Sociolect - Diversity Flashcards
Convergence
Changing one’s language in order to move towards another individuals language
Divergence
Changing one’s language in order to move away from another individuals language
Macro Level
Operating on a larger scale
Micro level
operating on a small scale
Post vocalic r
Pronouncing an /r/ after a vowel where there is an r in the spelling
Received Pronounciation
An accent traditionally associated with high social class
Density
Number of connections that people have
Social network
A network of relations between people in their membership of different groups
Informant
Someone who offers information to a researcher
Dialect
Style of language used within a geographical region
Ethnolect
Style of language thought to be characteristic of a particular ethnic group
Familect
Style of language used within a family
Social Practice
Ways in which people in groups habitually behave
Community of practice
Group of people who share understandings, perspectives and forms of language use as a result of meeting regularly over time
Lave and Wenger
- Community of practice: mutual engagement
Deficit model
Assumption that something is lacking or deficient
Elaborated code
Bernstein Middle-class speakers use context free, complex forms of language
Restricted code
Berstein Lower-class speakers use less complex forms of language due to lack of contextual knowledge
Who developed the Communication Accommodation Theory
Howard Giles
- Convergence
- Divergence
Communication Accommodation Theory
- behavioral changes that people make to attune their communication to their partner, - the extent to which people perceive their partner as appropriately attuning to them.
What did Labov conclude about his case study?
- Fishermen centralise /au/ and /ai/ more than any other occupational group
- People of the age group 30- 60 tend to centralise diphthongs more than younger or older people
- Up-Islanders used the centralised diphthongs more than people living in the area of Down-Island
What is a dipthong
Two vowel sounds occurring in the same syllable e.g cow, eye
What did Labov’s result show?
- generations, occupations, or social groups might be a big factor in language use as a sociolinguistic consideration
What did Labov’s result show?
- generations, occupations, or social groups might be a big factor in language use as a sociolinguistic consideration
Who is Peter Trudgill?
Studied the use of ‘ing’ in Norwich and made links between accent and social class.
What were Trudgill’s conclusions?
Changing the velar nasal /n/ to an alveolar /n/ was more likely to feature in working class speech than in middle class speech, although he also found differences between men’s and women’s use of non- standard forms
Lesley Milroy
Belfast speech in 1987
What did Milroy research ?
Described social network as a web of ties. He studied 3 inner city working class communities in Northern Ireland and found that variations in language use could be explained by the residents' social networks
What did Milroy find in her results?
Where people had a high network density score-through factors such as working together, living close to family members and socialising with each other- their accents were reinforced and stayed strong. On the other hand, people who were more isolated-perhaps through unemployed or looking after children at home- had less strong accents
What were Milroy’s results on gender?
Where men were the ones who were isolated (one community had a lot of male unemployment) their accents were weaker than those of women, who had high density scores through working together in local factories
What conclusions were drawn from Milroy’s study?
- social networks speakers were powerfully associated with their indentity and maintaining a strong accent was a way of demonstrating this sense of themselves.
- This was true for women as for men, there was nothing necessarily gender based about accent strength. It was more to do with their lifestyles rather than their gender
Eckert 2000
- Social network approach
- Social practices of American high-school students: the jocks and the burnouts
Who were the jocks and the burnouts?
- Jocks: participated in school life enthusiastically.
- Burnouts: actively rebellious and refused to take part in school activities
What did Eckert find?
- People tended to speak more like those who they shared social practices and values.
- The burnouts used the exaggerated pronunciations associated with the urban accent of their Detroit neighbourhood.
- Jocks were more concerned with speaking in a socially prestigious way
Jocks and burnouts use of language
The jocks were critical of the burnouts for their ungrammatical language, their frequent swearing and for not being articulate. The jocks were seen as talking like their parents
Who came up with the study of the effects of groups of teenagers in an adventure playground in Reading?
Jenny Cheshire in 1992
What did Cheshire find?
The toughest girls and boys conformed to the group of non standard grammatical forms such as ain’t
What did Bernstein claim?
Working class speakers used a restricted code of language which related to the here and now while middle class speakers used an elaborated code, which was more explicit and independent of context.
Problem with Bernstein’s work
Deficit model of language being associated with working class identity. What his work really shows was some of the differences between speech and writing
What was Bernstein’s research method?
He showed pictures to children and asked them what was happening in them. Working class children used language that fitted with the fact that they share the same physical place with the researcher while middle class children spoke as if the researcher wasn’t there
What Bernstein’s work show?
Middle class children are more aware of the nature of assessment and that it reveals the potential unnaturalness of school based practices
Pragmatic rules
Unspoken rules that operate in interactions between people who share a common understanding
