Sociolinguistics is the subfield of linguistics that examines the relationship between language and society.
Sapir describes language as a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.
Modern Linguistics see language as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols (sound and meaning vary in language) used for human communication.
Onomatopoeic/sign: Sign/word replicates some characteristic of the object (for example Buzzz)
Symbol: Arbitrary relationship between the sign and object, but which is understood as a convention. (green light in traffic = go)
Index: logical relation between sign and object (weathercock)
Icon: involves a relationship whereby the sign replicates some characteristic of the object, such as a drawing of a cat replicates the shape of a cat.
Linguists see language as an instinct, as a manifestation of an ability that is specific to humans.
In 500BC the first linguistic study was done by Pánini and his followers in India. They did oral treaties on phonetics and language structure. In 1786 Modern Linguistics was founded by Sir William Jones. In the early 20th century structuralism predominated linguistics (internal systems of language, instead of historical comparisons), but in 1957 the Generative Linguistics is founded by Chomsky (shift to a more psycho-biological stage, how do children acquire language).
Chomsky: Linguistic theory is primarily concerned with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts in attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.
→ Chomsky's emphasis in the 1960s on abstracting language from the context in which it was spoken.
Psycholinguistics with an interest in language use within human societies
Sociolinguistics with the ideas of Chomsky (focuses on what can be said, to whom, in whose presence, when and where, in what manner etc.). → acquiring language not just a cognitive process, but it's a social process as well.
Language is not just denotational (refers to the process of conveying meaning), but it's also indexical for someone's social class, status, religion, gender etc. Language not only reflects societal patterns and divisions but also sustains and reproduces them, for example through accents.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Using a language forces us into habitual grooves of thinking, language influences our way of perceiving things. It also suggests that real translation between widely different languages is not possible.
Boundaries between languages are often unclear, for example through geographical or historical (→ cluster) links. Socio-political criteria often decide the status of a variety, rather than linguistic ones.
Variety: a neutral term of any particular kind of language or dialect which linguistics wish to consider as a single entity.
Mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other
Continuum: A range of language varieties that differ from each other but are linked by degrees of mutual intelligibility
Register: Refers to the variation of language according to the context in which it is used.
Descriptive approach: characterize a language of specific groups of people in a range of situations, without bringing any preconceived notions of correctness to the task, or favoring language (this better than that). Most linguistics take this approach. Don't say “ain't”, it has negative social consequences, it's seen as a lack of education.
Prescriptive approach: how a language should be spoken, linguistic etiquette (enforcing the rules of a language, what's correct or proper) . Notions of good and bad language are highly influential in society. In an essay don't use “don't”, but “do not”, because that's linguistic etiquette.
One form is more logical than another; language should obey certain principles of mathematics. Descriptive approach is avoided because it's not logic.
Appeal to classical forms; correctness in language by appealing to classical forms.
Preference for older forms of the language; intolerant of innovations in language. Descriptive approach believes languages are constantly changing in subtle ways.
Injunction against the use of foreign words. Descriptive approach believes adopting words is essential for language development.
Linguists want linguistic equality in asserting that all varieties of a language are valid system with their own logic and conventions. Prescriptives are primarily concerned with improving public and formal language, Descriptives are more concerned with describing colloquial (vertrouwelijk, thus vernacular) speech.
Standardize: many dialects are spoken and then one dialect is chosen (most likely of high class people) to be the official form of language. They make rules and then it becomes standard. This standard form of language is most often associated with the subgroups and has specific and a wider range of functions for serving a community (education, literacy, government). The standard language is not 'native' to anyone, because it's a higher cultural endowment serving functions and has linguistic features that cannot be mastered after the age of 4/5.
A standardized language is for example Standard English. The rise of a standard form of a language is primarily a socio-political matter. US English is seen as a dialect whose speakers had sufficient political and economic influence to have declared their social independence.
Through the differences between USA English and Standard English can be seen that the standard forms of a language are based on pre-existing dialect usage, rather than dialect usage being necessarily a subsequent departure from a standard norm.
Received (Generally accepted) Pronunciation: accent that has non-localized prestige and is something of a standard for teaching (British) English to foreigners, this is the accent most frequently used on British radio and television (Chrystal notes that RP is not immune to change).
Writing is an invention that came late in human history and until recent times applied to a minority of languages. Some structuralist stressed the primacy of speech over writing, they rather focused on the study of sounds and significant pauses. Children learned their first language as an oral entity by socialization. Writing comes later by conscious teaching.
Bloomfield: Writing is not language, but merely a way of recording language by means of visual marks (they have the Primacy of speech).
Coulmas: Writing is a mode of verbal communication in it's own right, it changes the nature of verbal communication as well as the speaker's attitude to, and awareness of, their language.
Functionalism: the view that a society may be understood as a system made up of functioning parts. To understand any of these parts, the part must be examined in relation to the society as a whole.
Concepts:
Culture: the way of life of its members, culture in this sense is a design of living.
Socialization: the process via which people learn the culture of the society.
Norms and values: Norm is acceptable and appropriate behavior, Values provide general guidelines as to qualities that are deemed to be good, desirable and lasting worth.
Status and role: Status refers to social positions that society assigns to its members, Social roles regulate and organize behavior.
Community is used in sociology and suggests a dimension of shared knowledge, possessions or behaviors.
Speech Community is a group of people with shared norms or common evaluations about language forms. People are in habitual contact with each other by speech. If you speak different primary languages, you are not precluded from the same speech community. Speech community is not a good thing to work with, because it separates people from each other.
Monolingualism: 1 language in a society
Bilingualism: 2 languages in a society
Multilingualism: More than 2 languages in a society.
Diglossia (Charles Ferguson): a situation where two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout a speech community, with each being a assigned a definite but non-overlapping role.
A classical form (H) was used in forms such as education, while the modern colloquial variety (L) was spoken in domestic interaction. Great importance is attached to using the right variety in the right situation. Diglossia can be a means of excluding people from access to full participation in society. Diglossia is different from a simple 'standard vs dialect' arrangement in other societies. The H form in diglossia has to be learned via formal education, and the H and L forms have totally different grammar. Dialect Mixture (2 or more dialects, so different dialects at several occasions) could be used.
The way in which language varies systematically is one of the central concerns of sociolinguistics.
Idiolect: an individual's distinctive way of speaking
Regional Dialectology: the systematic study of how a language varies from one area to another.
Dialect Non linguistic view: Substandard, low status or rural form of the language.
Dialect: Subdivision of a language, the speech characteristic of a region (Regional Dialect) or of a group of people defined by social or occupational characteristics rather than by region alone (Social Dialect). It can also describe the speech characteristics of ethnic groups (Ethnic Dialect).
Social class often takes precedence over geography in speech.
The distinction between language and dialect is a political rather than a linguistic one.
Distinction between language and dialect is not significant for the analysis being done; linguists prefer the term ‘variety’.
Many linguists consider all dialects of a language to be equal, unless proven otherwise.
The standard form of a language is a sociohistorical product rather than an entity that necessarily pre-dated other varieties of that language.
It can be said that everyone speaks a dialect. The dialect of the most prestigious speakers however, is seldom labelled a dialect by non-linguists.
It is possible to speak the standard form of a language while using an accent associated with a particular region.
Accent: The way a speaker pronounces things and refers to a variety that is phonetically different from other varieties. This is often part of the defining feature of a dialect, but may be separated from it.
For a long time, linguistics was chiefly concerned with the study of written texts, with a view to establishing which languages of the world were related (Sound Law; phonetic correspondence between words of different languages).
Linguists eventually turned their attention to sources that would supplement textual evidence. They raised the possibility that dialect speech would preserve older and more regular forms than those of standard written forms of a language. Also the rapidly eroding forms of rural speech by the pressures of modernization and urbanization was a motivation for the dialect research.
Linguistic Geography: reveal the occurrence and distribution of speech usages, especially those characteristic of particular regions.
Isogloss: line on a map indicating a boundary between the use and non-use of a particular linguistic feature. These features can be items of vocabulary, sounds or relatively simple features of grammar. It's a key feature of dialectology.
If several isoglosses exhibit similar patterning (occurring close together), they are likely to represent a major dialect boundary. Isoglosses can be explained as geographical barriers (mountains or rivers), that kept speech communities from regular contact with each other. It can also be a socio-political barrier, people in a particular area may be subject to a particular set of political an social influences and accordingly develop a culture different from people in adjacent areas.
Concentric (or near-concentric) isoglosses show a pattern involving the spread of linguistic features from a center of prestige (usually city/town). Wave theory: essential belief of its theorists was that linguistic innovations spread in wavelike fashion.
Relic Areas: several small areas far apart exhibiting similarities with respect to a particular feature. These areas do not have a center of prestige, the newer forms haven't spread here yet.
Transitional Areas: Different linguistic variants coexist or where individual speakers use both variants, are more typical than the abrupt pattern of distribution implied by isoglosses.
Lexical set: convenient way of identifying vowel categories not by symbols, but by a set of words in which they occur. This set is of use for students who not have a background in phonetics, it identifies the sounds involved.
Critics of traditional dialect surveys point to severe flaws in conception and execution.
The type of people interviewed. Non-mobile, old, rural and male (NORM's) were interviewed.
Theoretical Linguistics: the approach to language itself was inadequate. Items were studied as individual unrelated parts.
Social Scientists: the validity of the surveys, for example if the survey methods were appropriate to the task set.
Modern dialectological studies survey the speech from a representative sample of community members of all ages. They also consider the social factors influencing the variety. Traditional dialect study focused more on the language itself rather than the actual speakers, social factors influencing the variety weren't taken into account.
Border dialect: one variety within a dialect continuum shades off into another. Trudgill and Champer found 2 types of subvarieties of Lects characteristic for such areas: mixed and fudged lects. A Lect is used for smaller groupings within a dialect.
New dialect formation, in territories far removed from the original base of the dialects.
Milton Keynes (rural area) was targeted by the British government for industrial development. The town had an influx of large numbers of people. Therefore, speakers of a range of dialects came into direct and prolonged contact with each other. What happened was Dialect leveling: the speech of a group of people converges towards a common norm, with extreme differences being ironed out. The children didn't speak the rural dialect anymore.
Because of cheap labor in the various British Colonies throughout the world, three salient processes occurred as speakers from a wide variety of related languages of North India communicated with each other and formed new territories
Focusing: stabilizing of a new variety out of the wide range of antecedent varieties.
Dialect Mixing: new variety shows a blend of features from other dialects and languages.
Dialect Leveling: selection of some features from 1 variety led to other features being lost.
Some prominent aspects of dialect identification either have not received sufficient attention within dialectology or have proved elusive when studied.
Traditional dialectology has mostly concentrated on segmental units of sound (individual vowels and consonants) rather than continuous prosodic characteristics (acquired in childhood and are deeply imprinted) like rhythm, pitch, intonation and voice quality.
The preferred shape of the vocal tract is known as the ‘articulatory setting’, and it will give a certain speech variety it s characteristic color and identification. Articulatory settings and their relation to dialects present the same difficulties to researchers as the study of prosody.
Register: variation in language according to the context in which it is being used. The type of language to your friends is different than your type of language to your mother.
Field: nature of the topic (what's happening)
Tenor: Relations between people communicating
Mode: Medium Employed.
Before the early 1960s, Dialectology focused mainly on regional variation in language. Many researchers were aware of social variation in language, but they did not have a systematic way of describing it.
Before variationist sociolinguistics, the two main ways of explaining language variation within a dialect area were:
Dialect mixture (coexistence in one locality of 2 or more dialects, so other dialects at several occasions)
Free variation (randoms use of alternate forms within a particular dialect).
William Labov: proposed that language contains systematic variation that can be described and explained by patterns of social differentiation within speech communities. Labov's work is known as variationist theory or urban dialectology.
Identify linguistic variables in community which; occur frequently enough to appear in interviews, linked to other elements in the linguistic system, exhibit stratification by social group
Interview a suitable sample of people
Elicit a range of speech styles through an interview involving informal continuous speech and a reading passage and a word list, for more formal dimensions of language.
Analyze the data, noting frequency of each linguistic future
Select relevant social categories (age, social class, ethnicity).
Establish significant correlations between the social groups and particular speech.
Case study in semi-rural fishing village in New England examined he social implication of the use of -in and -ing. Model boys used more -ing and the normal boys used more -in. -ing was used in formal settings and the variation between -in and -ing was related with sex, social class, personality, and whether the kids were tensed or relaxed.
Study of Martha's Vineyard examined the significance of social pattern in understanding language variation and change. With the exception of the very old and the very young, most island residents used centralized [ai] to indicate their orientation toward their local community.
This study highlighted the importance of studying vernacular speech of individuals in its community setting.
Linguistic Variable: linguistic items which has identifiable variants (eg-running → G)
Variants: ways how to pronounce the particular variable. Difference realizations of the linguistic variable (the Ing and In → Running/Runnin')
Vernacular: The least self-conscious style of speech used by people in relaxed conversation with friends, peers and family. The vernacular style of speech represents informal speech oriented towards a local community.
Study of social stratification of English in New York City revealed that certain linguistic variables used by speakers from different social groups are stratified in the same way that these groups are stratified by social class. The variable (r) after vowels [fourth floor] and the variable (th) [three things] show linguistic differentiation and social evaluation. These variables are stratified according to class and style. Socioeconomic differentiation cannot be ignored in studies of language structure. Therefore the different department stores are used to differentiate the High, Middle and Low class.
Sharp stratification: a distribution with a sharp break in the pattern; a relatively large gap between the lower-class and working-class scores compared to the middle-class scores
Fine stratification: a distribution with gradient or gradual gaps between the trend lines on the graph; the divisions between the social classes are not as great/wide as they are in sharp stratification
Hypercorrection: occurs when individuals consciously try to speak like people they regard as socially superior but actually go too far and overdo the particular linguistic behavior they are attempting to match. Hypercorrection reveals a degree of Linguistic Insecurity; people who don't usually use a form in their casual speech try and improve on their speech when it is being observed or evaluated. This could happen in the Observer's Paradox.
Three types of variables:
Markers, variables (like [r] and [th]) which show stratification according to style and social class.
Indicators, show differentiation by age or social group without being subject to style-shifting, and have little evaluative force in subjective- reaction tests.
Stereotypes, forms that are socially marked (prominent in the linguistic awareness of speech communities).
Overt prestige: positive or negative assessments of speech in accordance with the dominant norms of society (speech in media, educational institutions etc.). It represents the standardized form, people aspire to speak this variety. When you speak the overt prestige style you'll move up the social ladder, it has to do with the social norms of 'good' and 'proper' language.
Covert prestige: opposing set of values in which the use of 'non-standard' form indicate solidarity with peers, local norms, and values generally associated with working class groups. It's a more hidden variety, for example spoken in working-class. It's speakers do value to speak this variety, but it's stigmatized by overt prestige. No opportunity to move up the social ladder, working class. Middle-class speech reveals a concern for status, working-class speech marks solidarity.
Observer's paradox: the double-bind that researchers find themselves in when what they are interested in knowing is how people behave when they are not being observed, but the only way to find out how they behave is to observe them. Divert the speaker's attention away from the fact that she is being interviewed so that the vernacular can emerge. The vernacular, which the linguist wishes to observe closely, is the very style which speakers use when they are not being observed.
Methods to get around this problem:
Sociolinguistic interview; be as informal as possible in an attempt to defuse the relative status of participants.
Participant observation by a group of fieldworkers: For example in the study of the Milroy's in Belfast. Become part of the community to get the comparable data on all members of a social network.
Rapid and anonymous surveys; large number of people in a short time
Telephone surveys; for a spontaneous conversation.
Five different styles by Joos
Intimate style, involves a great deal of shared knowledge and background in a private conversation between equals.
Casual style, which is typical of informal speech between peers, includes ellipsis and slang between peers.
Consultative style is the norm for informal conversation between strangers.
Formal style is determined more by the setting than by the person(s) interacting.
Frozen style, is a hyper-formal style designed to discourage friendly relations between participants.
The upper classes are often conspicuous by their absence in sociolinguistics surveys. There are two reasons for this:
The smallness of the upper class as a group compared to the working class and middle class.
The inaccessibility of this group to outsiders.
Unlike classes defined by sociologists or socio-linguists, the upper class is a self-recognized group whose members frequently meet face-to-face in social institutions of their own.
Kroch found that in terms of phonological variables there was not much difference between the upper class and the middle class. Differences between the upper classes and the lower middle class are suggestive of a competition over status. On the other hand, there seems to be a bigger linguistic divide between the working and the middle classes, which seems a class division as opposed to differences over status. However, conclusions can’t be drawn (yet).
Labov thinks that Gender also plays an equally significant factor in language variation (for example in Fischer's study in New England). Eckert has argued that there is no apparent reason to believe that gender alone will explain all the correlations with linguistic scores between man and women in a society.
Another important factor that can upset the neat correlations between a speech community and its use of linguistic variables is ethnicity. Ethnic minorities may to some extent display the general patterns of the wider society but may also show significant differences.Ethnic varieties are called ethnolects. The factors that sustain an ethnolect are a sense of identity based on ancestry, religion and culture.
Sociolinguistic studies have shown that changes within a speech community are preceded by linguistic variation. In order to understand language change we must pay attention to both the language system as well as the social context and social factors. Social groups within the same speech community will react differently to changes that are occurring.
Variationist model of sound change.
Low-level variability involving subtle variation in the pronunciation of certain sounds.
A given phonetic variable becomes socially significant (some group pick it up) as a marker of group identification and stylistic style.
The linguistic variable attains linguistic significance
The 'new' variant may be extended to new social groups
The variant may eventually spread through the vocabulary system of the language and throughout the whole speech community.
The variant then becomes part of the community's repertoire, and the sound change has been completed.
Change from Above: change brought about consciously; involves new sounds introduced by the dominant social class involves issues of prestige.
Change from Below: unconscious change; involves sounds that are originally part of the vernacular.
Lexical diffusion model proposes to explain how sound change occurs and the rate at which sound change spreads.
First hypothesis is that sound change doesn't happens at once, rather word by word.
The second hypothesis is that the sound change first happens in a few common words and then rapidly spreads other words and finally slows down with the last few words with the last (The S-curve).
Proposes to explain how change spread across communities in a specific geographical area (geographic diffusion of language change). Density of population and the influence of large population centers are important factors.
This model holds that large, culturally important cities influence the smaller cities they dominate and eventually changes filter down to surrounding rural areas through even smaller towns and communities.
It's hard to find concrete evidence to verify this model. Looks a bit like the Cascade model (waterpools).
Apparent time studies: a single study is done and the different responses of various age groups are compared and then conclusions are drawn about changes. A community is divided into age groups which are studied intensively for a short period to examine whether any differences occur. An Apparent Time study is for example the Department Store Study.
Since linguistic usage tends to vary according to the age of the individual, such age grading must be also taken into account. For example with Slang, because when people get older they won't speak much slang anymore.
Real time studies: Long-term studies of a community conducted at different times, which can show the progress of a sound change. The Department Store study was done again (by Fowler) and therefore it became a real time study.
Early variationist studies revealed that people, especially lower-middle-class speakers, adopt linguistic variants associated with high social prestige, so a change from above.
Later studies showed that people living in many inner cities and rural areas continue to maintain low-status variants in their speech
Milroy's study (1980) in Belfast, found that social networks were important for understanding vernacular maintenance.
If the people you know and interact with people you also know and interact with one another, then your network would be described as a high-density network (rural villages) If they do not, then the network is a low-density one (upwardly-mobile middle class).
Multiplexity: the content of the networks links; how people are linked together in the network. If the people within your network are tied together not just through one activity, but through more social activities, then your network is multiplex. A network in which people are linked to each other in only one capacity is a uniplex network.
Conclusions from Milroy's study in Belfast. The 3 areas where Milroy did his study were lower working-class communities and haunted by social malaise (unemployment, crime, pemature death). Hence, dense, multiplex network patterns were found in all three communities. Milroy used the Participant Observation technique; he became part of the community, as a friend of a friend, which he was studying. In that way he could pick up the natural speech styles in different contexts.
Language use is influenced by both status and solidarity (Covert Prestige).
Several phonological variables were clearly stratified according to gender.
Network ties are central to language change. In this case the networks ties of the men were stronger, therefore the man had a higher level of vernacular use. In particular, weak network ties can lead to rapid change.
Early adopters: closely integrated in the local network, but have regular but brief contact with people from outside their social network.
New form are adopted by innovators with weak ties to more than one group.
Some of these innovations are taken up by core members of the groups and then change results
Strong network ties facilitated the spread and maintenance of new vernacular variant within certain neighborhoods.
While many earlier sociolinguistics studies focused on one or two linguistic variables in isolation, newer studies examined sets (or clusters) of variables in relation to societal patterns.
In many sociolinguistic studies researchers focused on the interplay between single units of pronunciation and the social meaning acquired within the community. Some researchers have focused instead on the interplay between different variables. Studies of vowel shifts in English in different parts of the world also reflects this new focus
Including native and non-native speakers as a part of the same speech community and examining multi-ethnic adolescent peer groups. Because of the inclusion of ethnic groups, it was possible to examine the interaction of class, gender and ethnicity.
The linguistic variables identified by linguists as being the most salient in characterizing a dialect are not necessarily the ones felt to be significant by ordinary people. Most findings have to a large extent applied to western 'late capitalist' industrialized countries in which one language is dominant. There are few large scale studies using variation methods in countries in which the majority of people are multilingual or in countries with large rural population.
Variationists sociolinguistics does not deal with language as an interactive process but focuses on the form of language and variation within the system.
Language change (or non-change) triggered or carried out deliberately and which has identifiable social motivations
Some speech communities consciously decide to change their entire lexicon in order to set themselves apart from neighboring communities
Linguistic taboo (the prohibition to utter certain words) can also cause extreme changes in the lexicon.
Language isolate: a language that has no genealogical relationship with other languages; on a language tree, it would not descend from any other language. Many languages become isolates after all. For example Basque: Several dialects that are spoken in the Pyrenees in Spain and France. Basque is one of the few surviving pre-Indo-European languages and the only one in Europe. Believed to be one of the languages spoken in Europe over 4000 years ago before the arrival of the Indo-European languages.
Language varieties are meaningful: they index, or point to a speaker's origin or aspects of their social identity.
Through language we actively construct and negotiate our self and social identities.
Our language choices are part of the social identity we claim to see ourselves in, so you can also pretend you are someone else.
Code: a term that can be used to refer to any kind of system that people employ for communication.
In general, when you speak, you must choose a particular language, dialect, style or register (thus a Particular Code).
You can and will shift from one code to another as the need arises.
The linguistic choices you make will have different social meanings.
Matched-guise experiments: the same speaker is recorded reading a passage in two or more different language varieties. People listen to these recordings and evaluate the speaker on his or her intelligence, kindness, humor, leadership etc. Because the only factor that varies in the language or dialect used, the responses of people who evaluate the speaker help shed light on social stereotypes. These experiments reveal:
Language varieties have a number of potential associations that may be drawn on by speakers and listeners.
Listeners are prepared to evaluate people on the basis of their language variety.
Listeners can very stereotype others' personal and social attributes on the basis of language cues and in ways that appear to have crucial effects on important social decisions made about them (Giles and Coupland).
Speakers of the “standard language” are rated higher than speakers with ‘broad’ accents in terms of intelligence, competence, reliability, honesty and status. Speakers with broad accents are given higher ratings in terms of humorousness and talkativeness.
Speech accommodation theory (Giles): analyzes the ways that speakers change the way they speak depending on the person they are talking to.
Speaker tend to converge (adopt similar styles of speaking) when they wish to reduce the social distance between one another, and divergence (speak differently) when they wish to emphasize their distinctiveness or increase their social distance
A general assumption is that convergence will be positively evaluated and divergence negatively evaluated.
Audience design theory (Bell); is concerned with the way speakers vary the way they speak primarily in response to an audience (not only the person directly addressed, but also participants who are not directly addressed).
Bell’s theory extends the speech accommodation theory by 1) describing in detail the different kinds of audiences that affect speaker convergence/divergence and by 2) undertaking quantitative investigation of specific linguistics variables rather than general discussions about differences in accents across speech style.
Many studies of language use in bilingual communities have been concerned with the habitual language choices made by speakers.
Domains can be thought of as particular settings or contexts, as well as the general activities associated with those settings.
Different settings call for the use of different language (or varieties of the same language) and not all language are equally used in all domains.
These specific contexts involve typical interactions between typical participants in typical settings about typical topics in which a language variety is generally used (Difference between the court house and the marketplace).
Domains can be broadly defined or narrowly defined (e.g. in the boardroom vs, around the water cooler).
Domains enable us to understand that language choice and topic are related to widespread sociocultural norms and expectations.
In Africa, the most common pattern of bilingualism is to use the speaker's mother tongue (ethnic identity) plus an indigenous lingua franca, or alien official language. The patterns of language choice vary to the social background and types of interaction. In Africa, English is used when communicating with superiors as an indicator of education and authority. English can be seen as high social status, but also as a threat to local languages and cultures.
Language Shift: the functions carried out by one language are taken over by another. Sometime this shift threatens the viability of a language, and may even result in language death. Example: Chinese people move to England and come in a Chinese monolingualism community. When children are born they pick up English, and they become English-dominant Bilingual. The elderly have a lot of contact with the Chinese community, while the youngsters have more contact outside the community.
Code-switching means incorporating material from another language into the one being spoken or alternating between one or more languages during the same communicative event. Varieties can have different social identities. One can be seen as more local cultural identity and another of more high social (education and religious) identity. Switches often convey a particular meaning associated with the habitual use of the two languages in the community.
Marked Code-switching: Language use is not normally expected, attempt to redefine aspects of the context, or the relation between the speakers.
Unmarked Code-switching: Language used is normally expected in the context.
Intersential code-switching; One sentence or clause in one language and another sentence or clause in another language
Interasentential code-switching; Use of more than one language within the same sentence or clause (also referred to as code-mixing or congruent lexicalization).
Code-switching allows a speaker to meet someone else half-way, establish common ground, and show flexibility and openness.
Code-switching can allow a speaker to do many things: Assert power, Declare solidarity.
Evidence from urban communities in Africa suggests that patterns of language choice vary according to speakers’ social background and the types of interaction in which they engage.
In Kenya, language choice is linked to education: those who have been educated to secondary level more often report some use of English, along with Swahili. English is also associated with more formal, public interactions.
Researchers have also been interested in how code-switching functions as an aspect of conversation management.
Conversation Analysis (Auer); framework to analyze the local, interactional functions of code-switching. This was contested by Myers-Scotton, her counter-argument emphasizes the social meanings of language varieties. She suggests also the that conversations are cognitive as well as social performances. Thus, speakers weigh not just what they say, but how they say it (Social Interpretation).
Principle of style-shifting; There are no 'single-style' speakers of a language because each individual controls and uses a variety of linguistic styles and no one speaks in exactly the same way in all circumstances.
Style-shifting: switching/shifting between different styles of speech or switching between different varieties of the same language.
Speech styles can change depending on the audience, the occasion, the degree of formality etc.
Style-shifting, like code-switching, is an example of language variation.
The social motivations for style-shifting are largely the same as the motivations for code-switching.
Language crossing: Shifting into a dialect or language that doesn't necessarily “belong” to the speaker.
What makes crossing different from code-switching/style-shifting?
Usually associated with young people who are not completely fluent in the language or dialect they are crossing
Crossing appropriates, explores, reproduces or challenges influential images and stereotypes of group that crossers don't belong to.
Different groups have different speaking practices.
Language in interaction focuses not so much on variation of accents, dialects, or languages, but on the functions and meanings of language and the general role of language in managing relationships between speakers.
Some of the information about speaking practices cannot be obtained through sociolinguistic interview. This requires Etnographic Research.
Etnography: research process used to provide an in-depth description of everyday life, beliefs, and cultural practices of a group of people. It involves fieldwork, asking questions, participating in group activities, and more.
Power plays an important role in linguistic interactions.
Asymmetrical talk: one speaker is in a more powerful position and can control the overall course of interaction (e.g. doctor/patient).
Language and language practices can be used to establish and maintain unequal relationships between speakers.
Relationships between speakers can be encoded in language, indicating social status and level of familiarity between speakers (sir, madam, tu/vous/, respectful words)
Silence is not an absence of speech, but as something that has communicative meaning alongside speech.
Miscommunication implies neutrality when in fact not all speakers are equally affected by it. Power plays an important role in who is seen as incompetent or who is negatively evaluated when miscommunication arise.
For example: encounters between Aboriginals and White Australians in which silence by Aboriginals is interpreted as unwillingness to answer, lack of knowledge, or agreement with a proposition. Second example: use of silence by Athapaskans in Arizona being viewed by outsiders as a lack of personal warmth. Negative evaluations of speakers whose behavior differs from the dominant or mainstream speaking behavior.
How conversations are organized: How speakers take turns, how they request and give information, and how they negotiate relationships as they talk.
Turn taking patterns differs among different group of speakers. Some take the on-at-a-time approach. Others allow speaking overlapping turns or co-constructed speaking turns.
Backchanneling/Minimal responses: linguistic strategies used by a listener to indicate that a speaker may continue with an extended conversational turn, to indicate that you are still listening. (e.g. mmmh, yeah, right).
Transition relevance places: places in the conversation where the utterance is potentially complete. Than it is appropriate to take you speaking turn.
Silence is not just the absence of speech; it also communicates meaning.
positive politeness: expressing friendliness & approval
negative politeness: not imposing on others
positive face: one's desire for approval and appreciation.
negative face: one's desire not to be imposed by others.
1970s: Growth of language and gender as a major research area. Focus at first on generalized gender differences, more recent studies have taken greater account of context, attempting to provide a more contextualized and nuanced account of how speakers may draw on language to negotiate gender. As an area, Language and Gender has been characterized by interdisciplinary.
The terms women’s language and men’s language imply homogeneity among women and men. Not all women or all men talk the same way; the way people talk depends on the context and on other social factors like age, social class, or region.
Separate language: Happened in the Caribs where the Woman and Daughters kept their own language, while the Boys learned the language of their Carib fathers.
Sex-exclusive language forms: Case in which an obligatory grammatical distinction is made between female and male speakers.
→ Early commentators on these linguistic distinctions tended to see them as indexical of social practices and beliefs. Language functioned as a kind of social mirror, reflecting important social distinctions.
→ Japanese: Woman are more polite and gentle when thy are speaking.
Gendered language forms are said to reflect the different roles and statuses of woman and men. Variability in the use of gendered forms because of age for example.
Hlonipha: women's language of respect in Southern African languages. It focuses on the avoidance by married women of any syllables that occur in the names of their in-laws. This is less seen in urban communities. It is a form associated with the relative women's powerlessness, particularly in traditional societies.
→ Connected with other forms of respect for senior, particularly male, relatives.
Such forms of avoidance are respectful because they ensure that someone who is a relative stranger in the household does not draw attention to herself.
Within each social class, and across each stylistic context studied, their female informants tended to use more prestige or high status language features, and their male informants more vernacular speech. Men lead language change when this involves new vernacular forms, but women lead change when new prestige forms are introduced.
Women use more prestige forms because they are more status-conscious, more awake of the social significance of language.
Working-class speech is more muscular, and therefore more appealing to men.
Class: Studies took class as the primary social division, making comparison between men and women in the same social class. But Women do not have to be in the same class as their husband or father.
Sociolinguistic Interview: This will affect the speech of informants and may affect female and male informants differently.
Self-evulation tests: This tests, done by Trudgill, show that many women over-report their use of prestige language forms, whereas the many men under-report their use of prestigious forms.
→ Covert prestige enjoyed by vernacular speech appealed more to male than to female speakers.
Stratification studies (Labov and Trudgill): Concerned to identify ' sociolinguistic patterns' within a speech community. The main gender finding that emerged was that women use more prestige and men more vernacular features of speech.
Milroy: Study in Belfast shows that men use more vernacular speech than women. However, the differences in gender were different between the communities he examined.
Employment patterns in interpreting language variation among the communities they studied were emphasized on.
Look at Women and Men's lifestyle in different communities to understand the language differences between gender (whom they interact with, what might motivate to adopt varieties).
Language varieties are probably best seen as related to gender both directly (strong association between man and women speakers) and indirectly (features of language are associated with certain attributes or practices that are already gendered).
How female and male speakers interact with one another, in variety of contexts ranging from informal conversations to more formal meetings, interviews etc.
Results of Empirical studies which have provided evidence of female and male conversational styles.
Men talk more than women in public
Men interrupt women often, to change topic
Women backchannel more
Tentativeness – women use hedges and tag questions more than men
Women use and pay more attention to compliments
Women use more high rise terminals and upspeak – shows uncertainty
Empirical studies show tendencies: They suggest that women tend to speak in one way and men in another. However, not clearly all men and women are the same, and it also differs from the context of talking.
Kajoff (1975): Claimed that women use a number of language features that, indicate uncertainty and hesitancy. These features deny women the opportunities to express themselves strongly and make what they are talking about appear trivial.
→ Deficit model: Proposes inadequacy compared to men. The women style of speaking denies them access to power. The Deficit approach uses men’s speech as the benchmark or standard when examining women’s language, and as a result, concludes that women’s language doesn’t measure up.
Zimmerman and West: More interruptions occurred in mixed-sex than in single-sex conversations, and that all the mixed-sex interruptions were made by men. This study was based on an empirical study of conversation.
→ Dominance model: Language behavior reflects the dominance of men within society.
Fishman: Woman gave more conversational support than man → Backchanneling and interest in the partner's conversational topic. Therefore, topics introduced by men had a greater chance of success than the topics introduced by women.
Maltz and Borker: Men and women come from different sociolinguistic subcultures. They have learned to do different things with language, particularly in conversation, and when the two genders try to communicate with each other, the result may be miscommunication.
→ Cultural difference model (Tannen): Groups of women are different cultural groups. Men speak and hear a language of status and independence, while women speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy. Women are irritated when men are changing the conversational topic, while men find it irritating when Women give minimal responses.
Positive politeness: Expressing friendliness & approval
Negative politeness: Not imposing on others or threatening their face
→ Women use these styles of politeness more than man, they have certain characteristic styles of politeness.
Tag Questions: Controversial in Language and Gender research.
→ Lakoff (1975) argued that though tag questions have a range of functions, women used them more than men and used them to weaken the force of an utterance. Still, tag questions have been controversial in language and gender research. Women frequently use tag questions where they were reluctant to state a proposition badly.
Holmes (1995) argued that there are two main differences between men’s and women’s use of tag questions:
Women used more facilitative tags that express positive politeness (i.e. show concern for the listener)
Men used more epistemic modal tags that express uncertainty about the information conveyed.
Softening Tag: the tag served to mitigate or soften the speaker's request.
Form Function Problem: Interaction studies tended to be interested not simply in the distribution of linguistic forms, but in the meanings or functions which those forms took on in specific context.
Postmodern shift in language and gender research. There was an increasing emphasis on the functions and meanings of language, gender was seen as more fluid. Post-modernists see the identity of people defined by the way of speaking.
→ Performativity: a view of language as a form of action → all languages perform an action, and therefore all languages may be seen as performatives → utterances that seem designed to do something rather than just say something.
Gendered Talk (Holmes): How women and men negotiate their gender identities as well as their professional roles in everyday workplace talk. Both men and women have certain communicative strategies.
Sexuality: Refers not just to sexual orientation but also sexual identity and sexual desire.
Many studies concerned with distribution of language features among women and men have seen language not simply as reflecting gender divisions but also as helping to construct and maintain them.
Language contact sometimes occurs when there is increased social interaction between people from neighboring territories who have traditionally spoke different languages. The outcomes of language contact often depend on the social relations among the groups in contact.
Language Contact: Concentrates on changes in language that are due to external influence from other languages, rather than with internal change. Often happened to face-to-face contact, but now also more through written contact.
A key component of language contact is the social interaction between the speakers of the different languages.
→ Borrowing: technical term for the incorporation of an item from one language into another. Adopted as a word of the borrowing language without a necessary knowledge of the language from which the word is officially from. Borrowing is different from code-switching, because it is an adoption of a word into the grammatical and phonetic system of a language.
Cultural aspects of borrowing: The spread of languages of power and prestige via conquest and colonization came at the expense of thousands of local languages. The power and prestige of English and its associated Anglo American technology have penetrated a large section of the globe.
Borrowing can be seen as an adaptive strategy undertaken by speakers to enrich certain registers of a language, rather than having to switch to the new language for that register.
Many cultures try to resist borrowing items from other languages by creating words or using expressions in their own language to refer to innovations in technology and other new concepts. Lexical or Word Borrowing: just 1 word is borrowed, for example: Le weekend become Het weekend (Loanwords).
Contact situations that involve language maintenance with varying degrees of bilingualism
Language Maintenance: Denotes the continuing use of a language in the face of competition from a regionally and socially more powerful. A group is involved in language contact but keeps its language over the long run (Borrowing happens a lot here).
Contact situations that involve language shift (or second language acquisition) Language Shift: Denotes the replacement of one language by another as the primary means of communication and socialization. Shifts usually involve a period in which individuals or wholenspeech communities are bilingual.
Contact situations that lead to the creation of new contact languages
Language Death: When a community is the last one to speak their language (Language Death without Shift, Language Shift without Death, Language Death and Shift).
Gradual Death: Involves gradual replacement of one language by another (Gaelic by English).
Sudden Death: Rapid extinction of a language, without an intervening period of bilingualism.
Radical Death: Due to severe political repression, a community may opt, out of self-defence, to stop speaking their language. The last speakers won't transmit it to their children.
Bottom-to-top Death: Language ceases to be used as a medium of conversation, but may survive in special use like religion or fol songs.
Where an indigenous group retains control of its traditional habitat and way of life, language maintenance is likely. However, the world's indigenous people and language are dying out or being assimilated into modern civilization because their habitats are destroyed. There is no single set of factors that can be used to predict the outcome of language-maintenance efforts. Domain, social network, gender, and age can help us understand the way in which speakers shift to another language or maintain their own language. The factors of Kloss can cut both ways, so non of the factors can be used on their own to predict the ability of a language to survive:
Absence or presence of higher education in the dominated language.
Relatively large or relatively small numbers of speakers of the dominated language.
Greater similarity or greater dissimilarity between groups of speaking the dominant and dominated languages respectively.
Positive or hostile attitudes of the dominant group to the minority.
Specific factors that have lead to the decline of languages:
Economic Factors: Economic changes are the most salient of the factors that leads to shift. Modernization, Industrialization and urbanization often lead to bilingualism in a vernacular language and a more widespread regional language associated with the economy. People shift to languages that give them greater economic opportunities, leaving their local languages behind.
Demographic Factors: The smaller the size of a community, the stronger the threat of language shift and death. Intensity: the amount of cultural pressure exerted by one group of speakers on another. If the contact is intense, then the languages involved are likely to be affected. The Duration of the contact period also plays an important role, because longer in contact, means easier to adopt.
Institutional support: The use of a minority language in education, religion or the media may assist attempts to bolster its position.
Status: The attitude of speakers towards their language is one of the most important sociolinguistic factors determining maintenance or shift.
A shift from one language to another cannot be effected without an intervening period of bilingualism in the shifting community.
Shrinkage of domains in the curse of shift is paralleled by receding competence in successive generations of the shifting community. Speakers of a language that is in its last stages may exhibit a range of competence in the outgoing language from full command to zero.
Young Fluent Speakers: Native command of the ancestral language, but who show subtle deviations from the norms of fluent, older speakers.
Passive Bilinguals: Understand the ancestral language, but are unable to use the language in productive speech.
Semi-Speakers: Those whose ability t speak the ancestral language is flawed, but who continue using it in certain contexts in an imperfect way.
Domain, Social Network, and gender prove to be crucial concepts in understanding the way in which speakers shift or resist shift from one language to another economically more powerful one.
Restructuring occurs when the grammatical, morphological, and/or phonological structures of one language undergo changes as a result of contact with another language
When a language is lost, we lose the opportunity to understand the unique systems of knowledge (including indigenous knowledge about plant species and their medicinal/healing properties properties) and the full range of grammatical and social abilities of human beings to communicate with one another. Language death results in loss of linguistic diversity.
Creolistics is the discipline of pidgin and creole studies essentially deals with new codes arising from the realignment of people who once were part of separate linguistic traditions.
Pidgin: A reduced language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. This form arises when groups of people who do not speak a common language come into contact with each other,
→ There is need for the rapid development of a means of communication results in a relatively simple type of language which may draw on the languages of the groups involved.
→ Simple form of language showing signs of language mixing, which no one speaks as their first language.
Functions of Pidgins:
Jargon (Pre-Pidgin): Unstable structure, draws on a limited vocabulary and is frequently augmented by gestures.
Stable Pidgin: Recognizable structure and fairly developed vocabulary, but which is in practice limited to a few domains.
Expanded Pidgin: Developed a level of sophistication of structure and vocabulary as a consequence of being used in many context (informal and formal).
During the time of the triangular trade and slavery, a lot of people from a variety of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds came together (under pressure). Creolists are concerned with the type of communication that must have taken place not only between slave master and slave (Vertical Communication) but also between slave and slave (Horizontal Communication).
Fort Creoles: Developed at the fortified posts where the Europeans held the slaves (Horizontal).
Plantation Creoles: Evolved in the New World Colonies, under the dominance of different European languages (Vertical).
Superstrate Languages: The Language of the socially dominant → Europeans.
Substrate Languages: The Language of the subordinated group → Pidgin/Native Language.
Adstrate: languages of roughly equal prestige that are in contact; a language involved in pidgin/creole genesis that does not belong to superstrate or substrate
Lexifier: The language that provides the greater portion of the lexica or vocabulary
Creole: A language that develops in contact situations that typically involve more than two languages. The creole is the native and primary language of a speech community. The Pidgin becomes the first language of a speech community (Papiamento).
Often developed in context of slavery and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Creole Language is suitable for all forms of communication.
Connected to plantation economies in the Atlantic and Pacific Islands.
Creole continuum: Range of language varieties that vary between forms that are similar to and different from the superstrate.
Absence of verbal and plural infection.
Reduced lexicon (vocabulary) and phonology.
Minimal distinction between gender pronouns and subject/object pronouns.
Use of serial verb constructions (run go leave him for run away from him).
Creoles are more grammatically and phonologically complex as a result of native speakers needing more linguistically expressive capabilities.
Pidgins are more often based on local languages than on colonization languages.
Creoles have Subject Verb Object, whereas pidgins can have any word order.
Bilingual Mixed Language: A language created by bilinguals, normally in situations of community bilingualism, with major linguistic components drawn from each of the two (or more) languages in contact.
Imperialism → Superstrate languages as French and Portuguese, above all English, were brought into a much more prominent position in Asia and Africa than before. The colonial contact included some Indigenous Pidgins, having vocabulary from local languages rather than from a European Superstrate. Locals were expected to adopt the language of the colonists for official purposes.
Language Spread: An increase, over time, in the amount of people that adopt a given language for a given communicative function. In other words, “the uses or users of a language increase”
→ Result of a process of language imposition by a greater colonial power, creating new linguistic relations in particular territories.
End of Colonization → New Sense of Nationhood → Lingua Franca.
Lingua Franca: A Language of Wider Communication, used when people do not have a language in common.
Every Pidgin is a Lingua Franca, but clearly not every Lingua Franca is a Pidgin.
New English: Term used to describe English varieties that developed in different parts of the colonized world and is often found in multilingual areas.
Nativization: Turning a foreign language in a local variant of that language (not a first language). It is not a native language, because it is not learned as a first language.
Basilect: refers to deep creole which is most removed or distinct from the lexifier language/variety of the colonizers (Covert Prestige, informal context).
Mesolect: denotes a variety spoken by some members of the creole community, which is essentially the same as the superstrate language.
Acrolect: Variety of speech that is closest to the standard prestige language, varieties which are intermediate between the basilect and mesolect (Overt Prestige in formal and educational contexts).
→ These forms of variation can be used to describe the forms of New English.
Dropping Down: Downshifting to another variety to show some solidarity.
Depending on speaker variables (educational level, motivation) and situational variables (degree of formality, topic) some New English speakers can shift up and down between Basilect, Mesolect and Acrolect.
Language reflects society and the differences that exist can be explained by status and gender differences among speakers.
Rather than reflecting society, language creates, sustains and replicates fundamental inequalities in societies; language is generally intertwined with social institutions and social inequality → Critical Sociolinguistics
→ Language is the primary medium of social control and power.
The Tu and Vous Pronouns show that the behavior of power in linguistic practices.
→ Tu was associated with Solidarity and Vous with non-solidarity.
Power is seen as the fundamental concept in relations of inequality → Classes, Status Groups and even political parties are all involved in the distribution of power. Gramsci drew a distinction between two forms of power:
Rule: The exercise of power is obvious or known.
Hegemony: The exercise of power is so disguised as to involve rule with the consent of the governed.
Critical Discourse Analysis often focuses on texts from the media → Fairclough argues that ideology is spread through language in the media, advertising and propaganda.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) examines the ways social and political domination are reproduced in text and talk, and often focuses on the media. Critical linguists look at the social forces behind linguistic persuasion and examine the consumption practices and aspirations promoted by advertisements.
→ Downing: The Power of the Media lies in the capacity to shape public feeing while appearing only to express it.
Advertising Discourse: Inescapable element of the modern Media. → Ads are part of the process of forming group and individual identities among subjects in westernized societies.
→ Code-Play: Frequent use of Puns, Rhymes, Alliteration, and other Poetic devices.
→ Cohesion: The link between sentences in forming a unit like a paragraph or stanza formed by some of these forms of Code-Play.
Propaganda: The technique of influencing human action by the manipulation of representations → One distinction that some scholars make between persuasion and propaganda is that persuasion is interactive and attempts to satisfy the needs of both persuader and persuade while propaganda attempts to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist
Three processes of the Semantics of the Powerful:
Euphemism: downplaying one’s own aggression → Softens unpleasant Themes (in times of war), justifies certain actions and Distorts/Conceals reality.
→ Our involvement in Vietnam (instead of Invasion).
Dysphemism: exaggerating the bad qualities of one’s opponents.
→ Refugees instead of Evacuees or flood victims.
Mystification: use of jargon to conceal certain activities
→ Air support instead of Bombing.
Under the rule of the Nazi Party (1933) the centralized Ministry of Information and Propaganda, under the leadership of Joseph Goebbels, got control over the German mass media, especially press, radio and film. The Major support came form the Middle-class and the Agrarian Sector. They also tried to win the hearts of the workers. 'German' and 'Worker' became synonyms of each other, meaning that every German was defined as a worker (Lexical Hardening: positive associated with war, honesty, honor and religion). Jewish Workers, however, were defined not as work, but as robbery and money-grabbing.
The Arbeitsbummelanten (Work-Shy people) were seen as guilty of destroying the productivity and economic/political success of Germany.
Resistance to Powerful Language: Wherever there is power, there is resistance.
Scott: Onstage (face when dealing with the local landlords) and Offstage (Interact with themselves, away from the elite) divergence.
Haliday: Anti-society is a group that reveal their oppositional status to a dominant society by several means, including the use of their own language (Anti-Language).
Bourdieu: Addresses a range of concerns of modern sociolinguistics. 2 Keys aspects of Bourdieu's thinking: The ideas of a communicative economy and of symbolic power.
→ Communication is a part of economics, and language is a resource which forms linguistic capital.
4 different types of resources or capital available for humans according to Bourdieu:
Economic Capital (Wealth in the form of capital).
Cultural Capital (Forms of knowledge and skill).
Social Capital (Resources based on connections and group membership).
Symbolic Capital (Accumulated prestige, honor).
→ Inequities in the distribution of “linguistic capital” are related to sociopolitical exploitation and oppression.
Linguistic interactions between speakers depend largely on the social relation between the speakers. Interactions take place within a “Linguistic Market”: Specific structured space in which people interact via language.
Symbolic Domination: the process whereby the ruling class is able to impose its norms as the sole legitimate competence on the formal linguistic markets
→ Those who are subjected to power believe in the legitimacy of those who wield it. Power thus always involves a 'misrecognition'
Pronouns, titles, and honorifics used to encode status and prestige and reciprocal/nonreciprocal relationships. Modal constructions reflect a speaker's writer's attitudes toward a degree of confidence in the truth of a proposition. Modality has relevance to power in that it can be used to express authority or a lack thereof (you must vs. you could vs. you should). Nonverbal signs of power play a role as well (bows, eye gaze etc.). Use of deictic pronouns to indicate inclusion or distance (we vs. they, our vs. their).
Language is a major factor in inequalities of access to knowledge and power
The criteria for educational segregation or tracking typically include a display of competence in the standard dialect of a language or the official language in multilingual societies.
This determines access to career paths and future social opportunities, and can institutionalize racial discrimination along linguistic lines by keeping out certain groups.
→ Literacy or lack thereof or fluency in a language or lack thereof may be used in powerful devices for social control.
Anaphora: the repetition of word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines
Alliteration: repetition of the initial consonant sounds beginning of several words in sequence
Syllepsis: The same word is used in different ways/use of a word or expression to perform two syntactic function.
Educational Sociolinguistics: Subfield of sociolinguistics dealing with relationships between education and language. The role of language in the teaching and learning experiences which occur in school settings, and the link between language, education, and (dis)advantage is a central concern.
→ Emphasis of Educational Sociolinguistics is placed on the differences between languages in the classroom and languages used at home, and the effects of those differences.
Classroom-based teaching and learning is heavily dependent on language.
Teacher Talk: primary means of classroom instruction.
Language is heavily regulated in the classroom: teachers are the primary speakers, teacher talk is the primary register in use, teachers determine the topics for discussion, and they determine who speaks when and for how long (Right to speak); students mainly listen and answer or ask questions.
→ So teachers maintain control over the conversations.
Teacher-student exchanges are not randomly constructed → 3-part-sequence: IRE Sequence.
Initiation of the sequence by the teacher: request for information.
Response to the teacher's request by one of the students.
Evaluation of the student's reply by the teacher, often accompanied by a new request.
Differences between classroom language and home/community language and cultural tradition are one of the most widely cited explanations for classroom-related language difficulties experienced by pupils. Linguists agree that no variety of a language is inherently better than any other; all language are equal in that they adequately serve the needs of those who use them. However, with the exception of pidgins, while that are reduced languages.
It is also acknowledged that certain varieties give those who use them certain social advantages, while other varieties give those who use them certain social disadvantages.
Bernstein: British sociologist interested in the role of language in socialization., main protagonist of the deficit approach. Students from different economic and social backgrounds respond differently to educational experiences in the classroom. By learning a language relevant to their social position, speakers learn the requirements and restrictions which regulate behavior within that social position.
Elaborated Code: Associated with the opportunities open to the middle-class people, which provides its speakers with precise, highly creative and richly expressive linguistic descriptions (way more calm style of speech) → Not accessible for all social classes.
Restricted Code: Associated with working-class and other marginalized groups, which provides its speakers with a much more limited range of linguistic options. Speakers leave much of their commentary without elaboration, if not entirely unsaid. It is simple and repetitively.
→ The consequences of this unequal distribution are considerable: children from the lower
working class are likely to find themselves at a disadvantage when they attend school, in which extensive use is made of the elaborated code.
Deficit Hypothesis: The reason why working-class and minority children did badly at school was that their language was deficient. The children were held to be victims of 'verbal deprivation', therefore the educators have the responsibility to teach language to them.
→ Students are deficient in language ability because their home language lacks certain features of the standard, and the consequence of that deficiency is cognitive/intellectual deficiency.
Cultural Relativity Approach: Though the home variety is different from the standard favored by educators, it is neither deficient nor unsystematic. These differences have nothing to do with cognition and everything to do with differences between home and school cultures. To assume that such children cannot think logically because they perform poorly in certain extremely inhibiting testing situations is absurd. These student may need help in adjusting to certain middle-class values about how language is used in education.
In multilingual countries, deciding which language(s) to use as the medium of education is a central issue. A study by UNESCO concluded that all students should begin their formal education in their native language, and if children's native language is not the official language of the country or is not a world language, then they need to learn a second language.
The Major function of schooling is to indoctrinate working-class children to middle-class children, with the language central to this process.
Immersion Education: students are immersed in the non-native language. → People that spoke English in Canada were taught all their subjects in French.
Additive Bilingualism: When children add a second language, socially relevant language to their linguistic repertoire without losing fluency and skill in their first language.
Subtractive Bilingualism: the learning of a socially dominant language leads to a loss of skills or even a complete loss of the home language.
Interdependence Hypothesis: First and second language or dialect development are closely related
Studies that examine the relationship between language and education show that teachers often have negative attitudes towards speakers of pidgins, creoles, and non-standard dialects and view them as less intelligent. Ebonics is seen as African American English and this is often viewed as less intelligent than the ones who speak the standard variety.
Several approaches have been proposed to deal with dialects other than the standard in the classroom.
Dialect replacement approach → Eradicate the home dialect and replace it with the standards dialect. The home dialect will limit the dialect speakers socially, so we have to get rid of it. Critiques: Often ineffective because teachers are not aware of the varying degrees of interaction between the linguistic systems of the home and and the school dialect. Also children could forget their home speech.
Bidialectalism approach → Speakers should be taught to speak the standards dialect, but no attempt should be made to get rid of the home spoken dialect. Critiques: Often ineffective because teachers are not aware of the varying degrees of interaction between the linguistic systems of the home and and the school dialect. There is not enough time to carry this out in a systematic way., particularly if the teachers do the most talking in the class. Lack of trained teachers, and lack of materials in non-standard dialects also are problems.
Language awareness approach → Teach everyone to be tolerant and accepting of other language varieties. Critiques: Too idealistic, Attitudes about stigmatized varieties in the rest of the world won't change.
Language planning: Conscious attempt to change a language or some aspect of how it functions in society → Conscious efforts to change the linguistic behavior of a speech community.
Language Policy: The linguistic, political and social goals underlying the actual language planning process.
The sociolinguistic approach to language planning stresses the social and symbolic context of language use and the importance of language attitudes. Language planning is often central to the attainment of more general political goals.
Corpus Planning: Concerned with the internal structure of the language.
→ Developing a variety of a language, usually to standardize it and provide it with the means for serving every possible language function in society
→ Language Standardization: creation and establishment of a uniform linguistic norm.
→ Creating new vocabulary, literature, Modernization, Simplification, New uses of the language in for example government and education.
Status Planning: All efforts undertaken to change the use and function of a language within a given society.
→ Attempts to interfere with a language may focus on its status with regard to some other language variety.
Creating a favourable psychological background which is crucial for the long-term success of language planning activities.
Haugen: 4 Stages of the language planning process.
Selection → Choosing a certain language variety over others and promoting them as the norm to be used to fulfill a certain function in a society.
Codification → Creating a linguistic standard or norm by developing a writing system (graphisation), deciding on the rules of grammar (grammatication) and identifying the vocabulary (lexicalization): Standardize the language.
Implementation → Socio-political fulfillment of the decisions made in the stages before. Implementation is usually conducted by the state and can involve marketing to promote use of the new standards.
Elaboration/Modernization → The terminology and stylistic development of a codified language tom meet the continuing demands of modern life and technology.
Differences in Graphisation:
Logographic: Words and Morphemes
Syllabic: Based on Syllables.
Alphabetic: Based on the vowels and consonants as individual units.
Re-visioning of an existing writing system.
Cobarrubias describes four typical ideologies that may motivate decision-making in language planning a particular society.
Linguistic Assimilation: Everyone, regardless of their origin, should be able to speak and function in the dominant language of the community or nation. This is the most common model for language planning. Cultural and Ethnic variation is a bad thing, it would obstruct communication, but also generate conflict that would hinder economic progress. This Assimilation process is usually used for immigrants, they have the language of the majority. Example: Russification in the Soviet Union. In the Netherlands had some of the least-restrictive citizenship requirements of the EU, but now the EU requires the every Dutch citizen (so also immigrants) have to speak Dutch. Immigrants will have to do an integration program.
Linguistic Purification: The recognition of more than one language in society. It emphasizes on the “multilingual reality of societies and involves the 'coexistence of different language groups and their right to maintain and cultivate their languages on an equitable basis”. This can be complete or partial, so that all or only some aspects of life can be conducted in more than one language in society.
Vernacularizarion: The selection and restoration or elaboration of an indigenous language or languages as main vehicles of communication and official language. (Hebrew in Israel).
Internationalization: The adoption of a non-indigenous language of wider communication either as an official language or for education purposes.\
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