Signifying female identity through grammatical innovation: A socio-cultural interpretation

Abstract

The perception of the Amish as an unchanging folk society (Redfield 1947) has long been exposed as a myth (Olshan 1981). The culture's dynamics take the form of rationally controlled and selective change. While this has become accepted as common opinion among scholars, the participation of Amish women in change has only recently been addressed. The shared assumption has been that women typically follow suit. A study of Pennsylvania German has inadvertently uncovered a variable whose usage singles out young women as linguistic innovators, and young men as disseminators of the innovation. The variant preferred among young women makes them a sociolinguistically salient segment. This innovative role of women does not agree with studies undertaken in Western societies where women's linguistic innovations are seen as a prestige-seeking mechanism. The present case is different insofar as the value system does not only ostracize the seeking of prestige, but also insofar as the innovated form does not approximate but rather deviates further from the de facto norm.