languageandsociety

8. Language and Society

8.1 the scope of sociolinguistics

Language is a social fact. Sociolinguistics is the subdiscipline of linguistics that studies language in social contexts. In view of language as a primary means of communication among individual speakers of a society, sociolinguists are concerned with the social significance of language variation and language use in different speech communities including regional, ethnic and social groups. Sociolinguists are also concerned with the impact of extralinguistic factors on language use, such as age, gender, profession, and social status.

8.1.1 the relatedness between language and society

1) social function of language: Apart from its function in communication, language is also used to establish and maintain social relationships;

2) Language reveals the social background of the speaker;

3) Language reflects the physical and social environments of a society

4) various social factors determine the individual speaker’s use of language

8.1.2 speech community and speech variety

variety/variation

speech community: a group of people who form a community and share the same language or a particular variety of language.

Speech variety (language variety): any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or a group of speakers. Varieties of language can be classified in respect of their user and use. Socialinguists generally distinguish regional dialects, social dialects and register.

8.2 varieties of language

8.2.1 dialectal varieties

regional dialect: linguistic variety used by people living in the same geographical region. (language variety according to the user)

Although geographical barriers are the major source of regional variation of language, loyalty to one’s native speech and physical and psychological resistance to change are among other reasons of such variation.

Linguistic variation may occur at all levels of language (phonological, lexical, morphological, syntactical, semantic), the most distinguishable linguistic feature of a regional dialect is its accent.

You don’t know what you’re talking about (Scottish English: Ye dinnae ken whit yer haverin’ about)

/ kœy 13 na:u22 tso35 jat5 ts‘a:n53 ŋο13/ (语概6)

sociolet (social dialect): linguisitic variety characteristic of a particular social class. (p.115).

U

Have a bath

Bike, bicycle Luncheon Riding Sick Mad Looking-glass Writing-paper Wireless Lavatory-paper non-U

take a bath

cycle

dinner

horse riding

ill

mental

mirror

note-paper

radio

toilet-paper

Rich Vegetables Pudding Scotch (encyc. P.39)

wealth

greens

sweet

Scottish

fig.8.2.1: relation between social variation and regional variation

headache: skullhead, head-wark, head-warch, sore head, etc.

8.2.2 language and social factors

gender

In some languages such as English, German, French, and Russian, women are supposed to use more oftern:

emotive adjectives and adverbs: super, lovely, terribly, aufully exclamations: Goodness me, Oh, dear; intensifiers: so, such (It was so busy)

expressions like: I’m afraid… I’m not sure…. Maybe I am wrong but…etc.

abundant use of tags: the lesson is terribly interesting, isn’t it? strategies: women have been found to ask more questions, make more use of positive and encouraging ‘noises’, use wider intanational range and a more marked rhythmical stress, and make greater use of the pronouns you and we. They usually tend to use standard form of the language on many occasions. By contrast, men are much more likely to interrupt, to dispute what has been said, to introduce more new topics and to make more declarations of fact or opinions. (encyc. P.21)

age

developmental patterns in language acquisition

at phonological, lexical, syntactical, and semantic and pragmatic levels as

well.

Idiolect: personal dialect of an individual speaker that combines elements regarding regional, social, gender, an age variations. Personal variety of a dialect

Ethnic dialect

An ethnic dialect is a social dialect of a language that cuts across regional differences.

Black English: an ethnic dialect

e.g. (p.118)

drop of final consonant;

deletion of copula;

double negation

other syntactical features (hu, p. 202)

8.2.3 register language variation according to use. That is, we typically use certain

recognizable configurations of linguistic resources in certain contexts. There are three main dimensions (variables) of variation which characterize any register:

what is being talked about (field of discourse), the people involved in the communication and the relationship between them (tenor of discourse) and how the language is functioning in the interaction (mode of discourse) (p.120)

8.3 Standard dialect

A particular variety of language which wins literary and cultural supremacy over the others and gains some kind of institutional support from government administration and news media, and also from individuals who write grammars and books on correct usage.

Features of the standard dialect: (p. 123)

8.4 Pidgin and Creole

Pidgin: a special language variety that mixes or blends languages, with a markedly reduced grammatical structure, lexicon and stylistic range, and a much narrower range of functions. It grows up among people to talk to each other, for trading and other reasons. It is the native language of no one.

Most pidgins are based on European languages – English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese—reflecting the history of colonialism

Creole is a pidgin language which has become the mother tongue of a speech community. The switch of pidgin involves a major expansion in the structural linguistic resources available, esp. in vocabulary, grammar, and style, which now have to cope with the everyday demands made upon a mother tongue by its speakers.

Pidgins are by nature auxiliary languages, learned alongside vernacular languages which are much more developed in structure and use. Creoles, by contrast, are vernaculars in their own right.

8.5 bilingualism and diglossia

bilingualism: (p.124)

diglossia: a language situation in which two markedly divergent varieties, each with it own set of social functions, coexist as standards throughout a community.

One of these varieties is used in ordinary conversation; the other is used for special purposes, primarily in formal speech and writing. It has become conventional in linguistic to refer to the former as ‘low’, and the latter as ‘high’