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Linguistic constraint, social meaning, and multi-modal stylistic construction: Case studies from Mandarin pop songs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2021

Yuhan Lin Open the ORCID record for Yuhan Lin [Opens in a new window]  and
Marjorie K. M. Chan
Yuhan Lin*
Affiliation:
Shenzhen University, China and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Marjorie K. M. Chan
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Yuhan Lin Shenzhen University 317 Huixing Building, 3688 Nanhai Boulevard Shenzhen, Guangdong, China518000lyh@szu.edu.cn
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Abstract

While the sociolinguistic variable is often deemed the carrier of social meaning, recent work reveals that the strength of social meaning can interact with linguistic environments. This study provides additional evidence that the same sets of variants can index drastically different social meanings across linguistic environments. Specifically, we present two cases of linguistic stylization in Taiwanese singer Jay Chou's performance in different genres: the ‘Chinese Flavor’ ballad and hip hop. Focusing on two socially salient variables in Mandarin—rhotacization and retroflex sibilants—we argue that while in both cases, Chou adopts variants associated with standard and mainland Mandarin, they index different social meanings. The conforming linguistic use in the ‘Chinese Flavor’ ballad indexes a sense of tradition, whereas the hypercorrected forms in the hip-hop song construct an unconventional stance. The study also addresses the connections between linguistic and non-linguistic stylizations and calls for more research on the multimodal construction of style. (Social meaning, linguistic constraint, multimodal, high performance, Mandarin)*

Type
Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , September 2022 , pp. 603 - 626
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, the editors, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments that improved this article greatly. We also thank the audiences at the Sociolinguistic Meaning group at The Ohio State University, Chinese Oral and Performing Literature in 2016, the 24th meeting of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics, and the 2017 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America for their kind feedback. Any errors that remain are our own.

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