Dissecting heteroglossia: Interaction ritual or performance in crossing and stylisation?

Abstract

As Coupland and others show, Bauman’s account of ‘performance’ provides a valuable perspective on speech stylisation across a range of public contexts. However, this chapter explores the limitations of performance as a window on crossing and stylisation in everyday practice, and although recognising other frames as well, it dwells instead on Goffman’s interaction ritual, cross-referring to two studies of adolescents in England. In the first, race and ethnicity were controversial, and the performance of other-ethnic styles was risky. However, interaction ritual constructed crossing and stylisation as urgent responses to the exigencies of the moment and this made them more acceptable. In the second, performance implies a reflexive composure that is hard to reconcile with informants’ experience of social class as an uncomfortable but only half-articulated issue, whereas interaction ritual provides a sharp lens on how youngsters used stylised posh and Cockney to register their apprehension of ongoing stratification.