement in the “linguistic marketplace.” Part of the workforce/more contact with workforce and standard-language dominated settings)

Adulthood (general linguistic conservatism, more pressure for standard)

Sonja Lanehart

Studied AAL, paved the way for other woc linguists, prominent feminist and researcher of intersectional linguistics

Anne Charity Hudley

Language and racialization?? (this wasn’t posted)

What is community-wide change?

When an entire group starts using a new variant around the same time A

What is age-grading?

When a variant is associated with individuals of certain age groups

What is generational change?

When each generation of a community shows progressively more frequent or less frequent use of a variant

What is lifespan change?

Changes in grammatical features after “the critical period”

What are the two major ways to study language change

Apparent time (comparing the way speakers of different ages talk at a single point in time, assumes critical period hypothesis)

Real time (study same respondents at various points in time)

Jenny Cheshire

Studies adolescent language and the way that social class influences language on the lexemic and syntactic level. Studies multicultural dialects in London and Paris.

Gillian Sankoff

One of the first people to study how language changes across a person’s life. Specializes in lifespan studies and language change in real vs apparent time. Applied Labov’s methods to bilingual communities outside the Western World.

Penelope Eckert

Studies third-wave language theory, language change in pre-adolescents, and gender variation. Overall contribution is how language expresses identity. Did the jocks and burnouts shit

John Rickford

Studies Creole, AAVE and education, relationship between linguistic variation and social structure

John Baugh

Studies discrimination against AAVE, linguistic and educational discrimination, malpractice against AA students and also landlord profiling, some research on deaf students + some research on law

What were the case studies/readings?

Roberts - child language variation (why was it not studied in the past/why is it hard to study now)

Eckert - jocks and burnouts, language and identity in adolescents (plus the Whole Woman CoP reading?? Maybe?)

Levon - three tenets of intersectionality

Charity Hudley - language and racialization (three types of racism, race within the three waves, intro to the fourth wave)