Ana's Presentation

Notes on Ana’s Presentation (from readings and ppt)

Metalinguistic study has always been a rather fascinating topic for me, and so I was quite sorry to have missed this presentation in person. I think the ways in which people create solidarity or distance by talking about the ways they talk is fascinating—I always think back to the first time I saw the “I’m not having any Southern Babies” monologue in American Tongues.

I am also particularly interested in the ways in which Ana is relying on much of the same framework as I am in looking at the issues of en-, decon- and recontexualization of the instance of metalinguistic commentary. I have personally found this to be a good area of intertextuality for my own work, as the process a text moves through as it moves from one of these to the next is frequently highly visible.

I was particularly interested in Coupland and Jaworoski’s discussion of language as innocent, in the idea that it is somehow removed from the social process and ideologies in which it is embedded. One thing I think keeps being broken down in this course is the idea of language as being separate from the social situations from which it arises. It is used to create identities and to shape them, and to move ideas from one sphere into another. If language were “innocent,” the rekeying that Tannen talks about would be impossible; there would be no social connection for that language to be able to move from a discussion about the return of a box to a discussion about spousal support in hardship.

Although language ideologies do not manifest themselves in my own research and there is not much in the way of metalinguistic commentary, I think the ways in which Ana is engaging with the same framework as I am to uncover the sites of her explorations forms a useful juxtaposition to my own work