Standards, styles, and signs of the social self

Journal article

Language standardization policies, usually enacted by state-designed national education systems, have an impact on the folk understanding of registers. The delimitation of registers and their social meaning are tested and assessed by the use of register shibboleths, which change over time. Registers are recognized metapragmatically and play a key role in group formation processes within a given political economy and its structures of power. This analysis, applied to US English, can also distinguish a barista register created, enacted and assessed by consumerist promoters of specialist coffees.

Authors: Silverstein, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 134-164
• Publication date: 2017-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-a42vgxyyb
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: JASO