1932

Abstract

Sociolinguists are deeply politically committed to (dis)fluency. They have generally seen it as their task to revise popular wisdom on the presumed disfluency of nonstandard, accented, or multilingual speakers and to demonstrate regularity and competence where deficit is presumed. I argue that this revision has its merits but is not immune to reconsideration for its naturalization of cultural ideas that value fluency and its promise of modernization through sociolinguistic knowledge. After addressing the limitations of this literature, I review works that explore alternative conceptualizations of (dis)fluency. I build on these to argue that rather than being an inherent characteristic of particular linguistic forms, (dis)fluency depends on relationships between these forms and their evaluation by speakers with competing perspectives and different positions in the social arrangements they so help to reproduce.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102215-100116
2016-10-21
2024-03-29
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/anthro/45/1/annurev-anthro-102215-100116.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102215-100116&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

Literature Cited

  1. Agha A. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  2. Agha A. 2015. Tropes of slang. Signs Soc. 3:2306–30 [Google Scholar]
  3. Alim S, Baugh J. 2007. Talkin Black Talk: Language, Education and Social Change. New York: Teachers Coll. Press
  4. Alim S, Smitherman G. 2012. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the US. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  5. Androutsopoulos J. 2007. Style online: doing hip-hop on the German-speaking web. Style and Social Identities: Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity P Auer 279–317 Berlin/New York: de Gruyter [Google Scholar]
  6. Au KH, Mason J. 1981. Social organizational factors in learning to read: the balance of rights hypothesis. Read. Res. Q. 17:1115–52 [Google Scholar]
  7. Avineri N, Johnson E, Brice-Heath S, McCarty T, Ochs E. et al. 2015. Invited forum: bridging the “language gap.”. J. Linguist. Anthropol. 25:166–86 [Google Scholar]
  8. Basso K. 1970. “To give up on words”: silence in Western Apache culture. Southw. J. Anthropol. 26:3213–30 [Google Scholar]
  9. Bauman R. 1983. Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence Among Seventeenth-Century Quakers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  10. Bauman R, Briggs C. 2003. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  11. Bennett J. 2012. “And what comes out may be a kind of screeching”: the stylization of chavspeak in contemporary Britain. J. Socioling. 16:15–27 [Google Scholar]
  12. Bereiter C, Engelmann S, Osborn J, Reidford PhA. 1966. An academically oriented pre-school for culturally deprived children. Pre-school Education Today: New Approaches to Teaching Three-, Four- and Five-Year-Olds FM Hechinger 105–35 Garden City, NY: Doubleday [Google Scholar]
  13. Bernstein B. 1961. Social structure, language and learning. Educ. Res. 3:3163–76 [Google Scholar]
  14. Blommaert J. 2014. Ethnography, Superdiversity, and Linguistic Landscapes. Bristol, UK: Multiling. Matt.
  15. Blommaert J, Backus A. 2011. Repertoires revisited: ‘knowing language’ in superdiversity Work. Pap. Urban Lang. Lit., Pap. 67, King's Coll. London
  16. Bourdieu P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power Cambridge, UK: Polity Press
  17. Bourdieu P, Wacquant L. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
  18. Brumfit CJ. 1984. Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  19. Bucholtz M. 1999. You da man: narrating the racial other in the production of white masculinity. J. Socioling. 3:4443–60 [Google Scholar]
  20. Bucholtz M. 2003. Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. J. Socioling. 7:3398–416 [Google Scholar]
  21. Busch B. 2012. The linguistic repertoire revisited. Appl. Linguist. 33:5503–23 [Google Scholar]
  22. Büscher K, Dhondt S, Meeuwis M. 2013. Recruiting a nonlocal language for performing local identity. Lang. Soc. 42:5527–56 [Google Scholar]
  23. Cameron D. 2000. Good to Talk? London: Sage
  24. Canagarajah S. 2013. Translingual Practice. London: Routledge
  25. Carr ES. 2006. ‘Secrets keep you sick’: metalinguistic labor in a drug treatment program for homeless women. Lang. Soc. 35:5631–53 [Google Scholar]
  26. Cazden CB, John VP, Hymes D. 1972. Functions of Language in the Classroom. New York: Teachers Coll. Press
  27. Charalambous C. 2012. ‘Republica de Kubros’: transgression and collusion in Greek-Cypriot adolescents' classroom silly-talk. Linguist. Educ. 23:3334–49 [Google Scholar]
  28. Chun E. 2004. Ideologies of legitimate mockery: Margaret Cho's revoicings of mock Asian. Pragmatics 14:2/3263–89 [Google Scholar]
  29. Chun E. 2009. Speaking like Asian immigrants: intersections of accommodation and mocking at a US high school. Pragmatics 19:117–38 [Google Scholar]
  30. Chun E. 2013. Ironic blackness as masculine cool: Asian American language and authenticity on YouTube. Appl. Linguist. 34:5592–612 [Google Scholar]
  31. Cole M, Scribner S. 1974. Culture and Thought: A Psychological Introduction. New York: John Wiley
  32. Corley M, Stewart O. 2008. Hesitation dysfluencies in spontaneous speech: the meaning of um. Lang. Linguist. Compass 2:4589–602 [Google Scholar]
  33. Cotterill J. 2005. You do not have to say anything…: instructing the jury on the defendant's right to silence in the English criminal justice system. Multilingua 24:1/27–24 [Google Scholar]
  34. Coupland N. 2010. Language, ideology, media and social change. Performing the Self K Junod, D Maillat 127–51 Tübingen, Ger.: Gunter Narr [Google Scholar]
  35. Creese A, Blackledge A. 2011. Separate and flexible bilingualism in complementary schools: multiple language practices in interrelationship. J. Pragmat. 43:51196–208 [Google Scholar]
  36. Cummings L. 2008. Clinical Linguistics Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press
  37. Cummins J. 2000. Language, Power and Pedagogy. Clevedon, UK: Multiling. Matt.
  38. Cutler C. 1999. Yorkville crossing: white teens, hip hop and African American English. J. Socioling. 3:4428–42 [Google Scholar]
  39. D'Amato J. 1993. Resistance and compliance in minority classrooms. Minority Education: Anthropological Perspectives E Jacob, C Jordan 181–207 Norwood, NJ: Ablex [Google Scholar]
  40. De Certeau M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  41. Deutsch M, Katz I, Jensen AR. 1968. Social Class, Race, and Psychological Development New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston
  42. Dorian NC. 1982. Defining the speech community to include its working margins. Sociolinguistic Variation in Speech Communities S Romaine 25–33 London: Edward Arnold [Google Scholar]
  43. Erickson F. 1982. Classroom discourse as improvization: relationships between academic task structure and social participation structure in lessons. Communicating in the Classroom LC Wilkinson 153–81 New York: Academic [Google Scholar]
  44. Erickson F. 1987. Transformation and school success: the politics and culture of educational achievement. Anthropol. Educ. Q. 18:4335–56 [Google Scholar]
  45. Evans BA, Hornberger N. 2005. No child left behind: repealing and unpeeling federal language education policy in the United States. Lang. Policy 4:178–106 [Google Scholar]
  46. Ferguson C. 1975. Toward a characterization of English foreigner talk. Anthropol. Linguist. 17:11–14 [Google Scholar]
  47. Fillmore C. 2000 (1979). On fluency. See Riggenbach 2000 43–60
  48. Flores N, García O. 2013. Linguistic third spaces in education: teachers' translanguaging across the bilingual continuum. Managing Diversity in Education. Languages, Policies, Pedagogies D Little, C Leung, P Van Avermaet 243–56 Bristol, UK: Multiling. Matt. [Google Scholar]
  49. Gal S. 1989. Between speech and silence: the problematics of research on language and gender. Pap. Pragmat. 3:11–38 [Google Scholar]
  50. Gal S. 2006. Migration, minorities and multilingualism. Language Ideologies, Practices and Polices: Language and the Future of Europe P Stevenson, C Mar-Molinero 13–27 London: Palgrave [Google Scholar]
  51. Gal S, Irvine J. 1995. The boundaries of languages and disciplines: how ideologies construct difference. Soc. Res. 62:4967–1002 [Google Scholar]
  52. García O, Wei L. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
  53. Gibson MA. 1987. The school performance of immigrant minorities: a comparative view. Anthropol. Educ. Q. 18:4262–75 [Google Scholar]
  54. Goral M, Conner PS. 2013. Language disorders in multilingual and multicultural populations. Annu. Rev. Appl. Linguist. 33:128–61 [Google Scholar]
  55. Graham L. 2011. Quoting Mario Juruna: linguistic imagery and the transformation of indigenous voice in the Brazilian print press. Am. Ethnol. 38:1164–83 [Google Scholar]
  56. Grainger K, Jones PE. 2013. The ‘language deficit’ argument and beyond. Lang. Educ. 27:295–98 [Google Scholar]
  57. Gumperz JJ. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  58. Gumperz JJ, Cook-Gumperz J. 1982. Language and Social Identity Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  59. Harris R. 1998. Introduction to Integrational Linguistics Oxford, UK: Pergamon
  60. Harris R. 2006. New Ethnicities and Language Use. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
  61. Heath SB. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  62. Heller M. 1999. Sociolinguistics and public debate. J. Socioling. 3:2260–92 [Google Scholar]
  63. Hill JH. 1993. Hasta la vista, baby: Anglo Spanish in the American Southwest. Crit. Anthropol. 13:2145–76 [Google Scholar]
  64. Hinnenkamp V. 1991. Talking a person into interethnic distinction. The Pragmatics of International and Intercultural Communication J Blommaert, J Verschueren 91–109 Amsterdam: John Benjamins [Google Scholar]
  65. Hymes D. 1967. Why linguistics needs the sociologist. Soc. Res. 34:4632–47 [Google Scholar]
  66. Hymes D. 1972. On communicative competence. Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings JB Pride, J Holmes 269–93 Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin [Google Scholar]
  67. Hymes D. 1996. Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice London: Taylor & Francis
  68. Irvine J. 1990. Registering affect: heteroglossia in the linguistic expression of emotion. Language and the Politics of Emotion CA Lutz, L Abu-Lughod 126–61 Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  69. Jaffe A. 1999. Ideologies in Action: Language Politics on Corsica. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter
  70. Jaspers J. 2008. Problematizing ethnolects: naming linguistic practices in an Antwerp secondary school. Int. J. Biling. 12:1–285–103 [Google Scholar]
  71. Jaspers J. 2011. Talking like a zero-lingual: ambiguous linguistic caricatures at an urban secondary school. J. Pragmat. 43:51264–78 [Google Scholar]
  72. Jaspers J. 2014a. From unwanted to so-called expertise: ideologizing sociolinguistics in contemporary mainstream media. Sci. Comm. 36:5570–92 [Google Scholar]
  73. Jaspers J. 2014b. Stylizations as teacher practice. Lang. Soc. 43:4373–91 [Google Scholar]
  74. Jaspers J, Madsen L. 2016. Sociolinguistics in a languagized world. Introduction. Appl. Linguist. Rev. In press
  75. Jaworski A. 1993. The Power of Silence: Social and Pragmatic Perspectives. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
  76. Jensen AR. 1969. How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?. Harv. Educ. Rev. 39:1–122 [Google Scholar]
  77. Jørgensen JN. 2008. Polylingual languaging around and among adolescents. Int. J. Multiling. 5:3161–76 [Google Scholar]
  78. Knowlson J. 1996. Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett. London: Bloomsbury
  79. Koponen M, Riggenbach H. 2000. Overview: varying perspectives on fluency. See Riggenbach 2000 5–24
  80. Kroskrity PV. 2009. Narrative reproductions: ideologies of storytelling, authoritative words, and generic regimentation in the village of Tewa. J. Linguist. Anthropol. 19:140–56 [Google Scholar]
  81. Kuhn M, Stahl S. 2003. Fluency: a review of developmental and remedial practices. J. Educ. Psychol. 95:13–21 [Google Scholar]
  82. Kurzon D. 1997. Discourse of Silence Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
  83. Labov W. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: Univ. Pa. Press
  84. Lakoff R. 1975. Language and Woman's Place. New York: Harper & Row
  85. Levinson S. 1983. Pragmatics Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  86. Lippi-Green R. 1997. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States London/New York: Routledge
  87. Macbeth D. 1991. Teacher authority as practical action. Linguist. Educ. 3:4281–313 [Google Scholar]
  88. Madsen LM. 2013. “High” and “low” in urban Danish speech styles. Lang. Soc. 42:2115–38 [Google Scholar]
  89. Makoni S, Pennycook A. 2007. Disinventing and Reconstituting Language Clevedon, UK: Multiling. Matt.
  90. Marsh J. 2011. Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality. New York: Monthly Rev. Press
  91. Martin-Jones M, Romaine S. 1986. Semilingualism: a half-baked theory of communicative competence. Appl. Linguist. 7:126–38 [Google Scholar]
  92. Maryns K. 2006. The Asylum Speaker: An Ethnography of Language and Communication in the Belgian Asylum Procedure. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publ.
  93. McDermott R. 1974. Achieving school failure: an anthropological approach to illiteracy and social stratification. Education and Cultural Process: Toward an Anthropology of Education GD Spindler 82–118 New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston [Google Scholar]
  94. McDermott R. 1988. Inarticulateness. Linguistics in Context: Connecting Observation and Understanding D Tannen 37–68 New Jersey: Ablex [Google Scholar]
  95. McDermott R, Varenne H. 1995. Culture as disability. Anthropol. Educ. Q. 26:3324–48 [Google Scholar]
  96. Meeuwis M. 1994. Leniency and testiness in intercultural communication: remarks on ideology and context in interactional sociolinguistics. Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Intercultural Communication M Meeuwis. Pragmatics 4:3391–408 [Google Scholar]
  97. Mehan H. 1979. Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
  98. Milani T. 2010. What's in a name? Language ideology and social differentiation in a Swedish print-mediated debate. J. Socioling. 14:1116–42 [Google Scholar]
  99. Moore R. 1996. Back to the future: the problem of change and the possibilities of advance in the sociology of education. Br. J. Sociol. Educ. 17:2145–61 [Google Scholar]
  100. O'Rourke B, Pujolar J, Ramallo F. 2015. New speakers of minority languages: the challenging opportunity—foreword. Int. J. Sociol. Lang. 231:1–20 [Google Scholar]
  101. Ogbu J. 1978. Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective New York: Academic
  102. Otsuji E, Pennycook A. 2010. Metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity and language in flux. Int. J. Multiling. 7:3240–54 [Google Scholar]
  103. Perry TH, Delpit L. 1998. The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language and the Education of African American Children. Boston: Beacon Press
  104. Piestrup A. 1973. Black Dialect Interference and Accommodation of Reading Instruction in First Grade. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  105. Pratt ML. 1987. Linguistic utopias. The Linguistics of Writing N Fabb, D Attridge, A Durant, C MacCabe 48–66 Manchester, UK: Manch. Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  106. Pujolar J. 2003. Gender, Heteroglossia and Power: A Sociolinguistic Study of Youth Culture. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter
  107. Rampton B. 1995. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London: Longman
  108. Rampton B. 2006. Language in Late Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  109. Rampton B. 2010. Speech community. Society and Language Use J Jaspers, J-O Östman, J Verschueren 275–303 Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins [Google Scholar]
  110. Rampton B. 2011. From ‘multi-ethnic adolescent heteroglossia’ to ‘contemporary urban vernaculars.’. Lang. Commun. 31:4276–94 [Google Scholar]
  111. Rampton B. 2013. Styling in a language learned later in life. Mod. Lang. J. 97:2360–82 [Google Scholar]
  112. Reay D. 2010. Sociology, social class and education. The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education MW Apple, SJ Ball, LA Gandin 396–404 London/New York: Routledge [Google Scholar]
  113. Reyes A, Lo A. 2009. Beyond Yellow English Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  114. Rickford J. 1999. African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolutions, Educational Implications Malden, MA: Blackwell
  115. Rickford JR, Rickford RJ. 2000. Spoken Soul. The Story of Black English. New York: John Wiley & Sons
  116. Riggenbach H. 2000. Perspectives on Fluency Ann Arbor: Univ. Mich. Press
  117. Ronkin M, Karn HE. 1999. Mock Ebonics: linguistic racism in parodies of Ebonics on the Internet. J. Socioling. 3:3360–80 [Google Scholar]
  118. Schegloff EA. 1980. The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. Syntax and Semantics 12 Discourse and Syntax T Givon 261–86 New York: Academic [Google Scholar]
  119. Schegloff EA. 2010. Some other “uh(m)”s. Discourse Process. 47:2130–74 [Google Scholar]
  120. Scollon R, Scollon SB. 1979. Linguistic Convergence: An Ethnography of Speaking at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. New York: Academic
  121. Silverstein M. 1979. Language structure and linguistic ideology. The Elements P Clyne, W Hanks, C Hofbauer 193–248 Chicago: Chicago Linguist. Soc. [Google Scholar]
  122. Silverstein M. 2003. Talking Politics. The Substance of Style from Abe to “W”. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press
  123. Simpkins G, Simpkins C. 1981. Cross-cultural approach to curriculum development. Black English and the Education of Black Children and Youth G Smitherman 221–40 Detroit, MI: Cent. Black Stud., Wayne State Univ. [Google Scholar]
  124. Snell J. 2013. Dialect, interaction and class positioning at school: from deficit to difference to repertoire. Lang. Educ. 27:2110–28 [Google Scholar]
  125. Stroud C. 2004. Rinkeby Swedish and semilingualism in language ideological debates: a Bourdieuean perspective. J. Socioling. 8:2196–214 [Google Scholar]
  126. Stubbs M. 1976. Language, Schools and Classrooms London: Methuen
  127. Talmy S. 2009. Forever FOB? Resisting and reproducing the other in high school ESL. See Reyes & Lo 2009, pp. 347–65
  128. Tannen D, Saville-Troike M. 1985. Perspectives on Silence Norwood, NJ: Ablex
  129. Trudgill P. 1975. Accent, Dialect and the School London: Edward Arnold
  130. Tsitsipis L. 1989. Skewed performance and full performance in language obsolescence: the case of an Albanian variety. Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death N Dorian 117–37 Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  131. Valentine G. 2008. Living with difference: reflections on geographies of encounter. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 32:3321–35 [Google Scholar]
  132. Varenne H, McDermott R. 1999. Successful Failure: The School America Builds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
  133. Varonis EM, Gass SM. 1985. Non-native/non-native conversations: a model for negotiation of meaning. Appl. Linguist. 6:171–90 [Google Scholar]
  134. Wiese H. 2012. Kiezdeutsch: Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht. München, Ger.: C.H. Beck
  135. Wiese H. 2015. “This migrants' babble is not a German dialect!”: the interaction of standard language ideology and ‘us’/‘them’ dichotomies in the public discourse on a multiethnolect. Lang. Soc. 44:3341–68 [Google Scholar]
  136. Williams G. 1992. Sociolinguistics: A Sociological Critique London: Routledge
  137. Williams Q, Stroud C. 2013. Multilingualism in transformative spaces: contact and conviviality. Lang. Policy 12:4289–311 [Google Scholar]
  138. Woolard K, Ribot Bencomo A, Soler Carbonell J. 2014. What's so funny now? The strength of weak pronouns in Catalonia. J. Linguist. Anthropol. 23:3127–41 [Google Scholar]
  139. Woolard K, Schieffelin B. 1994. Language ideology. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 23:55–82 [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102215-100116
Loading
  • Article Type: Review Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error