6: Gender and Sociolinguistic Variation, Penelope Eckert – Flashcards

- very far away from standard pronunciation easier to tell where a person is from when they use this form - flavor of community - evokes solidarity among community members

- hard to tell where a person is from more MMC + - hard to find local identity of a person using this

- As people move higher up the socio-economic hierarchy, they produce an increasing amount of standard pronunciations

Belten High School

1. Jocks - college-bound students/ participate enthusiastically in school, in the extracurricular sphere, - middle class culture orientated to the global market career bound, engaged in institutional enterprise

2. Burn-outs - blue-collar workplace - working-class culture - engage in school's downplayed vocational curriculum - minimizing their time in school in favor of independent engagement in the local and urban scene

- in the middle of both jocks and burn-outs and describe themselves in relation to these categories

-through a broad range of symbolic means from territory to clothing, hairdo, substance use, musical taste, friendship patterns

-the transition from parents' class to one's own community begins in school/ = articulated through one's forms of participation in school - jocks and burn-outs constitute communities of practice based in v. different (and class-based) responses to the school institution

guys - just as women are marginalized in the marketplace, so are girls marginalized in the adolescent marketplace - boys' actions and roles define the jock and burnout categories just as mens' actions and occupations are defining of the adult professional and blue collar worlds

- the relationship between female jocks and burnouts is a relation of opposition - the relation between male jocks and burnouts is more one of competition around physical prowness

- does not have a simple answer the girls describe the overall envelope of variation in the community - Burn out girls are the most advanced speakers in the community overall - Jock girls are the most conservative/ if not marginally more conservative than the jock boys

- men control material capital - women are constrained to accumulate symbolic capital While men develop a sense of themselves and find a place in the world on the basis of their actions and abilities... women have to focus on the production of selves to develop authority through a continual proof of worthiness