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Sociolinguistics and the social sciences more generally tend to
take an interest in norms as central to social life. The importance
of norms is easily discernible in the sociolinguistic canon, for
instance in Labov's definition of the speech community as
'participation in a set of shared norms' and Hymes' concepts of
'norms of interaction' and 'norms of interpretation'. Yet, while
the notion of norms may play a central role in sociolinguistic
theory, there is little explicit theoretical work around the notion
of norms itself within the discipline. Instead, norms tend to be
treated as conceptual primes - convenient building blocks,
ready-made for sociolinguistic theorizing - rather than theoretical
constructs in need of reflexive attention. The aim of this book is
to assess and advance current understandings of norms as a
theoretical construct and empirical object of research in the study
of language in social life. The contributors approach the topic
from a range of complementary disciplinary perspectives, including
sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, EM/CA, socio-cognitive
linguistics and pragmatics, to provide a multifaceted view of norms
as a central concept in the study of language in social life.
When talk circulates through technological media - through
television or radio and through the activities they support, like
the dissemination of news, product advertising or entertainment -
it takes on distinctive characteristics, functions and styles. The
talking media have developed their own ways of styling individuals
(often as celebrities of different types, but also as 'ordinary
people'), and ways of styling relationships (such as constructing
informality or trust or authority). Media also style their own ways
of communicating (how to read the news, how to conduct interviews,
how to entertain or educate others, and so on). Media invest
heavily in style and styling, drawing on semiotic modes well beyond
speech itself. 'Style' therefore needs to be theorised carefully in
sociolinguistics and neighbouring disciplines. Episodes and
fragments of mediated styles commonly take on new lives when they
are re-circulated via interactive 'new' media platforms. Style
therefore points to both stability, where ways of speaking and ways
of being have become culturally familiar, and to instability, in
the talking media's persistent dynamic reworking of stylistic
norms. This book explores a wide range of normative structures and
creative media processes of this sort, in many different national
contexts and in different languages. The globalised world is
already massively mediatised - what we know about language, people
and society is necessarily shaped through our engagement with
media. But talking media are caught up in wider currents of rapid
change too. Creative innovations in media styling can heighten our
reflexive awareness, but they can also unsettle our existing
understandings of language-society relations. In reporting new
investigations by expert researchers, situated in relation to
relevant theory, the book gives an original and timely account of
how style, media and change need to be integrated further to
advance the discipline of sociolinguistics.
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