Moore, E. orcid.org/0000-0002-0295-5260 and Spencer, S. (2021) “It just sounds proper common”: Exploring the social meanings expressed by nonstandard grammar. Linguistics and Education, 63. 100933. ISSN 0898-5898
Abstract
It has been suggested that morphosyntax has more constrained social meanings than phonological variation, despite the scarcity of empirical research evidencing this claim. By using frequency correlations to isolate stylized moments of grammatical variation, this paper provides evidence of the rich social meanings constructed by nonstandard1 grammar. In particular, we show that, whilst definite article reduction (DAR), nonstandard were, and negative concord work together in one British working class young person's speech to produce an intimate, collaborative style, these variants are used strategically to index subtly different states and alignments. We also show that other grammatical variants – use of nonstandard irregular preterit forms and demonstrative them – are not used strategically to convey interactional positioning. The different function of these variants demonstrates the diversity of morphosyntax, raising questions about the relationship between grammar and social meaning, ideology, pragmatics and linguistic processing. We argue that addressing these questions not only benefits our understanding of social meaning across different levels of linguistic architecture, it also provides us with better evidence to advocate for alternative (and more suitable) models of linguistic variability in educational discourse.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 Elsevier Inc. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Linguistics and Education. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | variationist sociolinguistics; grammatical variation; social meaning; ethnography; social class |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number British Academy MD19\190028 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Apr 2021 11:36 |
Last Modified: | 06 May 2023 00:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.linged.2021.100933 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:172782 |
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