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Sociological consciousness as a component of linguistic variation 1
Author(s) -
Dodsworth Robin
Publication year - 2008
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/j.1467-9841.2008.00352.x
Subject(s) - subjectivity , sociology , wright , consciousness , variation (astronomy) , sociological theory , epistemology , sociological imagination , linguistics , social science , history , philosophy , physics , astrophysics , art history
While practice theory has provided a valuable framework for establishing connections between individual‐level sociolinguistic variation and social structures, Bourdieu's (1977) formulation of practice theory has been argued to inadequately address subjectivity. The sociologist C. Wright Mills' (1959) concept of the sociological imagination – consciousness of links among personal experiences, social structures, and historical processes – is posited as a partial solution, as it offers a framework for modeling one aspect of subjectivity. Use of the sociological imagination concept is demonstrated through a quantitative acoustic analysis of /o/ fronting in Worthington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb confronting acute urban sprawl. The distribution of /o/ fronting across 21 speakers largely resists traditional sociolinguistic explanations. A close analysis of four speakers' mental representations of the local tensions surrounding urban sprawl reveals significant differences which are argued to account for their variable use of fronted /o/.