The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables

This article focuses on the use of contact features as social indexes in a Quechua-influenced variety of Spanish in central Bolivia. I suggest that context of use is important in producing social meaning, and indeed that context can redefine the indexical relationship between any particular sociolin...

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Autor principal:	Babel,Anna
Lenguaje:	English
Publicado:	Universidad de Chile. Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades. Departamento de Lingüística 2014
Materias:	Bolivian Spanish Andean Spanish indexicality enregisterment language contact context
Acceso en línea:	http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-93032014000200004
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spelling	oai:scielo:S0718-930320140002000042018-09-04The role of context in interpreting linguistic variablesBabel,Anna Bolivian Spanish Andean Spanish indexicality enregisterment language contact context This article focuses on the use of contact features as social indexes in a Quechua-influenced variety of Spanish in central Bolivia. I suggest that context of use is important in producing social meaning, and indeed that context can redefine the indexical relationship between any particular sociolinguistic variable and its social referent or referents (Eckert 2008; Silverstein 2003). Spanish-Quechua contact features, acting as part of a system or pattern of enregistered features, do not have a single indexical meaning. Rather, their meaning is built through contrast to or congruence with the expected forms of speech for a speaker or group (Agha 2007; Babel 2011). These expected forms of speech are related to a listener’s personal experience with the speaker over time, and with their conceptions of the types of speech that members of certain groups engage in. I argue that speakers form expectations about typical distributions of linguistic features, but that the interpretations of these patterns are highly context dependent and produced through microlevel interactional dynamics. Through these types of social negotiations, we can observe a system that produces meaning at a variety of scales and over a variety of dimensions, as part of a constantly shifting mosaic of linguistic performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessUniversidad de Chile. Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades. Departamento de LingüísticaBoletín de filología v.49 n.2 20142014-12-01text/htmlhttp://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-93032014000200004en10.4067/S0718-93032014000200004
institution	Scielo Chile
collection	Scielo Chile
language	English
topic	Bolivian Spanish Andean Spanish indexicality enregisterment language contact context
spellingShingle	Bolivian Spanish Andean Spanish indexicality enregisterment language contact context Babel,Anna The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables
description	This article focuses on the use of contact features as social indexes in a Quechua-influenced variety of Spanish in central Bolivia. I suggest that context of use is important in producing social meaning, and indeed that context can redefine the indexical relationship between any particular sociolinguistic variable and its social referent or referents (Eckert 2008; Silverstein 2003). Spanish-Quechua contact features, acting as part of a system or pattern of enregistered features, do not have a single indexical meaning. Rather, their meaning is built through contrast to or congruence with the expected forms of speech for a speaker or group (Agha 2007; Babel 2011). These expected forms of speech are related to a listener’s personal experience with the speaker over time, and with their conceptions of the types of speech that members of certain groups engage in. I argue that speakers form expectations about typical distributions of linguistic features, but that the interpretations of these patterns are highly context dependent and produced through microlevel interactional dynamics. Through these types of social negotiations, we can observe a system that produces meaning at a variety of scales and over a variety of dimensions, as part of a constantly shifting mosaic of linguistic performance.
author	Babel,Anna
author_facet	Babel,Anna
author_sort	Babel,Anna
title	The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables
title_short	The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables
title_full	The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables
title_fullStr	The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables
title_full_unstemmed	The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables
title_sort	role of context in interpreting linguistic variables
publisher	Universidad de Chile. Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades. Departamento de Lingüística
publishDate	2014
url	http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-93032014000200004
work_keys_str_mv	AT babelanna theroleofcontextininterpretinglinguisticvariables AT babelanna roleofcontextininterpretinglinguisticvariables
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The role of context in interpreting linguistic variables

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