Style (sociolinguistics)
He summed up his ideas about style in five principles:[2] Labov's work primarily attempted to linked linguistic variants as a function of formality (a proxy for attention to speech) to specific social groups.
[1] However, the presence of lack of postvocalic [r] can also function as a higher order indexical that points indirectly to traits stereotypically associated with members of the upper or lower class.
In this way, not articulating the [r] in the word "fourth" could index, for example, a lack of education (the trait) in addition to a lower social class (the group).
She defines style as "a unidimensional continuum between vernacular and standard that varies based on the degree of speaker self-monitoring in a given speech context".
Bucholtz argues that ideology connects the stylistic feature of using guey with particular groups of people based on age, gender (male), and race.
[7] An interlocutor's use of language could imply, for instance, that they feel a certain way about an issue at hand, or that they do not care for the subject, or the people around them; these positions with respect to the context are different stances.
This approach focuses more on interaction and reaction in a linguistic context, rather than a static identity or social group.
Interlocutors who wish to present in a certain manner may consciously alter their linguistic style to affect how they appear to others.
This is because they perceive that the eye makeup indexes an "adult" or "slutty" characteristic, while the all-black color scheme is "scary".
In the same way, interlocutors often choose to performatively create their own linguistic style to suit the self-image they desire.
In the Eckertian view, a person's linguistic style identifies their position in an indexical field of social meanings.
These social meanings are created by a continual analysis and interpretation of the linguistic variants that are observed based on who uses them.
It is a voluntary act which an individual effects in order to respond to or initiate changes in sociolinguistic situation (e.g., interlocutor-related, setting-related, topic-related).
[12] In recent developments of stylistic variation analysis, scholars such as Allan Bell, Barbara Johnstone, and Natalie Schilling-Estes have been focusing on the initiative dimension of style-shifting, which occurs when speakers proactively choose between various linguistic resources (e.g. dialectal, archaic or vernacular forms) in order to present themselves in a specific way.
One theory behind linguistic style matching suggests that the words one speaker uses prime the listener to respond in a specific way.
Additionally, Kate G. Niederhoffer[25] proposes a coordination-engagement hypothesis, which suggests that the degree of engagement should be predictive of both linguistic and nonverbal coordination.
There exists an interactional complexity whereby people can converge on some communicative features to meet social needs but diverge on others for identity management.
In Penny Eckert's study of Belten High in the Detroit suburbs, she noted a stylistic difference between two groups that she identified: school-oriented jocks and urban-oriented, school-alienated burnouts.
[4] The variables she analyzed were the usage of negative concord and the mid and low vowels involved in the Northern Cities Shift, which consists of the following changes: æ > ea, a > æ, ə > a, ʌ > ə, ay > oy, and ɛ > ʌ ([y] here is equivalent to the IPA symbol [j]).
‘Burned-out’ burnout girls were not indexing masculinity — this is shown by their use of female-led variants and the fact that they were found to express femininity in non-linguistic ways.
"Cooperative discourse" is often considered a feature of gay linguistic style, but is also used by some straight men, as well as by women.
The lawyer's high release of word final stops, a variable also often found in the language of geek-girls and Orthodox Jews, indexes a desire to appear educated and not "too gay."
