Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

194 Part 3: Language and Variation
everything must go through the fi lter of human perception, there is no
ideology-free platform from which we can observe linguistic phenomena.
This has given the impetus for much language-ideological research
and critical refl ection on, among others, linguists’ neglect of the social
world, their involvement in the construction and naming of (static) languages,
varieties and speech communities, as well as the impact of these
constructions on everyday language use (Calvet, 2006; Harris, 1998; Pratt,
1987; Rampton, 1998; Schieffelin et al., 1998; see also McGroarty et al., in
this volume).
Fourth and fi nally, a principles and processes approach invites attention
for exceptional linguistic performances, such as ‘stylisations’ (as in the
second example in the introduction: ‘so you are a repeater’). These were
mainly ignored in traditional variationist sociolinguistics because they
were considered inauthentic, caused by the observer’s paradox, or unsystematic
and thus irrelevant for the explanation of language change. But if
even the most routine language use is essentially constructed, there is no
reason why exceptional constructions should be kept out of the analysis.
All the more so, given that stylisations can be extremely informative of
local perceptions and routine talk. Stylisations are defi ned as the intensifi -
cation and exaggeration of a particular, but mostly culturally familiar, way
of speaking that deviates from the style that is usually expected in the current
situation (Coupland, 2001; Rampton, 2001a: 85, 2006: 224–225). They
are mostly produced by highly self-conscious and creative speakers, who
are often emphatically artifi cial and invite others to interpret how their
spectacular linguistic product comments on the business-on-hand and
evaluate how well it does that. Both their production and reception, therefore,
can give off information on local perceptions of what is routine and
artifi cial, acceptable and strange, and of what it is that language users
think they, or others, are doing as well as the (linguistic) building blocks
they have available.
In addition, as a kind of social action, it is argued that stylisations are
symptomatic of and therefore particularly apt for capturing some of
the complexities of ‘late-modern’ and the so-called globalised societies
(cf. Coupland, 2007: 30). More and more, contemporary western societies
are seen as featuring a social climate characterised by high levels of geographical
and also social mobility, a transnational consumer culture and
techno-popular industry, and omnipresent media. As a result of this,
authors have shown how attractive lifestyles are increasingly commodifi
ed and sold/bought (cf. Heller, 2003), while a wide variety of (linguistic)
identities intensely circulate, create new opportunities and get
introduced in new contexts and at other levels than where they are usually
seen to operate (Blommaert, 2003). If future sociolinguistic work
wants to address some of these processes, stylisation can provide a useful
entry point for this.