Theory: Social Groups Theorists, Experiments and Studies Flashcards
Age?
Eckert
There are three forms of age:
• Chronological - how long someone has been alive.
• Social - how someone interacts socially, for example, like marriage or the birth of a first child.
• Biological - physical maturity.
Teenspeak distances teenagers from adults.
Teenspeak contains?
Stenstrom
Teenspeak contains:
• Slang
• Expletives
• Contractions
• Name Calling
• Insult Battles
Linguistic norms?
DeKlerk
Teenagers have the ability and freedom to challenge and adapt linguistic norms.
Online?
Tagliamonte
When communicating online, teenagers use more intensifies. There is no evidence to suggest a decline in grammar.
Reading study?
Eckert
Looked at children’s (30 boys and 12 girls) use of nine different non-standard forms, including multiple negation and ‘ain’t’. She linked this to whether they thought criminal activity was acceptable.
Found that:
• Boys were more likely to approve of criminal activity.
• Those children, who approved of non-standard forms were most likely to use non-standard forms.
• There is a link between the covert prestige of using non-standard forms and standard forms.
Detroit study - Jocks and Burnouts?
Eckert
Eckert studied two types of students in Detroit - Jocks and Burnouts. Jocks were highly engaged in school and Burnouts well less interested by it and often engaged in immoral behaviour (like smoking and drinking). She studied non-standard forms and most notably negative concord (multiple negation). She found that:
• Jocks used almost all standard forms
• Burnouts used predominantly non-standard forms
• Importantly, it showed that those in the same social group spoke similarly.
Martha’s Vineyard Study?
Labov
Labov looked at inhabitants of the island of Martha’s Vineyard. He noted that the younger members (who worked or studied there for some of the year) converged to the vowel pronunciation of the older members of the island when tourists arrived to distance themselves.
New York stores study?
Labov
Labov looked at the presence of the post-vocalic rhotic /r/, which is very a common prestigious pronunciation in New York. He compared the speech of sales assistants in three different stores of different classes by getting them to say ‘fourth floor’ and then repeat it. Here is what he found:
• Klein’s (working class) - used it the least.
• Macy’s (middle class) - wasn’t overly used when first asked but used more when asked to repeat it. This shows that the assistants wanted to adapt their language to suit the class.
• Saks (upper class) - used it the most.
Norwich study?
Trudgill
Trudgill was looking at the pronunciation of words which end with -ing. He was looking at whether the pronunciation had the word-final /g/. He asked participants to estimate how many times they used standard and non-standard forms and compared this to what they actually did. Here are the results:
• The higher the social class, the lower the number of non-standard forms.
• The lower the social class, the lower the number of standard forms.
• Women of all classes reported higher usage of standard forms than they actually used.
• Women used more standard forms than men.
• Men of all classes reported higher usage of standard forms than they actually used.
Therefore, social class influences language more than gender.
Bradford Study?
Petyt
People who are socially aspirational tried to pronounce words with the /ʌ/ and /℧/ sounds in differently, like cushion. This led to them using the wrong vowel sound through hypercorrection. He also found that the lower the class a person was, the more likely they were to drop the word-initial /h/ in words like ‘house’.
Restricted and elaborated code experiment?
Bernstein
Bernstein believes there are two types of ‘code’ that can be used to communicate. Restricted code uses lots of conjunctions, context-dependent language and non-standard syntax. Elaborated code uses much more standard English.
His research found that:
• Children of all classes understood both codes when it was spoken to them.
• Working-class children speak using restricted code.
• Middle-class and upper-class children speak using elaborated code predominantly but can use restricted code.
• This disadvantages working-class children, as elaborated code is used in many formal situations.
Multicultural London English (MLE)?
There is a variety of English which started in London called MLE. This variety is popular amongst young black teenagers. This contains the following features as examples:
• Lexical - ‘peng’ (base adjective meaning ‘good’) and ‘creps’ (concrete noun meaning ‘shoes’).
• Grammatical - sentences may be constructed by starting ‘why’ and ending ‘for’ like, for example, ‘why you eating that for?’. In addition, ‘man’ replaces the first-person singular pronoun (I).
• Phonological - th-stopping - where the ‘th’ at the start of words become ‘t’. For example, ‘thing’ becomes ‘ting’.
There is no standard set of features of MLE - it varies depending on the location. The media often labels it ‘Jafaican’ due to its Jamaican roots.
Replace?
Kerswill
MLE will replace Cockney Rhyming Slang (CRS).
Spread?
Rampton
MLE is spread through friendship groups.
Multicultural Urban British English (MUBE)?
Drummond
MLE is a key part of the sociolect of young people in Manchester. Drummond has retitled MLE as ‘Multicultural Urban British English’ (MUBE) which reflects it spread.
