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‘Nobody canna cross it’: language-ideological dimensions of hypercorrect speech in Jamaica1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2015

AXEL BOHMANN
AXEL BOHMANN*
Affiliation:
Department of English, The University of Texas at Austin, Mailcode B5000, Austin, TX 78712USAaxel.bohmann@mail.utexas.edu
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Abstract

The concept of speaky-spoky, a pejorative label for hypercorrect speech in Jamaica, has thus far been described in the context of shared speech community norms (Patrick 1999). In this article, I analyze a stretch of speaky-spoky discourse and its recontextualization. The theoretical perspectives from which the data are examined are that of the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert 2010) and of entextualization (Bauman & Briggs 1990; Silverstein & Urban 1996). The method of analysis draws on Goffman's writing on frames (1974) and production formats (1981). I argue that the ideological dimensions and interactional versatility of the speaky-spoky concept have thus far not received enough empirical attention. To address this gap, I propose to interpret speaky-spoky as a dynamic and relational ‘construct resource’ (Fabricius & Mortensen 2013) that speakers draw upon to highlight social meaning in interaction.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 129 - 152
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

1

A preliminary version of this article was awarded the 2013 Richard M. Hogg Prize by the International Society for the Linguistics of English. I am grateful to my MA supervisors at the University of Texas at Austin, Ian Hancock and Lars Hinrichs, for their guidance and suggestions. Anne Fabricius and Janus Mortensen kindly shared an early draft of their work on construct resources and allowed me to discuss their ideas with them in personal communication. Michael Westphal and Byron Jones gave invaluable support in transcribing and interpreting the data. Finally, I would like to thank Bernd Kortmann, Christian Mair and the anonymous reviewers for both the Hogg Prize committee and English Language and Linguistics for insightful comments on earlier drafts of the present article. All remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

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