bibliographic query about meanings and ideologies of accent

[Alan Rumsey]

You're absolutely right about this Penny. Thank you for reminding me of 
the obvious relevance and usefulness of the 'third wave' in this connection.

Alan

Penny Eckert wrote:
> Not so fast, Alan ... and I address this to the entire list because I
> think variation stuff tends to get read only by the variation
> community - with good reason, given the problem that Alan notes.
>
> But variation's "third wave"
> (http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/thirdwave.html) is working towards
> understanding the indexical value of variation, moving away from the
> demographic and purely correlational approach that dominates the
> field. Third wave work views variables as resources for the
> construction of styles, and the Gal/Irvine semiotic processes are
> fundamental to this at a variety of levels, as each variable takes on
> some abstract meaning, which is then vivified in its deployment in
> styles.
>
> Rob Podesva talks quite specifically about this in his work on a gay
> doctor's use of variables in shifting between professional and social
> settings. See his paper currently in press in the Journal of
> Sociolinguistics entitled "Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The
> use of falsetto in contructing a persona."
>
> And I'd recommend reading Qing Zhang's work on variation in Beijing
> Mandarin - her 2005 paper "A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological
> variation and the construction
> of a new professional identity" (Language in society, 34.431-66), and
> her paper currently in press at the Journal of Sociolinguistics,
> entitled "The smoothness of Beijing speech". The former deals quite
> explicitly with the meanings of variables, the role of variation in
> economic change, and the construction of a new "yuppie"
> style/persona/category in Beijing; and the latter deals explicitly
> with historicity and the emergence of an iconic relation between
> particular phonological variables and classic Beijing types or
> personae.
>
> Finally, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler's experimental work shows that
> hearers base their interpretation of variables in a broader assessment
> of the speaker's persona rather than the reverse. She has a paper on
> this in press in American Speech entitled "Accent, (ING), and the
> Social Logic of Listener Perceptions".
>
> Penny Eckert
>