Micro/Macro-style and hyperconvergence in the other informant

James Peterson

Sun. 9-10:40 B

Expanding upon the notion of audience design (Bell 1984), I will inform a variation analysis of several speech events derived from sociolinguistic interviews conducted by a bidialectal interviewer with AAVE speaking informants from Robeson County, North Carolina. Not unlike Trudgill's Norwich study (1974), this project focuses on the style shifting registers of the "other" informant, the sociolinguistic interviewer. This informant is a college educated relative of the interviewees in Maxton, NC. He employs at least three distinctively AAVE features (r-lessness, copula deletion, and 3rd person -s absence) to varying degrees with several of his relatives whose vernacularity varies as well. It will present empirical data that reveal a correlation between the interviewer's vernacular use and the particular relative he is interviewing. Through a quantitative comparative analysis I will construct a framework for style shifting that reflects the sociolinguistic interviewer's propensity to accommodate (when culturally and dialectally feasible) his/her speech style to the informant in order to win approval (Giles and Smith 1979). Finally, I will suggest that both linguistic accommodation and pragmatic felicity contribute to the success of the sociolinguistic interview. Therefore, the dialectally convergent tendencies of the sociolinguistic interviewer are indeed vernacular employment strategies.