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Sociolinguistics
1. What is sociolinguistics?
Sociolinguistics is a relatively new discipline: it was born in the 1960s as a field of study for those who were interested in real language use and function. Sociolinguists say that language does not exist separately from the community, the users of that language. Therefore, language must be studied as it is naturally used. Also, since speakers of a language form various communities, language will be VARIABLE. This means it will appear in different forms from community to community.
Let us take a popular example to illustrate the manner in which sociolinguistic research is carried out. In the most often quoted sociolinguistic study from the early 60’s, William Labov went to three department stores in New York City. These were Saks Fifth Avenue, serving upper classes, Macy’s, serving middle classes, and S. Klein, for lower income shoppers. Labov asked the clerks questions that required answers containing two words: “fourth floor”. From the way the clerks pronounced the r’s he drew conclusions on class differences. The clerks serving the more affluent shoppers at Saks Fifth Avenue said [fç˘_ flç˘], that is, dropped their r’s far less frequently than the ones at the discount store, S. Klein. Labov found that the upper classes generally use more r’s than the middle or lower classes. Another result was that people in general use more r’s when they pay attention to their speech. In this research, the frequency of r-pronunciation in English indicated a social class. We can say that speakers of English in New York City socially distinguished themselves from others by their r-pronunciation.
People socially distinguish themselves by the way they speak. The variety of language that is related to social groups is called social dialect or SOCIOLECT.
Sociolinguistic is The study of language in its social contexts and the study of social life through linguistics.
1. Regional variation
a. ‘Englishes’ (+levels of analysis)
The following dialogue is borrowed from a show on a British television channel. A man enters a petrol station shop.
Shop assistant: It’s self-serve.
Man: I don’t need any petrol, thanks.
Shop assistant: Good. ‘Cause we don’t have any. Only gas.
We can see why the short conversation above is funny. The Englishman uses the word petrol, and the American shop assistant gas, to name the fuel in cars. The humor comes from the shop assistant’s ignorance of the other variety of English.
According to the countries or regions where English is spoken as a mother tongue, we distinguish at least British (English, Irish, and Scottish), American, Canadian and Australian English, but there are a large number of further varieties within those countries as well. In a number of countries which used to be English colonies, such as India or Hong Kong (in Asia) and Nigeria or Kenya (in Africa), English is spoken as an official second language in addition to the dozens of locally spoken vernacular languages. These varieties differ from each other on many linguistic levels, from phonetics and phonology through the lexicon to syntax. In practical terms there are even more differences, for example, in orthography (spelling).
We can name the most famous English food, Fish and other. It depends on where you are. In Britain, it is fish and chips. But be sure not to ask for chips in an American restaurant, for we will not get the kind of fried potato you want. In the USA, the right term is French fries. To make things more confusing, however, Americans do use chips, but for the popular potato snack which looks very thin and round, and is packaged in a bag. These, by the way, are called crisps in Britain. Chips, French fries and crisps are examples of differences on the lexical level. Grammatical differences include what is considered plural (American (AmE) the police is vs. British (BrE) the police are) or whether the sick are treated in hospital (BrE) or in the hospital (AmE). A phonological example is the pronunciation of the ’r’ sound: in most of England, ‘r’ is not pronounced after a vowel at the end of words (father, fair) or before a consonant (herb, Barbie), but in most of the USA, it is. Can’t is pronounced with the vowel sound of far in Britain but with the vowel sound of pan in the States. Orthographic (spelling) differences include neighbor (AmE) and neighbour (BrE). Such differences make British, Irish, American, etc.
b. We all speak a dialect
Lexical, grammatical and phonological differences continue to exist on a smaller scale within a country or a region. Regional variants or DIALECTs are the most well-known type of variation and are traditionally studied by dialectologists. A phonological, example; the pronunciation of ‘r’. If we pronounce ‘father’ and ‘farther’, we say them differently. We pronounce the r in farther. However, most English people do not: they say [fa:D_] for both words, because they speak an r-less variety. On the contrary, most Americans keep their r’s in words such as farther; so they say the two words differently. Nevertheless, this is only a tendency, which means there is regional variation. The r-less variety is characteristic of the south of England; but the northern regions, as well as Ireland and Scotland, keep their r’s. Likewise, while most Americans in the States do pronounce their r‘s, some Americans use an r-less variety, for instance in Boston or New York (or as some write, “Noo Yawk”) City. The variation of the r sound has historic origins in both Britain and the United States.
The best-known examples of dialectal differences are words and expressions. For heavy rain, some say downpour, some say shower or toad frog strangler in the middle and southern states of the American east coast. Some of these lexical varieties (such as the last) occur mostly in the south.
There may be interesting differences in grammar, which appear strange to the outsider. Did you know that an Irishman may say yous when he means “you” in the plural (that is, for more than one people)? An American from the South (for example, from Georgia) may use y’all (you+all) for the same. Standard English does not differentiate between singular and plural you.
If there are a large number of language phenomena (words, grammatical features, sound varieties) that appear only in one region, they distinguish a regional variety called DIALECT. So a dialect is neither “country language” nor some language variety your grandparents speak; it is simply a geographical variety of language. We all speak a dialect of our mother tongue.
Does it surprise you that you speak a dialect? People usually think of others and not themselves as dialect speakers. This is because of the everyday meaning of “dialect”: because it is usually considered different from the standard, perhaps incorrect or ill-educated. (You will be even more surprised soon to see that the standard is also a dialect.) For now it is best to accept that a dialect is simply a regional variety in sociolinguistics, and because we usually grow up in one region, we speak that regional variety.
c. Accent
Accents represent varieties in pronunciation (phonetics and phonology). An accent tells us which country or part of the country the speaker comes from; accordingly, people are said to have an Irish accent, an American accent, an Edinburgh accent, or a ‘Southern drawl’ (as they say in the USA). A foreign accent warns that the speaker comes ‘from abroad’ and is not a native speaker of a language. Since accents are phonetic or phonological variants, and do not involve lexical and syntactic features, they are not equivalent to dialects. However, dialect regions may be recognized by the speakers’ characteristic accent. Received Pronunciation (RP) is a highly prestigious accent in England.
So far we have distinguished sociolects (or social dialects, which are social varieties) and dialects (or regional varieties). We also clarified the difference between dialect and accent. Note that we used the word ‘language’ for larger regional varieties like ‘Englishes’ (English English, American English, Australian English, etc.), but called smaller regional varieties ‘dialects’.
d. Language or dialect?
Is Irish English a language or “just a dialect”? Is it a separate language, like Hungarian, Slovenian or Estonian, or is it just a dialect of English, like London Cockney or Boston English? If the ‘thing’ spoken in a country is a language, then Irish English should be a language; but one can argue that speakers of other varieties of English can very well understand Irish English, and then, according to this criterion called intelligibility (=‘understandability’), it is a dialect. We cannot really decide if Irish English is a dialect or a language. It is not always easy to determine if a certain variety should be considered a language or a dialect. Everyday thinking suggests that if speakers from two regions can understand one another (that is, if the two varieties are mutually intelligible), they speak dialects; and if they do not understand each other (that is, if the two varieties are mutually unintelligible), the speakers speak two different languages. This criterion often works but sometimes it does not: there are mutually unintelligible dialects and mutually intelligible languages! In China, for example, Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible varieties, that is, the speakers cannot understand one another, yet Cantonese and Mandarin are considered dialects because they are spoken in one country and have a common writing system. On the other hand, Serbians and Croatians, who now live in different countries, understand each other perfectly. In case you think this is perhaps an exception, there will be more examples here. Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian speakers can more or less understand one another; Ukrainian and Russian (and many other Slavic languages) are mutually intelligible; and Hindi (in Northern India) and Urdu (in neighbouring Pakistan) are also mutually intelligible varieties. All these are considered languages, and not dialects, because they are used in different countries or have different historical and cultural backgrounds. For instance, Croats are largely Catholic and use Latin script, whereas Serbs are mostly Orthodox and use Cyrillic letters in their writing.
To make things a bit more complicated, dialects are not really affected or separated by country borders: for instance, German gradually changes as we go from north to more southern regions, even when crossing a country border. Therefore, we can speak about a dialect continuum. Nearby languages also become similar, as the Italian spoken near the French border becomes more “French-like” and the neighbouring French variety more “Italian-like”. The same can be said about minority languages spoken in a country: ethnic Slovakian or Schwabish in Hungary sound more “Hungarian-like” than ‘mainland’ Slovakian or German.
As you can see, linguists have tried their best to distinguish dialect and language – but they simply cannot do so by using linguistic means. We cannot really define in linguistic terms where dialects end and languages start. For this reason, and also because of social and cultural factors such as national pride, religion and writing systems, sociolinguists usually let the speakers of that variety decide for themselves if they speak a dialect or a language.
2. Individual variation
We can probably think of some talk show host on TV or a politician, or perhaps a member of our family who has a characteristic way of speaking. Perhaps s/he has a slight lisp or speaks fast or uses certain expressions more frequently than others. This type of language variety is called IDIOLECT, and marks individual variation. Although sociolinguistics typically deals with groups, the individual’s role should not be underestimated. Researchers usually get data from individuals; this means they meet, ask or contact individuals, who mark their identity by their individual language use.
When children or comedians imitate someone else’s speech, they usually choose some of the most characteristic features. We perhaps feel that the way we speak in our mother tongue somehow expresses who we are, that is, our identity. This becomes obvious if we imagine how badly we can be hurt if someone mocks our way of speaking. If we change our way of speaking in any manner (e.g. adopt a new accent or use new words), that means we adopt a new identity. This often happens to people who move to live in a new region of their country and then slowly accommodate their speech to the local variety. It also happens to anyone who learns a foreign language, especially when trying to imitate its pronunciation and intonation.
For some Hungarians, the rising intonation at the end of “Did you have a good time?” is problematic. Adopting rising intonation in yes / no questions is a strange new behavior for a Hungarian and some may feel they behave “like a monkey”. Changing the ways of talking, and thus speaking a foreign language means creating a new identity.
Bibliography
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