Dissertation: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Stylistic Variation

Stylistic variation, or ‘style shifting,’ is the phenomenon in which a single speaker uses distinct speech styles to express the same semantic contents on different occasions: for example, I’m working vs. I’m workin’, or I’m going to eat dinner vs. I’m gonna eat dinner. Though these stylistic choices do not affect the assertoric content of the speaker’s message, they are socially significant. What are speakers doing when they shift styles, and why is this behavior rational?

I argue that socially meaningful style shifting plays two important and distinct conversational functions: it helps interlocutors affiliate themselves with social in-groups and manage group boundaries; and within a group, it helps interlocutors regulate contextual formality and signal their recognition and commitment to context-specific social norms. 

I explain these conversational functions by extending Grice’s maxim of Manner: cooperative speakers aim to use linguistic expressions and forms that are typical and match default expectations for their present social context. Speakers can also violate this maxim for pragmatic effects by dynamically shifting to unexpected styles. Ultimately, speakers’ stylistic choices signal the speech acts they are likely to perform, which functions as a defeasible guide to pragmatic interpretation. Thus, style shifting is a rational, cooperative conversational activity. 

Works in Progress

Speakin' With Style: The Pragmatics of Style Shifting. Speakers shift between speech styles dynamically within and across social contexts (e.g. I'm gonna eat dinner vs. I'm going to eat dinner). What are speakers doing when they shift styles, and why are these behaviors rational? I argue that style shifting is a cooperative conversational behavior, governed by Grice’s Maxim of Manner: speakers typically make efforts to select styles that are default and match expectations for their social context. By shifting to styles that are manifestly unexpected in context, speakers signal that they are engaging with the discourse in atypical ways. (slides)

In-Group Communication. According to a widely-accepted thesis, literal linguistic meaning is determined by the rules of a shared public language. Some philosophers reject the notion of a shared public language by appealing to legitimate communal linguistic variation: speakers in large language populations display significant diversity of language usage, and cannot be legitimately accused of speaking incorrectly. I argue that public languages are the languages of finely-grained social groups, reconciling the public language thesis with sociolinguistic diversity. 

Social Meaning and Convention. Speakers use socially meaningful expressions, like slang, nicknames, honorifics, and sociolinguistic variants, to perform social moves in discourse. Is social meaning encoded as part of conventional lexical meaning? I show that philosophers have misapplied key linguistic diagnostics in attempting to answer this question. I appeal to the normativity of linguistic conventions to show that some aspects of social meaning are lexically encoded, and others are not.