Style-Shifting in Public
New perspectives on stylistic variation
Editors
Language acts are acts of identity, and linguistic variation reflects the multifaceted construction of verbal alternatives for transmitting social meaning, where style-shifting represents our ability to take up different social positions due to its potential for linguistic performance, rhetorical stance-taking and identity projection.
Traditional variationist conceptualizations of style-shifting as a primarily responsive phenomenon seem unable to account for all stylistic choices. In contrast, more recent formulations see stylistic variation as initiative, creative and strategic in personal and interpersonal identity construction and projection, making a significant contribution to our understanding of this aspect of sociolinguistic variation.
In this volume social constructivist approaches to style-shifting are further developed by bringing together research which suggests that people make stylistic choices aimed at conveying (and achieving) a particular social categorization, sociolinguistic meaning, and/or to project a specific positioning in society. Therefore, there is a need, we collectively argue, to adopt permeable and flexible multidimensional, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to speaker agency that take into consideration not only reactive but also proactive motivations for stylistic variation, and where individuals – rather than groups – and their strategies are the main focus when examining style-shifting in public.
This book will be of interest to advanced students and academics in the areas of sociolinguistics, dialectology, social psychology, anthropology and sociology.
[Studies in Language Variation, 9] 2012. vii, 231 pp.
Publishing status:
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Introduction: Style-shifting revisitedJuan Manuel Hernández-Campoy and Juan Antonio Cutillas-Espinosa | pp. 1–18
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Part I. Style and sociolinguistic variation in political discourse
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Speaker design strategies in political contexts of a dialectal communityJuan Manuel Hernández-Campoy and Juan Antonio Cutillas-Espinosa | pp. 19–44
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Style-shifting in the U.S. Congress: The foreign (a) vowel in “Iraq(i)”Lauren Hall-Lew, Rebecca Lurie Starr and Elizabeth Coppock | pp. 45–64
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Condoleezza Rice and the sociophonetic construction of identityRobert J. Podesva, Lauren Hall-Lew, Jason Brenier, Rebecca Lurie Starr and Stacy Lewis | pp. 65–80
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Speaker design in Austrian TV political discussionsBarbara Soukup | pp. 81–100
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Recency, resonance, and the structuring of phonological style in political speechesRobert J. Podesva, Patrick Callier and Jermay Jamsu | pp. 101–118
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Part II. Style and sociolinguistic variation in media interaction
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Parodic performances as indexical negatives of styleJennifer Sclafani | pp. 119–138
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Popular music singing as referee designAndy Gibson and Allan Bell | pp. 139–164
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Performing style: Improvisation and the linguistic (re)production of cultural knowledgeAnna Marie Trester | pp. 165–184
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Dialect as style in Norwegian mass mediaThea R. Strand | pp. 185–204
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“Carry shopping through to the end”: Linguistic innovation in a Chinese television programQing Zhang | pp. 205–224
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Index | pp. 225–232
“This book provides much needed new insights into those elements of social situation which critically influence speech variation in public settings. The papers demonstrate that even what is generally regarded as a uniform ‘style’ –public speaking– actually varies radically in sociophonetics, morphosyntax, lexicon, pragmatics, discourse, and intonation depending on the situational variables discussed here. All sociolinguists should find this book of importance to their future work.”
Malcah Yaeger-Dror, University of Arizona
“In this volume Hernández-Campoy and Cutillas-Espinosa bring together a collection of in-depth studies devoted to style-shifting and proactive identity creation. High time that within the perspective of interactional sociolinguistics a set of papers written by prominent scholars is brought together to reflect the most recent trends in this exciting domain of research!”
Gitte Kristiansen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Cited by (24)
Cited by 24 other publications
Almeida Suarez, Manuel & Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy
2024. Chapter 5. Sociophonetic variation in a context of dialect contact. In The Continuity of Linguistic Change [Studies in Language Variation, 31], ► pp. 100 ff. 
Powell, Derrek
2024. ‘No’ Dimo’ par de Botella’ y Ahora Etamo’ Al Garete’: Exploring the Intersections of Coda /s/, Place, and the Reggaetón Voice. Languages 9:9 ► pp. 292 ff.
Fernández de Molina Ortés, Elena
2023. An Example of Linguistic Stylization in Spanish Musical Genres: Flamenco and Latin Music in Rosalía’s Discography. Languages 8:2 ► pp. 128 ff.
Pollock, Matthew
2023. Toeing the Party Line: Indexicality and Regional Andalusian Phonetic Features in Political Speech. Languages 8:3 ► pp. 196 ff.
Pollock, Matthew
2024. Buenas no[tʃ]es y mu[ts]isimas gracias: A Sociophonetic Study of the Alveolar Affricate in Peninsular Spanish Political Speech. Languages 9:6 ► pp. 218 ff.
D'Onofrio, Annette & Amelia Stecker
2022. The social meaning of stylistic variability: Sociophonetic (in)variance in United States presidential candidates’ campaign rallies. Language in Society 51:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
D'Onofrio, Annette
2020. Personae in sociolinguistic variation. WIREs Cognitive Science 11:6
Theodoropoulou, Irene
2020. Speech style as political capital: Barack Obama’s Athens speech. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 15:3 ► pp. 325 ff.
Dijkstra, Jelske, Wilbert Heeringa, Emre Yılmaz, Henk van den Heuvel, David van Leeuwen & Hans Van de Velde
2019. Chapter 5. Language change caught in the act. In Language Variation - European Perspectives VII [Studies in Language Variation, 22], ► pp. 86 ff.
Morán Panero, Sonia
2019. “It’s more fashionable to speak it badly”: indexicality and metasemiotic awareness among users of English from the Spanish-speaking world. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 8:2 ► pp. 297 ff.
Barke, Andrew
2018. Constructing Identity in the Japanese Workplace Through Dialectal and Honorific Shifts. In Japanese at Work, ► pp. 123 ff.
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. & Tamara García-Vidal
2018. Style-shifting and accommodative competence in Late Middle English written correspondence: Putting Audience Design to the test of time. Folia Linguistica 52:s39-s2 ► pp. 383 ff.
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. & Tamara García-Vidal
2018. Persona management and identity projection in English Medieval society: Evidence from John Paston II. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 4:1 ► pp. 33 ff.
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. & Juan A. Cutillas-Espinosa
2017. Canons in Media Language and Professional Voice. Complutense Journal of English Studies 25 ► pp. 49 ff.
Rickford, John R.
2014. Situation: Stylistic Variation in Sociolinguistic Corpora and Theory. Language and Linguistics Compass 8:11 ► pp. 590 ff.
Zappavigna, Michele
2014. Enacting identity in microblogging through ambient affiliation. Discourse & Communication 8:2 ► pp. 209 ff.
Zappavigna, Michele
2019. Language and Social Media. In The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics, ► pp. 715 ff.
Dror, Moshe, Daniel Granot & Malcah Yaeger‐Dror
2013. Speech Variation, Utility, and Game Theory. Language and Linguistics Compass 7:11 ► pp. 561 ff.
Dror, Moshe, Daniel Granot & Malcah Yaeger‐Dror
2014. Teaching & Learning Guide for Speech Variation, Utility, and Game Theory. Language and Linguistics Compass 8:6 ► pp. 230 ff.
[no author supplied]
2012. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. Language in Society 41:4 ► pp. 555 ff.
[no author supplied]
2013.
S
tyling
L
anguage and
I
dentities
. In The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics, ► pp. 293 ff.
[no author supplied]
2013. References. In The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics, ► pp. 333 ff.
[no author supplied]
2016. References. In Sociolinguistic Styles, ► pp. 192 ff.
[no author supplied]
2019. Situation. In Variation, Versatility and Change in Sociolinguistics and Creole Studies, ► pp. 224 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 september 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.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFB: Sociolinguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General