This study investigates how linguistic variation carries meaning, examining the impact of the English variable (ING) on perceptions of eight speakers from the U.S. West Coast and South. Thirty-two excerpts of spontaneous speech were digitally manipulated to vary only in tokens of (ING) and used to collect listener perceptions in group interviews (N = 55) and an experiment (N = 124). Interview data and experimental results show that (ING) impacts social perception variably, inhabiting an indexical field of related meanings (Eckert, Penelope. [2008]. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):453-476). One of these meanings, intelligence/education, is explored in detail to understand how a given meaning is realized or not in a specific context. Speakers were heard as less educated/intelligent when they used -in, but this effect is driven by reactions to speakers heard as aregional and not as working-class. Some implications on our future understanding of the processing of socially laden variation are discussed. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.
CITATION STYLE
Campbell-Kibler, K. (2009). The nature of sociolinguistic perception. Language Variation and Change, 21(1), 135–156. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394509000052
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.