Towards a sociolinguistics of in difference: stancetaking on others

Abstract

This paper proposes a sociolinguistics of in difference, an inquiry-based approach to stancetaking on others. It describes how multilingual speakers in an online context orientate towards a stance-object and affiliate, align and negotiate difference through embodied performances, as part of advancing an ethics of responsibility for the other and aesthetic investments. In the analysis of such orientations, I draw on virtual interactional data to illustrate how in difference through stancetaking is entextualized in the aesthetic, embodied performance of parody, in so-called Coloured English, Kaaps and a mixture of other languages by an emerging R&B and pop group in Cape Town. I demonstrate how the group invest in embodied performances merge the material, linguistic, cultural and semiotic significance of the body to undermine fixity and categorization. But also, how push-back from YouTube commentators, influencers, reactors take up evaluative, affective and epistemic stances as they move from difference to in difference. I conclude with the argument that in order for us to take adequate account of an ethics of responsibility for the other and describing aesthetic investments in embodied performances we have to recalibrate our theoretical and methodological toolkit to understand what it means to use language with dignity, to encounter each other in spaces of dignity and to just be dignified in diversity.