Language Variation

Language Varieties: Important Definitions

• Language variety: Any form of language characterized by systematic features.

  • → Applies to distinct languages (French vs. Italian), forms spoken by a specific group of people (Appalachian English vs. New York English), speech of a single person compared to others, or even the way a single person speaks in a particular context (formal vs. informal)

• Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between these language varieties and social 

  structure as well as the interrelationships among different language varieties

• Dialect: Language variety of a group of speakers which differs noticeably in its speech from another group

• → Note that sometimes the term carries negative connotations, but linguistically speaking, every person speaks a dialect of their native language.

• → Note that the term is often misused by laypeople to refer strictly to differences in pronunciation or sometimes to refer to slang usage. However, the appropriate term for systematic phonological variation is accent (which in layperson’s terminology is often used in reference to “foreign accents”--but every person speaks with an accent.)

• Speech community: A group of people speaking the same dialect

Speech Registers

• An individual speaker speaks differently in different social contexts.

• For example, most greetings are only felicitous (remember, pragmatics!) either when meeting 

  a country's leader vs. at a party ("Oh, hey. How’s it going?")

• Speech registers: different levels of speech formality, e.g., “formal” or “informal,” “casual” or “careful.”

• → Systematic variations in speech based on factors such as topic, setting, and addressee

Are two language varieties different dialects of the same language or different languages?

• One criterion used to distinguish dialects from languages is mutual intelligibility

• If speakers of one language variety can understand speakers of another language variety, and vice versa, we say that these varieties are mutually intelligible and therefore they are

  dialects of the same language.

• Example: People from Brooklyn, New York, and Beaumont, Texas, will notice differences in how they speak but understand each other. Their varieties are mutually intelligible but differ systematically; they are therefore dialects of the same language.

• The varieties spoken by people from Brooklyn, New York, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are not mutually intelligible; they are therefore different languages

• Mutual intelligibility isn't enough! Some tricky examples: 

  • In China, Mandarin is generally spoken in the Northern provinces, and Cantonese in the southern province of Guangdong.

• They are not mutually intelligible in spoken form, but are still considered by their speakers to be dialects of the same language. Why?

Are two language varieties different dialects of the same language or different languages? reason 2

• 1) The varieties share a common writing system (i.e., mutually intelligible in written form); 2) Politically, the speakers of these two language varieties live in the same country and consider themselves to be part of the same culture

  • In the American Southwest, there are two Native American languages, Papago and Pima.

• The varieties are mutually intelligible (there is actually less linguistic difference between them than there is between Standard American English and Standard British English).

• However, the two tribes regard themselves as politically and culturally distinct, therefore consider their respective languages to be distinct as well

• Another challenge: dialect continuum

  • In geographically contiguous dialects, each dialect is closely related to the next, but the dialects at either end of the continuum (scale) are mutually unintelligible. Thus, dialect A is intelligible to dialect B, which is intelligible to dialect C, which is intelligible to dialect D; but D and A are not mutually intelligible.

  • Example of Holland and Germany: Dialects at the border are mutually intelligible, but dialects of Dutch and German that aren’t near the border—including the standard dialects of the two languages—are not.

• Although the principle of mutual intelligibility is useful in theory, from a practical standpoint, the difference between two dialects and two languages really relates to how native speakers perceive them

Slang

• Two types of slang

  • Common slang (fridge for refrigerator or TV for television)

  • In-group slang: Specialized slang of a particular group at a particular time

    • Used to keep insiders together and to exclude outsiders

    • In order for the group to preserve its closed status, there is often a fairly high turnover and renewal of slang expressions, e.g., 23 skidoo (US, early 20th century: leaving quickly, or being forced to leave quickly by someone else)

    • Some last long enough to become widely accepted: Fan appeared as a slangy shortening of fanatic in the late sixteenth century

• Slang responds to a need in people to be creative in their language use and to show group membership (often unconsciously). These observations liken slang to some feature in the nature of being human and of interacting with humans. For these reasons, slang is found in all languages (even in Ancient Greek of 2,500 years ago, for instance)

Standard Dialects and Notions of Prestige

• Note: all dialects are linguistically equivalent!

  • This misconception of a "correct dialect" has arisen from social stereotypes and biases. Linguistically speaking, no one dialect or language is better, more correct, more systematic, or more logical than any other. Rather, every language variety is a 

    rule-governed system and an effective means of communication.

• "Standard" dialect: Variety used by political leaders, the media, and speakers from higher socioeconomic classes; taught in schools and to non-native speakers in language classes; every language has at least one, which serves as the primary means of communication across dialects

• Socially speaking, the standard dialect is the dialect of prestige and power. In the United States, the prestige group usually corresponds to those in society who enjoy positions of power, wealth, and education. It is the speech of this group, therefore, that becomes the standard, but there is nothing about the variety itself that makes it more prestigious than any other variety

Standard Dialects and Notions of Prestige Case Study

• Case study of multiple negatives: Language can change from standard to non-standard

  Geoffrey Chaucer’s description of the Knight in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (from Millward 1989: 158), meaning roughly “he has never in all his life said anything villainous to any creature.”

  • He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde

  • He has never yet said no villainy not said

  • In all his lyf unto no manner wight

  • In all his life, to no kind of creature

• Today, the speakers who commonly employ multiple-negative constructions are typically not members of the higher socioeconomic (i.e., prestige) group.

  • → Rarely used in public spheres by political leaders or media spokespeople, and English grammar instructors discourage use of these forms in writing or in speech

  • → Change over time in the prescriptive standard and shows that right/wrong judgments are not linguistically founded but are instead governed by societal opinion, and most often by the societal evaluation of speakers

Variation happens at all levels

• Phonological variation: A person from Oregon might say the phrase park the car as [phɑɹk ðə khɑɹ], a person from Boston or London might say [phɑːk ðə khɑː]

• Morphological variation: In Standard American English (SAE) the suffix-ish only attaches to some adjectives and nouns (e.g., reddish, youngish, foolish, childish), in other varieties it can also, e.g., attach to words like nouns and proper nouns (tree-ish, George Clooney-ish, Oprah-ish); In SAE, words like tree-ish are usually formed with the suffix-like (tree-like, Oprah-like)

• Syntactic variation: 1) In many southern American English varieties, done can function as an auxiliary verb, as in "she done already told you", where Standard American English use has: "she has already told you." 2) In Midwestern American dialects, verbs like needs and wants can be used in phrases such as "the crops need watered" or "the cat wants petted", but in SAE, speakers instead say "the crops need to be watered/need watering" and "the cat wants to be petted"

• Lexical variation: Soda is common in the northeastern and western parts of the United States, while pop is common in the Midwest and Northwest, and coke is common in the South. And, of course, there are other terms like soft drink, soda pop, fizzy drinks, or even juice that are used elsewhere

Reasons for Language Variation

• Regional variation (as in, soda vs. pop)

• Social factors: socioeconomic, age, gender, ethnic

Socioeconomic Status

• People often want to be associated with a particular socioeconomic group (e.g., to express solidarity with those of the same group or to show distance from those of a different group), and language is one way to achieve this.

• Furthermore, socioeconomic status may be associated with particular levels or types of education, and this subsequently affects language use.

• Famous study of language & socioeconomic status (William Labov, 1972, New York City)

  • In New York City speech, /ɹ/s at the end of syllables, such as in four, card, paper, here, there, etc. are often not pronounced ("non-rhoticity") → pronouncing /ɹ/s ("rhoticity") is associated with prestige

  • Labov tested salespeople in three department stores associated with different levels of prestige: Saks (high socioeconomic status), Macy’s (moderate socioeconomic status), and S. Klein (low socioeconomic status)

  • He went into the stores and asked salesclerks (who didn’t know they were being tested!) a question that would elicit the answer "fourth floor"

  • Results: Saks (63%), Macy's (44%), S. Klein (8%) of rhoticity in "floor"

    • → The lowest socioeconomic-class store, S. Klein, had the lowest percentage of rhoticity, while the highest socioeconomic-class store, Saks, had the highest percentage of rhoticity

Age

• Many times, older speakers will comment on the “degradation” of language, or the “desecration” of language, by the younger generation.

• From a linguistic point of view, however, the differences between older and younger speech are not “good” or “bad”; they are simply changes that occur naturally, just like any other differences between language varieties.

• Examples of relatively recent changes in English: the use of high-rising intonation at the ends of even declarative sentences (“uptalk”); the use of like as an interjection (I, like, didn’t know what to do) or as a quotative (He was like, “Well, I don’t know either”); the introduction of new words such as download; and the loss of older words such as dungarees to refer to jeans.

• As these changes occur, younger speakers use the new variants to a much higher degree than older speakers do

Gender

• Gender is performed in different ways through language.

• Note: The linking of cultural norms for behavior, including linguistic behavior, with gender is 

  usually arbitrary. Evidence: stereotypes involving language use (e.g., talkativeness, loudness, 

  and silence) are, in different cultures, associated with different genders.

• Example 

  • In Malagasy culture, indirect, deferential speech is valued. Malagasy men are often silent in public confrontations, while Malagasy women express anger and criticism through direct, confrontational speech, often to the benefit of their husbands or other 

    male family members.

• But there is clearly no direct link between silence and masculinity in all cultures. Many Western cultures value direct, public speech. A number of studies of conversation have shown that in Western societies, public speech tends to be dominated by men.

• Although the speech behaviors typical of Malagasy males and females are very different from those of much of Western society, note that in both instances, it is the 

  male norms that are more highly valued by the community

• Women tend to use more prestige (standard) variants than men, and listeners even expect female speech to be more like that of the middle class, and male speech to be more like that of the working class (at least in Western culture).

Gender Example Studies

• Example study (Trudgill 1974): Members of the middle class and women were more likely to use standard verb forms like running (with word-final [ɪŋ] instead of runnin' with [ɪn]).

• Example study (Edwards 1979): Adults were asked to listen to recordings of preadolescent children, some of whom were from working- class families and some of whom were from middle-class families. The adults had few problems identifying the working-class boys as boys and the middle-class girls as girls, but they did much worse identifying the middle-class boys and the working-class girls, more than doubling their number of errors. To these listeners, the speech of middle-class boys was perceived as feminine, and the speech of working-class girls was perceived as masculine

• Women tend to use more prestige (standard) variants than men, and listeners even expect female speech to be more like that of the middle class and male speech to be more like that of the working class (at least in Western culture).

• Hypotheses:

  • 1. Women have traditionally been considered inferior to men in terms of social status, women may make more of an effort to imitate the prestigious language of the social classes above them

  • 2. Women, being the primary caretakers for children in many societies, may try to expose their children to prestige dialects in order to improve the children’s chances of success.

• In many cases, however, gender influences language simply because certain features of language, such as nonstandard working-class varieties, is associated with masculinity and other features, such as standard varieties, are associated with femininity

Ethnic

• Note: The language a person speaks is not in any way predestined but is instead determined by the language that they are exposed to.

• Ethnicity influences variation in multi-ethnic communities. Pronunciations, words, and constructions from languages that represent the group’s heritage and culture may influence how the group speaks the standard language variety. Compounded with this is the factor of language and identity.

  • Example: African-American English (AAE), a continuum of varieties, spoken primarily by and among African Americans.

    • The features of AAE may be very similar to or very different from Standard American English, depending on which end of the continuum you consider. 

    • Contrast to SAE example: In AAE, you can reduce word-final consonant clusters when the following word begins with a vowel. For instance, phrases such as hand off [hænd ɔf] and best ever [bɛst ɛvɹ]are sometimes pronounced [hæn ɔf] and best ever [bɛs ɛvɹ]

Language & Identity

• Language exists only because people have created it and use it on a daily basis to communicate, and it is therefore a social phenomenon

• There’s nothing about being younger in itself that makes some younger English speakers use more rising intonation than older English speakers.

• What matters here is that age is one factor that differentiates groups of speakers who identify with each other in some manner, and once these groups are formed, the members of the group may develop particular language characteristics that distinguish their group from other groups.

• These characteristics are often not consciously developed

Defining Identity

• Most people have more than one group whom they identify with.

• For example, you may identify yourself in the classroom as a student but at the camp you work at in the summer as an instructor. Or you may identify yourself broadly as an American, but more specifically as someone from Southern California rather than some other part of the country or the state.

• This use of language is not always conscious or intentional. You may use particular lexical items that mark you as coming from a particular region, without even realizing that people from other regions might use different terms. 

• For example, not pronouncing the /r/s at the end of syllables, in words such as in four, card, paper, and so on, might be taken as a sign of your low prestige by a listener from New York but as a sign of your high prestige by a listener from London. 

• While you can certainly use your own knowledge of society’s associations between linguistic phenomena and elements of identity to bolster or separate yourself from certain types of identities, you do not have complete control over your linguistic identity

Studying Sociolinguistic Patterns

• “Observer’s paradox” → Often, it is impossible to get an accurate picture of what speakers do “naturally” among themselves, precisely because observing them makes them change their speech.

• For example, the perceived identity of the researcher may play a role in determining the speech of a person being studied:

  • John Rickford and Faye McNair-Knox found in a 1994 study that the same African American participant talked markedly differently when being interviewed by a Euro-American researcher than when being interviewed by an African American researcher