Vox Popular E-Book

Robin Queen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 506

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Our favorite movies and TV shows feature indelible characters who tell us about themselves not just in what they say but in how they say it. The creative decisions behind these voices—such as what accent or dialect to use—offer rich data for sociolinguistic study. Ideal for students of language variation as well as general readers interested in media, Vox Popular is an engaging tour through the major issues of sociolinguistic study as heard in the voices from mass media.

• Provides readers with a unified and accessible picture of the interrelationships between language variation and the mass media

• Presents detailed original analyses of multiple audiovisual media sources

• Includes a broad methods chapter covering quantitative and qualitative methods in a style not available in any other textbook

• All theoretical terms are accessibly explained, with engaging examples, making it suitable for non-academics as well as undergraduate students

• Incorporates pedagogical textboxes throughout and includes sections dedicated to developing practical skills for the field

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Preface and Acknowledgments

A Note on the Linguistic Conventions Used in

Vox Popular

Vocal Details

Turn-Taking

Transcriber Notes

Vowels

Consonants

Keywords Found in Each Chapter

Chapter 1: Language in a Mediated World

Chapter 2: Exploring Language and Language Variation

Chapter 3: Studying Language Variation in the Media

Chapter 4: Dimensions of Variation

Chapter 5: Making Language Variation Meaningful

Chapter 6: Language Variation and Characterization

Chapter 7: Language as Narrative Action

Chapter 8: Connecting to the Audience

Chapter 1: Language in a Mediated World

Mad Men

in a

Modern Family

World

Why Does a Linguist Care about

Mad Men

or

Modern Family

?

Narrative Media as a Site for Linguistic Exploration

Language Variation in the Narrative Media

References

Chapter 2: Exploring Language and Language Variation

Introduction

Languages and Dialects

The Components of a Grammar

All the Systems Work as a System

Systems of Variation

Language Change

References

Chapter 3: Studying Language Variation in the Media

Introduction

Formulating a Research Question

Turning Narrative Media into Data

Analytic Orientation

Transcribing Your Data

Coding Your Data

Constructing a Corpus

Quantitative Methods

Qualitative Methods

Triangulating Your Evidence with Different Analytic Approaches

References

Chapter 4: Dimensions of Variation

Introduction

Non-Linguistic/Linguistic

Spoken/Written

Non-Standard/Standard

Informal/Formal

Unplanned/Planned

Local/Global

Private/Public

Putting It All Together

References

Chapter 5: Making Language Variation Meaningful

Introduction

Meaning

Indexical Meaning

Ideology

Ideology about Language

Ideology, Indexicality, and Power

References

Chapter 6: Language Variation and Characterization

Introduction

Characterization and Language

Realness and Authenticity

Identity and Identification

Relational Identity

Norms and Types

Social Personae

Indexical Authenticity

References

Chapter 7: Language as Narrative Action

Introduction

Performance and Speech Acts

Language as a Plot Device

Switching as Action

Taboo Language as Action

References

Chapter 8: Connecting to the Audience

Introduction

Audiences

Audience Design

Setting Expectations for Viewers

Enregisterment

Stylization

Interacting with Audiovisual Media

The End

References

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 01

Table 1.1 Critical points for language in narrative mass media

Chapter 02

Table 2.1 The basic components of human languages

Table 2.2 The pronominal system of English

Table 2.3 Frequency of intensifiers by lexical item in the Friends Corpus

Chapter 03

Table 3.1 Broad parameters of qualitative and quantitative methods

Table 3.2 Gender-based distribution of -in allomorph in progressive verbs

Table 3.3 Multivariate analysis of intensifier ‘so’ by season

Chapter 04

Table 4.1 Characteristics that differentiate spoken and written language

Chapter 05

Table 5.1 Kiesling’s seven different types of power

Chapter 06

Table 6.1 Frequency of multiple negation and the null copula in

Boyz n the Hood

List of Illustrations

Chapter 01

Figure 1.1 Publicity Poster for

Blackmail

(1929), the first “talkie” by Alfred Hitchcock. Note the comment on the left: “See and hear our mother tongue as it should be spoken.”

Chapter 02

Figure 2.1 Mid-sagittal section of a velar nasal consonant. The back of the tongue is raised to the palate.

Figure 2.2 Mid-sagittal section of an alveolar nasal consonant. The tip of the tongue is raised to the alveolar ridge.

Figure 2.3 Schematic tree diagram drawing of “Sue is running fast.”

Figure 2.4 Change in intensifier use over eight seasons of the television series

Friends

(1994–2004, David Crane and Marta Kauffman [creators], NBC). Copyright 2005, the American Dialect Society. All rights reserved.

Chapter 04

Figure 4.1 Text messages being sent to journalists from Sherlock Holmes at a press conference he is not present for.

Sherlock

, “A Study in Pink,” Season 1, Episode 1, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (creators), BBC, October 24, 2010.

Figure 4.2 Dimensions of variability.

Figure 4.3 Map of North Shore High School.

Mean Girls

, Mark Waters (dir.), 2004, Paramount Pictures.

Figure 4.4 Detail of North Shore High School map.

Mean Girls

, Mark Waters (dir.), 2004, Paramount Pictures.

Figure 4.5 The Lost Boys, John Darling and Michael Darling, after being ‘caught’ by “Indians.”

Peter Pan

, Clyde Geronimi and Wilfred Jackson (dir.), 1953, Walt Disney Productions.

Figure 4.6 Joel Goodsen dances in a dress shirt, underwear, and tube socks.

Risky Business

, Paul Brickman (dir.), 1983, Geffen Company.

Chapter 05

Figure 5.1

Plants vs. Zombies

start menu. PopCap Games (2009).

Chapter 06

Figure 6.1 Marge Gunderson from

Fargo

, Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen (dir.), 1996, Working Title Films.

Figure 6.2 Tre and Doughboy from

Boyz n the Hood

, John Singleton (dir.), 1991, Columbia Pictures.

Figure 6.3 Minny and Aibeleen from

The Help

, Tate Taylor (dir.), 2011, Dreamworks.

Chapter 07

Figure 7.1 Taboo word counter from “It Hits the Fan,”

South Park

, Season 5, Episode 1,Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators), Comedy Central, June 20, 2001.

Chapter 08

Figure 8.1 Iconic ending for

Looney Tunes

(© Warner Home Video).

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Praise for Vox Popular: The Surprising Life of Language in the Media

“In our times, film and television show America talking in a more realistic way every year, and it’s high time someone wrote a book on language and society that puts Modern Family, Boyz n the Hood, and much else front and center as useful sources of discussion on how America talks and why. Robin Queen has done the job.” – John H. McWhorter, Columbia University

“Robin Queen’s Vox Popular manages to do many things at once, and with finesse: it introduces the study of language in its social context in a way that will be accessible to non-linguists; it establishes an approachable, achievable methodology for the study of language in the media that is theoretically sound; and it provides a treasure-trove of material gathered over many years that will be invaluable for anyone teaching these subjects. There are years of work distilled into a readable, useful whole about one of the least studied and most promising areas of research: the role that mediated language plays in constructing social identities, from Donald Duck to Breaking Bad and beyond.” – Rosina Lippi-Green, author ofEnglish with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the U.S.

“Not only an important contribution to media studies but the kind of book that makes you want to design a new course specifically in order to use it as a text. A pleasure to read!” – Barbara Johnstone, Carnegie Mellon University

“Vox Popular convincingly shows that in our media-saturated world, linguistics and cultural studies need each other. Students and faculty in both fields will learn a great deal from this insightful and engrossing text.” – Mary Bucholtz, University of California, Santa Barbara

Vox Popular

The Surprising Life of Language in the Media

Robin Queen

This edition first published 2015© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Queen, Robin M. (Robin Michelle), 1966– author. Vox popular : the surprising life of language in the media / Robin Queen. – First edition.  p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-0-470-65991-5 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-470-65992-2 (paper) 1. Mass media and language. 2. Popular culture–Social aspects. 3. Language and languages–Variation. I. Title. P96.L34Q84 2015 302.2301′4–dc23    2014030903

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image © bulentgultek / iStockphoto

Preface and Acknowledgments

I grew up in a household full of televisions, and my childhood was one marked especially by the rhythm of the television schedule. I got ready for school watching Sesame Street, Looney Tunes, and, if my mom got up before we kids did, The Today Show or Good Morning America. I did my homework in the afternoons to ABC’s Afterschool Special, H.R. Pufnstuf, and reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I tolerated my parents watching the evening news before primetime began at 7 pm, with each evening a buffet of half-hour sitcoms and hour-long dramas. I grew up in the Central Time Zone of the United States, with its primetime schedule running from 7 pm to 10 pm, a timing that imprinted on me so strongly that I have never gotten used to the Eastern Time Zone primetime schedule of 8 pm to 11 pm, even though I’ve lived in the Eastern Time Zone for most of my adult life. The effects of television on my life were wide-ranging.

My childhood experience of television included noticing language. The Ewings on the television show Dallas spoke like we did, but Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey from Cagney and Lacey most surely did not. Some kids used Spanish and taught it to the adults on Sesame Street. My father could imitate Donald Duck’s odd speech (which I found out later came from forcing air from your cheeks) but could never teach me how to do it. My sister and her friends thought it was hilarious to speak in Smurf (though thankfully not for very long).

Things have changed significantly since then and the television schedule no longer structures the day quite like it used to. Audiovisual media, especially what we have traditionally called “television” and “film,” are available pretty much on demand at any time of day or night using pretty much any device on which you might want to consume them. Whole seasons of a television series can be viewed in a weekend, and you can watch your favorite film on your phone while you travel. Something that hasn’t changed all that much, though, is how language gets used in these venues. The vampires on True Blood sound as (inauthentically) Southern as the Beverly Hillbillies did, and the imagined language of the West permeates Breaking Bad just as distinctly as it did Gunsmoke.

This book represents my attempt to pay homage to two of my favorite things: language, especially language variation; and media, especially television and film. It’s been curious to me for a long time that two things that seem to me so obviously connected to one another have not frequently been paired together in scholarly research. Linguists tend to see the media as somehow not “real” while media studies people tend to see language as not “interesting” (or at least not as interesting as many of the other elements of TV and film). Perhaps because of my fascination with both of them, I have long seen language as fundamental to the workings of audiovisual media and audiovisual media as a fascinating source of information about language. To be sure, I come to this book as a linguist and not as a media studies scholar and that orientation will be clear throughout the book. Still, I’d like to believe that the discussions you’ll find in this book will tell you as much about audiovisual media as they will about language.

The book is written for people like me who love language and who love watching television and movies. It’s also written for people unlike me who may not have thought about any of this from the perspective of scholarship, and especially those who may not be familiar with thinking about language like linguists do. I have tried as much as possible to use media sources that are current, but of course almost as soon as this book was finished, new and interesting media products appeared. By the time you are reading these words, many of the examples will undoubtedly seem like they came from long ago. I hope that the general points of the book will help you see past that inevitable fact and that you’ll be able to take the discussions here and apply them to whatever new and intriguing sources have come along in the meantime.

In the course of writing this book I learned firsthand that the old adage about it taking a village to raise a child holds true for books as well. I never could have imagined the many twists and turns my path through this book would take but now, coming to the end of this journey, I can absolutely say that it was only possible because of the treasured village of people who helped me along the way. My sincerest thanks go to all the friends, colleagues, and students who have been so generous with their time, energy, and expertise. Particular thanks go out to: Jannis Androutsopoulos, Marlyse Baptista, Rusty Barrett, Erika Beck, Pam Beddor, Andries Coetzee, Lisa Del Torto, Monika Dressler, Jennifer Glen, Scott Glen, Phil Hallman, Hayley Heaton, Amy Hemmeter, Barbara Johnstone, Deborah Keller-Cohen, Nate LeFave, Susan Lin, Rob McIntyre, Barbra Meek, Kelly Murnighan, Kris Brown, Carmel O’Shannessy, Rachel Oakford, Carly Skinder, Sarah Thomason, Stephen Tyndall, and Jeanne Weaver. Thanks especially to Kevin McGowan for the excellent idea to use Vox Popular as the title.

Particular thanks are owed to Lauren Squires, who helped me refine the thinking in this book in numerous ways, and to Anne Curzan, who gave me confidence in the project when I wasn’t sure it was merited and who read every word of the manuscript at a time when she was in the middle of her own pressing projects. Thanks are really hardly sufficient for either of them.

Writing this book showed me the merits of working with an academic coach, and I’m sure that I would not have reached this point without the coaching help offered by Jo Van Every. I am also greatly appreciative of Laura Esterman, who helped me understand the publishing side of writing books and who dropped everything to edit this manuscript in record time. I had an expert editorial team at Wiley Blackwell, especially Danielle Descouteaux, who saw this project as something worth pursuing, Julia Kirk, who provided just the right blend of encouragement and reminders for keeping the project moving, and Janet Moth, who copy-edited the manuscript.

Much love and gratitude are due the various members of my family who have always encouraged me even in what seemed to them frivolous pursuits, and the merry band of dogs, cats, chickens, and sheep who have kept me sane and made me laugh.

It’s nearly impossible to put into words all the ways I am grateful to Susan Garrett, my best critic and biggest fan, who didn’t know what she was signing up for all those years ago when she read through my dissertation but who has made every major piece I’ve written better and, most importantly, whose optimism and sustaining love make every day so very worth living.

A Note on the Linguistic Conventions Used in Vox Popular

Like many disciplines, linguistics has special symbols and conventions for representation. Unlike many disciplines, the representations used by linguists to capture facets of language compete with the systems, especially spelling and punctuation, that non-linguists use to do the same thing. This can make reading linguistic data somewhat confusing. To mitigate that confusion, I have used the conventional systems of spelling and punctuation as much as possible because most readers will already be familiar with those systems. This includes some seemingly standard ways of representing accents and dialects (for instance spelling < they > as < dey > for speakers who pronounce it that way).

Still, there are quite a few instances where the conventions of linguistics have been necessary in order to better capture the details of the language use. While it really isn’t possible to capture everything that might be relevant about language in a way that is unequivocally “true” to the way the language was produced, many of the conventions used by linguists make it possible to come closer than is often possible with standard spelling and punctuation.