Lauren Hall-Lew - Böcker

In Dimensions of Linguistic Variation, the contributors investigate evidence for the myriad factors which influence language variation and change, and consider how to best account for these factors in data and metadata coding. Given linguists' increasing ability to preserve and share data, questions arise around the possibility of comparing data from different communities: how should a corpus builder model, elicit, encode, analyze, and archive data that have been collected from highly diverse groups of speakers, from situations beyond the sociolinguistic interview, in a way that supports re-use, comparison across collections, and longer-term archiving? Answering these questions requires a highly nuanced understanding of the social influences on speech variation. Social differences between communities and contexts can permit or encourage comparisons, in some cases, and render comparisons impossible, in others. The current volume builds on a rich foundation of insight from the sociolinguistics community as to how community-specific social distinctions shape variation and change within a given community and presents new, state-of-the-art insights from a diverse range of community and context types. The editors have compiled a volume which will enable researchers both to expand the established set of variables expected to be considered in any community study, and to categorize data and results in ways that best permit cross-community comparisons. They present the issues involved in research planning, the modeling of the target community, subject selection, the elicitation and coding of demographic, situational and attitudinal factors, and how they all affect analysis and potential reuse.

In Dimensions of Linguistic Variation, the contributors investigate evidence for the myriad factors which influence language variation and change, and consider how to best account for these factors in data and metadata coding. Given linguists' increasing ability to preserve and share data, questions arise around the possibility of comparing data from different communities: how should a corpus builder model, elicit, encode, analyze, and archive data that have been collected from highly diverse groups of speakers, from situations beyond the sociolinguistic interview, in a way that supports re-use, comparison across collections, and longer-term archiving? Answering these questions requires a highly nuanced understanding of the social influences on speech variation. Social differences between communities and contexts can permit or encourage comparisons, in some cases, and render comparisons impossible, in others. The current volume builds on a rich foundation of insight from the sociolinguistics community as to how community-specific social distinctions shape variation and change within a given community and presents new, state-of-the-art insights from a diverse range of community and context types. The editors have compiled a volume which will enable researchers both to expand the established set of variables expected to be considered in any community study, and to categorize data and results in ways that best permit cross-community comparisons. They present the issues involved in research planning, the modeling of the target community, subject selection, the elicitation and coding of demographic, situational and attitudinal factors, and how they all affect analysis and potential reuse.

This book provides a critical overview of sociophonetic research and considers how the findings of this field illuminate and problematize a range of central issues in phonetics and phonology. The core argument of the volume is that research carried out under the aegis of sociophonetics is uniquely positioned to address core questions in phonetic and phonological theory; to raise new questions for research; to improve theories of how the sounds of language are represented, structured, produced, and perceived; and to discern the relationship between the linguistic system and the social context in which speech production and perception occur. The chapters address three key areas of impact for sociophonetic research - linguistic structure, the relationships between perception, production, and social representations, and language change - and outline further opportunities for interdisciplinary synergy. The book will appeal to researchers interested in questions surrounding phonological and phonetic representations and processes, and to scholars whose focus is the social patterning of phonetic variation; it also provides valuable suggestions for the design of future studies and the re-analysis of existing data.

This book provides a critical overview of sociophonetic research and considers how the findings of this field illuminate and problematize a range of central issues in phonetics and phonology. The core argument of the volume is that research carried out under the aegis of sociophonetics is uniquely positioned to address core questions in phonetic and phonological theory; to raise new questions for research; to improve theories of how the sounds of language are represented, structured, produced, and perceived; and to discern the relationship between the linguistic system and the social context in which speech production and perception occur. The chapters address three key areas of impact for sociophonetic research - linguistic structure, the relationships between perception, production, and social representations, and language change - and outline further opportunities for interdisciplinary synergy. The book will appeal to researchers interested in questions surrounding phonological and phonetic representations and processes, and to scholars whose focus is the social patterning of phonetic variation; it also provides valuable suggestions for the design of future studies and the re-analysis of existing data.

The 'third wave' of variation study, spearheaded by the sociolinguist Penelope Eckert, places its focus on social meaning, or the inferences that can be drawn about speakers based on how they talk. While social meaning has always been a concern of modern sociolinguistics, its aims and assumptions have not been explicitly spelled out until now. This pioneering book provides a comprehensive overview of the central tenets of variation study, examining several components of dialects, and considering language use in a wide variety of cultural and linguistic contexts. Each chapter, written by a leader in the field, posits a unique theoretical claim about social meaning and presents new empirical data to shed light on the topic at hand. The volume makes a case for why attending to social meaning is vital to the study of variation while also providing a foundation from which variationists can productively engage with social meaning.

The 'third wave' of variation study, spearheaded by the sociolinguist Penelope Eckert, places its focus on social meaning, or the inferences that can be drawn about speakers based on how they talk. While social meaning has always been a concern of modern sociolinguistics, its aims and assumptions have not been explicitly spelled out until now. This pioneering book provides a comprehensive overview of the central tenets of variation study, examining several components of dialects, and considering language use in a wide variety of cultural and linguistic contexts. Each chapter, written by a leader in the field, posits a unique theoretical claim about social meaning and presents new empirical data to shed light on the topic at hand. The volume makes a case for why attending to social meaning is vital to the study of variation while also providing a foundation from which variationists can productively engage with social meaning.