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Language and Dialects

  • national / standard ➝ regional / local ➝ individual (varieties of languages)
  • language: collection of different forms that are all mutually intelligible
    • if two speakers understand each other, they’re mutually intelligible
  • dialects: forms of speech with coherent, systematic properties
    • recognition of linguistic difference
  • dialect continuum: when there’s a number of continuous dialects, each dialect is closely to the next
  • there are political ideas of language too
    • ex: norway and danish
  • dialects can be affected by region, socioeconomic status, age, ethnicity, etc.
  • Dialects and Attitudes
    • there are intense subjective judgements on certain dialects
    • linguistic security: myth that you don’t speak a dialect but everyone else does
    • regional dialectology involves subjective evaluations
    • in-group / out-group
    • shibboleths: pronunciations of a single word which becomes a stereotype of a speech community
    • variation: style and register
    • everyone has a dialect (speech community) and an idiolect (personal speech style)
    • also have variation of speech styles based on linguistic context (informal v formal)
    • accommodation: speakers adopt the mode of speech of the person they’re addressing
  • Sociolinguistic Variation: regional and social variation
    • regional variation is usually determined by geographical and topographical features
    • mountains, rivers, deserts, etc.
    • the more a speech community is isolated, the less it will be changed by other speech communities
    • dialect maps are created by making isoglosses of the regional extent of a dialect indicator
    • bundles of isoglosses define regional dialects