171 OUP  UNCORRECTED PROOF 8 Style as Stance Stance as the Explanation for Patterns of Sociolinguistic Variation Scott F. Kiesling At the heart of the sociolinguistic enterprise is the search to explain why speakers choose one linguistic form over another. In the chapters in this volume, the focus of that explanation is stance: How do speakers use linguistic form to create stances, why do they take these stances up, and how are forms associated with stances? The search for the motivation of linguistic choices is also the focus of studies of variation and change, but whereas much of the focus on determining stance is more quali- tative and syntax- and discourse-oriented, variationist studies are generally quanti- tative and focus on morphophonological phenomena. Variationist studies proceed mainly by finding correlations between a linguistic variable and either some other linguistic element (so-called internal factors) or some nonlinguistic factor (so-called external factors or sometimes, social factors). The kinds of factors included in the latter are almost always based on identity: age, gender, race, class, and so on. But labor showed early on (1966) that there are other factors—which he placed under the general term “style”—that are not correlated with a speaker’s identity, but rather with speech activity: careful and casual. In this chapter I explore how stance can be used in variationist sociolinguistics, specifically, how stance is related to the variationist conception of style. The study of style in sociolinguistic variation has had renewed interest in recent years. Contemporary sociolinguistic work on style, including Schilling-Estes (1998), Eckert (2000), and the edited volume by Eckert and Rickford (2001), has explored style in a more speaker-centered, interactional vein than in much earlier style- focused analyses. Even so, the relationship between these style and identity mean- ings in variation has not been explored as much as we might expect. Rather, style and identity patterning have usually been seen as reflecting orthogonal meanings. In the earliest style work, Labov (1966) seems to suggest that it is the social group Alexandre Jaffe Ch08.indd 171 Alexandre Jaffe Ch08.indd 171 2/18/2009 11:16:52 AM 2/18/2009 11:16:52 AM