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Uptake (un)limited: The mediatization of register shifting in US public discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2012

Debbie Cole  and
Régine Pellicer
Debbie Cole
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Texas-Pan American, 1201 University Dr., Edinburg, TX 78541, USAdcole@utpa.edu
Régine Pellicer
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Texas-Pan American, 1201 University Dr., Edinburg, TX 78541, USArpellicer@utpa.edu
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Abstract

We observe that mediatization (Agha 2011b) creates and maintains the conditions by which some messages and uptake formulations remain unavailable to larger audiences while others are continuously recycled and increasingly accessible. We argue that the maintenance of the unequal divisions of semiotic labor in ways that mirror socioeconomic inequalities at an increasingly global scale can be facilitated by mediatization as currently practiced. An analysis of the way that the uptake formulations of a mediatized fragment of a register-shifting event varied in its pre- and postmediatized contexts reveals how premediatized value projects can be systematically replaced during mediatization, limiting the availability of premediatized value projects for wider uptake. We observe that value projects attached to mediatized fragments work to maintain the hierarchy of perduring semiotic registers (Goebel 2010) in US public discourse in which Standard English repertoires continue to dominate all others. (Mediatization, Standard, semiotic register-shifting, black preaching style)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , September 2012 , pp. 449 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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