Dialect And Variation Flashcards
DIALECTS IN THE UNITED STATES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUT
Dialects reflect past, present and the future and mark the original and cultural cartography of America. American dialects still reflect the dialects of the first english colonizers as well as the contact of the speaker of the another languages.
Obviusly, there are different stages. The inicial phase is the FOUNDATION STAGE:
In the stage speakers came from different regional backgrounds and language is not homogeneous.
The second phase is called EXONORMATIVE STABILIZATION:
In the stage communities stabilize under foreign dominance.
In the next stage, NATIVIZATION, there is a fundamental transition toward independence and unique linguistic usages and structures emerge.
In the fouth phase, known as ENDONORMATIVE STABILIZATION, the new nation adopts its own language norms, while in the final phase, DIFFERENTIATION, internal diversificatiom takes over and new dialects evolve on their own. In such a progression, we see how language variation in the United States has developed from its initial roots in the English language of the early British colonists to its current state in which the dialects of American English are viewed as the regional and cultural manifestations of diversity within America.
First English in America
JAMESTON
The first colonies was founded in Jameston, Virginia, in 1607. At that time British english was different from english today. There were many distinctive dialects related to different areas and there was not a unified standard language yet. These languages differences had a profound effect on the development of the dialects of the United States, infact even today dialect differences can be traced back to that time. The language of the early colonists was closer to todays american english than todays standard british english. There are words used in America that can be traced back to the colonists that are no longer used in Britain. For example, american can use the word ‘mad’ with its early meaning angry, while british speakers use it to refer to mental instability. Similarly, american use the word fall to refer to autumn, while british don’t.
The american use of ‘gotten’ is an older form supplanted in Britain by got.
A difference between british english and american english is the loss of ‘r ‘after wovel before consonance and this is the result of the varities of english spoken by the colonists.
In Virginia, the aristocrats built a rich society based on agricolture and they were R-less south estern english speakers, while in other areas colonists were R-ful, especially the Scoths and the Irish. As a consequence, upland Virginia speech is r-ful.
BOSTON
Also Eastern New England was an r-less dialect area, while the New York area became r- pronuncing as a consequence of 1.English-speaking settlement by r-pronuncing speakers; 2. The reduction of dialect differences and 3. Relative lack of contact with London as compared with speakers in Eastern New England. Today, r-lessness is receding sharply in Southern dialect areas like Tidewater Virginia. It is also declining in New York City and Eastern New England.
Some language differences derived from cultural differences, for example early residents of Eastern New England made their living from the sea and so their dialect was rich with nautical terminology. The influence of south eastern England can also be felt in more southern dialect areas. For example, while the Tidewater Virginia area is r-less, there are r-ful pockets in the Chesapeake Bay area.
As we move inland, traditional regional dialects tend to be characterized by a preponderance of farming terms. The traditional speech of rural New York State is also rich with localized farming terms.
Western New England speech is different due to Dutch and German influence. The Dutch had control of the Hudson Valley area until 1644, when the British took over. Then a huge influx of Germans began pouring into New York and Pennsylvania in the early 18 century. The only Dutch and German terms that remained in region are placed names such Brooklyn and Harlem.
PHILADELPHIA
Philadelphia was established in the 1680 by quakers under the leadership William Penn. The quakers came from North England, so Philadelphia reflected these linguistics carachteristics. In Philadelphia there were also emigrants from Wales and Germany. The Germans develop Pennsylvania Dutch that was not really dutch but a variety of German affected by the speaker contact with English. Another group that settled in early Philadelphia was the Scots-Irish. There were many waves of immigration of the Scots-Irish. The variety of English that the Scots-Irish brought to America was arrader archaic form of Scots English. Scots Irish English was strongly r-ful and remained so.
The Scots-Irish first settled in Pennsylvania and then spread trought out the middle Atlantic States and the highlands. They also picked up German terms, such as sauerkraut. In addiotion, they borrowed the musical instrument known as the dulcimer, which would later bacome a trademark of Scots-Irish culture in the Southern highlands, as well as the German-style log cabin.
As early as the 1730s, they began traveling southward down the Shenandoah Valley in the western part of Virginia. From there they fanned out into the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, bringing with them enduring features of speech.
The influence of the Scots-Irish can be seen in the use of ‘till’ to express time (e.g. quarter till four), constructions such as the car needs washed, and the use of ‘want’ plus a preposition, as in the dog wants in. In addition, the Midland feature known as ‘positive anymore’ (e.g. They watch a lot of Netflix anymore) is of Scots-Irish origin.
CHARLESTON
The Scots-Irish had small indipendent farms and remained separated from the plantation culture of the south. The most important center was Charleston, South Carolina, established in 1670. It was an heterogenous speech area. Its first european settlers were English, Irish and Welsh followed by Huguenots from France, Dutch people from Holland, Baptistes from Massachutesh, Quakers from Lousiana and number of Irish catholichs.
Slaves were imported from West-coast Africa and the Caribbean to work in the rice plantations. There were also a group of Barbadians who established plantations and started an active trade with the West Indies.
Obviously, all of this contributed to the formation of language and culture of Charleston.
As early as 1708, its population included as many blacks and whites, as by 1724 there were three times as many blacks as white. Some linguistists maitain that the contact situation among speakers
of various African languages and English resulted in the formation of a new contact-based language, or CREOLE language. Other researchers believe that African American Englis (AAE) derives directly from British English. However the radical language contact situations in which ita rose left enduring marks on the language variety that have persisted to this day.
Charleston speech affected South Carolina and Georgia. Florida was not as evely influeced because it was under Spanish rule until the early 19century.
Charleston speech was r-less and at the same time developed as a distinctive dialect that today remains quite different from other Southern US dialects.
NEW ORLEANS
The first secolers in New Orleans were French, Germans and Slaves. Blacks developed creole based on french. Then the Acadians or Cajuns arrived. The Acadians were people of frenc discendence who had been deported from the Canadian settlement of Acadia and spoke archaic French. Today the Acadians speech survives in Cajun English. Spain also had controlled over New Orleans, but French language has always had a greater linguistic impact then Spanish. Terms of French origin that originated in this region later spread all over the United States, for example brioche. Even when New Orleans post into American hands, French influence remained strong.
EARLIER AMERICAN ENGLISH: THE COLONIAL PERIOD
When the thirteen colonist became the United States, it was clear that American English was becoming different from British English, due to the various influences.
In addition, the development of English in America was affected by the variety of English spoken by people coming from different parts of Great Britain. Another caractheristics of American English was the fact that when early emigrants arrived they found new objcets, plants, animal and natural phenomena for which they had no name. Same names were borrowed from other languages, above all native American Indian languages; in other cases they created new words from English, for example seaboard, underbrush and backwoods all are compounds which were created in America; in addition, some existing words were given new meanings to better suit the American landscape. The term “Americanism” was coined in the 1780s to refer to particular terms and phrases that were coming to characterize English in the early United States but not British English. Early Americans also wanted to indicate the political separation from Britain through the language. For example, the early American lexicographer gave americans spellings as color for colour, wagon for waggon, fiber for fibre, and tire for tyre.
However, some linguistic changes took place in British English and American English at the same time. For example, thee and thou were replaced by you in both Britain and America. Infact, the transition from British-based, external norms to American based, internal norms was not a rapide, seamless one.
There are 3 speech areas in the Atlantic States: The North, The Midland, The South. People who learned the varieties of English in the second half of the 19 and the early 20th century show a connection to the earliest American English dialect differences. The traditional dialect of American English are ruther conservative when compared with standard British English, for example in the dialects areas of New England and the South there still are lexical items from Elizabeth English. In rural New England we may still hear terms such as the fourteenth century word rowan, meaning “a second crop grown in a hayfield which has been harvested”, while in the South we may hear terms as kinfolk, “family, relatives”, and liketa “almost”. The Midland dialect area traditionally tended to be more innovative chiefly because immigrants from British Isles and Europe continued to pour into this area.
It seem apparent that the seeds of regional speech were sown early in the history of English in the United States, and regional distictions have remained surprisingly intact over several centuries.
Whereas many terms have passed out of the New England lexicon, some newer terms such as the use of rotary for “traffic circle” are largely confined to the traditional New England dialect region
AMERICAN ENGLISH EXTENDED
No single map can paint a full picture of regional dialect variation in American English; dialect area contain sub-dialects; regional variation intersects with language varition based on factors like social status, ethnicity, gender, and speech style.
The map in the Figure 4.3. is based on lexical differences characterizing traditional US dialects and portrays the primarily westward flow of dialect expansion in the Unites Statess. In the latter half of the 18th century, Europeans and their descendants in New England and New York began pushing westward beyond New York into Ohio, driven by overcrowding, high land prices, steep taxes, and the religious and social conversatism of the Northeast. The northeastern corner of Ohio, called the Western Reserve, became an important region of New England speech. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 deflected migrations from New York and New England from the Ohio River Valley to the Great Lakes. After 1833, thousands of people came to Detroit, fanning out from there into Michigan and Northem Illions. By 1850, most of lower Michigan had been inhabited by New England farmers.
In general, the Northern United States is largely a region of New England expansion. It forms a large dialect area. Traditional dialect items characterizing the North were phonological features such as the different pronunciation of the vowels in north and force, as in horse and hoarse. Traditional lexical items that typify Northem speech include the use of pail (versus bucket) and grammatical features include items like dove as the past tense of dive.
This region draws its dialectal distinctiveness, in part, from the numerous non-English-speaking Europeans who were among its earliest non native-inhabitants. In fact, the 1860 Census shows that 30 percent of those living in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and northern Michigan were born outside the United States.
The westward expasion of the American Midland was accomplished chiefly by three groups of speakers: those from the Upper South, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the New England/New York dialect area. For the most part, the three streams remained separate, giving rise to a three-tiered settlement, most notable in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In some places, heavy concentrations of Southern settlement extend northward beyond the boundaries of the Upper South, forming anomalous dialect pockets called Apexes.
Also moving westward into the Midland along with Upper Southerners were people from the Mid- Atlantic, chiefly Pennsylvania and Maryland, who settled in Ohio, Indiana, and Central Illinois. Subsequently, they moved into Southern Iowa, Missouri, and other points west of the Mississippi. At the same time that the Northern and Midland dialect boundaries were being extended westward, the Lower South was expanding as well. Several dialect lines were laid in Georgia. Alabama i salso sometimes considered a separate sub-dialect area, since extensive habitation by English speakers took place rather late. However, Mississippi is Lower Southern in character. Southern Oklahoma and Texas are Southern as well, and Central Texas has developed its own sub- variety of Southern speech.
As the English language was transported westwars in America, dialect mixing intesified, and America English became more and more different from English in the British Isles.
Another factor that had an impact on the development of American English in the nineteenth century was the enormous influx of immigrants from other countries. Millions of Irish people poured into America together with Germans and Italians.
A large majority of the non-English immigrants settled in the North which further intensified dialect differences between Southern and non-Southern speakers.
THE WESTWARD EXPANSION OF ENGLISH
While immigrants were pouring into the United State in the 19th century, all sorts of Americans were pushing westward toward the Pacific Coast, particularly after the California Gold Rush of 1848.
The Northwest encompasses the entire state of Washington as well as most of Oregon and Western Idaho. The Southwest spans from West Texas to Southern California. Prior to the arrival of English-speaking settlers, the Southwest had long been dominated by Spanish speakers, first under Spanish and Mexican rule and then under the US government. The influence of Colonial Spanish on the English of the Southwest is pervasive to this day, chiefly in the lexicon, with such terms as corral, canyon, and fiesta, all three of which are now part of Mainstream American English (MAE).
Southern Texas remains largely Spanish-speaking to the present day. Central Texas received a large influx of English speakers. Northern California received its first major influx of English speakers in 1848, with the advent of the Gold Rush. San Francisco became a thriving urban center in a very short time period, and people from all over the United States and the world flocked to the area during the latter half of the 19th century and throughout the 20th. In particular, immigrants from Asia, especially China, have long been a very prominent part of San Francisco’s linguistic landscape.
The earliest English speakers in the Nothwest were the British, who had settled in Washington. English-speaking settlers began arriving in the Northwest in large numbers. In addition, there was a significant Scandinavian presence.
The New Englanders who populated the Pacific Northwest brought with them a number of Northern dialect features.
At the same time, some newer dialect areas in the West are now becoming more distinctive from other varieties of American English. For example, a distictive California English. This dialect is characterized by a series of vowel pronunciation changes.
We see that some innovations in American English are now actually spreading from West to East. A focus on the original development of English on the West Coast may reflect a westward expansion of the traditional dialects of the Eeastern United States, but a contemporary perspective shows that some regions on the West Coast are forming their own dialect.
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE STATE OF AMERICAN ENGLISH
As we consider the traditional dialect landscape changes from the origins to the 21th century, we must consinder all the socia-historical and social-cultural changes that have taken place in time. Among the important changes are:
1. Changing patterns of immigration and language contact;
2. Shifting patterns of population movement;
3. Changing cultural centers;
4. Increasing interregional accessibility.
The 20th century immigrations brought languages that affected MAE. These languages serve as bases for the creation of new socia-cultural varities of English.
The influence of Spanish has recently became so pervasive that Spanish influenced English is now so widespread in the United States that Latino English has its own subvarieties.
Nowadays research indicates that some distinctive varieties of Asian English have arisen as a consequence of large influexes of Asian especially from China, Vietnam, etc.
Another important feature of recent times is the change in cultural relations among different peoples living in America. The desegragation of ethich communities is a process in American society brings speakers of different ethnicities into closer contact with one another. The result of this interethnich contact is the erosion of ethnic dialect boundaries.
Not only are speakers coming into contact with different cultural and linguistic groups, but we also find that cross-cultural and cross-dialect mixing results when large populations of speakers migrate from one region of the country to another.
Migration routes in the United States are marked by subtle dialect lines.
African American remain rather isolated and there has been limited as similation with other speech varities. An important influence has come from popular music with terms like “jazz”, “riff” and “jam” for older generations and “rup” and “hip-hop” for younger ones.
Youth culture in America is affected by African American music, fashion and waves of speaking. Recently, the American south has whitnessed a large influx of European American speakers, so that in areas such as Miami, Floria, Texas, etc, southerners are overwhekmed by non-Southerners. A third type of social-cultural change that has affected America is the shifting of cultural and economic sentences. In the early 20th century, new metropolitan areas offered great opportunities for a lot of Americans who therefore left rural areas.
Today, these metropolitan areas are the focal points for many current linguistic innovations. In addition, dialect features that were formerly markers of regional speech have been transformed into markers of social class, ethnicity, or urban-rural distinctions.
Obviusly, these movements from rural areas to urban areas was marked by linguistic transformations. For example, the increasing of urbanization caused the loss of much of the traditional rural nature vocabulary.
The final type of change we must bear in mind is the ever-widening network of transportation and intercommunication that has spread across the US landscape throughout the later twentieth
century. The development of major interstate highways, broke down formidable geographic barriers, and once-remote regions have been transformed into havens for tourists and other outside visitors. Cable and satellite television, mobile telephones, and internet communications, including social media, are doing the rest.
One of the most important linguistic consequences of this increasing contact has been the emergence of the phenomenon we now call dialect endangerment. Such a fate is currently befalling a number of island communities on the Eastern Seaboard that have become increasingly accessible to tourists and new residents during the latter half of the twentieth century. Studies of islands on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and in the Chesapeake Bay indicate that some of these dialects are in a moribund, or dying, state.
However, there can be different responsen to dialect endargerment whereas some areas are losing most of the traditional dialect features while other are increasing their use of dialect features.
The Atlas of North American English (2006) however show that American dialect are alive and well.
Clearly, new dialects must be included along with the old when we consider the contemporary state of dialects in the United States. Dialect difference in America is by no means a thing of the past, and the boundaries whose foundations were laid when the first English colonists arrived in Jamestown in 1607 will continue to exist in some form long into the future.
SOCIAL VARIETIES OF AMERICAN ENGLISH
Social status and class divisions have long been recognized in the study of language variation in American English. The Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada distinguished three social categories:
Type I subjects were those the fieldworker classified as having “little formal education, little reading and restricted social contacts”.
Type II were those with “better formal education (usually high school) and wider reading and social contacts”.
Type III were those with “superior education (usually college), cultured background, wide reading and/or extensive social contacts
SOCIAL STATUS AND CLASS
The social reality of stratification seems obvious, but identifying the precise traits that define social status differences in a reliable way is not that simple.
For sociolinguists and other social science researchers, the challenge is to translate these abstract concepts into concrete attributes that can be measured reliably and correlated with linguistic variation. Typical variables used to measure social status differences include occupation, education, income, and residency.
The overall ranking obtained from combining scores for the different variables is the socioeconomic status (SES). Thus, it is possible to divide the distribution of scores into discrete social status groupings of some type, with labels such as upper-class, middle-class, working- class, and so forth.
A number of studies in sociolinguistics, for example, Labov’s Social Stratification of English in New York City, used such indexes to explore how language differences were linked to social status differences. At the same time, SES scales have been subjected to critical scrutiny, as social scientists realized that most of them are ideologically grounded in the values of mainstream, socially dominant groups. For example, women traditionally have been grouped into socioeconomic categories based on the characteristics of their husbands or fathers, often with misleading results.
According to the view of class based on analyses of Western society, it is assumed that all social groups share certain expectations and view increasess in social status as positive and desirable. Under this view, sometimes referred to as the consensus model of social class, individual competion is emphasized over conflicts between classes, and members of all social class groups value the linguistic usages of uppe-class groups more highly than the vernacular language varieties associeted with lower-class groups. Under this view, even speakers of quite vernacular varieties still believe that MAE is in some sense “better” than non-mainstream dialects. Under the conflict model, class differences are viewed as the consequences of these divisive conflicts; in turn, linguistic differences are seen as reflective of the interests of different classes. Accordingly, the standard–vernacular dichotomy may be viewed as symbolic of a class struggle, and vernacular speech is seen as an expression of alienation from the upper classes with whom the lower classes are in conflict. Members of lower-status groups may thus feel that socioeconomic improvement can only be achieved through class struggle rather than through accommodation to upper-class norms, including linguistic norms. Speakers may index their class of origin by the use of socially stigmatized features (We don’t want no imposters) on one occasion but use the MAE variant (We don’t want any imposters) at another point. For example, in a study of a conversation between two young male university students in the South, when talking about family in the local community, the two use more vernacular features; conversely, when talking about friends at the university, their linguistic usages are more MAE. Many current sociolinguistic researchers have abandoned traditional social class models in favor of approaches to status differences. However the definition and measurement of class distintions remain a major challenge in sociolinguistic studies.
BEYOND SOCIAL CLASS
Part of the problem in examining social class is its intersection with other factors such as ethnicity, gender, age, style, region, and so forth. One of the important correlates of linguistic difference may relate to the so-called linguistic marketplace, that is the extent to which a person’s economic activity necessitates the use of a particular language variety. David Sankoff and Suzanne Laberge show that a person’s linguistic market index, a ranking assigned to speakers based upon descriptions of their socioeconomic life histories and experiences, may correlate with the use of standard versus vernacular language features more closely than social status designations based strictly on measures such as income, education, and housing type. Another parameter that intersects with social class relates to social network. For example, closed social networks that are characterized by repeated interactions with the same people in a number of spheres of activity (e.g. work, leisure, and church) tend to correlate with a greater concentration of localized, vernacular dialect features than do open social networks. Attention to the social practices in which people regurarly engage may help explain why speakers use certain language features versus others. Problems in the neatness of fit between social class and language are not simply problems with defining social class and grouping people into categories. Instead, many of the complexities relate to the ways in which economic interactions, social networks and practices, and presentations of self and other intersect with conventional status measures like income and education in their effects on language variation.
INDEXING SOCIAL MEANINGS THROUGH LANGUAGE VARIATION
The question of why and how language forms come to be associated with social meanings can be multidimensional and complex. William Labov classifies features as one of three types, depending on the nature of this association. INDICATORS are features whose usage patterns differ across different social groups but whose group associantios are not yet noticed. Indicators become MARKERS when people begin using their social group associations for interactional purposes. When features become the subject of overt commentary, they are classified as STEREOTYPES, as, for example, in the well-know case of New York City or Boston r-lessness. Sociolinguistic researchers may discuss the connections between linguistic and social meaning in terms of the notion of indexicality, or indexical order. Linguistic forms are held to “index” (“symbolize”) social meanings related to group belonging and interactional positioning due to their frequent use by particular speaker groups or in particular contexts of speaking. Features can have more than one type of meaning, and meanings can be seen to cycle from so-called “first order” indexical meanings to “second order” meanings. For example, a feature such as -in’ for -ing, that is extensively used by working-class speakers can come to take on associations of authenticity. These associations can then be capitalized upon by speakers of all social groups. Meanings can change further as they become more strongly associated with groups or more highly enregistered. Other features of which people are quite aware and which they frequently discuss relate to social class. For example, the use of negative concord in Don’t do nothin’ and the production of word-initial th as d in words like dese, dem, and dose are common stereotypes of uneducated, lower-class speech in American English. However, features associated with lower social ststus groups often carry quite positive associantions related to solidarity, authenticity, and so forth. However, it is not really possible to determine which type of meaning comes first. For this reason, Allan Bell maintains that it is best to conveive of linguistic-social associations as operating in terms of an “indexical cycle” rather than an “indexical order”
THE PATTERING OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE
According to popular belief, differences in language varieties are quite simple. The members of one social group always use a particular dialect variant while members of a different group use another one. But it is not so simple. In many cases, dialect features often show group-preferential rather than group-exclusive pattering. For example, a certain group may use a certain amount of -in’ for -ing while another group still uses -in’, but at a different rate. Furthermore, dialects are constantly undergoing change, and different groups and individuals may innovate and adopt changes at different rates, even within a seemingly unified community.
The essential characteristic of group-exclusive dialect form is that speakers from other groups do not use these forms, not that all the members of the group use them.
Group-exclusive usage is therefore easier to define negatively than positively. Viewed in this way, there are a number of language forms on all levels of language organization that show group-exclusive distribution. On a phonological level, the regional vowel productions, such as the pronunciation of the thought and lot vowels shown a largely group-exclusive distribution across regions. There are similar examples in morphology, such as the absence of the -s plural on nouns of weights and measures as in four acre and five pound, and the pluralization of you as youse, y’all, or you’ns.
The careful examination of usage patterns shows that social groups are often differentiated on the basis of how frequently speakers use particular forms. When a speaker sometimes produces one variant and sometimes another one, is referred to as inherent variability. This term reflects the belief, common among sociolinguists, that variability is an internal part of a single linguistic system and not the result of importations from another dialect. For example, speakers may optionally place the verbal particle up after a noun phrase rather than directly after the verb, so that She looked up the number may also occur as She looked the number up. Linguistis do not say that each of these sentences belongs to a distinctly different dialect, instead, we say that both of these sentences are options within a single system. It can be shown for a number of phonological and grammatical features that social varieties within a community are more typically differentiated by the extent to which particular features occur, their relative frequency, than by their categorical presence or absence. The fact that there is flunctuation between between forms such as -ing and -in’ does not mean that the fluctuation is random or haphazard. Although we cannot predict which variant might be used in any particular instance, there are factors that can increase or decrease the likelihood that certain variants will occur. These factors are known technically as constraints on variability. The constraints are of two major types, social and linguistic. There are various social factors or social variables, for example social class. In other words, we can say that a speaker from the lower working class is more likely to use both -in’ for -ing. Not all linguistic structures correlate with social status differences in the same way. Since there are diffent patterns of correlation between social differences and linguistic variation and many ways of differentiating social groups, it is difficult to answer the question of how many social dialects there are in English. It is important to understand that both continuous and discrete patterns of sociolinguistic variation may simultaneously exist within the same population.
LINGUISTIC CONSTRAINTS ON VARIABILITY
Language variation is not simply related to social factors but are also due to Linguistic Constraints on variability. An example is process of word final CONSONANT CLUSTER REDUCTION that may affect sound sequences such st, nd, ld, kt.
This process means that word such as west, wind, cloud, and act may be pronounced without the final member of the cluster, as wes’, win’, col’ and ac’, respectively; and this reduction is increased when the cluster is followed by a word beginning with a consonant. This means that cluster reduction is more frequent in contexts such as west coast than in contexts like west end.
Some words are more likely to undergo reduction, such as wind, guest; while others for example words with –ed suffix will not. In some cases, linguistic constraints on variability can be ordered differently across varieties of english. Most variables are caused by social constraints such as states, regionality, gender and ethnicity. Some constraints are more important than others in their effect on the fluctuation of form
THE SOCIAL EVALUATION OF LINGUISTIC FEATURES
Socialy prestigious variants are forms that are value according to their association with high status groups, whereas socialy stigmatized variants are associated with law status groups. There are
grammar forms in American English that can be considered prestige variants in some social context, for example the use whom in “Whom did you see?” or never in “Never have I seen...” However example of prestige variants are rare. For present-day American English, the vast majority of linguistic features with social status associations exist on the axis of stigmatization rather than the axis of prestige. Classic illustrations involving grammatical features include the familiar cases of negative concord (They didn’t do nothing), regularized past tense verb forms (He knowed they were right), etc. There are also lexical shibboleths such as ain’t. Linguistic forms that are assigned their social evaluation on the basis of these widely recognized norms are said to carry overt prestige. When forms are positively valued apart from, or even in opposition to, mainstream norms, they are said to carry covert prestige. In the case of overt prestige, the social valuation lies in a unified, widely accepted set of institutional norms, whereas in the case of covert prestige, the positive social significance lies in the local culture of social relationships. Features that are widely socialy stigmatized, such as negative concord, subject-verb agreement, etc, may function at the same time as positively valued, covertly prestigious features in terms of local interactional norms. In fact, the social significance of language forms changes over time, it may be difficult for present-day speakers of English to believe that linguistic shibboleths such as ain’t were once socially inconsequential. Furthermore, shifts in social significance may take place over just the course of a few generations. In his classic study of the Lower East Side of New York City, William Labov showed that, for the older generation, there was very little social class stratification for the use of postvocalic r, but younger speakers showed a well-defined pattern of social stratification, indicating that the presence of r (cart) was more highly valued than its absence. The social significance og linguistic variables may also vary from region to region. As a native Philadelphian, an author grew up associating the pronunciation of aunt with the lot vowel with high-status groups, but he was shocked to discover later in life that the pronunciation of aunt he considered to be prestigious was characteristic of some Southern dialects.
SOCIAL CLASS AND LANGUAGE CHANGE
Language change usually starts in a social group and then spread to ohers. There has been debate on what social classes originate language change. The popular view is that upper classes originate change and other social classes follow, but the lower social classes are much more responsable then we could image. Upper working- and lower middle-class groups tend to have the strongest loyalties to their local communities and so are actively engaged in initianing and spreading localized changes. At the same time, members of these social class groups also have connections to speakers in outside groups. In order to understand the role of social class in language change, it is essential to understand the distinction between changes that take place below the level of conscious awareness, so-called changes from below, and those that take place above the level of consciousness, or changes from above. Many of the phonological changes in American English are changes from below. Changes from aboe tendo to reflect a movement away from socially stigmatized features. For example, the adoption or r-lessness in the late 18th century and aerly 19th century by speakers of some regional varieties in the United States, based on the external, British prestige norm, is an example of change from above. The spread of new forms through a population is only one side of language change. The other side concerns resistance to change. Whereas change is certainly natural and
inevitable, some social groups may differentiate themselves by holding out against changes taking place in other social groups. For the most part, it is the lower classes that adopt these changes initially and the upper classes that tend to resist them. It is the upper classes that have the most investment in maintaining features that are considered to be “standard”. On the other hand, the lower classes have less investment in maintaining current language standards. By resisting the changes that occur in lower status groups, the social stratification of linguistic differences is mantained and even heightened. The bottom line is that higher-status groups do not want to be mistaken for lower-status groups in language any more than they do in other kinds of behavior. In many respects, then, the social differentiation of language in American society is typified by the resistance to proposed changes initiated by the lower classes, especially the upper-working and lower-middle classes, by a steadfast upper class rather than the initiation of change by the upper classes and subsequent emulation of these changes by the lower classes.
ETHNICITY AND AMERICAN ENGLISH
Ethnicity is not a given or fixed attribute bur rather can be fluid and multifaceted. Furthermore, it is actually quite difficult to think about the relationship between language variation and ethnicity in terms of simple correlations.
What is popularly identified as “ethnicity” is also linked to other social constructions such as race. Historically, the definition of race has focused oh physucal traits and genetic code though, in reality, sociopolitical and social-psychological process play a large role in the grouping of peoples into different racial groups. While sociologists study racial theory as a fundamental axis of social organization in the United States, linguists generally restrict their descriptions to “ethnic groups”. In sociolinguistics, many studies do not tease out the factors of race and ethnicity, but historical and current racial designations obviously have played an active role in segregating groups now studied under the rubric of ethnolinguistic variation.
The definition of an ethnic group is complex and controversial. Usually, it involves the following kinds of parameters:
1) origins that precede or are external to the state;
2) group membership that is involuntary;
3) ancestral tradition rooted in a shared sense of peoplehood;
4) distinctive value orientations and behavioral patterns;
5) influence of the group on the lives of its members;
6) group membership influenced by how members define themselves and how they are defined by others.
ETHNIC VARIETIES AND ETHNOLINGUISTIC REPERTOIRE
Several sociolinguistic labels have been used to describe ethnicity-based language variation. Clyne defines an ethnolect as a variety of the majority language that is modified through a period of bilingualism of an immigrant group. For example, a group of German speakers settling in the southeastern region of Pennsylvania or Wisconsin may go through a period of bilingualism and eventually adopt an English variety that reflects some effects of German on the variety of English used in the community. These persistent structural impositions after language shift takes place are referred to as substrate effects.
Other terms, such as socioethnic dialect or ethnic dialect, are used in a slightly broader. These labels are convenient but also problematic because the notion of ethnic affiliation is complex and malleable. For example, it is commonplace in US society to talk about “Mexican English” or “Asian English” but people of Latin American and Asian descent encompass a wide range of different ethnicities and language varieties.
Furhermore, people who are not considered members of a particular ethnic group may use linguistic structures associated with the group for a variety of reasons, as for example, in the case of white youth who regularly use African American English-derived features of hip hop language. Sarah Bunin Benor (2010) introduces the notion of ethnolinguistic repertoire. The repertoire is defined as a “fluid set of linguistic resources that members of an ethnic group may use variably as they index their linguistic identity”. This approach emphasizes an individual’s use of features in social practice rather than a unitary system that characterizes a community of speakers.
