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ABSTRACT
This research delves into how gender, age, ethnicity, social network, socioeconomic status, and other social factors
impact language choices regarding style. This is called style variation, when people's speech patterns, dialects, and
registers change based on social circumstances. Vocabulary is a powerful tool for self-expression and group
identification, and this analysis shows how people change their vocabulary to fit in or stand out from their social
circles. How prevailing social standards impact linguistic prestige and stigmatization is one area that the article delves
into, as does the impact of power dynamics and social stratification on language patterns more generally. The study
shows how language is a social identity marker that reflects larger social structures and interactions through case
studies and sociolinguistic research. The results indicate that differences in style are not static but depend on the
surrounding environment. They are an integral part of society and lighten the relationship between language, culture,
and personal identity.
KEYWORDS
Gender, age, ethnicity, social network, socioeconomic status.
INTRODUCTION
In ordinary life, we use language to convey meaning
but also to evoke and maintain particular social
relationships and identities. As linguistic variation,
language style figures at the meeting point between
utility and preference, between language and social
life. This essay takes a close look at the social meaning
Research Article
SOCIAL FACTORS AFFECTING STYLE VARIATION
Submission Date:
Aug 16, 2024,
Accepted Date:
Aug 21, 2024,
Published Date:
Aug 26, 2024
Crossref doi:
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajsshr/Volume04Issue08-17
Dhuha Fadhil Abbas
University of Babylon, College of Education for Humanities, Department of English Language, Iraq
Journal
Website:
https://theusajournals.
com/index.php/ajsshr
Copyright:
Original
content from this work
may be used under the
terms of the creative
commons
attributes
4.0 licence.
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of stylistic variation, an area of linguistic study that has
captured a significant amount of attention in the last
twenty-five years. Our particular emphasis here is the
development and consequences of the conjunction of
linguistic style with the central categories of social
identity: gender, age, and social class. How are these
categories indexed in style? What does that tell us
about the organization of social life and the relation of
language to social structure and social change?
In the next section, we will survey some of the social
factors that influence linguistic style in English, in the
service of providing a rough sample of the state of the
art in variationist sociolinguistics as of the year 2000.
After that, we will move into a few case studies to
explore some ways in which language variation
actually works. Throughout the piece, we will lean
towards a more definitional approach, assuming that
style constitutes one of several levels of variation in
which language might be documented
—
in ascending
order along a drilldown from language to dialect,
register, style, and idiolect. There comes a jacket
(register) on the globe (language) (Coverdale's version
and Tyndale's 1526).
Definition of Style Variation
One of the issues in sociolinguistics is style variation.
The main concern of scholars working in this area is the
factors that affect style variation. It may be thought,
however, that determining the style in question is a
more significant issue than analyzing the determinants
of it. Although this idea seems plausible, one should
recognize how style is being used in social life as a first
step to make the concept more accurate. In language
and society, style generally refers to how language
changes according to the participants, the purpose of
communication, and the intent. Style also plays an
important role in providing respect, solidarity, or
status. Mullany and White therefore point out that the
concept of style is naturally relative to the situation.
The situation is not the only factor that sets off style
differences. There are a lot of social factors that need
to be considered. Accordingly, Labov introduces the
first consistent explanation of style behind the
linguistic difference. Labov (1972; cited in Holmes,
2001) defines style as the selection between two
known genres: formal style which we use to speak
judgmentally, and casual style used to speak things
that are suggested in casual usage. Holmes (2001)
states that people usually code-switch between
informal and formal styles. The informal style covers
casual vs. careful and scripted vs. spoken styles. The
formal style includes matters of etiquette and register.
Costume plays a great role in style coding. Other style
indicators are location, subjects as well as a
combination of these main variables.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
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Stylistic choices have often been argued to be socially
constructed and evaluated with reference to social
categories, such as those related to gender, socio-
economic class, age, or ethnic group. In this regard,
Tagliamonte noted, "as human social beings, we
construct our identities through socially constructed
differences in speech, dress, religion, food, etc", and
sociolinguists
have
predicted
and
observed
consequently that social factors should correlate with
stylistic variation. In this vein, this paper will argue that
speakers may also be motivated to make stylistic
choices which appear to others as stranger by
affiliation with style-innovators who use these features
as regular variants
–
thus also affiliating with the same
version of social identity as the style-innovators.
The paper analyses stylized lexical and lexical variation
in the talk show host interviewees in the early years of
the two Oliver films, as a case of show-stylization
where guests select lexical variants 'like the style
innovators in the show-world, and... ooze such variants
in their talk, mixing more or less genuinely
spontaneous showspeak, conv-show anagrams and
highlights of their specialist professional lexis less likely
to be developed beyond exclusive one-off status'. The
results generally support the SREL approach more than
the account based on style-innovator-stranger-
affiliations. SREL-affiliates' verbasization and poly-
twosomes usually occur on the row on the end of the
film comparable spots more frequently than
unaffiliates, and other stylized popular forms, such as
non-verbal token of turns and lexis, especially nick-
names, other show-world English and transcripts.
Social Identity Theory
Social Identity Theory (SIT) is premised upon the idea
that individuals develop and preserve their self-
concepts with reference to their memberships in social
groups and, crucially, that the value of "in-group"
membership is systematically preferred to "out-group"
membership. Members of an in-group are perceived to
share important characteristics with them - such as
nationality, religion, age, language, occupation, or
gender - whilst members of out-groups are perceived
to be different from them in some important aspect
(e.g. racism - based upon skin colour). Crucially, group
membership and how this is defined is salient;
demonstrating inter-subjective agreement within and
across groups.
Social Identity Theory posits that such group
membership represents a distinct form of self-identity
and has important consequences. Critically, SIT allows
us to talk about identity without resorting to
categorization; rather, it can be understood as a
psychological transformation, whereby the social
identity takes on cognitive primacy, having an impact
on the way we internalize our sense of self. We adopt
aspects of the identity of our in-group members as our
own and consequently use the indices of that social
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identity to locate, recognize, distinguish, and relate to
ourselves and others. As a central feature of SIT, style
is therefore considered not just as a reflection of
individual autonomy but rather as firmly rooted in
social identity. Homophily within groups means that
individuals are more similar to their groups than they
are to those who are not members of their groups,
with writing "we shape our self to fit the contours of a
particular face," whilst language style has emerged as
a key index in determining such social identity.
SOCIAL FACTORS INFLUENCING STYLE VARIATION
The usage of factors distinguished in the preceding
sociolinguistic analysis as social is distributed across
factors and effectors, which makes it difficult to
identify a common underlying feature or triggers.
Instead, we need to look for more concrete triggers.
Social factors include: (1) people's socioeconomic
status, their family's socioeconomic status, or their
place within wider economic systems such as their
perceived social class; (2) ethnic group or cultural
background; (3) the referred individuals' gender; (4)
fever age groups in mainstream population
(potentially such that the young people correspond to
in-group young people are more likely to be influenced
by contemporary social predictions).
In this section and the following ones, we will outline a
range of effectors associated with particular social
influences on linguistic variation. Given the challenge
of providing a comprehensive list of such influence, we
pull the literature on sociolinguistic variation to
compile a broad but non-exhaustive list of social
dimensions that have been reported in previous
studies. While those dimensions cluster around
gender, age, social class, geographical location, and
professional and institutional affiliations, we need to
be open in principle to additional varieties motivated
by social experiences associated with other social
categories, memberships, or roles. Even at the
dimensions of we quest to outline, the membership in
the relevant social groups might not determine
individual behaviors but rather serve as an additional
factor helping to determine the order or range of other
parameters such as the hearer's expectations, the
external circumstances, or internal goals and that
domain-specific or individual style differences can
trump the role of social groups.
Socioeconomic Status
Individuals differ in their speech behavior. A host of
factors serve to shape and constrain stylistic variation.
One is speakers' economic standing. Financial
resources are far from the whole story. Wealth alone
doesn't provide the same kind of constraints on talk as
does working money and social class. Both are basic to
understanding style. Speaking behavior varies reliably
with SES. Generally, wealthier speakers prefer more
formal, perhaps overtly polite, signals, while lower-
middle-class speakers prefer friendly casualness. It will
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be argued that subjects' place in the economy, or
purchasing power, influences their talk because it is a
component of their place in society.
It is generally practically and morally unacceptable to
be perceived as overpowering or blatantly cruel or
disdainful. As a result, if I seek to hear what you really
think of me or my writing, it is nonsensical for me to
press this request by offering money. Money will
distort the vocal expression of either valuations or
attitudes. What good are your insults to me, replete
with a sneer and scorn, if you show disdain in fluent
lawyerly terms? Notice that valuation and evaluation
may offer different responses, so research on the
matter must allow the speaker this distinction in
formulating answers. Wealth indexes the subject by
preference for interpretative practices that hold good
in the aggregate for people so positioned. The
aggregate is the resultant of many different
intersecting social histories. Religion, race, gender
figure into this transitional likelihood, but most
available indicators refer to current economic worth
and class.
CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON STYLE VARIATION
Finally, the cultural origin of an individual seems to play
an important role in the choice of vocabulary. In small-
scale societies, where all members have the same level
of acculturation, dialect leveling has flattened social
structures more than the size of the language units.
Among major languages, sociolects serve as in-group
markers and the sub-cultures of speakers shape
adjusted linguistic behavior. Far from being a
regrettable source of sociolinguistic noise to be
'factored out', ethnicity has been increasingly
recognized as constitutive of the social fabric of the
communities within which language and other
symbolic forms are produced. The link between
ethnicity and style, however, unlike the obvious
correlation between social status and style, is probably
the most neglected domain of the sociolinguistic
calculus.
Ethnic styles, like those of social classes, are historically
emergent, socially meaningful, and therefore variable
across and within speech communities. Moreover, all
available evidence across many linguistic communities
suggests that they bear the mark of the contact zones
in which they have evolved. But laid down in this
fashion, this conclusion must surely raise an important
research question. That question is: When ethnicity
and style are shown to be sensitive to the social
demography of a community, does this discovery mean
that ethnic variation is 'really' socially determined and
hence has, at base, the same kind of mechanistic and
determining status of social class as we have described
it? Or, to put the question another way, ought we to
regard the acceptability of a given usage to people
across racial or ethnic categories as simply a more
perfect reflection of social class positions? Or is it
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possible that in studying the structure and distribution
of varieties we should treat ethnic and racial identities
as a set of constraints in their own right, and potentially
as constraints that sometimes significantly modify and
displace the study-of-social-class distribution? The
detailed examination of ethnic style and stylistic
organization which follows in subsequent chapters will
speak directly to this question. In terms of the general
account that we have offered, we are committed to
the following propositions.
Ethnicity and Race
Many sociologists and other scholars have done
extensive research on the way that physical
appearance plays into the ascription of race and
subsequent stereotyping and biases based on assumed
racial memberships. Their findings point to the strong
link between social hierarchy systems and racial
categorizations insofar as they argue that the former
built and taught the latter. Physical appearance is
superficially performed but it is also a substantial
aspect of racial membership and identity.
Ethnicity and race represent a different aspect of social
categories than do other categories such as religion,
sexuality, sex, etc. or personal identity/emotion
categories such as attitude or ambition. Using lifestyle
as a form of cultural expression, we can highlight how
these social categories might be linked to appearance
variation in different ways. In some cases, ethnicity
and/or racial identity may influence the lifestyle that
groups of people become socialized into. For some
people, the cultural heritage shaped by their ethnicity
and racial identity might significantly shape the choices
they make with regard to appearance. In other cases,
particularly for multiracial and immigrant communities,
members may place a lower (though still existent)
premium on sartorial cues, using dress and exposure
more as an assertion of difference and privilege than
resonance with a real and authentic heritage.
Gender and Style Variation
Gender and style variation. The literature on style
variation has, to date, almost exclusively employed
cross-sectional data from convenience samples,
making it difficult to examine the influence of key
social factors, including gender. However, the fashion
media, much of the literature on fashion and social
identity, for instance, is replete with evidence
demonstrating that sex is a key determinant of one's
sartorial and stylistic preferences. There are plenty of
examples in the fashion media from which we can infer
the existence of a fairly essentialist discourse
circulating around what constitutes appropriate
'masculine' or 'feminine' dressing.
For example, Sarah Wilson, commentator for the UK
newspaper The Guardian and former editor at i-D,
states that it is difficult to 'visualize a group of young
women willing to embrace capris without coming over
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all fifties'. Judith Eurich of the Bertelsmann Foundation
in Germany claims that 'Today's young men are fashion
conscious, but they don't wear low-hipped and flared
pants'. It seems that women are much more compelled
to adopt contemporary styles, rather than men who
seem to be drawn to a sense of continuity.
Identities are also at work in the readers' posted
opinions; frequently they referred to 'local' attitudes
and values which justify and validate the individuals'
taste. Sexist and adolescent attitudes pervade
discussions, often implicitly, of dress and style,
especially in the family context. Men or boys who wear
or desire overtly fashionable clothes are generally
referred to in sexist terms because it is assumed that
only women and girls (the 'fair sex') can recognize or
should have any interest in the latest fashions.
Besides a few references to current fashion in relation
to particular items of military surplus, such as parkas
and camouflage gear, men hardly reference fashion or
style in their online texts at all. Women, on the other
hand, support the dominant belief that fashion and
styles are made for and by women and girls. In these
texts, therefore, it is unsurprising that overtly feminist
messages underpin most of the readers' opinions.
These messages concern the dangers of media
socialization and the value of alternative, innocent
childhood pursuits.
Thus, in accordance with 1. and 5. from the typifying
attributes above, femininity appears to be about caring
only in the 'true-to-oneself' way, while the fashion
system and, especially, media socialization pressurize
individuals to wear uniforms and imitate others.
Analysis of style comments also reveals some
interesting interrelationships within the family itself.
Those parents living with children do not negatively
adjust their views in line with Opinions 1-5 to such a
great extent as those adults who are not. It is also
interesting to note contradictions in the arguments of
some wholesale restylers who say that while they
personally embrace the trend en chraine children of
flashy fashion, like the ones featured in the 'pregnancy
section of Sunday papers.
In these contexts of family life, those who hold
opinions 1-5 largely actually assume that most people
are making such and similar arguments, whether
wholesale women's magazines or within at work in
education or other institutions (especially those sports
and health-related ones) are condemning mainstream
fashion, mass conformity, and/or the conspicuous
consumption of brands and labels or commodities to
some degree. But the great variation of subjects -
especially 'fashion victims' - in published articles
suggests that it is exceedingly unlikely they all agree on
these virtually universal traits, even though some of
them may indeed subscribe to these lifestyles.
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Thus, this dialogue potentially creates new hierarchical
boundaries around the possession of appropriate
'knowledge', and new signifiers such as the design of
the uniforms sourced from diverse high-street,
secondhand, and on-street garments which are
brought to local arts classes on a particular school day,
and which reflect subcultural and anti-mainstream
identities of these pupils. Requires Hard Hatters.
STYLE IN SOCIETY
Femininity and Masculinity
Our identities are social, and a range of social factors
shape who we are. One of these factors is gender.
Gender identity is an 'everyday social category'.
Fashion and personal style feed off this lived sense of
gender. Although masculine and feminine styles do not
always correlate neatly with biological sex, they are
markers of the kind of men and women the wearers
want to be. At a societal level, distinctive masculinities
and femininities are associated with different
normative ideologies, however overlapping they may
be. The values associated with hegemonic femininity
are domestic, private, and expressive; those of
hegemonic masculinity are public, the world of work,
and instrumental. Fashion choices can be an
instantiation of these values.
Thus, drawn from social norms, femininity and
masculinity in fashion are a response by women and
men to a web of collective expectations, institutions,
and structural power relations. As Smithers and Hiscox
put it, 'a belief in biological differences is far less
insidious in shaping fashion than are the socially
constructed myths surrounding heterosexuality'. A
classicist interpretation of femininity revolves around
the polarity of men's clothes being deliberately anti-
feminine. Gaultier says this contrast between the girlie
and the butch plays out in the French fashion scene.
Femininity advocates 'flexibility, sweetness, originality,
and high spirits', according to Chandor, and thus
femininity varies in its intensity. Normative femininity is
a broad consensus on the 'well-bred', 'emotional'
woman, at ease with her sexual desires and
relationships with others. A feminine fashion-a-full-
circle perspective struggles to deal with the fashion
that is unnaïve or tongue-in-cheek. It depoliticizes
femininity too much, making it merely a label of style.
It allows us less of a stance critiquing the ideology of
femininity.
AGE AND GENERATIONAL STYLE VARIATION
Our life is divided into stages; each stage is
characterized by different social responsibilities and
relationships, as well as different bodies and faces. In
general, the more time has passed since a person or
other social entity went through a particular life stage,
the more they will have changed. These observations
directly imply major style differences between age
groups as age is typically associated with a wide range
of social and biological changes. There are, of course,
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plenty of alternative moves an ageless society could
make, but in the world we live in, rough judgments
about characters and behaviors are often made on the
basis of age.
Compared to other sources of variation, many expect
relatively weak style contrasts between adjacent age
groups. But because of the social investment in age,
and because of the stylistic vested interests vested
parties have in their own pasts, generational style
differences can sometimes be unusually large. In
Michael Apted's Up series, for example, we watch
children grow up from primary school age and make
their way into their forties. The people featured in the
series are predominantly Londoners, and there's a fair
bit of variation between them in terms of education,
class origin, and ethnicity. But, generally speaking,
young Londoners are more different from old
Londoners than the old Londoners are from the old
country-siders.
In such rapid-career-change, slow-diet successive
periods, the visible differences between hard-working
young adults and their retiree parents, or between
defiant middle-aged punks and their upwardly-mobile,
married-settler peers, tend to be also matters of styles.
And in slow-fashion-change faster-life-change societies
it is at work that attitudes to clothing have been most
crisply observed. From the 1960s to the 1980s the post-
war lead party divided over the physical details of who
got the war's consolations, and who got the
consolations for having missed the war; whether or not
beer or suits, or other pinned-on accoutrements need
be thin, shoveled-out, many common pennies-thin, not
hardly any big wedge pinched, as beer or bootleg
Scottish whiskey or dandy threads or doss itself are all
equally free and typical. In response to almost every
Irish-generation power cut, the shored-old radiators
throw off the heady scent of 1950s paraffin of
pensioners' flaky hereditary pleura oil fuel. In fashion,
because consumption before production of old
globaloney music is so conflicted, youth-time rather
than yarn or civil service counts as the age-trend
signalman.
Youth Subcultures
Perhaps the most visible subcultures studied by
sociologists are the youth-driven movements
associated with style, such as punk, hip-hop, and
psychedelia. Organizations like punk started as social
networks full of creativity, emotional solidarity, and
music - not neatly organized social movements capable
of promulgating a plan or even a blanket ideology. But
historically, from the Beats in the 1950s, radical
activists in the 1960s, hip-hop breakdancers in the
1970s, eco-activists, grungers, anarcho-pacifist punks,
and riot girls in the 1990s, these same social
interactions go on to create such movements. In all,
one discovers a basic logic behind the study of these
musical and style movements: youth invests an
emotional intensity in its music and style that is
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transformative and serves narrative and community-
building purposes.
We are interested in turning attention directly to
fashion and its centering of the div, and to develop
what we see as the logical extension of our central
arguments here: fashion is as much a sticky object as a
sticky self and its influence works both ways. The
broader scene of stylistic fusion represents a more
complete incorporation of both the local and the
marginalized into contemporary fashion: the youth
collectively shape the standard, nonfashion. In its
stylization, the contemporary self oscillates between
illustrating and defying a multiplicitous, multivalent,
stylishly aware culture.
GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES ON STYLE VARIATION
In this paper, we will try to answer the second listed
question specifically about what kind of social factors
influence style. Specifically, is there some kind of
geographical difference in the use of forms like you and
your? And, if there is, can we say something about what
produces this difference - that is, about the kinds of
influences that geographical section or kinds of
residence exert on the form of address used? Are these
geographical influences essentially
urban/rural?
According to what we might call the large-scale
"hoodie" model of variation, the main domain of
influence would be the region or part of the country,
the "hoodie," while urban or rural residence would
affect the strength of the regional influence by
determining the extent of individuals' connections to
the region. Research in geography and related areas
(sometimes called "cultural" geography) has found
little to no class difference in the styles used.
To begin, it seems likely that there would be some
differences between the styles found in an average
urban and an average rural area, so that we would
want to at least attempt a zone of interaction between
them. In general, if we assume (following Labov) that
"style" in verbal behavior is influenced by regional
patterns and has a connection with the expression of
identity, and if we assume (following the labeling of
different sets of socially determined variables as
independent "sectors") that there are "sectoral"
group identities based on local residence as well as
apparently less ambiguous markers such as class
indicators, then we should predict that residence will
affect the stylistic choices of individuals. It may be that
the local identities less related to class are somehow
based on a preference for small town or rural residence
that might become apparent to linguists observing the
prestige and/or social psychological importance of
sectoral markers within and between areas lab
systematically.
Urban vs. Rural Styles
Urban fashion looks are different from rural as in cities
it is common to express oneself with different and
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unique fashion. In urban areas, several different people
from all over the state or even from other regions of
the country live together. This results in a mix and
blending of various traditions, cultures, and values
inculcated with various fashion. It creates a more
appealing and unique quality and a wider variety of
dress styles.
However, as society gets more and more
homogenously urban, I believe that this will influence
the styles of both rural and urban fashion. As more
people accumulate in the cities, rural lives are left
behind, making them less fashionable. It is important
to understand that people in rural areas also have their
unique styles which are not so common in city life.
Some people remember their rural life with their
clothes and may also customize their clothes to match
up with this style. In India, we can observe that the
tradition or culture of people from rural areas who are
away from cities for work tends to follow the same
fashion. A person might keep the tradition alive simply
with his or her clothes. A tourist going to a hill station
during this time may differentiate and observe a great
impact from a tourist going there 20 years back. The
people going there now will try to dress themselves
according to the tradition which is still prevailing in
such areas. For example, in Goa, 20 years back
everyone was attracted towards western culture and
lifestyle but now one can observe the change; people
have updated themselves with the new fashion and
lifestyle and are slowly moving away from the
traditional dresses.
MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY IN STYLE VARIATION
Media is another powerful social agent that affects the
actual speech of individuals. Like other social agents
studied in this chapter, new media can affect individual
social behaviour even beyond usage of the actual
platform (i.e. people who do not use social media
might be affected by the norms promoted by the
platforms). One of the new possibilities offered by the
internet is connection between individuals at a very
local level, and this can be seen particularly clearly in
types of styles that have little monetary cost and that
evolve by being copied or because people are learning
from looking at others. Here, we talk about internet
style evolution, and how social media and the
increasing use of the digital realm can exploit these
aspects of human social behaviour.
Sites, shows, newspapers and glossy magazines now
provide a constant stream of images of people and
places. These images may of course have been
photoshopped, airbrushed or even entirely faked, but
largely they purport to show a really existing person at
a really existing time and place. The humans in the
photos might be professionals, and the picture may
have been taken by professionals, and yet, for reasons
still not entirely understood, people look at these
pictures and try to copy the things that people in the
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pictures are doing. All this means that, to some extent,
a platform like Instagram has to feature what people
have been doing, but not too much. We talked before
about a short feedback loop in style evolution.
Influence of Social Media
Influence of Social Media - A Digital Revolution. Digital
culture has changed the way we use and consume
fashion. Women and men have equal access to the
internet, and the new digital machinery - computer,
tablet, and mobile phone - makes simulation easier.
Newspapers, fashion magazines, and fashion reports
have been partly replaced by social networks like
Instagram, Weibo, and Twitter. The picture of an
opening look can have millions of hits. More than that,
it is possible to buy that very piece immediately
because there are systems in place to connect buyers
and sellers. That way, distribution is increasing.
Producers, who navigate consumer markets, have
access to a broad digital network of information. This
newfound transparency provides fashion marketing
with a new army of fashion critics, making the
consumption of fashion increasingly difficult.
The new trend economy favors consumers who are
always on the lookout for something new. The
tendency to conform to others in the purchase of
goods and fashion trends is an important social force
to create and produce availability and exchange of
style. The characteristics of the surrounding group, the
daily working environment, and social grouping mark
the landscape of city and village with stylistic varieties
that are not shown in fashion magazines. Participants
in this hypostyle can identify a global trend, generated
by Creative Cities, Die Weltstadt Computers, Social
Media
Fashion,
Bloggergende
Vorbilderweg,
BürgerIn
∗
nenarbeit Gothams, and cityscapes of film
imagination in different territories.
PROFESSIONAL AND OCCUPATIONAL STYLE
VARIATION
Occupation and professionalism have contrasting style
expectations and norms. Lawyers, judges, and other
expert roles require an authoritative and formal
register of communication, while customer service
staff and waiters are expected to adopt informal styles.
The expectation in both of these papers was that, in
such contexts, there are virtually no perceptible
stylistic differences within each role, because such
roles
already
require
a
tightly
controlled
communicative style. Indeed, in this sample, there are
only sporadic morphosyntactic and lexicogrammatical
style shifts to be noted. This is not, though, a universal
pattern, as noted, for example, in customer service rep
openings.
However, jobs also interact in varying ways to generate
differing style degrees, and also professional or
occupational targets. One typical distinction is
between
people
professions
requiring
highly
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developed interpersonal skills and training in
contrasting and corporate strategic cultures, such as
managers in care and law, social service work and
health professionals, as in Hara's paper. Client groups
are also a defining feature of stylistic normatives.
Other distinctions can be made between professionals
working in more highly regulated state, legal or
political contexts and those in corporate-based youth,
sporting and creative industry fields. These papers
explore style detail and variation in other professional
and workplace contexts, ranging from mainstream
corporate businesses through to post-bureaucracy
(creative) industries. Boss and Wilson map out the
performance management source genres of different
industry spaces, for example, 'creativity' industries,
banks, hospitals and local government, and then
business divisions down to the internal policy formats
of the Human Resource division.
Corporate vs. Creative Industries
In corporate industries, the demands and constraints
of the professional setting impact stylists' choices and
productions. Stylists are required to fit into stylistic
codes, creating uniform and classic looks via a
combination of "neutral elegance" to constitute a
disguise that transmits consistency and impartiality.
They are also expected to avoid characteristics that
denote personal preferences and too radical tastes, so
as to fit within the distance and neutrality that
corporate visual projection is accustomed to. This
general drift is visible in distinctive styles based on
simple, neutral, loose, and classic shapes and materials.
The idea is also spread that females in these settings
should avoid going too far with sensuality and give a
better image by being modest and not using any
violent colors, helping to construct these general
stylizations.
In creative industries, such as fashion, professionalism
is associated with creativity and self-expression.
Occupational contexts generate characteristic stylistic
presentations via professional codes and an emphasis
on symbolic independence from norms. Fashion is an
industry where appearances matter most and where
people mostly work on the construction of clothes and
bodily presentations. Stylists in this field are into
showing their autonomy and creativity by having a
distinctive look that is both up to date and shows their
expertise and singled-out abilities, an important matter
in the world of fashion and creativity-focused work. In
those areas, the requirement is to present a non-
conforming look, probably a bit extravagant, and with
the perpetually-up-to-date trend showing not only the
skills and abilities of the stylists but also their growing
interest in the period's fashion. Overall, people
working in creative industries have a worried look on
their bodily and professional side and search for
distinctions that creative-looking clothes could offer.
CONCLUSION
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The four generative social factors discussed in this
book are at a variety of levels, refer to different
potentially social factors, and interpret them in a
variety of ways. Any analysis could only hope to do
justice to a few aspects of any one of these factors, and
so I cannot complain when the experts do not say
everything there is to say in such an analysis but
instead contribute only one thread to the fabric. The
goal of the research contained in this book is to cut into
the social conventions to show that style is also
possible.
We know that persons typically produce and
understand others' behavior as stylistic. Someone who
establishes a potential style to be hers is positioned -
and positions her friends as positioned relative to her -
in a social universe and the continua of identities
available there for the person to entertain. In part, this
identification yields moral stances on personal
attributes: style gives normative purchase on a
person's actions because style is a critical norm of
social life, whereas grammar is not. We are better
positioned to understand marks of the social
dimensions in stylistic production because we are
better and better at analyzing marks of the social
position of participants in the data we collect. We can
inquire with far more confidence and accuracy into the
relationships that are the upshots of the use of
linguistic variables in context.
Summary of Key Points
In conclusion, style variation may be linked to a
combination of different social attributes, including
audience design, link to ethnic group identity, stance,
and local community membership. Differences in
stylistic choices within a community with the same
other-accessible characteristics can be related to the
speakers' distancing from or embracement of local
community traits, their different attitude to the local
ways or to the stereotype regarding the local
community, different age group identity, or where
they have developed an attention to the role of style in
listener orientation. Speakers' backgrounds or their
location, area of interests (including the level of
institutionalisation of the activity), and their general
attitude to language variation and change may
determine not only how concerned they are with style,
especially how concerned they are with signalling
group membership or indicating stance and in what
respects this is done, but also what aspects of variation
the informant pays knowledge about in their H and/or
L.
This essay has presented an overview of a number of
social factors that may be associated with differences
in stylistic choices. The informants, as, for example,
participants in a regional survey, may not be able to
represent their community in relation to the variable
tested; they will not necessarily know whether the F2
of their vowels or the realisation of their glottal stop or
any other morphosyntactic or phonological item is an
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American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
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VOLUME
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Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
index of being from Cwmafan. It is incumbent on the
researcher to sample the groups to be included in the
study to ensure that the survey or interview is able to
register the old speaker, the young pre-adolescent, the
adolescent, the teenager, and the individual; the form
of address, topic of conversation or both that bring out
differences; and all speakers who address more than
one or two people and/or whom the others listen to. It
is incumbent on the researcher to ensure that the
topic, mode of conversation and the style type of
interest is included and that the researcher or the
committee can deal holistically with the situation in
Wrexham that includes the fundamentalist who will
not address her in his dialect or style and the former
The Guardian reporter, now the Plaid MP, who is
beginning to feel her linguistic pigmentation.
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