Sociolinguistics Flashcards
Types of Language Variation
- Lexical Variation
Different “Vocabulary” - Phonological Variation
Different realisation of a phoneme (cf: t-glottalling vs t-flapping) - Grammatical Variation
Different grammatical constructs - Discourse-Pragmatic Variation
Different language use in context.
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the study of the social embedding of language
The relationship between language and the social contexts in which it is used.
Factors that constrain language variation
- Context
- Intelocutor Relationships
- Identity
Free Variation
Variation that cannot be accounted for by phonological rules.
* Different people say things differently
*Two or more sounds with no change in meaning
* Cannot be predicted by phon. rules
Not wrong, just variable
Variation is not random, but are often conditioned by social, stylistic and linguistic factors
Social Factors
Examples include
1. Social class
2. Gender
3. Age
Stylistic Factors
Related to register / context eg:
1. Formal
2. Informal
Labov 1966 R-lessness in NYC
Historical Context
Study of presence or absence of postvocalic /r/
- BrEng was variant of prestige, hence NYC Eng was historically r-less
- After war perceptions of /r/ reversed
- /r/-ful now became variant of prestige
Labov 1966 R-lessness in NYC
Sampling Methodology
Random sampling from 3 different department stores that catered to different social classes.
- S Klein: Budget store, working class
- Macy’s: Mid-range, middle class
- Sak’s: Expensive, upper class
Labov 1966 R-lessness in NYC
Data Collection Methodology
Elicited target /r/ in the phrase fourth floor in both careful / emphatic and casual speech.
cf: register
Labov 1966 R-lessness in NYC
Results
/r/-lessness was more prevalent in the low-end department store while /r/-fulness was more prevalent in the high-end department store.
mid-range department store displayed a mixture of both.
Labov 1966 R-lessness in NYC
Conclusions
Variation in /r/-fulness was governed by two classess of factors.
- Social and stylistic factors
* r-ful pronunciations more frequent in high-end stores –> socioeconomic class
* Emphatic / careful –> more r-ful (r-less more prevalent in informal speech) - Internal factors (linguistic)
* Preconsonantal environment favours r-lessness
Seemingly random variation is actually systematic, predictable and orderly.
Case study: T-glottalling
Social factors
1. Age: Younger people were more likely to t-glottal
2. Gender: Women were more likely to t-glottal
Stylistic Factors
1. Register: More glottalisation in informal tasks
Types of Speaker Variation
- Interspeaker Variation
- Intraspeaker Variation (style)
Style: consider the contexts in which intraspeaker variation may arise.
Language variation
The difference in variants is merely between them being standard / nonstandard.
Nothing inherent about nonstandard variants makes them inferior to standard variants.
Traditional (errant) views on Lang Var
- Prescriptivist Rules of language
- Standard forms being more “correct”
- Typically believed to be common sense (no justification needed)
- Outsider if you do not subscribe to prescriptivist language beliefs
- Rules are prescribed by grammars + linguistic gatekeepers
Sociolinguistic Views on Lang Var
- Descriptivist approach
- Does not assign a value to any variable (no good/bad, correct/incorrect)
How language is, not how it ought to be.
Descriptivist Approaches
Premise: The connection between sound / form and meaning is arbitrary (all conventional)
Problem: People assign meanings and values to different ways of speaking
Sociolinguistic viewpoint: As long as the meaning is not changed, there is no “problem”
‘Standard’
Linguistics distinguishes between a standard (or standardised) and non-standard varieties / features.
eg: Cockney is a non-standard dialect (it is not legitimised)
N.B. this is not a value judgement but a description of the facts
Issues with Standard English
- Standard English is hard to define
- “Standard” itself is context-dependent (in the UK, the standard, BrE, is the variety of E normally used in writing)
Background of Standard English
Historical development:
* Written standard developed in the 15th century
* Based on East Midlands dialect
* Promoted by printing press
* By 1600, SE was the norm in printed texts
* Little to no variation in written SE all over the world
Facts of Standard Eng
- Possible to speak SE with any regional accent (it itself is not an accent)
- It is not the English language, but also one variety of it
- Likely an abstraction of Received Pronunciation (RP)
Language Change vis-a-vis Standards
Standards change.
Language change over time is inevitable — it is natural and systematic
Language change ideology
- Language change / standards often linked to employability and nation state identities
- Common assumption that language change = destruction of language
- Usually associated with minorities / disadvantaged groups
Tangible effects of language ideology
- Discrimination based on accent (from hearer POV)
- Accent consciousness (from speaker POV)
