Insults or Acts of Identity? The Role of Stylization in Multilingual Discourse
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Christina Higgins
Abstract
This article discusses how stylization sheds light on the role of authenticity as an increasingly relevant concept in sociolinguistics. Building on research on style, crossing, and mock language use, the article demonstrates how multilingual stylization provides speakers with a wider range of resources for navigating and negotiating borders and identities. Stylization is increasingly important since modernist linkages between language and the categories of nation and ethnicity still exert authority over how authenticity is ascribed. At the same time, transcultural flows offer speakers more opportunity to cross and challenge borders linguistically. When speakers begin to stylize one another’s languages, however, the thorny issue of interpretation arises since stylized speech can be understood as mocking the speakers of the language being stylized. While studies of dialect stylization have explored these issues for over a decade, research on multilingual stylization is less developed. Accordingly, this special issue examines the role that authenticity plays in the production and interpretation of stylization. A continuum of stylization is presented that places mocking on one end (to refer to stylization that leads to insult) and style on the other (to represent acts of identity), while keeping open the possibility that all acts of stylization can ultimately be understood as acts of identity, given the right framings and stances expressed by the speakers.
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©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Insults or Acts of Identity? The Role of Stylization in Multilingual Discourse
- “Mista, Are You in a Good Mood?”: Stylization to Negotiate Interaction in an Urban Hawai’i Classroom
- Talking with Abuelo: Performing Authenticity in a Multicultural, Multisited Family
- Stylizing Voices, Stances, and Identities Related to Medium of Education in India
- Stylizing Dialects and Restructuring the Nation of Nepal in Stand-Up Comedy
- “Cool” English: Stylized Native-Speaker English in Japanese Television Shows
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Insults or Acts of Identity? The Role of Stylization in Multilingual Discourse
- “Mista, Are You in a Good Mood?”: Stylization to Negotiate Interaction in an Urban Hawai’i Classroom
- Talking with Abuelo: Performing Authenticity in a Multicultural, Multisited Family
- Stylizing Voices, Stances, and Identities Related to Medium of Education in India
- Stylizing Dialects and Restructuring the Nation of Nepal in Stand-Up Comedy
- “Cool” English: Stylized Native-Speaker English in Japanese Television Shows
