1 Context: the study of pop culture in linguistics and sociolinguistics

Pop culture can be viewed as a globalized (and commercial) entertainment-related phenomenon with a focus on ‘the active process of generating and circulating meanings and pleasures within a social system’ (Fiske Reference Fiske2011: 19). It is widely represented in artifacts such as songs, TV shows, movies, video clips, comics, as well as within various digital registers used for interpersonal communication. Even though it has been widely recognized as a major cultural and globalizing force in present-day societies, (English) sociolinguistics, with its focus on ‘real’ (i.e. unplanned, spontaneous and, often, spoken) language as the locus of linguistic variation and change, has traditionally overlooked (but see Trudgill Reference Trudgill and Trudgill1983) or even contestedFootnote ² the study of performed language (Queen Reference Queen, Mallinson, Childs and van Herk2018; Werner Reference Werner2021).

As the term implies, such performed language is closely associated with the act of ‘performance’, defined as a ‘kind of activity that is formally staged or an aspect of everyday life in which a person is oriented to and intends to have some effect on an audience’ (Mukerji & Schudson Reference Mukerji and Schudson1986: 50). Two crucial insights that motivate linguistic engagement with such performances are (i) that they typically have a strong linguistic component (see, e.g., Bauman Reference Bauman2011) and (ii) that the performed language represented in them is subject to highly specific circumstances of production, distribution and reception. Specifically, performed language has been characterized as scripted (e.g. written-to-be-spoken), fictional (i.e. emerging from a writer’s imagination), preplanned and edited (e.g. by teams of writers, by performers, etc.) and typically mediatized and thus received asynchronically by the audience (Bell & Gibson Reference Bell and Gibson2011; Dynel Reference Dynel2011).Footnote ³

Another characteristic property of performed language is that it is often conveyed by a ‘persona’ (Coupland Reference Coupland2011: 580), that is, a character perceived by the audience (e.g. a specific character played by an actor on screen or by a comedian on stage, a singer, etc.). Such a persona may or may not be congruent with the actual (‘real-life’) person impersonating it and, importantly, may use specific linguistic features to styl(iz)e their identity (e.g. as indigenous American: see Meek Reference Meek2006; or as a culturally authentic Blues or Country music performer: see De Timmermann et al. Reference De Timmerman, De Cuypere and Slembrouck2024; Werner & Ledermann Reference Werner and Ledermann2024; for a critical perspective on how white actors mimic African American English, see, e.g., Bucholtz & Lopez Reference Bucholtz and Lopez2011). In sum, it is evident that all of the aforementioned factors potentially render performed language as an ‘instance … of strategic linguistic design’ (Werner Reference Werner2021: 561) radically different from other forms of spoken and written communication, which in turn may affect the analysis of contextual factors in sociolinguistic work, for instance. It is further worth noting that in pop cultural artifacts the linguistic sign and other modes of communication (e.g. images, music, etc.) regularly interact, motivating multimodal approaches (Van Leeuwen Reference Van Leeuwen, Tannen, Hamilton and Schiffrin2015).

This theoretical interest briefly outlined in the preceding passages concurs with an increasing recognition of the ‘socially transformative potential’ (Coupland Reference Coupland2011: 582) of pop culture in terms of determining people’s knowledge, opinions and values. In other words, performed language as used in pop culture has been accepted as an important and ubiquitous form of everyday language (see also Coupland Reference Coupland2016b), which may simultaneously serve as a marker of identities (see further section 3). Given this extensive social impact, it has been argued that linguists should not merely view performed language as yet another form of linguistic data but also as ‘language that is embedded in the larger processes of representation and dissemination via the many forms of PC [= pop culture] we experience every day’ (Trotta Reference Trotta2018: 29).

Looking back over the past couple of decades, indeed there have been a number of publications examining language in pop culture. These can roughly be divided into three broad areas:

• • Work that argues for or adopts the view that performed language is a legitimate object of study in (socio)linguistics;

• • Studies that explore how language use constructs identity and place;

• • Explorations of the role of globalization in establishing English as the dominant language of pop culture.

As described above, any retrospective account of work on language and pop culture starts with theorizations of performance (Bauman Reference Bauman1975). Such work spawned a great deal of interest in performed language as an object of study in sociolinguistics in contrast to the Labovian focus on ‘vernacular’, unmonitored speech. Indeed, as some argued, everyday speech is also a type of performance in which people style their speech to suit their audience or for specific purposes, as groundbreaking studies on crossing, styling and stylization have shown (see, e.g., Bell Reference Bell1999; Coupland Reference Coupland2007; Rampton Reference Rampton, Coupland, Sarangi and Candlin2014). Subsequently, scholars began to explore secondary linguistic representations of ethnic others in contexts such as hip-hop culture and stand-up comedy (Bucholtz Reference Bucholtz1999, Reference Chun2004; Cutler Reference Cutler2003; Chun Reference Chun2004). More recently, a 2011 special issue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics devoted to the sociolinguistics of performance established how performances are linguistically stylized, potentially producing significant sociolinguistic effects and contributing to language change, enregisterment and the reinforcement or challenging of language attitudes (see Bauman Reference Bauman2011; Bell & Gibson Reference Bell and Gibson2011; Bucholtz & Lopez Reference Bucholtz and Lopez2011; Coupland Reference Coupland2011; Gibson Reference Gibson2011; Johnstone Reference Johnstone2011).

A closely related line of research showcases the central role of language in constructing and negotiating identity and place in various forms of pop culture, including music (Trudgill Reference Trudgill and Trudgill1983; Beal Reference Beal2009; Duncan Reference Duncan2017; Gerwin Reference Gerwin, Anderwald and Hoekstra2017; Werner Reference Werner2019; Jansen Reference Jansen2022; Werner & Ledermann Reference Werner and Ledermann2024), television and film (Meek Reference Meek2006; Bucholtz & Lopez Reference Bucholtz and Lopez2011; Dynel Reference Dynel2011; Mitchell Reference Mitchell2020; Pua & Hiramoto Reference Pua and Hiramoto2020; Fought & Eisenhauer Reference Fought and Eisenhauer2022; Viollain Reference Viollain2023), comics (Cutler Reference Cutler2023; Walshe Reference Walshe2023) and digital media (Cutler Reference Cutler2016; Wilson Reference Wilson2024), while others have developed broader perspectives on fiction, highlighting communalities across various artifacts (e.g. Denis & Tagliamonte Reference Denis, Tagliamonte, Locher and Jucker2017; Montini & Ranzato Reference Montini and Ranzato2021a). Such work highlights how dialects and accents serve as markers of both personal and regional identity and illustrates their role in reflecting and negotiating the tension between local and global influences, and across intersecting categories of race, gender and ethnicity. Whether in the global music industry, Hollywood films or social media, linguistic choices reflect both resistance to and reinforcement of dominant ideologies, illustrating the complex interplay between language, culture and identity in pop culture. Contrary to the assertion that mediatized language has little effect on language use, this body of work also suggests that people are not passive consumers of pop culture and that, through it, they are exposed to language varieties that are not part of their daily repertoires and the social values attached to different ways of talking. Ultimately, exposure can lead to enregisterment and shifts in language attitudes, potentially resulting in uptake and language change (see Peng Reference Peng2021).

A third point worth making is that globalization and digital technology have allowed pop cultural disseminators (from international music, television and film conglomerates to individual content producers on social media) to spread their products to international audiences. As Appadurai (Reference Appadurai1996) and later Pennycook (Reference Pennycook2007) point out, language is an essential component of the cultural flows that characterize globalization, highlighting how languages are affected by worldwide movements of people, media and ideas, eventually leading to the creation of new linguistic forms and the recontextualization of existing languages. These processes and effects are highly visible in pop cultural artifacts from digital media to music (see, e.g., contributions to Hollington et al. Reference Hollington, Farquharson and Jones2022), and while the spread of English as a global lingua franca is a highly salient aspect of global pop culture, a number of studies focus on how specific varieties of English are becoming internationally recognized and enregistered through pop culture (Johnstone Reference Johnstone2011; Moody Reference Moody2021a). Examples include African American English (Bucholtz & Lopez Reference Bucholtz and Lopez2011; De Timmerman et al. Reference De Timmerman, De Cuypere and Slembrouck2024), Scottish English (Cutler Reference Cutler2016; Braber Reference Braber and Bassiouney2018), local British varieties (Beal Reference Beal2009; Gerwin Reference Gerwin, Anderwald and Hoekstra2017; Flanagan Reference Flanagan2019; Ilbury Reference Ilbury2024; Montiel-McCann et al. Reference Montiel-McCann, Lampropoulou, Cooper and Byrnein press) and Caribbean English Creoles (Jansen & Westphal Reference Jansen and Westphal2017; Wilson Reference Wilson2024).

At the same time, recent contributions take account of the multimodal nature of pop culture artifacts and thus explore the complex interactions and indexicalities between linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, spatial and other modes, including the body (Bucholtz & Hall Reference Bucholtz and Hall2016; Montiel-McCann Reference Montiel-McCann, Lampropoulou, Cooper and Byrnein press). As Werner (Reference Werner and Aronoff2022) points out, multimodality has been the focus in a number of studies of film, television, advertising and music videos, such as the volume by Djonov & Zjao (Reference Djonov and Zhao2014), but also more recently in comics (Dunst et al. Reference Dunst, Laubrock and Wildfeuer2018), the interaction between lyrics and music (Morini Reference Morini2013; several contributions in West Reference West2019) and telecinematic language and cinematographic techniques (Gentile Reference Gentile2021; several contributions in Hoffmann & Kirner-Ludwig Reference Hoffmann and Kirner-Ludwig2020). Other recent studies look at the combination of linguistic and sartorial practices of Latinx rappers (Garley Reference Garley2019), music and strategic camerawork in televised discourse (Eberhardt Reference Eberhardt2024), and racialized performance in stand-up comedy (Calhoun & Yoo Reference Calhoun and Yoo2024), to name but a few.

In view of the theoretical and practical significance of performed language and given the large body of works as described in the foregoing paragraphs, it can be claimed with some confidence that the traditional reluctance of sociolinguists to seriously engage with it has largely been overcome. In fact, its study has continuously been normalized (Pennycook Reference Pennycook, Hornberger and McKay2010; Androutsopoulos Reference Androutsopoulos2016) into a ‘sociolinguistics of performance’ (Bell & Gibson Reference Bell and Gibson2011; see also above) or ‘sociolinguistics of fiction’ (Stamou Reference Stamou2018), with ‘pop cultural linguistics’ (Werner Reference Werner2018, Reference Werner and Aronoff2022) recently emerging as a broader research paradigm. These developments have been fostered by trends in linguistics at large, with relevant resources such as the Movie Corpus/TV Corpus (Davies Reference Davies2021), theses (e.g. Reichelt Reference Reichelt2018; Watanabe Reference Watanabe2022), textbooks (e.g. Beers Fägersten 2016; Locher & Jucker Reference Locher and Jucker2021; Larroque Reference Larroque2023) and publications from various subfields (see, e.g., contributions to the specialized Journal of Language and Pop Culture) becoming increasingly available.

Specifically, there is also a growing body of sociolinguistic journal special issues (e.g. Loureiro-Rodríguez & Moyna Reference Loureiro-Rodríguez and Moyna2024) and book-length publications on pop culture (e.g. Queen Reference Queen2015; Boberg Reference Boberg2021; Fought & Eisenhauer Reference Fought and Eisenhauer2022; Jansen Reference Jansen2022), which indicate that sociolinguistics has developed into an important research paradigm for the study of performed language as it possesses a vast potential to contribute towards understanding pop cultural manifestations as multimodal realizations with an extended social impact as described above. To complement and update such efforts (and to balance out the bias towards sociophonetic analyses, which have prevailed in relevant work), this special issue aims (i) to showcase recent sociolinguistic approaches to English as the language of pop culture and (ii) to offer novel perspectives on how current work addresses core concerns in contemporary sociolinguistics centered around indexicality (Irvine & Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000; Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003) and enregisterment (Agha Reference Agha2005).

The choice of these two specific notions is by no means random as pop culture involves (large) audiences in the process of enregisterment, both in terms of reinforcing existing stereotypes and ideologies but also perpetuating them and possibly transforming them (Stamou et al. Reference Stamou, Maroniti and Griva2015; Squires Reference Squires2016). This process can further influence language attitudes and may eventually affect language change as audiences (e.g. viewers, listeners and readers) learn to identify the cultural value (Agha Reference Agha2003) associated with the linguistic features and adjust their speech accordingly (i.e. adopting culturally trendy or high-status forms, avoiding forms that have low cultural value or embracing such forms to express resistance to normativity). Therefore, while individual contributions to the present special issue (see section 3) might also touch upon related concepts (e.g. styling/stylization, multilingualism, stereotyping, language ideologies, etc.), each article emphasizes the explanatory power of indexicality and enregisterment as sociolinguistic frames for the understanding of pop culture as a multifaceted and heterogeneous phenomenon. Together, with their focus on performed language, the articles contribute towards taking research on indexicality and enregisterment in new directions.

2 Indexicality and enregisterment and their relevance for the study of pop culture

Indexicality and enregisterment are useful concepts when it comes to the sociolinguistic study of performed language as represented in pop culture as they directly pertain to the social meaning of linguistic variation (Eckert Reference Eckert2018). To provide some more background, the genesis of these concepts and their relevance will be fleshed out in order to clarify how they articulate with the individual contributions and their common themes.

The semiotic term indexicality (Irvine & Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000; Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003) refers to how linguistic signs index or ‘point to’ people located across geographical and/or social space. In the first-order indexical sense proposed by Silverstein, linguistic features of particular registers (e.g. h-dropping, /v/ for /ð/ and /f/ for /θ/ in British English) index the speech of working-class Londoners, whereas knowing which lexical forms take the /ɑ:/ vs. the /æ/ variants is an index of being an educated speaker of RP (Agha Reference Agha2003: 235). Through repeated metapragmatic reference, linguistic policing and grammar books, but also through mediated representations (e.g. children’s animated cartoons; see, e.g., Lippi-Green Reference Lippi-Green2012), the qualities or traits associated with certain groups of speakers can become detached from their the geographical or social roots and become ‘floating signifiers’ (Lévi-Strauss Reference Lévi-Strauss1987 [1950]: 63–4 cited in Thurlow & Jaworski Reference Thurlow and Jaworski2017: 549) or signifiers that are able to receive any meaning.

In line with the ‘third wave’ sociolinguistic focus on social meaning (Eckert Reference Eckert2018), when certain linguistic features are deployed in pop culture, they begin to transcend national and cultural boundaries and function as mobile resources (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2010: 218). Performers are aware of the indexical potential of linguistic features and exploit them to create social meaning as well as to fulfill genre expectations (Bell & Gibson Reference Bell and Gibson2011: 559). For instance, as repeatedly shown, features of Southern American English and selected vernacular universals (such as ain’t) are viewed as ‘belonging’ to the diction of Country lyrics, irrespective of the actual regional provenance of artists (Duncan Reference Duncan2017; Werner & Ledermann Reference Werner and Ledermann2024). In certain kinds of performance, it is common for selected linguistic features to co-occur with representations of particular characterological figures and/or associated traits and characteristics, which further naturalizes or ‘enregisters’ the link between the two.

Accordingly, the conceptual links people make between linguistic repertoires or registers and particular types of people and the associated social meanings are referred to as enregisterment (Agha Reference Agha2005), which ‘involves the circulation of linguistic forms in social practice and the linking of those forms with social identities and activities’ (Johnstone Reference Johnstone2016: 635). Once a stylistic variant attains ‘higher order indexicality’ (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003: 194) or becomes enregistered, attitudes towards it become apparent (Jansen Reference Lisa2018: 118). This process is furthered through the repetition of such links in pop cultural performances like stand-up comedy, televised sit-coms and the like. Yet performances also have the potential to resist normative expectations and trigger shifts in language ideologies among audience members (Beal Reference Beal2009; see also Gerwin, this volume).

Indexicality and enregisterment are especially relevant to the pop cultural artifacts analyzed in this special issue because language variation and the social meanings linked with particular accents and styles are central to the portrayal of particular types of people in pop culture. An early, and perhaps the most widely known, study in this area is Trudgill (Reference Trudgill and Trudgill1983), which illustrates the use of ‘Americanness’ as an indexical of mainstream pop culture and vernacular usage as an indexical of (local) authenticity (see also Beal Reference Beal2009; Coupland Reference Coupland2011; Moody Reference Moody, Kirkpatrick and Sussex2012; Flanagan Reference Flanagan2019; Jansen & Gerfer Reference Jansen and Gerfer2023; Shigeta-Watanabe Reference Shigeta-Watanabein press; among others).

As Bell & Gibson (Reference Bell and Gibson2011: 559) point out, interpreting such language variation entails a ‘semiotic backdrop of existing meanings and associated forms’, without which the performance would have little meaning. Performers are thus highly aware of the social meaning attached to different ways of talking. For instance, Jansen (Reference Lisa2018: 118) writes that ‘[w]hen a singer uses a specific set of features to evoke a certain image, then s/he is aware that a certain stylistic variant operates as an index for a certain social meaning’. This process is also particularly apparent in (animated) films, in which language is used as a ‘shortcut to characterization’ (Queen Reference Queen2015: 155), that is, a quick way to build character, bringing viewers to ‘associate particular characters and lifestyles with specific social groups’ (Lippi-Green Reference Lippi-Green2012: 104). In this respect, it has been shown, for instance, that the use of non-standard varieties like African American English in animated films is associated with minor and comical roles and correlates with unfavorable character traits and social status designations, which may lead to stereotypical representations and stigmatization of this speaker group (see, e.g., the overview Werner & Summer Reference Werner, Summer, Shei and Schnell2024: 231).

Furthermore, as pointed out by Appadurai (Reference Appadurai1996) and Pennycook (Reference Pennycook2007), language is an essential component of the cultural flows that characterize globalization (see also section 1). They note that global movements of people, media and ideas lead to the creation of new linguistic forms as well as to the recontextualization of existing languages and ways of talking as resources that can be endlessly taken up, repeated, reanimated and recycled. Concretely, this is illustrated in Alim et al. (Reference Alim, Ibrahim and Pennycook2009), for instance, for the larger domain of hip hop culture, which has developed into a worldwide movement characterized by processes of language mixing, codeswitching, crossing, styling and stylization to create linguistic identities. Several contributions to this special issue also emphasize the role that language (as it is used in pop culture) plays in shaping global and local identities and how this process reveals the growing power and influence of English in the lives of people in a globalized world.

3 Overview of contributions and common themes

The contributions of the present special issue all focus squarely on the themes of indexicality and enregisterment and investigate how they play out in a variety of individual pop cultural manifestations.

In their study ‘Decoding Bollywood: Why Hindi-English code-switching and standard English outrank Indian English’, Claire Cowie, Lalita Murty and Beck Sinar start from the general observation that Bollywood films, which are commercially driven productions aimed mainly at Indian audiences, have historically been dominated by the Hindi language. They observe that even with the gradual inclusion of English over the years, the dialogue of the main urban elite characters primarily remains rooted in Hindi. This contrasts with the code-switching tendencies of urban elites in casual conversations as well as other Indian media formats, such as chat shows, where English often takes precedence. While young urban elites may occasionally use English alone, their counterparts in Bollywood films tend to do so likewise, but strictly adhering to standard syntax. In their study, they illustrate that in Bollywood films, English is used without code-mixing primarily by minority groups like Goan Catholics, and their English showcases the morphosyntactic characteristics of Indian English. This usage differs from that observed outside films, where features of Indian English are more widespread. They eventually suggest that the conservative language patterns in Bollywood reflect the conflicting attitudes towards endormative Indian English varieties.

Anika Gerfer and Lisa Jansen explore the enregisterment of another non-standard variety in broadcast media in their contribution titled ‘“Di game show ‘bout spellin’ and ting”: Jamaican Creole and cultural stereotypes in Jamaican Countdown’. Their research investigates how Jamaican Creole and cultural stereotypes of Jamaicans are depicted in the sketch Jamaican Countdown, which featured as part of the long-running BBC Three comedy series Famalam. The parody stands in stark contrast to the British original game show Countdown, known for its intellectual and structured nature, by incorporating elements of Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English for humor. The authors also highlight that despite its comedic intent, the sketch has been criticized for perpetuating cultural stereotypes about Jamaicans. Their study specifically examines phonetic, morphosyntactic and lexical features used in the sketch. Using a blend of qualitative and quantitative approaches, it analyzes these linguistic features and considers how both language and visual components conspire to shape the representation of cultural stereotypes. Findings indicate that while the linguistic portrayal in the sketch avoids reinforcing stereotypes, other aspects, including visual and contextual elements, do serve to uphold cultural stereotypes about Jamaicans. Overall, Gerfer and Jansen suggest that this underscores the intricate relationship between language and cultural representation in media, especially within parodic contexts.

The aforementioned contribution links to Luca Valleriani’s analysis of another British comedy format, in which he studies ‘Accent enregisterment through humour in The Catherine Tate Show’. He argues that this specific show, which originally aired on the BBC in the early 2000s, serves as a valuable resource for examples of stereotypical language varieties associated with various television tropes, illustrating the general perceptions of speakers from specific regional areas of the British Isles within British society, and how the depiction of such speakers contributes to enregisterment of dialects. Building on earlier studies related to dialects in media and their stereotypical portrayals, Valleriani examines linguistic features unique to the Southeast of England, which are utilized to construct some of the fictional characters of the show. The analysis identifies distinct phonological traits that subtly position Tate’s recurring characters both regionally and socially and highlights that the important function of different language varieties in establishing a humorous tone can be understood through the ideas of enregisterment and indexicality. Audiences find humor in characters with accents because they identify the accent and its associated social implications as tied to particular personae, which are essential to the parody constructed for such shows. The study also confirms that within performed language depicting accents does not have to be entirely accurate or comprehensive; instead, the relationship between language and social identity can be formed through the repetition of only a few distinct features.

The interplay of dialect, humor and comedy is also a central aspect in Johanna Gerwin’s study ‘The role of dialect in comedy performances: Focus on enregisterment and humor’. Like Valleriani, she grounds her examination in the fact that using non-standard linguistic features is a core characteristic of many popular comedy performances. Specifically, she explores how dialect enhances the humor within such comedy acts and how these humorous dialect performances contribute to the enregisterment of a particular dialect. To this end, she analyzes online clips from three live comedy shows available online, Stephen Buchanan’s ‘How to survive Glasgow’, Ali G’s ‘Harvard Commencement Speech 2004’, Riaad Moosa’s ‘I have a weird accent’, as well as a clip from the British sitcom PhoneShop. Each of these dialect performances illustrates the linguistic and metalinguistic processes that are central to enregisterment. Additionally, the study shows that in each instance, the dialect serves a specific purpose in creating humor, whether by fostering a connection with the audience or by challenging a (linguistic) status quo. Eventually, the author argues that while dialect can enhance a performer’s comedic effectiveness, humor can simultaneously facilitate the enregisterment of a dialect.

The final contribution, co-authored by Derek Denis and Vidhya Elango, focuses on the representation of an urban variety in social media. In their article ‘“If ur from Toronto you’ll understand”: Register change and metadiscursive engagement with mediatized Multicultural Toronto English’, they illustrate how Multicultural Toronto English (MTE), a linguistic variety emerging in Toronto, Canada, is particularly associated with racialized youth and how it is enregistered. They suggest that the ongoing process of enregisterment of MTE unfolds through discussions on social media, which helps spread the variety to a broader audience. Based on investigations of online metadiscursive interactions with depictions of MTE, they analyze how audiences engage with, perceive and reinterpret MTE through metadiscourse on both grassroots and institutional social media platforms and discuss the implications this has for its enregisterment. Overall, the authors contend that the mediatization of MTE affects how actual speakers of MTE, especially Black youth, may have their speech perceived and interpreted.

As these summaries show, this special issue explores the intricate relationship between language and contemporary social representation through the lens of pop culture, focusing on the role of English, the functions of scripted and performed language, and the contribution of sociolinguistics. In this special issue, the analyses are mainly qualitative and are thus a good starting point for generating initial findings and exploring understudied areas of investigation. Indeed, we expect that such pioneering in-depth qualitative work can eventually lead to informed (ideally, hypothesis-testing) quantitative research in the future.

The following subsections identify three important themes that cut across the articles in the special issue: (i) the role of English as the language of pop culture; (ii) the functions of largely scripted and performed language in processes of contemporary social representation; and (iii) the value of sociolinguistics as a versatile subdiscipline for analyzing pop culture.