Paper 2 Theorists

Gender: Robin Lakoff

Women's language is weaker due to socialisation → leads to lack of power (e.g. hedges, tag questions) Defecit

Gender: Zimmerman and West

Men interrupt women more → shows male dominance in conversation- Dominance

Gender: Pamela Fishman

Women do more "conversational work" to keep interactions going and reflects societal position- Dominace

Gender: Deborah Tannen

Men and women have different communication styles due to socialisation, not inequality- Difference model

Gender: Jane Pilkington

Women in same-sex groups are more collaborative and use positive politeness

Gender/ Occupation: Janet Holmes

Women leaders use more collaborative, consensus-building language than males

Accent: William Labov

Studied the NYC department stores. Lower middle class are most likely to use overt prestige forms (hypercorrection) less likely to use rhotic r

Social groups: Penelope Eckert

Slang helps young people form identity and separate from older generations

Social groups: Unni Berland

Teenagers use language features (e.g. tags, innit, right, yeah etc) to show group belonging and assert identity

Social groups: Vivian de Klerk

Young people challenge linguistic norms and create new identities through language

World: Braj Kachru

English spreads in 3 circles: Inner (native L1 by birth), Outer (colonised by usa and brits L2), Expanding (global use like trade)

World: David Crystal

English spread due to British Empire, western science, technology, and industrial revolution

World: Henry Widdowson

English spread through colonisation; standard forms preserved globally

Occupation: Drew and Heritage

Communication between members of a discourse community relies on shared "inferential frameworks” (shared knowledge to understand implied meanings)

Lang Change: Jean Aitchison

3 metaphors: Damp spoon = LC caused by laziness, Crumbling castle = english once a perfect structure now declining, Infectious disease = people 'catch' from those around them, often unwittingly

Lang change: Robert Lowth

Prescriptivist: Language should follow strict rules; helped standardise English, wrote first grammer book.

Lang Change: David Crystal

Language is economised, (more practical like shortening words) derived from text talk. Therefore, change is inevitable driven by the needs of its users.

Occupation: Howard Giles

Accommodation theory: People adjust/ different levels of formality language (converge/diverge) depending on social situation (occupation)

Bernstein

Working class speakers use a restricted code of language, which related to the anchored in close-knit, communal relationships, while middle-class speakers use an elaborated code, which was much more explicit and independent of context. This contributed to a deficit model – an assumption that working class language is deficient.

Penelope Eckert (Case Studies)

Observational research on American High School students. Two distinct groups: the ‘jocks’, who actively participated in school life and the ‘burnouts’ who did not. She found that people tended to speak more like those with whom they shared social practices and values. ‘Burnouts’ used exaggerated pronunciations associated with urban accents. ‘Jocks’ spoke in a socially prestigious way – sometimes reflecting their MC backgrounds.

Peter Trudgill (1974)

• Norwich study looked at the pronunciation of the words ‘walking’ and ‘talking’. Trudgill was looking for the non-standard forms walkin’ and talkin’ (this is called ‘g-dropping’ or a ‘g-drop’).

  • The lower class used more non- standard dropping

• He also looked at the use of the ‘-s’ in verbs, like ‘he goes to school’ and the non-standard ‘he go to school’.

Langauge and technology, david crystal

Internet language is neither speech nor writing—it’s a hybrid with its own rules (e.g. abbreviations, emojis).

Judith butler langauge sexuality and ethnicty

Gender and sexuality are performed through repeated language and actions. The idea that identity is not fixed at birth, but is actively "performed" through daily choices like speech.

Deborah cameron, language and sexuality

Language reflects and shapes attitudes toward gender and sexuality.

Norman Fairclough language and sexuality

Discourse shapes power—language controls how sexuality is represented.

John Pitts- Ethnicity

Ethnolect:

• Key Finding: Black British youth shifted toward Jamaican Patois/Creole to resist societal exclusion and show group solidarity

Paul Kerswill & Jenny Cheshire (2008) – Multicultural London English (MLE)

The Social Reality: MLE is post-ethnic. A young person’s use of MLE is determined by their Social Network Score (how integrated they are in local youth subcultures) and their socioeconomic class, completely overriding their biological or heritage ethnic background. MLE is a multiethnolect—a variety born in highly diverse, working-class urban areas where no single ethnic group forms a majority.

Gary Ives- 8 boys bradford study

They used code-switching as a highly conscious, deliberate tool for social posturing (insincere behaviour to fit in or gain social status). Blended Punjabi and English, but only when talking to each other. When speaking to parents or teachers, they dropped the Punjabi entirely.

Sharma

Younger generation use ethnic linguistic features entirely for identity performance. They don't switch accents out of fear or survival; they dial their ethnic features "up or down" to signal humor, irony, or solidarity during conversations. This shows that the link between ethnicity and language shifts from a tool of survival to a tool of self-expression across generations.