Indeterminacy and Regularization: a process-based approach to the study of sociolinguistic variation and language ideologies

Abstract

This article explores the concept of indeterminacy as a fundamental property of social life (Falk-Moore 1978) as it relates to key issues in sociolinguistic theory: the relationship between structure and agency and the way that linguistic signs are invested with social meanings. Indeterminacy emerges as a fundamental principle of sociolinguistic variables, context, speaker identity and participation structures, as a resource for speakers and as a possible objective of communicative practice. It stands in constant tension with processes of sociolinguistic regularization, as it is instantiated across texts, time and discourses and as it is embedded in particular social and political fields. The article argues that studying this tension is how a contemporary sociolinguistics can approach a coherent account of agency and constraint, change and continuity, reproduction and contestation of normative practices and dominant language ideologies.

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