Variation and the listener: The contextual meanings of (ING)
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: This research addresses one of the basic questions about socially meaning-ful variation: how do listeners translate variation into social content? This question is, of course, important for understanding social structures and how they relate to language. But it is also important for understanding the use of linguistic variation and its spread. By posing this question, I am positioning the process of listening as a fundamental of sociolinguistic behavior, equal in importance to speaking. Lis-tening has not received as much attention from variationists as speaking, al-though this has been primarily a practical constraint rather than a theoretical position. Language attitudes, the primary area for the study of listeners, has focused on differences such as languages and language varieties. There have been multiple attempts to narrow the focus to sociolinguistic variables (Labov 1966, Rickford 1985), a trend which has strengthened in recent years (Fridland et al. 2004, Plichta and Preston 2005, Labov et al. 2005). Listeners merit this attention for several reasons: speakers can only learn about variation through
Author: Kathryn Campbell‐Kibler
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W217931547