Scott Kiesling

Stance and stancetaking are considered here as related concepts that help to explain the patterni... more Stance and stancetaking are considered here as related concepts that help to explain the patterning of language and the motivations for the use of lexical items, constructions, and discourse markers. I begin with a discussion of how stance can be used in variation analysis to help explain the patterning of variables and directions of change, and how stance is central in any understanding of the indexicality of sociolinguistic variables. I then provide a discussion of several approaches to theorizing stance and explicate a stance model that combines a number of these approaches, arguing that such a model should include three dimensions: evaluation, alignment, and investment. Finally, I outline several ways that stance has been operationalized in quantitative analyses, including analyses based on the model outlined.

format_quoteAnalysis of the term 'dude' reveals it indexes 'cool solidarity' and specific masculine identities, illustrating the intertwining of stance and social identity.format_quote

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Language, Gender, and Sexuality: An Introduction

Language, Gender, and Sexuality offers a panoramic and accessible introduction to the ways in whi... more Language, Gender, and Sexuality offers a panoramic and accessible introduction to the ways in which linguistic patterns are sensitive to social categories of gender and sexuality, as well as an overview of how speakers use language to create and display gender and sexuality. This book includes discussions of trans/non-binary/genderqueer identities, embodiment, new media, and the role of language and interaction in sexual harassment, assault, and rape. Drawing on an international range of examples to illustrate key points, this book addresses the questions of:

how language categorizes the gender/sexuality world in both grammar and interaction;

how speakers display, create, and orient to gender, sexuality, and desire in interaction;

how and why people display different ways of speaking based on their gender/sexual identities.

Aimed at students with no background in linguistics or gender studies, this book is essential reading for anyone studying language, gender, and sexuality for the first time.

Linguistic Variation and Change

The study of variation and change is at the heart of the sociolinguistics. Providing a wide surve... more The study of variation and change is at the heart of the sociolinguistics. Providing a wide survey of the field, this textbook is organised around three constraints on variation: linguistic structure, social structure and identity, and social and linguistic perception. By considering both structure and meaning, Scott F. Kiesling examines the most important issues surrounding variation theory, including canonical studies and terms as well as challenges to them. Research in non-English and non-European contexts is also addressed.

A range of different topics within sociolinguistics is covered including:

The linguistic variable and its status
Sociolinguistic methods
The description of variable patterns
Linguistic and social structure
Social meaning and perception.

With over 50 figures and a practical section on methodology, this textbook is an ideal solution for undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociolinguistics seeking a comprehensive study of variation and change.

Papers by Scott Kiesling

The Gay Voice and Brospeak

Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, 2018

Taking Elinor Ochs's (1992) notion of indirect indexicality as a starting point, this chapter exp... more Taking Elinor Ochs's (1992) notion of indirect indexicality as a starting point, this chapter explores the significance of stance for studies of sexuality. Stance helps organize identity registers and is thus central in the creation and display of sexuality. After defining stance and reviewing ways in which it has been used in studies of language and sexuality, the chapter analyzes representations of two sexual identity registers: a “gay voice” homosexual identity and a “brospeak” heterosexual identity. The analysis reveals how these representations are based on different configurations of stances that in turn constitute the differential enregisterment of personae or characterological figures. The chapter concludes with an outline of the ways that the concept of stance may be used in further research, especially with respect to the analysis of sexuality in interaction.

format_quoteThe 'gay voice' showcases linguistic features linked to specific stances, helping define gay identity in sociolinguistic contexts.format_quote

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Indexicality and Experience: Variation and Identity in Pittsburgh

In this paper we test the hypothesis that monophthongal /aw/ is semiotically associated with loca... more In this paper we test the hypothesis that monophthongal /aw/ is semiotically associated with local identity in Pittsburgh. We compare results of an experimental task that directly elicits participants' sense of the indexical value of /aw/-monophthongization with the occurrence of this variant in the same people's speech. People who hear monophthongal /aw/ as an index of localness are unlikely to have this feature in their own speech, and many of the people who do monophthongize /aw/ do not associate this variant with localness. Exploring how four of these participants talk about this feature and its meanings, we show that the indexical meanings of speech features can vary widely within a community, and we illustrate the danger of confusing the meaning assigned by hearers to a linguistic form with the meaning users would assign to it. We suggest that a phenomenological approach, attending to the multiplicity and indeterminacy of indexical relations and to how such relations arise historically and in lived experience, can lead to a more nuanced account of the distribution of social meanings of variant forms than can studies of perception or production alone.

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Operationalizing Stance as an Independent Variable

So-called third wave variationist studies have recently focused attention on how social meanings ... more So-called third wave variationist studies have recently focused attention on how social meanings become associated with sociolinguistic variants. Similarly, stance is a concept that has been invoked to link local, or micro, analysis with more global, macro patterns of variation and change (for example, Kiesling 2005). In this paper we demonstrate that stance can be operationalized in order to discover reliable patterns of variation use.

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Homosociality in Men ' s Talk : Balancing and Recreating Cultural Discourses of Masculinity

This paper explores how a group of men in the United States creates homosocial (as opposed to hom... more This paper explores how a group of men in the United States creates homosocial (as opposed to homosexual) desire through language. In a society in which dominant Discourses of masculinity provide competing scripts of male solidarity and heterosexuality, the achievement of closeness among men is not straightforward, but must be negotiated through other “indirect” means. However, in favorable speech events, the men do express homosociality overtly, and at times use linguistic features which have been more closely identified with “women's styles” of interaction. The paper shows how men actively negotiate dominant cultural Discourses in their everyday interactions. In addition, it argues for a view of indirectness based on social function as much as denotation.*

format_quoteIndirect communication among men redefines social significance, transforming typical insults into bonds of connection.format_quote

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Youtube Yinzers: Stancetaking and the performance of 'Pittsburghese

Work on dialect performance and enregisterment has shown that when dialects are performed it is o... more Work on dialect performance and enregisterment has shown that when dialects are performed it is often through the enactment or indexing of particular enregistered characterological figures and personae. I expand this view by showing that one linguistic feature of “Pittsburghese” is used to create stances that are enregistered along with the characterological figures in this vernacular variety of English. Falling question intonation (FQI) is a common feature of the White Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania variety. I analyze its use in a series of videos posted on YouTube® entitled Greg and Donny. The series depicts conversations among the two eponymous characters and their friends in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. LQI is used by them to take stances that serve to mock the addressee while simultaneously aligning with them, a stance that is typical of working class Pittsburghers. Stance is thus crucial for understanding both the enregistered figures and the use of LQI in Western Pennsylvania.

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Masculine stances and the linguistics of affect: on masculine ease

NORMA, 2018

The connections between sociolinguistic conceptions of stance and the notion of affect are explor... more The connections between sociolinguistic conceptions of stance and the notion of affect are explored. After an explication of sociolinguistic theory, a view of stance based on three dimensions of evaluation, investment, and alignment is articulated. It is argued that low investment stances are connected to masculinity, and through that to a wider affect of 'masculine ease.' ARTICLE HISTORY

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Interactional Stancetaking in Online Forums

Computational Linguistics, 2018

Language is shaped by the relationships between the speaker/writer and the audience, the object o... more Language is shaped by the relationships between the speaker/writer and the audience, the object of discussion, and the talk itself. In turn, language is used to reshape these relationships over the course of an interaction. Computational researchers have succeeded in operationalizing sentiment, formality, and politeness, but each of these constructs captures only some aspects of social and relational meaning. Theories of interactional stancetaking have been put forward as holistic accounts, but until now, these theories have been applied only through detailed qualitative analysis of (portions of) a few individual conversations. In this article, we propose a new computational operationalization of interpersonal stancetaking. We begin with annotations of three linked stance dimensions—affect, investment, and alignment—on 68 conversation threads from the online platform Reddit. Using these annotations, we investigate thread structure and linguistic properties of stancetaking in online ...

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A Multidimensional Lexicon for Interpersonal Stancetaking

Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), 2017

The sociolinguistic construct of stancetaking describes the activities through which discourse pa... more The sociolinguistic construct of stancetaking describes the activities through which discourse participants create and signal relationships to their interlocutors, to the topic of discussion, and to the talk itself. Stancetaking underlies a wide range of interactional phenomena, relating to formality, politeness, affect, and subjectivity. We present a computational approach to stancetaking, in which we build a theoretically-motivated lexicon of stance markers, and then use multidimensional analysis to identify a set of underlying stance dimensions. We validate these dimensions intrinsically and extrinsically, showing that they are internally coherent, match pre-registered hypotheses, and correlate with social phenomena.

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Abstract The Buckeye corpus of conversational speech: labeling conventions and a test of transcriber reliability

This paper describes the Buckeye corpus of spontaneous American English speech, a 307,000-word co... more This paper describes the Buckeye corpus of spontaneous American English speech, a 307,000-word corpus containing the speech of 40 talkers from central Ohio, USA. The method used to elicit and record the speech is described, followed by a description of the protocol that was developed to phonemically label what talkers said. The results of a test of labeling consistency are then presented. The corpus will be made available to the scientific community when labeling is completed.

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Why does informed consent fail? A discourse analytic approach

The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 2009

Informed consent often fails to meet the intended goals that a prospective subject should underst... more Informed consent often fails to meet the intended goals that a prospective subject should understand fully and choose autonomously to participate in research. The current study is an attempt to understand such failures by applying linguistic methods of discourse analysis to the transcripts of informed consent interviews. Elements of conversation and of the frame of discourse were analyzed to understand how the participants shaped their spoken interaction during the interview. We looked at the degree to which the subject appeared to be fully informed, at the problem of therapeutic misconception, and at the degree to which the subject was helped to explore concerns relevant to the choice at hand. We found that lapses or miscommunications could be understood specifically in terms of conversational elements and framing. This kind of detailed, language-based analysis is an alternative to approaches that are more abstract and inferential, such as those that are based upon the attitudes or...

format_quoteMutual attentiveness and dialogue richness create an atmosphere where essential information about side effects is shared in informed consent.format_quote

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Men's identities and patterns of variation

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Pittsburgh Speech and Pittsburghese

Speaking Pittsburghese

Linguists have sporadically noted peculiarities of pronunciation, lexis and morphosyntax in the s... more Linguists have sporadically noted peculiarities of pronunciation, lexis and morphosyntax in the speech of European Americans in the Pittsburgh area, and Pittsburgh speech, locally known as “Pittsburghese”, has been a topic of discussion in the Pittsburgh area for decades. This variety has never before been systematically documented, however. The first and only scholarly book to describe Pittsburgh-area varieties of English, Pittsburgh Speech and Pittsburghese is an essential reference tool for anyone studying the dialect of the Pittsburgh area and the only textbook choice for anyone teaching about it.

Australia's Many Voices: Australian English ? The National Language by Gerhard Leitner. Australia's Many Voices: Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous Languages and Migrant Languages. Policy and Education by Gerhard Leitner

World Englishes, 2007

Jack Sidnell, Talk and practical epistemology: The social life of knowledge in a Caribbean community. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. xv, 255. Hb $173

Language in Society, 2009

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Cues to gender in children’s speech

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2004

ABSTRACT Awareness of one&#39;s own gender emerges around 3 years and awareness that gender s... more ABSTRACT Awareness of one&#39;s own gender emerges around 3 years and awareness that gender stays stable throughout life is evident by 4 years (Bee, 1998). This suggests that by 4 years of age, noticeable gender differences may emerge along a number of dimensions. The hypothesis tested here is that adults are able to identify the gender of 4-year-olds by voice quality alone. Sixteen four-year-olds were recorded saying the alphabet. Small portions of each recording were excised, and played to 40 adults. Adults were asked to identify the gender of the speaker. Subjects were able to correctly identify the gender of the child more often than chance. However, in the cases where a child&#39;s gender was incorrectly identified, pitch did not play a significant role. Rather, it appears that formant structure is the best predictor (although not perfect), of how a child&#39;s gender will be judged by voice (Perry, 2001). These results have important implications for our understanding of the linguistic cues that listeners use to identify the gender of speakers; they must be relying on phonetic cues that are much more subtle than gross pitch, lexical, phonological, or syntactic differences which are the usual provisions of language and gender research.

Introduction: Rethinking indirection and the indexical cycle

Journal of Pragmatics, 2010

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The interactional construction of desire as gender

Gender and Language, 2011

Abstract Recently there have been spirited debates about the role of desire in the study of langu... more Abstract Recently there have been spirited debates about the role of desire in the study of language, gender and sexuality–debates largely centred around the publication of Cameron and Kulick&amp;#x27;s (2003) volume, Language and Sexuality. In the present paper, I address two important questions arising from this debate: defining evidence of desire in interaction, and the relationship of this &amp;#x27;interactional desire&amp;#x27;to gender and masculinities more specifically. First, I argue for a definition of desire that goes beyond sexual desire, in a direction ...

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