sociolects Flashcards
what is a social group?
the idea that society is not a collection of isolates individuals
what was Howard Giles’ Accomodation Theory?
Convergence – change one’s language to be like others
Divergence – change one’s language to be different from others
what was Lesley Milroy’s study?
According to Milroy, a social network is a “web of ties”:
*relationships between people and contact patterns
*strengths of ties between people
*nature of connections – their density and their multiplexity
Milroy studied three inner-city working class Northern Ireland communities – found that language variations could be explained due to the residents’ social networks.
High Network Density: working together, living close to family members and friends, socialising together – accents were reinforced and stayed strong
*Low Network Density: more isolated people – not getting out much (unemployed, looking after children at home) – weaker accents. Where men were “isolated” (one community had high male unemployment), their accents were weaker than the women’s who had higher-density scores through working together in local factories
For speakers in these social networks, strong ties within communities were associated with their identity.
*Maintaining a strong accent was a way of demonstrating and affirming this sense of themselves.
Milroy’s study showed this was true for men and women – nothing gender-based about accent strength.
what factors influence social class?
Household income
whether you own or rent
savings
kinds of people you mix with and know socially
cultural activities you engage in
what is dialect?
a style of language within a geographical region
what is an ethnolect?
a style of language thought to be associated with a particular ethnic group
what is a familect?
a style of language used within a family
what is a genderlect?
a style of language thought to be distinctive of either men or women
what is a sociolect?
a style of language used within a particular social group
what is overt prestige?
status that is publicly acknowledged
what is covert prestige?
status gained from a group, not the general public
what was Penelope Eckert’s study?
2000
The Jocks and the Burnouts
among high-school students in the Detroit, Michigan, area of the USA.
Jocks – group that participated in school life enthusiastically.
Burnouts – actively rebellious and refused to take part in school activities.
findings of Penelope Eckert’s study?
People tended to speak more like those with whom they shared social practices and values
*Burnouts used the exaggerated pronunciations associated with the urban accent of their Detroit neighbourhood (covert prestige)
*Jocks were more concerned with speaking in a socially prestigious way (overt prestige), reflecting their more middle-class backgrounds
The Jocks were critical of the Burnouts for their “ungrammatical” language, frequent swearing and for not being articulate
*The Burnouts thought that the Jocks talked like their parents.
what was Jennifer Cheshire’s theory?
*Found that the “toughest” girls and boys conformed to the group use of non-standard grammatical forms, such as ain’t.
what was Harriet Powney’s theory?
idea of familect – shared language and meanings with one’s family, such as pet names
Basil Bernstein’s theory?
1971
Restricted Code – Basil Bernstein claimed that working-class speakers used this context-based, less formal way of speaking
Elaborated Code – Bernstein said this one was for the middle class.
Sadly, his work created a deficit model – that working-class language was deficient – later challenged by William Labov (see accent and dialect work).
what was Lave and Wenger’s theory?
Community of Practice: A group of people who share understandings, perspectives and forms of language use as a result of meeting regularly over time.
1) mutual engagement – regular interactions based around
2) a joint negotiated enterprise and with group members using
3) a shared repertoire.
what are pragmatic rules?
the unspoken rules that operate in interactions between people who share a common understanding
what was Gary Ives’ study?
Do people speak differently because of their age?
Gary Ives survey in West Yorkshire secondary school – 100% of teens (63 surveyed) said yes.
In the same survey, he asked them to remember words they used when younger that they no longer used. They remembered some (kissy-catch, tig, kerby – semantic field of games) but had trouble doing so. Does that mean their vocabulary hadn’t changed much?
What was Anna-Brita Stenström’s theory?
2014
characteristics of teen language:
Irregular turn-taking
Overlaps
Indistinct articulation
Word shortenings
Verbal duelings
Slang
Taboo
Language mixing – using language from other cultures
what is lavendar language?
the language of the lgbtq community
what did William Leap do?
held the first Lavendar Language and Linguistics conference in 1993 for a small group of colleagues working in linguistic anthropology with an interest in language and sexuality
since then it has become an annual evenet
called lavender instead of queer linguistics bc of long-term association of ‘lavender’ with gays
lavender = synonym for homosexual in Gershan Leyman’s 1941 glossary of American Slang
1990s, William Heap published articles on language of gays and lesbians called ‘Lavender Linguistics’
‘Lavender’ seen as a neutral term which wouldn’t exclude research areas, neither was it explicitly political and would be welcoming to all those interested in language and sexuality
what did Arnold Zwicky find?
homosexual vs gay - he says some prefer one to the other as a referencing term. Also refers to article by Jeffery Schmalz in 1992 which states many people prefer the term ‘queer’
lesbian or dyke - he argued that dyke has been reclaimed as it was a pejorative term
gay (adj) vs gay (noun). he suggests many dislike the use of the noun form
queer (adj), he argued many young people preferred it to gay, older people less enthusiastic
he targeted folk belief that u can identify a non-straight person from language
common misconceptions = homosexuality was an identification with opposite sex eg lesbians think and act like men, gay men think and act like women. from this it was wrongly thought that gay men would imitate female speech etc
conclusions of zwicky?
considering that there would be different speech was erroneous because it made the assumption that people had rigid patterns of how they identified themselves
ppl had different ‘communities of practice’ (eckert + mcconnell-ginet, 1992), it is ‘foolish’ to assume there is a single gay/straight community)
zwicky’s research is quite dated and does not include trans, nonbinary and other groups
zwicky did not allow for difference between gender identity and sexual orientation
what is an anti language?
term coined by michael halliday in 1976
extreme version of social dialects arise among subcultures and groups that occupy marginalised/ precarious position in society, especially when outside the law
created by a process of relexicalization (substitution of new words for old)
what is thieves cant?
secret known to criminals, hustlers and vagabonds
thought to have begun around 1530 but probably existed before then
compilations and dictionaries of cant written as an aid to warn people what ne’er-do-wells were plotting, eg Richard Head’s Canting Academy
thought to originate from Romany, but there are different Celtic and Gaelic cants as well as evidence from Norman French
what is Cockney Rhyming Slang?
a particular cant used in London, eg mince pies for eyes and dog and bone for phone
what did Julia Coleman do?
identified the difference between jargon, cant and slang:
jargon = the professional language allowing for precise discussion of topics
related to the given vocation
cant = language used to obfuscate meaning completely from those not in the ‘in
group’
slang = an ephemeral term used by any ‘in group’ to distinguish them from other
groups
what is prison language?
A study in 2009 looked at the language spoken in prisons.
It was found that the language spoken by prisoners and officials in the prisons
(prison wardens, etc.) includes jargon, cant, and Slang
what is ethnicity?
community, might include religions, beliefs or language, your family relations
what is nationality?
what nation you belong to, legal concept
how has language changed in the UK under the influence of different ethnicities?
caribbean people arrived in the UK from late 1940s onwards.
variety of english used by 2nd and 3rd gen speakers became known as London Jamaican
by 60s and 70s, mix of peoples meant that people of different ethnic backgrounds come into contact with eachother’s varieties of english
people began crossing between varieties– a white speaker might use more traditional London English with white peer group, and shift to a lexis more influenced by Jamaican English with black friends
white and asian young people without black peer group began to use non-standard Creole-influenced speech at this time too
what was ben rampton’s theory?
Language Crossing – ‘Creole was widely seen as cool, tough
and good to use. It was associated with assertiveness, verbal resourcefulness,
competence in heterosexual relationships, and opposition to authority.’ (2010)
what did Roger Hewitt and Mark Sebba do?
Roger Hewitt (1986) and Mark Sebba (1993) identified ‘Black Cockney’ – a style
rather than a variety
what did John Pitts do?
John Pitts (2012) noticed the language of some young black speakers was shifting.
He said they felt that mainstream society was ignoring and constraining them.
They wanted to sound less like Ian Wright and more like Bob Marley
what is BBE?
Although there was language contact different ethnic groups from 1960s to 1990s,
one distinct variety emerged = British Black English (BBE).
Many British speakers with Caribbean heritage have this variety as part of their
repertoire of styles.
BBE varies from region to region across Britain with local variations spoken.
what did Jenny Cheshire find (to do with MLE)?
Jenny Cheshire et al. (2008) identified new a form emerging, predominantly among
young people: Multicultural London English.
Has been identified outside of London – so now linguists describe it as Multicultural Urban British English.
Not quite a variety (doesn’t have a uniform set of features) but more than just slang
(although some elements are slang terms).
examples of MLE? (some elements have moved into wider use)
Lexis: Bare (a lot/very) Beef (disagreement, conflict) Choong (attractive) ting (girlfriend or thing) endz (local area) on road (on the streets
Phonology: diphthong vowel sounds of words such as ‘face’ and ‘like’ /fes/ and /la:k/
Grammar: few syntactical differences. Use of ‘dem’ as plural marker as in ‘man dem’ for
‘men’, ‘man’ as a self-reference like a pronoun e.g.’man paid for my own ticket’.
Discourse features: ‘innit’ as tag question. ‘you get me’ as confirmation check. ‘this is me’
as a quotative, e.g.’this is me “What you doing?” and this is him “not much”.’
what is MLE?
is a dialect of London English which has emerged since the early 1980s in parts of London where there has been a relatively high level of immigration
based on the traditional East End Cockney dialect, but it has a number of different sounds and grammatical contructions
what did Ruth Kircher and Sue Fox (2019) do?
conducted an online survey among 800 Londoners to find out what sorts of attitudes they had towards MLE
on a five point scale (1 = very low), the ppl who answered the survey gave MLE an overall score of 2.2
what did Armanda Cardoso and her colleagues do?
investigated how people respond to the MLE accent
the milder version of MLE was rated as highly as RP, whereas the stronger version was the most poorly rated accent
what was polari
a coded form of language used by gay men, particularly in London
some words eg ‘camp’ and ‘butch’ still used today
paul baker discussed polari in an article. he said polari was often used in a rather sardonic, cutting way, by using feminising words referring to police like ‘lily law’ and ‘hilda handcuffs’.
polari was also used by men wishing to work out if their new acquiantance would be interested in him, by dropping a polari word in a conversation and seeing if it was picked up
what did deborah cameron say about homosexual speech in 2003
homosexuals THOUGHT to speak like women, lesbians thought to speak like men
homosexual speech seen as gender deviant
what was basil bernsteins study that evidenced his theory
he showed pictures to children and asked them to describe what was happening in them
the working class children used language that fitted with the fact that they shared the same physical space with the researcher, while the middle class children spoke as if the researcher was not there
what was peter trudgill’s 1974 study of norwich speech
concluded that changing the voiced velar nasal to an alveolar (saying runnin’ instead of running) was more likely to feature in working class speech than middle class speech, although he also found differences between men’s and women’s use of the non-standard forms
what did paul kerswill say about MLE
Multicultural London English (MLE) is said to occupy a continuum from a vernacular variety to a youth style.
Paul Kerswill highlighted the potential origins of the features of MLE:
for example how the differing vowels within words like ‘goat’ and ‘face’ may come from the Caribbean, Africa, India, or learner varieties.
Kerswill also noted that the ‘man’ pronoun, which is also a feature of MLE, has possible connections with Jamaican varieties, though the way it is used in London differs greatly from Jamaican creole, and is ‘home grown’.
On the other hand, the origins of other features of MLE, such as /k/-backing, were unknown to Kerswill.
