Cover not available
Part of
Positioning the Self and Others: Linguistic perspectives
Edited by Kate Beeching, Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 292] 2018
► pp. 219–239

Chapter 10
“Proper is whatever people make it”

Stance, positionality, and ideological packaging in a dinnertime conversation

This study analyzes a family dinnertime conversation in order to understand how language ideologies are created through everyday talk. Drawing on Conversation/Discourse Analysis and linguistic anthropology, this study address three questions central to this volume: (1) What and how do linguistic forms convey a speaker’s subjectivity and identity in the local context of interaction and to what level of language do they belong? (2) Which forms position individual speakers or groups of speakers socially and culturally (because of their association with particular situations or situational dimensions)? And (3), what are the socio-cultural norms for language usage, which enable speakers to represent their identities? I argue that a range of linguistic stance-taking strategies, and the way these strategies create positionalities for interlocutors, illustrate the relationship between ideology and everyday interaction. This paper also argues for the importance of understanding the sociocultural context of talk in order to interpret interactional data.
Keywords: language ideology, stance, positionality, Dominican Spanish, Ecuadorian Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Constructing ideology via stance and positionality
  • 2.The sociopolitical hierarchies of Spanish
  • 3.“Now you can see how crazy we really are”: Data and methods
  • 4.Generating implication through stance-taking
  • 5.The relationship between code choice and linguistic hierarchy
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 17 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.292.10val
References (43)
References
Bailey, Benjamin. 2001. “Dominican-American Ethnic/racial Identities and United States Social Categories.” International Migration Review 35 (3): 677–708. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eilers, Rebecca E., D. Kimbrough Oller, and Alan B. Cobo-Lewis. 2002. “Bilingualism and Cultural Assimilation in Miami Hispanic Children.” In Language and Literacy in Bilingual Children, ed. by D. Kimbrough Oller, and Rebecca E. Eilers, 43–63. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Englebretson, Robert ed. 2007. Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fishman, Joshua A. 1965. “Language Maintenance and Language Shift: The American Immigrant Case within a General Theoretical Perspective.” Sociologus 16: 19–38.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
. 1979. “Footing.” Semiotica 25 (1–2): 1–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane. 1993. “ Hasta la vista, baby: Anglo Spanish in the American Southwest.” Critique of Anthropology 13 (2): 145–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. “Language, Race, and White Public Space.” American Anthropologist 100 (3): 680–689. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. The Everyday Language of White Racism. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Jane, and Ofelia Zepeda. 1993. “Mrs. Patricio’s Trouble: The Distribution of Responsibility in an Account of Personal Experience.” In Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse, ed. by Jane H. Hill, and Judith T. Irvine, 197–225. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hurford, James R. 1991. “The Evolution of the Critical Period for Language Acquisition.” Cognition 40: 1591–1201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 2009. “Stance in a Colonial Encounter: How Mr. Taylor Lost His Footing.” In Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, ed. by Alexandra Jaffe, 53–71. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011. “Leaky Registers and Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorillas.” Anthropological Quarterly 84 (1): 15–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language, ed. by Paul Kroskrity, 35–83. New Mexico: School for Advanced Research.Google Scholar
Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2006. From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women’s Hair Care. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra ed. 2009. Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiesling, Scott F. 2004. “Dude.” American Speech 79 (3): 281–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koshik, Irene. 2003. “Wh-questions Used as Challenges.” Discourse Studies 5 (1): 57–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krogstad, Jens Manuel, Renee Stepler, and Mark Hugo Lopez. 2015. English Proficiency on the Rise Among Latinos: U.S. Born Driving Language Changes. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center,Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolingusitic Patterns . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 2012. English with an Accent (2nd ed). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Matoesian, Gregory. 1999. “The Grammaticalization of Participant Roles in the Constitution of Expert Identity.” Language in Society 28: 491–521. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McIntosh, Janet. 2009. “Stance and Distance: Social Boundaries, Self-Lamination, and Metalinguistic Anxiety in White Kenyan Narratives about the African Occult.” In Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, ed. by Alexandra Jaffe, 72–91. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 1999. “Turn-Initial No: Collaborative Opposition among Latina Adolescents.” In Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse, ed. by Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, and Laurel A. Sutton, 273–292. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor. 1992. “Indexing Gender.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 335–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik. 2013. Fast-Forward Family: Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pew Hispanic Center. 2011. “Characteristics of the Population of Arizona by Race, Ethnicity and Nativity.” Retrieved from [URL].
. 2011. “Characteristics of the Population of Connecticut by Race, Ethnicity and Nativity.” Retrieved from [URL]
. 2011. “Characteristics of the Population of Florida by Race, Ethnicity and Nativity.” Retrieved from [URL].
. 2011. “Characteristics of the Population of Massachusetts by Race, Ethnicity and Nativity.” Retrieved from [URL].
. 2011. “Characteristics of the Population of New Jersey by Race, Ethnicity and Nativity.” Retrieved from [URL].
. 2011. “Characteristics of the Population of New York by Race, Ethnicity and Nativity.” Retrieved from [URL].
. 2011. “Characteristics of the Population of Pennsylvania by Race, Ethnicity and Nativity.” Retrieved from [URL].
Portes, Alejandro, and Lingxin Hao. 1998. “ E pluribus unum: Bilingualism and Loss of Language in the Second Generation.” Sociology of Education 71 (4): 269–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life.” Language and Communication 23 (3): 193–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ten Have, Paul. 1999. Doing Conversation Analysis: a Practical Guide. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Toribio, Jacqueline Almeida. 2000. “Language Variation and the Linguistic Enactment of Identity among Dominicans.” Linguistics 38 (5): 1133–1159.Google Scholar
Uriciuoli, Bonnie. 1996. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race and Class. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Wei, Li. 2002. “’What Do You Want Me to Say?’: On the Conversation Analysis Approach to Bilingual Interaction.” Language in Society 31: 159–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wolford, Tonya E., and Carter, Phillip M. 2012. Spanish-as-threat Ideology and the Sociocultural Context of Spanish in South Texas. In Spanish of the U.S. Southwest: a Language in Transition, ed. by Susana V. Rivera-Mills, and Daniel J. Villa, 111–132. Madrid/Frankfurt: Lingüística Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn. 1992. “Language Ideology: Issues and Approaches.” Pragmatics 2 (3): 235–249. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zentella, Ana Celia. 2003. “José Can You See: Latin@ Responses to Racist Discourse.” In Bilingual Games, ed. by Doris Summer, 51–66. New York: Palgrave Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar