In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Nicole Holliday. Dr. Holliday is a sociophonetician and Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkely in the United States. Today, Dr. Holliday discusses her 2023 paper “Complex Variation in the Construction of a Sociolinguistic Persona: the Case of Vice President Kamala Harris” in which Dr. Holliday analyses VP Harris’ linguistic identity on the 2020 U.S. presidential election debate stage. In the paper, Dr. Holliday examines Harris’ construction of identity through language features and discusses the overt and covert prestige that those features represent to different audiences.
Some references made in this episode include:
- Representative Jasmine Crockett’s use of AAL
- “Dude gotta go”
- Dr. Arthur K. Spears’ “camouflaged features” of AAL
- Dr. Holliday’s fabulous TikTok account
- “You can always tell”
Kamala Harris with women of the Congressional Black Caucus, 2019 (Image credit: United States Senate, Office of Senator Kamala Harris, Wikipedia)
And for more Language on the Move resources about language and social identity:
- In search of language and an identity
- Whiteness, Accents and Children’s Media
- Life in a New Language, Part 1: Identities
- Between Deaf and hearing cultures
- Making Sense of “Bad English”
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