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Sociolinguistics
Until this point, we have essentially been considering language as a
formal system that can be profitably studied independently from the people
who use it. This type of approach is often referred to in the field as
the are of "formal" linguistics. People use the term "formal" because such
investigation revolves around constructing formal models that allow us
to understand how various subparts or modules of the linguistic grammar
function. These subparts or modules consist of the areas that we have been
studying all semester, such as phonetics, phonology, morphology,
syntax,
and semantics.
There is, however, a lot more to understanding language than focusing
on these core theoretical areas. If we can gain insight into how language
works by studying its formal grammatical properties, we must also realize
that language as a "thing" to be studied is necessarily a kind of simplification,
because language isn't a "thing" external to human beings, but rather,
something that makes up a part of who we are.
What I want to stress here is that language must also be profitably
studied in its social context. In so doing, we learn both about language
and about ourselves, the people who use it, live with it, and live in it.
Sociolinguistics, then, as the name implies, is the study of language in
human society. We'll focus here on a major aspect of sociolinguistic research
in the past decades, an area generally referred to as language variation.
As its own name implies, language variation focuses on how language varies
in different contexts, where context refers to things like ethnicity,
social class, , geography, age, and a number of other factors.
Language Variation
Before we review various aspects of language variation in more detail,
I want to make sure we've got some basic terms and concepts down. So, here
goes...
SOME IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGY
Internal Variation: the property of languages having different
ways of expressing the same meaning. Importantly, this refers to within
language, not across language, differences. An example of internal variation
in English is "ask" vs. "aks".
Language variety: This is a general term that may be used at
a number of levels. So, we can use the term to distinguish between English
and French, but we can also use the term to distinguish between two varieties
of English, such as New York City English vs. Appalachian English.
Dialect: This is a complex and often misunderstood concept. For
linguists, a dialect is the collection of attributes (phonetic, phonological,
syntactic, morphological, semantic) that make one group of speakers noticeably
different from another group of speakers of the same language.
COMMON SOURCES OF MISUNDERSTANDING
1) DIALECT is NOT a negative term for linguists. . Often times,
for example, we hear people refer to non-standard varieties of English
as "dialects", usually to say something bad about the non-standard variety
(and thus about the people who speak it). This happened quite a bit during
last year's ebonics controversy. But, the term dialect refers to
ANY variety of a language. Thus, by definition, we all speak a dialect
of our native language.
2) DIALECT is NOT synonymous with accent. Accent is only a part
of dialectal variation. Non-linguists often think accents define a dialect
(or that accents alone identify people as non-native or foreign language
speakers). Also, non-linguists tend to think that it's always the "other"
people that have "an accent". So, what is "accent"?
3) ACCENT: This term refers to phonological variation, i.e. variation
in pronunciation Thus, if we talk about a Southern Accent, we're talking
about a generalized property of English pronunciation in the Southern part
of the US. But, Southern dialects have more than particular phonological
properties. Accent is thus about pronunciation, while dialect
is a broader term encompassing syntactic, morphological, and semantic properties
as well.
A final note on accent. WE ALL HAVE ONE! There is no such thing as a
person who speaks without an accent. This is not an exercise in political
correctness, by the way. It is a fact.
In sum, a dialect is a particular variety of a language, and we all
have a dialect. Accent refers to the phonology of a given dialect. Since
we all have a dialect, we all have an accent.
Idiolect: Another term that we must be familiar with is idiolect.
"What's an idiolect?" you ask, on the edge of your seat. An idiolect is
simply the technical term we use to refer to the variety of language spoken
by each individual speaker of the language. Just as there is variation
among groups of speakers of a language, there is variation from speaker
to speaker. No two speakers of a language speak identically. Each speaks
her or his own particular variety of that language. Each thus speaks her
or his own idiolect.
A Snapshot of "The Big Picture":
A language, say English, is really a collection of dialects.
A dialect is a particular variety of a language that differs noticeably
from the variety or varieties of the same language spoken by another group
or groups of people.
Dialects themselves are collections of idiolects (and thus so are languages).
Some Issues that complicate the "Big Picture"
a bit
While the big picture is relatively simple, the world is a fuzzy and
complex place. How do we know where one dialect begins and another ends?
How do we even know if two language varieties are dialects of the same
language or are dialects of different languages altogether? Let's set aside
the first question for a moment, and address the second.
Linguists use a particular criterion to address the issue of how to
determine whether two dialects are varieties of the same language or not.
What we use is the criterion of mutual intelligibility.
That is, if speakers of the two dialects can converse fluently with one
another, although they recognize themselves to be speaking different varieties
of the language, then we are looking at two dialects of the same language.
Many of you are speakers of "Southern" English (I use quotes because
it is actually a BIG oversimplification to treat "Southern English" as
a monolithic dialect), while I speak something akin to so-called standard
English. (Though I grew up in the New York City metropolitan area, I do
not have many of the linguistic properties in my dialect that are usually
associated with that region.) Anyway, you can understand me in lecture,
and I can understand you when you ask questions or come to talk to me in
office hour. The point, to belabor the obvious, is that such communication
is possible because although we may speak different dialects of English,
the differences are not so great as to prevent us from understanding one
another.
Regarding the issue of different languages, clearly there are cases
where no one is going to wonder whether two speakers are speaking dialects
of one language or whether they are speakers of different languages. So,
if I come in and lecture to you in Spanish, I doubt that you'll scratch
your heads and say, "Gee, is this a variety of English or is it something
else?" But, there are many situations where the dividing line is far less
clear.
There are a number of reasons why things get tricky, both linguistic
and non-linguistic. A major linguistic complication comes in the form of
what we call a dialect continuum. This is a situation in which there
are a number of contiguous dialects that are closely related but that are
not all mutually intelligible.
What's a dialect continuum?
To simplify somewhat, think of it this way. Imagine we've got ten dialects
(1-10) in a row:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Now, imagine that each dialect is highly similar to its immediately
adjacent neighbors, but that as we move farther away the similarities become
fewer and fewer. So, 1 is very similar to 2, less similar to 3, even less
similar to 4, and by the time we get to 8, 9 or 10, 1 is no longer mutually
intelligible with these. By the criterion of mutual intelligibility, we'd
want to thus say that 1 and 10 belong to different languages. That's fine.
But what do we do about 5, which may be mutually intelligible with both
1 and 10? Which language does 5 belong to? How many different languages
are we talking about here?
An example of the dialect continuum problem
An interesting example that I have first hand experience with is the
case of the Mixtec languages in Mexico. There are roughly 300,000 Mixtec
speakers in Mexico, primarily spread out in the state of Oaxaca. Mixtec
is an indigenous language that is a member of a larger family called the
Otomanguean language family. But, Mixtec itself is actually composed of
a number of mutually unintelligible dialects. Estimates of how many such
dialects there are vary, but a fairly trustworthy study puts the number
at 22. Perhaps more meaningful than the number 22, however, is the observation
that mutual intelligibility among Mixtecs is best measured in terms of
walking distance. Specifically, it has been reported that the geographical
extension of mutual intelligibility is roughly the equivalent of two days
walking from any given Mixtec village. (Mixtecs, as I've told you, are
incredibly hearty walkers in general!) This is a clear case of a dialect
continuum similar to our case of 1-10 above, except that all the Mixtecs
obviously aren't all lined up in a row.
In fact, what more sophisticated studies of mutual intelligibility try
to do is quantify in some fashion over the issue of intelligibility. That
is, rather than take mutual intelligibility to be an all or nothing issue,
they try to break the issue down into percentages so that we might be able
to distinguish between degrees of intelligibility. As a case in point,
the particular variety of Mixtec that I have worked on is among the most
isolated, and has been reported to only have a 25% intelligibility level
with the closest dialect to it.
What you should take away from this discussion is that while the criterion
of mutual intelligibility is a good and useful criterion for determining
whether two varieties of a language are dialects of the same language or
not, dialects often form a continuum which makes finding an exact dividing
point between languages quite difficult, if not downright impossible.
Nonlinguistic Factors and the dialect vs. language
issue
Non-linguistic factors also often complicate matters further. A famous
linguists once said, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
What he was calling attention to were the political factors involved in
how people determine just what a language is. A good, though very depressing,
example of this can be found in the former Yugoslavia. The majority language
in the former Yugoslavia was called Serbo-Croatian. This language was spoken
throughout the country (Albanian and Macedonian, for example, were also
spoken in parts of Yugoslavia, so Serbo-Croatian wasn't the only language.)
Anyway, now that Croatia has broken off into its own independent state,
the language of Croatia is officially Croatian, and the language now spoken
in what is still called Yugoslavia is officially called Serbian. These
are now officially two completely different languages, due to the fact
that there is a political border between Croatia and Serbia.
From the point of view of the linguist, of course, they are still a
single language, and the differences between them are examples of dialectal
variation on a par with, say, New York vs. Boston English. But, the animosity
between Serbs and Croats makes them refuse to admit that they are speaking
the same language (even though they know they are and can, of course, understand
one another!).
An example of politics working in the other direction is the case of
China. There are quite a few languages spoken in China, but the Chinese
government refers to them all as dialects of Chinese. Two of these so-called
dialects are Cantonese and Mandarin. Cantonese is spoken in part of Southern
China (it's spoken in Shanghai), while Mandarin is spoken in the north
(it's the language spoken in Beijing). Though these two languages are both
historically related, they are NOT mutually intelligible. Yet the Chinese
refer to them as dialects of a single language as a means of enforcing
a vision of cultural and political unity. Imagine if the Europeans decided
that they were all going to call Spanish, French, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese,
Romanian, and Provencal dialects of a single language, Romance, and you
start to get the picture. Or imagine that we decide that English, Dutch,
and German are all dialects of a single German language. Yes, these languages
ARE historically related, but from the point of view of the linguist, their
non-mutual intelligibility makes them different languages, not dialects
of a single present day language.
Speech Communities
Okay, if we've got a pretty clear idea of what a dialect is, then the
idea of a speech community is fairly straightforward.
A speech community is a group of people who speak a common dialect.
Linguists working on language variation often characterize speech communities
in terms of extra-linguistic factors, i.e. along ethnic or geographical
lines. While this can be useful and can shed light on the hows and whys
of dialect variation, it is important to note that the linguists who do
this KNOW that there is really no such thing as a pure dialect spoken only
by a particular ethnic group or by people from just one perfectly definable
region. In large part, people are in contact with one another and with
many varieties of a language.
For example, your book Language Files gives you an example of speech
from an older man with many well known characteristics of Appalachian English:
1) I used to could read. (double modal)
2) I ain't no girl now. (multiple negation)
3) He has a broken back ____ was never set. ("that" deletion)
4) Put some bakin' sody on it. (sody instead of soda)
5) I fell upside of the building. (lexical substitution--upside
of for against the side of)
What they point out, though, is that the speaker is a native of Southern
Ohio, not actually a native of Appalachia. And his speech is affected by
factors such as age, , and socio-economic status.
To cite another simple example, linguists study African American English
(most recently called ebonics), but there is no assumption here that ALL
African Americans speak this dialect. Nor is there an assumption that this
dialect is limited to African Americans only. It does happen to be true,
however, that most speakers of this dialect are African Americans.
So, big picture again. A dialect is a variety of a language. A speech
community is the group of people who speak the dialect. What makes a particular
group of people speak a particular dialect has to do with a number of factors
which may play a more or less significant role in any particular case.
These include socio-economic status, ethnicity, , and geographical location.
Kinds of Variation
Now we're ready to get down to particular aspects of language variation.
Returning to our grammatical modules, we can see that carefully examining
language variation requires both attention to grammar and attention to
society. What do I mean by this? Simply, that if we identify a particular
dialect, our understanding of how that dialect works requires an understanding
of the phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of that
dialect, as well as an understanding of who speaks it. So, here we'll cover
grammatical aspects of language variation.
Phonetic Variation
Your textbook, Language Files, is actually a bit unclear regarding the
difference between phonological and phonetic variation.
Though it doesn't come out and say so specifically, your book treats
phonetic variation as variation in pronunciation that don't affect the
phonemic level of the grammar. Two examples are provided. Here's the case
of New York alveolar consonants.
In some New York City dialects, alveolar consonants are systematically
produced with contact between the tongue tip and the upper teeth (i.e.
they are dento-alveolar), while in so-called standard dialects, the alveolars
are not dental. So, in New York English, the [t] word "two" is produced
with contact between the tongue tip and the teeth. In so-called standard
English, this isn't the case. Alveolar consonants are not always realized
as dentals.
So, why is this a case of phonetic variation? The answer is basically
this. At the phonemic level, there is really no difference between NY English
and standard English. Both have the exact same set of alveolar consonant
PHONEMES. What's different is that the place of articulation differs ever
so slightly between the two dialects. NY English speakers always produce
their alveolar consonants with contact between the tongue tip and the upper
front teeth. Standard English speakers only do this sometimes, as in words
like [tenth].
In short, the difference is not found at the phoneme level but rather
at the allophone level. This is what your book is referring to by this
example of phonetic variation between NY English and standard American
English.
Phonological Variation
Now let's turn to the case of phonological variation. This situation
is a little different. Here, the variation in pronunciation represents
variation at the level of the phoneme or at the level of phonotactic constraints
on things like syllable shape. How so? The book gives a few useful examples.
Here's one:
I have a difference in my dialect between the vowel in the word "caught"
and the vowel in the word "cot". For me, these are a minimal pair. The
first, "caught" has a lax, mid, rounded, back vowel (its phonetic symbol
is a backwards "c"), while the latter is the low, back, unrounded vowel
[a]. In a few dialects of American English, this difference has been neutralized,
aka lost. That is, these two different phonemes have merged. Specifically,
people who speak these dialects pronounce the vowel in "caught" as an [a]:
[kat], thus rendering the two words "caught" and "cot" homophonous.
Why is this a case of phonological and not phonetic variation? Because,
the result of this kind of variation is the loss of a phonological contrast.
Whereas in my dialect these vowels are allophones of two different phonemes,
the dialects that don't have this difference have lost a contrast. Another
way of putting this is to say that the dialect that has lost the backwards
"c" vowel that I still have in my dialect, has one less vowel phoneme than
my dialect has. What's most important here is that we understand that the
difference is relevant at the level of the phoneme. This is what your book
classifies as an example of phonological variation.
So, the big picture is that the variation means that the phoneme system
is different in the two varieties. In the case of NY alveolars above, the
allophones of the alveolar consonant phonemes are different, but both dialects
still have the same alveolar phonemes in the same words. Here's another
interesting example:
In some African American dialects, the sequences Cr and Cl (C stands for
consonant) are prohibited in unstressed syllables. So, "professor" is "pofessor".
This is a case of phonological variation because in SAE, the word professor
has an /r/ as the second phoneme of the word, but in AAE, /r/ is simply
not allowed to appear in this position.
This is a case of phonological variation because we are able to identify
a particular difference in phonotactics between AAE and SAE. AAE doesn't
allow Cl and Cr clusters, while SAE does. This literally means that there
is a significant difference in the phonological rules of the two dialects
Specifically, the inventory of possible syllable types differs from one
to the other.
Morphological Variation
Examples of morphological variation should be fairly easy for you to
identify. Your book notes the case of northern England and Southern Wales,
where the -s suffix is used as a general present tense marker. In
many other dialects of English, -s is reserved for marking the present
tense in third person singular forms only.
I likes him.
We walks all the time.
Another example comes from Appalachian English, which has a number of past
tense forms that are non-standard. "Et" for "ate", "hEt" for "heated".
These are all examples of morphological variation.
Syntactic Variation
As the name suggests, syntactic variation involves syntactic differences
among dialects. Keeping close to home, it is common in many Southern dialects
to find the word "done" used as an auxiliary, as in "she done already
told you" or "I done finished a while ago." In SAE,
this isn't the case. And, in fact, many times people who want to imitate
Southern American English speech often pick up on this rather salient property.
Double modals (combinations of auxiliaries) are also common across parts
of the South. Examples are: "I might could do it" or "They useta could
do it" or "He might would if you asked him nice enough."
These are examples of syntactic variation. Another famous example is
the use of so-called double negatives, as in "I didn't see nobody."
Semantic Variation
Often times, what people studying variation talk about when they discuss
semantic variation is the different meanings that particular words have
from dialect to dialect, or the different words that are used for the same
thing in different dialects. We might more accurately refer to this as
the study of lexical semantic variation. That's a fancy way of saying that
we are studying variation in the meanings of words.
So, an example of a single word meaning different things is the compound
"knocked up". In England it means 'rouse from sleep'. Here in the States
it means "to make pregnant".
Examples of different words being used for the same thing also abound.
I remember when I first went to college that someone asked me if I liked
frappes. I literally had no idea what he was talking about. It turns out
that frappe is a common term for "milk shake" in New England. Obviously,
it wasn't a common term in the New York area that I was from.
Other examples are words like "soda". For me, this is a general term
for soft drink. For speakers of other dialects, "soda" may mean seltzer
water or club soda only. In some of these dialects, the general term for
soft drink is "pop". In yet other dialects, the general term is "coke",
while for me, "coke" refers to only a specific brand of cola.
By the way, when you go to the store, what do you get your groceries
in? A bag or a sack? In my dialect, it's a bag. But when I lived in Montana,
I quickly learned that you get your groceries there in a sack.
Language and Socioeconomic Status
One of the most persistent and pernicious misunderstandings of the concept
dialect revolves around the problem of standard vs. nonstandard varieties
of a language. Before I discuss this problem in a bit more detail, let's
make sure the big picture is clear. Specifically, let's break the problem
down into two categories: the WRONG view, and the RIGHT view. (I know,
I know, I'm being absolutist here. But the point is important to make,
and this issue is important to address, so why not be direct about it.)
THE WRONG VIEW
A language is composed of a "standard" dialect from which all of the other
non-standard dialects emerge.
The standard dialect is the "correct" way to speak the language.
The other dialects represent erroneous or inferior ways of speaking the
language.
The non-standard language is more complex, more logical, more expressive
than the non-standard dialects.
Non-standard dialects are a product of "lazy" speech.
THE RIGHT VIEW
Languages have various dialects.
There are actually a range of varieties that people consider to be standard.
So, Bill Clinton speaks the "standard" and so do I, but my dialect is clearly
NOT the same as Clinton's.
What is considered standard is associated with prestige, a non-linguistic
factor.
From a linguistic standpoint, what is considered standard has NOTHING to
do with correctness or superiority.
From a linguistic standpoint, ALL DIALECTS are equally correct, equally
expressive, equally complex, equally logical and so forth. That is, the
term non-standard dialect means just that, not the standard dialect.
It DOES NOT MEAN inferior or sub-standard.
Non-standard dialects are not simply offshoots from the standard. That
is, don't think of non-standard dialects simply as daughters of some standard
variety. This is important, because when we compare non-standard and standard
dialects people tend to think that the properties of the non-standard have
evolved out of the standard. This is not the case. Non-standard and standard
dialects taken together simply make up the range of dialects that constitute
a language.
Okay, I've given you the wrong and the right views. But this isn't sufficient,
because I don't want you to believe these things simply because I say so.
Rather, I want you to understand why the evidence overwhelmingly
supports what I've told you.
Evidence for the RIGHT VIEW
What kinds of evidence might we look for to support these claims? Here
are some ideas:
If there is a correct way to speak a language, and that correct way is
reflected in the standard, then we predict that through time the standard
will be unchanging with respect to this "right" way of doing things.
But, time and time again, we see that this is simply not the case. Language
Files provides a simple example regarding multiple negation. In current
standard American English, multiple negation structures are non-standard
and people who use them are often ridiculed, e.g. "I don't want no help".
We saw an example of this in the video that we watched in class. An upper
class Southern woman ridiculed what she referred to as uneducated speech
by imitating one speaker's use of multiple negation (something about "not
running into no stump and not wanting to make no hole in the bottom of
a boat").
In fact, some particularly pedantic types argue that two negatives actually
cancel each other out logically. As a consequence, they suggest that anyone
who says "I don't want no help" is actually requesting aid. Clearly, there
is often an attempt to demean speakers who use double or other multiple
negative constructions.
Well, let's be pedantic ourselves, just for fun, by pointing out that
in Chaucer's time, multiple negation WAS the norm. Language Files quotes
a passage from the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales:
He never yet no villany not said
In all his life to no kind of creature
By my count, there are FOUR (count 'em) negations in this sentence: "never"
, "no", "not", and "no". According to the rules of logic, since this is
an even number of negations, I suppose a paraphrase should have them all
canceling each other out, so the passage should mean something like: "He
always said bad things to all creatures". Of course, we KNOW that it doesn't
mean that. Even with its four negations, we have a clear sense that it
means that "He never said anything bad to anyone".
So, in our time, multiple negation is non-standard. Big deal. In Chaucer's
time, it was standard. In fact, multiple negation is highly common across
languages the world over. All that stuff about multiple negations canceling
each other out is basically bunk. Sure, we can use multiple negation to
this effect, but intonation plays a big role when we do so. So, I can say,
"I didn't say I saw nobody" to suggest that I did see somebody.
But note that if you do this, your intonation is not that of a normal declarative.
In fact, you put extra emphasis on the word "nobody" so as to call the
listener's attention to the fact that you are playing with the double negative.
Essentially, you are being coy.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that there is nothing inherently
more or less correct about multiple negation. Thus, whether it is standard
or not in contemporary English has nothing to do with correctness or logical
purity. It has to do with factors that are non-linguistic. Specifically,
our objections to multiple negation tell us more about our attitudes towards
the people who use it than about the adequacy or inadequacy of multiple
negation itself.
What other kinds of things should be true if the views above are correct?
Well, if we're right, we might expect to find cases of language change
in progress that show how arbitrary the notions of standard are.
Here is a nice example that shows just this point. In contemporary American
English, we have a couple of changes that are presently taking place. Both
involve "misuse" of pronouns. Note that I put quotes around "misuse" to
point out that both involve uses that depart from the traditional prescriptive
standard. Interestingly, one of these is generally accepted, while the
other is considered "incorrect". Here is an example of each:
John and me went bowling last Friday night.
Mary gave the books to John and I.
Does one of these seem somehow "worse" to you. My intuition, at least,
is that the first one sounds worse than the second one. In fact, according
to old time grammar rules, both are equally wrong. Each involves a misuse
of a pronoun. "Me", as an object pronoun, is should not be used as a subject.
In the second case, "I", as a subject pronoun, should not be used as the
object of the verb "gave". If both are equally wrong, why does the second
one not sound as wrong as the first (if this is the case for you)? One
explanation is that highly educated people say the second one all the time,
but tend not to say the first one as often. It's not the case that either
one is actually better (or worse). They both reflect ongoing changes in
how we use pronouns in English. As an aside, it is perhaps not surprising
that such changes should happen. The pronoun system is a relic of a case
system that has been lost in the rest of the language, so losing the old
case driven uses of the pronouns isn't shocking. But, what is important
here, is that our judgments about which of the two sentences sounds better
or more standard may have more to do with the speakers than what's actually
said.
Here's another example of the arbitrariness of what constitutes the
standard.
An even more glaring example can be found in the Spanish spoken in Spain.
In so-called standard peninsular Spanish, there's a phonemic difference
between the voiceless interdental ("th") sound and [s], so we find pairs
of words like: casa (pronounced kasa) and caza (pronounced katha). All
over the Americas, this difference has been lost, and both words are pronounced
the same, with an [s] and not a [th]. Both varieties are considered "standard"
or "acceptable" by the Spanish Royal Academy. In parts of Spain, however,
there is another dialect spoken in the southern part of the country in
which both words are also pronounced the same. In this case, however, both
are pronounced as [katha]. In this dialect, rather than all cases of [th]
in the standard being realized as [s], all interdental fricatives and [s]
are realized as [th]. I hope you can see that essentially the same process
has occurred from a phonological point of view. In one dialect (or set
of dialects), there is no /th/ phoneme, only /s/. In another, there is
no /s/ phoneme, only the interdental /th/. BUT, only one of the dialects
is accepted as falling into the standard. The southern dialect is considered
"unacceptable" by the royal academy and is frequently ridiculed. Why? Well,
the people who speak the "unacceptable" dialect are largely poor and uneducated.
Again, the message, it's not what is said, it's who says it! There is NOTHING
inherently better about either dialect. In fact, it is only attitudes towards
speakers that result in one falling into the sphere of acceptable varieties
while the other remains outside.
Let's provide another argument along these lines.
If we are right above then we should expect to see the very same linguistic
features be standard in one place but non-standard in another.
This is, in fact, simple to show. English, as we all know, has an American
Standard and a British standard. In American English, "r" dropping is considered
non-standard. Think about all the "r" dropping you saw in the video of
the non-prestige dialect speakers from Boston. Stereotypical New Yorkese
also has "r" dropping as a feature and "r" dropping is often taken as a
sign of lack of education and social status. By contrast, in standard British
English, "r" dropping is a prestige feature. Imitate a Brit saying "bird"
or the word "car" and you'll see that the [r] is dropped. So, here you
have "r" dropping as a marker of non-standard American English but standard
British English. This should be surprising to anyone who thinks that what
is found in the standard is inherently better. It should come as no surprise
to someone who thinks that the linguistic differences between standard
and non-standard dialects are simply that, differences.
One more point here:
If we are correct in our RIGHT VIEW /WRONG VIEW statements above, then
we should expect that today's standard might be tomorrow's non-standard.
And this happens all the time. I've already discussed above the example
of multiple negation in Middle English, but closer to home, it is useful
to remember that "r" drop in New York English was a marker of prestige
around the turn of the last century. Now, it marks the opposite. What gives?
People. What is standard is not a matter of "better" from a linguistic
point of view. What is standard is dictated by attitudes in the society
towards particular groups of people who speak in particular ways.
Big Picture Time Again
Once we recognize the arbitrary nature of what constitutes a standard
variety of a language, it is simply impossible to maintain that any dialect
is "superior" to any other. Different? Yes. Better? Worse? Never.
Prestige
If what makes a language standard or non-standard is not a linguistic
issue, what is the difference? Of course, the reality of the situation
is that the situation is VERY complex. There are many factors that come
into play. But, it is important to note that dialects are intimately related
to the notion of prestige within a society. Basically, the standard dialect
is the dialect that is associated with prestige in the society at large.
Does this mean that all prestigious people MUST speak the standard? No.
But an overwhelming number do. That's why we have no trouble associating
the standard with prestige. (Just what constitutes prestige is bundled
up in a number of issues that are beyond the scope of this review sheet!)
This raises an apparently simple question. If the standard confers prestige
on its speakers, why doesn't everyone just learn the standard? Well, what
looks simple isn't always so simple. One thing is this. The question assumes
that everyone is WELCOME to speak the standard. As the case of NY "r" dropping
might suggest, when lots of people in NY starting dropping their r's, the
prestige group put their "r's" back in. And, if we know anything about
dialects at this point, we should know that people's attitudes towards
dialects tells us more about their attitudes towards the speakers of those
dialects.
Also, think about how you feel about your own dialect. Even if you speak
a non-standard variety, do you want to be told by someone else that the
way you speak is "wrong" or inadequate and that YOU should change? Dialects
are intimately wound up with identity and with a sense of community. It
is not realistic to pretend that this is not the case and that people can
simply shrug off one dialect and adopt another with no cost. In fact, once
you are an , learning the speech patterns of another dialect may even
require a lot of training. It is important to realize that there are prestige
factors, within group prestige factors, involved in non-standard dialects.
Even though a speaker may speak a non-standard variety of a language, she
or he may gain prestige within her or his dialect community by using the
non-standard variety.
This thus brings us to two concepts:
Overt Prestige: This refers to speakers of non-standard varieties
who adopt (to some degree) the standard variety. We use the term Overt
Prestige to indicate that the speaker is seeking to associate her or himself
with the general prestigious dialect within a society.
Covert Prestige: This refers to speakers who choose not to adopt
a standard dialect. We use the term Covert Prestige because the prestige
associated with this choice is that gained from within group social identification.
So, in simple terms, overt prestige is about seeking prestige by assimilating
to the standard, while covert prestige is about not choosing to assimilate
to the standard. Clearly, either choice has a distinct set of costs and
benefits.
A final note on the prestige question. Many speakers of non-standard
dialects are bidialectal. What does this mean? Basically, that they
control both their own non-standard dialect and are fluent (to a greater
or lesser extent) in a standard variety. This isn't surprising and is an
obvious and logical strategy for pursuing the rewards of adopting the standard
without losing the sense of group identity that is intimately related to
the non-standard dialect.
Ways of classifying dialects
Okay, so we've seen that there are standard and non-standard dialects.
I've tried to argue that this distinction isn't about the linguistic properties
of the dialects in question, but rather, about sociological factors. In
a society, standard dialects can also be called prestige dialects. By prestige,
we mean that these dialects are not stigmatized in the society in which
they are spoken.
When attempting to characterize more precisely particular dialects,
linguists conduct their research along a number of lines. I'll review here
the three major sources of language variation that we mentioned in class.
These are: geography, ethnicity, and social class.
Geography
A major factor in dialect diversity is geography. The study of regional
dialects is called dialectology. In File 10.4 of Language Files
there is a nice discussion of regional dialect variation in the US, so
I won't regurgitate this here. It is important to note that classifying
regional variation proceeds similarly to work in historical linguistics.
Your book mentions things called isoglosses. What are these? They are geographical
areas that exhibit shared dialectal features. In the review notes for historical
linguistics, I cited you the examples of isoglosses for Balto-Slavic, Germanic,
and Indo-Iranian. People use isoglosses in dialect research, for example,
to mark the regions where people say bucket instead of pail,
or soda instead of pop, or drop their r's, or monopthonize
their diphthongs. This results in general shared dialect properties that
run along certain geographical lines. Of course, the lines are never perfectly
clear, but in broad strokes, we can get a nice sense of how dialect varies
with geography.
Ethnicity
Another factor driving language variation is ethnicity. Often, ethnicity
is also closely tied to a particular geographical area, as is the case
with the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch that we saw on the video in class.
Other times, ethnicity is a factor despite geographical dispersion, as
is the case of African American Vernacular English (AAVE or Ebonics). Linguists
have long noted that there are many shared characteristics in African American
English, regardless of whether speakers live in the South, the Northeast,
or the far West. This is most likely due to the recent migration of many
African Americans from the South in the early part of the 20th Century,
which in historical terms is only yesterday.
Your book provides a nice general sketch of AAVE in File 10.5. One controversy
surrounding AAVE is its origins, which are in broad strokes broken down
into the dialectologist view and the Creolist view. The former maintains
that AAVE is essentially originally a regional variety of English spoken
by a particular ethnic group that for obvious historical reasons was originally
concentrated in the South and which underwent a great migration from the
South. The Creolist view maintains that AAVE emerged as a Creole from pidgins
used by slaves who spoke different African languages and that this Creole
underwent a process of decreolization after increased contact with English.
Here's my two cents. Let me start by saying that I am not an expert
in this area. So, I can't really judge which is the better account. Many
people have argued (loudly) on both sides of the debate. From my point
of view, though, I'm not convinced that either answer much matters at this
point. I'm much more interested in making sure that we recognize that no
matter what its historical origins, AAVE is a dialect of English that is
every bit as "complete" as any other dialect of the language. This may
seem obvious given what I've said above, but it certainly didn't seem obvious
to the people screaming in the newspapers, on the radio, and on tv last
year during the ebonics controversy. What your book does a nice job of
is presenting a sketch of the structural features of AAVE (pp. 322-324),
simply to highlight its highly regular, rule governed nature. Review
these. (HINT)
Class
A third major factor in language variation is social class (the term
class almost feels quaint in these post-Marxist times! But, heck, it's
useful enough to get the job done here). Often times, it is important to
bear in mind that class plays a role in dialects. Remember the case from
the video of the Boston Brahmin dialect, or the reference by an upper class
Southern woman to the "poor white trash" dialect also spoken in the South.
Regarding class, you should all review File 10.7, especially William
Labov's study of R-lessness in New York City. What did Labov's experiment
show? Well, he showed that people, especially middle class people, exhibit
a large difference between whether they drop r's or produce them, depending
on how unguarded their speech is. The more unguarded, the more they drop
r's. The more guarded, the more r's they produced. Why? Labov concluded
that class consciousness played a big role. In guarded moments, their class
aspirations were visible. That is, they produce r's as a way of seeking
the prestige of the r-ful dialect spoken by the upper class in NY. In unguarded
moments, they don't produce as many r's because they are not trying to
put on more prestigious airs. By contrast, the upper class group produced
its r's regularly, in both careful and casual speech. Labov concluded that
they were more comfortable with their class status as reflected in this
aspect, at least, of their speech.
An Important Point
It's important to bear in mind that these factors are intermingled.
The video we saw in class did a very nice job of illustrating this by filling
the screen with a range of speakers from Boston. All spoke dialects identifiable
as Boston English (a regional classification); they represented different
ethnic sub-groups with distinct speech patterns within Boston English,
and they clearly were differentiated along class (economic, education,
etc.) lines. So, when we are looking at variation, we have to constantly
bear all of these factors in mind as potential extra-linguistic factors.
In fact, we also need to factor in such things as age and , which also
play important roles in understanding language variation.
Speech Style
One more aspect of language variation that merits discussion is the
notion of speech style. Frequently, speech style is confused with dialect.
This happens for example with people who erroneously think "rap" is synonymous
with African American English.
All people, regardless of what dialect they speak, control a range of
speech styles. Depending on who we are talking to, and where we are, and
so forth, we use different styles of speech. This is called style shifting.
Think about how you talk to a) your friends, b) your parents, c) your professors.
Do you use the same style with all three. I suspect not. If you are like
me, maybe you are casual with your friends, more formal but still familiar
with your parents, and most formal (sometimes you even feel stiff) with
your professors (by the way, you don't need to be so formal...).
There are a number of dimensions along which we exhibit variation in
speech style. These involve pronunciation, syntax, and vocabulary.
Pronunciation
One obvious area where speaking style shifts is how "carefully" we pronounce
things. Specifically, we see that in "casual" speech, we often "drop" endings
in words such as "hunting" which we might pronounce as something like "huntin".
We see that we contract things, such as "watcha" for "what do you" and
so forth.
Again, prescriptivists argue that this is evidence of laziness and so
forth. At this point in the semester, I hope we are not fooled by such
things. It's actually often evidence of efficiency and economy of speech
gestures--like building a more fuel efficient car!!! Seriously, there's
nothing wrong with such contractions. In fact, many contractions are necessary
even in careful speech if we don't want our speech to sound ridiculously
stupid. Imagine saying to your partner, "you love me, do you not?". Not
real effective, I suspect.
My point: there is nothing inherently sloppy about fast speech pronunciation
features. There are simply more and less appropriate times to use them.
Syntax
Style shifting also occurs in syntax. Here's a case in point. In the
prescriptive standard, we are supposed to use "there are + plural noun"
and "there is + singular noun". But, in more casual speech registers, people
often say "there's three problems with your analysis". This is a case of
syntactic style shifting. Another interesting example of syntactic style
shifting is this. People often use more passive constructions when they
want to sound more formal. Note how the first of the following sentences
sounds more formal because it is in the passive:
The use of antibiotics to treat bacterial infection is generally successful.
If you use antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, you'll generally
be successful.
This example also shows that the general prescriptive rule that we should
never
use passive constructions where active ones are possible is simply a lot
of bunk. Sometimes passive constructions elevate your prose or speech to
a necessarily more formal level.
Vocabulary
A major area of style shifting involves choice of vocabulary. We all
know, for example, which words are "dirty" words in our language and when
they are acceptable and when they are not acceptable to use. We also know
which words are high-brow words that we use to impress people. In English,
it is the case that we often use more Latinate words when we want to sound
formal and impressive and intelligent. What sounds more impressive, for
example, "divine" or "godly"? My intuition is that "divine" sounds more
learned. Think about differences like "there are many factors" as opposed
to "there are multiple factors". See how "multiple" makes the phrase sound
fancier? We also have words that we know constitute the technical jargon
of a particular field and we know how and when to use them (if we participate
in that field). I read you a passage from a linguistics book that was filled
with what most likely sounded like impenetrable jargon to you and which
is pretty straightforward for a phonologist familiar with the technical
language of the field.
Finally, we know that some words are SLANG. Slang is actually a tricky
thing to define, but that doesn't stop us from having a clear sense that
there are words that are clearly slang words. So, if someone comes up to
you and says, "yo, dude, you see that tight car?" I bet you don't think
that the speaker is talking about a car that doesn't have a lot of leg
room. Instead, the word "tight" is being used to express the speaker's
admiration of the way the car looks. "Tight" here (as well as the word
"dude" is an example of slang).
From a linguistic point of view, there is nothing particularly unique
about slang words as words. They are just words and are formed by the same
morphological processes as other words and are subject to the phonotactic
constraints and so forth of the language that they are a part of. What's
special about them is what we might call their sociopsychological role--i.e.
how and when we use them and how we feel about them as words. Here are
a couple of properties that slang words have:
Informality. Slang words are almost inevitably used in very informal
contexts. Think about when you'd use clueless as opposed to unaware.
Group identification. Many slang words are markers of membership
in a particular group that is outside of the "mainstream" society.
People who use the term "dude" to refer to a person are generally younger
(though "dude" has been around for quite some time now). I didn't know
the slang use of the word "tight" above, but one of you all (who will remain
nameless) taught me. I'm older than the group that knows and uses that
word. Many ethnic groups have specific slang terms that identify people
who use them as clued in members. In fact, of course, membership works
both ways. If you don't know the slang terms, you are also clearly identifying
yourself as a non-member of a particular group.
Short life span. Slang terms often have a short life span, though
not all do. There are examples like "cram" (particularly relevant here)
that mean "study intensely over a short period of time" that have been
around for a long time. Other slang terms appear and then disappear from
the language fairly quickly. Maybe "groovy" is one such example. I don't
think that "groovy" has really had much staying power. It feels dated,
as if its productive use really didn't extend beyond the sixties.
Slang terms are scalar. Slang terms actually seem to fall along
a continuum of slanginess. Think about the following three examples: unaware,
dense, clueless. I'd say that "unaware" is not slangy at all, while "dense"
feels marginally slangy, and finally "clueless" feels the slangiest of
the three.
A final note. Often times, when slang terms hang around for a long enough
time in a language, they lose their slanginess and become more accepted
as a part of the standard use of the language. In most cases, they still
feel informal to some degree, but they don't feel like slang anymore. An
example might be the verb "rip off" meaning "steal". Basically, the idea
is that if slanginess is a scale, i.e. a continuum, there is a middle ground
where items feel like they somehow aren't clearly slang but they don't
feel very formal either. Such words are what linguists sometimes refer
to as COLLOQUIAL terms. They are informal, but they do not feel like slang.
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