Coherence of Linguistic Communities - Orderly Heterogeneity and Social Meaning

This innovative collection brings together a range of perspectives on the notions of "orderly heterogeneity" and "social meaning", shedding light on how structured variation and indexicalities of social meaning "cohere" within linguistic communities. This book fills a gap in research on language variation by critically considering the position articulated by Weinrich, Labov, and Herzog in 1968 that linguistic diversity is systematically organized in ways that reflect and construct social order.
The volume investigates such key themes as

• covariation and co-occurrence restrictions;
• indexicality, perception and social meaning;
• coherence and language change;
• and the structure and measurement of coherence at different levels of analysis.

This collection advances our understanding of the coherence of linguistic communities through empirical investigations of larger and more diverse sets of variables, language varieties, speech styles, and communities, as afforded by the development and advancement of new methods and models in sociolinguistic research.
This book is of interest to scholars in sociolinguistics, language variation and change, and formal linguistics, as well as those interested in developments on research methods in linguistics.

List of contents

The coherence of linguistic communities: Orderly heterogeneity and social meaning
Karen V. Beaman and Gregory R. Guy


PART I. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN THE STUDY OF COHERENCE

1. False oppositions in the study of coherence
Devyani Sharma

2. Coherence across social and temporal scales
Meredith Tamminga and Lacey Wade

3. Indexicality and coherence
Gregory R. Guy, Livia Oushiro, and Ronald Beline Mendes

PART II. METHODOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF COHERENCE

4. What's in a Lect? Coherence in Phonetic and Grammatical Variation
James A. Walker, Michol F. Hoffman, and Miriam Meyerhoff

5. Measuring change in lectal coherence across real- and apparent-time
Karen V. Beaman and Konstantin Sering
6. Looking for covariation in heritage Italian in Toronto
Naomi Nagy and Timothy Gadanidis

7. Measuring distance-based coherence
Benedikt Szmrecsanyi

PART III: SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF COHERENCE

8. How social salience can illuminate the outcomes of linguistic contact: Data from Spanish in Boston
Danny Erker

9. Mapping social and sociophonetic changes: Gender in Auckland English
Evan Hazenberg
10. Coherence and implicational hierarchies in the speech of the very old
Aria Adli

PART IV: PERCEPTUAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF COHERENCE

11. Not anything goes: On implicational coherence and the penalty for being incoherent
Anne-Sophie Ghyselen and Stefan Grondelaers

12. Coherent patterns in nonstandard inflection in modern colloquial Standard Dutch?
Hans Bennis and Frans Hinskens

13. Coherence in a levelled variety: The case of Andalusian
Juan-Andrés Villena-Ponsoda, Matilde Vida-Castro, and Álvaro Molina-García
PART V. EFFECTS OF STANDARD LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES ON COHERENCE

14. Identifying language varieties: Coexisting standards in spoken Italian
Massimo Cerruti and Alessandro Vietti

15. Language change in real-time: 40 years of lectal coherence in the Central Bavarian dialect-standard constellation of Austria
Philip C. Vergeiner, Dominik Wallner, and Lars Bülow

16. Coherence and language contact: Orderly heterogeneity and social meaning in Namibian German
Heike Wiese, Antje Sauermann, and Yannic Bracke

INDEX

About the author

Karen V. Beaman is a Lecturer and post-doctoral researcher at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. Her research interests concern language variation, coherence and change, with particular focus on how factors of identity, mobility, and social networks drive or inhibit change.
Gregory R. Guy is Professor at New York University, USA. His research focuses on social, geographic, and diachronic diversity in language, and the implications of linguistic variation for the construction of linguistic theory in varieties of English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Summary

This innovative collection brings together a range of perspectives on the notions of "orderly heterogeneity" and "social meaning", shedding light on how structured variation and indexicalities of social meaning "cohere" within linguistic communities. This book fills a gap in research on language variation by critically considering the position articulated by Weinrich, Labov, and Herzog in 1968 that linguistic diversity is systematically organized in ways that reflect and construct social order.
The volume investigates such key themes as

• covariation and co-occurrence restrictions;
• indexicality, perception and social meaning;
• coherence and language change;
• and the structure and measurement of coherence at different levels of analysis.

This collection advances our understanding of the coherence of linguistic communities through empirical investigations of larger and more diverse sets of variables, language varieties, speech styles, and communities, as afforded by the development and advancement of new methods and models in sociolinguistic research.
This book is of interest to scholars in sociolinguistics, language variation and change, and formal linguistics, as well as those interested in developments on research methods in linguistics.

Product details

• Authors: Karen V. (Eberhard Karls Universitat Tubin Beaman
• Assisted by: Karen V. Beaman (Editor), Gregory R. Guy (Editor), Guy Gregory R. (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.01.2024
• EAN: 9780367681838
• ISBN: 978-0-367-68183-8
• No. of pages: 328
• Series: Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Linguistics, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General