meaningful act) is enregistered with B (a register) by C (an agent) in terms of D (an ideological schema) because of E (an interactional exigency in which calling attention to the enregisterment of or enregistering one or more forms serves some rhetorical function) and F (a sociohistorical exigency that gives rise to metapragmatic practices). (Johnstone 2016, 633–634)
To give just one example from Johnstone’s article, a participant in an online forum about Pittsburghese said, ‘I gotta tell yunz I think the way we talk is neat.’ Yunz is a form heard in Pittsburgh which means ‘you‐plural.’ This linguistic form (A) is enregistered with Pittsburghese (B) by this forum participation (C) in terms of the ideology of local belonging (D) evoked in the context of the online discussion which evaluates the regional dialect (E) which has been stigmatized but is also a matter of pride for its speakers (F).
Another relevant concept in the study of such stylistic performances is that of entextualization (Bauman and Briggs 1990). In this process, a chunk of discourse, or a text, becomes bounded, recognizable and replicable, and can thus be taken out of context and used in other discursive contexts. This is also discussed in terms of intertextuality, which is the use of text from one source to shape the meaning of another text (Fairclough 1992).
Leppänen et al. (2014) discuss this as a key resource for the construction of identities in social media, a point also discussed by Akkaya (2014). Language users on social media use chunks of text from other contexts to create new meanings. A prime example of this is the use of memes (Huntington 2013). In this multimodal form of communication, pictures and videos are circulated with changes in text which construct ideological stances (Davison 2012). In many cases, a particular photo is always used with the same text. For example, in the ‘Am I a joke to you’ meme shown in Figure 2.1, there is a picture of a serious‐looking man with the text Am I a joke to you? at the bottom. This meme is used to humorously scold someone for not taking someone or something seriously enough. We see one use of this meme in Figure 2.1. Here, the meaning is clearly that the boy is lying and is ‘talking to’ (which in this context means flirting with, dating, etc.) other girls, but uses ‘swearing on his grandma’ to imply sincerity – and grandma in heaven accuses him of not taking her seriously. In this case, the meme can be interpreted without knowledge of past memes, as the text at the bottom makes the meaning explicit.
However, in some cases the picture in a meme is so well known it is used without text; in this case knowing the text which usually goes with the picture is necessary to interpret the meme. An example of this with this same meme is given in Figure 2.2. Here the joke is about the lack of subtitles, with in this case the subtitles being the entity which is complaining about not being taken seriously.
In some cases, pictures from popular media, such as films, are used in such a way that the meaning is linked to the original text, which is not given in the meme; thus the meaning is derived from knowledge of the original source. An example of how meaning is tied to the entextualization of the picture can be found in the ‘Is this a pigeon?’ meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/is‐this‐a‐pigeon). This picture, taken from a Japanese anime TV series, shows a man holding up one hand and gesturing toward a butterfly; the original text was Is this a pigeon? The answer to this question is clearly no, and from this the meaning of this meme to indicate misunderstanding and confusion is derived. When other text is superimposed upon this picture, the same relationship between what the man represents and what the butterfly represents holds: the man is misidentifying the butterfly, and the answer to the question at the bottom is ‘no.’ For example, in one meme the man is labeled depressed White guys and the butterfly White supremacist propaganda and the question at the bottom is, Is this a sense of belonging? The message here is that while depressed White guys may think White supremacism will give them a sense of belonging, it will (or perhaps should) not.
Figure 2.1 ‘Am I a joke to you’ meme.
Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1425673‐am‐i‐a‐joke‐to‐you
Figure 2.2 ‘Am I a joke to you’ meme without subtitles.
Source: https://meme.xyz/meme/42875&nomobileview=1
The larger social functions of meanings are multiple; as in this last example, memes can also be used to make socially critical and political statements (see also Piata 2016 for an analysis of Greek political campaigns). However, it should also be noted that there is research which describes the social meanings of memes as largely phatic (Varis and Blommaert 2015; Laineste and Voolaid 2017). In other words, the social work done by memes is entertainment and the creation of connection based on shared cultural knowledge.
Chapter Summary
What is the relationship between a language and a dialect? This chapter seeks to acknowledge many nonlinguists’ perceptions about this issue while presenting the sociolinguists’ stance that particular ways of speaking are considered distinct languages or subordinated dialects because of sociopolitical ideologies and identities, not because of linguistic differences between varieties. While a ‘language’ is considered an overarching category containing dialects, it is also often seen as synonymous with the standardized dialect; yet closer examination of the standard reveals that it is a value‐laden abstraction, not an objectively defined linguistic variety. Further, every language has a range of regional dialects and social dialects, which develop due to social belonging as well as social stratification in linguistic communities. We also introduce some ideas about how these different varieties are used to create social meanings, looking at the processes of indexicality, enregisterment, and entextualization. These interrelated concepts are discussed and defined with a focus on how they are part of language users’ identities and social interactions.
Exercises
1 Read the article from The Independent titled ‘God save the Queen’s English: Our language is under threat from ignorance, inverted snobbery, and deliberate “dumbing down”.’ (You can find this in the links listed for this chapter on the website for this textbook.) Find evidence of the following aspects of the ‘standard language myth’ referred to in this chapter, notably:the standard as natural, as evidenced by its widespread use;the link between the standard and the heritage and identity of its users;the standard as linguistically superior;the standard as a clearly defined variety with recognizable features.
2 Find an internet meme and discuss it in terms of indexicality and entextualization. Define these terms and how they apply to the meme. What meaning is intended to be derived from the meme, or is it ambiguous? How is meaning derived by the viewer? What is the larger context of the use of the meme and how does this influence its interpretation?
3 Representing dialect. Find a novel that portrays AAVE speakers, such as the more recently published The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas or classics such as The Color Purple (Alice Walker) or Their Eyes Were Watching
