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Inferring social meaning from language variation: liminality and gender
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Linguistic observations of social change: lesbian identities in New Zealand
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Variation at the edges: A liminal approach to assessing social meaning in borderlands
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Abstract:
Borders are dividing lines – traditionally geographic, but also social – associated with a sense of identity: sameness on one side, and otherness across the threshold. People who inhabit borderlands are particularly attuned to the minutiae that define these edges, arguably more so than people who live deeper inland. This heightened awareness makes borderlands fundamentally interesting to sociolinguists because of the significance of language in defining category boundaries (e.g., Watt & Llamas 2014). The inherent variability of language poses an analytical puzzle, however: how should we separate social correlates of structural change from socially-driven, identity-laden variation? Structural changes can move through a language system without becoming imbued with strong social meaning (e.g., Labov 1994), such that patterns coinciding with social categories aren’t necessarily indexical of those categories. Stereotypes can offer a starting point for investigating social meaning, but language attitude (e.g., Baker 1992) and dialectology (Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006) have demonstrated that we attune to more than easily-articulated stereotypes (e.g., Preston 2002). In any given borderland, how do we know which variation is doing locally-meaningful identity work? This paper presents an analytical approach focusing on the linguistic practices of liminal people – border-crossers – as a way of identifying which features are perceptually relevant to the border in question. I explore the socially-reified borderland of gender, considering liminality within the context of transsexuality. A sociophonetic analysis of young trans men (female-to-male transsexuals) in urban New Zealand shows that they are selective in which variables they have adapted in their transition: they have triaged their linguistic landscape and picked out which features are interpretable in their community as indexing gender. This methodological approach is extendable to linguistic exploration of more traditional borders, by drawing on geo-politically liminal people to identify variation that is likely to be relevant in the borderland communities themselves.
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Keyword:
P0101 Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar
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URL: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/75218/
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/75218/1/Variation_at_the_edges.pdf
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Representing trans: linguistic, legal and everyday perspectives
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Towards a model of informed consent: trans healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand
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| 9 |
Representing trans: linguistic, legal and everyday perspectives
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Liminality as a lens on social meaning: A cross-variable analysis of gender in New Zealand English
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Walking the straight and narrow: linguistic choice and gendered presentation
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