SKOMP Distinguished Lecture - Penelope Eckert of Stanford University

Indiana University's Anthropology Department presents the 2011 Annual David Skomp Distinguished Lecture in Anthropology: Dr. Penelope Eckert (Stanford University) Doing Adolescence: Linguistic Variation, Stylistic Practice, and the Construction of Social Meaning Sociolinguistic variation is best known for its correlations with broad demographic categories - class, gender, age, ethnicity. But the demographic patterns are in a sense epiphenomenal, reflecting indexical activity on a local level that connects indirectly, but systematically, to these categories. As a key element in stylistic practice, variation calls up social types and concerns that are constitutive of local, and ultimately global, social categories. This construction of social meaning is particularly active among adolescents, whose intense symbolic activity makes them the movers and shakers in linguistic change. This symbolic activity is an integral part of the emergence of a peer-based social order as the age cohort jointly appropriates social control from adults. Based on long-term ethnography in elementary and high schools, this talk will trace the emergence of a peer-based social order, showing how the formation of this social order is foundational to the organization of stylistic practice, and the emergence of an integrated system of social differentiation in language use. Penelope Eckert received her PhD in Linguistics from Columbia University in 1978. She is now a Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, where she is also associated with the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology. She is widely known for her ethnographic approach to the study of variation in language, and is the author of numerous books and articles which have explored the ways in which variable features of language are reflected in individual identities and are used in turn to build and shape those identities. Among her best known works are Jocks and Burnouts: Social Identity in the High School (1989), Linguistic Variation as Social Practice (2000), and Language and Gender (with Sally McConnell-Ginet, 2003). 

Swain West 007
Thur April 21 - 530PM