Lingustic Decisions

Introduction:

Every time an individual formulates an utterance, a series of linguistic decisions have to be made regarding its content and vocal delivery. The decisions, which may or may not be made consciously, to choose some options over alternatives can have special sociolinguistic significance, if the variant selected has certain semantic associations. The choices an individual makes can be regarded as their linguistic style, with it being generally expected that one’s selections will be fairly consistent each time they encounter a specific context. However, it has been noted that speakers may vary their speech in accordance with a change in situation, and this process has been labelled ‘style-shifting’. Labov defines this as “any consistent change in linguistic forms used by a speaker… that can be associated with a change in topics, participants, channel, or the broader social context” (1984:29) Detailed reasons why this phenomenon occurs are not universally agreed upon, and I will be discussing three of the most commonly cited theories which try to explain it, namely the ‘Attention to Speech’, ‘Audience Design’ and ‘Speaker Design’ models.

Attention to Speech

One explanation for the variation is that people use different styles of speech when they change how much they are focussing on their language. This is the view held by Labov, who said that styles “can be ranged along a single dimension, measured by the amount of attention paid to the speech” (1972:208). An individual’s natural style is the vernacular, where concentration on the words they are using is minimal, and this is generally found in informal contexts. It will also be the most structured and easy-to-use form, as it is the speech style most commonly deployed by t...

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