In this revised version of her doctoral dissertation, Lisa Jansen makes an original contribution to the sociolinguistics of performance by introducing an audience-centered approach to the perception of linguistic performance in relation to cultural values. Taking up British and American audiences’ perceptions and evaluations of different singing styles in English pop and rock performances as her research topic, Jansen not only makes an empirical contribution by verifying and adding to the USA-5 model, which characterizes American(ized) singing styles by five phonetic features, but also makes a theoretical contribution by breaking down the concept of ‘indexical field’ into intentional fields and associative fields. This specification of terminology provides a window into indexed values from both the production side and the perception side respectively, enabling a better understanding of the complex and reflexive language ideological processes by which social meanings become embedded and renegotiated within a community of practice.
Aside from the introduction and conclusion, the book comprises six chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to situating singing as a topic of sociolinguistic investigation at the intersection of perceptual dialectology and folk linguistics, concurrently asserting the necessity of illuminating the role of the audience within language performances. Chapter 4 presents the methodology and data analysis of Jansen's qualitative research, which involves fifty guided interviews based on ten music stimuli with both British and American interviewees. Based on this data, chapters 5 and 6 reveal that the interviewees’ reaction to the music stimuli not only validates the USA-5 model and its British equivalents, but also brings out the importance of other linguistic and non-linguistic features such as genre and content in evaluating whether a music stimulus sounds particularly British or American. Jansen also finds that British participants tend to more sensitively identify American(ized) features, which is later attributed to the sentiment of power imbalance amongst British listeners (see chapter 7). What stood out the most from the study was the visual presentation of the associative fields generated from the data, in which the strong association between singing styles (American(ized) and British vernaculars) and particular genres (pop and rock) were differently yet intuitively expressed. The figures visibly demonstrate that the perceived interchangeability of certain stylistic practices with particular music genres results in shared associations and attitudes, which points toward further research dedicated to comparing such associative fields with intentional fields or other associative fields for a broader understanding of the creation of indexical fields.
While it remains to be seen how applicable the notion of ‘associative field’ would be for other language performance genres or circumstances in which the distinction between producer and perceiver is less clear, Jansen's terminological breakdown effectively shifts the focus to the long under-researched—and often underrated—role of the audience in the creation and evaluation of stylistic practices. With its thorough literature review, detailed methodology, and interesting interview excerpts, this book would be appealing not only to scholars of the discipline but also to anyone familiar with and curious about the stylistic features of English rock and pop music.
