<p>From Labov's (1963) finding that the centralization of the /ay/ and /aw/ diphthongs in Martha's Vineyard was emblematic of resistance to local economic and social change, to Mendoza-Denton's (2008) finding that variation in the realization of the /I/ vowel corresponds to gang affiliation among Latina girls in a Northern California high school, identity has been at the center of sociolinguistic analysis and theory for nearly a half century. Despite the centrality of this construct, sociolinguists have rarely stopped to ask about the epistemological, theoretical, and even political implications of identity. This dissertation offers a sustained, interdisciplinary critique of identity, both in linguistics and more generally in contemporary social theory. Through engagements with cultural anthropology, feminist theory, cultural studies, and linguistics, this critique calls attention to identity's epistemological baggage (e.g. collusion with neo-liberalism and Englightenment-era humanism) and theoretical tendencies (e.g. overestimation of agency) and suggests a turn to poststructuralist theory of subject formation. The dissertation is organized around three sections: historiography, theory, and empiricism, as follows.</p><p> The study begins with historiography, tracing the relationship between language and social analysis in a limited archive that includes the work of 19th and 20th Century language scholars, including William Dwight Whitney, Leonard Bloomfield, and Noam Chomsky. Focusing specifically on the relationship between Labov's variationist sociolinguistics and Chomsky's generative program, the historiography analyzes the conditions that led sociolinguistics to a form of social theory scaffolded around identity. </p><p>Poststructuralist theory of subject formation is introduced, with an emphasis on the work of Judith Butler (1990, 1997, 2004) and Michel Foucault (1975, 1976, 1981). A set of terms that animate this framework are introduced, including interpellation, subjectivization, discourse, subjectivity, subject position, subject type, power, and identity.</p><p>Two empirical studies of adolescent language are introduced and the findings are considered in light of the constellation of terms introduced in the prior section. The first is a case study focusing on the speech of one adolescent Mexican American female, "María," whose language use underwent reorganization over a three-year period coinciding with a change in community and school. Segmental and suprasegmental variables were analyzed from data collected from two time periods, T1 and T2. In order to account for modifications in "María's" vocalic production, two vowel variables were selected for acoustic analysis: pre-nasal and non-pre-nasal allophones of /æ/. These variables were selected because of their saliency in both Latino varieties of English (Thomas, Carter, & Coggshall 2006; Fought 2003; Thomas 2001). Midpoint measurements were taken for F1, F2, and F3 for a minimum of 25 tokens of each variable from T1 and T2 using PRAAT phonetics software (Boersma & Weenink 2009). Maria's production of prosodic rhythm was also analyzed using the Pairwise Variability Index (Lowe & Grabe 1995). Changes in F1 and F2 for both vocalic variables were statistically significant--both allophones of /æ/ were lowered and backed from T1 to T2. Conversely, no statistically significant difference was found in prosodic rhythm. These findings are analyzed in the context of the poststructuralist framework already set forth.</p><p>The second study is an intensive ethnographic investigation of a `majority minority' middle school in North Carolina that took place over a five-month period. Detailed ethnographic fieldnotes and unscripted interviews with 50 African American, white, and Latino speakers in social groups identified during observation constitute the data for this study. The analysis focuses on the subjectivizing effects of the institution, particularly the institutional discourses of `choice' and `value,' on the cultural and linguistic practices of its students. Using discourse analytic methods, the analysis shows that talk by students across all major social divisions (grade level, popularity status, gender, and ethnicity) is inflected by institutional discourses. </p><p>A complementary analysis considers the subjectivizing function of language ideology in the middle school context. Analysis of interview and ethnographic field data show three distinct discursive formations about language: `proper talk,' `ghetto talk,' and Spanish.</p> / Dissertation
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DUKE/oai:dukespace.lib.duke.edu:10161/1665 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Carter, Phillip M. |
| Contributors | Wolfram, Walter, Butters, Ronald |
| Source Sets | Duke University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 2290529 bytes, application/pdf |
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