Mary Bucholtz

Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach

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.

Why Be Normal?: Language and Identity Practices in a Community of Nerd Girls

The introduction of practice theory into sociolinguistics is an important recent development in the field. The community of practice provides a useful alternative to the speech-community model, which has limitations for language and gender researchers in particular. As an ethnographic, activitybased approach, the community of practice is of special value to researchers in language and gender because of its compatibility with current theories of identity. An extension of the community of practice allows identities to be explained as the result of positive and negative identity practices rather than as fixed social categories, as in the speech-community model. The framework is used here to analyze the linguistic practices associated with an unexamined social identity, the nerd, and to illustrate how members of a local community of female nerds at a US high school negotiate gender and other aspects of their identities through practice. (Community of practice, gender, discourse analysis, identity, social construction, social practice, speech community, adolescents, nerds)*

The politics of transcription

Abstract Despite its centrality to the methods of discourse analysis, transcription has received disproportionately little attention in its own right. In particular need of discussion is the issue of transcription as a practice inherently embedded in relations of power. Examples from a transcript of a police interrogation, from a newspaper transcript of a radio program, and from a variety of linguistic transcripts demonstrate that transcription involves both interpretive decisions (What is transcribed?) and representational decisions (How is it transcribed?). These decisions ultimately respond to the contextual conditions of the transcription process itself, including the transcribers own expectations and beliefs about the speakers and the interaction being transcribed; the intended audience of the transcript; and its purpose. The two basic transcription styles, naturalized transcription, in which the text conforms to written discourse conventions, and denaturalized transcription, in which the text retains links to oral discourse forms, have equal potential to serve as politicized tools of linguistic representation. A reflexive transcription practice, as part of a reflexive discourse analysis, requires awareness and acknowledgment of the limitations of ones own transcriptional choices.

Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research

The field of language and sexuality has gained importance within socioculturally oriented linguistic scholarship. Much current work in this area emphasizes identity as one key aspect of sexuality. However, recent critiques of identity-based research advocate instead a desire-centered view of sexuality. Such an approach artificially restricts the scope of the field by overlooking the close relationship between identity and desire. This connection emerges clearly in queer linguistics, an approach to language and sexuality that incorporates insights from feminist, queer, and sociolinguistic theories to analyze sexuality as a broad sociocultural phenomenon. These intellectual approaches have shown that research on identity, sexual or otherwise, is most productive when the concept is understood as the outcome of intersubjectively negotiated practices and ideologies. To this end, an analytic framework for the semiotic study of social intersubjectivity is presented. (Sexuality, feminism, identity, desire, queer linguistics.)*

You da man: Narrating the racial other in the production of white masculinity

Sociolinguistic research on the linguistic construction of identity has begun to attend to the construction of culturally normative, unmarked social categories such as whiteness and masculinity. The study of these categories involves the investigation of ideology as well as identity, because ideology produces hegemonic forms of white masculinity. Such ideologies of race and gender shape narratives of interracial conflict told by middle-class European American boys at a California high school. The article focuses on one such narrative, told by a white boy who aligns with black youth culture and uses elements of African American Vernacular English in his speech. Via language crossing and other discursive strategies such as constructed dialogue, the narrative positions black masculinity, in contrast to white masculinity, as physically powerful and locally dominant. At the same time, the narrative preserves the racial hierarchy that enables white cultural appropriation of African American culture through language crossing.

Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal? The Perceptual Dialectology of California

This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that Californias most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse sociolinguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks).

Reflexivity and Critique in Discourse Analysis

Within linguistic anthropology, the anthropological concern with reflexivity and critique emerges most explicitly in debates over discourse analysis. Through critical discussion of the contributions to this two-part special issue, several dominant approaches to discourse – including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, and natural histories of discourse – are assessed for their ability to yield insights into culture and power. It is suggested that an ethnographically grounded discourse analysis can be critically effective not only within linguistic anthropology but within anthropology more generally.

Finding identity: Theory and data

Abstract This commentary responds to the papers in the special issue ‘Accomplishing identity in bilingual interaction’ and particularly to the use of Bucholtz and Halls (2004a, 2004b, 2005) framework for the linguistic analysis of identities in interaction. The commentary focuses on the relationship between theory and empirical work, with attention to the role of ethnographic context in the analysis of both microlevel interaction and macrolevel sociopolitical and sociohistorical processes, the place of language ideologies in the interactional construction of bilingual identities, and the necessity to ground theoretical claims in rigorous empirical analysis.

‘It’s different for guys’: Gendered narratives of racial conflict among white California youth

As race talk has gained attention throughout the social sciences, sociocultural linguistics has become crucial in revealing how racial ideologies and identities are discursively produced. This article examines how race talk may reproduce racial binaries while perpetuating gender ideologies. Drawing on ethnographically collected narratives of conflict at an ethnoracially divided California high school, the analysis examines three discursive practices of racial reversal whereby white youth portray themselves as disadvantaged vis-a-vis their black peers: claims of ‘reverse discrimination’, narratives of racialized fear, and fight stories. Whereas white girls’ narratives relied on racial vagueness, white boys’ narratives highlighted racial difference, contrastive strategies that indicate the different racial stakes for white girls versus white boys at the school. The article demonstrates the necessity of examining race talk not only for its content but also for its discursive structure, its ethnographic and interactional context, its co-construction by the researcher, and its ideological effects.

Introduction; Public transcripts: Entextualization and linguistic representation in institutional contextsx

Abstract The articles in this special issue argue that entextualization—the process by which circulable texts are produced by extracting discourse from its original context and reifying it as a bounded object—is an indispensable mechanism for the construction of institutional authority. More specifically, they demonstrate that one particular mode of entextualization, that involving the inscription of speech into writing, plays an especially important role in modern institutions, as the transfixing power of the written record endows the institution with an enormous advantage in presenting itself as an authoritative voice that can define, describe, and discipline its subjects. The contributors to this special issue illustrate the role of entextualization in the consolidation of institutional power through the critical analysis of linguistic representation within three key institutions—the law, the media, and the academy—in a variety of languages and cultures in North America, Europe, and Asia.