Sociolinguistics

Question 1

Is a language a dialect with an army and a navy (aka, power and politics that are just as important as mutual intelligibility) ?

Answer 1

Yes !

Question 2

Dialect v. sociolect v. ideolect

Answer 2

Dialects are differentiated based on regional variation.

Other kinds of variation among people are called sociolects (So African American English is a sociolect rather than a dialect, technically.)

Each person has their own ideolect, the speech characteristics that make them them.

Question 3

Internal v. external variation

Answer 3

Internal is variation within your own speech.

External is variation between you and others.

Question 4

Regional variation

Answer 4

Regional variation usually arises from geographic considerations such as historic isolation from other speakers, or one group interacting with speakers of another language that other groups don’t interact with.

Question 5

Other than regional variation, the main types of sociolinguistics variables are based on :

Answer 5

Race and ethnicity 
Gender (performed) and sexuality 
Social class
Age 
Religion and Politics

Question 6

What are self-defined categories ?

Answer 6

In addition to the previous types of variation, self-defined categories are aspects of language that we share with others who are ‘’ like us ‘’ in some relevant way (they all play in a band, or they are all major snowboarders or something).

Question 7

Can variation take place at any linguistic ‘’ level ‘’ (phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic or pragmatic) ?

Answer 7

Yes !

Question 8

Can some variation cause further variation ?

Answer 8

Yes ! Some variation can cause further variation, as in the example of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (one vowel change affected others).

Question 9

Prestige

Answer 9

Overt prestige is held by the dominant (standard) way of speaking in a society and typically has advantages for rising in social class, for example.

Covert prestige is held by non-dominant (non standard) dialects and sociolects and typically has advantages for been seen as authentic and belonging to a community.

Many people switch between various dialects and sociolects ; these people are usually referred to as ‘’bi-dialect’’ or ‘’multi-dialect’’.

Question 10

Practice exercises

1. How would you convey that you are uncomfortable and don’t want to be asked anymore questions with the following people or in the following situations ?
   a. Your grandmother (who wants to know what your future plans are, for example)
   b. You are a politician in a press conference trying to avoid a scandal
   c. You are an exhausted server in a restaurant being hassled by customers
   d. A close friend is asking hard questions about your life choices
   e. You are talking to your boss about a project you’ve been working on
2. Look at your responses in (1) and identify some linguistic variation among them. Then list what kind of variation you think each one is (Age-based, Gender-based, categories we didn’t talk about in class, etc.)

Answer 10

Soon

Question 11

Practice exercises

3. Is Québécois a language or a dialect of French ? Give on possible argument for and one possible argument against as well as which of these you find most convincing.

Answer 11

Soon