Overview

What impact do accents have on our lives as we interact with one another? Are accents more than simple sets of phonetic features that allow us to differentiate from one dialect, variety or style, to the other? What power relationships are at work when we speak with what those around us perceive as an 'accent'? In the 12 chapters of this volume, an international group of sociolinguists, applied linguists, anthropologists, and scholars in media studies, develop an innovative approach that we describe as the ‘pragmatics of accents’. In this volume, we present a variety of languages and go beyond the traditional structural description of accents. From ideologies in national contexts, to L2 education, to accent discrimination in the media and the workplace, this volume embraces a new perspective that focuses on the use of accents as symbolic resources, and emphasizes the importance of context in the human experience of accents.

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9789027209887

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This volume presents a strong collection of studies in pragmatics that should be of interest to scholars not just in linguistics but also across other disciplines, particularly language education, second language acquisition, and anthropology. At its core and through this interdisciplinary lens, this collection successfully interrogates the theoretical status of the notion of accent. [...] Pragmatics of Accents effectively pushes us to consider the study of accents in deeper and more complex ways, illustrating how the linguistic and interactional dynamics in the production, perception, and interpretation of accents must be approached through a pragmatic lens, as well as how this approach serves as a link to an array of interrelated fields. Because of the wealth and range of data and perspectives that it draws upon to conceptualize the theoretical notion of accent, articles from the book would serve well as core readings in an advanced undergraduate or graduate course concerned with the close connections between language variation, context, and the nature and impact of language ideologies. -- Juan Jose Bueno Holle, Independent Researcher

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