Qing Zhang

The University of Arizona, Anthropology, Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Public Views

I am a sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist. My work examines language and discourse as a cultural resource and social tool in the production of social differentiation and power, and how variation in language use participates in social change in contemporary China. I'm interested in language and style, identity, language ideology, and language policy.

less

Mary Erbaugh

Mingzhe Zheng

Defense Language Institute

肖森王

University of Technology Sydney

Nicholas Jose

University of Adelaide

Weiting Guo

University of British Columbia

George Steinmetz

University of Michigan

Tomoko Tokunaga

University of Tsukuba

Yiya Chen

Katia Chirkova

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research

Mark W. Post

The University of Sydney

Interests

Uploads

Papers by Qing Zhang

Emergence of Social Meaning in Sociolinguistic Change

Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theorizing the Third Wave, 2021

An Emergent View on Sociolinguistic Variation In 'Three waves of variation study', Eckert (2012) ... more An Emergent View on Sociolinguistic Variation In 'Three waves of variation study', Eckert (2012) traces the treatment of social meaning in variationist research, from the firstand second-wave studies that 'viewed the meaning of variation as incidental fallout from social space' (2012: 94) to increasing focus on social meaning in the third wave by treating linguistic variation as 'a social semiotic system' (2012: 94) and the use of variation as a meaning-making resource in the stylistic enactment of social personae (2012, 2016). This development is captured in the subtitle of Eckert's 2012 article, 'The emergence of social meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation'. By emphasizing the emergence of social meaning, Eckert not only highlights increased attention to the study of social meaning but also articulates an emergent perspective on sociolinguistic variation in the third wave (e.g., Eckert 2008, 2012, 2016). This perspective approaches social meaning as mutable; it is created as linguistic variation is used in stylistic practices. It treats 'social locations and their evaluations' as emergent (Eckert 2016: 69) such that sociolinguistic variation does not merely reflect and serve as markers of the social but participates in its coming into being. This chapter further develops this emergent view on sociolinguist variation. It focuses on the third wave's contribution to the enterprise of sociolinguistic change that treats linguistic and social change as mutually constitutive (Coupland 2014, 2016). Drawing on my research on Cosmopolitan Mandarin (CM) in China, an innovative linguistic style, I treat linguistic innovation and change as emergent stylistic resources that create meanings about (new) social distinction. By examining the processes through which the social meaning of CM emerges, this chapter reveals that CM participates in a broader sociopolitical process of the transformation of stylistic regimes in China. Section 12.2 offers a theoretical discussion of the major conceptual tools that enable an 267

Qing Zhang

Uploads

Papers by Qing Zhang

Book by Qing Zhang

Log In