York University, Canada
Workshop
| 'You're not from New York City, you're from Rotherham': Dialect and Identity in UK 'Indie' Music | Joan Christine Beal |
| Do _You_ Speak Pittsburghese? Media Technology and Metalinguistic Expertise | Barbara Johnstone |
| Hip-Hop in a Post-Insular Community: Hybridity, Local Language and Authenticity in an Online Newfoundland Rap Group | Philip Hiscock, Sandra Clarke |
| Valorizing 'Corrupted French': Chiac and the Acadieman Phenomenon | Philip Comeau |
| ‘Aren’t we proud of our language?’: Commodification and the Nissan Bonavista TV Commercial | Ruth King, Jennifer Wicks |
Topic: The panel centres on usage of regional minority language varieties in contexts not typically considered in variationist linguistics, including music, blogs, print advertising, grafitti, comic strips, and TV. Thus we take up the conference theme – the relationship between linguistic practice and social structure – in technologically mediated communication. We are concerned with what linguistic features are involved in stylized performances of dialect and how identities get indexed (Coupland 2001, 2007). The paper topics lead to a consideration of public debates about the ‘authenticity’ of speakers and varieties, globalization and the commodification of language, and the de-localization of interactions. In addition, the papers point to the increasingly widespread phenomenon of the linking of youth identities with receding regional varieties.
Background: Barbara Johnstone’s recent research on language in the U.S. has focused on Pittsburghese. Johnstone et al (2006:78) consider how “social and geographic mobility in the second half of the twentieth century, driven by economic changes in the region connected to the globalizing economy, has played a crucial role [in the enregisterment of a recognized local variety].” They argue that, via a set of new discursive practices that have arisen over the past 60 years, a set of linguistic features has become recognized as “a linguistic repertoire differentiable within a language as a socially recognised register” which indexes “speaker status linked to a specific scheme of cultural values” (Agha 2003:231). Here, Johnstone considers how media representations of local speech have contributed to this process, focusing on how the constraints and affordances of print media have shaped the imagined dialect known as “Pittsburghese.”
Joan Beal has commented elsewhere (Beal 2000) on the role of 19th-century music-hall singers in enregistering the urban dialects of northern England. Here she focuses on the use of local accents by indie bands such as Arctic Monkeys, whose repertoire of Sheffield features has been widely commented on in the music press, and, she argues, indexes authenticity and independence from the corporate machine.
Two papers are concerned with Vernacular Newfoundland English, one of the most conservative of present-day spoken varieties of English. Philip Hiscock and Sandra Clarke are concerned with teenaged white rappers, Gazeebow Unit, who, rather than cross into AAVE, employ VNE features in their music, available exclusively online. Response to GU is mixed, with considerable controversy over authenticity. The Gazeebow phenomenon allows for the investigation of the stylized performance of local (working-class) identity, as well as the adaptation of a non-local musical genre (rap) to a form of local vernacular expression.
The second VNE-related paper, by Ruth King and Jennifer Wicks, focuses on controversy around a Canadian TV ad for a Nissan SUV in which the speech of a (non-Newfoundland) actor speaking a semblance of VNE is subtitled in ‘standard’ English. The ad has engendered media parodies, complaints to Nissan and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and heated blog debate. The controversy mirrors in several respects that around the group label Newfie (King & Clarke 2003): both sides acknowledge more or less explicitly the commodification of language and culture involved but value it differently.
Philip Comeau and Ruth King are concerned with chiac, traditionally the most disparaged of Acadian French varieties, associated with urban youth of the Moncton area of New Brunswick. Most objections have focussed on use of words of English origin. However, the recent Acadieman phenomenon (Acadieman is Acadie’s first superhero) involves a website, an animated cable TV show, and comic strips, all produced by a Gen-X Moncton resident and native speaker. We are interested in what features are deemed emblematic of chiac and the overwhelming shift in language attitudes from negative to positive the Acadieman phenomenon represents.
Preliminary Discussion Questions:
· What are the social functions of media representations of minority and/or nonstandard forms?
· How do media serve to focus and stabilize ideas about authentic speakers and authentic dialect forms?
· How do the constraints and affordances of different media shape (imagined) dialects and varieties in different ways?
Format: The panel will comprise five papers, followed by the response of the discussant, Nikolas Coupland..
References:
Agha, A. 2003. “The Social Life of a Cultural Value.” Language and Communication 23:231-73.
Beal, J. 2000. “From Geordie Ridley to Viz: Popular Literature in Tyneside
English.” Language and Literature 9.4:343-359.
Coupland, N. 2007. Style, Variation and Identity. Cambridge University Press.
. 2001. “Dialect Stylization in Radio Talk.” Language in Society 30:345-375.
King, R. & S. Clarke. 2003. “Contesting Meaning: Newfie and the Politics of Ethnic Labelling.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 6.4:547-556.
Johnstone, B et al. 2006. “Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregistrement of ‘Pittsburghese.’” Journal of English Linguistics 34.2:77-104.