Sociolinguistics

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Sociolinguistics

• Language in Society

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Speech Samples

• I will play you recordings of three speakers.
  Basing your decision on what the speakers sound
  like, try to make judgments about them and about
  their speech by answering the questions on the
  handout.

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Questionnaire on Dialects
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Language Variation

• What is a dialect? Do you speak one?

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Language VariationDialect, Accent and Idiolect

• When a group of speakers of a particular language
  differs in its speech from another group we say
  they are speaking different dialects.
• Note that we use the term accent to refer to
  strictly phonological variation.
• Also, there is variation from speaker to speaker
  the form of a language spoken by one person is
  known as an idiolect.

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Language and Dialect

• A language is a dialect with an army and a
  navy. - Max Weinreich

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DialectsDifferent Dialects or Different
Languages?

• The usual criterion used to distinguish dialects
  from languages is mutual intelligibility.
• If speakers of one language variety can
  understand speakers of another language variety,
  and vice versa, we say these varieties are
  mutually intelligible.

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But (as usual) Its a little more complicated
than that.

• Consider Spanish and Portuguese there is a fair
  amount of intelligibility between speakers of the
  two languages, but they are not considered
  dialects.
• On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese
  Chinese are both considered dialects of Chinese,
  although there is virtually no mutual
  intelligibility. (The same is true with dialects
  of Arabic.)

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Dimensions of Language Variation

• No language is static or uniformly used by all
  its speakers. Language varies across three
  dimensions
• Time (language inevitably changes with time)
• Space (people in one geographic area speak
  differently from people in other areas)
• Group (people in different gender, socio-economic
  or ethnic groups speak differently)
• People who speak together tend to speak alike.

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Absolutes vs. Relatives

• All native speaker production of a language is
  100 rule governed.
• But not all speakers are following the exact same
  set of rules.

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Consider

• Player favorite my mouth big has.
• My favorite player has a big mouth.
• Without exception English speakers will find
  sentence 1 unacceptable and 2 acceptable.
• That is, all English speakers agree on some
  (actually, many) of the rules of English.

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But!

• ? If he had kept his mouth shut, hed be more
  popular now.
• ? If he would have kept his mouth shut, hed be
  more popular now.
• ? If he were smart, hed shut up and play ball.
• ? If he was smart, hed shut up and play ball.
• ? He has proven that he has poor judgment.
• ? He has proved that he has poor judgment.
• Which of these are correct and incorrect? Would
  everyone agree?
• Correctness is relative to the individual
  speaker.

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Correctness vs. Appropriateness

• While all linguistic rules are equally systematic
  and legitimate, we acknowledge that not all rules
  are acceptable in all contexts. (e.g., aint)
• Every language has a so-called standard dialect
  which is appropriate in formal contexts.
• In the US, this is Standard American English
  (SAE), or newscaster English.

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Standard American English

• But note that there isnt just one Standard
  American English.
• Generally, the prestige dialect (more properly
  dialects) encompasses a number of dialects spoken
  by powerful groups in a language community.
• Well look at this notion in more detail tomorrow.

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Quick Exercise

• Which of each pair of sentences would you
  classify as formal or informal? Which would you
  use more often?

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Levels of Language Variation

• Dialects vary across all scales of language
• Lexical / Semantic Variation
• Phonemic Variation
• Phonological Variation
• Morphological Variation
• Syntactic Variation

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The Lexical / Semantic Level

• This level deals with word choice.
• Remember that nearly all words are arbitrary
  signs of their meaning lexical variation
  represents different agreements among different
  speakers of a language.

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For example Whats this?
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The Phonemic Level

• Variation at this level refers to different
  dialects having different phonemic inventories.
  For example
• Most American dialects have one vowel ? in
  caught, dawn, and hawk and another a in cot,
  Don and hock. Other dialects have only one of
  these vowels, so that caught and cot are
  homophones.
• In most American dialects, the sounds t, d, n,
  s, z are produced with an alveolar articulation,
  but some New York City dialects have dental
  articulation the tongue tip touches the teeth.

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The Phonological Level

• Variation at this level refers to the different
  phonological rules that different dialects have.
  For example
• The rule for tapping /t/ and /d/ that we saw for
  American English doesnt exist for British
  English instead, there is a similar rule for a
  glottal stop allophone.
• Some African-American English dialects do not
  permit sequences of C-r or C-l in unstressed
  syllables, so professor would be pronounced
  p?f?s?.

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The Morphological Level

• Like the lexical level, this level deals with
  words, but the focus is on word structure. For
  example
• In some dialects, the past participle of to
  prove is proved in others proven is
  correct.
• Appalachian English has past tense forms for some
  verbs that are different from other American
  dialects, e.g., Appalachian English has kl?m,
  Et and hEt where other dialects have climbed,
  ate and heated, respectively.

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The Syntactic Level

• This level deals with larger linguistic units
  how speakers form phrases and clauses. For
  example
• For many Southern speakers done can function as
  an auxiliary, as in She done already told you
  rather than She has already told you.
• In some dialects (including Appalachian English)
  combinations of auxiliaries like might could,
  might would, may can and useta could are
  permitted.

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Linguistic Variation Worksheet