The Linguistic Individual: Self-Expression in Language and Linguistics (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)

Linguists usually discuss language or dialects in terms of groups of speakers. Believing that patterns can be seen more clearly in the group than the individual, researchers often present group scores with no indication of the variation within the group. Even though linguists acknowledge that no two individuals speak alike, few study individual variation and voice. Barbara Johnstone makes a case for the individual's importance and idiosyncrasies in language and linguistics. Using theoretical arguments and discourse analysis, along with linguistic examples from a variety of speakers and settings, Johnstone illustrates how speakers draw on linguistic models associated with class, ethnicity, gender, and region, among others, to construct an individual voice. In doing so Johnstone shows that certain important questions in sociolinguistics and pragmatics can only be answered with reference to individual speakers. Johnstone's study is important both for the understanding of speech as expressive of self, and for the study of variation and mechanisms of linguistic choice and change. Contents......Page 14 CHAPTER 1 Discourse, Society, and the Individual......Page 18 Aaahh.........Page 19 Linguistics and the Individual......Page 24 Discourse Analysis......Page 36 CHAPTER 2 Resources and Reasons for Individual Style......Page 41 Two Stories......Page 44 Creating a Context......Page 49 Narrating......Page 52 Moving In and Out of the Narrative......Page 58 Marking Key Points......Page 61 Reasons for Variation......Page 65 Narrative and Individuation......Page 70 CHAPTER 3 Individual Voice and Articulate Speaking......Page 74 Articulateness and Self-Expression......Page 76 Two Articulate Voices......Page 77 Readiness......Page 80 Clarity......Page 85 Effectiveness......Page 92 Two Self-Portraits......Page 98 Loci for the Expression of Self in Academic English......Page 102 Social Identity, Rhetorical Adaptation, and Personal Style......Page 104 CHAPTER 4 Individual Variation in Scripted Talk......Page 107 The Texas Poll......Page 110 Individual Variation Among the Respondents......Page 111 Justifications of Answers......Page 114 Answers to an Open-Ended Question......Page 119 Answers to a Multiple-Choice Question......Page 123 What Were the Respondents Doing?......Page 125 Individual Variation Among the Interviewers......Page 127 Unsolicited Comments on Answers......Page 128 Introductions......Page 130 What Were the Interviewers Doing?......Page 133 Politeness in Scripted Talk......Page 135 Discourse Task Management......Page 137 Cultural Individualism and Linguistic Individuation......Page 139 CHAPTER 5 Consistency and Individual Style......Page 143 The Barbara Jordan Style......Page 145 The Texts: Two Case Studies......Page 146 Linguistic Correlates of Personal Authority......Page 153 Barbara Jordan: Speaking Consistently from Moral Authority......Page 155 Sunny Nash: Inconsistency and Pragmatic Flexibility......Page 166 Strategies for Personal Style......Page 170 CHAPTER 6 Idiosyncracy and Its Interpretation......Page 172 Discourse Markers and Conventional Interpretations......Page 176 So: Conventional Marking and Interpretation......Page 177 One time in particular: Semiconventional Marking, Semantic Inference......Page 180 And uh, uh: Nonconventional, Uninferable Marking......Page 185 Repetition and the Interpretation of Idiosyncracy......Page 186 Grammar, Convention, and Repetition......Page 187 CHAPTER 7 Toward a Linguistics of the Individual Speaker......Page 193 Language as Art......Page 195 Major Themes Reiterated......Page 200 Notes......Page 204 References......Page 210 B......Page 224 D......Page 225 I......Page 226 M......Page 227 P......Page 228 S......Page 229 Z......Page 230 An examination of various discourse genres, showing how choices among linguistic resources are mediated by self-expressive choices. Linguistic consistency across various situations is discussed with the question of how, if language is fundamentally idiosyncratic, people can understand one another.