Verticalization and African American Sociolinguistic Labor
Part of the Language Ideologies and Linguistic Discrimination lecture series
Kelly Wright, Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English, Virginia Polytechnic University
Metalinguistic awareness includes a language user’s knowledge about the relation of factors
(like age, gender, or race) to linguistic usage, distribution, meaning, or context of occurrence
variance. Such embodied knowledge is directly linked to the social meanings available to an
individual across linguistic markets, and the ways in which individuals choose to maintain or
shift away from the numerous styles, varieties, and languages they command, both in real time
and over time. Wright will begin this presentation with a discussion of how embodied
perception–stretched over time–interacts with institutions to create the conditions for linguistic
oppression. This discussion will highlight points from African American history to quickly set
these wider phenomena into a digestible perspective. Through these examples we will also
consider Verticalization’s interaction with Standard language ideologies and the extent to which
one’s capability of exploiting the range of variation available in a given context is constrained.
Wright will then present findings from an innovative methodology–the Metalinguistic Method of
Sociolinguistic Interview–designed to elevate metalinguistic commentary and to introduce
representative and equitable models of data collection and experimentation. In this light, we’ll
then consider the concept of sociolinguistic labor as Wright shares reflections from Black
professionals about the ways in which they orient to their own language use. This presentation
will end by priming a group discussion on a (user or listener’s) preference for assimilationist
sociolinguistic labor and the ways in which we–as a community of experts–can find large and
small ways to encourage the communities we enter to use their varieties safely and completely.
FREE and open to anyone!
This talk is co-sponsored by the Language Institute.
