Lecture 7

Question 1

People use language to signal their membership of particular groups and to construct different aspects of their social identity such as social status, gender, age, and ethnicity.

Answer 1

Regional and social dialects

Question 2

the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of Scottish speakers of English is distinct from that of people from England. ( )

Answer 2

V

Question 3

There is variation within Scotland, but there are also some features which perform an overall unifying function. ( )

Answer 3

V

Question 4

Dropping the initial [h] in words like house and heaven often indicates a higher socio-economic background in English. ( )

Answer 4

X

lower

Question 5

the use of grammatical patterns such as: they don’t know nothing them kids or I done it last week indicate a ________ .

Answer 5

lower socio-economic background in English

Question 6

We signal our group affiliations and our social identities by ________ .

Answer 6

speech forms we use

Question 7

An American god sounds like an English ________.

Answer 7

guard

Question 8

an American ladder sounds like latter _______.

Answer 8

latter

Question 9

The word dad sounded like the English word _______ to the British man.

Answer 9

dead

Question 10

‘Single parents’
Australian talk of _______ parents, people from England call them _______ parents, and New Zealanders call them _______ parents.

It’s an example of ________ difference.

Answer 10

Australia: sole parents
England: single parents
New Zealand: solo parents

vocabulary

Question 11

South Africans use the term ________ for British traffic-light.

Answer 11

robot

Question 12

American prefer ‘do you have’, English people prefer _______ , though this can now also be heard in Britain alongside the traditional British English ________ .

This is an example of ________ difference.

Answer 12

have you, have you got.

grammatical

Question 13

‘Got’

Americans say ________, where people in England use ________.

Answer 13

Americans: gotten
English: got

Question 14

• Do you have a match?
• Have you got a cigarette?

Which is American which is British?

Answer 14

American: Do you have a match?
British: Have you got a cigarette?

Question 15

• She has gotten used to the noise.
• She’s got used to the noise.

Which is American which is British?

Answer 15

American: She has gotten used to the noise.
British: She’s got used to the noise.

Question 16

• He dived in head first
• He dove in, head first.

Which is American which is British?

Answer 16

American: He dove in, head first.
British: He dived in head first.

Question 17

• Have you eaten yet?
• Did you eat yet?

Which is American which is British?

Answer 17

American: Did you eat yet
British: Have you eaten yet?

Question 18

In New Zealand, where US forms are usually regarded as more ________, younger New Zealanders say ________, while older New Zealanders use ________.

Answer 18

innovative
Younger: dove
Older: dived

Question 19

British and American English exhibit more regional variation than New Zealand and Australia. ( )

Answer 19

V

Question 20

The languages of Europe blend into one another forming a chain or a continuum. And that is called ________ .

Answer 20

Cross-continental variation: dialect chains

Question 21

the French varieties spoken in the border towns and villages of Italy have more in common with the language of ________ than the language of ________.

Answer 21

the next village, Paris.

Question 22

Dialect chains are very common across the whole of Europe. ( )

Answer 22

V

Question 23

Scandinavian chain links dialects of ________, ________ and ________.

Answer 23

Norwegian, Swedish, Danish.

Question 24

Swedes and Norwegians in ________ areas can communicate more easily than fellow-Swedes from ________ Sweden.

Answer 24

adjacent, southern and northern.

Question 25

Languages are purely linguistic entities. ( )

Answer 25

X

Languages are not purely linguistic entities. They serve social functions.

Question 26

________ can be thought of as a collection of dialects that are usually linguistically similar, used by different social groups who choose to say that they are speakers of one language which functions to unite and represent them to other groups.

Answer 26

Language