Research in linguistic perception has shown that social knowledge shapes how speech is processed, with listeners’ social biases influencing their interpretation of the speech signal. Such findings are inherently in step with the concept of listening practices in linguistic anthropology. Miyako Inoue's foundational work on the “listening subject” highlights how meaning emerges through listeners’ ideological positions, demonstrated through an analysis of Japanese schoolgirl speech. I argue that sociolinguistic perception work has much to be gained from integrating a listening subject framework, foregrounding the social conditions enabling perception and emphasizing interpretive agency. In this commentary, I focus on how the listening subject is constituted through contrast with the object of speech perception and explore how this dynamic intersects with ongoing work on in-group/out-group identity and the role of experience in shaping sociolinguistic perception, specifically drawing on my research on US regional dialect perception. Finally, I discuss how experimental sociolinguistics and public engagement efforts might be enhanced by critically examining the listening subject positions of research participants.
{"title":"In-Group/Out-Group Dynamics, Contrast, and the Listening Subject in Sociolinguistic Perception","authors":"Lacey Wade","doi":"10.1111/josl.12724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12724","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Research in linguistic perception has shown that social knowledge shapes how speech is processed, with listeners’ social biases influencing their interpretation of the speech signal. Such findings are inherently in step with the concept of <i>listening practices</i> in linguistic anthropology. Miyako Inoue's foundational work on the “listening subject” highlights how meaning emerges through listeners’ ideological positions, demonstrated through an analysis of Japanese schoolgirl speech. I argue that sociolinguistic perception work has much to be gained from integrating a listening subject framework, foregrounding the social conditions enabling perception and emphasizing interpretive agency. In this commentary, I focus on how the listening subject is constituted through contrast with the object of speech perception and explore how this dynamic intersects with ongoing work on in-group/out-group identity and the role of experience in shaping sociolinguistic perception, specifically drawing on my research on US regional dialect perception. Finally, I discuss how experimental sociolinguistics and public engagement efforts might be enhanced by critically examining the listening subject positions of research participants.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"371-375"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145530214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>In 2015, while pursuing my master's degree in linguistics at the National University of Singapore (NUS), I signed up for a three-day workshop by postcolonial theorist Raka Shome, who was visiting NUS at the time. On the very first day, we discussed Spivak's (<span>1992</span>) seminal essay Can the Subaltern Speak? Confronted with this challenging text, I found Shome's explanation to be immediately lucid and incisive—especially for a linguistics student like me. She explained that the difference between talk and speak lies in the fact that when we speak, we speak a language, and language is a structured system; to speak is thus necessarily to engage in an act that links the individual to a structure. Talk, however, does not inherently involve this linkage. From Spivak's perspective, the subaltern can talk, but what they say can never enter—let alone unsettle—the very structures that dominate them. Their words must always be mediated, fragmentarily and with alterations, through the authoritative perspectives of elites before they can be transmitted.</p><p>Smalls's (<span>2018</span>) ethnography, in this virtual issue, on discourses of “black-on-black” violence in the United States offers a contemporary illustration of this dynamic. In her analysis, anti-Black modes of listening construct Black people—especially African Americans—as inherently violent, enabling the criminalization of Black youth and shaping how African transnational youth present themselves in contrast to their African American peers. These listening modes sustain socio-racial hierarchies through “discursive violence” that casts groups or persons into a subaltern position (p. 361). A similar mechanism is visible in my study of Taiwanese netizens’ backlash against Vietnamese migrants’ antiracist petition (Wan <span>2025</span>). The petition protested a multinational supermarket's collaboration with a Taiwanese male YouTuber who profits from a fictional Vietnamese woman speaking a parodic accent. In response, many Taiwanese commenters hailed themselves as the listening subject by recasting the migrants’ antiracist action as itself “racist” to uphold the existing racial order where the Taiwanese majority defines how multiculturalism should be manifested. These cases produce a dynamic in which the margins’ self-representations are refracted through the dominant's listening practices.</p><p>From this perspective, the reason the subaltern cannot become a speaking subject is that they cannot truly be heard. Here, I want to bring in something that frequently surfaced in my past sociolinguistic interviews on identity negotiation among deaf individuals in Taiwan: interviewees would often repeat a saying from their speech-language pathologists— “Being able to hear doesn't mean being able to hear clearly; being able to hear clearly doesn't mean being able to understand.” This originally emerged as a clinical discourse in audiological rehabilitation: patients were instructed to progress fr
2015年，当我在新加坡国立大学攻读语言学硕士学位时，我报名参加了后殖民理论家Raka Shome为期三天的研讨会，当时他正在新加坡国立大学访问。第一天，我们讨论了斯皮瓦克（1992）的开创性论文《庶民能说话吗？》面对这篇具有挑战性的文章，我发现肖姆的解释立刻清晰而深刻——尤其是对像我这样的语言学学生来说。她解释说，说话和说话的区别在于，当我们说话时，我们说的是一种语言，而语言是一个结构化的系统；因此，说话必然是参与一种将个人与结构联系起来的行为。然而，谈话本身并不涉及这种联系。从斯皮瓦克的观点来看，下级可以说话，但他们所说的永远无法进入——更不用说动摇——支配他们的结构。他们的话语在传播之前，必须经过精英们的权威视角，断断续续地、不断地进行调解。斯莫尔斯（2018）的民族志，在这个虚拟的问题上，关于美国“黑人对黑人”暴力的话语，为这种动态提供了一个当代的例证。在她的分析中，反黑人的倾听模式将黑人——尤其是非洲裔美国人——塑造成天生的暴力，使黑人青年被定罪，并塑造了非洲跨国青年与非洲裔美国同龄人的对比。这些倾听模式通过将群体或个人置于次等地位的“话语暴力”来维持社会种族等级（第361页）。在我对台湾网民反对越南移民反种族主义请愿的研究中，可以看到类似的机制（Wan 2025）。请愿书抗议一家跨国超市与一名台湾男性youtube用户合作，该用户从一名模仿口音的虚构越南女子中获利。作为回应，许多台湾评论人士称自己是聆听的对象，他们将移民的反种族主义行为重新定义为“种族主义”，以维护现有的种族秩序，在这种秩序中，台湾多数人定义了多元文化应该如何表现。这些案例产生了一种动态，在这种动态中，边缘人的自我表征通过主导人的倾听实践被折射出来。从这个角度来看，庶民之所以不能成为说话的主体，是因为他们无法真正被倾听。在这里，我想引用一些在我过去对台湾聋人身份协商的社会语言学采访中经常出现的东西：受访者经常会重复他们的语言病理学家的一句话——“能听到并不意味着能听清楚；能听清楚并不意味着能理解。”这最初是作为听力学康复的临床话语出现的：患者被指示从听到无意义的噪音，到区分它们的自然类型（雷声、撞击和人声），最后理解它们的符号学意义，包括语言意义。然而在采访过程中，我发现自己更经常思考的是：为什么同样的话语不针对那些听不懂聋哑人发音的人？倾听也充满了权力关系。这里的主要观点是，听者——聆听的主体——决定了说话者在权力结构中出现的条件。近年来，越来越多的社会语言学家，包括语言人类学家和变化论者，将研究重点从说话者转移到听者（例如，Campbell-Kibler 2021; Cushing and Snell 2023； D'Onofrio 2018; Jessee and Calder 2025; Reyes 2017; Wong and Babel 2017）。一个动机，尤其是从自由主义的角度来看，是对社会正义的追求：通过上面斯皮瓦克提供的镜头，很明显，这个问题不是关于演讲者，也不是关于质疑演讲者做了什么“错误”而保持沉默或未能成为演讲主题。相反，应该质问的是倾听者——他们为什么不倾听？Campbell-Kibler（2021）的研究尤其证明了这一点：一些听众明确表示，他们会有意识地避免将外国口音与非白人面孔联系起来，以免显得有种族偏见。这说明，至少在某种程度上，听众可以使用意识形态包，对相同的语言信号产生不同的评价。当听众占据主导地位时，他们的倾听行为具有复制或改变社会权力秩序的结构性能力——他们是必须被审问的主体。 在我看来，井上对倾听主体的概念化提供了我们需要采取这种转变的另一个重要原因：除了听众通过占据主导地位来塑造社会结构的力量之外，他们对来自边缘的声音的倾听（和解释）没有先天或“自然”的动力来维持这些结构。在井上的叙述中，关键的一点是，倾听作为一种社会实践，在很大程度上是对主体焦虑的一种反应——在精神分析的意义上：当主体的自我完整感受到威胁时所经历的焦虑。我认为，进一步调动井上（2003）的“倾听主体”概念的一种方法是回到她对明治时期日本男性知识分子如何试图登记女学生的演讲风格的拉康式阅读。井上证明，无论这些男人如何坚持地将女孩的说话方式与负面的社会意义联系起来——低社会经济地位、粗俗等等——他们制造的标签从未完全吸收她们的不安感。她认为，这种不安来自于作为“精神对象”的声音（第176页），它的欢呼力量超过了任何元语用学的行为。他们的目标是“听起来不舒服”的句子结尾的粒子teyo和dawa， kango（中文单词）的上升，或者女孩之间的英语单词。然而，即使是最详尽的语言特征目录也无法捕捉到令男性不安的不可言喻的影响——当现代男性秩序感到不稳定时，这种焦虑就会浮现出来。在这种情况下，焦虑应该从精神分析的角度来解释。正如在Inoue对拉康的客体小a（第177页）的讨论中所引用的，象征上不可约化的“小a”体现了他们无意识地追求却从未达到的主体的空虚或缺乏。而且，当主体在象征阶段遇到“小a”时，心灵的建筑本身就有崩溃的危险，因为主体看到了自己的不完整。正如Inoue提醒我们的那样，“总是有一种残余或过剩，它无法还原为语言和意义，无法转换为所指，并且不一定在语言上呈现和呈现”（第176页）。也就是说，当主体从他者中看到自己时，焦虑就会出现，然而，这种脱节是无法被象征的。同样，雷耶斯（2017）表明，菲律宾中产阶级精英如何将康约精英（他们的英语-他加禄语混合语言）视为不恰当的现代，甚至背叛了国家，尽管从符号上讲，英语-他加禄语混合可以具有同样的现代性索引潜力。雷耶斯指出，“这种焦虑往往是由于瞥见了大多数人无法企及的现代性而产生的”（第217页）。面对康永精英，中产阶级精英似乎认为康永精英在戏剧化一种无法完全符号化的现代性。正如雷耶斯所说（第228页），这些精英们遇到了一个“内在的他者”：他们自身的缺陷和对现代合法性未实现的渴望的一面镜子。再次，围绕现代性的更深层次的焦虑无法用语言来定位，因为当主体进入符号世界时，主体与投射到他者身上的主体部分之间的鸿沟已经形成。从这个角度来看，Inoue的听力主题不仅仅是将索引化从说话者的自我风格转向听者的解释。它突出了那些听到女学生声音的男性知识分子被这些声音的残余或过剩所欢呼，从而被构成倾听主体的瞬间。对于井上来说，回报不在于记录哪些语音特征与哪些负面含义相关联，而在于追踪主体化的过程，通过这个过程，解释他者的声音成为一种应对难以形容的、由现代性引起的不安的策略。换句话说，井上的概念强调了听者如何在社会世界中协商自己的地位：他们将前符号、前逻辑影响——由他人的声音引发的原始情感——置于将听者和说话者联系在一起的权力关系中。从这个意义上说，“倾听”是将这种影响转化为话语的工作，任何对听到的话语的公开评论都只能部分地体现出表达它的倾听主体。社会语言学感知的变异论研究走上了一条不同的道路。研究人员利用说话者评价范式，让听者仔细操纵语音变体，并要求他们对说话者进行社会评价，或者向听者提供社会信息，并邀请他们识别他们听到的声音。最近的研究表明，听众自己的社会经历会影响他们的评价。例如，Wong和Babel（2017）在本期虚拟期刊中表明，事先接触民族语言变化可以提高听众识别以口音为
{"title":"Listening as Self-Positioning: Revisiting Inoue's Psychoanalytic Approach to the Listening Subject","authors":"Tsung-Lun Alan Wan","doi":"10.1111/josl.12719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12719","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 2015, while pursuing my master's degree in linguistics at the National University of Singapore (NUS), I signed up for a three-day workshop by postcolonial theorist Raka Shome, who was visiting NUS at the time. On the very first day, we discussed Spivak's (<span>1992</span>) seminal essay Can the Subaltern Speak? Confronted with this challenging text, I found Shome's explanation to be immediately lucid and incisive—especially for a linguistics student like me. She explained that the difference between talk and speak lies in the fact that when we speak, we speak a language, and language is a structured system; to speak is thus necessarily to engage in an act that links the individual to a structure. Talk, however, does not inherently involve this linkage. From Spivak's perspective, the subaltern can talk, but what they say can never enter—let alone unsettle—the very structures that dominate them. Their words must always be mediated, fragmentarily and with alterations, through the authoritative perspectives of elites before they can be transmitted.</p><p>Smalls's (<span>2018</span>) ethnography, in this virtual issue, on discourses of “black-on-black” violence in the United States offers a contemporary illustration of this dynamic. In her analysis, anti-Black modes of listening construct Black people—especially African Americans—as inherently violent, enabling the criminalization of Black youth and shaping how African transnational youth present themselves in contrast to their African American peers. These listening modes sustain socio-racial hierarchies through “discursive violence” that casts groups or persons into a subaltern position (p. 361). A similar mechanism is visible in my study of Taiwanese netizens’ backlash against Vietnamese migrants’ antiracist petition (Wan <span>2025</span>). The petition protested a multinational supermarket's collaboration with a Taiwanese male YouTuber who profits from a fictional Vietnamese woman speaking a parodic accent. In response, many Taiwanese commenters hailed themselves as the listening subject by recasting the migrants’ antiracist action as itself “racist” to uphold the existing racial order where the Taiwanese majority defines how multiculturalism should be manifested. These cases produce a dynamic in which the margins’ self-representations are refracted through the dominant's listening practices.</p><p>From this perspective, the reason the subaltern cannot become a speaking subject is that they cannot truly be heard. Here, I want to bring in something that frequently surfaced in my past sociolinguistic interviews on identity negotiation among deaf individuals in Taiwan: interviewees would often repeat a saying from their speech-language pathologists— “Being able to hear doesn't mean being able to hear clearly; being able to hear clearly doesn't mean being able to understand.” This originally emerged as a clinical discourse in audiological rehabilitation: patients were instructed to progress fr","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"376-381"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12719","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145530213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>In my classes, grad and undergrad, many students arrive with a modern concept of identity as something that you claim, that you hail upon yourself rather than one that hails you (n.b. Althusser <span>1970</span>), and that power comes from one's ability to self-identify with the identities that most resonate with them. It makes sense—many of us, especially queer linguists, come to academia at least in part to study our own communities, and it sure can feel empowering to give a voice to our own communities. The urge for community representation and showcasing resistance within my own marginalized communities has inspired much of my own work, bringing me to discussions of the power of indexicality for resistance (Steele <span>2022, 2024</span>, <span>in press</span>). But identity is a process rather than an endpoint, and the perceiver is always implicated in, if not in the powerful position to ratify, the semiotic strategies that marginalized speakers agentively use to construct our identities (e.g., Bucholtz and Hall <span>2005</span>; Brubaker and Cooper <span>2000</span>; Gal and Irvine <span>2019</span>). While it may be tempting to focus on the agentive aspects of sociolinguistic production and self-identification when we study language and identity amongst speakers marginalized from linguistic inquiry, we must remain cognizant of the power that perception can hold to legitimize marginalized speakers (or not).</p><p>Theories of the citationality of discourse situate meaning and identity as both emergent in interaction and situated in histories of previous texts/utterances/meanings, such that any identificatory move iteratively cites previous utterances and is in many ways bound by meanings already sedimented over repeated acts (Foucault <span>1972</span>; Bakhtin <span>1986</span>; Butler <span>1990</span>; Silverstein <span>2003</span>; Agha <span>2003</span>). Perception falls within this iterative semiotic chain, and due to the stickiness of the snowball of discourse, often, for the marginalized speaker, bars them from their subversive or localized meaning being taken up and understood. Communication is necessarily intersubjective—that is, meaning is necessarily between interlocutors, multisided, and up for contestation (Bucholtz and Hall <span>2005</span>).</p><p>In the sociolinguistic construction of marginalized, subversive, or otherwise marked identities within normative contexts in Western and postcolonial societies, all of these points necessarily intersect, interact, and overlap with each other. Beyond representation and recognition as the vision of social justice within the sociolinguistic enterprise, these issues are meant to serve as a point of departure for the sociolinguistic study of identity, pushing us to consider the inherently political interplay between production and perception in social meaning (see Duchene <span>2020</span>). Ultimately, I argue, foregrounding perception forces us to consider the intersubjective nat
在我的课堂上，无论是研究生还是本科生，许多学生都带着一种现代的身份概念来到这里，认为你可以宣称，你为自己欢呼，而不是为你欢呼的人（n.b.阿尔都塞，1970），这种力量来自于一个人对最能与他们产生共鸣的身份的自我认同的能力。这是有道理的——我们中的许多人，尤其是酷儿语言学家，至少在一定程度上来到学术界是为了研究我们自己的社区，为我们自己的社区发声肯定会让我们感到有力量。在我自己的边缘化社区中，对社区代表和展示抵抗的渴望激发了我自己的许多工作，使我讨论了抵抗的指数性的力量（斯蒂尔2022年，2024年，出版）。但身份是一个过程，而不是终点，感知者总是涉及到边缘化说话者主动使用的符号学策略，以构建我们的身份（例如，Bucholtz和Hall 2005； Brubaker和Cooper 2000； Gal和Irvine 2019）。当我们研究被语言研究边缘化的说话者的语言和身份认同时，我们可能会把注意力集中在社会语言学生产和自我认同的代理方面，但我们必须认识到，感知可以使边缘化的说话者合法化（或不合法化）。话语的引用性理论将意义和身份置于相互作用中出现的位置，并置于以前的文本/话语/意义的历史中，因此，任何认同的举动都会迭代地引用以前的话语，并在许多方面受到已经沉淀在重复行为中的意义的约束（福柯1972；巴赫金1986；巴特勒1990；西尔弗斯坦2003；Agha 2003）。感知属于这个迭代的符号链，由于话语雪球的粘性，对于边缘化的说话者来说，往往阻止他们颠覆性或局部性的意义被接受和理解。交流必然是主体间性的——也就是说，意义必然是对话者之间的，是多方的，是可以争论的（Bucholtz and Hall 2005）。在西方和后殖民社会的规范语境中，在边缘化、颠覆性或其他标记身份的社会语言学建构中，所有这些点都必然相互交叉、相互作用和重叠。除了作为社会语言学企业中社会正义愿景的代表和认可之外，这些问题旨在作为身份的社会语言学研究的出发点，推动我们考虑社会意义中生产和感知之间内在的政治相互作用（见Duchene 2020）。最后，我认为，前景感知迫使我们考虑社会的主体间性，以及通过社会语言易读性构建身份的局限性。作为一名有色人种的跨性别非二元者，我从社会语言学训练和基层社区组织的历史中得出了这些建议，这促使我通过社会意义寻求有色人种的跨性别抵抗，以对抗系统性压迫的正常化压力（玻利瓦尔2024；福柯1977）。正如我将讨论的那样，感知的影响使我质疑抵抗的极限，因为感知给边缘化说话者带来了压力（Inoue 2003； Flores和Rosa 2015）。最终，将感知放在首位为研究人员提供了重要的社会分析视角，通过它可以理解边缘化的语言使用或表演何时起作用，并将感知主体理论化，从而为我们提供了意识形态上的原因。在过去的15年里，有很多人推动研究那些在历史上被社会语言学研究边缘化的人的语言。从黑人女性的语言使用（例如，摩根2021年；华盛顿2020年），到跨性别者（例如，齐曼2017年；考尔德2019年；克劳利2025年），有色人种年轻人(例如，伯曼2014年；Brookes and Kouassi 2018)等，本研究通过研究边缘化人群如何说话，特别是他们在他们的言语中传达他们的特定身份和/或意识形态的代理能力，促进了我们如何理解社会意义在我们领域的外围交叉点的发展，以实现他们的交际和/或认同目标。在这项工作中，“在多个交叉的社会人口维度中占据边缘的个人，在面对同时威胁使他们难以辨认的多重规范时，坚持他们的代理”（Calder 2021, p. 446，我的重点）。虽然能动性并不总是被认为纯粹是一种断言，但边缘化说话者使用符号学资源的意向性可能会被行为的正常化互文性和引用性所掩盖，这样，社会意义的定位和沉淀方面就主导了边缘化说话主体的局部社会意义。 例如，Wong and Babel 2017)。正如Campbell-Kibler（2021）所讨论的那样，社会语言学感知中的代理讨论通常也将社会处理描述为审议性的；也就是说，感知者可以选择他们如何赋予社会意义。然而，无数的社会语音感知研究表明，社会处理并不是如此的代理，听众在感知行为中隐含地施加了偏见和规范，我将在下一节中更详细地讨论。通过这种方式，能动性成为一种资源，在边缘化群体中同时被视为强大的资源，但无论是说话者还是感知者都不能可靠地利用它来赋予他们的言语非规范的含义。这种对社会语言学身份认同工作中的能动性的玫瑰色眼镜观点应该被对语言的物质主体间性的基础理解所取代，在这种理解中，说话者和听者的意图被重新定义为对霸权规范压力的各种关系和反应，这些反应对说话者和听者的物质后果以权力和规范性为中心（例如，Edwards 2018）。也许这种方法将为Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak所说的“测量沉默”（1988，第92页）腾出空间——超越作为权力给予的实证研究中的代理，并走向对被我们试图拆除的力量所束缚的边缘化主体的现实的诚实对待。为边缘化的发言者提供理想化的代理可以让人感到生机勃勃，但它冒着继续学术项目固有的认知暴力的风险，这些项目试图代表次等人，因为需要解释霸权的沉默。当我们质疑感知时——不仅仅是在感知研究中，而是通过更广泛地理论化感知在语言工作中的作用——我们转向了一种更现实的观点，即边缘化的说话者如何在社会景观中导航，而不是将代理作为认知终点的理想化观点。在不断增长的社会语言学工作中，边缘化说话者的社会意义，仍然有空间更彻底地参与评估语音生产作为社会意义中心的局限性；也就是说，在最近的工作中，对边缘说话者的研究并没有对感知进行彻底的处理。社会语言学领域的许多感性研究，即内隐匹配伪装研究，即声音与不同的社会能指配对，从面孔、服装、地点，甚至是毛绒动物（Hay and Drager, 2010），表明听众倾向于优先考虑可获得的社会信息，而不是演讲本身的内容，他们的感知是通过他们对说话者和世界的意识形态过滤的(Kang和Rubin, 2009； Wong和Babel, 2017； D'Onofrio, 2019；Campbell-Kibler 2021)。当我们仅仅基于生产研究来发展边缘化说话者的社会语言学理论时，我们忘记了说话是一种必然的主体间的、社会的和引用的行为，它总是位于说话者和听者之间的空间（例如，Lippi-Green, 1997）。虽然很少，但最近对边缘化说话者的生产研究的感性研究表明，无论这些说话者如何代理地重新混合语言，听者都会将规范意义强加给他们的言语（例如，Zimman 2013; Jessee and Calder 2025）。根据下一节讨论的倾听主体的种族语言学观点，听者充当社会意义的仲裁者，感知的不是所说的内容，而是将他们的意识形态传授给说话者（Rosa and Flores 2017）。当感知与生产一起考虑时，我们可以更好地将意识形态、权力和社会意义之间的关系理论化，为将边缘化的说话者置于社会意义中心的解释增加细微差别。在这个不断发展的领域，研究人员必须强调系统压迫和权力与感知相互作用的方式。将倾听主体的符号学力量理论化是一种方法。在她关于19世纪日本现代精英男性对日本女学生演讲的吸收的开创性工作中，井上（
{"title":"Perception Is Political: The Production–Perception Interface as a Contested Site of Power and Legibility","authors":"Ariana Steele","doi":"10.1111/josl.12721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12721","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In my classes, grad and undergrad, many students arrive with a modern concept of identity as something that you claim, that you hail upon yourself rather than one that hails you (n.b. Althusser <span>1970</span>), and that power comes from one's ability to self-identify with the identities that most resonate with them. It makes sense—many of us, especially queer linguists, come to academia at least in part to study our own communities, and it sure can feel empowering to give a voice to our own communities. The urge for community representation and showcasing resistance within my own marginalized communities has inspired much of my own work, bringing me to discussions of the power of indexicality for resistance (Steele <span>2022, 2024</span>, <span>in press</span>). But identity is a process rather than an endpoint, and the perceiver is always implicated in, if not in the powerful position to ratify, the semiotic strategies that marginalized speakers agentively use to construct our identities (e.g., Bucholtz and Hall <span>2005</span>; Brubaker and Cooper <span>2000</span>; Gal and Irvine <span>2019</span>). While it may be tempting to focus on the agentive aspects of sociolinguistic production and self-identification when we study language and identity amongst speakers marginalized from linguistic inquiry, we must remain cognizant of the power that perception can hold to legitimize marginalized speakers (or not).</p><p>Theories of the citationality of discourse situate meaning and identity as both emergent in interaction and situated in histories of previous texts/utterances/meanings, such that any identificatory move iteratively cites previous utterances and is in many ways bound by meanings already sedimented over repeated acts (Foucault <span>1972</span>; Bakhtin <span>1986</span>; Butler <span>1990</span>; Silverstein <span>2003</span>; Agha <span>2003</span>). Perception falls within this iterative semiotic chain, and due to the stickiness of the snowball of discourse, often, for the marginalized speaker, bars them from their subversive or localized meaning being taken up and understood. Communication is necessarily intersubjective—that is, meaning is necessarily between interlocutors, multisided, and up for contestation (Bucholtz and Hall <span>2005</span>).</p><p>In the sociolinguistic construction of marginalized, subversive, or otherwise marked identities within normative contexts in Western and postcolonial societies, all of these points necessarily intersect, interact, and overlap with each other. Beyond representation and recognition as the vision of social justice within the sociolinguistic enterprise, these issues are meant to serve as a point of departure for the sociolinguistic study of identity, pushing us to consider the inherently political interplay between production and perception in social meaning (see Duchene <span>2020</span>). Ultimately, I argue, foregrounding perception forces us to consider the intersubjective nat","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"367-370"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12721","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145530211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>This commentary unpacks how insights from studies of sociolinguistic perception and research on listening subjects may offer compelling ways to recognise the humanity and multiplicity of each voice, disclosing that perception is something listeners <i>do</i>. Below, I think with selected projects from the two strands of research to advance discussions on accent bias in technology, showing how listening is formed through practices operating within particular cultures of reception, where ‘even the most silent of listeners is an author of an emergent narrative’ (Ochs and Capps <span>1996</span>: 21). I argue that the two strands enable us to reimagine all accents as loci ‘of the experience and knowledge production of the modern’ (Inoue <span>2003</span>: 158), operating through particular practices of citation transcending ‘observable and […] recordable “realities”’ (Inoue <span>2003</span>: 182). This in turn enables more voices ‘to be justly recognized’ (Eidsheim <span>2023</span>: 143), moving beyond only listening from positions of power to a better understanding of how affordances and infrastructures amplify, mishear or silence particular human soundings.</p><p>With the increased use of voice AI technologies, researchers have become interested in examining what listening practices are being translated into algorithms and how they perpetuate particular ideas about language structure and use. Recently, a group of computational linguists at Cambridge has evaluated automatic speech recognition systems (ASR), which sit at the core of many such technologies. Having dramatically improved (e.g. Jurafsky and Martin <span>2025</span>), today most mainstream ASR systems recognise acoustic patterns in audio recordings and map them onto probabilities for corresponding text to transcribe human speech into writing. After testing the performance of tools provided by Google, OpenAI and Meta on corpora with ‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ audio data in Arabic, Spanish, Bengali, Georgian, Tamil, Telugu and Tagalog, Kantharuban et al. (<span>2024</span>) report, however, that the tools still underperform for under-resourced dialect varieties. They argue that ASR performance ‘depends on the task and existing state of the [dialect] gap’ in ASR training datasets, with the largest predictor for having one's speech recognised being ‘linguistic proximity to well-resourced dialects’, most widely used for ASR training.</p><p>Such accented listening of ASR systems makes some accents hyperaudible, perpetuating oppressive social relations. Research shows that ASR's underperformance may reinforce or even amplify existing ethnoracial or regional dialect disparities. For example, Koenecke et al. (<span>2020</span>) observed twice as many errors for Black as for White American English speakers, with the highest word error rate reported for Black men using most features associated with African American English. Similarly, mainstream videoconferencing and social media platforms p
这篇评论揭示了社会语言学感知研究和听力主题研究如何提供令人信服的方法来识别每种声音的人性和多样性，揭示了感知是听者的行为。下面，我想从两个研究方向中选择一些项目来推进对技术口音偏见的讨论，展示倾听是如何在特定的接受文化中通过实践形成的，在这种文化中，“即使是最沉默的听众也是一种新兴叙事的作者”（Ochs和Capps 1996: 21）。我认为，这两条线索使我们能够将所有口音重新想象为“现代经验和知识生产”的轨迹（Inoue 2003: 158），通过引用超越“可观察和[…]可记录的“现实”（Inoue 2003: 182）的特定实践来操作。这反过来又使更多的声音“被公正地识别”（Eidsheim 2023: 143），不仅仅是在权力位置上倾听，而是更好地理解能力和基础设施如何放大、错听或沉默特定的人类声音。随着语音人工智能技术的使用越来越多，研究人员开始有兴趣研究哪些听力练习被转化为算法，以及它们如何延续有关语言结构和使用的特定想法。最近，剑桥大学的一组计算语言学家对自动语音识别系统（ASR）进行了评估，该系统是许多此类技术的核心。经过显著改进（如Jurafsky和Martin 2025），今天大多数主流的ASR系统都能识别音频记录中的声学模式，并将其映射到相应文本的概率上，从而将人类语言转录成文字。然而，Kantharuban等人（2024）在测试了谷歌、OpenAI和Meta提供的工具在阿拉伯语、西班牙语、孟加拉语、格鲁吉亚语、泰米尔语、泰卢固语和他加洛语的“标准”和“非标准”音频数据语料库上的性能后，报告称这些工具在资源不足的方言变体上仍然表现不佳。他们认为，ASR的表现“取决于ASR训练数据集中的任务和[方言]差距的现有状态”，一个人的语言被识别的最大预测因素是“与资源丰富的方言的语言接近”，这是最广泛用于ASR训练的。ASR系统的这种重音聆听使得一些重音听不清，使压迫性的社会关系永久化。研究表明，ASR的表现不佳可能会加强甚至扩大现有的种族或地区方言差异。例如，Koenecke等人（2020）观察到黑人的错误率是美国白人英语使用者的两倍，黑人男性使用与非洲裔美国英语相关的大多数特征时的错误率最高。同样，主流的视频会议和社交媒体平台对母语为英语的第二语言使用者产生的错误率是母语使用者的两倍（Dubois et al. 2024）。越来越多的研究关注ASR表现不佳对少数群体的行为和心理影响（Menegesha等人，2021），许多研究强调需要重新连接算法以实现“仅仅识别”（Eidsheim 2023）。在对抗ASR中这些现实生活中的不公正的斗争中，感知研究提醒我们，人类的语言感知不仅仅是声学模式识别。相反，人类口语理解是一个嵌入“一方面是复杂的社会动态，另一方面是快速出现的语言线索”的过程（Campbell-Kibler 2020: 254）。由于他们的实验设计和对影响听者对言语、语言处理和记忆的期望的因素的细致研究，这些项目揭示了人类在感知和评估语言材料时如何使用语言风格来将变化的意义语境化或整合外部信息。这些知识对于揭示ASR设计中的内置偏差至关重要。例如，Wong和Babel（2017）在温哥华对30名自我认同为中国人、东印度人或加拿大白人的人进行的研究表明，与ASR一样，人类最准确地识别出与优势群体相关的语言模式，在这种情况下是加拿大白人。然而，少数群体的经验也与高精度相关，并揭示了听众一致的标签选择，这要求ASR系统对特定品种进行精心策划和平衡（Bender等人，2021），同时推进优化策略。然而，根据Campbell-Kimbler（2021）、Hay and Drager（2010）或D'Onforio（2019）的研究，我们必须承认，关注声信号的变化只是故事的一部分。在多模态人际互动中，音频和视觉模态结合的方式影响感知。 例如，Campbell-Kimbler关于外国口音感知和说话者吸引力的实验工作表明，明确的指导和执行的任务对面孔和声音信息在社会感知中所扮演的角色有很强的影响。坎贝尔-金伯勒向1034名美国参与者（大多自称为女性、白人，年龄在25岁左右）展示了不同口音发音的单个单词的语音刺激，以及85张男性面部的静止图像，这些照片上的男性有统一的身体姿势、不同的背景颜色和衬衫风格。他表明，感知是通过不同类型的信息形成的，并不总是刻意控制和回顾。在讨论口音时，D’onforio进一步指出，视觉风格提供了丰富的信息，这些信息可能会影响语言记忆，因为口音的预期并没有直接映射到基于表型信息的种族化类别上。当153名母语为美国英语的参与者对韩国的熟悉程度不同时，这一点很明显，他们将白人男性和代表不同角色的同一韩国男性演员的视觉刺激与音频样本联系起来，音频样本是由母语为韩语的第二母语英语人士或母语为美国英语人士录制的。其中一个韩国人被评为“更热情、更可爱”、“更像美国人、更随意”、更可能是“来自美国”，结果显示出不同的回忆准确率，前者的模式与白人男性的模式更接近。在考虑ASR设计时，大多数模型没有以类似的方式整合动态过程中接收到的多个信息，这本身就不是数字音频信息的中性校准。ASR系统只承认某些类型的人，并将他们作为种族化群体的最具代表性的群体进行宣传，建立起特定的真实性话语。虽然社会语言学感知的研究揭示了ASR系统是如何通过选择性地使用他人的图像和线索来构建口音的，但他们的实验设计暂时冻结了社会关系，并且主要强调了中立倾听的不可能性。然后是对听力受试者的研究(例如Rosa and Flores 2017；Pak 2023)，这促使我们处理这种不可能：研究当人类的声音通过ASR基础设施被重新定向时，人类的多模态听力会发生什么，嵌入到特定的习惯和使用环境中，以及他们如何和为谁重新创造那些听到特定声音并以特定方式理解口音的人的现实，使系统识别内置的口音和以不同方式在“声学阴影”中运行的声音（Eidsheim 2023）。社会语言学感知研究也经常关注孤立的变量，并通过感知实验、刺激的声学操纵或强迫选择判断来操纵它们来测试因果关系，将听者视为揭示认知过程和社会索引实践。相比之下，对倾听主体的研究采用长期的参与者观察、情境访谈技术或与档案合作，认为倾听者也是一个社会行动者，其倾听是由生活经验塑造的，并且仍然是选择性的和意识形态的。通过这样做，他们强调了ASR将某些假设适应到算法中，消除了感知在特定时间和地点是“社会权力制度的影响”的现实，而“从来都不是自然或无中介的现象”（Inoue 2003: 157）。因此，对倾听主体的研究迫使我们质疑这种文化实践的条件：谁倾听，谁被倾听，何时以及如何被倾听，也在精心设计的研究实验之外，以及考虑到记录特定标志的制度历史、媒体基础设施、种族化过程或殖民历史，什么是可听的和不可听的。通过这样做，它使我们敏锐地意识到，并不是所有其他人都能“构成自己”和“为自己说话”，作为那些处于主导地位的人，这反过来可能有助于更好地理解ASR社会结构是如何自然化白人的阴影和相互关联的压迫系统的，并使听起来不合适的人类发展出新的策略来让他们的人性得到认可。为了理解人机交互中的这种“偶然的、协作的和紧急的自我创造过程”（Smalls 2018: 360），这些项目迫使我们研
{"title":"Reimagining Accents and Speech Recognition with Sociolinguistic Perception Studies and Research on Listening Subjects","authors":"Kinga Koźmińska","doi":"10.1111/josl.12720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12720","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This commentary unpacks how insights from studies of sociolinguistic perception and research on listening subjects may offer compelling ways to recognise the humanity and multiplicity of each voice, disclosing that perception is something listeners <i>do</i>. Below, I think with selected projects from the two strands of research to advance discussions on accent bias in technology, showing how listening is formed through practices operating within particular cultures of reception, where ‘even the most silent of listeners is an author of an emergent narrative’ (Ochs and Capps <span>1996</span>: 21). I argue that the two strands enable us to reimagine all accents as loci ‘of the experience and knowledge production of the modern’ (Inoue <span>2003</span>: 158), operating through particular practices of citation transcending ‘observable and […] recordable “realities”’ (Inoue <span>2003</span>: 182). This in turn enables more voices ‘to be justly recognized’ (Eidsheim <span>2023</span>: 143), moving beyond only listening from positions of power to a better understanding of how affordances and infrastructures amplify, mishear or silence particular human soundings.</p><p>With the increased use of voice AI technologies, researchers have become interested in examining what listening practices are being translated into algorithms and how they perpetuate particular ideas about language structure and use. Recently, a group of computational linguists at Cambridge has evaluated automatic speech recognition systems (ASR), which sit at the core of many such technologies. Having dramatically improved (e.g. Jurafsky and Martin <span>2025</span>), today most mainstream ASR systems recognise acoustic patterns in audio recordings and map them onto probabilities for corresponding text to transcribe human speech into writing. After testing the performance of tools provided by Google, OpenAI and Meta on corpora with ‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ audio data in Arabic, Spanish, Bengali, Georgian, Tamil, Telugu and Tagalog, Kantharuban et al. (<span>2024</span>) report, however, that the tools still underperform for under-resourced dialect varieties. They argue that ASR performance ‘depends on the task and existing state of the [dialect] gap’ in ASR training datasets, with the largest predictor for having one's speech recognised being ‘linguistic proximity to well-resourced dialects’, most widely used for ASR training.</p><p>Such accented listening of ASR systems makes some accents hyperaudible, perpetuating oppressive social relations. Research shows that ASR's underperformance may reinforce or even amplify existing ethnoracial or regional dialect disparities. For example, Koenecke et al. (<span>2020</span>) observed twice as many errors for Black as for White American English speakers, with the highest word error rate reported for Black men using most features associated with African American English. Similarly, mainstream videoconferencing and social media platforms p","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"360-362"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12720","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145530212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Three days prior to his murder in March 1995, Scott Amedure was a guest on <i>The Jenny Jones Show</i>, alongside Jonathan Schmitz. On the talk show, Amedure publicly stated his admiration for Schmitz, who is heterosexual and turned him down. Linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick read the talk show interaction between Schmitz and Amedure not only as a rejection of unreciprocated desire but as an instance of interpellation (Althusser <span>1971</span>) where Schmitz was called ‘into being a sexual subject’ (Kulick <span>2003</span>, 145) by Amedure's confession.</p><p>It was this interpellation, Kulick argued, that motivated Schmitz's homophobic retaliation. What Kulick left out of his discussion was another interaction between the duo that occurred right before Amedure's death. When Schmitz discovered a suggestive note left at his door, he drove to its presumed author's home to demand answers. Amedure reportedly responded with a smile when confronted. Schmitz then returned to his car to fetch his shotgun and fired at Amedure, twice through his chest (Turner <span>2025</span>).</p><p>Kulick's (<span>2003</span>) reading of Schmitz's rejection on the talk show argues for the indexical variations and pragmatic failures of the word ‘No’, where ‘No’ can be understood as more than refusal. In the case of Schmitz, there was no verbalisation of ‘No’ in response to Amedure's confession, but Kulick (<span>2003</span>, 146) argues that this nonverbal rejection of Amedure already produced Schmitz as a ‘non-masculine subject’. But there is more to Schmitz's violence. When Amedure smiled after being questioned by Schmitz about being the author of the suggestive note, an additional meaning-making event occurred. Schmitz ‘listened’ to Amedure's smile not only as confirmation of authorship but as an unrepentant attempt to threaten Schmitz's masculinity and heterosexuality. Amedure's smile and note were interpreted as a persistent affront to Schmitz's selfhood, and the only reasonable response was that of violence. In Schmitz's subsequent trial, the ‘Gay Panic Defence’ was invoked to reduce his charges, claiming that unwanted advances from a gay man resulted in emotional instability (‘panic’) that led to gunfire.</p><p>I begin this commentary with this case study as a backdrop to make two arguments. The first is the theorisation of listening as an <i>act</i> (Isin <span>2008</span>) rather than a practice. The second extends this theorisation to understand listening as an act of <i>powered interpretation</i>. This essay is in conversation with the papers in the virtual issue that have conceptualised linguistic perception and listening practices as distinct ideas that have commonalities in the way meaning-making is examined in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. My intervention, however, is one that sees listening acts (and subjects) as extending investigations of language use into the realm of change in social life. Listening acts attend to the accompl
1995年3月，在他被谋杀的三天前，Scott Amedure和Jonathan Schmitz一起参加了《珍妮·琼斯秀》。在脱口秀节目中，Amedure公开表达了他对Schmitz的钦佩，Schmitz是异性恋，并拒绝了他。语言人类学家Don Kulick将Schmitz和Amedure之间的谈话节目互动解读为不仅是对不求回报的欲望的拒绝，而且是一个质询的例子（Althusser 1971），其中Schmitz被Amedure的忏悔称为“成为性主体”（Kulick 2003, 145）。库利克认为，正是这种质询激发了施密茨对同性恋的报复。库利克在他的讨论中遗漏了两人之间的另一次互动，就在阿默多尔死前。当Schmitz在他的门上发现了一张暗示的纸条时，他开车去了假定的作者的家要求答案。据报道，当阿默多尔被质问时，他的回应是微笑。然后Schmitz回到他的车里拿起他的猎枪，朝Amedure开了两枪，穿透了他的胸膛（Turner 2025）。Kulick（2003）对Schmitz在脱口秀上的拒绝的解读认为，“不”这个词的索引变化和语用失败，“不”可以被理解为不仅仅是拒绝。在施密茨的案例中，没有人用语言表达“不”来回应阿默杜尔的忏悔，但Kulick（2003,146）认为，这种对阿默杜尔的非语言拒绝已经使施密茨成为一个“非男性主体”。但施密茨的暴力不止于此。当Amedure在被Schmitz问及他是这封暗含性留言的作者后露出微笑时，另一件具有意义的事情发生了。Schmitz“聆听”Amedure的微笑不仅是对作者身份的确认，也是对Schmitz的男子气概和异性恋的不悔改的威胁。阿默多尔的微笑和留言被认为是对施密茨自我的持续侮辱，唯一合理的回应就是暴力。在施密茨随后的审判中，“同性恋恐慌辩护”被用来减轻对他的指控，声称一名同性恋男子的不受欢迎的挑逗导致情绪不稳定（“恐慌”），从而导致枪击。我以这个案例研究作为背景，开始这篇评论，提出两个论点。首先是将倾听作为一种行为（Isin 2008）而不是一种实践的理论化。第二个扩展了这一理论，将倾听理解为一种有动力的解释行为。本文与虚拟问题中的论文进行了对话，这些论文将语言感知和听力实践概念化为不同的想法，这些想法在社会语言学和语言人类学中研究意义形成的方式中具有共性。然而，我的干预是将听力行为（和对象）视为将语言使用的调查扩展到社会生活变化的领域。倾听行为与意义创造的成就有关；也就是说，它们关心的是在赋予意义之后会发生什么。因此，社会语言学家只知道意义和语言形式是如何联系在一起的是不够的——还需要对这些有意义的形式是如何在意识形态上制定的进行研究。除了证明语言感知和听力行为之间的协同作用外，我在这里的论点还试图证明听力是如何被驱动的。我所说的力量，是指从聆听主体中产生的作为一种相对强大的认知来源的意义的强加、保留和循环。《虚拟问题》中的论文将语言感知发展为社会语言学的兴趣领域，主要关注社会语音学的归属——围绕身份类别的社会意义如何被归因于所听到的内容。虽然言语仍然是这些研究的中心因素，但社会语音学家也考虑了语言感知的视觉维度，因为只有声音受到审查的情况有限。正如D' onofrio（2019）和Campbell-Kibler（2020）在他们的研究中所证明的那样，通过面部提供的视觉信息对听者对声音的感知有显著影响，影响他们如何根据种族和出生地对说话者进行分类。作为对话者或听者，视听信息无处不在地提供给我们，将这一意义生成和归属的过程概念化，使社会语言学家能够深入了解人类行为者是如何相互理解社会意义的。当Amedure微笑着回答Schmitz关于作者身份的问题时，除了他的肯定之外，他所传达的大概是一种调情。目前尚不清楚阿默多尔是否还说了其他什么。如果我们通过（非）语言感知的视角来解读这样的互动，我们可能会认为，Schmitz将这种视觉信息（以及暗示性的注释）视为一种不受欢迎的性侵犯，同时也是对他男子气概的侵犯。 调情和骚扰的含义被归因于Amedure的微笑，这激怒了Schmitz早先在脱口秀上的公开尴尬。即使这种互动不涉及社会分类或识别，语言感知的概念也可以让我们深入了解施密茨在那个时刻的情感状态。当我说Schmitz听到了Amedure的微笑时，我感兴趣的不仅仅是该事件的意义形成过程。重要的是“注意的符号学行为”之后发生的事情（Woolard 2008）。根据Inoue（2003）的理论，将Schmitz定位为倾听主体，既质疑了对意义的感知，也质疑了Schmitz对意义所做的表达。Inoue（2003,157）对现代日本女性的言语如何被理解为“不是噪音，而是一种能指——对听者来说意味着什么”的观察，关注的是听者所练习的意义创造。但正如井上后来解释的那样，男性听众对这些含义的理解也至关重要：把现代日本女性塑造成有缺陷的人。井上的开创性论文继续启发了语言人类学的研究，研究什么是听力主体。虽然男性听力受试者是Inoue的重点，但其他人也考虑了美国的白人（Flores and Rosa 2015; Rosa and Flores 2017）和易性别的（Calder and Steele 2025; Jessee and Calder 2025）听力受试者和菲律宾的精英听力受试者（Reyes 2017）。我自己的工作试图阐明后殖民新加坡的国家倾听主体（Pak 2023；另见Babcock和Gershon 2025关于美国国家忽视主体）。井上的这些想法最近的迭代试图将不同形式和位置的主体定位为听众（和忽视者），使感知和构建说话主体的过程具有当代性。但是倾听到底是什么意思呢？井上并没有明确地说明这一点，但她（以及现存的）将倾听作为一种实践的编纂（井上2003,157）无疑是布尔迪厄式的，其特征是主导结构和历史事件的常规沉淀（布尔迪厄1990；参见marsili - vargas 2025）。听力练习的概念可以关注听力的适用性（而不是理论化）和重复性（作为行为）。两者都有助于理解听力主题。我认为，有干预空间的地方是将倾听作为一种行为的理论化，这可能更准确地捕捉到倾听的重大、破坏性特征，而不是其持续、重复的行为。首先，我们应该看看听力科目是做什么的。包括并遵循Inoue最初的概念，我们意识到倾听主体的不同迭代会对他们所听到的内容产生意义，无论是认为日本女学生的演讲是有缺陷的（Inoue 2003）还是将反种族主义言论重新表述为种族主义（Pak 2023）。但是，除了制造意义之外，倾听对象还会做的是断裂。倾听行为旨在“打破既定的命令、惯例和习惯”（Isin 2008, 36），通过提出倾听可以破坏正在进行的存在方式并创造新的存在方式，为倾听实践提供了额外的视角。Inoue（2003, 165）的男性倾听主体成功地将社会（日本女学生）和语言（teyo-dawa语）两种以前不存在的类别具体化，她认为这种意识形态“积极地构建了它声称要代表的现实”。同样，在我对新加坡种族语言意识形态的分析中，我也证明了国家倾听主体如何通过倾听公民说话者发出的反种族主义言论，“制造（种族主义）意义，因为它将被大众传播、理解和接受”（Pak 2023, 166，重点原）。在这两种情况下，我想强调的是
{"title":"What We Do with the Meanings We Make","authors":"Vincent Pak","doi":"10.1111/josl.12718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12718","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Three days prior to his murder in March 1995, Scott Amedure was a guest on <i>The Jenny Jones Show</i>, alongside Jonathan Schmitz. On the talk show, Amedure publicly stated his admiration for Schmitz, who is heterosexual and turned him down. Linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick read the talk show interaction between Schmitz and Amedure not only as a rejection of unreciprocated desire but as an instance of interpellation (Althusser <span>1971</span>) where Schmitz was called ‘into being a sexual subject’ (Kulick <span>2003</span>, 145) by Amedure's confession.</p><p>It was this interpellation, Kulick argued, that motivated Schmitz's homophobic retaliation. What Kulick left out of his discussion was another interaction between the duo that occurred right before Amedure's death. When Schmitz discovered a suggestive note left at his door, he drove to its presumed author's home to demand answers. Amedure reportedly responded with a smile when confronted. Schmitz then returned to his car to fetch his shotgun and fired at Amedure, twice through his chest (Turner <span>2025</span>).</p><p>Kulick's (<span>2003</span>) reading of Schmitz's rejection on the talk show argues for the indexical variations and pragmatic failures of the word ‘No’, where ‘No’ can be understood as more than refusal. In the case of Schmitz, there was no verbalisation of ‘No’ in response to Amedure's confession, but Kulick (<span>2003</span>, 146) argues that this nonverbal rejection of Amedure already produced Schmitz as a ‘non-masculine subject’. But there is more to Schmitz's violence. When Amedure smiled after being questioned by Schmitz about being the author of the suggestive note, an additional meaning-making event occurred. Schmitz ‘listened’ to Amedure's smile not only as confirmation of authorship but as an unrepentant attempt to threaten Schmitz's masculinity and heterosexuality. Amedure's smile and note were interpreted as a persistent affront to Schmitz's selfhood, and the only reasonable response was that of violence. In Schmitz's subsequent trial, the ‘Gay Panic Defence’ was invoked to reduce his charges, claiming that unwanted advances from a gay man resulted in emotional instability (‘panic’) that led to gunfire.</p><p>I begin this commentary with this case study as a backdrop to make two arguments. The first is the theorisation of listening as an <i>act</i> (Isin <span>2008</span>) rather than a practice. The second extends this theorisation to understand listening as an act of <i>powered interpretation</i>. This essay is in conversation with the papers in the virtual issue that have conceptualised linguistic perception and listening practices as distinct ideas that have commonalities in the way meaning-making is examined in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. My intervention, however, is one that sees listening acts (and subjects) as extending investigations of language use into the realm of change in social life. Listening acts attend to the accompl","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"363-366"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12718","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145530210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Third-wave sociolinguistics emphasizes speakers’ agentive roles in leveraging linguistic variation to construct and reinforce social identities. The present study examines how speakers of Andalusian Spanish navigate sociolinguistic variables, with a particular focus on mediatized contexts. We analyze variation between the /s/ and /θ/ phonemes in the speech of Joaquín Sánchez Rodríguez, a prominent Andalusian athlete and media figure. Drawing on 66 YouTube videos across formal and informal settings, we analyze how Joaquín navigates between the three reference systems associated with /s/~/θ/ usage (distinción, ceceo, seseo). We show that linguistic “scripts” privileging distinción create conditions for identity work through marked features like ceceo and seseo. Rather than merely imposing constraints, however, these scripts paradoxically augment the indexical potential of marked variants, fostering a dynamic interplay between agency and structure in public discourse. Finally, this study challenges claims that social meaning primarily attaches to phonetic elements rather than phonological relations.
{"title":"Beyond Distinción: Media, Identity, and the Strategic Use of /s/ and /θ/ in Andalusian Spanish","authors":"Nicholas Henriksen, Lucas Rubin","doi":"10.1111/josl.12717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12717","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Third-wave sociolinguistics emphasizes speakers’ agentive roles in leveraging linguistic variation to construct and reinforce social identities. The present study examines how speakers of Andalusian Spanish navigate sociolinguistic variables, with a particular focus on mediatized contexts. We analyze variation between the /s/ and /θ/ phonemes in the speech of Joaquín Sánchez Rodríguez, a prominent Andalusian athlete and media figure. Drawing on 66 YouTube videos across formal and informal settings, we analyze how Joaquín navigates between the three reference systems associated with /s/~/θ/ usage (<i>distinción</i>, <i>ceceo</i>, <i>seseo</i>). We show that linguistic “scripts” privileging <i>distinción</i> create conditions for identity work through marked features like <i>ceceo</i> and <i>seseo</i>. Rather than merely imposing constraints, however, these scripts paradoxically augment the indexical potential of marked variants, fostering a dynamic interplay between agency and structure in public discourse. Finally, this study challenges claims that social meaning primarily attaches to phonetic elements rather than phonological relations.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"332-347"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145530067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The participatory culture of social media allows women's voices to be heard but also parodied and policed. On Chinese social media platforms, where performers rapidly adopt and transform vocal trends for engagement, discourse on gendered vocal styles has proliferated. This study examines the phenomenon of “clip voice,” a newly enregistered feminine vocal style in China characterized by high pitch and creaky phonation. Using quantitative acoustic analysis and qualitative analysis of online videos and associated metalinguistic commentary, we trace the enregisterment and evolution of clip voice. Specifically, we demonstrate how clip voice is renegotiated to reinforce stereotypes of infantilized femininity by drawing upon tactics of denaturalization and recruiting features and meanings associated with sajiao, a more established feminine style. These findings highlight the ways in which the evolution and evaluation of gendered registers on social media not only reflect but also reinforce societal misogyny.
{"title":"Clip Voice: Misogyny and the Renegotiation of a Gendered Vocal Style in Chinese Digital Discourse","authors":"Zichuan Yu, Rebecca Lurie Starr","doi":"10.1111/josl.12715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12715","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The participatory culture of social media allows women's voices to be heard but also parodied and policed. On Chinese social media platforms, where performers rapidly adopt and transform vocal trends for engagement, discourse on gendered vocal styles has proliferated. This study examines the phenomenon of “clip voice,” a newly enregistered feminine vocal style in China characterized by high pitch and creaky phonation. Using quantitative acoustic analysis and qualitative analysis of online videos and associated metalinguistic commentary, we trace the enregisterment and evolution of clip voice. Specifically, we demonstrate how clip voice is renegotiated to reinforce stereotypes of infantilized femininity by drawing upon tactics of denaturalization and recruiting features and meanings associated with <i>sajiao</i>, a more established feminine style. These findings highlight the ways in which the evolution and evaluation of gendered registers on social media not only reflect but also reinforce societal misogyny.</p>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"348-359"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josl.12715","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145530003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Listening-as, Listening-for, and the Politics of Perception—Theirs and Ours","authors":"Joshua Babcock, Benjamin Salinas, Rina Sugawara","doi":"10.1111/josl.12716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12716","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 5","pages":"382-388"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145529861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this interview, Shobha Satyanath, one of India's premier sociolinguists, reflects on her career working on language variation and change in India and Guyana. The interview starts with a definition of what sociolinguistics is, namely, a social theory of language, and then continues to trace the development of Indian sociolinguistics. Satyanath also shares insights into the ideas behind the conference New Ways of Analyzing Variation Asia-Pacific and the associated journal Asia-Pacific Language Variation. From her and her students’ work on a range of Indian languages, it becomes clear that certain frameworks developed in Western sociolinguistics, such as diglossia, or what she also calls a hierarchical model of bilingualism, do not work to accurately account for the multicultural fabric of Indian and Guyanese societies. Satyanath proposes to understand multilingualism in a horizontal and harmonious way.
{"title":"Horizontal Multilingualism: Interview with Shobha Satyanath","authors":"Jaspal Naveel Singh","doi":"10.1111/josl.12709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12709","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In this interview, Shobha Satyanath, one of India's premier sociolinguists, reflects on her career working on language variation and change in India and Guyana. The interview starts with a definition of what sociolinguistics is, namely, a social theory of language, and then continues to trace the development of Indian sociolinguistics. Satyanath also shares insights into the ideas behind the conference <i>New Ways of Analyzing Variation Asia-Pacific</i> and the associated journal <i>Asia-Pacific Language Variation</i>. From her and her students’ work on a range of Indian languages, it becomes clear that certain frameworks developed in Western sociolinguistics, such as diglossia, or what she also calls a hierarchical model of bilingualism, do not work to accurately account for the multicultural fabric of Indian and Guyanese societies. Satyanath proposes to understand multilingualism in a horizontal and harmonious way.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"285-293"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this interview, John R. Rickford reflects on his career working on sociolinguistics in Guyana and the United States. The interview focuses on sociolinguistics and social justice, with particular focus on the potential for linguistic expertise in legal contexts. He addresses the concept of the creole continuum, and the concept of the conflict theory of social class, advocating for the importance of both. The interview also touches on Rickford's stroke and his thoughts on disability and sociolinguistics. Rickford makes a strong case for a positive future for the field of sociolinguistics and its changing position relative to linguistics, more generally. Through personal stories both in and out of academia, Rickford's career is a shining example of how the intertwining of the personal and the political is central to a life in sociolinguistics.
在这次采访中，John R. Rickford回顾了他在圭亚那和美国从事社会语言学工作的职业生涯。面试的重点是社会语言学和社会正义，特别关注法律背景下语言专业知识的潜力。他阐述了克里奥尔连续体的概念，以及社会阶级冲突理论的概念，倡导两者的重要性。采访还涉及到里奇福德的中风，以及他对残疾和社会语言学的看法。里奇福德为社会语言学领域的积极未来以及它相对于语言学的不断变化的地位提出了强有力的理由。通过在学术界内外的个人故事，里奇福德的职业生涯是一个光辉的例子，说明个人和政治的交织是社会语言学生活的核心。
{"title":"“You Have to Keep Fighting”: Interview with John R. Rickford","authors":"Lauren Hall-Lew","doi":"10.1111/josl.12710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12710","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In this interview, John R. Rickford reflects on his career working on sociolinguistics in Guyana and the United States. The interview focuses on sociolinguistics and social justice, with particular focus on the potential for linguistic expertise in legal contexts. He addresses the concept of the creole continuum, and the concept of the conflict theory of social class, advocating for the importance of both. The interview also touches on Rickford's stroke and his thoughts on disability and sociolinguistics. Rickford makes a strong case for a positive future for the field of sociolinguistics and its changing position relative to linguistics, more generally. Through personal stories both in and out of academia, Rickford's career is a shining example of how the intertwining of the personal and the political is central to a life in sociolinguistics.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51486,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sociolinguistics","volume":"29 4","pages":"294-301"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号