[lingtalks] Mary Bucholtz- Friday 10/20 - Workshop on Langugae Ideology and Change

[asnyderf at weber.ucsd.edu]

University of California, San Diego

Workshop on Language Ideology and Change in Multilingual Communities*
(Anthropology and Ethnic Studies)
sponsored by IICAS and The Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Gender
Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues

presents a colloquium by

Mary Bucholtz
University of California, Santa Barbara

“¿Qué onda, güey?: Slang, Gender, and Latino Migrant Youth Styles”


Friday, October 20, 2006 2:00 p.m.
SSB 105 (Anthropology Conference Room)


A reception will follow at 3:30 in the Spiro Library of the Anthropology
Department, SSB 269.  Open and free to the public.


Abstract:
       Sociocultural linguistic research on slang has tended to focus on
word lists and surveys of usage, with little attention to how
specific slang terms are used in discourse. However, the social
meaning of slang cannot be read off directly from its semantics or
the demographic distribution of its use. Rather, slang gains its
semiotic value only within the sociocultural context in which it is
used. Indexicality is therefore fundamental to understanding how
slang comes to be associated with gender and other social
categories. As Ochs (1992) has shown, the indexicality of gender
involves two semiotic levels: at the level of direct indexicality,
linguistic forms are associated with interactional stances or
orientations to ongoing talk, while at the level of indirect
indexicality, these stances calcify into more enduring ways of
being—that is, styles or identities—which are in turn associated
with particular social groups, such as women or men.  In this paper
I demonstrate the complexity of this indexical process, drawing on
data from Spanish-speaking youth in California to examine the
interactional use of a slang term, güey, which, like its English
counterpart dude (Kiesling 2004), is ideologically associated with
masculinity at both the referential and semiotic levels. I argue
that the social and particularly the gendered meaning of any
linguistic form involves both direct and indirect indexicality and
hence must be understood with regard to the stances and styles that
slang allows speakers to take up in discourse.


*The Workshop on Language Ideology and Change in Multilingual Communities
brings together anthropologists, ethnic studies specialists, and linguists
to discuss change in linguistic structures and patterns of use by members
of minority language communities in a variety of world settings.