MODULE 7

dialects

variations across cultures and across geographic regions

• variations in speech and language

  patterns across groups of people, or “speech

  communities”, who share a set of norms and rules

  for the use of language, language characteristics

  and communication habits.

• learned from parents/primary caregivers, peers and community

accent

phonological level sound changes

code-shifting

the use of more than one dialect in conversation

direct rules apply to:

— Phonology (speech sounds)

— This course will concentrate on phonological differences

— Semantic (meaning)

— Grammatical (rules of grammar)

— Syntactic ( sentence structure)

— Pragmatic (rules of language use with other people)

Example: eye contact

dialectology

the branch of linguistics concerned with the geographic and social distribution of language.

regional dialects

šRegional Dialects: varieties of English as defined

by the geographic location in which the variety

is spoken. (ex: northeast, south, midwest)

šRegional dialect differences come

from a number of different sources:

Øhistorical settlement patterns

Ømigratory routes

Øcontact with other language groups

Øphysical and social separation

speech communities

Macroculture: larger community

šEx. In America the speech community is

English speaking people

š Microculture: smaller community

šFewer members of this community

šGeographic region, ethnicity, social class,

etc

social dialects

šSocial Dialects: the varieties of English spoken

by definable social groups.

Sociolinguists:

š Study the effects of language on people

š Studies the relationship between verbal & nonverbal

linguistic forms and social communication.

š How a speaker talks & the effect it has upon the

speaker-listener (Adler, 1993)

š The varieties of a language spoken by defined social

groups

The farther a dialect is from the mainstream

dialect (a more prestigious dialect); the more

likely it is to carry social stigmatization

š Even speakers of nonmainstream dialects hold

their own dialects in low esteem.

ESL/ELL

š Rules of L1 compete with the production of

English

š What is affected?

šPhoneme differences

šSuprasegmental differences

šStress

šIntonation

ASHA Position Paper on Dialects

š Competencies an SLP must have to distinguish between a

difference and a disorder:

š Knowledge of a given dialect as a rule governed

linguistic system

š Knowledge of the phonological and grammatical

features of the dialect.

š Knowledge of non-discriminatory testing procedures.

linguistic contrast analysis

š Obtain a representative speech sample

š Narrowly transcribe words or phrases that highlight the dialectal

variations

š Analyze the sample by comparing it to the standard dialect and find

the differences

š Look at the variant features and identify rules that the speaker follows

that account for the dialect.