Barbara Johnstone

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Barbara Johnstone
Born (1952-03-24) March 24, 1952 (age 72)
Occupation(s)Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Known forScholar of discourse studies

Barbara Johnstone (born March 24, 1952) is an American professor of rhetoric and linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University. She specializes in discourse structure and function, sociolinguistics, rhetorical theory, and methods of text analysis. [1] She was the editor in chief of Language in Society from 2005 to 2013, [1] and is the editor of Pittsburgh Speech & Society, a website about Pittsburgh English for non-linguists. [2] She has published several books, including Speaking Pittsburghese (2013) and Discourse Analysis, 2nd Ed. (2008). She has also written for The New York Times. [3]

Contents

Education

Johnstone received her bachelor of arts in linguistics from Yale University.[ when? ] She received her master's and her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Michigan.

Career

She taught at Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne (1981-1985), Georgetown University (1985-1987), and Texas A&M University (1987-1997), followed by her current position of professor of rhetoric and linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University since 1997. [4]

Johnstone has also published papers on gender and language, Arabic language discourse, as well as many other linguistic topics. [5] On top of that, she also wrote a book called the "Linguistic Individual," [6] discussing self-expression in language.

Research on Pittsburghese

Johnstone is recognized as an expert on Pittsburgh English, [7] locally known as "Pittsburghese." Her research is concerned with how the dialect is "constructed through local talk, and talk about talk," connecting "people's understandings of language and place" with language change. [1] Her 2013 book Speaking Pittsburghese: The Story of a Dialect, is a summation of her scholarly work on Pittsburgh English. [1] [8] [9] The book is a sociolinguistic analysis of the history of Pittsburgh English and how it has changed over time, with a focus on the process of enregisterment and how the dialect is linked to local identity. [10] It also explores the history and local use of some of Pittsburgh's most emblematic words, including "yinz," "nebby," and "dahntahn." [11] Johnstone also focuses on phonological features of "pittsburghese" such as the monophthongal /aw/. [12]

Research on Texas women

Johnstone has written about style-shifting among Texas women. In her article, "Uses of southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women", Johnstone delves into how Texas women use different ways of talking, which range from "automatic and nonstrategic" to "very planned and strategic". [13]

In another article, titled "Sociolinguistic Resources, Individual Identities, and Public Speech Styles of Texas Women", Johnstone studied how women in Texas form linguistic identities based on their own individual backgrounds, such as ethnicity, region of living, as well as the linguistic models they experienced in their lives. [14]

Related Research Articles

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Pennsylvania English</span> Dialect of American English

Western Pennsylvania English, known more narrowly as Pittsburgh English or popularly as Pittsburghese, is a dialect of American English native primarily to the western half of Pennsylvania, centered on the city of Pittsburgh, but potentially appearing in some speakers as far north as Erie County, as far west as Youngstown, Ohio, and as far south as Clarksburg, West Virginia. Commonly associated with the working class of Pittsburgh, users of the dialect are colloquially known as "Yinzers". The dialect is even heard in the town of Hancock, Maryland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Discourse analysis</span> Generic term for the analysis of social, language policy or historiographical discourse phenomena

Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event.

<i>Yinz</i> Second person pronoun used in Pennsylvania

Yinz is a second-person plural pronoun used mainly in Western Pennsylvania English. It is most prominent in Pittsburgh, but it is also found throughout the cultural region known as Appalachia, located within the geographical region of the Appalachians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Speech community</span> Group of people who share expectations regarding linguistic usage

A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language. It is a concept mostly associated with sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.

Jenny L. Cheshire is a British sociolinguist and professor at Queen Mary University of London. Her research interests include language variation and change, language contact and dialect convergence, and language in education, with a focus on conversational narratives and spoken English. She is most known for her work on grammatical variation, especially syntax and discourse structures, in adolescent speech and on Multicultural London English.

Linda Flower is a composition theorist. She is best known for her emphasis on cognitive rhetoric, but has more recently published in the field of service learning. Flower currently serves Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of rhetoric.

Mary Bucholtz is professor of linguistics at UC Santa Barbara. Bucholtz's work focuses largely on language use in the United States, and specifically on issues of language and youth; language, gender, and sexuality; African American English; and Mexican and Chicano Spanish.

Interactional sociolinguistics is a subdiscipline of linguistics that uses discourse analysis to study how language users create meaning via social interaction. It is one of the ways in which linguists look at the intersections of human language and human society; other subfields that take this perspective are language planning, minority language studies, quantitative sociolinguistics, and sociohistorical linguistics, among others. Interactional sociolinguistics is a theoretical and methodological framework within the discipline of linguistic anthropology, which combines the methodology of linguistics with the cultural consideration of anthropology in order to understand how the use of language informs social and cultural interaction. Interactional sociolinguistics was founded by linguistic anthropologist John J. Gumperz. Topics that might benefit from an Interactional sociolinguistic analysis include: cross-cultural miscommunication, politeness, and framing.

New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) is an annual academic conference in sociolinguistics. NWAV attracts researchers and students conducting linguistic scientific investigations into patterns of language variation, the study of language change in progress, and the interrelationship between language and society, including how language variation is shaped by and continually shapes societal institutions, social and interpersonal relationships, and individual and group identities.

In sociolinguistics, a style is a set of linguistic variants with specific social meanings. In this context, social meanings can include group membership, personal attributes, or beliefs. Linguistic variation is at the heart of the concept of linguistic style—without variation, there is no basis for distinguishing social meanings. Variation can occur syntactically, lexically, and phonologically.

Penelope "Penny" Eckert is Albert Ray Lang Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Stanford University. She specializes in variationist sociolinguistics and is the author of several scholarly works on language and gender. She served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2018.

Jagoff or jag-off is an American English derogatory slang term from Pittsburghese meaning a person who is a jerk, stupid or inept. It is most prominent in the Pittsburgh area and Pennsylvania in general, along with wide use in the City of Chicago, particularly in the Irish taverns. The Dictionary of American Regional English defines the term as a "general term of disparagement". It is an archetypical Pittsburgh word, conjuring feelings of delight among Pittsburgh expatriates. The term is generally not seen as obscene among Pittsburghers and Chicagoans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yappin' Yinzers</span>

Yappin' Yinzers is a line of talking plush dolls with exaggerated stereotypical Pittsburgh mannerisms and speech patterns, a personality type called Yinzer. They are designed to "represent the epitome of Yinzerdom"

Anne Harper Charity Hudley is an American linguist who works on language variation in secondary schools. Since 2021, she has been a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

Sali A. Tagliamonte is a Canadian linguist. Her main area of research is the field of language variation and change.

Deborah Sue Schiffrin was an American linguist who researched areas of discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, producing seminal work on the topic of English discourse markers.

In sociolinguistics, covert prestige is a type of scenario in which nonstandard languages or dialects are regarded to be of high linguistic prestige by members of a speech community. This is in contrast to the typical case of linguistic prestige, wherein only the standard varieties of a speech community are considered prestigious.

John Gordon Baugh V is an American academic and linguist. His main areas of study are sociolinguistics, forensic linguistics, education, and African American language studies. He is currently the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and President of the Linguistic Society of America. In 2020 Baugh was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the section on Linguistics and Language Sciences, and in 2021 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sonja L. Lanehart is an American linguist and professor of linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona who has advanced the study of language use in the African American community. Her work as a researcher, author, and editor includes African American English, education, literacy, identity, language variation, women's languages, intersectionality, and inclusivity within the African American community. Lanehart's sociolinguistic orientation prioritizes language as a phenomenon influenced by sociocultural and historical factors. She also utilizes the perspectives of Critical Race Theory and Black feminism in her work. Lanehart was the Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio from 2006 to 2019, and was selected by the Linguistic Society of America as a 2021 Fellow.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Barbara Johnstone Carnegie Mellon University". Carnegie Mellon University. Archived from the original on 2014-02-23. Retrieved 2014-03-23.
  2. "Pittsburgh Speech & Society". University Library System at University of Pittsburgh.
  3. Johnstone, Barbara (December 23, 2013). "Local Accents Give You a Sense of Place". The New York Times .
  4. "Selected Works of Barbara Johnstone". bepress. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
  5. "Barbara Johnstone | Carnegie Mellon University | discourse structure and function, sociolinguistics | Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics, Affiliated Faculty, Department of Modern Languages". works.bepress.com. Archived from the original on 2015-04-11. Retrieved 2015-04-14.
  6. Johnstone, Barbara (2009). Jaffe, Alexandra (ed.). "Stance, Style, and the Linguistic Individual". Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Stance. Oxford University Press: 29–52. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331646.003.0002. ISBN   978-0-19-533164-6.
  7. Potter, Chris (January 22, 2014). "Oral History: CMU linguistics professor charts the city's history through its language". Pittsburgh City Paper .
  8. Rea, Shilo (November 4, 2013). "Pittsburghese: Carnegie Mellon's Barbara Johnstone Uncovers the Story of a Dialect". Carnegie Mellon University.
  9. Johnstone, Barbara (October 14, 2013). Speaking Pittsburghese: The Story of a Dialect. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford University Press. pp. lxxi. ISBN   9780199374915.
  10. University, Carnegie. "Press Release: Pittsburghese: Carnegie Mellon's Barbara Johnstone Uncovers the Story of a Dialect-Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University". www.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2015-04-14.
  11. Weaver, Rachel (January 4, 2014). "Yinzers proud of their dialect n'at". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . Retrieved 2014-03-22.
  12. Johnstone, Barbara; Kiesling, Scott (2008). "Indexicality and experience: Exploring the meanings of /aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburgh". Journal of Sociolinguistics. 12 (1): 5–33. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00351.x.
  13. Johnstone, B. (1999) Uses of southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women. Journal of Sociolinguistics , 4 (3), 505-22.
  14. Johnstone, Barbara (1995). "Sociolinguistic resources, individual identities, and public speech styles of Texas women". Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 5 (2): 183–202. doi:10.1525/jlin.1995.5.2.183.