Topic 20: Sociolinguistics (study of the interaction between language and culture)

Learning Objectives

u What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?

u How does culture affect the vocabulary of a language?

u How do individual speech patterns correlate with

class, gender, ethnicity, and region?

u Define dialects and diglossia.

Sociolinguistics

study of the interaction between language and culture

• Context: more than just something being said, its what people actually mean when they say it

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The idea that language profoundly shapes the

perceptions and worldviews of its speaker. (if you speak a certain language, your world-view will be shaped by that language)

• The verbal categories of a language shape the way people perceive the world (vocabulary of langauge)

§ Example: the units of time sequence of the English language (based on natural occurances: day, year, moon phases. Based on culture: seconds, minutes, hours)

Critique of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Language shapes our thoughts only to certain degrees

u Social and economic changes often lead to changes in

vocabularies

u People’s perceptions and worldviews change much more

rapidly than language

u Learning a new language doesn’t necessarily change a

person’s worldview

Culture and Vocabulary

Vocabulary: a language’s set of names for things,

events, actions, qualities, etc. The words that make up a language

Semantic domain: a set of words that belong to an

inclusive class and develop around things important to

a group of people

• example: furniture (desk, table, chairs, etc)

• example: food (mac and cheese, meatloaf, sandwich, milkshake, etc)

Different cultures have different semantic domains

• Some domains of a language may not appear in other languages (e.g., snow, cattle)

• Different cultures may have the same domain, but the components of each domain could be different (e.g., kinship, color)

Vocabulary is the area of language that changes most readily as culture changes

Speech Patterns of Individuals

Variations in speech patterns include pronunciation,

vocabulary, and grammar. (Example: Southern and Northern accents, Bronx vs Canada, vocabulary boys vs girls use)

Speech Patterns and Gender Roles

Speech patterns of different genders reveal different

gender expectations.

• Female speech pattern and women’s traditional lesser power in society

(women are more careful to not make grammatical mistakes, men like to use lots of double negatives: I don’t want nothing)

Speech Patterns and Social Status/Class

• Specialized vocabularies as status markers

• Different social classes adopt different speech

patterns. Mainstream society tends to evaluate

negatively the speech of low-status groups—this

is a social judgement, instead of a linguistic one.

Speech Patterns Affected by Geographic Locations and Ethnicity

u Dialects: a variety of a language that is peculiar to a specific region

or social/ethnic group

u A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and

pronunciation. (e.g., Standard American English and other

dialects in the US)

u All dialects are equally effective as systems of communication

but are associated with different social and economic status.

Therefore, dialects are often judged socially rather than

linguistically

Speech patterns Affected by Region and Ethnicity

• Diglossia: the coexistence of “high” (formal) and “low” (informal) dialects within a single language community.