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-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T14:17:36.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - The Cognitive Structure behind Indexicality: Correlations in Tasks Linking /s/ Variation and Masculinity

from Part I - Where Is (Social) Meaning?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2021

By
Kathryn Campbell-Kibler
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

This chapter explores the cognitive links necessary to create and use indexical meaning of sociolinguistic variation, specifically, whether different sociolinguistic behaviors – speech perception, speech production, and sociolinguistic evaluation – depend on the same associative links between linguistic and social concepts. Three effects are replicated and the correlations between them examined: 1 influence of speaker gender on /s/ production; 2 influence of linguistic forms (/s/ variants) on speaker evaluation (masculinity judgments); 3 influence of social information (masculinity) on speech perception (placement of the /s/-/?/ boundary). Despite successful replication of all three effects, little evidence was found for correlations across participants: that is, participants with a particularly strong tendency to infer masculinity from hearing a speaker’s /s/ production were no more likely than others to show a large shift in their /s/-/?/ boundary in response to the perceived masculinity of the talker, or to have a particularly gender-typical /s/ production themselves. This provides preliminary evidence that the mental associations used in indexical practices may develop independently of one another.

Keywords

social meaningthird wavesociolinguistic variationindexicalitysociophoneticssociolinguistic cognitionlanguage and gender
Type
Chapter
Information
Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
Theorizing the Third Wave
 , pp. 127 - 150
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

Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barr, Dale J., Levy, Roger, Scheepers, Christoph, and Tily, Harry J.. 2013. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68(3), 255–78.Google Scholar
Beddor, Patrice Speeter. 2015. The relation between language users’ perception and production repertoires. Proceedings of the 18th ICPhS: Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Theoretical and Methodological Issues. 171–204.Google Scholar
California Style Collective. 1993. Variation and personal/group style. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 21. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2010. Sociolinguistics and perception. Language and Linguistics Compass 4(6), 377–89.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2011. The sociolinguistic variant as a carrier of social meaning. Language Variation and Change 22(3), 423–41.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2016. Toward a cognitively realistic model of meaningful sociolinguistic variation. In Babel, Anna (ed.), Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 123–51.Google Scholar
Chandrasekaran, Bharath, Yi, Han-Gyol, and Maddox, W. Todd. 2014. Dual-learning systems during speech category learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 21(2), 488–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Docherty, Gerard J., and Foulkes, Paul. 2014. An evaluation of usage-based approaches to the modelling of sociophonetic variability. Lingua 142, 42–56.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4), 453–76.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, and McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 2003. Language and Gender. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Susanne, and Toda, Martine. 2010. Do differences in male versus female /s/ reflect biological or sociophonetic factors? In Fuchs, S., Toda, M., and Zygis, M. (eds.), Turbulent Sounds: An Interdisciplinary Guide. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 281–302.Google Scholar
Giles, Howard, and Billings, Andrew C.. 2004. Assessing language attitudes: Speaker evaluation studies. In Davies, A. and Elder, C. (eds.), The Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 187–209.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, Jannedy, Stefanie, and Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 1999. Oprah and /ay/: Lexical frequency, referee design, and style. Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. San Francisco, CA, 1389–92.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, Podlubny, Ryan, Drager, Katie, and McAuliffe, Megan. 2017. Car-talk: Location-specific speech production and perception. Journal of Phonetics 65, 94–109.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, Warren, Paul, and Drager, Katie. 2006. Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. Journal of Phonetics 34, 458–84.Google Scholar
Hazenberg, Evan. 2016. Walking the straight and narrow: Linguistic choice and gendered presentation. Gender and Language 10(2), 270–94.Google Scholar
Heffernan, Kevin. 2004. Evidence from HNR that /s/ is a social marker of gender. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 23(2), 71–84.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
Johnson, Keith. 2006. Resonance in an exemplar-based lexicon: The emergence of social identity and phonology. Journal of Phonetics 34, 485–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kristiansen, Tore. 2009. The macro-level social meanings of late-modern Danish accents. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 41, 167–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center For Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1993. The unobservability of structure and its linguistic consequences. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 22. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, Ravindranath, Maya, Weldon, Tracey, Baranowski, Maciej, and Nagy, Naomi. 2011. Properties of the sociolinguistic monitor. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(4), 431–63.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez. 2007. Sexuality in context: Variation and the sociolinguistic perception of identity. Language in Society 36(4), 533–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levon, Erez. 2014. Categories, stereotypes, and the linguistic perception of sexuality. Language in Society 43, 539–66.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez, and Fox, Sue. 2014. Social salience and the sociolinguistic monitor: A case study of ING and TH-fronting in Britain. Journal of English Linguistics 42(3), 185–217.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez, and Holmes-Elliot, Sophie. 2014. East end boys and west end girls: /s/-fronting in southeast England. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 19(2), Article 13.Google Scholar
Linville, Sue Ellen. 1998. Acoustic correlates of perceived versus actual sexual orientation in men’s speech. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica 50(1), 35–48.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Maryellen. 2013. How language production shapes language form and comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology 4(226).Google Scholar
Munson, Benjamin. 2011. The influence of actual and imputed talker gender on fricative perception, revisited. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 130(5), 2631–4.Google Scholar
Munson, Benjamin, Jefferson, Sarah V., and McDonald, Elizabeth C.. 2006. The influence of perceived sexual orientation on fricative identification. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119(4), 2427–37.Google 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
Pharao, Nicolai, and Maegaard, Marie. 2017. On the influence of coronal sibilants and stops on the perception of social meanings in Copenhagen Danish. Linguistics 55(5), 1141–67.Google Scholar
Pharao, Nicolai, Maegaard, Marie, Møller, Janus S., and Kristiansen, Tore. 2014. Indexical meanings of [s+] among Copenhagen youth: Social perception of a phonetic variant in different prosodic contexts. Language in Society 43(1), 1–31.Google Scholar
Pickering, Martin J., and Garrod, Simon. 2013. An integrated theory of language production and comprehension. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(4), 329–92.Google Scholar
Pickering, Martin J., and Garrod, Simon. 2014. Self-, other-, and joint monitoring using forward models. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8(132).Google Scholar
Pleck, Joseph H., Sonenstein, Freya L., and Ku, Leighton C.. 1993. Masculinity ideology: Its impact on adolescent males’ heterosexual relationships. Journal of Social Issues 49, 1–29.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J., and Van Hofwegen, Janneke. 2015. How conservatism and normative gender constrain variation in inland California: The case of /s/. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 20(2), Article 15.Google Scholar
Reidy, Patrick F. 2015. The Spectral Dynamics of Voiceless Sibilant Fricatives in English and Japanese. Ph.D. dissertation. Columbus: Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R., and McNair-Knox, Faye. 1994. Addressee- and topic-influenced style shift: A quantitative sociolinguistic study. In Biber, D. and Finegan, E. (eds.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 235–76.Google Scholar
Sachs, Jacqueline, Lieberman, Philip, and Erickson, Donna. 1973. Anatomical and cultural determinants of male and female speech. In Shuy, R. W. and Fasold, R. W. (eds.) Language Attitudes: Current Trends and Prospects. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 74–85.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Martin F. 1968. Identification of speaker sex from isolated, voiceless fricatives. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 43(5), 1178–9.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. In Basso, K. and Selby, H. (eds.), Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 11–55.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23, 193–229.Google Scholar
Strand, Elizabeth A. 1999. Uncovering the roles of gender stereotypes in speech perception. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18(1), 86–99.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane. 2007. Empirical evidence for gendered speech production: /s/ in Glaswegian. In Cole, J. and Ignacio Hualde, J. (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 9. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 65–86.Google Scholar
Wagner, Laura, Speer, Shari R, Moore, Leslie C et al. 2015. Linguistics in a science museum: Integrating research, teaching, and outreach at the language sciences research lab. Language and Linguistics Compass 9(10), 420–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Suzanne Evans, and Hesson, Ashley. 2014. Individual sensitivity to the frequency of socially meaningful linguistic cues affects language attitudes. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 33(6), 651–66.Google Scholar
Walker, Abby. 2014. Crossing Oceans with Voices and Ears: Second Dialect Acquisition and Topic-based Shifting in Production and Perception. Ph.D. dissertation. Columbus: Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Zhang, Qing. 2005. A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological variation and the construction of a new professional identity. Language in Society 34(3), 431–66.Google Scholar
Zimman, Lal. 2010. Female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: A pilot study. Colorado Research in Linguistics 22(1), 1–21.Google Scholar
Zimman, Lal. 2016. Sociolinguistic agency and the gendered voice: Metalinguistic negotiations of vocal masculinization among female-to-male transgender speakers. In Babel, A. (ed.), Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 253–77.Google Scholar
Zimman, Lal. 2017. Gender as stylistic bricolage: Transmasculine voices and the relationship between fundamental frequency and /s/. Language in Society 46(3), 339–70.CrossRefGoogle 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
×