HESP120 Module 10- Sociolinguistics

Types of language variation

• Dialects 

  • Language variety characteristic of a particular social group 

  • Everybody speaks a dialect (a group of people who speak the same dialect is a speech community) 

  • NOT: a bad way of talking, slang, or an underdeveloped/inferior form of language

• Regional variation 

• Stylistic variation (context- ie. presentation vs. w/friends) prestige 

• Social variation

  • Ethnicity

    • Often speakers of the same ethnicity will share a dialect but it is not a biological issue 

  • Class

  • Age

    • Natural language changes may be phonetic, phonological, lexical, semantic, etc. 

  • Gender

    • Links between cultural norms for behavior and gender are usually arbitrary 

  • Socioeconomic status

  • Education

• Lexical variation (different words for the same object) 

• Phonological variation (pronunciation) 

• Gender variation

• Isogloss: 

  • Geographical boundary marks the limit of the regional distribution of a particular feature 

  • When many isoglosses fall in approximately the same location they form an isogloss bundle (which then usually marks the boundaries of dialect)

• Overt prestige: The speaker seeks prestige by assimilating to the standard 

  • People model their speech after the dialect that is prestigious to them 

  • Often the dialect with the most prestige is the standard 

• Covert prestige: the speaker chooses to differ from the standard and assimilate to a different non-standard language variety 
  

Chicano English 

• Spanish-influenced English that has been acquired by children as their native language.

  • Now distinct dialect of English

  • Many speakers of Chicano English may be bilingual, but many are also monolingual English speakers.

• Features 

  • Vowel substitutions (e.g. /tədeɪ/→[tudeɪ])

  • /z/ devoicing (e.g. /wʌz/→[wʌs])

  • Topicalization:

    • To talk about myself, it’s easy for me. (SAE: It’s easy for me to talk about myself)

  • Use of “barely” for “just recently”

    • “You’re leaving? You barley got here.

African American English 

• is not a homogenous variety; it’s a continuum of varieties (also with regional, age, etc.variation)

• Rule-ordered and has a very complex grammatical system

• A phonological rule: word-final consonant cluster reduction 

  • past and passed =pass

  • burned my hand = [bʌɹn maɪ hæn]

• A grammatical rule: “habitual be”

  • Distinguishes whether the statement refers to a specific instance or in general (a habitual state)

    • The coffee (always) be cold

    • *errored: The coffee be cold right now

    • She be late (everyday)

Sociolinguistics 

• Study of the relationships between language varieties and social structure 

  • Studying interrelationships among language varieties 

  • Language variety: 

    • A specific form of a language (isolects or lects) including dialects, idiolect, registers, styles, or other forms of language (vernacular varieties) 

  • Social structure: 

    • Internal institutionalized relationships that people weave as they live together within a group 

Language and power

• Privilege:

  • A group of unearned cultural, legal, social, and institutional benefits extended to a group based on their social group membership

• Linguistic discrimination: 

  • Discrimination against an individual on the basis of the way they speak 

    • Tied to prestige, accent discrimination, ASL discrimination 

    • Speakers of “standard” varieties often are perceived to be more “credible” 

• Official language: 

  • The status of an official language usually means that all official government business must be conducted in that language

    • People who do not speak the language may have limited access to voting, court systems, education, public health and safety, etc. 

• Disability: 

  • Assumptions about speech and intellect:

    • Aphasia, stuttering, autism

  • Generation of pejorative terms:

    • Lame, handicapped, “special” 

• Communication access: 

  • Various tools and methods through which people receive and exchange information 

  • Appropriate communication access: gives people equal access to education, the workplace, public venues, etc.

  • Differential access to information if: you don’t speak the official (or de facto official) language, speak a non-standard variety, are Deaf, etc.

Style and register 

• An individual speaker speaks differently in different contexts 

• Speech styles: systematic variation in speech based on factors such as topic, purpose, setting, addressee

• Registers: refer to the different levels of formality and are characterized by an entire set of linguistic features 

  • Markers: all parts of speech 

  • Style shifting: automatically adjusting from one speech style to another  

• Slang: words or expressions used in informal settings often to indicate membership in a particular social group

  • Not the same for everyone, found in all languages, can be short-lived or in general use, changes over time 

• Jargon: technical language associated with a particular specialized domain 

  • Business speak, legalese, argot, sports terminology, news and politics, medical terminology, etc