Complex Variation in the Construction of a Sociolinguistic Persona: The Case of Vice President Kamala Harris

Abstract

Over the past few decades, sociolinguists have begun to take greater interest in how public figures, such as politicians, may employ variation at different levels of linguistic structure in the construction of a public persona. These figures are of particular interest because their public and constructed usages may also illuminate wider social usages and indices of specific linguistic variables. This paper presents results from analyses of multiple aspects of ethnolinguistic variation in the speech of Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2019-2020 Democratic Party Primary debates. In particular, it focuses on her use of selected morphosyntactic features associated with African American Language (AAL), vowel systems associated with California and African American identities, and topic-based differences in the use of selected prosodic variables. Together, these results show how VP Harris selectively employs both enregistered and subtle linguistic variables in the establishment of a highly specific sociolinguistic identity that comports with her unique positions politically, socially, and racially. The results of this study expand our knowledge about how the complexities of speaker identity are reflected in sociolinguistic variation, while further illuminating how speakers in the public sphere use variation reflect and construct both who they are and who we want them to be.