Language and Social Variation Flashcards
What is an idiolect?
The speech habits peculiar to a particular person, almost like a language fingerprint
What did Thornborrow say about language?
(2004)
“One of the most fundamental ways we have of establishing our identity, and of shaping other people’s views of who we are, is through our use of language.”
What is a sociolect?
A form of language or a set of lexical terms used by a socioeconomic class, a profession, an age group, or other social group
What kind of groups influence our language?
- Age group
- Family
- Ethnicity
- Occupation
- Hobbies
- Social class
- Sexuality
- Gender
What is a social group?
People who connect with others because of certain commonalities. Language is often at the heart of these groups.
What is passive acquisition?
When a shared language is leanred subconciously because of the people around you
What is active learning?
People making a concious choice to change their language in order to fit in
What was Howard Giles’ theory?
Communication and Accommodation Theory (CAT), which showed how individuals adapt aspects of their own language when speaking to people who are different to them
What is language convergence?
When we change our language to be like that of the person we’re speaking
What is language divergence?
When we change our language to be different to the person’s we’re speaking to
How is language convergence shown in Mean Girls?
Cady changes her paralingustics, lexis and semantics, and grammar to reflect those of the ‘Plastics’ in order to fit in
What are parts of someone’s idiolect?
- Body language
- How it sounds
- Words chosen
- How it looks
When might divergence be used?
To gain control of a situation or to distance yourself from others
When might convergence be used?
When speaking to a small child or wanting to fit into a social group
What did Peter Trudgill propose?
Speech communities
What is a Speech Community?
Peter Trudgill
A group of people who share the same patterns of language use. It helps people to define themselves and others.
(Can be large regions or small units)
What did Penelope Eckert suggest?
In the 1990s she found that people’s language was affected by important life events. Therefore, we cannot assume all people of a certain age range speak the same.
What is chronological age?
Age since birth
What is biological age?
Physical maturity, puberty, hair loss
What is social age?
Events such as marriage, birth of first child, divorce, tax payments, ect..
What was Gary Ives’ Study?
- 63 teens were asked if age affects language
- 100% said yes
- They assumed we stop swearing, use more Standard English, and become more posh as we get older
- Done in 2014 in West Yorkshire schools
Where did slang orignate from?
British criminals, leading to its bad reputation
How are slang words formed?
- Neologism
- Old words, new meanings
- Inversion of meanings
- Clipping
- Borrowed
- Changes in word class
- Initialism + Acronyms
What is a neologism?
A completely new word
What was Eble’s (1996) definiton of slang?
An ever-changing set of colloquial words and phrases that speakers use to establish or reinforce social identity or cohesiveness within a group or with a trend or fashion in society at large
What did Johnathon Green say about slang?
‘Slang reprsents us at our most human. It may not represent us as our nicest, or most compassionate, kind, or caring. But this is our human side, we may not like this side, but it is not a side we can pretend does not exist.’
What did Stenstrom identity as the most prominent features of ‘Teenage Talk’?
- Irregular turn-taking
- Slang
- Verbal duelling
- Taboo
- Indistinct articulation
- Teasing
What did Anderson + Trudgill say was the reason people use slang?
(1990)
To show belonging to a group or to keep outsiders outside
What did Eckert (2003) say was the reason people use slang?
It is used to establish a connection to youth culture and to set themselves off from the older generation. To signal toughness or attitude.
What did Klerk (2005) say was the reason people use slang?
- Young people have the freedom to challenge linguistic norms
- They seek to establish new identities
- They need to be seen as modern, cool, and fashionable
- Need to establish themselves as different
What was Gary Ives’ study of teenspeak?
- Discussed with thirty 15 yr olds in West Yorkshire
- They gave examples of text speech such as wtf and cba
Why might teens use intialisms such as wtf and cba?
- To avoid conflict by being less direct
- To censor offensive words
- To save time when typing
What did Mary Kohn (2016) say about teenspeak?
She argues that teenspeak is not ruining language and offers explainations for why slang is more present in adolescent speech communities
What is multi-modal communication?
Combination of spoken and written modes
How is text language different to written language?
- Lack of full stops
- Phonetic spellings
- Lack of captial letters
- Graphological symbols ‘xxx’
- Ellipsis
What are some positives to texts?
- Private
- Efficent
- Easy to ignore
- Easier to end conversations
- Groupchats
- May improve reading
What are some negatives to texts?
- Harder to read emotions
- May impact written English
- Parents have less control
- Negatvie effects on forming realtionships
What’s a descritive view of language?
- Open minded
- Accept change
- Describe what they see
What is a prescriptive view of language?
- Only like standard English
- Dislike variety and change
What does John McWhorter say about texting?
- It isn’t killing language
- Texting is ‘fingered speak’
- It’s a new way of using language
What does Crystal (2004) say are features of texts?
- Vowel omission (pls)
- Homophonic representation (L8, M8)
- Phonetic spelling (luv, gurl)
- Initialism (BBC)
- Acronym (AWOL)
What can be argued about acronyms and intialisms?
They are not new language habits (e.g. PM has been in use since 1500 AD)
What are Thurlow’s Sociolinguistic Maxims? (2003)
Texts are used to meet these sociolingustic maxisms:
- Speed
- Brevity
- Paralinguistic restitution
- Phonological approximation
What was Jenny Cheshire’s Reading Study? (1982)
- 8 month long study
- Done in Berkshire, Reading
- Interested in how teenagers use non-standard morphogical and syntactical features
- Observed 13 teenage boys + 13 girls at school and recorded their natural speech
- Represented a ‘delinquent subculture’
What non-standard varients did Cheshire discover?
- Present tense ‘come’ (We come down here yesterday)
- Multiple negation (Im not going nowhere)
- Auxiliary ‘do’ with 3rd person singular subjects (How much ‘do’ he wanr for it)
What did Cheshire find about delinquent social norms?
- Fighting
- Swearing
- Following a specific dresscode
- Carrying a weapon
- Minor criminal activity
What were Cheshire’s findings?
- Teenagers who approved of peer group criminal activites were more likely to use non-standard forms, but boys more so
What do Cheshire’s findings say about language use?
- Variation is a concious choice influenced by social attitude
- Language is associated with memebership to a social group
- Males are more susceptible to covert prestige
What are some criticisms + evaluations of Cheshire’s study?
- Small sample size
- Only looked at one region
- Doesn’t consider social class
- Can’t be sure social group is the reason they use this language
What is overt prestigue?
Generally socially acknowledged as correct and valued highly among speakers
What is covert prestige?
Getting prestige from deliberatly using non-standard English to appear cool
What is Penelope Eckert’s Jocks and Burnouts study? (2000)
- Detroit study
- Jocks (academic)
- Burnouts (rebellious)
Characterisitcs of Jocks
(Penelope Eckert)
- Paticipated in school life enthusiastically
- Concered with speaking in a more socially prestigious way
- Middle class background
- Critical of Burnout’s swearing + non-standard grammar
- Overt prestige
Characterisitcs of Burnouts
(Penelope Eckert)
- Actively rebellious + refused to partake in school activies
- Used exaggerated pronunciations
- Criticised Jocks for sounding like their parents
- Covert prestige
What are critcisms + evalutation of Eckert’s Jock and Burnout study/
- Their different social backgrounds arent considered
- Too much stereotyping
- Ethnic differences
What did Emma Moore do in her Bolton Study?
- Tested was was/were varitation in 4 social groups of girls who attended the same school
- She recorded how often they used the non-standard ‘were’
- Analysed 50+ hours of recordings of the 39 girls
What did Emma Moore’s Bolton Study show?
- The use of the non-standard ‘were’ has social meaning rather than being determined by class
- It is a marker of local identity
- Although w/c Boltonians were more likely to use it, some of a higher social class still used it
What is Basil Bernstein’s Speech codes?
Restricted code - w/c, contect-bound, short sentences and phrases, more vague language
Elaborated code - m/c, not context-bound, complex sentences
What was Bernstein’s study?
- Working-class and Middle-class children were asked to describe a comic strip to the examiner
- The m/c children provided non-context bound language that was more descriptive
- The w/c children’s description only made sense when the strip was in front of them
(E.g ‘They’re playing football and he kicks it’ vs ‘Three boys are playing football and one boy kicks the ball’)
What is a criticism of Bernstein’s study?
- It’s unfair to say the w/c children used deficient language as the comic strip was in front of them so there was no need for further context
- In addition, the m/c children may have been more culturally aware that they were being assessed so they chose to be more elaborated
What was Leslie Milroy’s Belfast Study?
- Studied w/c communities within Belfast
- The more connections a person had, the stronger their accent
- Accent was used to affirm identity
What was William Labov’s New York study?
- Observed the promunciation of /r/
- Collected his data from 3 department stroes with different class statuses
- The higher-class employees used the /r/ sound more
- The middle-class conciousnessly tried to use it more
What was Malcom Petyt’s Bradford study?
- Found that w/c speakers were more likely to use non-prestige forms (such as dropping the /h/ sound)
- Language functions as an identity marker
- Non-standard accents wer judged negatively
What was Peter Trudgill’s Norwhich study?
- Done in the 1970
- Examined pronunciation and social class
- The higher the social class, the more likely the prestigious language
- Alveolar /n/ is more likely in lower social classes
