A quantitative and qualitative consideration of language and

A quantitative and qualitative consideration of language and material style in a study of white women in contact with AAE Sonya Fix sonya. fix@ nyu. edu The Ohio State University Columbus College of Art and Design

Adults, language and material style Material style emerges as a social category of consideration in the investigation of the linguistic practices of adult white women with significant African American social ties. • How do we quantify this variable to include it in a social index score? What does this quantification buy us? • How do subjects in the sample discursively construct personae by referencing material style?

What is Material Style? Clothing, hairstyles, and other external semiotic symbols of adornment, accessory, and grooming; aesthetic tastes including music.

Material Style and Linguistic Style Eckert 2008: 456: “Persona style is the best level for approaching the meaning of variation, for it is at this level that we connect linguistic styles with other stylistic systems such as clothing and other commoditized signs and with the kinds of ideological constructions that speakers share and interpret and that thereby populate the social imagination. ”

Material Style and Linguistic Style: Adolescents and Young Adults Mendoza-Denton’s Latina gang girls (1996, 1997, 2008): Hair, makeup, and clothing styles communicate social group affiliation, often in subtle ways. In-group vs. out-group readings of the semiotics of these material style practices

Subjects Sample • 14 white women from low and moderate income urban racially integrated/predominantly African American communities in Columbus, Ohio • All have significant, long-term social, romantic, and kinship ties with African Americans • Variation in degrees and types of contact with African Americans across life spans • Range of use of AAE features • Range of material style practices

Subjects: Data collection methodologies • Recruitment through friend of friend and direct approach in African American community spaces • Sociolinguistic interview (one on one) • Group interviews and casual speech recording sessions with African American partners, kin, and friends. • Ethnographic information about subjects derived from short-term observation and ethnographic interview questions.

Positing distinct African American material style practices Hall 1992; Kaiser, Rabine, Hall, and Ketchum 2004; O’Neal 1998 a, 1998 b; Thomas 2000; Tulloch 2004; White and White 1998

Resistance to a persona: speech style + material style +affect Melissa: I knew that, okay, I might have dated a black guy, but I never wanted to be one of those girls. That I'm gonna cut my hair a certain way, or I'm gonna talk a certain way, or any of that stuff.

Indexing African American ties through speech style + material style + affect Kathy: And people say "you don't look like you're married to a black man. What-is a look? A lot of people tell me that. And then I got my hair cut one time and I was wearing it all spiked up, and this chick I was working with—she was kind of a hillbilly too—and she's like //click// "your hair is cute but um, it looks kind of ghetto. " I said "what's that supposed to mean? " "Well you know, like those girls that are, that hang around black guys. " I said my husband's black. She said “I never would have expected you to be married to a black man. ”I said I am. And you know people will make a comment to you like that cause, I don't—you know how //Makes suck tooth sound//you how they talk, and they act, and they wear their hair all out like this, and like tons of makeup.

Quantifying social ties through the lifespan The use of social network indices in sociolinguistic studies: Labov 1972; Gal 1978; Millroy 1980; Bortoni- Ricardo 1995; Blake and Josey 2003; Kirke 2005

Quantifying social ties and material style and cultural practices across the lifespan: a combined index

Including a material dimension in a social index Drawn from lifestyle indices operationalized by Adli (2006) Influenced by Bourdieu’s (1991) sociocultural theory in which the notion of habitus (acquired sensibilities and tastes) functions as a secondary but integral component of social identity.

The material style dimension Adorning the self: • clothing styles, accessories, • hairstyles, grooming products Adorning the home (Afrocentric art and decoration) Other aesthetic preferences, including music consumption (favorite artists, radio stations).

Correlation of linguistic factors and social index scores: The case of L vocalization

What is L vocalization? When an L resembles a back vowel, semi-vowel, or voiced glide, or nothing. • In this data set, vocalized L only occurs in coda position • This realization of L seems to always develop from dark L

L vocalization and AAE L vocalization is a documented cross regional feature of AAE (Green 2002; Thomas 2007) Evidence in 2 Columbus studies of increased use of this variable among African Americans (Fix 2004; Durian 2008) Some preliminary evidence of L vocalization as a marker of ethnic identity in an ethnic identification test performed by linguists (Hall-Lew & Fix 2011)

Variation in L vocalization among subjects

Significance of the phonological variable of L vocalization and combined index score

L vocalization’s correlation with the index score L vocalization factor weight and combined index score (with Material Style Dimension) r=0. 639 (df=12), p=0. 0138 L vocalization factor weight and social index only (without Material Style Dimension) R=0. 574 (df=12), p=0. 0319 Result: improvement in strength of correlation with integration of material style component within the index.

Material Style as a social factor group in multivariant analysis

The discursive production of persona through reference to material style Nicole: And I think my physical appearance, one, is what people see. I think what I wear, the clothes that I wear, because I'm not-. I think the clothes that I wear when I go out into public define "oh woah what's she wearin? ” People look at the jeans and the shirts and the things like that. How you put together. I think that, um and then… What people see, your appearance, your clothes, the way you physically-the way you act walk and talk I think that in itself speaks volumes for, what a person's preference, or who a person may be. I really do. But, I don't know if there's anything you can do about it. Like for you, I mean is there anything you do can about it because someone would look at you and say "ah ah she likes chocolate!" Oh well. How do you know? !What makes you think that? ! You know.

Conclusions This consideration of material style and linguistic variation in an adult population: • Explores how and why material style can be integrated into a quantified social network index. • Draws our attention to the ways of in which material style continues to work as a symbolic resource far past adolescence; in this data set it correlates with linguistic style and indexes racial alignment and constructs a persona constituted by racialized desire.

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