Sociolinguistics

Question 1

What is sociolinguistics?

And alternatively what is the sociology of language?

Answer 1

Hudson, R: Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society.
Coulmas: correlations between language use and social structure.

sociology of language studies society in relation to language, e.g effects of multilingualism on economic development

Question 2

If an utterance is an ‘act of identity’ (le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985), which acts of one’s identity can it express.

Answer 2

age, nation of residence, region of origin, class/profession, sex, ethnic background

Question 3

How does age affect language use? (General - Hudson, R, Sociolinguistics)

Answer 3

Babies - only hear input from parents & carers.

Children - obsessively conform to older children, so much so that some linguistic behaviours (such as words) repeat themselves in consecutive generations of children, without being used at all by adults.

Adolescents - linguistic foundation is laid. Individualism takes over from conformity leading adolescents to use ever changing slang words which differ from adult speech behaviours. (Cheshire & Milroy, 1993, suggest that peer group pressure is stronger on young people than adults, whereas adults who have professional lives, personal independence and geographic & social mobility have greater variability in social relationships and thus feel more pressure to conform to a societal standard.)

Adults - behaviour far more stable, but still malleable by other sociolinguistic factors.

Old people (see 1974 ing study below) use more non-standard variants than middle aged adults - pressures reduce as they return to a smaller more consistent social network? This said, Laboc (2001) found that in Philadelphia old people did not use non standard variants such as negative concord. Are some of these generational features rather than simply non-standard variants?

Question 4

Time assignment: two ways to tell the time?

Answer 4

Event based time - units and measurements of time correspond to community actions and rituals

‘Cognitive artefacts’ - arbitrary units and measurements such as days weeks months and hours govern our expression of the time, which correspond to literal artefacts (clocks, calendars).

This may well be influenced by community size & dispersion, as well as complexity. No one timed ritual is shared by everybody in London, let alone every English speaker.

Different ideas of time & directional relation. One language in the video had it related to body (perhaps all events are personal and domestic if there is little contact with mass media etc), japanese future is down (related to script?). Why is ours forward?

Question 5

‘Official Language’

Answer 5

Is the language / languages used by a specific state for state affairs and expected to be the lingua franca of the population though this is not always the case. It can be written into the constitution as it is in India, or specified in other ways, for example in England, residents wishing to naturalise must speak English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic.

This creates a dynamic between language and power. For example the administration of justice act in Ireland requiring use of English in court disadvantages those who do not speak English.

Question 6

How does the study of sociolinguistics from the Chomskyan study of linguistics?

Answer 6

Chomsky argued that linguistic theory is primarily concerned with the ‘ideal speaker-listener’, whatever that is… Sociolinguistics actually studies the variation between the language use of real speaker-listeners.

Question 7

Micro. vs. Macro. Sociolinguistics?

Answer 7

Micro: how does language structure influence language use, how do varieties and patterns correlate with social attributes.

Macro: attitudes and attachments towards languages (which also correspond to distribution of forms in society)
language shift, maintenance, replacement

Question 8

Varieties, dialects, accents, languages

Answer 8

Languages are not mutually intelligible. (to varying degrees. and sometimes state politics influences what is said to be a distinct language).

Dialects or varieties are mutually intelligible but distinct varieties of a language. They often exist on continua.

The standard form of a language is arbitrary and the ‘language’ encompasses all varieties.

Accents exclusively refer to the phonetic & phonological variation between dialects.

Question 9

The fourfold model of standardisation:

Haugen 1996

Answer 9

1) selection - one variety is picked & elevated to standard (for ease, cultural significance, societal associations, etc etc)
2) acceptance - promotion, spread, establishment & enforcement (involving norms, institutions, authorities such as schools and the media), to become standard form.
3) elaboration - where the language lacks resources for all of its functions they are developed.
Academie Francaise introduces alternatives to anglicisms, German incorporates anglicisms.
4) codification - the norms and rules of grammar, orthography etc are formulated and defined in grammars, dictionaries, style manuals.

Question 10

Assignment 2: laryngealisation rates - key findings.

Answer 10

Conversational Data:
Used by men more than women.
Used by working class more than middle class.
Used by younger speakers more than older speakers.
These second two trends are far less obvious amongst men.
Word List Data:
Less usage overall.
Middle class speakers show the greatest reduction in usage.

Implications:
Not a prestige feature
Innovation occurred in a male environment?

Question 11

Overt vs Covert Prestige

Answer 11

Overt prestige involves conforming to standard, prestigious speech behaviours. Covert prestige involves intentionally straying from standard speech behaviours to mark difference.

Question 12

COVERT PRESTIGE STUDY: Martha’s Vineyard (Labov, 1963)

Answer 12

Martha’s Vineyard is an island off Massachusetts which had 6000 inhabitants but accommodated 42000 summer visitors each year. Residents had a long record of resistance to norms and culture of Boston.

They also had a differing pronunciation of /aʊ/ (as in ‘house’), pronouncing instead [əu], a pronunciation which only became more frequent and exaggerated despite its lack of prestige.

Labov linked this change to the natives’ resentment towards the invading holiday makers from the mainland (which represented economic exploitation).

This idea is compounded by the fact that the feature was most marked among young speakers who had worked on the mainland and then returned, aware of the social significance of their pronunciation. It was least marked among those who wanted to leave for the mainland.

Question 13

LANGUAGE & SOCIAL CLASS STUDY: New York Department Stores (Labov, 1966)

Answer 13

The idea is that prestige variants correspond to behaviours of the socioeconomically successful strata of society.

Labov visited three New York department stores, linked to differing classes. He triggered staff members to say the word ‘fourth’ in both casual and emphatic contexts.

He found that postvocalic /r/ was more frequent at the higher class establishments and more frequent in emphatic speech.

Problems:

• unreliable way to judge class of speaker
• possible accommodation of interviewer’s speech.

Question 14

LANGUAGE & SOCIAL CLASS STUDY: Variation in Norwich (Trudgill, 1974)

Answer 14

The idea is that standard/prestige variants are used more in formal speech, and more by higher classes.

Trudgill studied the following features:

• the percentage of n’ as opposed to ng in walking, running, etc.
• the percentage of glottal stops as opposed to t in words such as butter, bet, etc.
• the percentage of dropped hs’ as opposed to h in words such as hammer, hat, etc

When style is kept constant, the lower the social class the greater the
incidence of the non-standard variant
• When the social class is kept constant, the less formal the style, the
greater the incidence of the non-standard variant

Question 15

Prestige, Standard, Formality, Class, Reading

Answer 15

The ‘standard’ form of the language gains prestige, as those seeking ‘overt prestige’ conform to the standard. These groups tend to be of higher classes and as such non-standard variants tend to appear among lower class groups. Speakers conform to the standard to a greater extent in formal speech situations or when reading.

Question 16

LANGUAGE & SOCIAL CLASS STUDY: Social Networks in Belfast (Milroy & Milroy, 1978)

Answer 16

Milroy & Milroy studied working class speech in 3 inner city communities.

They determined a ‘Network Strength Scale’, where a strong network would exhibit the following features:

• membership in high density
• territorially based cluster
• kinship in network
• working with 2+ people of same sex from same area.
• voluntary leisure time with workmates.

They found that the use of non-standard variants such as using long ‘a’ in hand and deleting dental fricatives between vowels was positively correlated with the strength of social networks.

They also found that there was a more prominent gender divide with regard to fricative deletion in Ballymacarett where men worked together on a shipyard.

Question 17

Language and age: middle age bias?

Answer 17

Penny Eckert identifies that middle aged groups are the only seen to be using language rather than learning it or losing it.

Question 18

LANGUAGE & AGE STUDY: Quotative ‘like’ in AmE, EngE & NZE (Buchstaller & Darcy, 2009)

Answer 18

Evidence for younger speakers (17-30), using more non-standard variants than older speakers (40-63)

In England, 7% of quotative verbs used by young people were ‘be like’, compared to 0.5% for older people. Pattern mimicked in other places.

Question 19

LANGUAGE & AGE STUDY: Norwich ‘ing’ (Chambers & Trudgill, 1998)

Answer 19

Found that there was a pattern where middle aged people used the most standard variants whereas younger and older people were more likely to use the non-standard variant.

Question 20

Language & Gender: Trudgill (1974)

Answer 20

Found that women showed less usage of the non-standard varient ‘in’ for ‘ing’ than men.

Deborah Cameron (1992): ‘Trudgill took it that women wished to identify themselves with a higher social class, and thus that their status aspirations were higher than men’s … but surely it is possible that the women’s assessments might just as well have reflected their awareness of sex stereotypes and their consequent desire to fulfil ‘normal’ expectations that women talk ‘better’.’

Question 21

Models for linguistic variation between genders.

Answer 21

Deficit Model: Lakoff (1975) claimed that women use a number of language features which collectively indicate uncertainty and hesitancy, and as a result women cannot express themselves strongly and make what they are talking about appear trivial, denying themselves access to power.

Dominance Model: Don Zimmerman & Candace West (1975) found that more interruptions occurred in mixed-sex than in single-sex conversations. Virtually all the interruptions in mixed-sex conversations were perpetrated by men. This was actually an empirical study and focused on men’s oppressive speaking behaviour rather than women’s inadequacy. By interrupting, men violate women’s right to complete their turn, and in doing that men deny women’s equal status as speaking partners. Cameron’s critique is relevant here. Also, Moosmuller (1987-8) found that negative attitudes to non-standard dialect in official contexts (school, politics, media) were greater when women were speaking. Wodak found that women using most non-standard variables in court (as well as UMC men weirdly) were treated most harshly.

Two Cultures Model: assumes that men and women follow fundamentally different communicative principles, acquired during socialisation in single sex peer groups. (Maltz & Borker, 1982). Objections to this model: the basic differences predicted could not be demonstrated, men and women are not exclusively socialised in single sex groups.

Biological Models are rare. Chambers 1992 thinks that women have a better ability to learn languages and will therefore show more variation.

Alternative Approaches:

Ethnographic Approach - Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (1992) investigate ‘communities of practice’ - an aggregate of people who come together in mutual engagement in some common endeavour. Common ways of talking emerge during this time.

Question 22

Assignment 3: Differing rates of 0 & [l] realisation of intervocalic voiced dental fricative in Derry.

Answer 22

• l realisation more non-standard than 0 realisation (used to a lesser extent by all).
• Avoided by all middle class groups except teenage catholics.
• Middle class groups also show less use of 0 variant than working class groups, but again for the catholic middle class the difference is actually very small.
• One could argue that catholics in Derry are a minority group and live in a specific area so have a high NSS like working class groups leading to greater use of non-standard variants.
• Teenagers use far more non-standard variants than adults.

Question 23

Influence of ethnic background on speech (MLE).

Answer 23

Minority ethnic groups favour non-standard variants, however due to the language contact involved in ethnic diversity, the non-standard variants are often specific to specific groups based on L1 transfer during L2 acquisition. MLE: Cheshire et al (2011) identify a non-standard pattern of ‘was’ & ‘were’ usage which is favoured by English based Creoles, African English & Indian & Bangladeshi English. They also identify that the vowel system used more closely resembles vowels used in Patois, rather than cockney. (MLE is also regional tho remember).

Question 24

Important considerations when discussing age

Answer 24

Is this an age-specific feature or generation specific feature. (changing tendencies of use within an individuals life as opposed to behaviours of an age group in a specific speech community).

Eckert (1997) chronological age, biological age and social age.
Mentions that it is different to differentiate age & generation given that aging is a process which occurs in a group.

Question 25

Age exclusive features:

Answer 25

Maturational factors - FLA speech & trembling voice (Helfrich 1979)

Cultural factors: babies not expected nor encouraged to speak in Japan

Question 26

More examples of youth non-standard language.

Answer 26

Clyne (1984) identified that German speaking teenagers were using English phrases such as ‘hello friends’ and English influenced phrases (‘es tornt mich an - it turns me on). Preisler (1999) & Hogsbro (1995) find the informal use of English amongst young danes in Anglo-american influenced youth subcultures.

Question 27

Labov’s observations about women’s language use:

Answer 27

• more standard variants
• LMC women ‘hypercorrect’ their language - meaning they apply standard features found in MC language to new contexts, stimulating language change. (see style shifting of oh by three socioeconomic groups in new york city - labov 1990 224 - also in white handbook 134).

Thinks mother status gives women more influence in language change.

Question 28

Milroy 1981 reason for women’s use of standard variants.

Answer 28

‘It would seem that female linguistic behaviour is viewed more tolerantly by local peer-groups, so that women have, in a sense, more linguistic freedom than men’. (men under more social pressure from other males to conform to local norms)