Sociolinguistics lane 422

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Sociolinguistics lane 422
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Language and society

• Language has a social function it helps us to
• establish and maintain relationships.
• Convey information about the speaker.

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• Language vs. dialect ? regional vs. social
• Dialect vs. accent
• no clear-cut boundaries dialect continuum
• Language continuum, eg. German and dutch spoken
  along the Netherlands-Germany frontier

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Criteria to Language

• Linguistic criteria ? Mutual intellegibility
  language, e.g Dutch and German
• Political and cultural criteria
• autonomy and heteronomy (German and Dutch
  non-standard dialects in Germany, Austria and
  Switzerland)

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• Discreteness and continuity
• Dialect grammar, vocabulary and pronuciation

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• Language is closely tied p with the social
  structure and value systems of society therefore
  different dialects and accents are evaluated in
  different ways.
• e.g. non pre-vocalic /r/ car, cart England, not
  prestigious
• New York, prestigious

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• Value judgments are arbitrary, and based on
  social connotations
• Subjective attitudes towards language are
  important for the study of language change,
  explain why dialects change and how, e.g. /r/ in
  New York (Labov)
• The use of non pre-vocalic /r/ by upper middle
  class in New York
• Labovs study of Marths Vineyard, house , mouth
• /?u/ ,/au/
• subjective attitudes towards the native
  linguistic form favorable or unvavorable
• Linguistic change is not always in the direction
  of a prestigious form.

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• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• The effect of society on language how physical
  environment is reflected in language
• the social environment, kinship terms.
• The values of society affect language, e.g taboo
  words, the word but not the concept.
• Language is variable, is not used in the same
  manner by all people in all situations.

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Key sociolinguistic concepts

• Variety a neutral term to refer to any form of
  language (languages dialects)
• Speech community controversial concept
• a community of people who share a linguistic
  variety as their own and share social norms.
• shared linguistic norms , shared
  communicative competence and shared social norms.
  (can be a city, neighborhood, region, nation)
• Communicative (Sociolinguistic) competence
• speakers underlying knowledge of rules of
  grammar and rules for their use in socially
  appropriate circumstances. (learned through
  socialization), e.g. please, thank you. Greeting
  formally, informally.
• Social knowledge is essential for membership in
  speech community.

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• boundaries between speech communities are social
  rather than linguistic. speech community ?
  language community e.g Papua New Guinea mutual
  intelligibility
• Gaelic\English communities in Scotland (rely on
  their communicative the shared norms of
  interactions in the community.

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• Can we claim the existence of a homogenous speech
  community with the attested heterogeneity in
  cities and countries?

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Variation and Language

• The variable an abstract representation of the
  source of variation, realised by two or more
  variants, e.g think /?/ ?, f.
• the variants are the actual realization of a
  variable
• Constraints on variation linguistic social
  factors determine the use of variants.
• Free variation
• Variation is predicable but not with 100
  certainty

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Fischers 1958 study of the use of (ng) in New
England.
(ng)singing vs. singin
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Variation Studies

• Fischers 1958 study of the use of (ng) in New
  England.
• 12 boys, 12 girls aged 3-10.
• Interview
• Concusions
• Boys used more in than girls.
• The use of in increases with the formality of
  situations. The use of in increased when
  relaxed.
• in is used more with verbs that describe
  everyday activities ,e.g hit ing is used
  with formal verbs, e.g criticize.

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2. Labov (1966) study of (r) in New York

• To investigate the incidence of final and
  post-vocalic /r/
• While most American accents are rhotic, New York
  (and Boston) have distinctive non-rhotic accent
• Post-Depression, such urban accents lost
  prestige, and rhotic midwest accent emerged as
  standard
• Labov showed that rhotic use of /r/ reflected
  social class and aspiration, and was more
  widespread in younger speakers

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Labov (1966) study of (r) in New York

• Method
• He needed to quickly elicit possible /r/
  pronunciations in both spontaneous and careful
  speech
• Walked around 3 NYC department stores, asking the
  location of departments he knew were on the
  fourth floor
• By pretending not to hear, he got each informant
  to pronounce the two words twice, once
  spontaneously, and once carefully
• 3 stores catering for distinct social groups
• Saks (upper), Macys (middle), S. Klein (lower)
• Informants were shop workers at different grades,
  giving a further possible stratification

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Results

• Use of r corresponded to higher class of store

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Results

• use of r increases in careful speech

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Pronunciation and style
Adoption of prestige form increases with
formality of style, in each case with a higher
usage by higher classes EXCEPT in one case
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middle class outperform upper middle class on
word lists and minimal pairs this cross-over due
to hypercorrection (according to Labov) not sure
whether results are statistically significant
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Multilingulaism

• Multilingualism the use of more than two
  languages, e.g. Nigeria, India, and Philippines
  have hundreds of languages.
• Canada, USA.
• How multilingual nations develop? migration,
  imperialism, federation
• Diglossia A situation in which two forms of the
  same language co-exist in a complementary
  relationship in a society. High variety, low
  variety. Both forms are grammatically distinct,
  dont overlap.
  Classical Arabic
• Each variety has its domains, e.g Arabic
  vernaculars
  (dialects)
• The term is extended to refer to any two
  languages, even related ones, that has this kind
  of social and functional distribution.
• Triglossia ,Tunisia
• Polyglossia several H and L languages co-exist
  in a complex multilingual society, e.g. Singapore
  L,H, M varieties,e.g. Mandarin, Tamil and Malay
  are official languages.

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• Which languages will be officially or nationally
  recognized in a multilingual society?
• Vitality demographic, social and institutional
  strength of a language and its speakers.
• Language planning, language policies, in
  multilingual communities.
• Deliberate, Official government policies in
  relation to language
• Singapore (Hokkeien)

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Code switching\mixing

• The alternation between two varieties across
  sentences or clause boundaries.
• It implies some degree of competence in the two
  varieties even if bilingual fluency is not yet
  stable.
• What determines code switching?
• Domain-based or situational code switching.
• Domain (social and physical setting),
  addressee (interlocutor),
• Constraints switching takes place between
  languages with similar structure?
  Spanish/Englishbetween determiners and nouns,
  Subjects and verbs, but not nouns and adjectives.

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• Code mixing alternations within a clause or
  phrase, e.g. Spanglish, Franglais, arabizi?
• Motivations \functions for a switch between
  codes?
• Attitudes towards code switching\ mixing.
  Stigmitaized or favorable (ethnic identity)

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Sociolinguistic research

• An hypothesis is a specific statement of
  prediction. It describes in concrete (rather than
  theoretical) terms what you expect will happen in
  your study.
• Your prediction is that variable A and variable B
  will be related (you don't care whether it's a
  positive or negative relationship). Then the only
  other possible outcome would be that variable A
  and variable B are not related. Usually, we call
  the hypothesis that you support (your prediction)
  the alternative hypothesis, and we call the
  hypothesis that describes the remaining possible
  outcomes the null hypothesis.
• hypothesis formation one might formulate a
  hypothesis before beginning the research project,
  based on available literature, or ones
  observations in the course of collecting,
  processing, and/or analyzing data might lead to
  an interesting, testable hypothesis.
• Not all studies have hypotheses. Sometimes a
  study is designed to be exploratory

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Sociolinguistic research

• Empirical research
• Sampling target population define the sampling
  universe, determine the sample size
• Stratified sample by age, sex, region, etc.
• random, judgment sampling (snowball sampling)
• Methods of data collection
• Questionnaire
• Face-to-face interview, telephone interviews
• population, tape recorded, agreement to
  participate.

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Sociolinguistic research

• The analysis of variation The quantitative
  method
• Define your linguistic variables and social
  variables
• Transcription, coding, counting tokens,
  percentages
• Excel or word for tables and graphs

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Sociolinguistic research

• Interpretation of data, Look for pattern,
  correlation between linguistic variable and
  social variable.

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Sociolinguistic research

• Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on
  Bilingualism
• Linguistic Constraints on Codeswitching and
  Codemixing     of Bilingual Moroccan
  Arabic-French Speakers in Canada
• www.cascadilla.com/isb4.html
• Code Switching Between English and Arabic An
  Empirical study on Saudi Female Students

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Sociolinguistics project

• DESCRIPTIVE STUDY.  If you choose to do a
  descriptive study, it will have the following
  components
• (1)  A description of the speech community,
  giving enough information to contextualize the
  sociolinguistic variables.
• (2)  A description of the sociolinguistic
  variables embodied in this speech community, and
  an indication of how they have been identified
  (e.g. personal observation, previous studies,
  general community knowledge, jokes and
  stereotypes, etc.).
• (3)  A review of relevant literature concerning
  this particular speech community or
  sociolinguistic configuration.  At least 5
  sources must be cited. 

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Sociolinguistics project

• An analysis of the chosen sociolinguistic
  situation within a broader context.  How does
  this fit in with the general study of
  sociolinguistics?  Do the data from your study
  offer anything new to sociolinguistics?  Would a
  thorough and complete analysis of the chosen
  community require resources or models not
  currently contemplated in sociolinguistics?
• (5)  Suggestions for future research.  This can
  be brief and can be appended to the analysis in
  point (4).  Every linguistic study should suggest
  new directions, unanswered questions, and future
  research.  Mention the most promising
  possibilities.

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QUANTITATIVE STUDY

• 1)  A description of the speech community, giving
  enough information to contextualize the
  sociolinguistic variables.
• (2)  A description of the sociolinguistic
  variables embodied in this speech community, and
  an account of how the data have been obtained
  (data collection, number of speakers, coding of
  tokens).
• (3)  A review of relevant literature concerning
  this particular speech community or
  sociolinguistic configuration.  At least 5
  sources must be cited. 
• (4)  A working hypothesis about the
  sociolinguistic importance of the chosen
  variables, that will be tested against the data.

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• (5). A brief interpretation of the quantitative
  results with respect to the working hypothesis. 
  Do the quantitative results support or disconfirm
  the hypothesis? 
• (6)  Suggestions for future research. Be sure to
  add any suggestions for improvement of the study
  (data collection, quantitative analysis,
  interpretation of results).

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Style, context and register

• Style, in the most general sense, refers to the
  distinctive way of speaking or writing. People
  adopt different styles in different contexts.
• The influence of the addressee on the speakers
  language solidarity (social closeness) between
  participants is an important influence on speech
  style.
• Casual, relaxed, vernacular forms with friends
• Standard forms with strangers
• Many factors affect social distance\solidarity
  between people

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Factors affecting speakers style

• Age of addressee child, elderly vs. adult
  simpler vocabulary and less complex sentences,
  we vs. you example 4, p.225
• Social background of the addressee, example 6 p.
  228
• Peter Trudgill interviewing people in Norwich,
  use of t in better, bet. Glottal stop used up
  to 98 with lower class interviewees (100). With
  higher class (25), Trudgills use dropped to
  30. He was accommodating to his interviewees.
• Relative status and solidarity between speaker
  and addressee
• Colloquial style vernacular
• social dialect survey in New York Labov elicited
  the vernacular the style in which minimum
  attention is given to the monitoring of speech
• Observers paradox can be overcome by
  manipulating the topic of interview

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Register

• Occupational style a jargon which a group of
  specialists develop to talk about their
  specialty, eg. Journalese, legalese, sport
  commentators.
• Example 23

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Speech accommodation theory

• The notion of accommodation developed from the
  work of Howard Giles and his associates.
• Speakers tend to change the way they are speaking
  depending on who they are talking to.
• Speakers may Converge (modify their speech to
  sound similar)or diverge (maintain linguistic
  distinctiveness to distinguish themselves from
  interlocutor e.g. some minority ethnic groups).
• Motivation in the case of convergence to express
  solidarity or reduce social distance, polite
  speech strategy, sarcastic effect.
• Upward convergence, downward convergence
• Short-term accommodation vs. long term
  accommodation which may lead to permanent
  linguistic changes.
• Dialect contact zones.

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• Reactions to speech convergence and divergence
  depend on the reasons people attribute for the
  convergence or divergence.
• Deliberate divergence will be heard as
  antagonistic or uncooperative.

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Language contact and dialect levelling

• Reduction of differences distinguishing regional
  dialects or accents.
• The result of mobility, in the 20th century
  social changes affected the local dialect
  diversity which characterised regions for hundred
  of years.
• Immigration, urbanization, new towns.
• The outcome of close daily contact levelling out
  of differences

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Outcomes of Language contact

• All variation and change can be viewed as the
  outcome of some form of contact between different
  individuals or members of different groups
  bilingualism, bidialectlism, code switching,
  dialect levelling (e.g. the use of London
  variants (ay) PRICE, MOUTH (aw) by young children
  in Milton Keynes stops t and glottal ? in
  Reading (close to London) and Hull (far from
  London, no immigration or contact with London or
  south east speakers. The Fens).

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Contact-induced change pidgins and creoles

• pidgins and creoles are languages that emerge out
  of the contact between speakers of more than two
  different languages.
• Social conditions associated with the contact
• Limited social contact speakers may only be in
  contact in a reduced set of social interactions,
  such as trading or work. Limited access to native
  speakers model of each others languages.
• Lack of motivation to acquire native-speaker like
  skills in the other language.
• How they are learnt.

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• Pidgin a contact language that is not nobodys
  first language, no native speakers. Arise in the
  conditions of trade and labor related contexts.
• Restricted social functions
• A creole a contact language which has native
  speakers, may be added the community repertoire
  resulting in bilingualism.
• A creole serves most of the or all of the
  functions that any natural human language must
  serve everyday interaction, telling stories,
  jokes, games, etc.

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Functional definition of pidgins and creoles

• Any variety used for business or limited to work
  place may be considered a pidgin.
• Russenorsk used between Russian and Norwegian
  sailors in The Bering Sea during fishing season
  of the northern summer.
• Francais tiraillou torn French used in the
  military parts of the French colonies in Africa.
• Once a variety is used a as vehicle for all
  types of communication, it has become a creole.
• Once it acquires its native speakers, it becomes
  a creole (nativization).
• Creolisation the process by which a pidgin
  becomes the first language of group of speakers.
  Exansion of a pidgin into a wider range of
  social functions.
• Vernacularisation the process by which a contact
  variety becomes used with the full range of
  social functions of the language of the home.

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Characteristics of Pidgins

• Ps have structural norms must be learned
• Pidgins distinct from Input languages by
• Structural reduction, typically in morphology
• Lack many semantic and grammatical distinctions
• Few stylistic resources (conventional variation
• Lexical reduction, derivation from dominant
  groups
• 00
• 1. Simplification of superstrate (dominant
  language) grammatical structure
• 2. Retention of substrate (less dominant)
  grammatical structures

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Tok Pisin (talk pidgin)

• Orait yu yet killim bikinini
  bilong me
• Alright 2s focus kill child
  poss 1st
• all right youre the one who killed my child

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Gulf Pidgin Arabic (Næss, Unn Gyda (2008)

• Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) used as a communication
  tool between local citizens and the large Asian
  immigrant population in the area for at least 30
  years.
• Example Asian immigrants in the Omani border town
  of Buraimia developed separate language variety
  rather than as a collection of individual
  attempts of mastering Gulf Arabic.

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• three grammatical features of this variety,
  possession, negation and the verbal system. to
  document systematic reductions and greater
  regularity in the grammar of GPA compared to that
  of Gulf Arabic, as well as the development of a
  light verb system unparalleled in Arabic, but
  similar to several of the main substrate
  languages of GPA such as Urdu.
• GPA grammar and phonology also display several of
  the characteristic features of other
  well-documented Arabic-based pidgins and creoles
  such as Juba Arabic, Nubi and Turku in
  Arabic-speaking Afr

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Language shift

• Language (dialect) shift when a community who
  share a native language abandon it, and
  collectively shift to speaking another one
  instead.
• Language shift is always preceded by
  multilingualism
• What effects does language shift have on the
  structures of the languages involved?
• Language shift can happen raidly or slowly.
• Caribbean Creole languages developed within a
  century, even less, from African and European
  languages. Most African languages were lost in
  1-2 generations under the catastrophic conditions
  of slavery

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• Language shift is not a new phenomenon. It has
  been going on for all of recorded history.
  Whenever two cultures/populations with different
  languages come in intense contact, shift is a
  possibility.
• Typically those who shift are the weaker group,
  but
• sometimes it is the more powerful one who shifts.
• Vikings who speak Old Norse invaded in the
  British isles in 787 kept their language for
  centuries, then shifted to the evolving English
  language. Vikings went to Northern France became
  bilingual then shifted to French.
• Historical Language shift to Arabic by Berber
  population in North Africa (Morocco) following
  the Muslim conquest
• Language shift to Arabic by Armenians in Jordan.
•  

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Language death (attrition)

• Language death is the complete disappearance of a
  language. (Latin is not a dead language)
• An old phenomenon as old as the recorded history
  of the languages of the world.
• Often death comes by in a situation of dialect
  contact and shifting bilingualism.
• Most commonly a gradual process spanning several
  generations.
• Sudden death when the last speaker of a language
  spoken by a very small and isolated group dies,
  the death of Ishi the last wild Indian in North
  America.

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• Radical language death Sometimes a result of
  genocide, the sudden elimination of an entire
  population.
• Example of language death by genocide Australian
  Aboriginal languages
• Over 350 languages were spoken when Capt. Cook
  landed in 1770. 200 years later, only 90 survived
  as viable languages.
• Only 10 of Aboriginal people still speak native
  languages.

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• Bottom-to-top death sometimes death affects
  first the lower registers of the language leaving
  for last the most formal register (Latinate
  pattern).
• Speakers typical of language death situations
• 1.Semi-speakers imperfect speakers with
  partial command of the productive skills, but
  perfect command of receptive skills.
• 2. remembers speakers who may have been at an
  early stage fluent speakers, but have lost most
  of their earlier linguistic ability. Typical of
  advanced stage of language death, found in
  conditions of isolation.

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The effects of language death on language
structure

• Loss of registers and language forms associated
  with them the most widespread case is the loss
  of higher registers
• Lexical Loss
• Loss in phonologt
• Loss in morphology
• Loss in syntax

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Language and gender

• Gender has replaced sex in sociolinguistics.
• Sex biologically or physiologically based
  distinction between males and females.
• Gender a social and cultural notion. It
  indicates the social identity that emerges or is
  constructed through social action, and adherence
  to certain cultural norms and proscriptions.

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Gender exclusive and gender preferential features

• Gender exclusive features
• Some linguistic features are used exclusively by
  (or to) speakers of a particular sex. e.g.
  kinship terms
• My Auntie Kath, grandson, niece, cousin,
• Cultural differences. You in English vs. Arabic
• Such (gender exclusive) linguistic features that
  directly index sex, or exclusively used by one
  sex rather than another are rare.

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Gender preferential features

• Some social dialect studies showed that some
  linguistic forms are more used by men or the
  opposite.
• Generalizations made about preferential gender
  differences in relation to the use of standard
  variants.

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Principles of Gender and Variation (Labov
1990,2001)

• Principle I. In stable sociolinguistic
  variation, women use the standard more than men
• Stable variation vs. change in progress
• Examples of sociolinguistic variation
• (ing) variable in, I?
• (dh) variable fricative or stop d this
• (th) variable fricative or stop t thin
• Negative concord didnt do nothing ? anything

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Mens and womens use of the alveolar variant
In in three speech styles and two
socio-economic classes in Norwich, England.
(source Trudgill 1972)
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Explanations for gender differences

• Trudgill in Western society, men are evaluated
  more on what they do, and women on how they
  appear.
• Eckert women rely on symbolic resources, eg.
  Speech, dress, make-up, to establish their
  position in their social groups.
• Women are aware of what is proscribed
  (prohibited) and therefore avoid it more than men.

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• Principle I a. In change in progress above the
  level of awareness, women use the standard more
  than men.
• Women use innovative and positively evaluated
  variants more then men.
• Example the use of (r) in final pre-consonantal
  position in New York city. Used more by higher
  class, within each class women used it more than
  men. Some exceptions.
• New Yorkers talked about r presence and absence
  and preferred or valued r-full speech than r-less
  pronunciation.

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• Example the use of glottal stop ? in place of
  /t/ is one of the phonological changes in
  progress in British English. It is gaining ground
  in the cities.
• Attitudes towards the glottal stop
• Teen agers show overt awareness of this
  feature my parents dont like me missing
  letters out, like if I say wer
• Teen agers are aware of the spread of the glottal
  stop and that it is not a non-standard form.
• Principle I and Ia are not always applicable.
  Figure 10.4. many factors interact in any
  variation.

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Principle II

• Women use more of the incoming variant form in
  changes in progress above the level of conscious
  awareness.
• Women lead in the use of incoming non-standard
  variants if people are not aware of the variation
  involved and therefore do not talk about them.
• Example changes in the vowel system in
  English,e.g central vowel ? in bus, is
  pronounced as boss. Eckert (2000) this change
  is restricted to the speech of a group known as
  burnouts, and within the group the use was
  advanced among the girls than it was among the
  boys.

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• Figure 10.6
• Figure 10.8
• In the Arabic speaking world, men use more
  standard Arabic than women.

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Language and social class

• Sociolect (or social dialect) a socially
  distinct variety.
• Speaker A speaker B
• I done it yesterday I did it yesterday
• He aint got it He hasnt got it
• Grammatical, phonetic, phonological differences
  give us clues about their social background.
• Social class accents

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• Why do we have these differences?
• Physical barriers and distance
• Regional dialect boundaries coincide with
  geographical barriers, mountains, swamps, rivers,
  e.g. house hus north of the river Humber vs.
  haus (diphthong) south of the river.
• Social barriers and distance
• The diffusion of a linguistic feature through a
  society may be halted by social factors including
  social class.
• A linguistic innovation that begins in upper
  class may reach the lower class last, if at all.

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Social stratification

• Any hierarchical (ranking) ordering of groups
  within a society in terms of power, wealth and
  status.
• In the industrialized societies of the West,
  social stratification takes the form of
  stratification into social classes and gives rise
  linguistically to social-class dialects.
• Social class is a controversial concept, no
  general agreement as to the exact nature or
  definition or existence of social classes.

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• Social class stratification is not universal,
  e.g. India caste system (hereditary). Rigid
  separation into distinct groups, therefore,
  social distance is more differentiating than the
  geographical distance in India.
• Unlike the situation in India, in the class
  societies of the English speaking world, the
  linguistic situation is more complex.
• Social classes are not clearly defined,
• aggregates of people with similar social and
  economic characteristics.
• Social mobility is possible, the movement up or
  down the social hierarchy.

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• In the beginning linguistic complexity was
  ignored by focusing on idiolect, or speakers in
  rural areas (dialectologists, dialect surveys).
• It is only after the Second World War, linguistic
  realized that confining dialect studies to rural
  areas, they missed important information about
  the majority of people who live in towns.
• Urban dialectologist faced the problem of
  describing fully and accurately the speech of
  large towns and cities with heterogeneous
  populations.
• In 1966 the American linguist William Labov
  published The Social Stratification of English in
  New York city, a large scale survey,
  tape-recorded interviews with 340, by random
  sample

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• Representative sample therefore accurate
  description of all the varieties in the area.
• Labov also developed techniques to elicit normal
  speech from people in spite of the recorder.
• Developed methods for quantitative measurements
  of linguistic data.
• Labov showed that variation is not free in the
  speech of New Yorkers, e.g guard, beard, and
  bad.
• Variation is not random, but determined by
  extra-linguistic factors in a predictable way.

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Social and regional dialect variation

• Social variation
• highest
  class standard dialect
• lowest
  class most localized non standard
• regional variation

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• Standard English
• He a man who likes his dog
• He a man who likes his dog
• Regional non-standard variation is greater than
  social variation.
• He a man who likes his dog
• He a man who likes his dog
• He a man at likes his dog
• He a man as likes his dog
• He a man what likes his dog
• He a man he likes his dog
• He a man likes his dog

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Social and regional accent variation

• social variation higest class RP
• lowest
  class most localized variant
• Table 3
• Home 27 variants, three accent forms, in 7
  cities
• 
  London
• RP
  houm
• Inermediate
  h?um
• 
  ?um
  
  
• Most locaized
  aum

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• Sociolinguistic studies showed how RP, and the
  intermediate and the most localized accents are
  related to social class.
• To measure linguistic and social phenomena.
• Assign individuals a numerical index score on the
  basis of income, education, other factors, then
  group them with others who have similar indexes.

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• In east Anglia and in AA Detroit the 3rd p.suffix
  s is not present in the speech of some people
• She like him very much
• He dont know a lot, do he?
• It go ever so fast
• Since s is standard, and since standard English
  is associated with higher classe, we may suspect
  that there is a correlation between the usage of
  s and social class
• Tape record, listen, transcribe, count , Table 4.

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• Norwich () Detroit
  ()
• MMC 0 UMC
  1
• LMC 2
  LMC 10
• UWC 70 UWC
  57
• MWC 87 -
• LWC 97
  LWC 71

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• Correlational sociolinguistics
• Like regional dialects, social-class dialects are
  not distinct entities, they merge into each other
• Popular stereotypes of social dialects are
  misleading. The Detroit African American dialect
  has no third person marker. Detroit African
  Americans of all classes use both forms, it is
  only proportions that differ.

77
Language and ethnicity

• Ethnic-group differentiation in a mixed community
  is a particular type of social differentiation
  and has linguistic differentiation associated
  with it.
• Experiment carried out in the USA, tape
  recordings of two different sets of speakers.

78

• Two types
• Language as a defining characteristic of the
  ethnic group membership, common world wide,e.g.
  multilingual Africa, Canada. People will
  identify themselves as belonging to a particular
  ethnic group on the basis of their language.
• Separate identity of ethnic groups is signalled
  by distinct varieties of the same
  language,e.g.Jewish, Italians in New York.

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• Ethnic groups are fluid entities whose boundaries
  change through history.
• Example Yugoslavia, in the centre of the country
  the language was Sebo-croat. Different ethnic
  groups who speak the same dialects. With the
  breakup of Yugoslavia, the government in Zagreb
  calls its national language Croation, Latin
  alphabet, the government in Belgrade calls its
  language Serbian, Cyrillic alphabet. Moslims of
  Bosnia calls their language Bosnian
• They stress their separate nationhoods and
  ethnicities by focusing on lexical differences.

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• Ethnic groups in New York. Jewish, Italian.
• Ethnic groups tend to form separate communities
  within the city.
• Differences are due to the influence of
  substratum varieties, languages spoken before
  they become speakers of New York English. Yiddish
  or Italia accent accent of the first generation
  would lead to hypercorrection of foreign features
  by the second generation. The use of high vowels
  in bad, bag by Italians because their fathers
  used more open vowel than the English sound.

81

• AAVE

82
Language and social networks

• Linguistic variation can be analyzed in terms of
  social networks the grouping of people based on
  the frequency and quality of interaction.
• James and Lesley Milroys 1985 study of Belfast.
• The relationships individuals contract with
  others--- through social and geographical space
  linking many individuals.
• Social networks are defined by who your friends
  are, who live near, who you work with.

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• Network analyses ask how often the members of
  these groups are the same and how often they are
  completely different.
• The diffusion of Linguistic change happens fast
  and efficiently along horizontal channles (
  within one age and a social cohort). On the other
  hand vertical channels (across generation, social
  classes) are comparatively slow and inefficient
  with regard to the transmission of a linguistic
  innovation.

84

• How can you identify a social network?
• Observe who interacts with who in a community
• Note how they are interacting with each other.
• Patterns of interaction constitute individualss
  social networks.
• Let the people define their own social networks.
  Ask who are your best friends?
• Name all the people you had conversation with
  yesterday
• A researcher can build a network from all the
  answers.

85
Dense and Loose social networks

• A dense social network is one where all members
  know each other. If you ask five people, each one
  should mention the other four.
• Loose social network not all members know each
  other
• Dense networks slow down or inhibit change.
  Members police each others behaviour
  (consciously or unconsciously) because of the
  intensity of their contact

86

• Because in dense networks contacts with outside
  the network are comparatively superficial, there
  is less chance of being exposed to innovation
  from outside.
• Loose networks make people more open to change.
  The ties that individual members have to other
  networks provide an opportunity for them to be
  exposed to and pick innovations from outside
  their network.

87
Multiplex and uniplex ties within networks

• Net works can be distinguished in terms of the
  quality of the ties between individuals.
• Uniplex tie if the network tie between two
  individuals is based on one relationship, e.g.
  the two people work together, or are family
  members, or have children in the same club.
• Multiplex tie if two people know each other in
  several different roles, e.g best friends, and
  thy take the same courses at niversity, work
  together on weekends. (A three-way tie)

88

• A loose network based on uniplex ties is going to
  be more open to the introduction and transmission
  of innovations than dense networks where members
  share multiplex ties.

89
Language power/ language politeness

• The social relationship between the speaker and
  the hearer is indicated by his/her linguistic
  choices.
• (T/V) distinction the choice between Tu
  (familiar form) and vous (the polite form) forms
  in languages, e.g. Latin, French, Italian
  German, Greek, (English once had thou/you
  distinction.
• According to Brown and Gilman (1960) it started
  as a sing. And plural difference. By medieval
  times, the upper classes began to use V with each
  other to show mutual respect

90

• The asymmetrical T/V usage came to symbolize
  power relationship.
• Symmetrical V usage became polite usage, spread
  downward but not to the lowest classes.
• Symmetrical T usage to show intimiacy or
  solidarity (strong common interest).
• This mutual T came to replace the mutual V of
  politeness because solidarity is more important
  in personal relationships.

91
Address terms

• How do you name or address another? By title (T),
  first name (FN) by last name (LN), nickname, by
  combination of these or by nothing at all.
• What factors govern the choice you make?
• Is the address process asymmetrical? Mr. Smith
  leads to John, or symmetrical?
• Family relationships
• Use of kinship terms for use as address terms

92
Politeness markers

• Politeness is prescribed, rules, norms.
• The concept of politeness is associated with
  Goffman (1967) study on face.
• Brown and Levinson (1987) define face as the
  public self image that every member wants to
  claim for himself
• They distinguished between Positive face vs.
  negative face.
• Positive face the desire to get the approval of
  others.
• Negative face the desire to be unimpeded by
  others in ones actions. Freedom of actions and
  freedom form impositions.