Style and Sociolinguistic Variation

Offers a broad perspective on the study of style and variation in spoken language.

Penelope Eckert (Edited by), John R. Rickford (Edited by)

9780521591911, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 January 2002

360 pages, 10 b/w illus. 26 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.7 cm, 0.674 kg

'… thought-provoking and frustrating in the way a book should be if it is to push the field forward. the editors deserve our gratitude for organizing it and seeing it through.' Journal of Sociolinguistics

This study of sociolinguistic variation examines the relation between social identity and ways of speaking. Studying variations in language not only reveals a great deal about speakers' strategies with respect to variables such as social class, gender, ethnicity and age, it also affords us the opportunity to observe linguistic change in progress. The volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to create a broad perspective on the study of style and variation. Beginning with an introduction to theoretical issues, the book goes on to discuss key approaches to stylistic variation in spoken language, including such issues as attention paid to speech, audience design, identity construction, the corpus study of register, genre, distinctiveness and the anthropological study of style. Rigorous and engaging, this book will become the standard work on stylistic variation. It will be welcomed by students and academics in sociolinguistics, English language, dialectology, anthropology and sociology.

Introduction John R. Rickford and Penelope Eckert
Part I. Anthropological Approaches: 1. 'Style' as distinctiveness: the culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation Judith T. Irvine
2. Variety, style-shifting, and ideology Susan Ervin-Tripp
3. The ethnography of genre in a Mexican market: form, function, variation Richard Bauman
4. The question of genre Ronald Macaulay
Part II. Attention Paid to Speech: 5. The anatomy of style shifting William Labov
6. A dissection of style shifting John Baugh
7. Style and social meaning Penelope Eckert
8. Zeroing in on multifunctionality and style Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Part III. Audience Design and Self-Identification: 9. Back in style: reworking audience design Allan Bell
10. Primitives of a system for 'style' and 'register' Malcah Yaegar-Dror
11. Language, situation and the relational self: theorising dialect-style in sociolinguistics Nikolas Coupland
12. Couplandia and beyond Howard Giles
13. Style and stylizing from the perspective of a non-autonomous sociolinguistics John R. Rickford
Part IV. Functionally Motivated Situational Variation: 14. Register variation and social dialect variation: re-examining the connection Edward Finegan and Douglas Biber
15. Conversation, spoken language and social identity Lesley Milroy
16. Style and the psycholinguistics of sociolinguistics: the logical problem of language variation Dennis R. Preston.

Subject Areas: Sociolinguistics [CFB]