Prosodic Packages and Social Meaning

Abstract: 

This dissertation investigates how complex prosodic structures in Beijing Mandarin take on interactional meanings. By examining the conventionalized social meanings of prosodic features anchored by locally prominent character types, I argue that these meanings emerge in stylistic practices that contextualize packaged sociolinguistic resources in dialogical social actions, a process that connects moment-to-moment interactions to broader social structure, relationship, and change. 

I collect speech data by eliciting performances in an interactive game, and meta-discursive data from focus group interviews. My analysis covers a broad range of prosodic features. First, speakers vary pitch at melodic, intonational, tonal, and stress levels. I propose an order of accessibility of how speakers draw from these resources. Second, speakers manipulate their voices by combining different qualities and varying them in the temporal domain. Voice quality also works with the body to index affective meanings. Finally, with a holistic approach to analyzing timing variation, I argue that the temporal, rhythmic, and cadential features of speech not only work together, but they also conspire with the discourse structure to evoke the power dynamics these character types inhabit. 

Put together, this research demonstrates character type as a vital social and theoretical construct for understanding sociolinguistic style. I show that multifaceted personhood emerges in dialogical social engagement through complex prosodic packages delivered in an embodied discourse. I also find novel and rich ways to understand prosodic structure in the interactional context, drawing from the toolkits of sociophoneticians, linguistic anthropologists, and conversation analysts.