WP65 Style in a second language.

This working paper is designed as an exploratory contribution to the study of L2 style that (a) avoids an a priori separation of first and second language speakers, (b) analyses artful performance and L2 linguistic limitations together, and (c) addresses the dynamic interrelations of structural form, interactional practice and language ideology.? It presents the case-study of a man who migrated to London in his late twenties, and uses three complementary definitions of style to examine his English segmental phonology: style as quantitative style-shifting, as rhetorical stylisation, and as register.? It offers normative appraisals of his speech, pegged to the local currency of different forms, to situation-sensitive expectations about genre and footing, and to the compensatory effect of co-occurring semiotic signs, and it examines his stylistic self-positioning within two axes of ideological differentiation, one related to migration and the other to social class.? Working at the interface between sub-disciplinary traditions, the paper also addresses methodological issues in some detail, and although there is no longitudinal component, it concludes with reflections on learning and metalinguistic reflexivity.