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INDEXICALITY
Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2012, Ethnomethodology, Indexicality, Reflexivity
Indexicality as used by ethnomethodologists refers to
the contextual nature of behaviour and talk.
Talk for example is indexical in the sense that it has no
meaning without a context or can take on various meanings dependent on the context.
As we construct talk or listen to talk we all must engage
in the interpretive process of constructing a context. With this context we give the talk
a sense of concreteness or definiteness.
There is no way to avoid indexicality, however, nor a way
to remove it, since talk about context itself is also indexical. For this reason
constructing a sense of reality is an ongoing accomplishment of social members.
Reflexivity and
indexicality are properties of behavior, settings and talk which make the ongoing
construction of social reality necessary. Both of these properties question the
objectivity of accounts, descriptions, explanations, etc.
Language Ideology and the Transmission of Phonological Change
Changing Indexicality in Two Situations of Language Contact - Alicia Beckford
Wassink, University of Washington
Judy Dyer, University of Michigan
The authors consider the changing indexicality of phonological variants in two different
contact situations—Corby, United Kingdom, and Kingston, Jamaica. While quite
different sites of contact, they suggest that similar sociolinguistic phenomena may be
observed in both places. Using a language ideology framework, acoustic and auditory
phonetic data are interpreted through respondents’own metalinguistic comments about
their dialect. This socially embedded interpretation of the data reveals that in both
Corby and Kingston, one phonological variant may in fact index distinct and different
identities for speakers in the respective communities. In particular, in both Corby and
Kingston, features associated with historically stigmatized varieties have apparently been
adopted by the younger generations as a means of marking local identity and pride. This
method of interpretation offers an alternative method of analyzing variationist data and
follows earlier work conducted in language ideology.
Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of
"Pittsburghese"
Barbara Johnstone, Jennifer Andrus, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania
Andrew E. Danielson, University of California, Berkeley
This article explores the sociolinguistic history of a U.S. city. On the basis of
historical research, ethnography, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistic interviews, the
authors describe how a set of linguistic features that were once not noticed at all, then
used and heard primarily as markers of socioeconomic class, have come to be linked
increasingly to place and "enregistered" as a dialect called
"Pittsburghese." To explain how this has come about, the authors draw on the
semiotic concept of "orders of indexicality." They suggest that social and
geographical mobility during the latter half of the twentieth century has played a crucial
role in the process. They model a particularistic approach to linguistic and ideological
change that is sensitive not only to ideas about language that circulate in the media but
also to the life experiences of particular speakers; and they show how an understanding of
linguistic variation, language attitudes, and the stylized performance of dialect is
enhanced by exploring the historical and ideological processes that make resources for
these practices available. - eng.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/2/77
"Are you losing your culture?": poetics, indexicality and Asian American
identity
Angela Reyes, University of Pennsylvania
This article examines a school district conference panel discussion to illustrate how
'culture' is interactionally emergent and how 'identity' is performatively achieved
through struggles to position the self and other in socially meaningful ways. Analyzing an
interaction between a panel of Asian American teens and an audience of teachers, advisors
and administrators, the author traces how the term 'culture' emerges as two constructs:
'culture as historical transmission' and 'culture as emblem of ethnic differentiation'.
This is accomplished, in part, through emergent poetic and indexical patterning which
shape categories and trajectories of personae to which speech event participants are
recruited. It is argued that these two schemas of culture are not merely static essences,
but dynamically linked to distinct participation frameworks which achieve particular
performative effects. These schemas, which are brought into circulation, reveal how
metalevel constructs, such as 'identity politics' and 'multiculturalism', are played out
rather vividly in microlevel interaction. - dis.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/2/183
Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach - Mary Bucholtz,
University of California, Santa Barbara, Kira Hall, University of Colorado
The article proposes a framework for the analysis of identity as produced in linguistic
interaction, based on the following principles: (1) identity is the product rather than
the source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore is a social and
cultural rather than primarily internal psychological phenomenon; (2) identities encompass
macro-level demographic categories, temporary and interactionally specific stances and
participant roles, and local, ethnographically emergent cultural positions; (3) identities
may be linguistically indexed through labels, implicatures, stances, styles, or linguistic
structures and systems; (4) identities are relationally constructed through several, often
overlapping, aspects of the relationship between self and other, including
similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice and authority/ delegitimacy; and (5) identity
may be in part intentional, in part habitual and less than fully conscious, in part an
outcome of interactional negotiation, in part a construct of others’ perceptions and
representations, and in part an outcome of larger ideological processes and structures.
The principles are illustrated through examination of a variety of linguistic
interactions. - dis.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/4-5/585
Transforming Signs. Iconicity and Indexicality in Russian Healing and Magic, Lindquist
G
Abstract: In this article, the ethnography of magic and healing in contemporary Russia is
analyzed using the basic concepts of Peircian semiotics. Indigenous terms of affliction
used in magical diagnostics of misfortunes, as well as pantomimic gestures in hand healing
are regarded as iconic and indexical signs. Their mode of signification is pragmatic
presentation rather than textual representation, which underlies their capacity to effect
transformations in consciousness. It is shown, however, that it is cultural conventions of
their symbolic meanings that form these signs as icons and indexes. - ingentaconnect.com
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