sociolinguistics

  • sociolinguistics: study of how social norms, values, beliefs affect language use (and vice versa)

    • differences in language use regarding:

      • gender

      • ethnicity/race

      • religion

      • age

    • convergence of disciplines in studying the social side of language

      • sociolinguistics come from sociology

      • ethnography of speaking from anthropology

  • Why important?

    • language use indexes our identities

      • speak differently depending on who, what, when, and where

      • out speech reveals many things about us as individuals and groups

    • people do NOT have linguistic styles, instances of linguistic styling

      • linguistic style is static (doesn't exist IRL)

      • that we use language strategically for action

  • language and class: how social groups affect language use

    • social class: set of concepts centered on social stratification in class society

      • people are grouped into hierarchical social categories

        • upper, middle, lower class

      • class is indicated by dialect

    • standard dialect: widely used or recognized as proper/normal accent

      • concept is contradictory

    • dialectology: study of dialects

      • patterns that influence dialects:

        • language contact: when speakers of two or more languages interact

        • population movement: migration within and across borders

        • communication networks: information flows within culture

  • social stratification and conversational style

    • social stratification: differentiation of a given population inter classes

    • categorizing people by socioeconomic factors

    • upper classes use "standard" dialect

      • lower classes use "unstandardized" dialect

    • William Labov*'s* study of social stratification of (r) in NYC stores

      • postvocalic position of (r)

      • findings:

        • high use of rhoticity among upper class (saks)

        • higher use and correction of rhoticity among middle class (Macy's)

        • lower use but some correction of rhoticity among lower class (S. Klein)

    • linguistic variation is pervasive, structured, and related to social identity

  • conversational styles: ways of speaking for persons that are personal but NOT idiosyncratic, since group-level sociological identity predicts the style

    • Deborah Tannen found that much of conversational style is:

      • paralinguistic: involves body language, gestures, facial expressions, tone, and pitch

      • concerned with face

        • face: positive social value communicated and maintained by persons during social contact; respectability and deference

        • negative face: need to be unimpeded by others

        • positive face: need to be included, respected, and approved by others

  • linguistic security

    • it is uncomfortable when someone loses face in a conversation

    • linguistic insecurity: sense of unease, discomfort or anxiety experienced when using or attempting to use one's language/dialect in conversations outside of one's language community

      • if experiences insecurity, one usually engages in hypercorrections

        • hypercorrection is the over-application of phonemic and syntactic rules

    • linguistic politeness: showing consideration for fellow interlocutors

      • linguistic deference: expression of respect fo others, usually due to social distance

  • language and race

    • focus on the ways that language produces racial differences and how the construction of race produces differences in language

      • race is not biological, it is cultural

      • racism results in significant cultural and biological consequences

    • raciolinguistics: examines how language is used to construct race and how ideas of race influence language and language use

    • linguistic discrimination: unfair treatment based on the use of language and speech characteristics

      • Samy Alim: analysis of people saying Obama was so articulate, despite being black

      • John Baugh: linguistic profiling

        • people are judged based on the sound of their voice with respect to race

  • Logic of Nonstandard English

    • Hip hop nation language: way of speaking that has come out of inner city and black communities

      • lexicon, phonology, communication styles, phonetic simplifications, and grammatical consistencies

  • Language and ethnicity

    • ethnicity: identification of a group based on perceived cultural distinctiveness that makes the group into a people

      • involves expressive styles of language, music, values, art, lit, family life, religion, ritual, food

    • Donald Rubin: find that ethnic groups experience prejudice

      • perceived as having lower competence

    • linguistic oppression: enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, or social coercion

      • colonial policies against language use

    • common language policies

      • status planning, corpus planning, language education planning, prestige planning

  • early studies

    • Robin Lakoff: Language and woman's place was foundational

      • men and women speak in different ways due to patriarchy and marginalization of women

    • differences in male and female speech patterns

      • women use apologetic language, speak less, and use more indirect speech hedges

    • linguistic marking is a way of designating a term as unusual or divergent from common usage

    • gendered lang is referencing one gender as the common category of usage

      • man/maleness = mankind

      • woman/femaleness is negative = loose woman

  • masculinity is the norm

    • higher occupation were presumed male

      • doctor = male | nurse = female

    • gendered language that favors masculinity

      • diminutive creates the meaning of small or little

        • often done with "-ette"

      • terms of address are words or titles (mister)

        • there was no equivalent of "mr" for women before the 1970s

      • women are expected to take their husband's last name

  • recent studies

    • Deborah Tannen" has advanced the field of sociolinguistics of gender

    • men and women engage in 2 styles of speech

      • Rapport-style: when people talk to establish rapport

        • high feedback frequency, signal cooperation, respect

      • report-style: people talk competitively to convey info and status

        • low feedback frequency, signal competency

      • communication breaks down when both people presume they are using the same style of language when they are not

    • Edward Fischer: found that flight recordings from black boxes after plane crashed revealed failures in communication due to rapport and report miscommunication

      • flight 90 of air florida crash (1982)

  • language and gender variation

    • sex refers to biological differences

    • gender refers to cultural identities associated with one's sex

  • gender pronouns

    • open vs closed lexical categories

  • gender system among Hijras

    • grammatical gender does not designate bio gender

      • gender in grammar means only category

      • do converge in some languages

    • Hindi

      • has two morphological/grammatical genders

      • some words must correspond with gender of the speaker

      • men and women speak in different registers (mardana boli and zanana boli)

    • Hijra are a third gender

      • third genders are neither male nor female

      • speak in khari boli

    • pre-discursive self: presumption that gender maps to sex

    • performativity: language functions to perform social function