Baca Juga
1. Social variation
Social variation includes varieties related to socio-economic status, ethnic varieties and gender (or sex-related) varieties. Labov and others showed that r-pronunciation or r-dropping “a linguistic variable” was related to socio-economic status (higher, middle or lower classes). Black English Vernacular (BEV) is an ethnic variety of Standard American English and its grammar is systematically different from the grammar of the standard. Language also varies according to age. The film in the 1950s, show the different language of conversations. Sociolinguists think that age-related variation is connected to language change, and have shown that teenagers tend to lead innovations. Finally, sex is also a cause for variation. The last social variety discussed was men’s and women’s speech. In some languages, females and males speak as if they had two different dialects (different verb forms related to speaker’s sex, and sometimes to listener’s sex as well). In English, women tend to use more standard forms than men. Even young girls and boys were observed to behave like this: girls used more and boys fewer standard forms of the verb ending –ing in word such as “playing”.
2. Standard language and dialect
The standard turned out to be a prestigious and idealized variety. The standard sets the norm for people in educated language use. People do not always use their language according to the standard: instead, they follow the grammar in their heads. When we try to describe the rules of a language as it is used, we create a descriptive grammar. This is different from prescriptive grammar, which instructs people how to use language. Language purism is related to prescriptivism. Independently of whether we accept prescriptivism or descriptivism, we need tolerance and acceptance of language variation when we meet people.
Example of this is Arabic, spoken in various countries in the Near East and Africa (e.g. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt). For this language, the norm or standard is set by the Koran (Q’uran) is “Koranic”. In several hundred years old, no one speaks its language anymore. In sum, a standard variety is a prestigious one usually taught at school and to non-native speakers, spoken by educated people, and used in print and news broadcasts.
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