Voice, Footing, Enregisterment

2005/05/23 by Asif Agha · 11 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Multilingual Education and Policy

paper · doi:10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.38

openalex publication_date 2005/05/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

The article argues that a fuller consideration of voicing phenomena clarifies the nature of processes whereby registers of language expand, change, or remain constant in the socialized competence of language users. The first half of the article describes the semiotic processes whereby voicing effects are recognized or identified by interactants. The second half discusses the role of discursive voices and figures in large-scale sociohistorical practices involving registers. The overall goal is to show that the social existence of registers depends on the semiotic activities of language users, particularly those characterized in this article as matters of "alignment."

Cited by

• Metapragmatische Stereotype de-/nasaler Aussprache – Von näselnden Adeligen, Franzosen und ‚Schwulen‘
• Ethnolinguistic infusion: Community language socialization and reclamation without proficiency
• Disgust and Disdain in Meat Interactions in Mumbai: Halal Practice, Industrial Meat Production, and Urban-Spatial Configuration
• Korean Words in the OED : Race, Gender, and the Modern English Speaker
• Koreaish: Aesthetics, Qualia, and the Sensory Emergence of Korea Among Young Japanese Women
• “Can a minister say qǐyè?”: How a non-standard tone becomes indexical of the national other
• Inventing Postcolonial Elites: Race, Language, Mix, Excess
• Variation and the indexical field1
• Heritage Language Education and Identity in the United States
• Postracial Policing, “Mother Tongue” Sourcing, and Images of Singlish Standard
• The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies