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Intonation, identity and contact‐induced change among Polish‐speaking migrants in the U.K.[Note 1. Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Dr Rosalind Temple as well ...]
Author(s) -
Kozminska Kinga
Publication year - 2019
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/josl.12318
Subject(s) - intonation (linguistics) , variation (astronomy) , linguistics , context (archaeology) , meaning (existential) , narrative , language contact , sociology , identity (music) , sociocultural evolution , world englishes , psychology , geography , philosophy , physics , archaeology , astrophysics , acoustics , anthropology , psychotherapist
This article examines intonational variation in a language contact situation. The study contributes to sociolinguistic research on the social meaning of intonational variation (Podesva [Podesva, Robert, 2006]; Levon [Levon, Erez, 2014]). Intonation is studied in a multilingual context of global mobility: within a group of Polish‐speaking migrants in Britain who, thanks to cheap transportation and new channels of communication, could make use of linguistic resources unlimited by territorial boundaries from the beginning of their transnational experience. The study shows that speakers with seemingly similar linguistic and cultural profiles make use of intonation patterns in different ways in the context of the narrative of the self: speakers oriented towards the global economy and the English‐speaking world incorporate a mainly English intonational pattern, the fall‐rise, with increased frequency to do interactional work that it does in English, while other groups maintain Standard Polish norms. As shown, intonational variation participates in the creation of fluid identities that blur linguistic and sociocultural boundaries.