Abstract
This volume offers a variety of exceptional examples of how linguistic communication – here defined as styles – projects one’s identity in social reality. Some of these styles are very subtle and at first glance implicit, while some are recognizable only by native speakers or specialized scholars. Such a social constructivist approach to style-shifting enables one to demonstrate the ideological and political performativity of the most basic linguistic items at various levels – in this book, primarily at the phonetic level and, to a lesser extent, at the level of genre. Such an orientation within the field of sociolinguistics and stylistics is described as a transformation from the reactive (responsive) model towards the proactive (initiative) model. Two more traditional approaches, Attention to Speak (AS) and Audience Design (AD), are labelled in the introduction as not sufficient, and are now being replaced by a more sophisticated Speaker Design model in which the speakers are understood as ‘taking part in shaping and re-shaping interactional norms and social structures, rather than simply accommodating to them’ (p. 4). The approach takes into account the question of how individuals position themselves within societal reality by and through linguistic use. From this perspective, however, identity is not taken as static, but as dynamic and variable; any speech use, thus, has a performative nature ‘with speakers projecting different roles also in different circumstances, since we are always displaying some particular type of identity’ (p. 4).
What makes the approach in question important for Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) is its interest in the link between ideology and language, although the very term discourse appears quite rarely (moreover, there is no entry for discourse in the index). Furthermore, the constructivist approach to style, as in discourse analysis, takes into consideration several settings such as context, speaker’s agency, social meanings (i.e. attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes), interactional level, practice, and so on. Roughly speaking, the use of a particular stylistic variation generates additional meaning that is attributed to texts and decoded by interlocutors. As the authors of one of the chapters say: ‘style-shifting is a powerful way for public figures to construct stances and convey their positions on critical issues’ (p. 101) or, in another chapter: ‘stylistic variation is a multifaceted phenomenon that plays an important role in the construction of situated meanings and identities in discourse’ (p. 121). This approach, however, overtly omits a critical attitude.
The first five chapters, as well as Chapter 9, cohere well as all of them deal with the linguistic performance of important political figures who mix in their speeches standard variables with non-standard codes. Chapter 1 deals with a speech by a Spanish mayor who switches to vernacular forms that have connotations of ruralness in order to index local identity and thus to trigger a socialist and anti-elitist ideology. Chapters 4 and 9 deal with comparable issues taking place in Austria and Norway. Similarly, Chapters 2, 3 and 5 deal with the linguistic performance of American politicians and their ideological implications.
Chapter 3, by Robert J. Podesva et al., stands out as it deals with the phonetic features of a prominent American figure, the former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Analysis of her pronunciation forms the basis for an exploration of membership in several groups at the same time. This is a relevant problem in the plurality of identity: in many cases, when dealing with ideological stances encoded in discourses, scholars concentrate on a level that enables them to detect, describe and – in critical inquiry – criticize the stances taken into consideration. Such an approach, however, emphasizes and makes salient only some identity markers, whilst others are left aside. Thus, the complexity of a person is lost and their identity simplified.
This problem, in turn, opens up another important question: In what way can we really distinguish between the deliberate and non-deliberate use of a feature? This issue is taken up by Andy Gibson and Allan Bell in Chapter 7, as they propose a tool enabling confrontation of this problem by comparing different types of data. In an impressively well-documented study of popular music in New Zealand, they try to answer why singers modify their pronunciation. Using music data as well as interviews with singers, they identify American English as a default way of singing popular music. Singing in any other variety of English ‘requires an initiative act of identity’ (p. 160). Thus, the use of American pronunciation is responsive, whereas the use of any other variety requires initiative audience design.
Chapters 6 and 8 deal with speech genres. In Chapter 6, Jennifer Sclafani shows how parody can be used to demonstrate (by a selection of stylistic features), to entertain (by exaggeration) and to critique (by indexical inversion) social values associated with certain stylistic values. In Chapter 8, Anna Marie Trester investigates the role of dialect in a theatrical performance at an American improvisational theatre, where the audience is understood by the author as a co-constructor of social meaning.
It is noteworthy that in this volume the borders between two key disciplines, sociolinguistics and stylistics, are not strictly defined (e.g. as they are in French or Polish and Russian stylistics). This has some obvious disadvantages but also advantages. As far as advantages are concerned, this enables one to think about the stylistic reality of linguistic use more globally without distinguishing between these two interconnected levels. However, one of the consequences of such an approach is the use of style as an umbrella-term for many terms such as variety (including dialect), register, repertorie, idiolect, the whole discourse with stylistic features, and sometimes even genre. I think this generalization of the term style – similar to the generalization of the term language or literature – could make the analysis unclear.
To sum up, this volume is an important contribution to thinking on language, ideology and social meaning. The inquiry, exceptionally documented and theoretically well elaborated, provides an account of a variety of linguistic issues. Moreover, it signals some theoretical problems (such as multiple addressees, problems of genre and salience of features) that the discipline still has to face.