Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-26T15:54:32.026Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constructing social meaning in political discourse: Phonetic variation and verb processes in Ed Miliband's speeches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2015

Sam Kirkham  and
Emma Moore
Sam Kirkham
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and English Language, County South, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UKs.kirkham@lancaster.ac.uk
Emma Moore
Affiliation:
School of English, Jessop West, University of Sheffield 1 Upper Hanover Street, Sheffield S3 7RA, UKe.moore@sheffield.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates how variation across different levels of linguistic structure indexes ideological alignments in political talk. We analyse two political speeches by Ed Miliband, the former leader of the UK Labour Party, with a focus on the use of /t/-glottalling and the types of verb processes that co-occur with the pronouns we and you. We find substantial differences in the production of /t/ between the two speeches in words such as Britain and government, which have been argued to take on particular salience in British political discourse. We contextualise these findings in terms of metalinguistic discourse surrounding Miliband's language use, as well as how he positions himself in relation to different audiences via verb process types. We show that phonetic variation, subject types, and verb processes work synergistically in allowing Miliband to establish a political persona that is sensitive to ideological differences between different audiences. (Social meaning, indexicality, political discourse, verb processes, phonetic variation, /t/-glottalling)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 87 - 111
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ashby, Michael, & Przedlacka, Joanna (2014). Measuring incompleteness: Acoustic characteristics of glottal articulations. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 44(3):283–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald (2012). Multivariate statistics. In Podesva, Robert J. & Sharma, Devyani (eds.), Research methods in linguistics, 337–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benor, Sarah (2004). Talmid Chachams and Tsedeykeses: Language, learnedness, and masculinity amongst Orthodox Jews. Jewish Social Studies 11:147–70.Google Scholar
Breiman, Leo (2001). Random forests. Machine Learning 45(1):5–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary (1999). Geek the girl: Language, femininity, and female nerds. In Ahlers, Jocelyn, Bilmes, Leela, Chen, Melinda, Oliver, Monica, Warner, Natasha, & Wertheim, Suzanne (eds.), Gender and belief systems: Proceedings of the Third Berkeley Women and Language Conference, 119–32. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.Google Scholar
Clarke, Harold D.; Sanders;, David & Stewart, Marianne C. (2004). Political choice in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Docherty, Gerry, & Foulkes, Paul (2005). Glottal variants of /t/ in the Tyneside variety of English. In Hardcastle, William J. & Beck, Janet Mackenzie (eds.), A figure of speech: A festschrift for John Laver, 173–99. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Drummond, Rob (2011). Glottal variation in /t/ in non-native English speech: Patterns of acquisition. English World-Wide 32(3):280–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):453–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2012). Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual Review of Anthropology 41:87–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabricius, Anne H. (2000). T-glottalling between stigma and prestige: A sociolinguistic study of modern RP. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen dissertation.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman (1989). Language and power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman (2000). New Labour, new language? London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita, & Bull, Peter (2012). Doing leadership in political speech: Semantic processes and pragmatic inferences. Discourse & Society 23(2):127–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, Paul, & Docherty, Gerard J. (eds.) (1999). Urban voices: Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Hall-Lew, Lauren; Coppock, Elizabeth; & Starr, Rebecca L. (2010). Indexing political persuasion: Variation in the Iraq vowels. American Speech 85(1):91–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall-Lew, Lauren; Friskney, Ruth; & Scobbie, James M. (2013). ‘If you will allow me, Mr. speaker’: Audience design and phonetic variation in the House of Commons Chamber. Conference paper presented at UKLVC9, University of Sheffield, UK.Google Scholar
Kirkham, Sam (2015). Intersectionality and the social meanings of variation: Class, ethnicity and social practice. Language in Society 44(5):629–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Jonathan (2001). The sociolinguistic status of the glottal stop in Northeast Scots. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 5:49–65.Google Scholar
Milroy, James; Milroy, Lesley; Hartley, Sue; & Walshaw, David (1994). Glottal stops and Tyneside glottalization: Competing patterns of variation and change in British English. Language Variation and Change 6(3):327–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milroy, Lesley (2007). Off the shelf or under the counter? On the social dynamics of sound changes. In Cain, Christopher M. & Russom, Geoffrey (eds.), Managing chaos: Strategies for identifying change in English, 149–72. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma, & Podesva, Robert J. (2009). Style, indexicality, and the social meaning of tag questions. Language in Society 38(4):447–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moosmüller, Sylvia (1989). Phonological variation in parliamentary discourse. In Wodak, Ruth (ed.), Language, power and ideology: Studies in political discourse, 165–80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor (1992). Indexing gender. In Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Language as interactive phenomenon, 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O'Connor, Brendan; Taha, Maisa; & Sheehan, Megan (2008). Castro's shifters: Locating variation in political discourse. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 14(2):121–29.Google Scholar
Pearce, Michael (2001) ‘Getting behind the image’: Personality politics in a Labour Party election broadcast. Language and Literature 10(3):211–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, Michael (2005). Informalization in UK Party election broadcasts 1966–97. Language and Literature 14(1):65–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podesva, Robert J.; Reynolds, Jermay; Callier, Patrick; & Baptiste, Jessica (2015). Constraints on the social meaning of released /t/: A production and perception study of US politicians. Language Variation and Change 27(1):59–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podesva, Robert J.; Roberts;, Sarah J. & Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn (2006). Sharing resources and indexing meanings in the production of gay styles. In Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don (eds.), The language and sexuality reader, 141–50. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Purnell, Thomas; Raimy, Eric; & Salmons, Joseph (2009). Defining dialect, perceiving dialect, and new dialect formation: Sarah Palin's speech. Journal of English Linguistics 37(4):331–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schleef, Erik (2013a). Glottal replacement of /t/ in two British capitals: Effects of word frequency and morphological compositionality. Language Variation and Change 25(2):201–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schleef, Erik (2013b). Whose social meaning? Age and the indexical field: Evidence from perception and conversational style in Manchester. ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-4490. Swindon: ESRC.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23(3–4):193–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soukup, Barbara (2011). Austrian listeners’ perceptions of standard-dialect style-shifting: An empirical approach. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(3):347–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straw, Michelle, & Patrick, Peter L. (2007). Dialect acquisition of glottal variation in /t/: Barbadians in Ipswich. Language Sciences 29(2–3):385–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & Baayen, R. Harald (2012). Models, forests, and trees of York English: Was/were variation as a case study for statistical practice. Language Variation and Change 24(2):135–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Heuven, Walter J. B.; Mandera, Pawel; Keuleers, Emmanuel; & Brysbaert, Marc (2014). SUBTLEX-UK: A new and improved word frequency database for British English. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 67(6):1176–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wales, Katie (1996). Personal pronouns in present-day English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (1997). What's happening to Received Pronunciation? English Phonetics (English Phonetics Society Japan) 1:13–23.Google Scholar
Williams, Ann, & Kerswill, Paul (1999). Dialect levelling: Change and continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull. In Foulkes, Paul & Docherty, Gerard J. (eds.), Urban voices: Accent studies in the British Isles, 141–62. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth (ed.) (1989). Language, power and ideology: Studies in political discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar