Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

P. KERSWILL & A. WILLIAMS
outside linguistic structure, is provided by Yaeger-Dror’s (1993) study of
accommodatory behaviour by Israeli pop singers when being interviewed and
when performing. Yaeger-Dror was interested in the alternation of the
mainstream Israeli koine pronunciation [I] for /r/ with the Mizrahi
(Sephardic) and standard Hebrew [r] in the usage of singers of different ethnic
origins and having different target audiences. Her operationalisation of
‘conscious accommodation’ versus ‘unconscious accommodation’ is novel,
though the classification itself seems to be related to Labov’s distinction
between indicators and markers (see below): she hypothesises that conscious
accommodation will take place in ‘cognitively salient positions’ (1993:203),
while less conscious accommodation will be found in ‘relatively nonsalient
environments’. Citing a range of studies on linguistic and psychological
correlates of ‘salience’, she assesses the environments in her data according to
their salience versus nonsalience on the following three dimensions: phonetic
prominence, lexical ordering and prosodic factors. Although these three
dimensions are arguably ‘labels’ and therefore not free of circularity, Yaeger-
Dror’s results suggest that the choice of factors was well motivated. She finds
that, among the Mizrahi singers, whenever sociolinguistic factors (especially
appropriacy in song) strongly suggest the use of [r] rather than [I], then this
indeed occurs in the salient environments. Conversely, in nonsalient
environments, the other variant [I], or a compromise ‘fudge’ [rI], is more
likely to occur, signalling the ethnolinguistic ambivalence of these individuals
in a more unconscious way.
While Yaeger-Dror’s approach to salience involves a combination of
linguistic and psycholinguistic criteria, Cheshire (1996; 1999) applies a
definition of salience which is more pragmatically based than any of those
discussed so far. Cheshire focuses her attention on the particular patterning of
syntactic variables, noting that their relative infrequency leads to their being
likely than phonetic variables to be used as identity markers (1999:61). Their
pragmatic and interactional function will be correspondingly more important.
Thus, the form of BE in existential there is appears almost invariably in the
singular form even with plural logical subjects (that is, there is is invariant), a
fact which she interprets as deriving from the function of the construction as a
means for taking the floor. Because of this, it is economical for there is to be
a ‘prefabricated’ phrase. The ‘salience’ of particular pragmatic and
interactional functions, as well as syntactic positions, is explicitly explored in
Cheshire’s (1996) discussion of variation in the frequency of a number of
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