Social Groups Flashcards
What are Expletives?
Swear words
What is Multiple negation?
Using more than one negative in a sentence eg. I aint done nothing
What are stndard forms?
Socially accepted way of saying things ( using Standard English)
What is overt prestige?
Form of social value you get from using standard forms
What is covert prestige?
Form of social value you get from using non- standard forms
What is convergence?
Language becomes similar
What is divergence?
Language becomes more different
What is code?
Form of language
What is genderlect?
Language of gender
What is sociolect?
Language of a social group
What is ethnolect?
Language of an ethnic group
What is teenspeak?
Language of teenspeak
What is polari?
Secret code used by gay men to communicte when homosexuality was illegal
What was Penlope’s Eckert three forms of age?
Chronlogical: how long someone has been alive
Social: how someone interacts socially eg, marriage and birth of first child
Biological: physcial maturity
Parrott’s theory of age?
Teenage identity is characterised by:
Rebellion
Forbidden behaviour
Exclusion
Idolisation
Stenstrom and teenspeak
Teenspeak contains:
Slang
Expletives
Contractions
Name calling
Insult battles
Penlope Eckert Teenspeak
Teenspeak distances teenagers from adults
Zimmerman teenspeak
Teenspeak influenced by:
Media
Music
Internet
DeKlerk’s age theory
Teenagers have ability and freedom to challenge and adapt linguistic norms
Tagliamonte age theory
When communicating online teenagers use more intensifiers, no evidence to suggest a decline in grammar
Penelope Eckert age and gender study
Reading study:
look at children’s use 9 different non standard forms including multiple negation, linked to whether they thought criminal activity was acceptable. Found that:
Boys more likely to approve
Children approved of non standard forms more likely to use non standard forms
Link between covert prestige of using non standard forms and standard forms
Penelpe Jocks and Burnouts study
Studied two types of students in Detroit (Jocks and Burnouts)
Jocks highly engaged in school, Burnouts less interested by it and often engaged in immoral behaviou (smoking and drinking)
Studied non-standard forms and most notably multiple negation
Jocks used almost all standard forms
Burnouts predominatly used non standard forms
Showed those in same social group smoke similarly
Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard study
Looked at inhabitants of the island of Martha’s Vineyard, noted the younger members (worked or studied there for some of the year) converged to vowel pronunctiation of older members of island when tourists arrived to distance themselves
Labov Social Class
New York stores study:
looked at the presence of the post- vocalic rhotic /r/ ( r sund that comes after the vowel) very prestigious pronuciation in NY. Compared speech of sales assistants in 3 stores of different classes by getting them to say “fourth floor” and then repeat it:
Klein’s (working class)- used it the least
Macy’s (middle class)- wasn’t overly used when first asked but used more when asked to repeat it, shows assistants want to adapt their langiage to suit the class
Saks (upper class)- used it most
Trudgill’s Norwich study
Looking at the pronunciation of words ending in -ing, looked at whether the pronunciation had the world final /g/, asked ppts to estimate how many times they used standard and non-standard forms, compared to what they actually did. Found that:
Higher the social class, lower number of non-standard forms
Lower the social class, higher the number of non-standard forms
Women of all classes reported higher usage of standard forms than they actually used
Women used more standard forms than men
Men of all classes reported higher usage of standard forms than they used
Social class influences language more thn gender
Bernstein: Restricted and elaborated code experiment
Believes there are two types of “code” used to communicate
Restricted code uses lots of conjunctions, context dependant language and non-standard syntax
Elaborated code uses more standard English
Research found that:
Children of all classes understood both codes when spoken to them
Working class children speak using restricted code
Middle and upper class children speak using elaborated code mainly but can use restricted code
Disadvantages working class children as elaborated code is used in many formal situations
What is Multicultural London English (MLE)?
Variety of English which started in London, popular amongst young black teenagers, it contains:
Lexical: peng (adjective meaning good)
Grammatical: sentences constructed starting with “why” and ending with “for” man replaces first person singular pronoun (I)
Phonological: th-stopping where the th at start of words becomes t
No standard set of MLE varies depending on location
Media often lables it “Jafaican” due to Jamaican roots
Kerswill (Ethnicity)
MLE will replace Cockney Rhyming Slang
Rampton (Ethnicity)
MLE is spread though friendship groups
Drummond (Ethnicity)
MLE is key part of sociolect of young people in Manchester, Drummond retitled MLE and Multicultural Urban British English (MUBE) reflects its spread
Khan (Ethnicity)
Ethnicity was a central factor influencing person’s language
Rampton and Harris (Ethnicity)
Four ways to categorise view of ethnolects:
1: Defecit- there is something lacking
2: Difference- there is nothing wrong ith variety it is just different
3: Domination- variety should be oppressed
4: Discourse- previous three aren’t correct, too simple, its a community and its culture cannot easily be defined
Leap (Sexuality)
Coined term Lavender LInguistics to describe study of langauge and sexuality
Lakoff (Sexuality)
Gay men adopt defecit features to mirror women’s language
Baker (Sexuality)
Speech of gay people uses puns, acronyms and lexical items, only make sense to those in the community
Kulik (Sexuality)
Cannot tell someon’s sexuality because of their language
Butler (Sexuality/ gender)
Use of lnaguage and your behaviour can perform and identity, eg. gay men may choose to adopt feminine speech patterns to consciously be different from heterosexual men
