32.1439, Review: General Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Watts, Morrissey (2019)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1439. Fri Apr 23 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.1439, Review: General Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Watts, Morrissey (2019)

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Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 13:19:22
From: Andrew Jocuns [jocunsa at gmail.com]
Subject: Language, the Singer and the Song

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36638277


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1726.html

AUTHOR: Richard J. Watts
AUTHOR: Franz Andres Morrissey
TITLE: Language, the Singer and the Song
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Andrew Jocuns, Assumption University

SUMMARY

Richard J. Watts and Franz Andres Morrisseys’ “Language the Singer and the
Song” provides an intriguing take on folk song music performance that is quite
broad, but thorough in scope, including recent concepts from sociolinguistic
and anthropological linguistics, such as performance, variation, language
change, style, and enregisterment. The book offers a template for the analysis
of folk music performance, but could be applied to other objects of inquiry.

The introduction describes the layout of the book and introduces two
performances one by Maddy Prior at Cecil Sharp House in Long, and another at a
pub, the snug at the Eel’s Foot pub in Eastbridge, Suffolk, UK. The authors
also discuss a definition of folk music, rejecting the idea that folk music is
a genre in itself. Rather they prefer to use terms such as “musicking” which
focuses upon the activity of performing music. In addition, they problematize
the notion of “folk” in effect arguing that who the folk are referring to in
folk music is an attempt to construct a group of people who are bonded
together in a particular time and place through song. Note this could refer to
music that transcends a common referent of “folk music”.

Chapter 1, “Language and Music” offers a succinct discussion of relationships
between language and music centered primarily in Mithen’s (2007) engaging “The
Singing Neanderthals” which discusses the evidence for and theories centered
around the evolution of language and music in human evolution. They introduce
the notion of “languaging” as how language emerges as a social practice in
real-time. In terms of language and music the argument made by Mithen (2007)
is that music came before language in terms of both its social use and
biological mechanism. Music Watts and Morrissey note has often been said to
have no real meaning noting Pinker’s (2007) comment that music is “cheesecake”
as far as language is concerned, which has not value. Mithen’s
conceptualization of how music which preceded language is known as “hmmm”
(holistic, manipulative, multimodal, musical) which holds that language as a
system was formed on the basis of what hmmm emerged as. In short, language did
not replace hmmm but emerged from its structure. The authors then discuss
song1 which is prelinguistic song and song2 which emerged with language. The
argument they make has to do with ritual that music later emerged through
ritual and that ritual performance is how we can describe musical performance,
what the authors refer to as the “symbolic container of ritual” (p. 35).

Chapter 2 “‘Breaking through’ into Performance”, Watts and Morrissey offer a
discussion of performance noting the differences between breaking into a
performance and the performance mode itself. Drawing on notions of performance
in sociolinguistics, anthropology, and linguistic anthropology the authors
discuss Hymes notion of break through into performance (Hymes, 1981) noting
his difficulty in getting his ethnographic subjects to perform for him. The
issue that Hymes had was that he was not perceived to be the ideal audience
for a Wishram Chinook performance. It is from Hymes’ discussion that the
authors develop two important concepts which emerge throughout the monograph:
keying-in and keying-out. Keying-in refers to the interactional moves,
linguistic and action based, that a performer uses to take the floor in order
to perform folk music. Keying-out is how the performer returns to the
interactive space from which they keyed-in to close out their performance. In
short performance in this interactional sense involves the process of a
performer keying-in and keying-out. The authors then discuss a number of
important works from anthropology on both ritual and performance, most notably
Bauman and Briggs (1990) and the work of Victor Turner (Turner, 1970, 1988).
The authors then discuss two key notions that also emerge throughout the
analysis, relational and representational performance. The former refers to
performances which are impromptu (a bar, a party, or in social interaction)
the latter are performances which are staged at specific venues.

Chapter 3, “The Communality of Folk Song: Co-performance and Co-production”
focuses upon comparing relational performances across time and space: two
performances at the Eel’s Foot Pub in 1939 and 1947, performances at the
University of Leicester Folk Song Club in the winter of 1962/1963, and
performances at Monkseaton Arms at Monkseaton, Tyne and Wear in 2014. After
discussing these performances, the authors discuss a number of notions of
community in sociolinguistics focusing upon how an audience and the performers
are a part of a communal practice. These senses of community range from
communities of practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992; Eckert & Wenger,
2005; Wenger, 1999) to discourse communities (Swales, 1990). The authors then
discuss a variety of songs which create community from rowing songs to
marching songs and others. 

In Chapter 4 “Answering Back: Rebels with and without a Cause”, the authors
provide a more solid discussion of what many people think about when they hear
the term folk song, the idea that folk music is progressive to the degree that
it is addressing social issues such that they are answering back to social
issues of the day. One trend the authors note is how there was a demographic
shift in terms of listenership of folk music that involved social class where
after the 1940s to the present the shift was from working class people to
middle class people. The difference the authors argue has to do with how the
notion of voice (Blommaert, 2005) was appropriated between using the voice of
the people versus appropriating voice to create a folk. The authors discuss
how folk song emerged as a form of answering back against injustice through
the appropriation of voice discussing some strategies through which this is
accomplished as well as some history of how this was done in the
English-speaking world.

Chapter 5 “‘The Times They Are a-Changin’: Language Change and Song Change”
begins a discussion of sociolinguistic variation in folk song over the next
three chapters. Three ways of examining the traces of history in folk songs
are proposed. First, the principle of increasing variability notes that with
more variations it is less likely that one would find the original version of
the song. Second, the principle of extent and type of variability suggests
that within song schema versions may differ to the extent that they are
perceived as different songs. Third, the principle of currency reflects the
popularity of a song such that if it can be traced it was likely popular. The
notion of song schema is discussed noting that it is a map of a song at three
levels: musical, linguistic and narrative. It is through schemas that songs
are open to adaptation.

Chapter 6 “Ideologies, Authenticities and Traditions” covers a few topics of
increasing interest in sociolinguistics: ideology and authenticity.
Convincingly, Watt and Morrissey argue that imposing restrictions on folk song
based on authenticity removes folk song from its original context which
involved both flexibility and hybridity. That is to say authenticity was not
traditionally a strict dogma in folk song. The authors introduce the term
discourse archive as an ideological construct that can refer to what we can
say and what is true of our worlds (p. 154). Authenticity is thus an
ideological value in that someone places upon certain folk songs. The argument
that Watts and Morrissey make in this chapter is that authenticity is more a
matter of performance and should be the focus of folk song.

Chapter 7 “‘Insects Caught in Amber’: Preserving Songs in Print, Transcript
and Recording” focuses upon the notion of preserving folk songs either in
print or through recording. Using a metaphor from the insect caught in amber
in Jurassic Park the authors suggest that a performance of folk song may be
captured in print or recording that might not be typical of how the song was
usually performed. Because traditionally folk songs were transmitted and
learned through performance how they are preserved can affect their
preservation. They note three ways this has occurred with folk song: through
print, transcription of song and lyrics, as well as recordings of audio or
video. In effect songs are processes, as opposed to products, and the authors
argue that part of the change involved in songs, like language change, is how
they have been adopted and/or adapted by different performers.

Chapter 8 “Voices in the Folk Song” offers a discussion of voice in folk song
performance. Building on the work of a number of sociolinguists on the topic,
Watts and Morrissey define voicing “as an instance of language adapted to a
particular interactional context and the self as a continually changing
indefinite number of distinct voices internalized by an individual” (p. 203).
They further note that during performance a performer’s voice may change in
terms of: fictionality, representation, ritualization, and uni-directionality
(p. 203). The authors then discuss voice and narrative in folk song
performance primarily focusing upon Labov and Waletzky's (1967) typology of
narrative analysis. One of the points of this chapter is that through
identifying voices in folk song we are able to observe not only characters and
social class, well known objects of analysis in sociolinguistics, but also how
voice and narrative enable performers to key-in and key-out during folk song
performance.

Chapter 9 “The Song: Text and Entextualization in Performance” is on another
object of inquiry in sociolinguistics, processes of entextualization (Bauman &
Briggs, 1990) specifically as they relate to folk song performance. They use
the term entextualization to note how a text can be removed from a context and
reified and decontextualized and brought into being in through a folk song
performance. Part of this entextualization process involves the folk song
schema, the music, the lyrics, language and other performance elements. The
process of drawing together all of these elements and (re)assembling them in a
performance is, the authors argue, an act of re-entextualization. The chapter
details the variety of ways that performances in folk song are
re-entextualized.

Chapter 10 “Going Out There and Doing Your Thing” draws attention to
representational performance focusing upon the performance of Norman Blake’s
“Billy Grey”. What the authors do in this chapter is quite intricate
sociolinguistically as they examine the variety of choices that folk song
performers have in adapting a song for performance. Decisions that different
performers take to re-entextualize a song sociolinguistically for example
choosing which phonological features of which dialect to use during the
performance. For example, the performance of “Billy Grey” by Planxty’s Christy
Moore, does not use an American pronunciation but rather a Scottish one.
Towards the end of the chapter the authors offer a discussion of how
standardized features may emerge in some performer’s adaptations followed by a
discussion of style. In effect through style, re-entextualization practices,
the manipulation of phonological features and other semiotic tools,
representational performers make well-known versions of songs their own.

Chapter 11 “Enregisterment through Song: The Performer’s Credibility” is the
final analysis chapter of the book, and Watts and Morrissey draw our attention
to how the register of folk song has become enregistered. Enregisterment is
the process by which distinct ways of speaking from phonological variation to
characterological representations of speakers come to be associated with
groups or types of people (Agha, 2005, 2007). The authors also discuss what
they term de-enregisterment where a register which was once held positively
has become “moribund” (p. 279) and re-enregisterment where a register “begins
to generate new and possibly very different social stereotypes” (p.279). Using
an example from Leadbelly’s recording of “The Hammer Song” recorded by Alan
Lomax, they show how a folk song can indicate features of enregisterment over
time through other performers’ adaptations in which the singer chose to adopt
or erase features of Leadbelly’s African American Vernacular English from the
original recording. Through some other examples, the authors make a strong
argument for a register they refer to as “folk talk” (p. 286). This discussion
also includes the various functions of keying-in and keying-out in folk song
performance, detailed in table 11.1 on page 291. The discussion in the chapter
closes with how the Geordie dialect has emerged in folk song and has become
enregistered to the extent that the accent is associated with the “depressed
north” and functions socially to answer back to the south.

Chapter 12 “Whither Folk Song, whither Sociolinguistics?” The conclusion
provides not just a summary of the findings and analysis in the previous
eleven chapters, but also offers some poignant discussion of where this kind
of analysis can go. The latter includes adding multimodal analysis to the mix
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Machin & van Leeuwen, 2007), addressing issues of
standardization as well as recent discussions of mobility both in human
cultural geography (Cresswell, 2006) and sociolinguistics (Britain, 2016).
Watts and Morrissey discuss how the study of folk song performance and
sociolinguistics are inextricably linked, for example in how they both argue
against and reveal hegemonic discourses. The following quote does more justice
to their handling of this than any paraphrasing of mine could do:

“…both inherently need to concern themselves with hegemonic discourses.
Sociolinguistics engages those discourses by revealing that there is
essentially no social interaction without asymmetries in the distribution of
power. Folk song practice engages those discourses by addressing a variety of
social frictions and creating communities of practice through anti-hegemonic
discourse. Both address the status quo; both ‘answer back’.” Page 327.

EVALUATION

Graduate students, undergraduates and sociolinguists who are conducting
research or who are interested in relations between language and music will
find this work appealing and unique in how it approaches both modes. I plan to
use at least one of the concepts presented here in a paper I am currently
working on that shows how rap artists ‘answer back’ through song. The chapters
could also be adapted to a variety of graduate or undergraduate courses in
sociolinguistics.

One criticism of this work is more of a frustration as opposed to an
argumentative flaw. The authors throughout the book make many references to
audio and video files of performances that were uploaded to a website hosted
by the publisher: www.cambridge.org/watts it took me quite awhile to navigate
access to the site. The link given redirects to another site hosted by
Cambridge and to access the files one has to click on “resources” to navigate
to the content. Of note is that it took some time for me to determine how to
navigate the site to find the files which also have  a .doc file that has
YouTube links in it. For all the work I put in to finding the files, the
authors should have just put those YouTube links throughout the book. 

Despite this minor frustration I found this book very timely in how Watts and
Morrissey utilize concepts from third wave approaches to sociolinguistic
variation (Eckert, 2012) to handle folk song performance. The year 2020 has
given us a lot to think about and this work offers us a means through which we
can all “answer back.”

REFERENCES

Agha, A. (2005). Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic
Anthropology, 15(1), 38–59.

Agha, A. (2007). Language and social relations (1 edition). Cambridge
University Press.

Bauman, R., & Briggs, C. L. (1990). Poetics and performance as critical
perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19,
59–88.

Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge University
Press.

Britain, D. (2016). Sedentarism and nomadism in the sociolinguistics of
dialect. In N. Coupland (Ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates (pp.
217–241). Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107449787.011

Cresswell, T. (2006). On the move: Mobility in the modern Western world.
Routledge.

Eckert, P. (2012). Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in
the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41(1),
87–100. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145828

Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992). Think practically and look locally:
Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 21, 461–490.

Eckert, P., & Wenger, E. (2005). Communities of practice in sociolinguistics.
What is the role of power in sociolinguistic variation? Journal of
Sociolinguistics, 9(4), 582–589.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-6441.2005.00307.x

Hymes, D. (1981). “In vain I tried to tell you”: Essays in Native American
ethnopoetics. University of Pennsylvania Press.
https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512802917

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse. Bloomsbury
Academic.

Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of
personal history. In J. Helm (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts (pp.
12–44). University of Washington Press.

Machin, D., & van Leeuwen, T. (2007). Global media discourse: A critical
introduction. Routledge.

Mithen, S. (2007). The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language,
Mind, and Body. Harvard University Press.

Pinker, S. (2007). The language instinct: How the mind creates language.
Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Swales, J. (1990). General analysis: English in academic and research
settings. Cambridge University Press.

Turner, V. (1970). The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. Cornell
University Press.

Turner, V. (1988). The anthropology of performance. PAJ Publ.

Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (1
edition). Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Andrew Jocuns is a sociolinguist (PhD Georgetown 2005) currently working as a
lecturer in the PhD program in ELT at Assumption University in Bangkok,
Thailand. His research has focused upon Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand),
informal learning, multimodal discourse analysis, nexus analysis, linguistic
landscapes and mediated discourse theory. His present research includes: a
nexus analysis of Thai English that explores learning in both informal and
incidental contexts, narrativizing linguistic and geosemiotic landscapes, and
family language policy in Thailand. His research has appeared in Semiotica,
Mind Culture Activity, Journal of Multicultural Discourse, Multimodal
Communication and Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research.





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