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Linguistic Variation and Sociological Consciousness

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Linguistic Variation and Sociological Consciousness LINGUISTIC VARIATION AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Robin M. Dodsworth, B.A., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Donald Winford, Adviser Professor Steven Dandaneau _________________________ Professor Brian Joseph Adviser Professor Scott Schwenter Linguistics Graduate Program ABSTRACT Much current thinking in the field of linguistic variation assumes that speakers actively manipulate linguistic variables for local social purposes. While broad social structures such as class, ethnicity, and gender continue to shape the basic questions that variationists ask, attention to speakers’ context-driven uses of variables is gaining prominence. Eckert (2002) addresses this shift in her description of the three “waves” of linguistic variation studies. Critically, third-wave studies assume that speakers (consciously or not) use linguistic variables to construct identities situated within local social contexts. The claim that particular uses of linguistic variants index dynamic and ultimately supra-local social meanings entails that speakers recognize links among different levels of social organization. Despite the upsurge of ethnographic work in sociolinguistics, the latter claim has yet to be fully supported or even well investigated, partly, I argue, for lack of an adequate theoretical framework for speakers' perceptions. This study explores sociological consciousness – the recognition of links among the levels of social structure – as a factor conditioning linguistic variation. The sociologist C. Wright Mills’ (1959) notion of the “sociological imagination” is used as a ii framework. The sociological imagination is the quality of mind that allows one to conceptualize daily life in terms of society-wide social forces. According to Mills, those who possess well-developed sociological imaginations manage to understand personal troubles and public issues as the products of historical events, social structures, and biography—the three “coordinate points.” The speech community under investigation is Worthington, Ohio, a mostly white, upper-middle class community lying immediately to the north of Columbus. Worthington was founded in 1803 by well-educated, Episcopalian settlers from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and some of the current residents work vigorously to maintain the city’s “traditional” New England identity with its religious and educational values intact. This task has become all the more relevant and challenging as Columbus has expanded; in fact, Worthington is now completely surrounded by annexed Columbus land, much of which has been stuffed with residential developments. A preliminary analysis of the sociolinguistic distribution of /l/ vocalization with respect to locally- relevant social categories (Dodsworth 2005a) reveals a significant linguistic distinction between living within the Worthington city boundaries and living in the surrounding areas of Columbus. Building on that conclusion, the present study considers the ways in which Worthingtonites understand and react to the forces that promote urban sprawl and urbanization. Following much recent variationist work, this study employs the qualitative and quantitative paradigms simultaneously, using both ethnographic and traditional quantitative methods to investigate three phonetic variables previously documented in central Ohio: /l/ vocalization (Ash 1982, Durian 2004, Fix 2004), /o/ fronting (Thomas iii 1989[1993]), and movement of /æ/ toward /a/ (Dodsworth, ms). The linguistic data are extracted from one-on-one ethnographic interviews with 17 speakers. Speakers are divided into four rough 'social consciousness' categories with respect to the local urban sprawl situation: individual-focused, social structure-focused, integrated (i.e. a relatively balanced view of the individual with respect to social structures and history), and little or no critical awareness. These four types constituted a factor group in logistic regression analyses of the three linguistic variables. The results show sociological consciousness, when combined with attitude toward urban sprawl in the Worthington area, to be a significant factor group for all three variables. The proposed explanations for the patterns of linguistic variation are rooted to some extent in familiar notions such as 'persona', but they are claimed to ultimately descend from differences in sociological consciousness, particularly for /æ/ backing and /o/ fronting. The importation of sociological consciousness as a factor in variationist analysis, as well as the quantitative results derived from it, are argued to have potentially serious implications for sociolinguistic theory, particularly the notions of persona and style. It is argued further that greater use of social-theoretic concepts within variation studies promises fruitful results for both sociolinguistics and other areas of social science. iv Dedicated to my parents v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My graduate school years have been blessed with a department full of colleagues who are also friends. The profound gratitude I owe this group goes first to my adviser, Don Winford, who has been the most dependable and open-minded teacher and mentor I can imagine. Don's intellectual rigor and flexibility are foundational to this dissertation. In addition, he has been patiently and sincerely present in my personal life, the person who looked after both my academic development and my emotional self. While I have reaped benefits from the dedication of every faculty member in the Department of Linguistics, I am grateful in particular to Brian Joseph and Scott Schwenter, who were both on my dissertation committee and taught courses that continue to be foundational to my approach to language. Scott in particular devoted many office hours to my papers and presentations, as did Galey Modan, who taught me discourse analysis, and Mary Beckman, Keith Johnson, and Beth Hume, who guided the phonetics and phonology underlying my work. Three professors with no formal connection to the Department of Linguistics generously helped me navigate interdisciplinary research. Jim Moody of the OSU vi Sociology Department provided expertise in network theory and invaluable help in carrying out my own network study. Amy Zaharlick of the OSU Anthropology Department served on the committee for my month-long candidacy exam. Steve Dandaneau of the University of Dayton Sociology Department has supported and challenged me as a scholar and human being since my sophomore year of college. Most recently, he served on both my candidacy committee and my dissertation committee, in both instances artfully achieving the difficult task of evaluating and informing a primarily linguistic endeavor from a sociological perspective. Countless graduate students in my own department and in others contributed to my dissertation and the work preceding it. Kathleen Currie Hall spent hour upon selfless hour evaluating tokens of /l/ and also provided the initial idea for the normalization method used for /o/ and /ae/. Pauline Welby wrote the Praat scripts I used for automatic formant measurement. David Durian, another variationist tackling the Columbus area, made available all of his results and also alerted me to several previous studies of Ohio English; both types of resources proved critical to this project. The members of Changelings, a discussion group for sociolinguists and historical linguists, offered extremely helpful comments on several pre-conference presentations. Lauren Hall-Lew of Stanford made available her manuscript on northern Arizona /o/-fronting and offered a great deal of encouragement at conferences and during my job search. Concluding this necessarily incomplete list is Christine Mallinson of North Carolina State, who painstakingly commented on several chapters of my dissertation and was always ready with boundless encouragement for my attempts to make use of sociological theory. vii I am immensely fortunate to have gone through the trials of graduate school with the other three members of my entering class: Wes Collins, Markus Dickinson, and Anton Rytting. The cohesion and support among the four of us – from which I always felt I gained more than I contributed – remains a glowing aspect of my experience. I could not have done without many other friends in the department, including and especially Andrea Sims and Jason Packer, who in addition to being favorite dinner company and wonderful cooks, did me innumerable favors, the most recent of which was opening their home for several days. Ila Nagar has been a friend whose emotional support defies words, and whose tea is the best there is. For good conversation and much more, I am grateful to Steve Conley, Peter Culicover, Robin Dautricourt, Hope Dawson, Anna Feldman, Jirka Hana, Sofia Jungmann, Laurie Maynell, Grant McGuire, Detmar Meurers, Crystal Nakatsu, Julia Papke, Michelle Ramos-Pellicia, Tom Stewart, Na'im Tyson, Steve Winters, and many others. My five housemates from our undergraduate years at the University of Dayton – Sarah Albright, Dana Beane, Heather Focht, Sarah Kuhlman, and Emily Meyer – supported me all the way through the program despite momentous events in their own lives, as did Ranjana Das. I also wish to thank Pat and Dick Jones for many years of encouragement, as well as Marilee, Rich, and Alison Mielke. I wrote the bulk of the dissertation
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