El neoliberalismo norteamericano: el modelo de Chicago

Much of the previously discussed research on stereotypes has viewed stereotypes as detrimental, necessarily reproducing negative perceptions of social groups and

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For example, the titles of the humorous book Southern Ladies and Gentlemen (King 1976) and standup comedy routine “You Might Be a Redneck If” (Foxworthy 1993) explicitly label the stereotypes they comment on, yet their commentary on these stereotypes often serves to recirculate the same stigmatized type.

stripping individuals of their ability to understand the nuances of a complex world. While some sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists have shared this interest in critiquing problematic stereotypes (e.g., Bucholtz & Lopez 2011; Hill 2008), others have

acknowledged that stereotypes, embedded in our language ideologies, are an integral componentof sociolinguistic processes. This research has thus examined the mechanisms by which social and linguistic characteristics are linked with recognizable social types in conversation.

Some stereotypes are often the subject of commentary, circulating at a high level of metalinguistic awareness, as is the case in Labov’s (1972b:178–180) usage of the term “stereotype.” Yet while Labov treats stereotypes as a class of linguistic features, distinct from “markers” and “indicators,” which operate at lower levels of awareness, I use the term “stereotype” to refer to ideological models about a social group that may, but need not always, include reference to the group’s language practices. Beliefs about the social and linguistic characteristics of a group may be fundamental in individuals’ linguistic practices regardless of whether individuals are explicitly aware of those beliefs. For example, Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985) articulate the role of stereotypes in the construction of linguistic identities in language contact settings, arguing that “linguistic performance—what people actually say—is related ... to the stereotypes and abstractions and idealized models which both linguists and non-linguists have about ‘languages’ and about ‘speech or language communities’” (247). Agha (1998) makes a similar argument, approaching language variation from a cultural-historical perspective: stereotypes may serve “as models for some individuals, counter-models for others” (152), allowing for

individuals to deliberately construct their linguistic identities in response to circulating stereotypes and discourses about those stereotypes.

Scholars such as Keane (2003) have pointed out that identities exist at the intersections of multiple social dimensions (cf. Crenshaw 1989), including race, gender, class, and sexuality. As such, linguistic variables are unlikely to index only a single dimension of identity but rather are likely to evoke multiple components of an identity at once. For example, Agha (2007a) has labeled the widely recognized social types with which language varieties become associated as “characterological figures of

personhood,” based on his analysis of the type of person with whom the British English variety of RP (Received Pronunciation) is linked, defined by class and education as well as intellectual and aesthetic attributes simultaneously (Agha 2003). Perceptual linguistic research supports this idea as well, revealing that linguistic practices can bring to mind a collection of social factors about a speaker, including region, gender, and ethnicity, as well as personal characteristics such as friendliness, snobbiness, and intellectual ability (e.g., Niedzielski & Preston 2003; Preston & Robinson 2008; Campbell-Kibler 2009). This focus on stereotypes and their linguistic representations recognizes that language is ideologically connected to conceptions of holistic social types rather than single

dimension social traits or identities.

In addition to the relationship between language use and the social identities that language use evokes, sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological studies have also addressed the nuanced ways that stereotypes, their labels, and discourses about them are mapped from societal to interactional levels (Hewstone & Giles 1997; van Langenhove & Harré 1994; Chun 2004; Reyes 2004; Reyes 2012). For example, linguists have examined

the use of stereotypes themselves as interactional resources, allowing individuals to construct identities by aligning and distancing from widely circulating stereotypes (Bucholtz 2004) and to use racial labels as indirect commentary on gender identities (Chun 2011). At these interactional levels, stereotypes can be used in flexible ways that call into question the relationship between various presupposed dimensions of identity, just as the meanings of stereotypes may be challenged at community and societal levels as well.

The specific values and effects of stereotypes depend on their particular situatedness within local contexts, for example, as individuals link widely circulating stereotypes to relevant local typifications of them (Reyes 2004). For example, Johnstone (1999) investigates Southern language practices from a rhetorical and stylistic

perspective, exploring the varying ways that “Southern-sounding speech” is used

intentionally because of its ability to evoke particular Southern identities in interactions. Johnstone argues that, for female speakers, the language variety of the South is itself linked with personal traits such as the ladylike reservation and feminine wiles of the regionally situated Southern “belle” social type. Similarly, Hall-Lew and Stephens (2012) show that the social meaning of using “country talk”—made up of certain features of Southern language—can vary depending on the local community, as in Texoma, Texas, where “country” identities may be defined in opposition simultaneously to city dwellers, hicks, and rednecks. In these and other ways, residents of the South employ stereotypes of Southern identities and language practices, categorizing their lived experiences according to multiple dimensions of identity, both directly and indirectly constructing local instantiations of regional social types.