Language and Social Variation Sociolinguistics Chapter 19 Ms

Language and Social Variation ‘Sociolinguistics’ Chapter 19 Ms. Abrar Mujaddidi

Introduction p Certain varieties of a language, such as ‘slang’, are more likely to be used by some individuals in the society more than others. p People who live in the same region, but who differ in terms of education and economic status, often speak in quite different ways. p A speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language.

Sociolinguistics p Sociolinguistics is used generally for the study of the relationship between language and society.

Social dialects has been mainly concerned with speakers in towns and cities. p In the social study of dialect, it is social class that is mainly used to define groups of speakers: 1. middle class 2. working class p

cont. , p Certain features of language use are treated as relevant in the analysis of social dialects: - pronunciation - words and structures

Education and Occupation Idiolect: The personal dialect or the individual way of speaking of every person. p Although we have different idiolects, we generally tend to sound like others whom we share similar educational and/or educational backgrounds. p E. g. people who didn’t complete college it wasn’t us that done it p

cont. , p Labov (1966) experiment p. g. 207: The pronunciation of postvocalic r in New York city speech.

Social markers A social marker refers to having a feature occur frequently in a person’s speech (or not) marks him/her as a member of a particular social group, whether he/she realizes is or not. p E. g. 1. Final –g dropping in words such as playing and making is a marker of a lower class and less education. 2. the same applies to initial h- dropping in words such as horse and hungry. p

Speech style and style-shifting p Speech style : 1. formal style 2. Informal style p A change from one style to the other by an individual is called style-shifting.

Prestige p Overt prestige: occurs when the style-shift happens in the direction of a form that is more frequent in the speech of those perceived to have higher social status. p Covert prestige: It refers to the ‘hidden’ status of a speech style as having a positive value in groups which do not exhibit style shifts like other groups. - why is that?

Speech accommodation p Speech accommodation is our ability to modify our speech toward or away from the perceived style of the person(s) we are talking to. p Convergence: is when we adopt a speech style to reduce social distance. p Divergence: is when a speech style is used to emphasize social distance between speakers. p Refer to p. g. 210 for examples.

Register and jargon p A register: is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context, which may be identified as situational, occupational, or topical. p Examples of register: 1. religious register. 2. legal register 3. linguistic register.

cont. , p One of the features of registers is the use of jargon, which is a special technical vocabulary associated with a specific area of work or interest.

Slang p Slang is typically used among those who are outside established higher groups. p Slang or ‘colloquial speech’ describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests. p E. g. bucks awesome Benjamins

cont. , p Taboo terms are words which people avoid for reasons related to religion, politeness, and prohibited behavior.

Social barriers p Social barriers, such as segregation and discrimination, serve to create marked differences between social dialects. p E. g. the case of AAVE

Vernacular Language p Vernacular is a general expression for a kind of social dialect, typically spoken by a lower-status group, which is treated as ‘non-standard’ because of marked differences from a socially prestigious variety treated as the standard language. p E. g. AAVE Chicano English Latino English

cont. , p The sounds of the vernacular (AAVE): E. g. - reduction of final consonant clusters (lef han) instead of (left hand). - Initial dental consonants often pronounces as alveolar stops (think that) pronounced as (tink dat)

cont. , p The grammar of a vernacular: E. g. - double negatives (he don’t know nothing). - Absence of forms of verb ‘to be’.

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