Work that –s!: Drag queens, gender, identity, and traditional Newfoundland English

Making use of three data sets of Newfoundland English, this paper uncovers the linguistic and social motivations and strategies used by young speakers to reclaim and re‐shape a traditional, local, relic language feature (verbal –s attachment, as in I goes ). While each group that we discuss (young f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Sociolinguistics
Main Authors: Childs, Becky, Van Herk, Gerard
Other Authors: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josl.12094
https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fjosl.12094
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/josl.12094
Description
Summary:Making use of three data sets of Newfoundland English, this paper uncovers the linguistic and social motivations and strategies used by young speakers to reclaim and re‐shape a traditional, local, relic language feature (verbal –s attachment, as in I goes ). While each group that we discuss (young females, drag queens, and a sample of the Newfoundland population) is differently situated with respect to the broader local culture (i.e. they each have their own social identities), similarities and parallels in the reclamation and use of verbal –s indicate important processes that occur in the enregisterment and reappropriation of a salient, traditional linguistic form. Results indicate that the local social and linguistic reconstruction of a speech feature can change a path of decline and prove fertile ground for creating a unique identity that moves toward the global while still motioning to the past of a community.