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Article published In:
Styles, Standards and Meaning in Lesser-Studied Languages
Edited by Uri Horesh, Jonathan R. Kasstan and Miriam Meyerhoff
[Language Ecology 4:1] 2020
► pp. 17–38

Style, identity and language shift

| University of Rochester

This study is an examination of style-shifting in the speech of a single interviewer conducting sociolinguistic interviews in Garifuna (Arawak), an endangered language spoken in Belize and along the eastern coast of Central America. It provides a case study of intraspeaker variation in the context of language shift, exploring how the models and principles of intraspeaker variation hold in the social context of language shift scenarios, and framing language shift scenarios as particular contexts of performativity where cultural identity is highlighted. The focus of the paper is on the agentive use of a single phonetic variable in Garifuna as employed by the individual across speech events, as an example of how a linguistic form may become iconized in the context of language shift.

Keywords: language shift, style, audience, variation, Garifuna, interviewer speech, performance, multilingualism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language documentation and variation
  • 3.Garifuna
  • 4.The variable
  • 5.Social meaning of (ch) and intraspeaker variation
  • 6.Language shift, ethnic identity, and iconization
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.00007.abt
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