Sharedness and variability in Language Regard among young Danes: Focus on gender

TY - CHAP

T1 - Sharedness and variability in Language Regard among young Danes: Focus on gender

AU - Kristiansen, Tore

PY - 2018/1/1

Y1 - 2018/1/1

N2 - Sharedness of norms for how linguistic expression (form) relates to meaning (content) is a prerequisite for language to function as a means of communication. In speaking, we transfer (if there is a listener) both linguistic meaning and social meaning. Both kinds of meaning transfer require that people agree on how form relates to content but in different ways: (i) successful transfer of linguistic meaning requires agreement on how one linguistic form unit relates to one linguistic content unit (we disregard the role of context here); (ii) successful transfer of social meaning requires agreement on how two (or more) linguistic form units relate to one linguistic content unit plus agreement on what the difference in form means socially. Change and difference in type (i) agreement hampers linguistic meaning-making and is likely to cause misunderstanding, sometimes of a rather troublesome kind (as in the case of the Danish expression godt followed by any relatively large round number, which used to mean “somewhat above” the number but is increasingly used/understood by young Danes to mean “somewhat below” the number). In contrast, change and difference in type (ii) agreement is the sine qua non of social meaning-making, the essence and possibility of reinterpretation (as when young Danes in today’s post-industrial society fail to retain the previously strong association of much variation in Copenhagen speech with social class, e.g., backed vs. non-backed “short o” as in godt used to index Copenhagen working class vs. middle class; Thøgersen and Pharao (2013) discuss similar society-related changes in the ideological underpinnings of variation in Copenhagen “short a”). In brief, linguistic meaning-making builds on the assumption that the agreement about form-content relationships is non-negotiable, while it is the very nature of social meaning-making that the agreement about form-content relationships is negotiable. By repeating such well-established knowledge, I simply want to stress the insight that social meaning-making fundamentally relies on and is flexibly open to variation in a way that linguistic meaning-making is not. Having reminded ourselves of that fact, it may seem rather surprising that type (ii) sharedness of norms - agreement about the social meaning of linguistic variants - has repeatedly been found in sociolinguistic studies to be a most characteristic feature of speech communities.

AB - Sharedness of norms for how linguistic expression (form) relates to meaning (content) is a prerequisite for language to function as a means of communication. In speaking, we transfer (if there is a listener) both linguistic meaning and social meaning. Both kinds of meaning transfer require that people agree on how form relates to content but in different ways: (i) successful transfer of linguistic meaning requires agreement on how one linguistic form unit relates to one linguistic content unit (we disregard the role of context here); (ii) successful transfer of social meaning requires agreement on how two (or more) linguistic form units relate to one linguistic content unit plus agreement on what the difference in form means socially. Change and difference in type (i) agreement hampers linguistic meaning-making and is likely to cause misunderstanding, sometimes of a rather troublesome kind (as in the case of the Danish expression godt followed by any relatively large round number, which used to mean “somewhat above” the number but is increasingly used/understood by young Danes to mean “somewhat below” the number). In contrast, change and difference in type (ii) agreement is the sine qua non of social meaning-making, the essence and possibility of reinterpretation (as when young Danes in today’s post-industrial society fail to retain the previously strong association of much variation in Copenhagen speech with social class, e.g., backed vs. non-backed “short o” as in godt used to index Copenhagen working class vs. middle class; Thøgersen and Pharao (2013) discuss similar society-related changes in the ideological underpinnings of variation in Copenhagen “short a”). In brief, linguistic meaning-making builds on the assumption that the agreement about form-content relationships is non-negotiable, while it is the very nature of social meaning-making that the agreement about form-content relationships is negotiable. By repeating such well-established knowledge, I simply want to stress the insight that social meaning-making fundamentally relies on and is flexibly open to variation in a way that linguistic meaning-making is not. Having reminded ourselves of that fact, it may seem rather surprising that type (ii) sharedness of norms - agreement about the social meaning of linguistic variants - has repeatedly been found in sociolinguistic studies to be a most characteristic feature of speech communities.

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-1-107-16280-8

SP - 282

EP - 300

BT - Language Regard

A2 - Evans, Betsy E.

A2 - Benson, Erica J.

A2 - Stanford, James N.

PB - Cambridge University Press

CY - Cambridge

ER -