Language Social Group Flashcards
Sociolinguist Joanna Thornborrow
“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”
Misconception about accents - Jane Setter
•They are always regionally based
•They are ‘low’ or substandard’ varities
•They are ‘rustic’ varieties (‘r’)
•Old forms are dying out
•They aren’t codified (no rules)
Howard Giles’ Accommodation theory
•people try to emphasise or minimise the social difference between whom they interact with
Convergence: you minimise your accent or dialect to seem more similar to the conversation partner
Divergence: you emphasise language features to make sound nothing like the conversational partner.
Social Network Theory (Lesley Milroy)
•She investigated the correlation between the integration of an individual in the community and the way they speak
•She found that the more connections to the community a person had, the more variation they used.
•she also found that non-standard form are less evident in women’s speech
Trudgill Study
•He studied final consonant in words like ‘running’ ‘walking’
•He found that the higher class people were more likely to pronounce ‘g’ at the end
Gary Ives (Bradford Study)
•8 teenage boys
•They said it was the way they were born and it was natural
•But when further asked they said they mix Punjabi and English
•They also said they speak English to their parents and Punjabi to their friends.
•They created a term called ‘freshies’ as a term for those born in Pakistan and moved to England
•Most of the slang they used was gotten from hip-hop and rap e.g ‘sick’ ‘swag’ ‘killed it’
•They code-switched to exclude others deliberately.
•These boys were actually born in the UK
Martha’s Vineyard
•by William Labov
•he researched the /aw/ and the /ay/ phonemes in words like ‘house’ and ‘spice’.
•Locals on the island used language as a part of identity to diverge from tourist
(Incop)
John Swales - Discourse community
“group that have goals or purpose, and use communication to achieve these goals”
Heritage - Institutional Talk
“Institutional talk can occur anywhere, and by the same token, ordinary conversations can emerge in almost any institutional context”
Anti-language
•Proposed by M. Hallway
•a way of communicating within a language that excludes outsiders
•It use same grammar and words that the :outsiders” use, but it is used in a different way, so it can only be understood by insiders.
•E.g, criminals use this
Phatic talk and Banter
•Koester studied how employees interact in a workplace and she found that ‘banter is needed in the workplace’, as it calms that atmosphere.
•She found that small talk is important for workers to establish relationships.
Business English
•Micheal Nelson
•He found that in some occupations, workers are not expected to talk about leisure or personal matters because it is unnecessary and time-consuming
Spoken Language Style
•Frozen Style - e.g language of police (You have the right to…)
•Formal style - language of the wealthy/middle class. Etc
•Joos found that using the wrong register can be socially offensive
