Givenness and the Said Construction - Alicia Stevers
Information within a discourse is introduced in a way that reflects the speaker’s assumptions about the knowledge of the hearer. Theories of discourse often label information that the hearer is expected to know at the time of utterance as “given” information. However, different discourse theories have argued that a wider or narrower range of phrases should be considered given, based on whether they contain information that has been explicitly mentioned, inferred by something previously stated or assumed to be in the hearer’s consciousness by common world knowledge (Chafe 1967, Haviland & Clark 1974, Chafe 1976, Kuno 1978, Prince 1981, 1992, inter alia). One construction that seems to interact with notions of givenness is the Said Construction (SC). SC is characterized by the use of said as a determiner, followed by a noun (N2) that seems to be given (in some sense) and licensed by an antecedent noun (N1): “I made a turkey sandwichN1 for lunch but I left said sandwichN2 on the kitchen counter.” A close examination of SC seems to show that said can only be used to refer to something that has already been stated or is linguistically entailed by the discourse. With this in mind, looking at information structure through the lens of this construction can provide a new perspective into some of the less solidified and conventionally agreed upon details of the notion of givenness.
I present the results of two studies on SC. The first is a corpus based analysis based on a collection of 261 tokens found across a variety of genres such as fiction, spoken language, written news, historical documents, blogs, and social media. The results of this analysis reveal a strong tendency for SC to refer to information that is given due to linguistic context. The second study tested the results of the first analysis by gathering native English speakers’ judgements of the grammaticality of SC in various informational contexts. Results show that participants are most likely to rate said as acceptable in an environment with a linguistically stated referent. The results of these experiments point towards the idea that in order to account for SC’s relationship with information in a discourse, a definition of givenness that is limited to linguistic context and excludes extralinguistic information (such as situational context and world knowledge) is necessary.

"People say, 'Omarosa is Black, Omarosa is a Woman,' I'm an American First." :
Omarosa and Hyperarticulated /t/ - Rachel Elizabeth Weissler
Multiple scholarly treatments have argued that released or hyperarticulated /t/ indexes intelligence, is used in more professional contexts, and indexes emphasis and strength in discourse (Bucholtz 1995, Podesva 2006, Eckert 2008b). Podesva et al’s (2015) study on released /t/ demonstrates that even in a subject pool balanced for gender, race, regional accent, and political affiliation, women politicians use final and medial released /t/ more than their male counterparts. Additionally, Podesva et al (2012) show that among many features that former Secretary of State Condoleezza “Condi” Rice uses to construct her identity, 72% of her final /t/’s are released.
The current study looks at the speech of conservative politician Omarosa Manigault and her use of hyperarticulated final /t/ in the construction of her identity. This study shows that variable proportions in how final /t/ is articulated function as an index that allows speakers significant performative flexibility. Though Condi and Omarosa are both black female conservatives, they are very different kinds of conservatives. While Condi has worked in academia and politics her entire career, Omarosa has no formal training in politics, worked briefly in the office of Al Gore during the Clinton Administration, and now works for President Donald Trump, who she forged a relationship with during her stint on The Apprentice. While Condi’s speech reflects “neutrality and standard language” (Podesva et al 2012), Omarosa’s speech indexes a different kind of conservative performance, one rooted in a more populist framework through which she can appeal particularly to African Americans, since working with disenfranchised groups is central to her current role, while also appealing to the American Public at large as a political figure.
The data consist of word-final /t/ realizations within a 15-minute interview of Omarosa on The View, in which she discusses a myriad of topics including her role as assistant to President Trump and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, her upbringing, the African American community, and her marital engagement. Realizations of final hyperarticulated /t/ were auditorily coded, with a total number of 41 realizations of hyperarticulated /t/ relative to 40 /t/ unreleased realizations. Overall, Omarosa hyperarticulated 50.6% of the time in this interview.
I show that Omarosa’s use of both hyperarticulated /t/ and unreleased /t/ can be linked to specific factors such as particular socio-lexical items (buzzwords from the Trump administration), target audience (the African American community versus America at large), and spontaneous speech versus more prepared remarks. This variation endorses the conclusion that realizations of a feature can vary based on speaker’s opinions about the topics being discussed (Schilling-Estes 2004). Through the calibrated use of these variants of /t/, Omarosa indexes intelligence and professionalism, as has been found in previous research. However, her choice to use unreleased /t/ while discussing certain topics such as her upbringing in the projects, or her fiancé allows her to index a more populist stance, thereby constructing an identity designed to resonate with multiple
audiences.