Regional dialect

Luncau Elena Diana, Practici de comunicare, II,2

Meeting people is always fun and interesting, but when meeting people who are not from your home-town, even geographical area, is even more interesting. Ok, we meet someone speaking the same language and lives in the same country as we do, but we realize that they do not speak it in the same way as we do. They just sound different. How is it possible? The answer has to do with dialect and accent. Well, accent only deals with how people pronounce the words, but dialect is another story. According to David Crystal1 , a dialect is a way of talking that belongs to a particular part of a country. It uses local words and phrases, and often these are well known in other parts too. According to J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill 2 in their Second Edition of Dialectology, a dialect is also a term which is often applied to forms of language, particularly those spoken in more isolated parts of the world, which have no written form and refers to varieties to which are grammatically (and perhaps lexically) as well as phonologically different from other varieties. In other words, strictly speaking, a dialect is a variety of a language that differs from others, abiding three main variables: vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation (accent), therefore, a dialect is a persons identity within a social group.3 According to linguistics, dialects are of two types: geographical and social; in short, geographic dialects are associated with speakers living in a particular location4, for example Gypsies in Valea Seaca in Bacau County speak a different dialect than Gypsies in other town The Kalderash Gypsies known as Caldarari. They might not understand each other at all.

1 2

Crystal, David (2010): A Little Book of Language, UNSW Press, Sydney, p.71 Chambers, J. K; Trudgill, Peter (2004): Dialectology, Second Edition, Cambridge, New York, pp. 3-7 3 Morarasu, Nadia (2011): Registers and Styles of English Language a coursebook for Masters degree students, Vasile Alecsandri University, Bacau, p. 59 4 Idem 3

But, there will be divisions and differences between speakers in the same geographical area depending on social class, gender, cultural origins 1, therefore, social dialect refer to speakers belonging to different social groups . All dialects are both regional and social. All speakers have a social background as well as a regional location, and in their speech, they often identify themselves not only as natives or inhabitants of a particular place, but also as members of a particular social class. Any child, teenager, grown man or woman belonging to different social statuses: middle class, working class, high class, whether a lawyer, a gangster, we all talk differently. According to Donna Jo Napoli and Lee Schoenfeld 2s ideas, I will try and analyze two people talking: a man and a woman and highlight the principles of social dialect. The two authors sustain that women and men in the United States talk differently in several ways. Lets consider six common and representative: 1. Men interrupt women more than vice versa. 2. Men ignore the topics that women initiate in conversation. 3. Men do not give verbal recognition of the contributions women make to conversation. 4. Men use more curse words and coarse language than women, whereas women use more apologies and try to mitigate the conversation. 5. Men use more nonstandard forms (such as aint) than women 6. Men are more innovative, accepting language change more readily than women. The following dialogue is a piece of real conversation between two teenagers (a boy and a girl) who had just come out from a movie: B: Well that was funny. G: Oh, but it was so cute!

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Coultas, Amanda (2003): Language Social Contexts, Routledge Tyler and French Gr, New York, p. 72 Jo Napoli, Donna; Scoenfeld, Lee (2010): A Guide to Everyday Questions about Language, Second Edition, Oxford Univ Press, NY, pp. 142-147

B: It was funny how the frickin cat switched bowls, you see dat? He, um, fell into the bowl and breathed in the milk into his ear. It was funny aright! G: Yes, I liked it. It was so cute, as well, the cat, it B: Yeah, right! G: And what about the girl B: Um Im hungry. Lets eat, baby! Where did you said that Pizza House was? G: Is on 35th Av. At Northern not far from here. B: RightIm starvin! Taking into account those six claims, it is obvious who the boy is and who is the girl. The first interlocutor always interrupts the other one and ignores what his baby is saying, and only shows interest when he seeks an answer: Where did you said that Pizza House was? Because the two interlocutors are two teenagers, maybe in high school, the boy doesnt pay attention to his grammar, and indeed curses at some point (frickin cat) and uses nonstandard language: you see dat, aright, yeah, frickin, starvin. When the girl tries to continue the commentaries on the movies, he interrupts her without mercy and starts his line with um. He keeps his sentences very short, like: that was funny, yeah, right!, Im starvin, Lets eat, baby! She did offer support in conversation and acts more as an active listener, whereas he seek to dominate the conversation, to make a point how the cat put milk into its ear. One more claim that I could add at the list is that women talk more about feelings, whereas men talk more about things, for example she begins to talk about the girl in the movie, but he interrupts her to talk about a cat who switched bowl. The baby in Lets eat, baby! Has a pejorative use here in some way: he is just thinking that he is hungry and calls her baby to please her and to make her shut up add change the topic because the Pizza House is more important than that girl in the movie.

As mentioned before, dialects are of two types. If the social dialect has to do more wit different in discourse how words are used differences in discourse, how words are used by different social people with different social statuses, the geographical dialect has to do more with grammar and pronunciation and people from different areas may even not understand very well his/her interlocutor. If we travel from village to village, we notice some differences in language. The further we get from our starting point, the larger the differences will become. That is why all over America the more the regions, the more the dialects: Eastern New England, Western New England, New York City, The Mid-Atlantic area, The mountains of the inland Atlantic Coast, the Deeper South, Boston English, Philadelphia area, Pittsburg, Buffalo, North Central, Midland America, Canadian, etc. The following text is an excerpt from Sarah Orne Jewett book Andrews Fortune, an American novelist born and raised in New England: We was dreadful concerned to hear o cousin Stephens death, said the poor man. He went very sudden, didnt he? Gret loss he is. Yes, said Betsey, he was very much looked up to; and it was some time before the heir plucked up courage to speak again. Wife and me was lotting on getting over to the funeral; but its a gret ways for her to ride, and it was a perishin day that day. Shes ben troubled more than common with her phthisic since cold weather come. I was all crippled up with the rheumatism; we want neither of us fit to be out (plaintively). T was all I could do to get out to the barn to feed the stock while Jonas and Tim was gone. My boys was over, I spose ye know? I don knows they come to speak with ye; theyre backward with strangers, but theyre good stiddy fellows. Them was the louts that was hanging round the barn, I guess, said Betsey to herself. Theyre the main-stay now; theyre ahead of poor me aready. Jonas, hes got risin a hundred dollars laid up, and

I believe Tims got something too,hes younger, ye know? 1 Anyone who has lived in New England knows immediately that the sounds and idioms used here are specific to the down east speech of Maine. Spellings such as gret, ben, want, spose, stiddy, aready are part of the eye dialect. Literature gets round the problem Literature gets round the problem of representing regional speech, especially accent, by using eye dialect. This means that words are written using the standard alphabet but not standard spelling. The spelling is altered to indicate how the word would sound when spoken. Basically, the words are written to reflect their pronunciation as closely as possible without excluding the reader who has no specialist knowledge.2 The word stiddy is specific of Maine speech, according to Lerer and the Standard English word for it would be sturdy. What concerns grammar and morphology, the author makes a confusion between cases for pronouns: wife and me, them was and the use of was in stead of first and third person plural we was, boys was. Something else that is particular to this geographical area is the ly ending which doesnt appear at all: dreadful concerned, very sudden and some syntactic patterns and idioms have a distinctively regional touch: very looked up to, all crippled out, fit to be out. The vocabulary is distinctively too. For example, the word lotting (meaning counting on, or looking forward to), comes from the practice of drawing lots, and was recognized as a New Englandism in early 1820s. But what is it about in this fragment that makes it New England? This is a dialogue about the dead people, old age, illness and bad behavior. If I have to classify the interlocutors, I would say they are not from an urban area, because of the sounds of the words: the naming of the dead mans status: Cousin Stephen, the name Betsie, in a city she would be Elisabeth, or the talk about illnesses: phthisic or rheumatism, all these are markers of language used in a rural area.
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Lerer, Seth (2007): Inventing English a portable history of the language, Columbia Univ Press, NY, 197 Coultas, Amanda (2003): Language Social Contexts, Routledge Tyler and French Gr, New York, p. 74

The word phthisic is again a very good marker of New England. The Oxford English Dictionary appears to describe it as an archaic word; no longer in scientific use, used more in the Northern parts of America, and means tuberculosis of the lungs. The Dictionary of American Regional English offers a veritable essay on identity, beginning with the words emergence in Webster and then running through all kinds of learned texts, folk stories, and answers to questionnaires, popular stories of American speech and says that it was a good Maine word.1 If compared with other texts in literature from different areas, we will see that each region has its slang, its idioms and grammatical patterns. For example Huckleberry Finns language denotes a regional dialect from Missouri a Middle Western Dialect, and so on. Each region has its own particularities which define the people living there. Dictionaries definitions note that a dialect is one of the subordinate forms of varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities, and that some varieties simply sound better than the other or are more aesthetically pleasing .2 But no matter how you sound, one should always know that even the simplest word define his/her being either if you are from East or West, North or South, and should remember that you always are a man of your words.

Wolfram, Walt; Ward, Ben (2006): American Voices how dialects differ from coast to coast, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, US, pp 57-62 2 Edwards, John (2009): Language and Identity p key topics in sociolinguistics, Cambridge, NY, p. 65

Bibliography:
Crystal, David (2010): A Little Book of Language, UNSW Press, Sydney Chambers, J. K; Trudgill, Peter (2004): Dialectology, Second Edition, Cambridge, New York Morarasu, Nadia (2011): Registers and Styles of English Language a coursebook for Masters degree students, Vasile Alecsandri University, Bacau Coultas, Amanda (2003): Language Social Contexts, Routledge Tyler and French Gr, New York Jo Napoli, Donna; Scoenfeld, Lee (2010): A Guide to Everyday Questions about Language, Second Edition, Oxford Univ Press, NY Lerer, Seth (2007): Inventing English a portable history of the language, Columbia Univ Press, NY Wolfram, Walt; Ward, Ben (2006): American Voices how dialects differ from coast to coast, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, US Edwards, John (2009): Language and Identity p key topics in sociolinguistics, Cambridge, NY