The Gal of peasants Section on Gal 1978

The Gal of peasants Section on Gal (1978) 5/21/2009 Questions? Tylers at Stanford

Gal (1978) overview • Peasants ≠ workers – A shift in society • Bilingualism in Hungarian and German is shifting to just German – Especially for young women – They’re also marrying non-peasants (ie, people who don’t speak Hungarian) • Big theme: language offers symbolic value (capital)

Background • Sociolinguistic assumption: – Speech differences indicate social differences • Rule of thumb in the field: – Women use newer, advanced forms more frequently than men – Not a rule – Not always pro-prestige, though you might hear that claim

What Gal is up to • Gal’s innovation: – “Linguistic innovation is a function of speakers’ differential involvement in, and evaluation of, social change” (Gal 1978: 2) – Change in language can represent (i) changes in speakers’ social status or (ii) their attitudes toward the activities the languages symbolize – What does (ii) really mean? What are German and Hungarian symbolizing?

Associations and alignments • Even the young people speak Hungarian sometimes (and report their usage accurately), but they still say “only old peasants speak Hungarian”. • How do we square this?

A few other notes • Like Eckert in suburban Detroit high schools, Gal uses the local’s definitions – (peasant=someone with cows and pigs) • A person’s social network was a better predictor of linguistic behavior than the person’s actual placement on the workerpeasant continuum

Seeing the world differently • What do men and want that’s different? • What’s it about?

Check for understanding • Can you compare/contrast Oberwart and Martha’s Vineyard and suburban Detroit – What’s the linguistic market? – Why do we want to talk about phonetic variation in terms of the linguistic market? – How do sociolinguists characterize interactions between: • Gender • Social class • Phonetic variation

Here’s what to be conversant in • What’s a linguistic variable? – How does it link to: • • Social meaning Identity Language acquisition Bourdieu and the market (currency/value by connection) • Global vs. local markets – Standard language ideology – Ideology! • What it means to be more standard and to see women as speaking more standardly – What you get from linguistic capital (if you don’t have access to economic capital)