Cover not available
Part of
Language Variation - European Perspectives VII: Selected papers from the Ninth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 9), Malaga, June 2017
Edited by Juan-Andrés Villena-Ponsoda, Francisco Díaz Montesinos, Antonio Manuel Ávila-Muñoz and Matilde Vida-Castro
[Studies in Language Variation 22] 2019
► pp. 145–158

Chapter 9
Tracking change in social meaning

The indexicality of “damped” /i/ in rural Sweden

 | Institute for Language and Folklore, Sweden
 | University of Turku
 | Institute for Language and Folklore, Sweden
In this study, we focus on the different connotations of [ɨ] (a variant of the phoneme /i/) in Sweden in order to discuss the possible processes behind the changes in social meaning for a linguistic form. We investigate two rural areas (Skärhamn and Edsbyn), where the feature has been part of the traditional dialect, indexing place. In order to investigate how the social meaning of this variant has changed over time we have approached the phenomenon from different angles. Apart from investigating the change in use between the mid–20th century and present time, we have analysed informants’ production, attitudes and specifically perception of [ɨ] today. In Skärhamn [ɨ] still indexes place. In Edsbyn, the social meaning of this variant is more complex.
Keywords: indexicality, dialect change, Implicit Association Test, production, perception, interviews, rural areas, Sweden, Swedish dialects
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The locations – Skärhamn and Edsbyn
  • 3.The “damped” /i/
  • 4.Data and methods
    • 4.1Data from the project Dialect levelling in West Sweden and the project Dialect change in rural Sweden
    • 4.2New data from Edsbyn and Skärhamn
      • 4.2.1Production test
      • 4.2.2IATs
      • 4.2.3Attitude interviews
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1The use of short and long “damped” /i/ in Edsbyn and Skärhamn
    • 5.2Results of the production test
    • 5.3Results of the IATs
    • 5.4Results from the attitude interviews
  • 6.Summary and discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.22.09nil
References (24)
References
Auer, Peter. 2005. Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. In Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera and Dirk Geeraerts (eds.), Perspectives on variation: Sociolinguistic, historical, comparative, 7–42. (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs 163.) Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Björsten, Sven and Olle Engstrand. 1999. Swedish “damped” /i/ and /y/: Experimental and typological observations. In John J. Ohala (ed.), Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 99), San Francisco, August 1999, 1957–1960. Berkeley, Calif.: Linguistics department, Univ. of California.Google Scholar
Bruce, Gösta. 2010. Vår fonetiska geografi: Om svenskans accenter, melodi och uttal. Lund: Studentlitteratur.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2012. The implicit association test and sociolinguistic meaning. Lingua 122 (7). 753–763. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elert, Claes-Christian. 1995. Allmän och svensk fonetik. (7. omarb. uppl.) Stockholm: Norstedt.Google Scholar
Engstrand, Olle, Sven Björsten, Björn Lindblom, Gösta Bruce and Anders Eriksson. 1998. Hur udda är Viby-i? Experimentella och typologiska observationer. Folkmålsstudier 39. 83–95.Google Scholar
Greenwald, Anthony G., Debbie E. McGhee and Jordan L. K. Schwartz. 1998. Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74 (6). 1464–1480. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greenwald, Anthony G., Brian A. Nosek and Mahzarin R. Banaji. 2003. Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85 (2). 197–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2009. Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. American Speech 84 (2). 157–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. ‘100% Authentic Pittsburgh’: Sociolinguistic authenticity and the linguistics of particularity. In Véronique Lacoste, Jakob Leimgruber and Thiemo Breyer (eds.), Indexing authenticity: Sociolinguistic perspectives, (Linguae and litterae 39). Berlin-München-Boston: DeGruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, Jennifer Andrus and Andrew E. Danielson. 2006. Mobility, indexicality and the enregisterment of Pittsburghese’. Journal of English Linguistics 34 (2). 77–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara and Scott F. Kiesling. 2008. Indexicality and experience: Exploring the meanings of /aw/–monophthongisation in Pittsburgh. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (1). 5–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19. 273–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levon, Erez, Marie Maegaard and Nicolai Pharao. 2017. Introduction: Tracing the origin of /s/ variation. Linguistics 55 (5). 979–992. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nilsson, Jenny. 2009. Dialect change? Nordic Journal of Linguistics 32 (2). 207–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Something old, something new: Some processes for dialect change in Sweden. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 40 (3). 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Öqvist, Jenny. To appear. Perspektiv på Stockholmska. Institutet för språk och folkminnen.
Peirce, Jon W. 2007. PsychoPy – Psychophysics software in Python. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 162 (1–2). 8–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Røyneland, Unn. 2005. Dialektnivellering, ungdom och identitet. Ein komparativ studie av sprakleg variasjon og endring i to tilgrensande dialektområden, Røros og Tynset. (Acta Humaniora 231). Oslo: Det hunamistiske fakultet, Universitetet i Oslo.Google Scholar
Schötz, Susanne, Johan Frid and Anders Löfqvist. 2011. Exotic vowels in Swedish – an articulographic and acoustic pilot study of /i:/. In Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong, 17–21 August 2011.1766–1769.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23. 193–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strangert, Eva and Mattias Heldner. 1995. Labelling of boundaries and prominences by phonetically experienced and nonexperienced transcribers. Phonum 3. 85–109.Google Scholar
Svahn, Margareta and Jenny Nilsson. 2014. Dialektutjämning i Västsverige. Göteborg: Dialekt, –ortnamns- och folkminnesarkivet i Göteborg.Google Scholar
Westerberg, Fabienne E. 2016. An auditory, acoustic, articulatory and sociophonetic study of Swedish Viby-i. MPhil(R) thesis. Retrieved from [URL], accessed August 01, 2018.
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Nilsson, Jenny, Lena Wenner, Therese Leinonen & Eva Thorselius
2021. New and old social meanings in urban and rural Sweden. In Urban Matters [Studies in Language Variation, 27], ► pp. 179 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.