Varieties of English

1
Varieties of English

• Sociolinguistics

2
Sociolinguistics

• Study of accent and dialect is part of
  sociolinguistics
• Mostly so far we have looked purely descriptively
  at accents/dialects
• Clearly just below the surface is the fact that
  varieties of language are connected in some way
  to sociological issues
• We will look at these issues for the next few
  sessions

3
Language and dialect

• We prefer to think
• Languages have various dialects.
• There are actually a range of varieties that
  people consider to be standard.
• What is considered standard is associated with
  prestige, a non-linguistic factor.
• From a linguistic standpoint, what is considered
  standard has NOTHING to do with correctness or
  superiority.
• From a linguistic standpoint, ALL DIALECTS are
  equally correct, equally expressive, equally
  complex, equally logical and so forth. That is,
  the term non-standard dialect means just that,
  not the standard dialect. It DOES NOT MEAN
  inferior or sub-standard.
• Non-standard dialects are not simply offshoots
  from the standard. In fact, often the opposite is
  true

4
Language and dialect

• Some common misconceptions
• A language is composed of a "standard" dialect
  from which all of the other non-standard dialects
  emerge.
• The standard dialect is the "correct" way to
  speak the language.
• The other dialects represent erroneous or
  inferior ways of speaking the language.
• The standard language is more complex, more
  logical, more expressive than the non-standard
  dialects.
• Non-standard dialects are a product of "lazy"
  speech.

5
Factors in classifying dialects

• Geography
• Dialectology
• Effects still surprisingly strong despite global
  communications and mobility
• Ethnicity
• Often closely tied to geography
• Various features associated with certain ethnic
  groups cut across geographical boundaries
• Self identity often an important effect here
• Social class
• Socio-economic factors
• Class consciousness, identity and aspirations

6
History of Sociolinguistics

• Usually said to start with Labov (1966), but
  actually dates back to 1900s
• Saussures langueparole distinction reflects
  difference between abstract and language in use
• Dialect geographers of the 1930s commented on
  social aspects of dialect differences
• At the same time, anthropological linguists
  couldnt help but note socially conditioned
  aspects of exotic languages
• Also, researches interested in bilingualism
  (1930s) noted a sociological aspect

7
History of Sociolinguistics

• 1960s/1970s saw much work in
• Language and social context (Hymes, Fishman)
• Language and class (Labov, Bernstein)
• Language and gender (Lakoff)
• Issue of dialect vs language (status)
• Pidgins and creoles
• Bilingualism, code shifting

8
History of Sociolinguistics

• Focus in late 1970s/1980s reflects contemporary
  social issues
• Studies of Black English (Ebonics, and other
  names)
• emphasize linguistic integrity of nonstandard
  forms
• link between language and identity
• similarities across regions, plus certain
  features suggest it may be a creole rather than a
  (number of) dialect(s)
• Language and gender
• How language reveals, embodies and sustains
  attitudes to gender.
• How language users speak or write in (different
  and distinctive) ways that reflect their sex
• Latterly, including gay and lesbian issues
• Language and politics
• All of the above, plus How language reveals,
  embodies and sustains attitudes to political
  positions (eg marxist, colonialist, )

9
Fundamental concepts

• Speech community
• Prestige
• Internal vs external language
• Class
• Age
• Gender

10
Speech community

• Group of people who share some identifiable
  aspect of their linguistic communication
• More importantly there should be some self
  identification as a community
• and there may be some degree of deliberate
  exclusion of outsiders
• Speech communities can be defined by geography,
  ethnicity, socio-economic class, but also
  occupation, gender, religion, etc.
• It follows that individuals can identify with
  multiple speech communities
• and can adjust their language according to the
  circumstances, so as to identify in the most
  appropriate way

11
Prestige

• Dialects are often classified according to the
  prestige associated with them
• Within vs outside the speech community
• Conforming to the speech habits of ones peer
  group may accord prestige and acceptance
• Some speech habits are viewed as prestigious by
  outsiders, who then aspire to those speech habits
• Prestige may be measured on a scale rather than
  fixed points (moreless rather than highlow)

12
Internal vs external language

• Chomskyan distinction
• I-language abstraction of language as mentally
  represented knowledge in a native speaker
• E-language language in social contexts
• Related to competenceperformance distinction
• Assumption that all native speakers are quite
  homogeneous in how they process and perceive
  language E-language explains why this is
  assumption appears to be contradicted by actual
  use
• Many sociolinguists reject this as a false
  distinction

13
Class

• Socio-economic class now more prevalent than
  geography in dialect studies (since 1960s)
• Undisputable (but still controversial) link
  between lower classes and less standard language
  think about why this is, though!
• Labov (1966) first showed that social aspirations
  influence speech patterns
• Highly controversial theory (Bernstein 1971) that
  elaborated vs restricted codes reflect
  fundamentally different mental organization of
  language
• Well look at these studies in more detail

14
Age

• Language change often traceable by studying
  differences in language use according to age of
  speaker
• Speech communities (cf above), as defined by age,
  are a factor (issues of identity, exclusion)
• Slang comes and goes
• But more significantly, changes are often more
  prevalent in speech of younger people
• Phonetic changes Vowel shifts, intonation
  patterns
• Changes in meanings of words
• Grammatical changes

15
Gender

• It has long been acknowledged that there may be
  differences in language usage between men and
  women quite extreme in languages other than
  English
• Lakoff (1975) identified extensive differences
  not just in grammar and lexis, but in aspects of
  style, register, and (especially in dialogues)
  dynamic roles
• Studies have adapted to the broader social
  agenda early theories relating to power
  relationships between sexes (Lakoff) now giving
  way to view that there is a cultural difference
  (Tannen)
• Well look at this issue in more detail later

16
Coming up in the next few sessions

• Well look in more detail at the work of
• Labov
• Bernstein
• Language change
• Language and gender
• etc