When the music changes, you change too: Gender and language change in Cajun English

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvie Dubois ◽  
Barbara Horvath
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intimate Association ◽  
Level Of Consciousness ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

The role of gender in language change, as discussed in Eckert (1989a) and Labov (1990), forms the context for an exploration of the role of gender in the development of Cajun English. Neither Principle I, Ia, or II predicts the role of gender in Cajun English, which leads us to question the generalizability of the principles to the specific sociolinguistic setting of this study—a closed cultural enclave. The study of four sociolinguistic variables and three generations of speakers reveals two patterns of language change: a curvilinear or v-shaped age pattern and a linear age pattern. These patterns relate in a complex way to changes from above and below the level of consciousness. We support Eckert's call for a finer specification of the social categories but suggest alternatives to the ethnographic method. Using a variety of sources of information on the social life and sociohistory of three generations, we find an intimate association between the sociohistory of this Cajun community and the linguistic behavior of each generation.

Language change across a lifetime: A historical micro-perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Micro Analysis

Abstract This paper focuses on the micro-analysis of historical data, which allows us to investigate language use across the lifetime of individual speakers. Certain concepts, such as social network analysis or communities of practice, put individual speakers and their social embeddedness and dynamicity at the center of attention. This means that intra-speaker variation can be described and analyzed in quite some detail in certain historical data sets. The paper presents some exemplary empirical analyses of the diachronic linguistic behavior of individual speakers/writers in fifteenth to seventeenth century England. It discusses the social factors that influence this behavior, with an emphasis on the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities when investigating intra-speaker variation and change.

scholarly journals Non-discursive Knowledge and the Construction of Identity Potters, Potting and Performance at the Bronze Age Tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Budden ◽  
Joanna Sofaer
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Differential Acquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article explores the relationship between the making of things and the making of people at the Bronze Age tell at Százhalombatta, Hungary. Focusing on potters and potting, we explore how the performance of non-discursive knowledge was critical to the construction of social categories. Potters literally came into being as potters through repeated bodily enactment of potting skills. Potters also gained their identity in the social sphere through the connection between their potting performance and their audience. We trace degrees of skill in the ceramic record to reveal the material articulation of non-discursive knowledge and consider the ramifications of the differential acquisition of non-discursive knowledge for the expression of different kinds of potter's identities. The creation of potters as a social category was essential to the ongoing creation of specific forms of material culture. We examine the implications of altered potters' performances and the role of non-discursive knowledge in the construction of social models of the Bronze Age.

The role of public libraries in the development of social capital in local communities – a theoretical study

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 184-196
Author(s):  
Maja Dorota Wojciechowska
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

PurposeSocial capital, understood as intangible community values available through a network of connections, is a factor in the development of societies and improving quality of life. It helps to remove economic inequalities and prevent poverty and social exclusion, stimulate social and regional development, civic attitudes and social engagement and build a civic society as well as local and regional identity. Many of these tasks may be implemented by libraries, which, apart from providing access to information, may also offer a number of services associated with social needs. The purpose of this paper is to present the roles and functions that libraries may serve in local communities in terms of assistance, integration and development based on classical social capital theories.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews the classical concepts of social capital in the context of libraries. It analyses the findings of Pierre-Félix Bourdieu, James Coleman, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Putnam, Nan Lin, Ronald Stuart Burt, Wayne Baker and Alejandro Portes. Based on their respective concepts, the paper analyses the role of the contemporary library in the social life of local communities. In particular, it focuses on the possible new functions that public libraries may serve.FindingsA critical review of the concept of social capital revealed certain dependencies between libraries and their neighbourhoods. With new services that respond to the actual social needs, libraries may serve as a keystone, namely they may integrate, animate and engage local communities. This, however, requires a certain approach to be adopted by the personnel and governing authorities as well as infrastructure and tangible resources.Originality/valueThe social engagement of libraries is usually described from the practical perspective (reports on the services provided) or in the context of research on the impact of respective projects on specific groups of users (research reports). A broader approach, based on original social theories, is rarely encountered. The paper draws on classical concepts of social capital and is a contribution to the discussion on possible uses of those concepts based on an analysis of the role of libraries in social life and in strengthening the social capital of local communities.

Voorbij navelstaren en narcisme

KWALON ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Müller
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
Qualitative Studies ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Cultural Understanding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Auto Ethnography

Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell’s auto-ethnography as part of ethnography Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell’s auto-ethnography as part of ethnography The labeling of auto-ethnography as navel-gazing does not do justice to the variety with which auto-ethnography is applied. A distinction should be made between emotional and analytical auto-ethnography. In the first form the central person of the researcher plays the central role, in the second auto-ethnography is applied to get a better understanding of the social world which is being studied. In this article the author discusses the second approach by using the work of Jeff Ferrell. Ferrell is a well-known cultural criminologist, who focuses critically on the cultural understanding of social life. By looking at how Ferrell applies auto-ethnography, insight is gained into the added value of this method for qualitative studies: (1) the integration of the personal experiences of researchers in texts in order to achieve a richer description of the social worlds they explore, (2) making explicit the role of the researcher in publications, and (3) developing new (more appealing) forms of representation.

Maximizing, Moralizing, and Dramatizing

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

This chapter describes a “dramatistic,” “dramatic,” or “dramaturgical” approach to the study of social interaction. It asks whether the dramaturgical model insists on the theatricality of social life merely in the sense of insisting that people fill roles just as persons act parts in a play. This is the question of whether the crucial element in the dramaturgical picture is that cluster of insights that goes under the general heading of “role distance.” The chapter considers the peculiarities of rational explanation and about the role of reconstructions of “the thing to do” other than the role of explaining an action or series of actions by focusing on voting behavior in the terms proposed by Anthony Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy. It also examines some recent accounts of the phenomenon of suicide, along with the rationality principle, which Karl Popper calls “false but indispensable” to the social sciences.

The Manufactured Map, 1790–1830

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Brückner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Social ◽  
Time Map ◽  
Diverse Audience

The symbolic and social value of maps changed irreversibly at the turn of the nineteenth century when Mathew Carey and John Melish introduced the business model of the manufactured map. During the decades spanning the 1790s and 1810s respectively, Carey and Melish revised the artisanal approach to mapmaking by assuming the role of the full-time map publisher who not only collected data from land surveyors and government officials but managed the labor of engravers, printers, plate suppliers, paper makers, map painters, shopkeepers, and itinerant salesmen. As professional map publishers, they adapted a sophisticated business model familiar in Europe but untested in America. This chapter documents the process of economic centralization and business integration critical to the social life of preindustrial maps and responsible for jump-starting a domestic map industry that catered to a growing and increasingly diverse audience.

Refracted visions: Street photography, humanism and the loss of innocence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Carville
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
Politics Of Religion ◽  
Street Photography

Justin Carville draws on recent debates in relation to photography and the everyday in order to examine the role of street-photography in the cultural politics of religion as it was played out in the quotidian moments of social relations within Dublin’s urban and suburban spaces during the 1980s and 90s. The essay argues that photography was important in giving visual expression to the social contradictions within the relations between religion and the transformation of Irish social life, not through the dramatic and traumatic experiences that defined the nation’s increased secularism, but in the quiet, humdrum and sometimes monotonous routines of religious ceremonies and everyday social relations.

The Role of Electronic Signature in the Third Millennium of the Development of International Trade Transactions

2016 ◽  
pp. 170-183
Author(s):  
Amir Bagherian ◽  
Yosef Ebrahimi Nasaband ◽  
Hassan Heidari ◽  
Mahmoud Ebrahimi
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Public Interests ◽  
Electronic Signature ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Commerce Law ◽  
Data Explosion ◽  
Internet Revolution

Data explosion, in the present era, has created a lot of changes in the social, economic and cultural relationships of all developed societies. Modern areas usually do not have the required legitimacy; however it does not mean that the way for all kinds of violation is open. Social life requires that order and security also govern these areas and protect ethics and public interests. Electronic commerce law is one of these areas a debatable area filled with innovations and surprises. In this regard, waves of internet revolution and the explosion of e-commerce collide with the legal system and influence the concepts of traditional law. One of the key achievements of information technology is changes in traditional regime of evidence claim. In the system of evidence claim in the majority of countries, written reasons and documents are of undeniable importance, in a way that they are mostly used as citation or to defend the Lawsuit. In fact, a lawsuit and adducing the evidence in our legal life largely depend on delivering or issuance of a written paper such as ID cards, pay stubs, payment receipts, contracts, declarations, warnings, statements, and or commercial documents.

The rôle of instinct in the social life.

2012 ◽  
pp. 199-246
Author(s):  
Charles A. Ellwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
The Social

Cognition in construction grammar: Connecting individual and community grammars

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-337
Author(s):  
Lynn Anthonissen
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Small Individual ◽  
Age Cohorts ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Language User ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

AbstractThis paper examines, on the basis of a longitudinal corpus of 50 early modern authors, how change at the aggregate level of the community interacts with variation and change at the micro-level of the individual language user. In doing so, this study aims to address the methodological gap between collective change and entrenchment, that is, the gap between language as a social phenomenon and the cognitive processes responsible for the continuous reorganization of linguistic knowledge in individual speakers. Taking up the case of the prepositional passive, this study documents a strong community-wide increase in use that is accompanied by increasing schematicity. A comparison of the 50 authors reveals that regularities arising at the macro-level conceal highly complex and variable individual behavior, aspects of which may be explained by studying the larger (social) context in which these individuals operate (e. g., age cohorts, community of practice, biographical insights). Further analysis, focusing on how authors use the prepositional passive in unique and similar ways, elucidates the role of small individual biases in long-term change. Overall, it is demonstrated that language change is an emergent phenomenon that results from the complex interaction between individual speakers, who themselves may change their linguistic behavior to varying degrees.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document