Sociolinguistics Chapter 3

Minimal Groups Paradigm

Minimal Groups Paradigm

• To investigate intergroup discrimination (Henri Tajfel)

• Participants told they will receive resources allocated to them by other participants

• Fairness in allocation, but also significant in-group advantages (i.e. intergroup discrimination)

• Occurs in the absence of any previously existing hostility or dislike toward the outgroup

• Groups matter to people

Essentialism

• the idea that people can be placed into fixed social categories and that all members we assign to a category share certain traits which we see as the essence of this category

• assumes that social categories reflect an essential underlying identity

Stereotype

a generalisation about members of a group based on the idea that all members of the group will share certain personal characteristics

Anti-Essentialism

proposes that there is no essential underlying identity to particular social groups and that identity is something that changes according to time, place, and context

Speech Community

• a group of people with shared norms or common evaluations about language forms

• Members of a speech community don't necessarily speak the same way, but they attribute the same (or very similar) social meanings to particular ways of speaking

• broad unit of analysis

Criteria for a speech community

◼ Shared language use ◼ Frequency of interaction by a group of people ◼ Shared rules of speaking and interpretations of speech performance ◼ Shared attitudes and values regarding language forms and language use ◼ Shared sociocultural understandings and assumptions regarding speech events

Shared Norms

• a common feeling about linguistic behaviour in a particular community; giving the same (or very similar) social meanings to particular ways of speaking

• can be hard to understand for outsiders

Language Crossing

shifting into a dialect or language that doesn’t necessarily ‘belong’ to the speaker; speakers “are not accepted members of the group associated with the second language [or variety] that they are using”

CoP (Community of practice)

• a group of people who engage on an ongoing basis in some common activity or endeavour

• Differences also at linguistic level (phonology and grammar)

Mutual Engagement

the relationships that members of the community forge with each other, their investment in time and resources

Joint Enterprise

the goal that they pursue together

Shared Repertoire

the set of behaviours (linguistic and non-linguistic) that members of the community share

Social Network

-the social connections that inform how and when people interact with each other

• The degree to which a person is integrated in a social network (the strength of their network) can be measured on two dimensions: ◼ Network density ◼ Network multiplicity

• to reveal how particular linguistic usages can be related to the frequency and density of certain kinds of contacts among speakers

Network Density

• the number of connections in a network

• high-density; dense network (if people you know interact with one another)

• low-density; loose network

Network Multiplexity

• how people are tied together in the network

• linked through multiple capacities; mulitplex

• linked through one capacity; uniplex/simplex

• Dense and multiplex networks often act as norm-enforcement mechanisms

Perceptual dialectology/folk linguistics

• the study of non-linguists’ ideas about the regions, features and values of dialects

• Methodology: give people a map and ask them to draw dialect regions, label them and describe them

matched-guise paradigm

• The same speaker is recorded reading a passage in two or more language varieties. People listen to these recordings and evaluate the speaker on his or her intelligence, kindness, ambition, leadership, sincerity, sense of humour, etc.

• Criticisms: ◼ Artificial setting ◼ There is a danger of resorting to stereotypes which may, in turn, evoke stereotyped reactions