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The nature of sociolinguistic perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2009

Kathryn Campbell-Kibler
Kathryn Campbell-Kibler
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
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Abstract

This study investigates how linguistic variation carries social meaning, examining the impact of the English variable (ING) on perceptions of eight speakers from the U.S. West Coast and South. Thirty-two excerpts of spontaneous speech were digitally manipulated to vary only in tokens of (ING) and used to collect listener perceptions in group interviews (N = 55) and an experiment (N = 124). Interview data and experimental results show that (ING) impacts social perception variably, inhabiting an indexical field of related meanings (Eckert, Penelope. [2008]. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):453–476). One of these meanings, intelligence/education, is explored in detail to understand how a given meaning is realized or not in a specific context. Speakers were heard as less educated/intelligent when they used -in, but this effect is driven by reactions to speakers heard as aregional and not as working-class. Some implications on our future understanding of the processing of socially laden variation are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 135 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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