Premium
Uses of Southern‐sounding speech by contemporary Texas women[Note 1. Although the analysis represented in this paper is mine, ...]
Author(s) -
Johnstone Barbara
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9481.00093
Subject(s) - variety (cybernetics) , rhetorical question , sociology , linguistics , history , gender studies , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence
Anglo‐Texas women typically do not think of themselves as Southerners, but many can use speech forms that came to Texas from the American South. The relationship of Texas women to Southern speech is complex, and Texas women orient to and use Southern forms in various ways. Several of the possibilities are briefly illustrated. These examples serve to raise questions about language crossing and stylization in contexts in which the variety being adopted does not clearly ‘belong’ to an outgroup, and to suggest some new avenues for thought about what ‘regional varieties’ are and how regionally‐marked speech forms can serve as rhetorical resources.