Recubrimientos comestibles

Earlier phases of this study drew on theories presenting variational spelling as an indexical enactment of resistant social attitudes. Potentials for social signification of this kind are attested by the longstanding identification in sociolinguistic studies of stigmatised vernacular and subcultural forms of speech, especially taken from regiolectal and sociolectal varieties, which have been subsequently re-appropriated by marginalised groups and re-oriented for their affordances in intimating solidarity with a localised peer-group ideology. So, German Punk fanzine writers use of ‘non-standard choices’ was an indexical of their ‘subcultural

capital’ (Thornton 1995), construing social distance from mainstream values and identities (Androutsopoulos 2000). The sociolinguistics of covert prestige is reworked in its written and spelt forms (ibid., Labov 1968, Trudgill 1976, Cheshire 1982). This approach to spelling as resistance is amplified and extended by the analysis presented in two edited collections of case studies illustrating orthographic variation as discursive constructions of youth identity (Androutsopoulos & Scholz 1998, Androutsopoulos & Georgakopoulou 2003). It is further exemplified by studies African-Caribbean varieties, as they feature in stylised representations marking stance, subcultural affiliation or enregisterment (Sebba 2003 a & b, Hinrichs 2012). A more extreme version of a related idea can be seen too in Halliday’s earlier theorisation of a lexical and orthographic anti-language as a performative register of subversion; this informs some studies of internet chat and popular attitudes about SMS language as an argot (Halliday 1976, 1979, Donath 1999, Stevenson 2001). Androutsopoulos’s study of fanzines is also significant for its delineation of a typology of respelling which focuses on the social conditions giving rise to innovation, and the affordances which might be achieved, rather than the more common previous approach of using terms and concepts for spelling primarily driven by deficit, form-focused comparison with standard forms. The approaches to corpus data classification taken in this study derive from such socially-conceptualised approaches (see Werry 1996, Jaffe 2012, Chapter 4 below).

The earlier reporting of this study presented analysis of small corpora of SMS and instant messaging as ‘systematic innovation and deviation’ in teenagers’ use of language (see Chapter 4).47 _{That work used the sociolinguistic concept of ‘covert prestige’ as the social motivation for} the deployment of some linguistic variants, including those which model established covert prestige accent features such as ‘g’-dropping in written form: ‘g-dropping’ in Trudgill (1976) becomes ‘g-clipping’ in Thurlow (2003). Such motivations are attested in the questionnaire and interview comments with fine-grained idiolectal claims of preferences and dislikes for variants such as <wat>/<wot>/<what>, <soz> for <sorry>, <dem> for <them> and <skl>, <skool>, <school> (see Chapters 6, 7 and 8). As SMS diffused beyond its early adopters’ social and generational profiles, claims of respelling as ritualised resistance could not explain evidence for more heterogeneous views, including the linguistically conservative attitudes reported by a quarter of the sample, or markedly transgressive choices by some with high levels of educational attainment. Some expertly literate, culturally-accomplished older people, including teachers and academics, also claimed respelling preferences. The argument that lexical and orthographic non-compliance is a rhetorical performance of oppositional social stance can only explain some of the potential of vernacular choice.48 _{The focus on youth and its rituals of} respelling collocates youth, subculture and social resistance and presents a homogenising construction of youth as norm-resisting and oppositional (Thurlow 2005b, 2006, 2007, Thurlow & Marwick 2005). The actual heterogeneity of young people’s appropriation of all aspects of digital technology including its associated spelling choice is evident in the data-set examined in the surveys and interviews used in this study, in which respondents report diverse attitudes and

practices in SMS spelling, and where their attitudes and practices appear amenable to change in relation to changing social role and aspiration.

2.7.2 ‘Variational spelling’, processing and ‘affect’

There is a subtler argument about the social and semiotic advantages of innovative orthographic choices made by scholars who have commented on the potential of respelling for construing affect, and a more direct mode of address in orthographic intimations of spokenness in conjunction with a more vivid sense of reading. Reaching for an explanation for the respellings which featured so strongly in her study of 1960s trade names, Praninskas cites a memorable image taken from I.A. Richards, likening the psychosocial effect of non-standard spelling choices to that of walking over flat, even ground giving way to difficult terrain, with all the attendant refocusing and emotional re-engagement associated with that. Such potentials may be invoked by the designed apparently ‘jumbled’ respellings shown in Figure 2.14, as part of a discoursal strategy to manage customer expectations. Here the popular awareness of the intelligibility of variational forms, as found in a commonly cycled email meme about the intelligibility of a principled reconfiguration of spelling (Davies 2003, Appendix IIb ) is combined with the affordances of such spellings for semiotic vividness. The designed respellings function to intimate a mimetic simulation of actively experienced disorientation.

Kataoka presented related analysis of the effect of orthographic and graphological innovations and transgressions in the domestic settings of informal letter-writing by young Japanese women. In the context of gendered expectations of formulaic conventionalised linguistic (and social) behaviour, she suggested that powerful intimations of loyalty and intimacy may be construed by small speech-like innovations and script-switching (Kataoka 1997, 2003a, 2003b).49 _Similarly Jaffe argued that respellings can have powerful localised meaning-potentials:

re-embod[ying] the linguistic sign, de-familaris[ing] reading experiences formed mainly in practices which engage with standard English orthography, and can be powerful in eliciting active, engaged modes of re-reading and de-coding.... non- standard orthographies can graphically capture some of the immediacy, ‘authenticity’ and ‘flavo[u]r’ of the spoken word. (Jaffe 2000;498).

Focusing on the ‘expressive power’ of a ‘home-made’ poster written in unconventional spelling and capitalisation, Jaffe demonstrates how the same object of focus can be looked at in deficit, with forensic audits of non-compliance, carrying the value judgement loadings of ‘incompetence’ while, using an ideological lens of fitness for purpose, still being vivid and effective beyond the meaning-potentials possible in the standard forms. The ubiquitous hegemony of normative spelling renders it naturalised to the point of invisibility, so offering contrastive affordances for variational choices, which may have meaning-potentials particularly well-suited to the localised context of address, as here.

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The appeal of that ‘affect’ isn’t easily articulated in standard English, as evinced in the inverted commas Jaffe deploys around the words she uses to characterise the powerful, yet elusive effects, of vernacular respelling: ‘authenticity’, ‘flavo[u]r’ and ‘genuine.’ All seem to point to some sense of connotative potential which is lost in the regimentation of standard English which, it appears, is weaker in its potential to invoke immanent spoken simulation and localised social loyalty. As the references above indicate, these phenomena can be found in the institutional contexts of UK English but also operate across other languages and cultural practices, sometimes with a greater politicised import (Johnson 2005, 2012, Sebba 2006, 2007). Vernacular respellings can embody text with complex psychosocial nuances of emotional affect which evoke localised loyalties to the point of intimate address (Knas 2009). Such appeals may also imply affective dimensions in the experience of the standard. The connotations of normative forms may not be neutral, calling up as they do past experiences, and current

evaluations, of imposed instruction in literacy regimes which may not acknowledge local literacy conditions in a geographical location remote from the origins of standard English (Besnier 1993, 1995). Choices may be received as indexical of a lack of respect for the vernacular norms, forms and ways of life of students from under-resourced inner-city contexts in the US (Camitta 1993). Such arguments resonate with the fieldwork data in this thesis, especially when respondents reported a hostile evaluation of schooled literacy and its exclusive focus on a standardised linguistic performance found inimical to peer-group values (Chapters 7 and 8, Appendix VIII).