Language & Social Groups Theory

Question 1

Penelope Eckert (Jocks & Burnouts 2000)

Answer 1

Jocks (middle class enthusiasts in school life) spoke in a socially prestigious way to reflect education and knowledge.
Burnouts (lower class active rebels in school life) used exaggerated pronunciations associated with urban detroit accents and likely to diverge language to avoid judgment from Jocks.
Found people in schools spoke more like those they shared social practice with.
Jocks largely criticised the burnouts for their inability to articulate words.

Question 2

Jenny Cheshire (Reading Study)

Answer 2

Analysed children’s language use in a playground and found all children who approved of peer group criminal activities were more likely to use non-standard forms such as non gramatical varieties ‘ain’t’ and ‘I never went’.
All children who disproved, did not use nonstandard forms.

Question 3

Howard Giles (Communication Accommodation Theory)

Answer 3

Convergence - adapting linguistic choices to conform to the language used by the other speaker to identify with them.
Divergence - adapting linguistic choices to differ your language from the other speaker to disassociate with them.

Question 4

William Labov (NYC Department Store Study)

Answer 4

Coined the term social stratification - a correlation between social class and lexis.
Studied the presence of the final preconsonantal ‘r’ sound in ‘fourth floor’ of sales assistants in a high-end shop (Sak’s) a mildly priced shop (Macy’s) and a low-end shop (Klein’s). It was found that Macy’s employers used to most hypercorrection that Labov labelled a sign of insecurity in a social situation.
Also found that the prestige variable was used the least in Klein’s (low-end) and the most in Sak’s (high-end).

Question 5

Joanna Thornborrow

Answer 5

One of the most fundamental ways of establishing our identity is through our use of language.

Question 6

Michael Halliday (Anti-language)

Answer 6

A language used often to exclude particular people e.g. Cockey Rhyming Slang to exclude police officers amongst thieves or Polari used exclusively amongst gay people.

Question 7

Penelope Eckert (Slang)

Answer 7

Slang is often used to connect an individual to youth culture and to dissociate themselves from older generations.

Question 8

Lesley Milroy (Belfast Study)

Answer 8

She defines two types of networks -
Open networks have low density and have many links to people outside the normal living area, connections do not know eachother.
Closed networks have high density where ties all know eachother and are tight-knit all within a similar area.