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Attitudes and Ideology | Gender and Sexuality | Urban-Rural Interface | Pidgins and Creoles |
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Although discourse is an important area of sociolinguistics, it is one
area that our program does not emphasize at
the moment, simply because we can't do everything. Some of us have done
some work in discourse, however.
California All: Change in Progress Isabel Buchstaller, John Rickford, Elizabeth Traugott and Tom Wasow This project investigates the spread of a new and rapidly grammaticalizing quotative, be all, in California and beyond. We focus on its use as an intensifier or focus marker, as in (1), and its use to introduce quotations, as in (2): 1. Omar was all making faces at Ms. Johnson yesterday. 2. He's all, 'I'm leaving!' By studying the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the innovative uses of all, its social distribution as well as its acquisition by young children in California and its spread to other states, we intend to push forward our understanding of (i) the ongoing grammatical change within the quotative system as well as of (ii) the diffusion of linguistic trends. For more, see the all webpage Cooperative Competition Penelope Eckert The claim that women's talk is cooperative while men's is more competitive holds center stage in talk about language and gender. I believe that comparisons of this kind are not analytically useful, but it is clear that this generalization is an important of gender ideology. One question is whether what a linguist might identify as a cooperative or a competitive conversational style actually corresponds to greater cooperative or competitive social practice. My work with adolescents certainlly suggests that girls and boys are equally competitive and status-oriented, but that they carry it out with different styles. This study of a group of girls shooting the breeze illustrates this point. ECKERT, PENELOPE. 1990. Cooperative competition in adolescent girl talk. Discourse Processes, 13.92-122. |