LING20010 Chap.2 Style, Attention to Speech and Audience Design
Style, Attention to Speech and Audience Design
One speaker does not sound the same all day. This chapter covers style-shifting, the variation within a single person that follows changes in addressee, setting, goals and imposed tasks, and the three accounts the subject compares.
Labov explained style as attention to speech and built it into the sociolinguistic interview, moving speakers from casual talk to reading minimal pairs and finding more constricted r in New York as attention rose. Giles and Bell argued that style responds to listeners instead: audience design ranks addressees, auditors, overhearers and eavesdroppers by how far the speaker ratifies them, and even absent referees count.
Speaker design treats style as an active presentation of identity, illustrated by dialect performance and scripted call-centre talk. The chapter shows how to tell the accounts apart with evidence.
It also explains why style mattered to Labov's definition of a speech community: when every group shifts in the same direction as tasks grow more careful, the shared direction shows a shared evaluation of the variants, even where speakers cannot put their attitudes into words.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Intraspeaker variation and style-shifting
- 02
Labov's sociolinguistic interview
- 03
Attention to speech and triangulation
- 04
Bell's audience design and referee design
- 05
Speaker design and dialect performance
Worked example · free
Rank the listeners who shape a speaker's style
- 1The guest is known, ratified and addressed, so the guest is the addressee.
- 1The producer is known and ratified but not addressed, so the producer is an auditor.
- 1The noticed passer-by is not ratified but known to be there, so is an overhearer.
- 1The unnoticed cleaner is not ratified and not known about, so is an eavesdropper.
- 1Because influence is proportional to ratification, the guest shapes style most and the cleaner least.
Key terms
- Style-shifting
- Style-shifting is variation within one speaker's speech that follows changes in addressee, setting, goals or task.
- Triangulation
- Triangulation is the use of several independent tests to confirm a result and support its interpretation.
- Referee design
- Referee design is style-shifting influenced by people who are talked about but are not present.
- Dialect performance
- Dialect performance is the deliberate, exaggerated use of a dialect to make a social point, as in Schilling-Estes's Ocracoke speaker.
- Speaker design
- Speaker design is an approach that treats style as an active creation and presentation of the speaker's identity.
Style, Attention to Speech and Audience Design FAQ
What did Labov's sociolinguistic interview contain?
It moved a speaker through tasks needing different attention: reading minimal pairs, reading a word list, reading a passage and talking with the interviewer about life and experiences. That let him compare the same speaker across styles within one session.
Why did Giles criticise attention to speech?
Giles argued that social behaviour is seldom so egocentric. Speakers accommodate to the norms associated with the people they talk to, so shifts across styles may reflect the audience rather than how closely speakers monitor themselves.
How do the newsreader findings support audience design?
The same New Zealand readers read the same news on classical and popular stations yet pronounced the (t) in words like city differently. With the speaker and script held constant, the station's audience is the remaining explanation.
What is an auditor in audience design?
An auditor is a listener the speaker knows about and has accepted into the conversation but is not speaking to directly. In Bell's ranking auditors influence style less than addressees and more than overhearers or eavesdroppers.
Assessment move
Learn the three accounts as a comparison, not as three separate lists. For each, write what drives the shift, whether the speaker is reacting, responding or creating, and one lecture example. Then practise the most useful skill: given a style shift, name the evidence that would separate attention from audience. The answer is almost always a design that holds the task constant and changes the listener, or the reverse.
If your project involves style, use that logic when planning your settings, and build fillers into any word list so participants cannot guess the variable. Revisit the department-store survey as an example of triangulation, since it confirmed the interview results with a completely different method.
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