Abstract
This article illustrates how, in a Web 2.0 environment, narrative ways of knowing circulate and disseminate indexical value associated with performances of accent. We compare the information-storing and -sharing functions of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, making an analogy between these two conceptualizations of the Internet and Jerome Bruner’s two different modes of knowing in his (1986) book Actual minds, possible worlds: logico-scientific and narrative. Just as analyses of Web 2.0 discourse highlight collaborative construction, dissemination, and uptake of information, analysis of narrative illuminates the accrual of sociocultural meaning in collaboratively constructed stories. We use discourse and narrative analytic methods to investigate the social indexicality of “accent” in a corpus of Philadelphia Accent Challenge YouTube videos (and the associated comment sections), and we illustrate how indexical value accrues via the snowballing of reflexive metacommentary in the form of narratives about these accent performances. We argue that discourse in Web 2.0 affords narrative ways of recirculating certain emblematic features of accent. This perspective on analyzing YouTube video-based accent data illuminates the value of YouTube accent performances as a source of linguistic anthropological and narrative insight, and narrative modes of knowing as a means of circulating language ideological discourse via Internet-based participatory culture.
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Appendix. Publicly available YouTube video information
| Username | Video URL | Year posted | Views (6/2016) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1RedFox2 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLntYYSn9AU | 2013 | 4,390 |
| ELLONERANG3R | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EP4VD-jyWM | 2012 | 2,031 |
| felicianunezz | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0z53948Is4 | 2013 | 2,260 |
| lpbmoney321 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmQlBvyEoYI | 2012 | 428 |
| Old Mahomies | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYy2VRi2caM | 2013 | 5,716 |
| thethugyone | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXt1fHZIHtk | 2013 | 5,642 |
| Whittany Mackey | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOvmgV_nvxQ | 2013 | 3,114 |
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Lifestyle residents in Barcelona: a biographical perspective on linguistic repertoires, identity narrative and transnational mobility
- Exploring the interplay of narrative and ethnography: A critical sociolinguistic approach to migrant stories of dis/emplacement
- “No-one told me it would all be in Catalan!” – narratives and language ideologies in the Latin American community at school
- Narrative circulation, disputed transformations, and bilingual appropriations at a public school “somewhere in La Mancha”
- Circulation and localization of a transnational founding story in a social movement
- YouTube-based accent challenge narratives: Web 2.0 as a context for studying the social value of accent
- Afterword
- Book Review
- Ana María Relaño Pastor: Shame and pride in narrative: Mexican women’s language experiences at the U.S.-Mexico border
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Lifestyle residents in Barcelona: a biographical perspective on linguistic repertoires, identity narrative and transnational mobility
- Exploring the interplay of narrative and ethnography: A critical sociolinguistic approach to migrant stories of dis/emplacement
- “No-one told me it would all be in Catalan!” – narratives and language ideologies in the Latin American community at school
- Narrative circulation, disputed transformations, and bilingual appropriations at a public school “somewhere in La Mancha”
- Circulation and localization of a transnational founding story in a social movement
- YouTube-based accent challenge narratives: Web 2.0 as a context for studying the social value of accent
- Afterword
- Book Review
- Ana María Relaño Pastor: Shame and pride in narrative: Mexican women’s language experiences at the U.S.-Mexico border