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Full-Text Articles in Geography
“100% Authentic Pittsburgh”: Sociolinguistic Authenticity And The Linguistics Of Particularity, Barbara Johnstone
“100% Authentic Pittsburgh”: Sociolinguistic Authenticity And The Linguistics Of Particularity, Barbara Johnstone
Barbara Johnstone
As Bucholtz (2003), Coupland (2007, pp. 25-26), and others have pointed out, what counts as an authentic linguistic variety or an authentic speaker depends on who is counting and why. Sociolinguists have often unthinkingly privileged as their object of study the most unselfconsious, “vernacular” speech in relatively closed, homogeneous communities like traditional working-class neighborhoods, with their dense, multiplex social networks, and in the relatively self-contained symbolic economies of schools. This has allowed us to explore social correlates of variation and processes of change in communities where these things appear least muddied by outside influences, and doing so has given us …
Pittsburghese Shirts: Commodification And The Enregisterment Of An Urban Dialect, Barbara Johnstone
Pittsburghese Shirts: Commodification And The Enregisterment Of An Urban Dialect, Barbara Johnstone
Barbara Johnstone
This article considers a type of material artifact that circulates ideas about regional speech in the United States: T-shirts bearing words and phrases thought to be unique to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I argue that Pittsburghese shirts, seen for themselves and in the context of their production, distribution, and consumption, are part of a process leading to the creation and focusing of the idea that there is a Pittsburgh dialect. To describe how particular locally hearable forms have become linked with the city, I invoke Asif Agha’s concept of “enregisterment.” To understand why this has happened at the time and in the …
Linking Identity And Dialect Through Stancetaking, Barbara Johnstone
Linking Identity And Dialect Through Stancetaking, Barbara Johnstone
Barbara Johnstone
No abstract provided.