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Sociolinguistics > Sociolinguistics Fundamentals > Flashcards

Sociolinguistics Fundamentals Flashcards

1
Q

What is sociolinguistics?

A

A broad discipline examining the relationship between language/communication structure and social structure

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2
Q

What’s the Chomskyan approach?

A
  • Formal area of linguistics
  • theory of language acquisition argues that human brain structures naturally allow for the capacity to learn and use languages. Chomsky believed that rules for language acquisition are innate (inborn) and strengthen naturally as humans grow and develop
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3
Q

What are some lessons of intuition failing?

A
  • inaccurate results about use because decontextualized examples
  • social stigma of non-standard forms
  • literacy & education can cloud accuracy of intution
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4
Q

What are Labov’s principles of intuition?

A
  • Principle of experimenter
  • Principle of Validity
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5
Q

What is the principle of experimenter?

A

If disagreement on introspective judgements happen then those familiar with the theoretical issues can not be counted as evidence

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6
Q

What is the principle of Validity?

A

When use of language is shown to be more consistent than introspective judgments a valid description of the language will agree with use rather than with intuitions.

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7
Q

What are some predictions when intuition may fail?

A
  • Social intervention
  • Physical collapse
  • Pragmatic opacity
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8
Q

What is the sociolinguistic approach?

A
  • non-formal area (empirical)
  • relies on data from real language users
  • spoken vs written
  • notes vs recordings vs videoing
  • formal vs informal data
  • questionnaires?
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9
Q

What’s Chomsky’s notion of competence?

A
  • = I-Language, innate knowledge a native speaker has of the language
  • the unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows a speaker to use and understand language
  • actual speech performance is considered a grammatically irrelevant
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10
Q

What’s Chomsky’s notion of performance?

A
  • actual use of language in concrete situations
  • describes both the production, as well as the comprehension of language
  • opposite of competence
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11
Q

What is communicative competence by Hymes?

A
  • speakers grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology
  • when to speak, when not to speak, and about what to speak
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12
Q

What are the 5 factors of competences by Hymes?

A
  1. Linguistic competence
  2. Sociovarietal competence
  3. Pragmatic competence
  4. Discourse competence
  5. Strategic competence
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13
Q

What is Linguistic competence?

A
  • knowledge of semantics
  • connotative (emotional part of words/meanings)
  • Semantic structure
  • Grammar
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14
Q

What is Sociovarietal competence?

A
  • knowledge of characteristics of spoken/written language
  • ability to recognize presence, function and social/linguistic differences between std and non-std
  • select appropriate language in particular contexts
    –> SPEAKING
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15
Q

What is Pragmatic competence?

A
  • ability to read between the lines, read subtext
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16
Q

What is Discourse competence?

A
  • grammar beyond sentence, things surrounding discourse –> rules for turn-taking, saying hello/goodbye
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17
Q

What is Strategic competence?

A
  • ability to compensate inadequate competence
  • for example: paraphrase when forgot a word, polite ways of addressing someone of unknown status, knowing filler words/markers
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18
Q

SPEAKING—explain each letter and give example

A
  • SETTING AND SCENE: Setting = (locale) time and place – scene = (situation) abstract psychological setting, cultural definition, recurring institution, social occasion
  • PARTICIPANTS: Combinations of speaker-listener usually fill specified roles
  • ENDS: Outcome of an exchange, marriage, buying a new sofa etc. – Conversation?
  • ACT SEQUENCE: Form and content of the message. Sometimes conventionalised and specific language attached to them – weeding ceremony.
  • KEY: Tone manner and spirit in which a message is conveyed
  • INSTRUMENTALITIES: Choice of channel (oral, written, telegraphic, audio-visual); Choice of code / dialect or register
  • NORMS OF INTERACTION AND INTERPRETATION: Cultural specific behaviors and properties that are attached to speaking
  • GENRE: Particular demarcated types of utterance: poem, joke, sermon, lecture etc.
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19
Q

What are the reasons as to why investigating performance is valuable?

A
  • Variation is functional
  • Variation is a necessary precondition of language change
  • Variation is highly structured, both in speech of individual and communities
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20
Q

What are the 5 types of constraints that structure language variation?

A
  1. Speakers social characteristics
  2. The audience’s social characteristics
  3. Setting and Topic
  4. Psycholinguistic phenomena (attention, processing, etc.)
  5. Language and conversation structure
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21
Q

Define prescriptive and descriptive tradition

A
  • prescriptive: how people SHOULD speak
  • descriptive: how people actually speak
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22
Q

Name some issues that sociolinguistics have with standard languages

A

a. Artificial created and derived from national elites. Supported by government and power
b. Symbol of political power
c. Linguistically odd: suppressing language variation. Doesn’t allow the variability as in non-standardised forms. (some is allowed, I’ve not been well vs I haven’t been well)
d. Tidy in the written form but writing is learnt not acquired. Many languages aren’t written.
e. Standard languages don’t have native speakers: they are ideological
f. Standard languages often have strange forms
g. No standard forms ≠ no norms, social groups and communicative need create linguistic norms
h. Differences between writing and speech

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23
Q

What is verbal hygiene?

A
  • urge to meddle in matters of language
  • effort to improve or correct speech and writing
  • prescriptivism and language purism
  • Based on what we see in the world we want to change it and make it better. In language this leads to a will of norms to define what is good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. These norms represent deeper anxieties which are not linguistic but social, moral and political.
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24
Q

What are some examples of verbal hygiene?

A
  • political correctness
  • New Right/neoliberal speak
  • translating Bible into Klingon
  • The French words (Prohibition) Bill
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25
Q

What are Kroskrity’s 5 dimensions in his cluster concept for ideology?

A
  1. The perception of language and discourse that is constructed in the interests of a specific social or cultural group
  2. Ideologies are multiple – different groups have different ideological takes on the same phenomenon
  3. Awareness of the ideological nature of these views differs
  4. Mediation between social structures and forms of language
  5. Ideologies are productively used in the creation and representation of various social and cultural identities, such as nationalism and ethnicity
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26
Q

What are Irvine and Gal’s strategies?

A
  • Iconization
  • Fractal recursivity
  • Erasure
27
Q

Define Iconization & give example

A
  • Attribution of causal connection between social group and linguistic form
  • These features (Enregisterment) made iconic of the identities of those speakers
  • Examples: High rising terminal in Australians, Southern Accent in the USA, Rhoticity in rural southern England
28
Q

Define Fractal recursivity

A
  • projection of an opposition at one level of social life onto another social level
  • If these oppositions are made repeatedly, either reiterating what is similar on one side of the opposition - what binds that group together - or reiterating what makes that group different from the other side, the oppositions are reproduced, strengthened and made to appear ‘real’.
  • Example: construction of oppositions (e.g. nation-state building in former Yugoslavia)
29
Q

Define Erasure

A
  • Ignore some people or activities in a sociolinguistic field. - Example: Catalan as dialect of Spanish, Valencian as dialect of Catalan. Dialects not having grammars. There are no true/real gypsies/Maori etc.
30
Q

What does NORM stand for?

A

Non-mobile
Older
Rural
Male

31
Q

What are the characteristics of the “authentic speaker”?

A
  • Firmly place-based
  • Socially ‘untainted’
  • Male
  • Traditional
  • Unconscious speech
  • Non-mobile
32
Q

What is variationist sociolinguistics?

A
  • methodological and analytical approach to understanding the relationship between language and its context of use
  • concerned with the variable nature of language in use
33
Q

What is ‘real language’ according to Bucholtz?

A
  • Contrast with the idealism of the Chomskyan paradigm
  • real language—that is authentic language—is language produced in authentic contexts by authentic speakers
  • Underwrites nearly everything we do in sociolinguistics
34
Q

What are Bucholtz’s four ideologies concerning authenticity? (2003)

A
  • Linguistic isolationism
  • Linguistic mundaneness
  • The linguist as obstacle to linguistic authenticity
  • The linguist as arbiter of authenticity
35
Q

Define “Linguistic isolationism”

A
  • Isolated language is the most authentic language, unaffected by other influences
  • most authentic speaker belongs to a well-defined, static and relatively homogeneous social grouping
  • Monolingualism is ‘unmarked’
36
Q

Define “Linguistic mundaneness”

A
  • most authentic language is unremarkable, commonplace, everyday, naturally occurring speech
  • Conversation analysis: conversation is the most authentic, the base from which other kinds of language use derive
37
Q

Define “the linguist as obstacle to linguistic authenticity”

A
  • ‘Observer’s paradox’ –> the means of perception itself affect the perceived action
  • Ethnography, participant observation
38
Q

Define “the linguist as arbiter of authenticity”

A
  • It is the linguist who ultimately decides who is authentic and who isn’t
39
Q

What does Bucholtz mean by “authentication”?

A
  • The process by which, through constantly negotiated social practices, speakers claim certain identities
    Examples:
  • use of AAVE by white hiphop fans; Middle class African Americans; Asian Americans seeking to display solidarity
  • Use of British regional accents by Britpop singers ; populist classical musicians; the ‘authentic’ north v RP South etc
40
Q

What are the two extremes of identity?

A
  1. identity as the essentialised traits of people of certain kinds (e.g. ‘women’…)
  2. identity as ‘traits seen as only loosely tied to individuals and groups [which] can be donned and doffed as easily as one can change the cut of one’s jeans’ (Kiesling 2013)
    –> identity is largely divorced from these groups/categories –> we can change our language as often as we change –> we have control over language
41
Q

What are the 5 principles by Bucholtz and Hall (2005)?

A
  1. The Emergence Principle
  2. The Positionality Principle
  3. The Indexicality Principle
  4. The Relationality Principle
  5. The Partialness Principle
42
Q

Define the Emergence Principle

A

People’s sense of self and their individual mind are reflected in a form of discourse. Identity emerges from concrete conditions of linguistic interaction and is not a pre‐ existing source of linguistic or semiotic practices. It is fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon.

43
Q

Define the Positionality Principle

A

Identity includes a) macro‐level demographic categories (such gender, age, social class); b) local ethnographically specific cultural positions; and c) temporary and interactionally specific stances and participant roles (e.g. joke teller, listener etc.)
b = locality is important
c = particular moment in time

44
Q

Define the Indexicality Principle

A

The notion of indexicality: linguistic forms semiotically linked to social meanings. It is closely related to cultural beliefs and values, and can be found on all levels of linguistic structure.

45
Q

Define the Relationality Principle

A
  • Identities are never isolated. They gain social meaning through interaction with other identities in the discourse. This interaction includes similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice, and authority/delegitimacy.
  • identity is performed in interaction with someone else
46
Q

Define the Partialness Principle

A

This principle challenges the old view that social life is coherent. Reflexive ethnography and especially postmodernism see the identity of individuals as fractured and discontinuous localized in a discoursive context. Identity is constantly shifting both as interaction unfolds and across discourse contexts

47
Q

What are the five problems of language change & including questions by Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968)?

A
  1. The constraints problem: Are there constraints on change? Can any sort of change occur?
  2. The transition problem: By what route does a linguistic feature change from the old form to the new?
  3. The embedding problem: how does the change spread through society and through the language?
  4. The evaluation problem: how are changes evaluated and how does this evaluation affect the progress of change?
  5. The actuation problem: why does a particular change occur at a particular time in a particular place? Why that feature? Why there? Why then?
48
Q

What are the two approaches in the transition problem?

A
  • Neogrammarian regular sound change
  • Lexically diffused changes
49
Q

What are Neogrammarian regular sound changes?

A
  • Vowel will move gradually across phonetic space moving ever further away from its original position and ever nearer its destination
  • They are phonetically gradual
  • They affect all words at the same time
50
Q

What are Lexically diffused changes?

A
  • The vowel will move abruptly across phonetic space ‘jumping’ from its original position to its destination.
  • sound will jump from its original pronunciation to its new pronunciation without ever going through a stage where a phonetically intermediate pronunciation is used
  • They are phonetically abrupt
  • They affect different words at different times
  • They do not change in a phonologically predictable or tidy order
    Example: bryde [bridɛ] > bird [bird > bɜrd > bɜːd] / frist > first / thridde > third
51
Q

What are the three waves of language variation and change defined by Eckert (2012)?

A
  1. First wave: macrosociological approaches
  2. Second wave: ethnographic sensitivity, but retaining macro-sociological principles
  3. Third wave: ethnographic sensitivity to localised stylistic variation and the construction of identities through styles
52
Q

What are the methods and analysis used in the first wave of research?

A

Methods:
- dominated by research on NORMs.
- Sociolinguistic approaches to studying language variation changed the WAY we collected dialect data considerably:
- Conversational data were collected (not one-word questionnaire answers) and recorded
- The demographic was expanded: young speakers, female speakers, minority ethnic speakers and speakers of different social classes were included

Analysis:
Some new key tools were introduced:
- The linguistic variable: two or more ways of saying the same thing
- Apparent time model for examining change in progress

53
Q

What is the approach and methods used in the second wave of research?

A
  • employs ethnographic methods to explore the meaningful local categories and configurations important for that community

Methods:
- social network studies
- occupation-based studies

54
Q

What are the approach and method used in the third wave of research?

A
  • ‘speakers place themselves in the social landscape through stylistic practice’
  • emphasis on style and how people perform styles; on individuals and small groups, rather than on ‘representative samples’
  • emphasis on the social meaning that variation can perform

a) Variation constitutes a robust social semiotic system
b) The meanings of variables are underspecified, gaining more specific meanings in the context of styles
c) Variation does not simply reflect, but also constructs social meaning

55
Q

Labov argued that “Historical linguistics can be thought of as the art of making the best use of bad data”. In what senses did he think the data were ‘bad’?

A
  • Documents from the past survive by chance not by design: the selection available is the product of an unpredictable series of historical accidents;
  • Only written forms of the language are available, not spoken (historical phonology? written and spoken forms of the language?)
  • There was no written norm in earlier forms of the language (and still isn’t for some languages):
    a) people will write more like they speak, or
    b) the lack of conventions may mean that similar sounds are transcribed in a different way.
56
Q

What is the Uniformitarian Principle?

A
  • Linguistic uniformitarianism posits that the same linguistic processes and mechanisms that operate in the present have also been at work throughout the history of a language.
  • In other words, the changes we observe in language today are governed by the same principles that have shaped languages in the past.
  • mechanisms of language change are consistent over time.
57
Q

What are Apparent Time studies?

A
  • Tracks variation in language use across different age levels
  • If a feature A is not used (or used less) by the old, used somewhat more by the middle aged and used most by the young, we could assume that this is a sign of language change in progress.
  • It signals the lack of existence of a feature when the old were acquiring language, but the emergence of that feature among later generations.
58
Q

What are the issues with the Apparent Time studies?

A
  1. Very few include old speakers: rarely do you see data from speakers over the age of 80
  2. Very few include very young children, and most have post-adolescents as their youngest age group
  3. Many rely on chronological age rather than ‘age-related place in society’
  4. Assumes that our speech doesn’t change after childhood (and the critical period). It assumes that 60 year olds today speak the same way as they did 20/40/50 yrs ago
59
Q

Name two Real Time studies?

A
  • Panel studies: a survey at time x, then at time y, (then at time z), with the same sample of informants
  • Trend studies: conduct a survey at time x, then at time y, with a sample not of the same people, but with similarly structure sample
60
Q

What are the issues with Panel and Trend studies?

A

Panel studies:
- unwillingness of sample to reparticipate
- people leave the community: emigrate, die…
- takes too long to do

Trend studies:
- never sure how comparable the samples are…
- takes too long to do?

61
Q

When is age variation not change?

A
  • Age grading: Features associated with particular age groups: usually lexical (words for “cool”, “Z” in Canada)
  • Stable variation: Different generations use different amounts of the standard and non-standard forms but this pattern is repeated generation after generation. No linguistic feature finally replaces the other. [(ing) in English speaking world; multiple negation?; Causes of stable variation: linguistic marketplace? (=symbolic market where linguistic exchanges happen)]
62
Q

What have been some of the Chomskyan arguments AGAINST the use of data from actual language use in linguistic theorisation and grammar building?

A
  • Chomsky has argued that focusing on performance data can be misleading, as it may include errors, hesitations, and other non-grammatical elements that do not reflect the underlying competence of the speaker.
63
Q

What is a constraints on variation?

A
  • Sociolinguists use the term ‘constraint’ in the sense of constraining, influencing and shaping, rather than blocking altogether.
  • A constraint on variation, then, is a factor which influences the proportions of variants found for a particular linguistic variable.
64
Q

What is Marché linguistique and how did it shape language variation?

A
  • it looks at the extent to which the standard language is actually important in that person’s everyday life. Looking at the relationship between importance or lack of importance of the standard and the use of a particular linguistic variable.
  • Linguistic differences are analysed in terms of the importance of the legitimised language in the socio-economic life of the speaker.
  • Some people have a greater stake in speaking the ‘legitimised language’ than others. This is not necessarily correlated with social class.

Example: People who are in frontline customer’s service jobs may well be more invested in being able to speak standard German in Germany than sb who doesn’t have much contact with the public/customer service role (sb who doesn’t need to be able to speak standard German in their everyday working life).

Sociolinguistics (1 decks)

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