The vowel space as sociolinguistic sign

Abstract

This paper examines variation in vowel space area and its use in social meaning making. Among adolescents at a California high school, patterns of difference in vowel space correlate to social practices of exclusion in the partying scene, albeit alongside explicit discourses of high school social life as inclusive and fluid. I treat vowel space as a sociolinguistic sign, that is, a holistic semiotic resource at play in addition to (or in tandem with) individual segments. Though the semiotic potential of a given linguistic sign is no doubt shaped by large-scale patterns of variation, the particular manifestations of meaning making are best viewed at the community level alongside other day-to-day practices. Further, I suggest that linguistic practices of difference and discourses of sameness are not contradictory, but instead a feature of the semiotic landscape. I thus interpret this vowel space variation as stylistically meaningful within the context of social actors’ ideological orientation to social life.