Language acts are acts of identity, and linguistic variation reflects the multifaceted construction of verbal alternatives for transmitting social meaning, where style-shifting represents our ability to take up different social positions due to its potential for linguistic performance, rhetorical stance-taking and identity projection.Traditional variationist conceptualizations of style-shifting as a primarily responsive phenomenon seem unable to account for all stylistic choices. In contrast, more recent formulations see stylistic variation as initiative, creative and strategic in personal and interpersonal identity construction and projection, making a significant contribution to our understanding of this aspect of sociolinguistic variation. In this volume social constructivist approaches to style-shifting are further developed by bringing together research which suggests that people make stylistic choices aimed at conveying (and achieving) a particular social categorization, sociolinguistic meaning, and/or to project a specific positioning in society. Therefore, there is a need, we collectively argue, to adopt permeable and flexible multidimensional, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to speaker agency that take into consideration not only reactive but also proactive motivations for stylistic variation, and where individuals – rather than groups – and their strategies are the main focus when examining style-shifting in public. This book will be of interest to advanced students and academics in the areas of sociolinguistics, dialectology, social psychology, anthropology and sociology.

Language acts are acts of identity, and linguistic variation reflects the multifaceted construction of verbal alternatives for transmitting social meaning, where style-shifting represents our ability to take up different social positions due to its potential for linguistic performance, rhetorical stance-taking and identity projection.Traditional variationist conceptualizations of style-shifting as a primarily responsive phenomenon seem unable to account for all stylistic choices. In contrast, more recent formulations see stylistic variation as initiative, creative and strategic in personal and interpersonal identity construction and projection, making a significant contribution to our understanding of this aspect of sociolinguistic variation. In this volume social constructivist approaches to style-shifting are further developed by bringing together research which suggests that people make stylistic choices aimed at conveying (and achieving) a particular social categorization, sociolinguistic meaning, and/or to project a specific positioning in society. Therefore, there is a need, we collectively argue, to adopt permeable and flexible multidimensional, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to speaker agency that take into consideration not only reactive but also proactive motivations for stylistic variation, and where individuals – rather than groups – and their strategies are the main focus when examining style-shifting in public. This book will be of interest to advanced students and academics in the areas of sociolinguistics, dialectology, social psychology, anthropology and sociology.

This innovative and interdisciplinary book on style shifting in Japanese brings together a wide range of perspectives and methodologies—including discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and functional linguistics—to look at a variety of types of style shifting in both spoken and written Japanese discourse. Though diverse in approach, the contributions all reflect the belief that language use is inextricably linked to both context and language structure in mutually constitutive relationships. Topics covered include shifting between "polite" and "plain" styles, the emergence of a "semi-polite" style, speakers' strategic use of gendered styles or regional dialects, shifting between different deictic expressions, and prosodic shifting. This careful and detailed examination advances our understanding of the complex phenomenon of style shifting not only in Japanese, but also more generally, and will be of interest to researchers and students in fields such as linguistics, linguistic anthropology, communication studies, and second language acquisition and teaching.

This study of sociolinguistic variation examines the relation between social identity and ways of speaking. Studying variations in language not only reveals a great deal about speakers' strategies with respect to variables such as social class, gender, ethnicity and age, it also affords us the opportunity to observe linguistic change in progress. The volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to create a broad perspective on the study of style and variation. Beginning with an introduction to theoretical issues, the book goes on to discuss key approaches to stylistic variation in spoken language, including such issues as attention paid to speech, audience design, identity construction, the corpus study of register, genre, distinctiveness and the anthropological study of style. Rigorous and engaging, this book will become the standard work on stylistic variation. It will be welcomed by students and academics in sociolinguistics, English language, dialectology, anthropology and sociology.

Geordie Stylizations is a short-focused research work which builds on the renovated interest on the nexus between accent-identity-prestige-prejudice, offering an analysis of celebrities' use of the Geordie variety in a series of public performances as a reflection instrument for scholars, but also for neophyte readers with an interest in Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Celebrity Studies, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and Gender Studies. Of interest are the individual instances of Geordieness performed on specific occasions, i.e. the ways in which people construct their unique and constantly evolving language repertoires sometimes appropriating some, other times distancing themselves from, linguistic traits that would characterize them as members of specific communities in other people's perceptions. The material investigated is provided by the artistic world: engaging with the arts and culture, and in particular with music, is not just a solitary event, but also a participatory one which many people feel is worthwhile sharing through ordinary conversation and interaction via social networks every day.

Why did a rural dialect from the heart of Norwegian farm country win a national dialect popularity contest? What were the effects of this win, and what has happened to the winning dialect since? A Winning Dialect tells a story of linguistic and cultural transformation in the rural district of Valdres, Norway. It shows how lifelong residents have adapted to changing social, economic, and political circumstances – particularly the shift from family farming to tourism development – and how they have used local linguistic and cultural resources to craft a viable future for themselves and the places their ancestors have called home for centuries. Once stigmatized as poor and uneducated, the distinctive dialect of Valdres now holds a special place as a valuable part of Norwegian national heritage, as well as a marker of local belonging. Based on two decades of research and fieldwork, A Winning Dialect considers how a traditional dialect is transformed – linguistically and culturally – as it is put to new uses in the contemporary world.

The goal of The Oxford Handbook of African American Language is to provide readers with a wide range of analyses of both traditional and contemporary work on language use in African American communities in a broad collective. The Handbook offers a survey of language and its uses in African American communities from a wide range of contexts organized into seven sections: Origins and Historical Perspectives; Lects and Variation; Structure and Description; Child Language Acquisition and Development; Education; Language in Society; and Language and Identity. It is a handbook of research on African American Language (AAL) and, as such, provides a variety of scholarly perspectives that may not align with each other -- as is indicative of most scholarly research. The chapters in this book "interact" with one another as contributors frequently refer the reader to further elaboration on and references to related issues and connect their own research to related topics in other chapters within their own sections and the handbook more generally to create dialogue about AAL, thus affirming the need for collaborative thinking about the issues in AAL research. Though the Handbook does not and cannot include every area of research, it is meant to provide suggestions for future work on lesser-studied areas (e.g., variation/heterogeneity in regional, social, and ethnic communities) by highlighting a need for collaborative perspectives and innovative thinking while reasserting the need for better research and communication in areas thought to be resolved.