Sociolinguistics Flashcards
What is Sociolinguistics
The study of the relationship between language and society
Empirical
What is macro-sociolinguistics
Examines what societies do with their languages
ex: language planning, bilingual education
What is Micro-linguistics
Examins how language variation correlates with social factors
ex: age, social class, gender, sexuality, education
What are the types of variations in speech?
intra-speaker variation, inter-speaker variation, regional variation, linguistic variable, linguistic variants
What is intra-speaker variation?
Variation within one persons speech
Ex: couch vs sofa
What is inter-speaker variation?
Variation in speech with other people
Compares variants across groups
What is regional variation?
variation wihtin speech dependant on location
Variation in linguistic variables?
instances of variation between forms that mean the same thing
ex: furniture poeple wit on, future expression
What are linguistic variants
Each of the forms participating in the variation
tree: (variable) -> (variant) + (variant) + (variant)
Who is William Labov?
father of variationist sociolinguistics, first to define variation
What is an example of variationist sociolinguistics in terms of address?
(nominal masculine address terms) -> (man) + (dude) + (bro)
What are some linguistic factors that affect language variation?
linguistic environment: phonological, syntactic
What are some non-linguistic factors that affect language variation?
Age, Gender, Sexuality, Social class, education, context, interlocutor
What are sex based patterns of variation?
women are ahead of men in the use of incoming linguistic forms
women are more likely to use standard language
What are different linguistic studies?
Real time study, panel study, trend study, apparent time studies
What is a real time study?
Examining one variable across time
focus on detecting change in chronological (real) time
What is apparent time study?
more common, compares the speech of different age groups at one point in time
ex: younger speakers vs older speakers
What is a panel study?
tracks the same people across time
What are trend studies?
match age cohorts across time, but don’t use the same people
What are Quotives?
verbs that introduce quote speech
Be like appears in the 1980s
What does variationist sociolinguistic research show on gender?
women are ahead in the use of incoming linguistic forms
women use standard/prestigious features of language
What are some explanations for variationist sociolinguistic research?
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
What social roles and opportunities explain the research on variationist sociolinguistic research?
- In traditional societies, men adopt new forms first
- In mobil groups women adopt new forms first
- In transitional societies, women have conservative AND innovative behaviours
Language use must be understood relative to the social roles (mobility, education, job opportunities)
What is socio-economic status?
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
What is standard language?
idealized variety, no specific region, associated with education and mass media, considered acceptable
What is accent?
when speakers differ in pronounciation only
no major differences in grammar, index by speaker, due to geographic origin or social factors
What is a dialect?
sub-varieties of a single language,
differ in morphosyntatic structure, vocab, pronounciation
non-linguists use this term to imply non-standard variation
What is mutual intelligibility?
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
What are the problems with mutual intelligibility?
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
What is regional dialectology?
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
What is the founding research of regional dialectology?
1920: surveyed 600 towns with questionnaire to find regional differences
determined isoglosses
What is an isogloss?
line on a dialect map marking the boundary between linguistic features
always crisscross a geographical area
What are the causes of regional variation?
- Historical settlement patterns
- isolation from other groups
What are examples of regional variation?
- newfoundland english: immigration in mid 1800s led to geographical isolation
- Quebec french: 1600s settlements from france, geographical isolation
What did Laura Ford’s research on lexical variation in died in Winnipeg obituaries find?
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
What did Maria Rodrigo-Tamarit’s research on “A Couple of” find?
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
