Sociolinguistics

Question 1

What is Sociolinguistics

Answer 1

The study of the relationship between language and society
Empirical

Question 2

What is macro-sociolinguistics

Answer 2

Examines what societies do with their languages
ex: language planning, bilingual education

Question 3

What is Micro-linguistics

Answer 3

Examins how language variation correlates with social factors
ex: age, social class, gender, sexuality, education

Question 4

What are the types of variations in speech?

Answer 4

intra-speaker variation, inter-speaker variation, regional variation, linguistic variable, linguistic variants

Question 5

What is intra-speaker variation?

Answer 5

Variation within one persons speech
Ex: couch vs sofa

Question 6

What is inter-speaker variation?

Answer 6

Variation in speech with other people
Compares variants across groups

Question 7

What is regional variation?

Answer 7

variation wihtin speech dependant on location

Question 8

Variation in linguistic variables?

Answer 8

instances of variation between forms that mean the same thing
ex: furniture poeple wit on, future expression

Question 9

What are linguistic variants

Answer 9

Each of the forms participating in the variation
tree: (variable) -> (variant) + (variant) + (variant)

Question 10

Who is William Labov?

Answer 10

father of variationist sociolinguistics, first to define variation

Question 11

What is an example of variationist sociolinguistics in terms of address?

Answer 11

(nominal masculine address terms) -> (man) + (dude) + (bro)

Question 12

What are some linguistic factors that affect language variation?

Answer 12

linguistic environment: phonological, syntactic

Question 13

What are some non-linguistic factors that affect language variation?

Answer 13

Age, Gender, Sexuality, Social class, education, context, interlocutor

Question 14

What are sex based patterns of variation?

Answer 14

women are ahead of men in the use of incoming linguistic forms
women are more likely to use standard language

Question 15

What are different linguistic studies?

Answer 15

Real time study, panel study, trend study, apparent time studies

Question 16

What is a real time study?

Answer 16

Examining one variable across time
focus on detecting change in chronological (real) time

Question 17

What is apparent time study?

Answer 17

more common, compares the speech of different age groups at one point in time
ex: younger speakers vs older speakers

Question 18

What is a panel study?

Answer 18

tracks the same people across time

Question 19

What are trend studies?

Answer 19

match age cohorts across time, but don’t use the same people

Question 20

What are Quotives?

Answer 20

verbs that introduce quote speech
Be like appears in the 1980s

Question 21

What does variationist sociolinguistic research show on gender?

Answer 21

women are ahead in the use of incoming linguistic forms
women use standard/prestigious features of language

Question 22

What are some explanations for variationist sociolinguistic research?

Answer 22

60s-80s: women use standard to compensate for less social power
2000s: women have better vocab, higher marks on verbal standardized tests and less speech disorders

Question 23

What social roles and opportunities explain the research on variationist sociolinguistic research?

Answer 23

1. In traditional societies, men adopt new forms first
2. In mobil groups women adopt new forms first
3. In transitional societies, women have conservative AND innovative behaviours
   Language use must be understood relative to the social roles (mobility, education, job opportunities)

Question 24

What is socio-economic status?

Answer 24

educational level, income range, occupation type
Labov: NY r-less dialect
Trudgill: ing variable in Norwish English
difficult to distinguish between wealth and class/status

Question 25

What is standard language?

Answer 25

idealized variety, no specific region, associated with education and mass media, considered acceptable

Question 26

What is accent?

Answer 26

when speakers differ in pronounciation only no major differences in grammar, index by speaker, due to geographic origin or social factors

Question 27

What is a dialect?

Answer 27

sub-varieties of a single language, differ in morphosyntatic structure, vocab, pronounciation non-linguists use this term to imply non-standard variation

Question 28

What is mutual intelligibility?

Answer 28

Differentiates between dialect and language If two speakers can understand each other with little difficulty its typically a dialect speaker dependent and experience plays a role

Question 29

What are the problems with mutual intelligibility?

Answer 29

some languages are mutually intelligible (ex: hindi and urdu) some dialects are not mutually intelligible (ex: cantonese and mandarin) must also consider: politics, culture, ethnicity

Question 30

What is regional dialectology?

Answer 30

study of regional differences in language use Norms: isolated rural dialects and non-mobile, older rural males originally examined traditional rural dialects because they preserved older speech features

Question 31

What is the founding research of regional dialectology?

Answer 31

1920: surveyed 600 towns with questionnaire to find regional differences determined isoglosses

Question 32

What is an isogloss?

Answer 32

line on a dialect map marking the boundary between linguistic features always crisscross a geographical area

Question 33

What are the causes of regional variation?

Answer 33

1. Historical settlement patterns 2. isolation from other groups

Question 34

What are examples of regional variation?

Answer 34

1. newfoundland english: immigration in mid 1800s led to geographical isolation 2. Quebec french: 1600s settlements from france, geographical isolation

Question 35

What did Laura Ford's research on lexical variation in died in Winnipeg obituaries find?

Answer 35

variable: verbs that mean died real time longitudinal project 1922-2022 Passed away most common, 3 periods of dominant variations: died, null variant, passed away Reflect relationship to death and shows religious affiliation

Question 36

What did Maria Rodrigo-Tamarit's research on "A Couple of" find?

Answer 36

investigate variation of 'a couple of', 'a couple a', 'a couple' in Manitoba and Alberta 'a couple most common', depends on birth years, term grammaticalized over time and women use 'a couple of' most often as standardized variant