Nikolas Coupland. Style: Language Variation and Identity - Download

Reviewed by Zaenal Arifin

Tulungagung, 30 November 2013

Nikolas Coupland. Style: Language Variation and Identity

"Style refers to ways of speaking – how speakers use the resource of language variation to make meaning in social encounters. This book develops a coherent theoretical approach to style in sociolinguistics, illustrated with copious examples. It explains how speakers project different social identities and create different social relationships through their style choices, and how speech-style and social context inter-relate. Style therefore refers to the wide range of stra-tegic actions and performances that speakers engage in, to con-struct themselves and their social lives. Coupland draws on and integrates a wide variety of contemporary sociolinguistic research as well as his own extensive research in this field. The emphasis is on how social meanings are made locally, in specific relationships, genres, groups and cultures, and on studying language variation as part of the analysis of spoken discourse." - Nikolas Coupland.

This book explains and explores any variations of language used by people in their social interaction, that includes some aspects related to the why or how the variations are there.

The book itself is series, from Key Topics in Sociolinguistics by Rajend Mesthrie (Ed.), where there are still other titles, dealing with sociolinguistics, like Politeness by Richard J. Watts, Language Policy by Bernard Spolsky, Discourse by Jan Blommaert, Analyzing Sociolinguistic Variation by Sali A. Tagliamonte and Language and Ethnicity by Carmen Fough.

Contents

Introduction

1.1 Locating ‘style’

1.2 Variationism in sociolinguistics

1.3 Style in sociolinguistics and in stylistics

1.4 Social meaning

1.5 Methods and data for researching sociolinguistic style

1.6 Style in late-modernity

1.7 Later chapters

Style and meaning in sociolinguistic structure

2.1 Stylistic stratification

2.2 Limits of the stratification model for style

2.3 ‘Standard’ and ‘non-standard’

2.4 ‘Non-standard’ speech as ‘deviation’

2.5 Social structure and social practice

3. Style for audiences

3.1 Talking heads versus social interaction 54

3.2 Audience design 58

3.3 Communication accommodation theory

3.4 Some studies of audience design and speech accommodation

3.5 Limits of audience-focused perspectives

Sociolinguistic resources for styling

4.1 Speech repertoires

4.2 The ideological basis of variation

4.3 Habitus and semantic style

4.4 Language attitudes and meanings for variation

4.5 Metalanguage, critical distance and performativity

4.6 Sociolinguistic resources?

Styling social identities

5.1 Social identity, culture and discourse

5.2 Acts of identity

5.3 Identity contextualisation processes

5.4 Framing social class in the travel agency

5.5 Styling place

5.6 Voicing ethnicities

5.7 Indexing gender and sexuality

5.8 Crossing

5.9 Omissions

High performance and identity stylisation

6.1 Theorising high performance

6.2 Stylisation

6.3 Decontextualisation

6.4 Voicing political antagonism – Nye

6.5 Drag and cross-dressing performances

6.6 Exposed dialects

Coda: Style and social reality

7.1 Change within change

7.2 The authentic speaker

7.3 The media(tisa)tion of style

I recommend this book for you who are studying language variations.

Download the book here!