Sociolinguistics

Question 1

Variables

Answer 1

one idea, many ways of expressing it

Question 2

Variant

Answer 2

different ways of expressing a variable

Question 3

Allophony as a sociolinguistic variable?

Answer 3

is not a sociolinguistic variable as allophony is not interchangeable - you do not have the option to say one thing over the other

Question 4

Orderly heterogeneity

Answer 4

speakers have many choices on how they assemble their speech (heterogeneity)
these choices form predictable patterns (orderly)

Question 5

examples of variables

Answer 5

regional words for a bread roll: bap, un, barn….

g dropping - running, runnin’

Question 6

transcription of variable

Answer 6

(…)

Question 7

transcription of variants

Answer 7

[…]

Question 8

speech communities

Answer 8

people in frequent interaction who share a linguistic repertoire and have shared norms and evaluations of that repertoire

can cross continents:
USA: zee
UK, NZ, SA, AUS: zed

Question 9

components of a repertoire

Answer 9

can be lexical, phonological, pragmatic, vowel distribution, syntactic…

Question 10

superposed language

Answer 10

language associated with formal speechmaking, scientific discussion, a specialised function

the choice of superposed variants may be guided by:
technical requirements
social barriers

typically these are late learned, outside the critical period

Question 11

community of practice

Answer 11

people who get together to engage in a shared activity (and talk about the shared practice they have in common)

Question 12

enregistered language

Answer 12

when notable features of the way language is spoken is in a given place become crystallised in the public imagination, we say it has become enregistered:

• Cockney (London)
• Pittsburghese (Pittsburgh)

Question 13

Uniformitarian Principle

Answer 13

knowledge about the past that helps us explain the present

Question 14

Real Time

Answer 14

replicating a previous study in the same environment as the initial study

Question 15

Apparent Time

Answer 15

compare generations of speakers in the same moment

Question 16

Change from above

Answer 16

involves an incoming norm (usually from outside)
people know it is happening
tends to be used stylistically
tend to be led by the higher socio-economic class
tends to be led by women

Question 17

Change from below

Answer 17

speakers are unaware of it
tends to be less stylistically active
tends to be led by ‘interior’ socio-economic classes
tends to be led by women

Question 18

age grading

Answer 18

age differences are a stable property of the speech community
- adolescents tend to use more non-standard forms

often involves stable variation, or change that is not progressing between generations

Question 19

crossover effect

Answer 19

when one class takes over another in a linguistic phenomena, thus going against the pattern in place

Question 20

gendered language

Answer 20

caretakers more likely to use the more prestigious form when talking to girls than boys across all ages

gendered identity and presentation adheres to held notions of gendered speech (women having a fronter [s], men have a backer [s])

Question 21

gender paradox

Answer 21

women use the more standard/prestigious form
they lead change from both above and below
- because it is not the same women leading both changes

Question 22

Eckert’s Study

Answer 22

study of teens in Detroit split into important social groupings:

• Jocks (middle class, suburban, university bound, hierarchal)
• Burnouts (locally based, urban, workplace bound)

recorded language changes and had the following findings:

• for older, more established changes: girls lead
• for newer, more recent changes: change led by social grouping, not gender

Question 23

styleshifting/intraspeaker variation

Answer 23

when speakers change the way they speak depending on the context or topic

Question 24

attention paid to speech (Labov)

Answer 24

when you do not pay attention to your speech, you are more likely to use your most natural vernacular.
when you do, you are more likely to use more formal, superposed elements

Question 25

Audience design (Bell)

Answer 25

proposed that speakers shift their speech to match to their imagined audience

audience roles:

• addressee (ratified and being directly addressed)
• auditor (ratified but not directly addressed)
• overhearer (neither ratified nor being directly addressed but speaker is aware of their presence)
• eavesdropper (speaker not aware of them)

Question 26

speaker design

Answer 26

when speakers choose different variants to present a certain identity to the world

‘acts of identity’ treats use of linguistic variants as a kind of speech act

Question 27

speech acts

Answer 27

performative (by saying it, you are doing it)
promising
swearing
pronouncing
declaring

Question 28

indexicality

Answer 28

when a linguistic variant is associated with a certain place, or group of speakers, that variant can ‘index’ the meanings associated with that place

-ing
= formality, educatedness, effortfulness

-in’
= casualness, friendliness

Question 29

Study by Smith, Durham and Fortune

Answer 29

recorded caretakers and young children in Buckie, Scotland

• children exposed to two variants
  (HOOSE)
• [u:] - [ʌʊ]

associated ‘hoose’ with play and ‘house’ with discipline

Question 30

reification

Answer 30

assuming a form of speech is more or less than another

Question 31

Study by Purnel, Idsari and Baugh

Answer 31

carried out an experiment in the Californian Bay Area where a tridialectal speaker requested house viewings in 5 different locales in:
Standard American English
African American English
Chicano English

findings showed that the population breakdown for each locale roughly corresponded with which guises were granted permission to view the properties
(for example, in the predominantly white Woodside, appointments made in Standard American English were more likely to be accepted)

Question 32

Credibility

Answer 32

case of Trayvon Martin
- witness Rachel Jeantel was on the phone to Trayvon Martin at the time of the shooting, but because jury members struggled to understand AAE, her testimony played no role in their decision which took the side of the cop.

Question 33

Associations of Vocal Fry

Answer 33

associated with both powerful, authoritative British men as a good thing, and Californian women as a sign of uneducatedness or stupidity.

• derived from attitudes about the speakers, not the variant itself