Multidimensional Identity as Bricolage: Indexing Race and Place in Bakersfield, California
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| Title: | Multidimensional Identity as Bricolage: Indexing Race and Place in Bakersfield, California |
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| Authors: | Sharese King, J. Calder |
| Source: | American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage. 100:307-338 |
| Publisher Information: | Duke University Press, 2025. |
| Publication Year: | 2025 |
| Subject Terms: | 0602 languages and literature, 05 social sciences, 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences, 06 humanities and the arts, 10. No inequality |
| Description: | While traditional variationist research has been critiqued for positioning ethnic and regional variation in terms of separate “lects,” recent work has adopted a more nuanced view in which racialized subjects can combine individual linguistic resources to index multiple identities. Expanding upon this perspective, this article explores how 12 African Americans in Bakersfield, California, combine elements of a local variety, the California Vowel Shift (CVS), and elements of a racialized variety, African American Language (AAL), via their realization of /u/-fronting, /æ/-backing, and the /A/-/O/ merger. While African Americans front /u/ and increasingly back /æ/ over time, as predicted by the CVS, they maintain a /A/-/O/ distinction, a pattern in line with descriptions of AAL. These patterns, which do not mirror either the CVS or AAL in a wholesale way, align with the aforementioned perspective describing the linguistic practices of racialized individuals as a fluid linguistic repertoire in which individual variables can be leveraged to articulate identity in complex ways. Relatedly, conversations in gender and linguistics have used bricolage as a theoretical framework to describe a similar phenomenon. Bridging these disciplinary conversations, it is argued that through stylistic bricolage, speakers draw from a fluid linguistic repertoire to articulate their identities as multidimensional. |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| ISSN: | 1527-2133 0003-1283 |
| DOI: | 10.1215/00031283-11466578 |
| Accession Number: | edsair.doi...........a11eb23cf59dac4054a0b549e34ab2aa |
| Database: | OpenAIRE |
Nájsť tento článok vo Web of Science | Abstract: | While traditional variationist research has been critiqued for positioning ethnic and regional variation in terms of separate “lects,” recent work has adopted a more nuanced view in which racialized subjects can combine individual linguistic resources to index multiple identities. Expanding upon this perspective, this article explores how 12 African Americans in Bakersfield, California, combine elements of a local variety, the California Vowel Shift (CVS), and elements of a racialized variety, African American Language (AAL), via their realization of /u/-fronting, /æ/-backing, and the /A/-/O/ merger. While African Americans front /u/ and increasingly back /æ/ over time, as predicted by the CVS, they maintain a /A/-/O/ distinction, a pattern in line with descriptions of AAL. These patterns, which do not mirror either the CVS or AAL in a wholesale way, align with the aforementioned perspective describing the linguistic practices of racialized individuals as a fluid linguistic repertoire in which individual variables can be leveraged to articulate identity in complex ways. Relatedly, conversations in gender and linguistics have used bricolage as a theoretical framework to describe a similar phenomenon. Bridging these disciplinary conversations, it is argued that through stylistic bricolage, speakers draw from a fluid linguistic repertoire to articulate their identities as multidimensional. |
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| ISSN: | 15272133 00031283 |
| DOI: | 10.1215/00031283-11466578 |