scholarly journals Intersectionality and the social meanings of variation: Class, ethnicity, and social practice

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 629-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Kirkham
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Phonetic Variation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings

AbstractThis article examines how the social meanings of phonetic variation in a British adolescent community are influenced by a complex relationship between ethnicity, social class, and social practice. I focus on the realisation of the happy vowel in Sheffield English, which is reported to be a lax variant [ε̈] amongst working-class speakers but is undergoing change towards a tense variant [i] amongst middle-class speakers. I analyse the acoustic realisation of this vowel across four female communities of practice in a multiethnic secondary school and find that the variable's community-wide associations of social class are projected onto the ethnographic category of school orientation, which I suggest is a more local interpretation of class relations. Ethnographic evidence and discourse analysis reveal that local meanings of the happy vowel vary further within distinctive community of practice styles, which is the result of how ethnicity and social class intersect in structuring local social practices. (Intersectionality, indexicality, social meaning, identity, ethnicity, social class)*

scholarly journals Analyzing Social Meaning: How Words Matter in Social Contexts (Based on German Communicative Practice)

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 1556-1566
Author(s):  
Sergei T. Nefedov ◽  
◽  
Valeria E. Chernyavskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Linguistic Unit ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings

The paper discusses the notion of social meaning that has become a central one in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, metapragmatics. The study was informed by these research directions and the main outcomes. The term social meaning pinpoints what linguistic forms convey about the social identity of the users, about their personality, social features and ideologically, value-based orientations. We presume that this is a category of meaning that a linguistic unit (an utterance) obtains as a result of its usage in a certain context. Social meanings are fixed by social practice. It acts as an index to the context in which the linguistic unit is expected to be used and relevant. Indexical relations are open for re-evaluations that are mediated by speakers ideological views. The study is based on German socio-cultural practice and reveals how indexical relations arise between a linguistic unit and the socio-cultural environment, the social occasion of its usage. The analysis is conducted as corpus-assisted discourse analysis, based on the «Digital dictionary of the German language» / «Das Digitale Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache»

‘Don’t even [θ/f/h]ink aboot it’

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Lexical Effects ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
Using Data

As a relatively new phenomenon in the phonology of Scottish English, TH-fronting has surprised sociolinguists by its rapid spread in the urban heartlands of Scotland. While attempts have been made to understand and model the influence of lexical effects, media effects and frequency effects, far less understood is the role of social identity. Using data collected as part of an ethnographic study of a high school in the south side of Glasgow, Scotland, this article addresses this gap in the literature by considering how TH-fronting is patterned across three all-male, working-class, adolescent Communities of Practice, and how this innovative variant is integrated within a system of the more established variants [θ] and [h]. Drawing on recent work on linguistic variation and social meaning, the article also explores some of the social meanings of (θ), particularly those variants which previous research has reported as being associated with ‘toughness’, and suggests how these meanings are utilised in speakers’ construction of social identity.

The Social Characterizations of Price: The Fool, the Faithful, the Frivolous, and the Frugal

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick F. Wherry
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
Pricing System ◽  
Meaning Of Money

This article extends both Viviana Zelizer's discussion of the social meaning of money and Charles Smith's proposal that pricing is a definitional practice to the under-theorized realm of the social meanings generated in the pricing system. Individuals are attributed with calculating or not calculating whether an object or service is “worth” its price, but these attributions differ according to the individual's social location as being near to or far from a societal reference point rather than by the inherent qualities of the object or service purchased. Prices offer seemingly objective (quantitative) proof of the individual's “logic of appropriateness”—in other words, people like that pay prices such as those. This article sketches a preliminary but nonexhaustive typology of the social characterizations of individuals within the pricing system; these ideal types—the fool, the faithful, the frugal, and the frivolous—and their components offer a systematic approach to understanding prices as embedded in and constituents of social meaning systems.

scholarly journals Social inferences from the use of just as an exclusive particle

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 746
Author(s):  
William C. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Perception ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Discourse Particle ◽  
Social Inferences

Recent work has begun to investigate the interaction between semantics and social meaning. This study contributes to that line of inquiry by investigating how particular social meanings that are popularly believed to arise from the English discourse particle just are related to the conventional semantic meaning of just. In addition to proposing an inferential process by which the social meanings associated with just arise, this paper reports the results of a social perception experiment designed to test whether those social inferences arise when just is used in particular speech acts and whether they depend on the speaker’s gender and level of authority relative to the addressee. The use of just was found to significantly increase the perceived insecurity of men but not of women. This suggests that listeners may more strongly perceive speaker qualities that stereotypes cause them not to expect.

scholarly journals Social meanings of linguistic variation in BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language)

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-118
Author(s):  
Nick Palfreyman
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Supplementary Material ◽  
Different Levels

Abstract Abstract (International Sign) In contrast to sociolinguistic research on spoken languages, little attention has been paid to how signers employ variation as a resource to fashion social meaning. This study focuses on an extremely understudied social practice, that of sign language usage in Indonesia, and asks where one might look to find socially meaningful variables. Using spontaneous data from a corpus of BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language), it blends methodologies from Labovian variationism and analytic practices from the ‘third wave’ with a discursive approach to investigate how four variable linguistic features are used to express social identities. These features occur at different levels of linguistic organisation, from the phonological to the lexical and the morphosyntactic, and point to identities along regional and ethnic lines, as well as hearing status. In applying third wave practices to sign languages, constructed action and mouthings in particular emerge as potent resources for signers to make social meaning.

scholarly journals Yos Sebagai Pengintegrasian Masyarakat Desa Pedawa

HUMANIS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 297
Author(s):  
Ni Putu Arik Febriani ◽  
I Wayan Suwena ◽  
Aliffiati .
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Village Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Village Communities

Pedawa Village community, Banjar sub-district, Buleleng Regency has two kawitan namely kulit and kawitan lokal. Kawitan kulit that found in Pedawa Village is the general kawitan in Bali, meanwhile kawitan local of the Pedawa Village community refers to Yos which must be owned by all Pedawa Village communities. The Yos has a highly glorified God and the god closest to the community because the God is believed to be a protective deity, with the existence of the Yos the formation of social class in society. This reserach aimed to know the status and role of community members based on Yos, and to reveal the implications of Yos for the social structure of the Pedawa Village community. The results of the study revealed that there were 14 types of Yos. From several types of Yos, there are several members of community who have the status and role in a ceremony namely as Balian Desa, Premas, Headman, Janbangul, Pedewasan, and Sekaa Gong. Yos also has important implications and meanings toward the Pedawa Village community. The implications of Yos on aspects of the pedawa Village community belief system, besides the implications there are also meanings of Yos covering religious meaning, social meaning and cultural meaning.

The meaning of Greta: a psychosocial exploration of Greta Thunberg

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Simon Western
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Time Magazine ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
Famous Person ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
New Social Movement ◽  
New Social Movement Theory

This article explores the social meaning of Greta Thunberg. Time magazine made her Person of the Year 2019, claiming she has become a social phenomenon, a "global sensation". This article utilises psychosocial theory and new social movement theory to explore the social meaning of "Greta". It asks what "Greta" evokes in our "social imaginary" (Taylor, 2009, p. 146). What conscious and unconscious identifications are projected onto "Greta" that have made her the unlikely famous person she is? These questions are not about exploring her individual psychological, leadership, or character traits, but focus on Greta (now eighteen years old) as a social object (Latour, 2005) with a vast social network following her, including over 4.2 million Twitter followers, a new documentary film about her, and mainstream media coverage across the globe. Part one of this article outlines the context and libidinal economies that Greta operates within, and the theoretical influences the article draws upon. Part two outlines five core messages that Greta transmits, and the meanings that emerge from observing social reactions to her. The article ends with a conclusion summarising the social meanings of Greta.

Variation within a Greek-Cypriot community of practice in London: Code-switching, gender, and identity

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina A. Finnis
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Past ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Greek Cypriot ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Practice Framework ◽  
Greek Cypriots

AbstractThe past two decades have seen an explosion of interest in interactionally orientated perspectives on identity. The Community of Practice framework was employed by sociolinguists working within this paradigm because it firmly grounds identity in social practice seeing it as a process that speakers engage in during actual interactions. Interest in variation within communities of practice is growing, as the well-boundedness of linguistic and social concepts (including identity and language) is increasingly questioned. The current article develops this perspective by exploring code-switching practices of British-born Greek-Cypriots in two distinct contexts: community meetings and a dinner. Findings indicate that this community of practice does not constitute a uniform entity: complex interactions transpire between local and global variables including gender, community-specific setups, contexts, and discourse types. The study also problematizes the concepts core and periphery, used to describe variation within communities of practice, offering a revised understanding of practice, which focuses on silent participation. (Code-switching, community of practice, Greek-Cypriot, gender, identity, individual variation)

The social life of style1

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Moore
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Essential Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Using Data

Variationist sociolinguistics has provided essential information about community-wide patterns of language variation and change. However, as the field has developed, the need to provide coherent explanations for observed correlations has highlighted problems with the conceptualization of style, social meaning and the linguistic variable. Using data from two case studies, this article illustrates how a more nuanced account of stylistic practice provides a richer understanding of the social and cognitive basis of language use. In particular, it is argued that the linguistic analysis of social groups should be driven by the specific social concerns of the groups studied, not by the search for variable ways to ‘say the same thing’. This approach not only enables a fuller account of the social meaning of language features, it demonstrates that social meanings may be encoded at the intersection of components of the grammar (phonology, morphosyntax and discourse), and in more complex ways than has previously been assumed.

Is Marx a Moral Consequentialist?

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-563
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Basis ◽  
Richard Boyd ◽  
Sophisticated Version

Derek Allen, Richard Boyd, and Alan Gilbert have suggested that Marx’s normative political views should be reconstructed as a sophisticated version of moral consequentialism. This paper investigates whether Marx’s ostensible anti-moralism differs in any interesting way from Mill’s sophisticated utilitarianism plus some Marxist social science. I present an account of the social meaning and implications of moral language and argument, based on Marx’s description of morality as a social practice based on distinctive motives, emotions and sanctions, to explain why Marx would reject moral consequentialism. This account will explain how Marx can consistently reject morality yet retain a normative basis for his social criticism.

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