Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:40:04.805Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The Social Meaning of Semantic Properties

from Part I - Where Is (Social) Meaning?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2021

By
Andrea Beltrama  and
Laura Staum Casasanto
Edited by
Lauren Hall-Lew ,
Emma Moore  and
Robert J. Podesva
Lauren Hall-Lew
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Emma Moore
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Robert J. Podesva
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Get access

Summary

How do the semantic and pragmatic properties of a linguistic expression inform its social meaning(s)? We show that the intensifiers totally in American English and -issimo in Italian are perceived as more salient carriers of social meaning in context that require substantial pragmatic work to be interpreted; that is, when they occur in the absence of a gradable predicate (e.g., “totally click on a link”), as opposed to when they target a lexically supplied scale (e.g. “totally full””). We suggest that two factors make these semantic variants particularly apt to serve as social indexes. First, in both cases the semantics of the intensifiers fosters a heightened degree of epistemic and evaluative convergence between the speaker and the hearer, making these expressions particularly apt to perform identity work at the interactional level. Second, both uses of totally and -issimo are linguistically marked with respect to their lexical counterparts. As such, they emerge as suitable linguistic resources to be used for stylistic purposes, in a similar fashion to what has been observed for marked variants in the domain of phonological, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic variation (Bender 2000; Campbell-Kibler 2007, Podesva 2011; Acton and Potts 2014).

Keywords

social meaningintensifiersgradabilitysemanticsmarkedness
Type
Chapter
Information
Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
Theorizing the Third Wave
 , pp. 80 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acton, Eric K. 2019. Pragmatics and the social life of the English definite article. Language 95.1:37–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acton, Eric K., and Potts, Christopher. 2014. That straight talk: Sarah Palin and the sociolinguistics of demonstratives. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(1), 3–31.Google Scholar
Agha, Asif. 2005. Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15, 38–59.Google Scholar
Andersen, Gisle. 2000. Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Anderson, Wendy. 2006. ‘Absolutely, totally, filled to the brim with the famous grouse’: Intensifying adverbs in the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech. English Today 22(3), 10–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Machler, Martin, Bolker, Ben, and Walker, Steve. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1), 1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beltrama, Andrea. 2018. Totally between subjectivity and discourse. Exploring the pragmatic side of intensification. Journal of Semantics 35(2), 219–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beltrama, Andrea. 2016. Bridging the Gap: Intensifiers Between Semantic and Social Meaning. Ph.D. dissertation. Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Beltrama, Andrea, and Bochnak, M. Ryan. 2015. Intensification without degrees cross- linguistically. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 33(3), 843–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bender, Emily. 2000. Syntactic Variation and Linguistic Competence: The Case of AAVE Copula Absence. Ph.D. dissertation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Linguistic features: Algorithms and functions. In Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 211–245.Google Scholar
Bochnak, M. Ryan, and Csipak, Eva. 2014. A new metalinguistic degree morpheme. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistics Theory (SALT) 24, 432–52.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1972. Degree Words. The Hague, NL: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, LeAnn, and Tagliamonte, Sali. 2012. A really interesting story: The influence of narrative in linguistic change. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18(2), Article 2.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle. 2006. Diagnostics of age-graded linguistic behaviour: The case of the quotative system. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(1), 3–30.Google Scholar
Callier, Patrick. 2013. Linguistic context and the social meaning of voice quality variation. Ph.D. dissertation. Washington, DC: Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2007. Accent, (ing) and the social logic of listener perceptions. American Speech 82(1), 32–84.Google Scholar
Constantinescu, Camelia. 2011. Gradability in the Nominal Domain. Ph.D. dissertation. Leiden, NL: Leiden University.Google Scholar
Denis, Derek, Wiltschko, Martina, and D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2016. Deconstructed multifunctionalIty: Confirmational variation in Canadian English through time. Paper presented at Discourse-Pragmatic Variation & Change (DiPVaC) 3. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Eckardt, Regine. 2009. APO: Avoid pragmatic overload. In Hansen, M. Mosengaard and Visconti, J. (eds.), Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics. Bingley, UK: Emerald, 21–41.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4),453–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2012. Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of variation. Annual Review of Anthropology 41, 87–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glass, Lelia. 2015. Need to vs. have to and got to: Four socio-pragmatic corpus studies. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 21(2), Article 10.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1991. Markedness in grammar: distributional, communicative and cognitive correlates of syntactic structure. Studies in Language 15(2), 335–70.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2006. Against markedness (and what to replace it with). Journal of Linguistics 42(1), 25–70.Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1984. Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature. In Schiffrin, D. (ed.), Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 11–42.Google Scholar
Hume, Elizabeth. 2011. Markedness. In Van Oostendorp, M., Ewen, C., Hume, E., and Rice, K. (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Vol. 1. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 79–106.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., and Gal, Susan. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Kroskrity, P. V. (ed.), Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 35–83.Google Scholar
Irwin, Patricia. 2014. SO [totally] speaker-oriented: An analysis of ‘Drama SO’. In Zanuttini, R. and Horn, L. R. (eds.), Micro-Syntactic Variation in North American English. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 29–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ito, Rika, and Tagliamonte, Sali. 2003. Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and recycling in English intensifiers. Language in Society 32(2), 257–79.Google Scholar
Jeong, Sunwoo, and Potts, Christopher. 2016. Intonational sentence-type conventions for perlocutionary effects: An Experimental investigation. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistics Theory (SALT) 26, 1–22.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Christopher, and McNally, Louise. 2005. Scale structure, degree modification and the semantics of gradable predicates. Language 81(2), 345–81.Google Scholar
Kiesling, Scott F. 2019. The ‘gay voice’ and ‘brospeak’: Toward a systematic model of stance. In Hall, K. and Barrett, R. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. Oxford, UK, and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kwon, Soohyun. 2012. Beyond the adolescent peak of toykey. Paper presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS). Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns, Vol 2. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change, Volume 2: Social Factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lim, Ni-Eng, and Hong, Huaqing. 2012. Intensifiers as stance markers: A corpus study on genre variations in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Chinese Language and Discourse 3(2), 129–66.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald. 2002. Extremely interesting, very interesting, or only quite interesting? Adverbs and social class. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(3), 398–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald. 2006. Pure grammaticalization: The development of a teenage intensifier. Language Variation and Change 18(3), 267–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNabb, Yaron. 2012a. Cross-categorial modification of properties in Hebrew and English. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 22, 365–82.Google Scholar
McNabb, Yaron. 2012b. The Syntax and Semantics of Degree Modification. Ph.D. dissertation. Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma, and Podesva, Robert J.. 2009. Style, indexicality, and the social meaning of tag questions. Language in Society 38(4), 447–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor. 1992. Indexing gender. In Duranti, A. and Goodwin, C. (eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 335–58.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carita. 2000. It’s well weird: Degree modifiers of adjectives revisited: The nineties. In Kirk, J. M. (ed.), Corpora Galore: Analyses and Techniques in Describing English. Amsterdam, NL, and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 147–60.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J. 2011. Salience and the social meaning of declarative contours: Three case studies of gay professionals. Journal of English Linguistics 39(3), 233–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, and Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R., Wasow, Thomas, Zwicky, Arnold, and Buchstaller, Isabelle. 2007. Intensive and quotative all: Something old, something new. American Speech 82(1), 3–31.Google Scholar
Sassoon, Galit W. 2012. A typology of multidimensional adjectives. Journal of Semantics 30(3), 335–80.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23(3), 193–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2005. So who? Like how? Just what?: Discourse markers in the conversations of Young Canadians. Journal of Pragmatics 37(11), 1896–1915.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. 2008. So different and pretty cool! Recycling intensifiers in Toronto, Canada. English Language and Linguistics 12(2), 361–94.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, and D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2005. When people say, ‘I was like … ’: The quotative system in Canadian Youth. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 10 (2), Article 20.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, and D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2009. Peaks beyond phonology: Adolescence, incrementation, and language change. Language 85(1), 58–108.Google Scholar
Wagner, Suzanne Evans, Hesson, Ashley, Bybel, Kali, and Little, Heidi. 2015. Quantifying the referential function of general extenders in North American English. Language in Society 44(5), 705–31.Google Scholar
Waksler, Rachelle. 2012. Super, uber, so, and totally: Over-the-top Intensification to mark subjectivity in colloquial discourse. In Baumgarten, N., Du Bois, I., and House, J. (eds.), Subjectivity in Language and Discourse. Bingley, UK: Brill.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold. 2011. GenX so. Arnold Zwicky’s Blog. http://arnoldzwicky.org/2011/11/14/genx-so/.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×