Style and Stance #8: Coding My Control Data Set

Warning: To those who want no more than a casual look at sociolinguistics, move on from this post.  Explore lighter posts like this one about design -- it's even colorful!  In the post you are currently reading, I am starting to dive into the coding of my two data sets, the submission guidelines for a traditional print journal and for a digital academic journal. Come back another day for my findings written in a more blog friendly (and maybe digitally academic) way!

Style and Stance #7: Pinning Down My Categories

I came a long way in my last post ... Let me quote myself:

• "For written texts, style has always been the main way to convey stance because we do not have the other options of voice inflection, dress, gestures, etc that are considered when we look for style in spoken language." 
• "Academic writing wants to show a certain stance so adopts a certain style in presenting a given content."   
  
• "My task now is to categorize this stance and define this style to see if journals are intentionally disaligning from this stance by making different style choices."
• "Rather than stance being the primitive that drives style, stance is the created by style." 

But I am left with somewhat the same question I had before: how does content fit in?  What is the role of all of the stuff we want to jam into our writing?

Style and Stance #6: Defining These Terms

Reading ahead to Kiesling’s  “Style as Stance” was really great advice from Dr. Anderson.  I have been trying to understand the relationship between style and stance, and Kiesling presents a new idea for me to consider: "any choice of linguistic form made by speakers is based ultimately on the interpersonal or epistemic stance they wish to take with their various interlocutors at a particular time, and … it is stances that become associated, through cultural models, with various identities" (172). In other words, stance is at the heart of what then drives style choices and style-shifting.

Style-Shifting

My Discussion

Style and Stance #5: Another Data Pairing

Having spent some of this past weekend prepping my discussion for Labov and the Decision Trees, I have started to think about whether I can apply the ideas of careful and casual speech to traditional and digital academic writing.  Now, again, I am applying a spoken framework to a study of writing, but I think it illuminates some interesting points.

Style and Stance #4: My First Data Examination

My goal tonight is to examine the submission guidelines for traditional academic journals to establish their style and stance then turn to digital academic journals' guidelines to see if I can find any contrasts.  Wish me luck on this first foray!

Style and Stance #3: Am I ready to start being a sociolinguist?

I am just about ready to start examining data sets ... just about.  Before I do, though, I want to use this week's post to encapsulate my understanding of style and stance and how a researcher applies these.  I also want to explore how these seem applicable to written texts in light of the majority of sociolinguistic work being done with speech.  If I am wrong about any of what I write below, tell me now!

Style and Stance #2: Categorizing

Think back to the halls of  high school.  Can you see the different groups standing together while eyeing the other groups? Do you remember what group you were in? What groups you wanted to be in?  Little did you know you were an early sociolinguist.

Style and Stance #1: Pondering

For those of you who follow my blog, I am sorry I have been absent. I took off the last few weeks of the summer to rest my brain in anticipation of taking two grad classes this fall. Now, my teaching year started three weeks ago, my grad student year started two weeks ago, and here I am, back on the blog.

Multimodal: Been There, Done That

In my final text for my independent study, Jason Palmeri explores how  "[l]ong before the contemporary multimodal turn, compositionists have been articulating the deep interconnections between seeing and writing -- experimenting with ways that visual composing can help students both generate ideas for and consider revisions of alphabetic texts" (9-10). I wanted to read this book because I was drawn to his idea that today's composing, while there are different tools, is not the first time alphabetic texts have had competition for composing. I (along with many other educators) am leery of the advent of "brand new" theories, and Palmeri shows so well where we have been and how these old paths can and should inform our work today with digital technologies.

The Little Details ...

I am at the stage with my Wordpress site where I am just tweaking things until I go live with it and get feedback and suggestions from my students.  I am looking at two aspects right now to wrap up before deciding I am ready to open it up to my classes in August:

• Making it mobile
• Linking it to our current database system

Design Mind

I have finished reading Robin Williams's design book, and while the prior four posts probably suffice for "enough said" about design, I want to wrap up by saying that Williams has shown me that I seem to have a natural flair for design.  There were a few moments in the prior posts when I had seemed to read her mind.  That continued to the end ...

• I discovered in my contrast post that repetition was my favorite design principle and that I had founded my class site on it.  Well ... "While the same four basic principles I've mentioned over and over in this book (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity) also apply to web design, repetition is one of the most important for a web site. The other three principles helps pages look good and make sense, but repetition lets your visitors know whether they're still in the same web site" (139). 
• I also mentioned that I chose my theme because I wanted a horizontal navigation bar that was visible without scrolling.  well ... "Don't make visitors scroll to see the navigation links!" (140).

 Thanks for taking this design journey with me.

References
Book image source
Williams, Robin. The  Non-Designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice. Third ed. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2008. Print.