Individual Variation Flashcards
What did Susie Dent find?
Susie Dent, English lexicographer and etymologist, proposes that we think of ourselves and our groups as ‘tribes’. She states that we are all parts of these ‘tribes’ that determine our language. Private languages can be a loud marker of who we are or want to be, and where we fit and don’t fit in society. She says that “we shield our private languages in order to keep outsiders firmly out”. Tribe talk is essentially jargon that can be used to unite people or exclude others.
What are the four researchers for language and age?
Anita Stenstrom states that some common features of teenspeak are the use of slang, irregular turn taking, verbal dueling, overlaps, teasing and name calling, indistinct articulation and taboo and language mixing
Penelope Eckert states that slang is used to connect an individual to youth culture and to set themselves off from other generations and some typical features include using double negatives, the rising inflection and repeating words such as ‘like’ or ‘okay’ especially as fillers
Ignacio Palacios (2011) states that teenagers are more direct and not afraid of potential FTAs.
Vivian de Klerk (2005) states that younger people have the freedom to challenge linguistic norms as they seek to establish new identities. The patterns of speech formed by parents are eroded by patterns in peer groups due to the need to be seen as modern and cool to appear as a distinct peer group.
Researchers of Language and Social Class
Bourdeiu, Trudgill, (Chechire, Kerswill and Williams), Bernstein and Freeborn
What did Bordieu found?
Bordieu (1988) talks about ‘cultural capital’ invested into education and other lifestyle choices as a means to gain economic and other advantages in society.
Language is a key part of this as others make presumptions using it; more favorable career aspects are available for more standard language
What did Trudgill find?
Trudgill (1988) looked at 60 random people from Norwich and divided them into classes based on occupational status, income, education, locality and housing type.
He found that the higher up his class scale a person was, the more likely they were to use standard language forms of language including pronunciation and grammar.
Lower class participants, on the other hand, were more likely to:
drop the final -s in third person verbs; such as wear instead of wears
use -in instead of -ing
use glottal stop
drop the ‘h’ sound at the start of words
The results did vary from region to region according to age.
What did Cheshire, Kerswill and Williams find?
Cheshire, Kerswill and Williams found similar outcomes in a study of working class and middle-class adolescents in Reading and Milton Keynes.
They found that the middle-class cohorts used the glottal stop much less frequently than the working class.
Furthermore, while the middle-class groups used more standard forms, the working-class adolescents used double negatives and the non-standard use of the following:
the second and third person past tense of the verb ‘to be’ (was and were)
don’t (he don’t)
come (she come here today)
done (he done that today)
relative pronouns (the house what we saw, rather than that)
the(look at them cars)
Whar did Bernstein find?
Bernstein (1960) came up with two varieties or forms of language use seen as part of the general theory of the nature of social systems and social rules
Elaborate code: used by well educated people. The vocabulary is extensive, detailed and articulate. It’s the language used by school teachers, in textbooks and in formal occasions. It often includes far more varied and meaningful words and phrases utilizing:
standard syntax
more subordinate clauses
fewer minor or unfinished sentences
more explicit references rather than pronouns
more imaginative or original content
more focus on communicating facts and abstract ideas, often associated with intelligence and maturity.
Restricted code: the language used by friends and family in informal settings. It’s sometimes slang and grammatically incorrect with basic vocabulary. It is often used by both working-class and middle-class (however, they know when to switch to elaborate code). Because working-class were being failed educationally so they often used:
fewer adjectives and adverbs
a greater reliance on repeated stock phrases and cliches
sympathetic circularity (it’s only natural, isn’t it?)
looser or non-standard syntax
simpler coordination (mainly using and or but)
more reliance on pronouns rather than explicit reference
more focus on communicating attitudes and feeling
What did Freeborn find?
The Incorrectness View: all accents are incorrect compared to Standard English and the accent of RP, Freeborn says that an accent’s popularity is due to fashion and convention not correctness. RP became the standard simply because it has social prestige
The Ugliness View: some accents just don’t sound nice. This is linked to stereotypes and negative social connotation, especially as the least liked accents seem to be found in poorer urban areas
The Impreciseness View: some accents are described as lazy or sloppy, such as Estuary English where some sounds are omitted or changed. Freeborn offers the Glottal stop as an argument that some sound changes are logical
Who investigated reactions to accents and what did he find?
Giles carried out a study to investigate the way that people react to different accents and he found that RP was rated highly for intelligence and social status, regional accents were rated more highly for friendliness and sincerity while rural accents were considered to more aesthetically pleasing than urban and industrial accents but subordinate to RP regarding social status.
What is Accomodation Theory?
Convergence is moderating language to create a relationship.
Divergence means moderating language to create distance in a relationship.
Overt prestige is moving an accent closer to RP and behaving in a socially desirable manner regardless of context.
Covert prestige is flouting social norms and moving nearer to regional accents
Studies related to accents
Howard Giles investigated accent by performing a matched guise experiment in which participants will listen to a speaker using a guise (an accent put on by the speaker) and rate that accent on various features.
His research details that RP was seen as the most intelligent and prestigious, whereas regional accents were seen as friendlier or more honest.
Ranked bottom for intelligence was the Brummie accent.
RP was less favorable in terms of integrity, but it shows industriousness.
Halliday states that ‘dialects have simply developed in different directions and no one is linguistically better than another’
‘to make anyone feel so ashamed is as indefensible as to make them feel ashamed of the color of his skin’
it states that rural accents are judged positively and seen as ‘musical’ whereas urban accents are seen as negative and ‘guttural’
Trudgill describes what he refers to as ‘good and bad language’ which includes third person verb inflections in Norwich, e.g I goes; dropping the ‘h’ in Norwich and Bradford and glottal stops in Glasgow
Howard Giles and Trudgill conducted a capital punishment where 500 seventeen-year olds were given a questionnaire about capital punishment.
There was an equal mix of sexes, set-up prepared lectures with teachers of different accents such as RP, typescript, Somerset, Birmingham and South Welsh.
Those who heard RP were more enthusiastic and though that the presentation was polished and showed authoritativeness
After a week, those who heard RP changed their opinion and switched to the regional accent they felt was more open and honest.
Howard Giles investigated accent by performing a matched guise experiment in which participants will listen to a speaker using a guise (an accent put on by the speaker) and rate that accent on various features.
His research details that RP was seen as the most intelligent and prestigious, whereas regional accents were seen as friendlier or more honest.
Ranked bottom for intelligence was the Brummie accent.
RP was less favorable in terms of integrity, but it shows industriousness.
Halliday states that ‘dialects have simply developed in different directions and no one is linguistically better than another’
‘to make anyone feel so ashamed is as indefensible as to make them feel ashamed of the color of his skin’
it states that rural accents are judged positively and seen as ‘musical’ whereas urban accents are seen as negative and ‘guttural’
Trudgill describes what he refers to as ‘good and bad language’ which includes third person verb inflections in Norwich, e.g I goes; dropping the ‘h’ in Norwich and Bradford and glottal stops in Glasgow
Howard Giles and Trudgill conducted a capital punishment where 500 seventeen-year olds were given a questionnaire about capital punishment.
There was an equal mix of sexes, set-up prepared lectures with teachers of different accents such as RP, typescript, Somerset, Birmingham and South Welsh.
Those who heard RP were more enthusiastic and though that the presentation was polished and showed authoritativeness
After a week, those who heard RP changed their opinion and switched to the regional accent they felt was more open and honest.
Internet chat
In Internet chat, participants are prepared to use more letters than necessary, particularly when to stimulate prosodic effects of speech, or to indicate Semantic nuance.
Linguistic compression are features, such as phonetic spelling, vowel omissions, and initialism, identified by several theorists including Christopher Werry.
The focus is on communication rather than grammar, so non-standard spelling yet according to David Crystal the apostrophe is one of the least dropped punctuation while texting.
Influential vs Instrumental power
Instrumental power: used by individuals or groups to establish or maintain power, usually due to authority or law, e.g teacher in a classroom
Features include:
Formal register
Imperative sentences; giving requests, demands or advice
Modal verbs; e.g ‘you should’ or ‘you must’
Mitigation; using language to reduce the seriousness of what is being said
Conditional sentences; e.g ‘if you…’
Declarative sentences
Latinate words such as include, continue and produce
Influential power: used to influence or persuade others, e.g an advertisement trying to sell a product
Features include:
Assertions; presenting opinions as facts
Metaphors; established ones can reassure the audience and evoke the power of memory, establishing a bond between the speaker and the listener
Loaded language; language e that can evoke strong and/or exploit feelings
Embedded assumptions; assuming the listener is really interested in what the speaker has to say
Classroom interactions
Classroom interaction is often structured in a pattern of initiation-response-feedback which is called the IRF model (Coulthard and Sinclair 1975)
In learning encounters, the features often include:
the teacher taking most turns
the teacher taking longer turns than pupils
adjacency triplets using the IRF model
discourse markers used by teacher
teacher often reformulates, summaries and evaluates what pupils say
teacher selects the pupils
use tag question
Face Theory
Goffman’s Face Theory: this concept describes the way in which people put across the best version of themselves in social interactions in order to gain respect or acceptance from others. He states that individuals are emotionally attached to the face that they constructed for Social situations and feel good when their face has been protected or maintained.
Brown and Levinson’s—Politeness Theory:
Positive face: an individual’s desire to be liked and appreciated by others.
Negative face: an individual’s desire to protect their personal rights.
Positive politeness: appealing to a person’s positive face can mean making the individual feel good about themselves e.g Well done!
Negative politeness: appealing to a person’s negative face by making them feel like they haven’t been imposed on or taken advantage of. e.g If you don’t mind…, Could you possibly…
Face-threatening act: being rude to people (positive face treating act) or impeding on their personal freedoms (negative face treating act). When we admit and apologise for our shortcomings, we commit face-threatening acts at ourselves. They can be verbal, nonverbal and paraverbal.
Politeness strategies include Bald-on record, Positive Politeness, Negative Politeness and Off-record.
Bald-on record: doesn’t attempt to limit the threat to the listeners face because there is low risk of threat to the listeners face such as during urgencies.
Off record: some indirectness; the speaker typically avoids saying potentially face-threatening acts. The speakers intentions are implied and the listener to interpret them. Relies heavily on pragmatics. E.g Is that chair free over there?
Synthetic Personalisation
Norman Fairclough synthetic personalisation: using language to create a sense of personal connection or relationship with the audience. They use personal pronouns, informal language and cultural references then vocabulary and visuals that align with the ideology.
Four gender models
Deficit, Dominance, Diversity and Difference
Dominance Model
-Schulz and Lakoff: ‘-ess’ marks out feminine equivalent of ‘-er’ and how it links to Semantic derogation where words have gained negative connotations as time has progressed
-Holmes: women are often referred to in affectionate nominative predominantly such as a semantic field of food and animals such as sugar and bitch
-Spender: there is a culture of maleas norm where males are seen as dominant models and women as add-ons; thus male language is seen as default
-Spender also said women’s speech is weaker because we live in a patriarchal society where men have more power which reflects in their speech. They speak more, interrupt more and respond minimally
-Zimmerman and West: studies mixed sex conversations and found that men interrupted women more and women gave delayed minimal responses
Difference model
Suggests that men and women learn different ways of communicating in childhood which influences them later in life. This argues that men and women have different ways of communicating which reinforces gender roles and power relationships in society.
The six principles:
-Status vs Support
-Advice vs Understanding
-Information vs understanding
-Orders vs Proposal
-Conflict vs Compromise
-Independence vs Intimacy
Criticism: Tannen specifically associates the notions of gossip and small talk with women and based on assumptions because there is insufficient data
Discursive/Diversity model
Cameron states that communication means more to women than men so women speak more
Women are better at communicating than men
Men talk more about facts and getting things done while women talk about their feelings.
She focuses on the relationship between language and gender in relation to societal change, lang diff are due to expectations from society
Deficit Model
Lakoff states that the language that men use is superior and more standard while women’s is insufficient She believes that this is due to the different in social status
Jespersen found that women talk a lot use simpler vocals false starts and have unfinished sentences as they do not think before they speak
Features of speech include:
Backchanneling
Hedging
Intensifies
Apologies
Empty adjectives and euphemisms
Women also tend to use more formal language than men as they use less slang insults and swear words
They also lack a sense of humour
Some key terms of individual Variation
Idiolect: the distinctive features of a person’s language which mark them out as an individual
Sociolect: the language spoken by a social group, social class or subculture. It is a term which combines the words ‘social’ and ‘dialect’
Idiosyncrasies: a characteristic, haabit, mannerism, or the like, that is peculiar to an individual
Colloquialisms/colloquial language: informal or casual communication that people use in everyday conversations or in informal contexts. It is usually linked with spoken texts but can see evidence in written work through contractions and so on.
Slang: language used by specific social group
Jargon: language used by a specific professional or interest group
Features of teen language
Informal register
Taboo
Slang dialect that excluded older people
Mixing of language from different ethnic/cultural backgrounds
More frequent coining of new words
Word abbreviation
Use of ‘like’ as a discourse marker/filler
Reasons for using slang
establishes and demonstrates membership of a youth culture, separate from adults
seen as been up to date and cool
allows them to relate to each other and build a rapport
shows individuality, difference or divergence
shows that they are rebelling against social norms
can exclude others like the older generation
influenced the media, technology and so on
