Language in Society

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Language in Society

• Chapter 10. Fromkin, Rodman Hyams (2003)
• Introduction to Language

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Dialects in General
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Dialects

• Idiolect
• The unique characteristics of the language of an
  individual speaker
• English may be said to consist of more than
  450,000,000 idiolects, or the number equal to the
  number of speakers of English
• Dialect
• There are systematic differences in the way
  different groups speak a language
• Mutually intelligible forms of a language
• Mutual intelligibility The situation that holds
  between two varieties of a language when speakers
  of either one are able to understand the other. A
  criterion to decide whether the two dialects are
  the same language or not
• A dialect is not an inferior or degraded form of
  a language ? a language is a collection of
  dialects.

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(cntd.)

• When dialects become mutually unintelligible ?
  these dialects become different languages
• The speakers of one dialect group can no longer
  understand the speakers of another dialect group
• But mutual intelligibility is hard to define
• People speaking different languages (Swedish,
  Danish, or Norwegian) converse with each other.
• Mandarin Cantonese are mutually unintelligible
  but have been referred to as dialects of Chinese.
• Spoken within a single country
• Sharing a writing system
• Neither mutual intelligibility nor the existence
  of political boundaries is decisive
• ? No clear-cut distinction between language and
  dialects

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Regional Dialects

• Dialect levelling
• Movement toward greater uniformity and less
  variation among dialects.
• Mass media influence
• However, dialect variation in UK is maintained
  despite a few major dialects broadcast
• Grammar changes
• Do not take place all at once but gradually in a
  speech community
• Communicative isolation
• A dialect user is much less likely to talk to
  speakers of other dialects.
• Why dialect differences occur?
• Language changes occur in one region and fails to
  spread to other regions of the language
  community.
• ? Regional dialect

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Accents

• Regional phonological or phonetic distinctions
• Characteristics of speech that convey information
  about the speakers dialect
• Revealing speaker information
• country or part of the country the speaker grew
  up in
• sociolinguistic group the speaker belongs to
• Examples
• Boston accent, a southern accent, a Brooklyn
  accent, a midwestern accent
• British accent (in US), American accent (in UK)

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Dialects of English
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Regional Dialects of English

• British English
• Every other dialects in every other areas
• American English
• The 1st colonies as British dialects
• 3 major dialects by the time of the American
  Revolution
• Northern dialect new England, Hudson river
• Midland dialect Pennsylvania
• Southern dialect

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Phonological Differences

• r-less (r-dropping) before C, word finally
• Southern England, 18c
• New England, by the end of 18c
• Presently maintained in Boston, New York, and
  Savannah
• r-coloring influenced by immigrants from Northern
  England
• caught/k