6.4 Function versus Structure

This sociolinguistic tradition of investigating style as an aspect of symbolic speech variation differs fromthat of anthropological linguistics or ethnography of communication, which primarily focuses on ways of speaking – including styles and registers – as expressing particular social functions, events, or relationships (though it also includes careful linguistic description) [17].

An importantmovement in sociolinguistics in recent years has been themerging of variationist analysiswith such an ethnographic conception. In the case of style, a group led by Penelope Eckert (the California Style Collective) at Stanford led the way with a paper in 1993. They discard a purely-linguistic definition or identification procedure for style, and instead crucially emphasize the role of social function and practices. This is also linkedwith a focus on style as collective and dialectic, rather than stressing its individual, intra-speaker and static nature [6].

We can see amovement towards functional definition inWolfram’s and Schilling-Estes’s [21] discussion, right away. They include not only the formal-informal axis of variation, but also treat shifting from one dialect into another as style-shifting – whether or not the second dialect is native to the speaker (if not, this use of an out-group dialect has been called crossing) – as well as shifting registers, in the sense we described above. Looked at in this light, it is hard to see why shifting from one language into another quite distinct one (code-switching) would not also be style-shifting.

This shows quite clearly that they are not limiting their definition by linguistic structure – since the notion of register they use, and dialect, and language, all seem to be distinguished by structural criteria, at least partly.The same is true ofAllan Bell’s definition: if an individual speaker controls different dialects, or languages, they are styles for him [2].

6.5 Overview of Approaches to Style

Now we have had an overview of the theoretical bases of different approaches, let us look briefly at some of the specific ones and their advantages and problems, following the discussions in Bell [ibid.] and Wolfram&Schilling-Estes [21].

There aremany types of style-shifting, at least including formalitybased, cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic, register shift, hyper-correction, and performance speech.

Style operates on all linguistic levels: phonology, grammar, lexicon and semantics, but also pragmatics and discourse (irony, address forms, conversational overlap).

Style alsomay be influenced by a wide range of social factors and contexts (audience, topic, channel,mode, genre, situation and setting, etc.).

A shift on one dimension or axis (e.g. to more formal speech) may also involve a shift on another (e.g. to another register, dialect or language).

However, research in the Labovian paradigm has found that social class distinctions are generally preserved across style shifts on the formality dimension, i.e. different social classes style-shift in the same direction for the same variable, in proportional amounts.

Themajor exception to this is (quantitative) hyper-correction – in fact, it’s defined by not preserving class relations. Consequently, it requires a separate explanation from whatever explains the tendency of style-shifting to reflect social class ordering.

Performance speech is another exceptional type: when a register exists to display a variety (either one that is native to your community, or one that is not, e.g. crossing or inaccurate dialect imitation). This type of performance speech also occurs in a variety of contexts, including conversation and the sociolinguistic interview.

It’s one thing to correlate style with contextual social factors – but it is another thing to explain why style-shifting occurs as it does, and not some other way.

William Labov’s Approach: Style as Attention Paid to Speech

1. The goal is to record and analyze the vernacular, i.e. the most casual speech, because it is the earliest acquired, is more regular, and is the most relevant to linguistic change.

2. The more closely speakers monitor their speech itself, the more they shift into formal styles and the more they change their speech to accommodate the outside observer.

3. “Any systematic observation… defines a formal context where more than the minimal attention is paid to speech” [10, p. 29]. Thus, casual speech won’t easily appear in interviews.

4. “Styles may be ordered along a single dimension, measured by the amount of attention paid to speech” [ibid., p. 29]. Labov grants this is not the same thing as an ethnographic analysis of style – but maintains that such ordering can be usefully accomplished.

5. Casual speech may be recorded in contexts such as extended or emotional narratives, conversation among peers in pre-existing groups, recollection of childhood games and events, speech aimed not at the observer but at others present (family, neighbours) or, e.g., on the phone; and topics the interviewee introduces and regards as important.

6.Common formal contexts include responses to interviewquestions, discussions where language is thematized as a topic (no matter who introduces it), and soap-box speech.

7. Field experiments alsomay be highly formal in nature:word-lists, minimal-pair tests, commutation tests, linguistic insecurity tests, self-report & subjective-reaction tests, etc.

8. Tests / tasks which rely on reading produce speech that is closerto the formal extreme of the style continuum, because reading is associated with more formal occasions than speaking.

9. Channel cues – paralinguistic elements such as laughter, increased tempo, raised pitch, heavier breathing–may beused to identify casual speech.

Findings by William Labov Related to Style

Social class distinctions tend to be preserved in each speech style; conversely,the slope of style-shiftingtends tobe identical across social classes.

Linguistic variables can be characterized in terms of their salience, or of speakers’ awareness, and consequently of the patterns of style-shifting they produce:

– variables which show social stratification but not style-shifting are called (social) INDICATORS;

–ifspeakersshowbothstratificationandstyle-shifting,butdonotcomment overtly upon a feature, the variable is known as a MARKER; and – if speakers do remark upon a socially-diagnostic variable, it’s a STEREOTYPE.

The degree of variation along the style axis, from one extreme to another, is almost always less than the degree of social class differentiation. This has been used to argue that style variation is derived fromsocial variation (Bell, 1984; Preston, 1991).

Patterns of variation in casual, vernacular speech give a truer picture of linguistic changes in progress than formal speech does; formal speech tends to be conservative or distorted.

Problems with William Labov’s Model of Style

Channel cues turn out to be unreliable and ambiguous in use.

One-dimensionalmodels are found insufficient to represent the repertoire of stylistic options available tomost speakers.

Reading and speaking, e.g., are not necessarily part of the same dimension in all communities, and not necessarily ordered as in Labov’s NYC data; reading may produce a citation register which is different in kind fromspeech.

The experimental results used to argue for the attention model prove on closer inspection to be contradictory.

There are cases easily found in which greater attention to speech does not result in a higher level of formality, e.g. switching into a non-standard dialect by a native standard speaker who is not fully fluent in it, or dialect performance speech.

Allan Bell’s Audience-Design Model of Style Shifting

This is a variationist version of speech accommodation theory; quantitative study of linguistic variables according to Labovian principles is taken as the norm. Themodel assumes that speakers adjust their speech primarily towards that of their audience in order to express solidarity or intimacy with them, or conversely away fromtheir audience’s speech in order to express distance.

The model elaborates a taxonomy of audience members [2]:

addressees are those who are directly addressed, ratified participants;

auditors are not directly addressed, but are ratified participants;

overhearers are non-ratified listeners ofwhomthe speaker is aware;

eavesdroppers are non-ratified listeners of whom the speaker is unaware;

referees are non-present groups with whom speakers attempt to identify while they are speaking to addressees, etc.

Other features of the model include:

The primary engine of style-shifting is the speaker’s urge to gain the audience’s approval.

Style-shifts are thus mainly responses to features of the context (including the audience).

Social evaluation of particular features of a group’s speech precedes, and is the reason for, use of those features by other individuals in style-shifting. Styles are normally associated with certain groups or situations, and carry the flavour of those associations.

Not all audiencemembers are equallyimportant; their importance is proportional to the degree towhich the speaker recognizes and ratifies them.

Speakers typically make subtle adjustments of style for a range of differentaddressees,and toalesser degree forothertypesof audiencemembers. Besides the types of style-shifting covered by the principal modes above, there are also other types which Bell sees as secondary and tries to integrate with the above [2]:

Stylemay be shifted according to topic or setting, but in reality it is the association of a topic or settingwith a particular type of audience which gives the shift its social meaning.

Speakers may shift styles not in response to their environment, but in order to alter the existing situation themselves through language use; this is initiative style-shifting. Initiative style-shifts are explained as cases of referee design, i.e. the use of features associated with a referee group by a speaker who wants to identify with that group.

Problems with the Audience-Design Model

It is still one-dimensional, and tries to repackage apparently different reasons for style-shifts (topic, setting) as sub-cases of itsmajor dimension (audience).

It is hard to tell which features of an audience a speaker is responding to, and hard to investigate this since it’s a matter of divining speakers’ intentions (a validity problem).

It is focused on audience attributes rather than linguistic features, so has difficulty explainingwhy some variables appear to bemore salient for style-shifting than others.

Though it focuses on speakers’ desire to achieve solidarity with audiencemembers, it overlooks the fact that this can be done by a variety of linguisticmeans –includingspeech that is not convergent,but ratherdivergent.

It tends to assume a consensusmodel of the speech community, i.e. agreement on the social value of speech varieties, instead of recognizing that great diversity may exist across groups – and conflict exist within them – on the evaluation of speech forms.

Initiative style-shifting, though an add-on to the originalmodel, seems to be pervasive and important. In fact, it’s possible to see all style shifting as initiative rather than responsive: speakers are projecting their own identity, not just responding to how others view them.

Speaker Design Style Shifting

A new emphasis, called speaker design, works to break down the original dichotomy between social and stylistic variation, since the projection of identity includes both its permanent aspects and also fleeting ones [21, p. 46]. It has the following features:

Identity is dynamic: speakers project different roles in different circumstances. The interaction of the desire to project identity with the recognition that audiences differ means that we don’t see it as purely an individual phenomenon, but rather a relational one: role relations, and speaker choice, are the focus.

This allows explanation of some previously puzzling cases, eg. dialect-performance speech events, or other instances where divergent speech is adopted but solidarity seems to be intended. The speaker is adopting a role towards which she, and the audience, may be expected to have a positive orientation (even though the speech produced is not like either the speaker’s or the audience’s everyday conversation).

Even the cases of convergence for which audience design and accommodation theory were invented can be better seen as pro-active – a choice to conform to existing norms.

Fromthis it is a small step to the idea that all speech is performance, all shifts involve adopting roles. This would contradict approaches which privilege particular styles, e.g. the idea that the vernacular is the most “natural” and does not require speakers to put on roles.

Problems with Speaker Design Approach to Style

As a new approach to style, then, this is designed to solve some of the problems of previous ones, but equally some of its own characteristics and weaknesses are not yet clear.We might ask questions of it, such as:

Howcanwe generalize fromthemotivations of one speaker, with a complex range of roles, to the behavior of groups? (or should we try?)

Speaker motivation is not observable, and we can’t trust selfreports – there’s a validity problem: How to refute (or support) the interpretations of other analysts?

What is the repertoire of styles/identities available to speakers? how to define it?

If the basis of style-shifting is so individualistic, how do others recognize and respond?