Voices, bodies, and the cultural organization of meaning

Abstract

This article examines how the “arbitrary content of culture” (Bourdieu 1977) comes to be inscribed onto patterns of sociolinguistic variation. Specifically, we consider the role of iconicity in this process. Studies of iconicity and variation to date have tended to focus on the iconic properties of the speech signal itself (e.g., an association between higher frequency sounds and smallness). We bring these ideas about sound symbolism into dialogue with research on embodied behavioural codes, which link particular forms of bodily comportment and their associated qualia with specific social categories and positions. We suggest that certain claims about sound symbolic meanings may be better interpreted as derived effects of socially meaningful bodily hexis. Our arguments are illustrated through a consideration of two variables, both of which have received widespread attention in the literature on variation in English: the backing and lowering of the short front vowels and the fronting/backing of /s/. We discuss how treating these variables from the perspective of socially inculcated bodies can provide a unified account of their observed sociolinguistic patterning and help to shed light on how variables accrue social meaning more generally.