theories Flashcards
Guile’s Matched Guise test
•human subjects listen to recorders of speakers of two or more languages
•make judgement about traits
• believe they are hearing different speakers
• possess lanauage attitudes which they use to evaluate the speakers
Trudgill speech community
= a group of people who share the same patterns of language use
•may be large regions like an urban area with a common distinct accent or small units like families & friends
•help people define or misidentify themselves as individuals & community & identify others
Eckert defining age
•in 1990s sociolinguist Penelope Eckert found people’s language was often affected by important life events
•said we cannot assume all people of a certain age range speak the same
•defined age in three ways;
- chronological (age since birth)
-biological (physical, maturity , puberty etc)
-social (events like marriage, birth etc)
Ives West Yorkshire study
•said age does affect language use
•63 teens were asked the same question, 100% replied yes
•seem to assume that as we get older the following things happen;
-stop swearing
-use more standard english
-become more posh
Sternström teenage talk
•did a corpus (study based on large collections of real life lang use stored in corpora/corpuses) looking at the most prominent features of teenagers talk (slanguage);
-irregular turn taking
-overlaps
-indistinct articulation/mumbling
-word shortening
-teasing & name calling
-verbal duelling/banter
-slang & taboo
-lang mixing/code switching
klerk
•draws several conclusions;
-young people have the freedom to challenge linguistic norms
-seek to establish new identities
-patterns of speech previously modelled on adults are slowly eroding
-need to be seen as modern, cool, fashionable
-establish as different
-need to belong to a group whose habits are different to adults, parents, other young people~ distinguish as distinct social group
Jonathon Greene
•said slang represents us at our most human, it may not represent us at our nicest, our most compassionate, kind or caring but this is our human side and we cannot pretend it doesn’t exist
•slang is a counter language- a direct steal from the counter language
•75% of it is playing on standard english. Had a bad reputation from earliest usage in 1990s e.g criminals
Cheshire concept of age
•argued it wasn’t just chronological age which affects our language use alone: ‘it is widely recognised..that adult language develops in response to important life events that effect the social relations and social attitudes of individuals’
•supports Eckerts concept of age
Cheshire reading study
•started in 1982 for a period of 8 months
•interested in finding out how often teens use non-standard morphological & syntactical features
•observed 13 teen boys & girls at school and recorded their natural speech
•the participants who were chosen were notorious for truancy & missing school therefore represented as ‘delinquent subculture’
•research was based on the idea that teens who use non-standard forms have different social ‘norms’ e.g getting in trouble, swearing/taboo, carrying a weapon, participation in minor criminal activities & the jobs they thought were unacceptable
•suggested variants in lang use is conscious, influenced by social attitudes- lang use associated with members in social groups
•males are more susceptible to covert prestige
•teens who adhere to less admirable social norms were more likely susceptible to covert prestige
reading 2
•9 non-standard variants;
-present tense suffix with non-standard 3rd person singular “we goes shopping”
-has with non-standard 3rd person singular “we has”
-ain’t used for negative present tense with all subjects “I ain’t going”
-was with plural subject “they was outside”
-multiple negation “i’m not going nowhere”
-negative past tense never used for standard english didn’t “I never done it”
-what used for standard english who,whom, which, that
-past tense come “I come down”
-auxiliary do with 3rd person singular verb “how much do he want for it”
Eckert Jocks and Burnouts
•emerged in response to William Labov’s studies criticism
•idea of social practice (what we share when we as speakers engage in activity)
•observed friendship groups- method is known as ethnography
•established to groups- jocks (actively engaged, enjoyed school, respect authority, standard English & elaborate pronunciation & standard lexis) and burnouts (anti-school, anti-authority, rebellious, non-standard lang)
•people tend to speak more like their friends- shared social practice together- than others belonging to the same demographic category e.g age
•problems- artificial environment, situation dependent, Nicholas Copeland (lang is context dependent, people code-switch in public vs private)
Devine & Savage seven social classes
•elite- high level of all three- high capital distinguishes from others
•established middle class- high levels of all but lower than elite- gregarious & culturally engaged
•technical middle class- high economic capital but less culturally and socially engaged- small new class with few social contact
•new affluent- medium levels of economic capital & higher levels of cultural & social capital- young active group
•emergent service- low economic capital but higher cultural & social capital- new class of young people often in cities
•traditional working- low levels of all 3 but higher economic capital than precariat- average age is older than other classes
•precariat- lowest level of all- member’s everyday lives are precariat
Petyt
•studied phonological variable /h/ in word initial position (otherwise known as h- dropping) in Bradford
•upper middle class- 12%
•lower middle class- 28%
•upper working class- 67%
•middle working class- 89%
•lower working class- 93%
•people belonging to LWC use h-dropping at almost every opportunity, UMC only around 1 in 10
Trudgill Norwich study
•investigated realisation of word final /ng/, words media /t/ & word initial /h/- differentiated between relaxed & careful speech in order to assess participants awareness of own accents as well as how they wish to sound
•/ng/ used more by middle class with non-standard ‘-in’ from among LWC
•other factors important- nature of context & gender •while class is clearly a factor in language use, it is part of a wider range of variables
Bernstein
•restricted code- short, simple sentence, limited vocabulary, frequent ‘y’know’, concrete nouns, predictable convos, similarity b/w speaker & person listening, reinforces group identity
•position oriented families- working class, personal (physical contact), context bound, common assumptions, imply rather than spell out
•elaborated code- language concerned with individual & uniqueness, complex sentences, extended vocabulary, 1st person, harder to predict, focus on ideas & theories
•person oriented- middle class, more impersonal, context free, less likely to assume shared attitude
