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SOCIOLINGUISTICS
LINA02
What is Sociolinguistics?
■ The study of language in society, more
specifically the study of variation in
language.
Consider the word ‘secretary’:
/’sɛ.krɪ.tə.rɪ/
/’sɛ.krɪ.tə.ri/
/’sɛ.krɪ.trɪ/
Variation in Language
■ The way you talk (pronunciation, word choice,
grammar) says something about your social identity.
■ There are strong social beliefs and attitudes
associated with certain ways of speaking.
■ These attitudes are social norms, not objective facts
about language itself.
How do we define ‘language’?
– Sociolinguists vs. other linguists
– (Socio)linguists vs. non-linguists
For many linguists
(but not sociolinguists)…
• Elicit language forms of interest
– “How do you say this in your language?”
• Use that information to build up a grammar
– Description of how that language is
represented in the mind.
• Actual use isn’t helpful, because it’s full of
“noise” (false starts, etc.)
– Competence vs. performance
In that perspective…
• You don’t need actual language
recordings.
• You’re interested in what people know
about their language.
• If you’re a native speaker, you can sit in
an office and “describe” your language.
The sociolinguistic
perspective…
• Empiricist
• Language as actually used and recorded
• Everyday “real” language is more
structured than you’d think
How do we get “real
language”?
• Record people
– Often, in sociolinguistic interviews
– Designed to encourage people to focus on
the content of their speech, not the form
• Harvest data from existing sources
– Media (including internet)
– Data collected for other purposes
– Personal letters, diaries
For non-linguists (“normal
people”)…
■ “Language” often means the standard language
– Language of school, formal writing
– Often seen (by non-linguists) as more
“correct”
■ Associated with a prescriptive approach
– How people “should” talk
■ Other language (non-standard, dialect) is often
seen as chaotic, not rule-governed
Linguists are descriptive
■ How people actually talk, not how they “should”
■ There’s no “good” or “bad” language
– Or “ugly”, or “lazy”, or…
■ A necessary attitude for scientific study
■ Other disciplines don’t talk about “good” or “bad”
planets, minerals, birds, etc.
Social Evaluation
■ Different language varieties or features are
evaluated as “good” or “bad” by members of the
society
– … and that’s something that we study
■ Different varieties/features are considered
appropriate in different social contexts
– … which is also something that we study
Dialect
■ Do you recall the definition of what a dialect is?
■ When two speakers of two different linguistic
communities can understand one another, then
they speak dialects of the same language
■ Dialects of the same language are mutually
intelligible
Regional dialects
■ Differences between a language spoken in different
areas are referred to as regional dialects
– English spoken in the city of Boston
– Canadian English of Newfoundland
– English spoken in Brooklyn
– Texan English
– English spoken in London
Naming: “language” vs. “dialect”
■ How do we tell them apart?
■ Linguistically: mutual intelligibility
■ Socially/politically: who gets to decide?
Dialect vs. language
■ When two dialects become mutually unintelligible,
i.e., speakers of two dialects cannot understand
each other, they are considered to have become
separate languages
■ Recall, however, that it is often difficult to draw a
line between separate dialects and separate
languages
• cultural, political or historical considerations may cloud
the issue
Social and political forces
■ “A language is a dialect with an army and a
navy”
■ If your subgroup has the power to convince
people that your language is distinct, it
becomes known as a “language”
■ Example: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian
– Mutually intelligible, but considered
separate languages for political reasons
This works both ways
■ Hindi and Urdu are fairly mutually intelligible, but are
considered separate languages
– Different countries, writing systems, religions
■ Cantonese and Mandarin are not mutually intelligible,
but are considered dialects of the same language
– Same country, same writing (usually)
– Political interest in unity over diversity
Chinese…
– In China, Mandarin is spoken in the northern
province, and Cantonese in the southern province
of Guangdong. Even though in spoken form, these
language varieties are NOT mutually intelligible,
they are considered by the speakers to be dialects
of the same language.
one reason is that these two varieties share a
common writing system and are thus mutually
intelligible in written form.
spoken within the same political boundaries
share a common history
Scandinavian…
The opposite situation:
Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are commonly
considered to be separate languages, although their
speakers can understand each other.
■ Why? They have been distinct countries, with
separate monarchies for many centuries
Linguists consider them to be dialects of the same
language
Other names…
■ Slang: lexicon (words) that are new or have new meanings
(non-standard, informal language)
■ Accent: phonetics/phonology (pronunciation)
Regional phonological or phonetic distinctions create different
accents
■ Variety: what many sociolinguists call a subset of a language
■ Dialect: usually, a regional subset of a language
– But sometimes used to mean variety
Dialects: varieties of language
Characteristics of groups of speakers
■ Geographically defined groups: regional
dialects (week 2)
■ Groups defined by social factors: social
dialects or social groups
- socio-economic status
- ethnicity
- gender
- age
- sexual orientation
Ways dialects can differ
■ Features which vary:
- Pronunciation
- Vocabulary
- Grammar
- Conversational practices
Pronunciation Variation
/bʌtə/
/bʌʔə/
/bʌɾər/
/bʌʈə/
Lexical Variation
■ An internet survey examined dialectal variation with
respect to the name for non-alcoholic carbonated
beverages:
– Pop
– coke
– soda
which one do you use?
Geographic variation:
carbonated beverage
Discussion
■ Have you ever been in a situation where you
were speaking to somebody with a different
dialect or accent, and you just couldn’t
understand each other? How did you deal
with the situation?
Social Factors…
■ There are different social factors
affecting language variation.
■ Can you name any?
Place…
■ Regional differences are something everybody
acknowledges.
– Because there are differences even at the
level of formal language…
– For example, British vs. American English
■ Sociolinguists have always been concerned
with place.
■ Be it nation, region, county, city, neighborhood,
or block, place has long been adduced as a key
correlate of linguistic variation, and geography
has often entered into explanations of
variation.
Place…
• Different places/varieties established by people
from different places, backgrounds
• Barriers to interaction let each variety develop in
its own way (or avoid changes that happen
elsewhere)
• Different varieties are in contact with different
other languages or varieties
• This is easier to understand by looking at actual
examples.
Local and Lexical
■ What words (if any) are associated with
your home region?
■ Do people from your home region
actually use those words?
– Or are they out-dated stereotypes?
Place…
■ It refers to a situation where the pronunciation of
a word becomes a stereotype of a speech
community.
■ Most varieties of English have their own
shibboleth.
Examples:
Newfoundland: b’y for ‘boy’
Jamaicans: mon for ‘man’
Pittsburghers: dahntahn for ‘downtown’
Social Status
■ Societies are divided into multiple groups
■ Some groups have higher status or prestige
■ Language use is variable
■ Particular variants become associated with
prestige groups… … and thus behave in
particular ways
■ Higher status people use more prestige variants
■ Everybody uses more prestige variants in more
formal situations
Social Status
■ Income
■ Higher class than income: teachers, artists,
writers
■ Higher income than class: dope dealers?
■ Sophistication
■ “You got no class!”
■ … although upper-class behaviors often become
seen as more sophisticated, at least until
lowerclass people adopt them
■ Preppy clothing brands, Courvoisier
Social Class
■ You can use a complex scorecard (Trudgill)
■ Type of home, neighborhood, income,
occupational prestige … or something simpler
■ Occupational prestige alone
■ Very high levels of agreement about which jobs
are considered higher or lower prestige
■ In more formal situations, we change our speech
to sound more like the classes above us. This
may lead to social hypercorrection which is the
result of linguistic insecurity.
Gender
■ Sex: what you are (biologically)
■ Gender: what you do (socially)
■ … even though many people nowadays
just use the word gender for both
meanings – For example, the “gender” of
birds
Gender
■ A widely understood idea outside
linguistics
■ There are biologically determined
differences in the language of men and
women – Men have longer thicker vocal
cords
■ … but almost all language differences
have nothing to do with that
Gender
■ Pioneering researcher: Robin Lakoff
■ Language and Woman’s Place
■ Major claims:
– Women’s language exists
– It includes an identifiable set of linguistic features
– Women’s language reflects subordinate status
– Language about women also reflects status
Features of women’s speech
(according to Lakoff)
(a) Hedges (sort of )
(b) Fillers (well, you know )
(c) Tag questions (It’s nice, isn’t it? )
(d) Rising intonation even in non-question sentences
(sometimes called “uptalk”)
(e) “Empty” adjectives (divine, cute)
(f) Precise color terms (chartreuse )
Features of women’s speech
(according to Lakoff)
(g) Intensifiers like so (“It was soooo good!”)
(h) Increased use of standard language forms
(i) Super-polite forms (indirect requests,
euphemisms)
(j) Avoidance of strong swear words
(k) Avoidance of interruptions
Ethnicity
■ Often called ethnolects….
■ Variety of language associated with a particular
ethnic group
■ May contain traces of the group’s original
language – Or ethnic hypercorrections, attempts
to not sound like speakers of the original
language
Ethnicity
■ People in enclaves
■ Places where many residences share ethnicity
■ Probably, people who can’t integrate
– By choice, or by force
– There are no named enclaves for groups that
assimilate easily, like Dutch Canadians