Language,dialect and variation,

sociolinguistic

Sociolinguistic Variables• Variation ( linguistics )• Dialectology• Language and

gender
Variety (linguistics)
• In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a ​specific form of a language or
language cluster​. This may include​ languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles
or other sociolinguistic variation​, as well as the ​standard variety itself.
• Variation at the level of the​ lexicon, such as slang and argot​, is often considered
in relation to particular styles or levels of formality (also called registers), but such
uses are sometimes discussed as varieties themselves.
Dialects
• OGrady et al. define dialect as, "​A regional or social variety of a language
characterized by its own phonological, syntactic, and lexical properties​. The term
dialect is often associated with​ regional varieties of speech​. In addition, though,
there are dialect varieties associated with particular ethnic groups (sometimes
called ethnolects), socioeconomic classes (sometimes called sociolects), or other
social or cultural groups.
One criterion often invoked in attempts to distinguish between languages and
dialects is that of mutual intelligibility: if speaker A is intelligible to speaker B, no
matter how great the linguistic differences might be, then they are speaking the
same language​ (although they may be speaking different dialects of the same
language); by contrast, if speaker A is not intelligible to speaker B, then they are
speaking different languages
Registers and Styles
• A register (sometimes called a style) is a variety of language used in a particular
social ​setting​. ​Settings ​may be defined in terms of​ greater or lesser ​formality, or
in terms of socially ​recognized events​, such as ​baby talk,​ which is used in many
western cultures when talking to small children, or a joking register used in
teasing or playing the dozens.
Idiolect
• An idiolect is defined as "the language use typical of an individual person." An
individual's idiolect may be affected by contact with various regional or social
dialects, professional registers, and in the case of multilinguals , various
languages.

general interchangeably,however, dialect is often considered a sub-variety of

language​.
language has the following criteria:
• Standardization (codified/put into a system) which functions to​ unify individuals
and groups​, symbolize identity (regional, social, ethnic, or religious), give prestige
to speakers, reduce or eliminate diversity and variety, assert independence
• Vitality (the existence of a living community of speakers)
• Alive and dead languages
• Historicity (sense of identity)
• Autonomy (people feel their language is different)
• Reduction (not necessarily to be the representative speakers of a language)
• Mixture (speaker’s feeling of the purity of the language they speak)
• De facto norms (speakers realize there are good and bad speakers)
 Class II/Nov. 8th

What is sociolinguistics?
Language variation
Dialects

Sociolinguistics?
● The study of the relationship between language and society, of language
variation, and of ​attitudes ​about language
● Variation may occur at all levels of the language
Language variation?
● No two speakers of a language speak exactly the same way
Between group variation = ​intergroup variation
● No individual speaker speaks the same way all the time
Within-speaker variation = intraspeaker variation
Variation is very slow

Dialect?
● A variety of a language spoken by a group of people that is characterized by
systematic features (e.g., phonological, lexical, grammatical) that
distinguish it from other varieties of that same language
● Idiolect: the speech variety of an individual speaker
● Language = a continuum of dialects
Misconceptions about ‘dialect’
● Dialect # ‘substandard’
● Dialect # ‘incorrect’
● Dialect # ‘slang’
● FACT: Everyone speaks a dialect
Language vs. dialect?
Linguistic criterion
● Mutual intelligibility YES? = dialects NO? = languages
e.g., British vs. American vs. Irish vs. Australian (= dialects of English)
Sources of dialects
Q: Why do dialects exist?
A: Because of isolation or long term separation of groups
Isolation can be across time, geography or social barriers.
Two types of “dialects”:
● (1) ​sociolects or “social dialects”​: linguistic differentiation based upon on
membership in a longstanding socially-isolated or separate group
● (2) ​regional dialects​: linguistic differentiation based upon on membership in
a longstanding geographically-isolated or separate group
Issues 1
Asymmetries in intelligibility, e.g.,
● Danish speakers understand Swedish, but not vice versa
● Brazilian Portuguese speakers understand Spanish, but not vice versa 2.
● Nonlinguistic criteria (political, historical, geographic etc.) may play a role
● Mandarin, Cantonese are mutually unintelligible, but are referred to as
‘dialects’ of Chinese
● Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible, but are referred to as
separate languages
○ Czech vs. Slovak
 ○ Norwegian vs. Swedish
Ways dialects vary
● Phonological (‘accent’)
● Morphological
● Syntactic/grammatical
● Semantic/lexical
More issues Perceptions:
● ‘Bad’ Vs ‘good’
● This is no OUR way
● The native speaker concept
● Standard language

community
2.2 What is a community?
A community has a​ shape and a structure​, which is​ ​internally cohesive and
externally distinctive​. Members of a community must have ​enough in common
to be identifiable (both to others within the group and to external observers) as
members of that community, and must show enough differences from non-
members to indicate that they do not belong to any other contrasting
communities. Membership of a community can be both voluntary and enforced,
though enforced membership is rare, and arises usually as a result of dependence
on others: for example, children in many societies have no option but to be
members of a particular community, but as they age, and begin to establish their
own sense of identity and distinctiveness, their allegiance to that community may
change. Much more common
2.4 Communities of practice
Communities of practice are defined by three particular characteristics:
mutual engagement, a jointly negotiated enterprise, and a shared repertoire
An example of a community of practice is a school rock band. Here, a number of
individuals come together in face- to- face contact (mutual engagement) for a
particular purpose, that is, to play music (jointly negotiated enterprise), often
conversing using jargon common in discourse on popular music, such as riff,
bridge, amp, bass guitar and so on (shared repertoire)

WHAT IS LANGUAGE PLANNING?

Language planning is official, government level activity concerning the selection
and promotion of a unified administrative language or languages.
It represents a coherent effort by individuals, groups, or organizations to
influence language use or development.

WHY IS LANGUAGE PLANNING NEEDED?

› Overt & covert goals
› Linguistic goals
● Promotion of mass literacy
● Elimination of sexist language
● Need for technical terms
› Non-linguistic goals
● Consumer protection
● Scientific exchange
● National integration
● Political control
● Economic development
● Creation of new elites or preservation of old one
● Pacification or cooption of minority groups
● Mass mobilization of national or political movements
Language policy and planning decisions arise in response to sociopolitical needs.

Examples:
● Reducing linguistic diversity:
a national language in a multilingual country (Bahasa Malaysia in Malaysia)
a single variety of a language where ​divergent ​dialects exist (Mandarin in
China)
Competing linguistic groups over access to the mechanisms of day-to-day
life
● A particular linguistic minority is denied access to such mechanisms.
Court Interpreters
● Governmental and social institutions must effectively and equitably meet
the
● needs of the population so that groups varied in linguistic repertoire have
an
● equal opportunity to participate in their government and to receive
services from their government.

WHAT ARE THE STAGES OF LANGUAGE PLANNING?

1. Needs analysis, involving a sociopolitical analysis of communication patterns
within the society.
2. the selection of a language or language variety for planning purposes.
These stages are sometimes referred to as "status planning" and include​:
● Codification​. Characteristics or criteria of a "good" language are
established.
● Standardization​. A unified variety of the language is established, if
necessary.
● "​Fine-tuning​" the selected language or language variety is referred to
as "corpus planning" and includes the following stages:
● Elaboration​. Any of a variety of developments, including expansion of
vocabulary, expansion of stylistic repertoire, and creation of type fonts,
allows the language to function in a greater range of circumstances.
● Cultivation​. The establishment of arbiters, such as dictionaries or language
academies, maintains and advances the status of the language.
In addition to the establishment and implementation of changes through status
and corpus planning, ​evaluation and feedback p
​ rovide a mechanism for
determining how well the language planning efforts are progressing
Language planning may affect all areas of language use but typically concentrates
on the more ​observable ones​.

WHAT SPECIFIC AREAS OF LANGUAGE USE DO THESE STAGES

AFFECT?
Writing
› The written form of a language may have to be developed, modified, or
standardized.
› For example, Turkish was written for centuries with the Arabic alphabet, which
does not represent vowels. Since Turkish has eight vowels, writing with the Arabic
alphabet was very difficult, and, in the 1920s, Ataturk responded to this problem
by mandating that Turkish be written using the Roman alphabet.
Lexicon
› The vocabulary of a language may need to expand to keep pace with increasing
technological development.
› For example, the primary function of institutions such as the Swedish Center for
Technical Terminology is to coordinate standard spoken and written forms for
new terminology in media, government, and industry.
Syntax
› The syntax of the language may need to expand as the language takes on a
national function.
› Tok Pisin started as a pidgin in Papua New Guinea. However, as Tok Pisin
became a lingua franca for the New Guinea area, the small vocabulary, restricted
syntax, and lack of tense markings forced a necessary syntactic development of
the former pidgin to accommodate the more widespread use of the language in
legal documents and in governmental proceedings

Language change Vs language variation

Synchronic Linguistics  

The study of a language at a ​single point​ in time without references to early

stages  
Diachronic Linguistics  

The study of a language at ​different historical stages

Comparative method

A technique for studying the development of languages by performing a

feature-by-feature comparison  
Variation is tructured

Diachronic variation?
What is the extent of variation?
Example?

Orthographic change: þ
Morphological change: hem
Semantic change: seethe
Syntactic change: seethe
Lexical change: chilly
Stylistic or textual change: Imperatives
Constraints​:
what constraints exist on possible changes (including those specifically
in a given language at a given time)?
Actuation:
why does a change begin in a language at time t1, and not at time t2?
Why does the change begin in variety v1 but not in variety v2?
Transition:
how does a change develop, from stage s1 to stage s2, o from form f1 to
form f2?
Embedding​:
how is the change embedded in both the linguistic system and the
community in which the language is spoken?
Evaluation​:
how do speakers in the community evaluate the change?
Are they aware of the change? Has f1 or f2 become
Stigmatised?

The case of /r/

Stable sociolinguistic variation?

Innovation Vs Change ?
Language change in Canada:
which and witch
whales and Wales
Hypothesis:
1. The apparent-time data
External factors kept constant (age): variants are
diachronic change
2. The real-time data
Confirm the hypothesis
Examples: age-grading: idiolectal change

Other factors in change

- Social class:
change from above and change from below
(Labov 1994)
Hypercorrection​: middle-class the interplay of social
and stylistic variation
-
Sex and gender
Principle I​: case of stable sociolinguistic variation:
women use standard variants more frequently
Principle Ia​: case of change from above: women use
the incoming prestige variant more frequently
Principle II​: case of change from below, women are
usually the innovators
Endangered Languages

One result of language contact can be

language shift​, where speakers
begin to speak a new language and
stop speaking their former language.
Over time, this can result in language
death.
This phenomenon is happening all over
the world, and has already happened
to many Native American languages in the U.S.

In ​language shift​, people begin to use

one language more than another, and
may encourage their children to pick
the new language. Eventually, the
community is using one language, not
the other.
A language is ​moribund ​if no children
are learning the language as their first
language
A language is ​dead ​if there are no
living speakers of the language
Language revitalization​ is an attempt to
“resurrect” a language that is ​moribund
through increasing the number of people who
are learning and speaking the language
Language revitalization programs focus on
getting people to learn and speak a dying
language and teach it to their children
Revitalization programs often must work
against social ideas about or prejudices against
the dying language.
For example, the language may not be
considered “modern,” or may be associated
with lack of education, negative ethnic
stereotypes, or be considered

Resurrect resurrect prejudices prejudices prejudices

Regional and Social Variation

Dialect--a ​local form of "a language”; often

associated with a particular region (regional
dialect) or subsection of a larger language
community (sociolect).
regionally or socially distinctive
vary in relatively minor aspects of their
pronunciation (“accent”), vocabulary and
grammar (how words are combined into
sentences)
… Similar techniques for diagnosing
dialects may be used for all languages

American Regional Dialects

How many dialects are there, and Why do dialect differences arise?
Why is it that people in all parts of the country do not speak in the
same me way?
1. English, as is true of all languages, is constantly changing.
2. Not all changes take place in all parts of the country, and
3. Not all changes take place at the same time.
Often, the spread of changes is stopped short by barriers to
communication between groups of speakers.
1. Geographical isolation
2. Temporal dislocation (separation over time)
3. Social isolation

Language change is not always about variation

✦ Language becomes less varied based on increased mobility.
✦ Dialect leveling: fewer differences between ways of speaking
in different areas. A “convergence” of accents and dialects
toward each other, so that many differences between them
disappear.
✦ Standardization: dialects moving closer to a standard variety.
E.g. abandoning of a rural dialect for more urban speech
Patterns
Types of Groups into which Society is Organized
Large-scale groupings:
1. Regional dialects
2. Social dialects, or “Sociolects”
- social classes
- educational groupings
- genders
- ethnicities
- age cohorts
Small-scale groupings:
3. Social networks, e.g.
- immigrant communities
- neighborhoods and recreation groups

Traditional Dialectology

Aims:
1. Provide a ​historical ​record of the language
2. Show ​areal distribution ​of unique
linguistic features
3. Not concerned with representing the speech of the community
Method:
1. Administer a dialect survey targeting specific lexical items,
pronunciations (​diagnostic ​forms)
2. Collect data from ​representative community members​, called NO
3. Typically, sampling was done by relying on ​population density
Lines indicating the distributional limits of lexical items or linguistic
forms are called ​isoglosses​.

Focus:
1. Lexical
2. Grammatical
3. Phonological
Two recent subfields of sociolinguistics in which dialect
descriptions are now accomplished:
Sociophonetics -- Instrumental phonetics supplements auditory
phonetic and phonological analysis
Urban Dialectology​ -- Utilizes updated lexical cartographic method
(TELSUR)

Variationist Sociolinguistics

Aim is to correlate linguistic variation (the dependent variable)

With independent variables such as social categories, style, or the
linguistic environment.
- Labov‟s department store study: correlation
between linguistic variation (post vocalic „r‟) and
social class
- Trudgill‟s Norwich study: again, linguistic
variation (third person singular verb form without
proper marker and –in‟ instead of –ing) and social
Class

Styles in focus
1. Establish what aspects of a speaker‟s social make- up
correlate with the use of particular linguistic forms.
2. Investigate the effects of speech style on the kind of language
used
3. Investigate the linguistic behaviour of the individual (outliers)

Methods
- Increasing smaple size
- Randomising sampling
- Varying test tasks
- Ethnographic appraoch
Overall, emphasis on quatitative distribution of variants and varian
patterns
proof that variation in language was not random, but
structured – the “orderly heterogeneity”

The linguistic variable

„‟a set or, perhaps better, a network of related linguistic forms,
Or variants ‟‟.
Co- variation between linguistic variables and other variables:
- the speaker
- the audience
- the nature and situation of the communicative act
Variation social meaning
e.g. butter

The first wave​ (variationist studies in the 1960s

and 1970s, such as Labov 1966 and Trudgill 1974)
- surveys of urban populations
- quasi-random sampling
- surveys: the relationship between variation and
ongoing change in the community
The second wave​ (Rickford, 1986): an ethnographic approach:
- long observation of a community
- understand the social practices of
- the social meaning of linguistic variation
- the projection of identity in linguistic practices
The Third wave:​ concern with with local practices,
- the notion of the community of practice
- the social meaning of variation in a given
community
- emphasis on the kind of stylistic variation discussed