Kathryn Campbell-Kibler

I'll be the judge of that: Diversity in social perceptions of (ING)

This article examines divergent listener perceptions with an expanded form of the Matched Guise Technique, using 32 matched pairs of short recordings of natural speech. Social evaluations were collected in open-ended interviews (N = 55) and an online experiment (N = 124). Three speakers are described who prompted disagreement about the English variable (ING). Ones -ing use is seen by some as more intelligent and by others as annoying, less intelligent, and trying to impress. Anothers -in guise is seen as compassionate by some and as condescending by others, while a third, when using -in , is seen by some as annoying and less masculine, while others describe him as a masculine “jock.” These findings show that listeners shift their interpretations of a linguistic resource, highlighting the ambiguous role intention plays in social meaning and calling into question long-held assumptions about the need for conscious introspection in sociolinguistic perception.

The sociolinguistic variant as a carrier of social meaning

Traditionally used as a “heuristic device” (Labov, 1978), the sociolinguistic variable has taken on a new role as a primitive of speaker/hearer mental models in third-wave variation work (Eckert, 2005, 2008). Results from a sociolinguistic perception study suggest that at least in some cases, variants of the same variable function independently as loci of indexically linked social meaning. Listener responses were collected to three matched guises of the English variable (ING): -in , -ing , and a neutral guise with no audible (ING) tokens. The results counter the study hypothesis that listener expectation, triggered by speaker regional accent, would shape (ING)s impact. Instead, the two variants showed distinct social associations: the -ing guises were rated as more intelligent/educated, more articulate, and less likely to be a student than either the -in or neutral guises, which did not differ significantly. In contrast, -in guises made speakers sound less formal and less likely to be gay than the -ing and neutral guises, which did not differ. These results suggest that third-wave work needs to more closely examine the role of the variable in theorizing the relationship between linguistic and social structures.

Sociolinguistics and Perception

The social perception and evaluation of language are key elements in sociolinguistic phenomena. While perceptual studies have long played a role in the study of linguistic variation, they have not enjoyed central status, in contrast to their widespread use in the field of language attitudes. Recently, however, interest in the perceptual study of variation has grown. Three threads of research on sociolinguistic perception are discussed: the social and affective evaluation of language, the identification of social information from speech and the influence of social information on linguistic comprehension. Finally, methodological and theoretical developments within the field of variation are explored that place perceptual studies at the heart of the variationist enterprise.

Contestation and Enregisterment in Ohio’s Imagined Dialects

This article examines the contestation of a partially enregistered variety, namely, the “Cleveland accent” or “northern accent” in Ohio. Speaker perceptions of language variation within Ohio were collected from eighty-nine visitors to a science museum in Columbus, Ohio. Participant responses reflect Ohio’s complex dialect situation, dividing the northern and southern areas of the state out from a purportedly neutral, normative center. Accent-free speakers are positioned in central Ohio cities and presented as racially unmarked, while Southern, rural speakers and African American, young, urban speakers are presented as stigmatized and linguistically deficient Others. This stigma contrasts strikingly with the value-free discussion of otherwise unmarked speakers in northern Ohio, whose language differences, when noted, are presented less negatively, marked as less widely known, and, in some cases, downplayed as idiosyncratic variation. These results suggest that, for Ohio speakers, the North Midland/Inland North boundary is incompletely enregistered and would therefore be a promising site for the examination of enregisterment in progress and of the strategies speakers use to try to counter potential enregisterment.

Repeat what after whom? Exploring variable selectivity in a cross-dialectal shadowing task

Twenty women from Christchurch, New Zealand and 16 from Columbus Ohio (dialect region U.S. Midland) participated in a bimodal lexical naming task where they repeated monosyllabic words after four speakers from four regional dialects: New Zealand, Australia, U.S. Inland North and U.S. Midland. The resulting utterances were acoustically analyzed, and presented to listeners on Amazon Mechanical Turk in an AXB task. Convergence is observed, but differs depending on the dialect of the speaker, the dialect of the model, the particular word class being shadowed, and the order in which dialects are presented to participants. We argue that these patterns are generally consistent with findings that convergence is promoted by a large phonetic distance between shadower and model (Babel, 2010, contra Kim et al., 2011), and greater existing variability in a vowel class (Babel, 2012). The results also suggest that more comparisons of accommodation toward different dialects are warranted, and that the investigation of the socio-indexical meaning of specific linguistic forms in context is a promising avenue for understanding variable selectivity in convergence.

The Effect of Speaker Information on Attitudes Toward (ING)

Speakers build linguistic styles by combining elements of existing styles, a process known as bricolage , which results in stylistic resources appearing across multiple styles. Although speakers’ ability to construct and deploy styles across situations has been documented repeatedly, little perceptual work has been done on how linguistic cues function across styles. This study used a matched guise experiment to examine the impact of the English variable (ING) on social perceptions of speakers presented as professors, political candidates, or experienced professionals. As predicted, profession shifted the impact of (ING) on perceived knowledgeability, such that professors were seen as more knowledgeable when using -ing, whereas experienced professionals were more knowledgeable in their -in guises. Use of -in also made all speakers sound less caring and created a positive relationship between political progressiveness and caring in perceptions of political candidates.

Linguistics in a Science Museum: Integrating Research, Teaching, and Outreach at the Language Sciences Research Lab

We describe the mission and practices of the Language Sciences Research Lab, a fully functional research lab embedded within a science museum. Within this environment, we integrate cutting-edge research, formal instruction, informal learning, and outreach to the public so that our work in each domain interacts with and enriches the others. We are guided by core concepts from the field of informal science education, and we strive to inspire excitement and expand both scholarly and public knowledge about the language sciences.

Competing Reflexive Models of Regional Speech in Northern Ohio

Campbell-Kibler (2012) argued that the “northern” or Cleveland accent has been developing as a register (Agha 2003, 2007) in Ohio, primarily positioned as an unstigmatized and idiosyncratic form of linguistic difference from an imagined central Ohio norm. The current study examines northern Ohioans’ orientation to this construct within a larger understanding of their sociolinguistic imagining of Ohio. Northerners are found to share many language ideologies with other Ohioans, including a focus on north-to-south variation, an emphasis on rural versus urban language difference, and a belief in the local existence of unaccented, educated, normative speech. They differ from other Ohioans in sometimes conceptualizing urban speech as standard, failing to mark central Ohio as a distinct region, and subdividing the northeast (their own region) in a Cleveland-centered small region and a larger northeast corner of the state. Most importantly, they differ from central Ohioans in their treatment of the linguistic difference between central and northern Ohio, i.e., the Inland North/Midland dialect boundary (Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006). Forty-two percent of northerners and 52 percent of others fail to construct a perceptual boundary between central and northeast Ohio, while 27 percent and 48 percent respectively indicate the north as the divergent speech area. Northerners differ, however, in having a third group (31 percent), who position their own speech as normative and the central Ohio speech as marked, counter to the discourses of central Ohioans. These results support Agha’s (2007) point that individuals’ stakes in particular reflexive models are a key influence on models’ circulation and further show the importance of “unremarkable” as a context-bound and often valuable sociolinguistic meaning, rather than a lack of meaning.