Buku Ajar Sosiolinguistics

INTRODUCTION TO
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Jufrizal
Rusdi Noor Rosa
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
UNIVERSITAS NEGERI PADANG
2012
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Praise is to the Almighty God, by saying Alhamdulillahi rabbil alalamin,

for his blessing giving the writers favor to finish writing the course book
Introduction to Sociolinguistics that can thus appear as one book used for the
English Department of Faculty of Languages and Arts of Padang State University.
The writers would like to acknowledge great debt to many people who have given
valuable contributions from early drafts of a majority of the chapters of the book.
A lot of thanks are addressed to those who have taken a part in improving the
content of this book. May Allah bless them all!
The writers would also like to express the gratitude to the Rector of
Padang State University, the Dean of Faculty of Languages and Arts, and the
chairperson together with the secretary of English Department for the great
opportunity given to them to write this course book. Their valuable guidance,
supervision, and motivation play very important role in the writers‘ ability to
complete writing this book.
The writers would also like to express their thanks and ask permission to
the experts whose ideas are quoted, paraphrased, and summarized to construct this
course book. Without their bright ideas, this book cannot be completed. The
writers would also acknowledge to all people whose names cannot be mentioned
one-by-one in this very limited page.
Comments, suggestions, and criticisms are highly appreciated to improve
the content of this course book. Having better course book on sociolinguistics,
complex and abstract concepts and theories may be academically comprehended
by the learners.
Padang, December 2012
The writers
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................ ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................ iii
1. SOCIOLINGUISTICS IN LINGUISTICS
1.1 Linguistics and Sociolinguistics: A Brief Overview ................................. 1

1.2 Language and Society ............................................................................... 3
1.3 Three Views of Language .......................................................................... 5
1.4 Language, Culture, and Identity ................................................................ 11
1.5 Suggested Further Readings ...................................................................... 14
1.6 Questions for Discussions ......................................................................... 14
2. LANGUAGE, DIALECT, AND VARIATION
2.1 Language and Dialect .............................................................................. 15

2.2 Regional Dialects .................................................................................... 23
2.3 Social Dialect .......................................................................................... 28
2.4 Linguistic Items and Varieties ................................................................ 29
2.5 Suggested Further Readings .................................................................... 31
2.6 Questions for Discussions ....................................................................... 32
3. PIDGINS AND CREOLES

3.1 Lingua Franca .......................................................................................... 34
3.2 Pidgins and Creoles ................................................................................. 36
3.3 Theories of Origin ................................................................................... 39
3.5. Questions for Discussions ....................................................................... 45
4. ASPECTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

4.1 Speech Situations, Speech Events, and Speech Acts .............................. 46
4.2 The Components of Speech Acts ............................................................. 49
4.3 Rules Governing the Use of Speech Acts ............................................... 53
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5. CHOOSING A CODE
5.1 Diglossia................................................................................................... 58
5.2 Bilingualism and Multilingualism .......................................................... 62
5.3 Code Choice, Code Switching, and Code Mixing ................................... 66
5.5 Questions for Discussions ........................................................................ 71
6. SPEECH COMMUNITIES
6.1 Definitions ............................................................................................... 73
6.2 Intersecting Communities ....................................................................... 77
6.3 Networks and Repertoires ....................................................................... 82
7. LANGUAGE CHANGE
7.1 The Traditional View .............................................................................. 87
Internal and external factors ................................................................... 88
Simplicity and symmetry ......................................................................... 89
Iconicity and indexicality ........................................................................ 90
Markedness and naturalness ................................................................... 91
7.2 The Mechanism of Change ..................................................................... 92
Comparative method ............................................................................... 92
Internal reconstruction ............................................................................ 93
8. LANGUAGE SHIFT, DEATH, AND REVIVAL

8.1 Language Shift ......................................................................................... 96
8.2 Language Death ...................................................................................... 98
8.3 Language Revival .................................................................................. 100
A Model for Language Revival ............................................................. 104
8.4 Suggested Further Readings .................................................................. 112
8.5 Questions for Discussions ...................................................................... 113
9. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

9.1 The Whorfian Hypothesis ..................................................................... 114
9.2 Kinship Terms ....................................................................................... 117
9.3 Colour Terminology .............................................................................. 121
9.4 Taboo and Euphemisms ........................................................................ 126
Communicative functions of euphemisms ............................................ 129
9.6 Questions for Discussions ..................................................................... 134
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10. SOLIDARITY AND POLITENESS
10.1 Solidarity ............................................................................................... 136
10.2 Politeness ............................................................................................... 140
10.3 Address Terms ...................................................................................... 145
10.5 Questions for Discussions ...................................................................... 154
11. LANGUAGE AND SEX

11.1 Language, Sex, and Gender ................................................................... 155
11.2 The Roles of Men and Women and the Functions of
Prestige Varieties .................................................................................. 157
11.3 Men and Women in Relation to Social Class ........................................ 161
12. PLAYING WITH LANGUAGE

12.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 168
12.2 Nicknames ............................................................................................. 168
12.3 Puns ................................................................................................ 170
12.4 Jokes ................................................................................................ 173
12.5 Riddles ................................................................................................ 175
12.6 Suggested Further Readings................................................................... 177
13. SOME FINDINGS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS RESEARCHES

13.1 Language, Dialect and Society .............................................................. 179
13.2 Lingua Franca ........................................................................................ 183
13.3 Diglossia and Code ............................................................................... 186
13.4 Language Change .................................................................................. 191
13.5 Euphemism ............................................................................................ 191
13.6 Solidarity and Politeness ....................................................................... 193
13.7 Language and Gender ........................................................................... 195
13.9 A Question for Discussions ................................................................... 197
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................... 198
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CHAPTER 1
SOCIOLINGUISTICS IN LINGUISTICS
1.1 Linguistics and Sociolinguistics: A Brief Overview

In general, linguistics is a scientific study of a language. It is a term which
refers to any kinds of systematic study that involves the use of language. Gleason
and Ratner (1998:7) say that linguistics is the study of language in its various
aspects. As a science, its primary function is as the structure of a particular
language or of languages in general. By structure we mean that rules for forming
acceptable utterances of the language. In short, linguistics as the scientific study
of language is aimed at identifying some relatively stable linguistic knowledge
which underlies language behavior. Furthermore, linguistics investigates human
language in all its aspects, including its structure, its use, its history and its place
in society.
Language in socio-cultural views is born as it is needed to facilitate
communication among the members of a society, and a society will never be in
existence without communication, and the communication will never take place
without language. This view shows how language and society are two inter-
dependent matters whose existence maintains the life of all human. Wardaugh
(2006) suggests to do some attempts to define each of these terms. Let us say that
a society is any group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or
purposes. By such a definition, society becomes a very comprehensive concept.
We may attempt an equally comprehensive definition of language. A language is
what the members of particular society speak. However, speech in almost any
society can take many very different forms, and just what forms we should choose
to discuss when we attempt to describe the language of a society may prove to be
a contentious matter. We should also note that our definitions of language and
society are not independent. The definition of language includes in it a reference
to a society. From this discussion, the term sociolinguistics appears.
Sociolinguistics is a term including the aspects of linguistics applied
toward the connections between language and society, and the way we use it in
different social situations. It ranges from the study of the wide variety of dialects
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across a given region down to the analysis between the way men and women
speak to one another. Sociolinguistics often shows us the humorous realities of
human speech and how a dialect of a given language can often describe the age,
sex, and social class of the speaker; it codes the social function of a language.
This is supported by Eble (2005) who defines sociolinguistics as the study of how
language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings. In its
broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse ways in
which language and society entwine.
Eble‘s views suggest that sociolinguistics examines the interplay of
language and society, with language as the starting point. Variation is the key
concept, applied to language itself and to its use. The basic premise of
sociolinguistics is that language is variable and changing. As a result, language is
not homogeneous — not for the individual user and not within or among groups
of speakers who use the same language. This idea implies a role of
sociolinguistics as a medium to emphasize that diversity is not a problem and
should not be minimized. In fact, diversity should be considered as the evidence
that people are creative and sociolinguistics acts as a mediator to unify that
diversity. Crane et al. (1981:175) say ―Sociolinguistics concentrates on analyzing
the diversity of language‖. The diversity can be a result of different geographical
area and different social status. Sociolinguistics is concerned not only with the
description of such diversity but also with the analysis of how linguistic
differences are related to sociological differences among individuals.
When two people speak with one another, there is always more going on
than just conveying a message. The language used by the participants is always
influenced by a number of social factors which define the relationship between the
participants. Let us consider, for example, a professor making a simple request of
a student to close a classroom door to shut off the noise from the corridor. There
are a number of ways this request can be made:
a. Politely, in a moderate tone ―Could you please close the door?‖
b. In a confused manner while shaking his/her head ―Why aren't you shutting
the door?‖
c. Shouting and pointing, ―SHUT THE DOOR!‖
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The most appropriate utterance for the situation would be a. The most
inappropriate would be c. This statement humiliates the student, and provides no
effort by the professor to respect him/her. However, this statement will be
accepted if it is uttered in non-academic setting such as in the market. Utterance b
is awkward because it implies that the teacher automatically assumes that the
student should know better than to leave the door open when there is noise in the
hallway. The inappropriateness is a social decision tied to the social factors which
shape the relationship between speaker (the professor) and the listener (the
student).
We can also notice that we may speak differently to different people as a
result of social relationship. There is a difference in the way we speak to our
friends and the way we speak to our relatives, teachers, or others of professional
status. When inviting our friend to our party, we may simply say: ―Hey, don‘t
forget to be at my party tonight!‖ However, we may not say those words to our
boss, instead, we may say: ―If you are free, would you come to my party tonight?‖
or ―It‘s really wonderful if you could come to my party tonight.‖ This is called
choosing a variety of language or code. This can also be seen on a larger scale,
diglossia (later discussed in next chapters), where multilingual nations include a
variety of accents, language styles, dialects and languages. Each of these factors is
a reflection of the region and socio-economics background from which we come
from. In monolingual societies, in contrast, the region and socio-economic factors
are only determined by dialect and language style.
In short, it can be concluded that any activities involving language in a
society are the concerns of sociolinguistics. Well understanding sociolinguistics
leads to fluent communication and misunderstanding in communication can be
obviously avoided. Diversity in a society should be regarded as a gift for humans
to make them more creative.
1.2 Language and Society

So far we have talked about the nature of social interaction. But as the
examples we have given above make clear, interaction is overwhelmingly
conducted through language. It is in and through language that most of the actions
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we perform are done. Through language we ask and answer questions, request
help, give instructions, report problems, make jokes, explain who and what we
are, and so on. Language is fundamental to everything that is done in social life:
as members of society we live our social lives by talking to and with others. This
is true of the ―insignificant‖ activities we engage in as well as the ―significant‖
ones. For example, through language we are able to do things like chatting with a
friend or asking the time, but also things like answering questions in a job
interview or proposing marriage. However, it is not just the activities of
individuals that are dependent upon language. The institutional structures of
society that you have read about in sociology textbooks – such things as economic
organization, the legal system, political and educational structures – are also made
possible by language. Such institutions themselves consist of activities of various
kinds – business meetings, courtroom trials, parliamentary debates and classroom
lessons – which are conducted through the use of language.
In short, social life is permeated by language at every level. As members
of society, we use language to describe, question or explain what is going on
around us, as well as to perform actions that others may then describe, question or
explain. The relationship between language and social life is thus a mutually
constitutive one. Without language there could be no social life, at least as we
human beings live it. Conversely, without social life there would be no need of
language, since it is communication that lies at the heart of language. Through
language persons are able to communicate with one another; we need to
communicate because we lead social lives together and it is linguistic
communication that makes social life what it is.
According to Wardaugh (2006) there are several possible relationships
between language and society. One is that social structure may either influence or
determine linguistic structure and/or behavior. Certain evidence may be adduced
to support this view: the age-grading phenomenon whereby young children speak
differently from older children and, in turn, children speak differently from
mature adults; studies which show that the varieties of language that speakers use
reflect such matters as their regional, social, or ethnic origin and possibly even
their gender; and other studies which show that particular ways of speaking,
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choices of words, and even rules for conversing are in fact highly determined by
certain social requirements.
A second possible relationship is directly opposed to the first: linguistic
structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social structure. This
is the view that is behind the Whorfian hypothesis, the claims of Bernstein, and
many of those who argue that languages rather than speakers of these languages
can be ‗sexist‘. A third possible relationship is that the influence is bi-directional:
language and society may influence each other. One variant of this approach is
that this influence is dialectical in nature, a Marxist view put forward by Dittmar
(1976), who argues that ―speech behavior and social behavior are in a state of
constant interaction‖ and that ―material living conditions‖ are an important factor
in the relationship.
A fourth possibility is to assume that there is no relationship at all between
linguistic structure and social structure and that each is independent of the other.
A variant of this possibility would be to say that, although there might be some
such relationship, present attempts to characterize it are essentially premature,
given what we know about both language and society. Actually, this variant view
appears to be the one that Chomsky himself holds: he prefers to develop an
asocial linguistics as a preliminary to any other kind of linguistics, such an asocial
approach being, in his view, logically prior.
1.3 Three Views of Language

Language can be seen from different views of linguistics. The first view
concerns with language as a grammatical system. Linguistic theory seeks to
explain the principles by which grammatically well-formed sentences are
generated, hence the approach is called ―generative linguistics‖. These principles
are assumed to be part of any speaker‘s mental apparatus. The task of the
linguistic theorist, therefore, is not to describe ―performance‖ – how persons
actually talk – but to reconstruct the linguistic ―competence‖ that each one of us,
according to the theory, possesses in our minds. To this end, linguistic theorists
such as Chomsky (1965) study language in abstraction from its actual use,
examining sentences that have been invented by the theorist.
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The view of language taken here differs in several fundamental respects
from this generative linguistic approach. First, our concern is not with language as
an abstract system but as a practical vehicle of communication. From this point of
view it is notable that, contrary to what generative linguistics might lead one to
think, persons much of the time do not speak in grammatically perfect sentences,
or even in sentences at all. Yet the ungrammatical character of much language-in-
use does not typically create communication difficulties; persons seem quite able
to understand one another without prioritizing grammatical correctness. Second,
our concern is not with the individual speaker and his or her internal linguistic
knowledge, but with the ways that persons achieve ―interpersonal understanding‖
through language. Whereas linguistic theorists like Chomsky conceive language
as an individual and mental phenomenon, language-in-use is a social
phenomenon; it ―exists‖ in the communicative relations between persons. This
leads to a third difference, of a methodological kind. Unlike the isolated, invented
sentences of the linguistic theorist, the data for our inquiries has to be the actual
things that are said by real people in social interaction. Our interest is in how
persons use language together to accomplish the social activities that they are
engaged in.
The second view of language is related to how language is taken from
sociology point of view. Here too one finds that the dominant approach differs
from the one advocated here. The first point to make is that, for much of its
history, sociology paid little attention to language and failed to see it as a
significant phenomenon. Given the essential and paramount role of language in
social life, it is perhaps surprising that sociology for so long took little interest in
it. During the period of sociology‘s expansion as an academic discipline, language
was marginal at best to its research interests. What could account for this neglect?
One possibility is that the very ubiquity of language, its pervasiveness in
everything we do, makes it easy to overlook its importance. It is so much a part of
what we do that it requires effort not to take it for granted.
We suspect that there is also a theoretical reason for this neglect. The
predominant tendency in sociology has been to focus upon the results or outcomes
of social activities without asking how language is used to accomplish such
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results. For example, sociologists traditionally have paid much attention to ―rates
of behavior‖ – crime rates, suicide rates, rates of industrial or political action of
various kinds – and typically have sought to explain these in terms of other kinds
of measures. The availability of such rates as sociological data is made possible
by the activities of those who have assembled the records from which the rates are
compiled, such as police officers, coroners, civil servants, employers and so on.
These activities are conducted through language: it is by means of language, for
example, that decisions are made as to whether to count an event as a case of this
or that statistical type. Yet the linguistic activity that has gone into the production
of official records disappears from sight when the rates are treated as free-
standing, ―anonymous‖ phenomena.
In so far as sociologists have paid attention to language, this has often
taken the form of theorizing language as just another variable that requires
sociological explanation in terms of its relationship with other social factors.
Language is often taken to be a ―mediating variable‖, providing a causal link
between general features of society and the fates of individuals. The form of such
explanations is twofold: first, socially distributed aspects of language use such as
dialect, vocabulary and idiom are explained by other social factors, for example
social class, gender or race. Second, these linguistic features are held to account
for the life chances of individuals, involving such things as marital patterns and
occupational career paths. We will briefly mention two examples of this approach
to language.
The first concerns the relationship between language and educational
achievement. A theory of educational achievement that was very popular in the
1970s holds that a critical factor in determining class differences in children‘s
school performance is the linguistic code, or style of speech, that they have
acquired as a result of their family background (Bernstein 1972a). Children from
middle-class families, the theory proposes, arrive at school equipped with an
elaborated code of speech that fits well both with the expectations of teachers and
the communication demands that formal education makes upon the child.
Children from lower-class backgrounds, however, are said to arrive at school
equipped with a restricted code that leads them to be viewed as less able by
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teachers and which creates difficulties for them in meeting the demands of
schooling.
More recently, numerous studies have argued a relationship between
language and gender. In the work of Tannen (1990), for example, it is argued that
differences between women and men in the style of their conversational
interaction reflect basic differences in the social personalities of women and men.
Tannen argues that as a result of childhood socialization, men and women are
motivated by quite different general orientations in interaction: men towards
hierarchy and competition for position, women towards solidarity and mutual
support. This individualist/collectivist gender difference is then reflected in how
talk is conducted. In their turn, such differences can be seen to reproduce and to
have an impact upon the relative life chances of men and women. Tannen claims
that women, by virtue of these learned personality characteristics and the
linguistic patterns that follow from them, are at a systematic disadvantage in the
male-dominated world of work, thus perpetuating occupational inequality.
In these ways language is incorporated within explanations of specific
aspects of society. Now, it is not our intention to argue that learned ways of
speaking cannot have educational consequences or implications for gender
relations. Indeed, that there may be a link between how one speaks and one‘s
chances of educational success or occupational advancement is something that
novelists and other writers have noted long before it became thematic within
sociology. However, while such connections between language and social
relations may be evident, our point is that sociological theories that conceive it
solely in terms of causal connections between social structural variables and
linguistic interaction take an excessively narrow view of the social nature of
language.
The causal approach is inadequate because it crucially misses the
―constitutive‖ nature of language in social life; language is not just one variable
among many, nor does it simply play a role in this or that aspect of social life.
Rather, it constitutes the very possibility of social life in the first place. Thus, in
relation to schooling, language is not simply (if it is) a basis for teachers‘
judgments of children‘s abilities; it is through the use of language that the
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fundamentals of schooling within which such judgments are embedded are
produced in the first place. Without the use of language there could be no such
things as lessons and therefore no teacher‘s questions or pupil‘s answers.
Similarly, that gender is both massively observable in and widely relevant to the
activities that make up ordinary social life is largely constituted in and through
language. One expression of this is that men and women are conventionally given
different names such that if one knows a person‘s name a reasonable inference can
be made about that person‘s gender.
The third view is from semiotic point of view. In recent years the
constitutive character of language in social life has come to be recognized to a
certain extent in social thought. In place of the causal approach just described,
many sociologists nowadays regard language as comprising a system of
representations or signs in and through which all social phenomena are realized.
Society is a ―semiotic‖ reality in this view: every aspect of social life shapes and
is shaped by language, conceived as structures of linguistic signs. Such structures,
or ―discourses‖ as they are often called, amount to organized sets of linguistic
representations that give meaning to social phenomena. The key point made by
proponents of this approach is that linguistic representation is never neutral, never
simply corresponds to the extra-linguistic nature of that which it represents. Thus
meaning does not flow from object to sign, but rather the other way round: signs
impose meaning upon that which they represent. Thus different discourses
represent things in quite different ways. Furthermore, discourses themselves differ
in their social distribution. While there may be a variety of discourses within
society, some are used more widely and propagated more effectively as
representational systems than others. Some discourses are apparently ―expert‖ or
―authoritative‖ ways of representing an aspect of social life. On this basis, one can
speak of ―dominant‖ (and of course ―subordinate‖) discourses in society. The
more widespread and/or authoritative a discourse is, the more it dominates the
way in which social phenomena are thought about and acted towards by members
of society.
This semiotic approach to society has become enormously popular and
influential in present-day sociology, underpinning studies in areas of inquiry as
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diverse as media, education, health, work, crime and the family, to name but a
few. Across these fields of research studies display strong analytical similarities.
Such studies tend to be geared towards identifying the features of this or that
discourse and tracing its influence upon the definition and treatment of social
issues and problems. As such, the analyses they present invariably have a critical
cast, explicitly or implicitly. The semiotic notion that meaning is ‗imposed‘ upon
phenomena provides the basis for conceiving socially accepted definitions of
issues and problems as irremediably tendentious: they are imposed by some
groups upon others in the service of social interests. Where once social
domination was accounted for in terms of the control of society‘s economic
resources, now it is held, by discourse analysts at least, to consist in control of
society‘s semiotic structures. By revealing the social origins and the arbitrary
character of such structures, sociological analyses are held to point towards more
rational understandings of social life and ‗emancipation‘ from such domination.
While the political ends that inform contemporary discourse analysis may
be laudable, the conception of language it assumes is highly questionable in
several respects. First, it presupposes an extremely cognitive view of language.
We referred earlier in this chapter to a ―mentalistic‖ conception of meaning,
namely the view that mean consists of ideas in the mind. The conception of
meaning that lies at the center of the semiotic approach is just such a mentalistic
view. Meaning is conceived in terms of the relationship between a textual or aural
vehicle and an idea in the mind (a ―signifier‖ and a ―signified‖ in the terminology
of semiotics). However, unlike the individualist theory discussed earlier, semiotics
conceives of such meanings as socially shared. On the basis of this assumption, to
describe the system of signs is by definition also to describe the organization of
people‘s ideas. Thus language is held to shape and restrict the very possibilities of
thought.
However, since the system itself resides at an unconscious level, the
discourse analyst argues that the semiotic shaping of social experience is not
something that members of society are aware of. From the viewpoint of ordinary
members of society the discursive formations in terms of which phenomena are
perceived and understood are invisible. Furthermore, their ‗hegemonic‘ character
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means that the meanings they give to phenomena are experienced as objective and
natural. Given the assumption of the semiotic approach that persons are only able
to conceive phenomena through the discursive frameworks available to them, it is
difficult for them to step outside such frameworks and comprehend them
independently. It follows that the contingent and historically relative character of
the way of thinking and the forms of practice that the discourse provides remains
beyond the member of society‘s ordinary comprehension. Only sociological
analysis has the capacity to reveal the structure and operations of discourse.
The cognitivist presuppositions of the semiotic approach entail a gulf in
understanding between the sociologist and the ordinary member of society. For
reasons that we will explain presently, the notion of such a gulf is inimical to the
approach we recommend in this book. The important point to note here is that the
view that how members of society think can be read off from a semiotic analysis
of the structure of language deflects sociological attention from the detail of
people‘s actual conduct. This neglect of situated action in favor of
decontextualized analysis of the meaning of signs is reinforced by a distinction,
fundamental to the whole semiotic approach, between the structure of language
and its use. As expressed by the founder of semiotics, Ferdinand de Saussure, the
difference between ―langue‖ and ―parole‖ concerns two distinct dimensions of
language (Saussure 1983). On the one hand is langue, the systematic relations
between signs, while on the other is parole, the actual ways in which persons use
language to communicate in concrete situations. This distinction is not dissimilar
to Chomsky‘s (1965: 4) distinction between ‗competence‘ and ‗performance‘.
Like Chomsky, in Sausurre‘s view no scientific analysis of language is possible at
the level of parole: how persons actually use language is subject to too many
random factors for any generalizations to be possible. But this is no particular loss
for Saussure; since the structure of language corresponds to the organization of
thought, the analysis of parole would in any case tell us little about how people
understand their experience.
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1.4 Language, Culture, and Identity
The relationship between language, culture and identity is an intriguing
one. There is a lacuna of research on how language impacts one‘s identity.
Culture is inextricably linked to language. Without language, culture cannot be
completely acquired nor can it be effectively expressed and transmitted. Without
culture, language cannot exist. Kim (2003) says that language and culture are so
interconnected that it is difficult to define the parameters of language and culture,
and whether language impacts culture or vice-versa. It is generally agreed among
trained scholars though, that culture is a broader umbrella concept, and that
language is a part of culture (Trueba and Zou 1994). In the early years of
socialization, both the linguistic and cultural symbolic systems that an individual
is raised in will play an instrumental role in socializing an individual, and in
shaping his perceptions and his persona.
Language can be defined as the system of communication comprising
codes and symbols which is used by humans to store, retrieve, organize, structure
and communicate knowledge and experience. Language is not a static process. It
is the primary instrument in the expression, transmission, and adaptation of
culture. Language is used to maintain one‘s own culture and to acquire a new
culture and new knowledge. The learning of a second or foreign language enables
one to view life through another cultural lens.
Culture has many definitions. It is a set of beliefs, values, norms, customs,
traditions, rituals, and a way of life that differentiates one group from another.
Tylor (1958) views culture as that complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as a member of society. Banks (1988: 261) defines culture as, ―a cluster of
attributes such as values, beliefs, behavior patterns and symbols unique to a
particular human group‖. Goodenough (1976: 5) believes that culture ―is made up
of the concepts, beliefs, and principles of action and organization‖.
In reality, culture is not a static entity. It has the ability to acquire new
characteristics and forms. It is dynamic - its permutations can take place from one
generation to another or from one geographical location to another. To the trained
social scientist and traditional anthropologist however, culture is ―still composed
12 | P a g e
of socially shared elements, socially shared norms, codes of behavior, values, and
assumptions about the world that clearly distinguish one sociocultural group from
another‖ (Trueba 1993: 34). Anthropologists and social scientists basically agree
that sharing a culture of a group means being able to operate effectively in that
particular group.
Clifford (1986) states that culture is not an object to be described, nor is it
―a unified corpus of symbols and meanings that can be definitively interpreted.
Culture is contested, temporal, and emergent‖. Britzman (1991) defines culture as
that site where identities, desires and investments are mobilized, constructed, and
reworked. If culture is such a dynamic negotiation site, then there is much in
linguistic and cultural actions that need to be understood, and much in learners‘
roles and identities that need to be deconstructed and understood.
Spindler and Splinder (1990) have argued that culture is a transactional
process. It is during the cultural transmission from one generation to another that
culture is being recreated, redefined and restructured by those involved. Much of
the literature on cross-cultural research that explores cultural socialization,
cultural conflict and learning is influenced by the work of Spindler and Splinder.
The Spindlers (1990) talk about the three dimensions to the self - the enduring
self, the situated self and the endangered self. The enduring self is the sense of
continuity that one has with the past, a personal continuity in experience, meaning
and social identity. The situated self encompasses those aspects of the person as
he continuously adapts to the pragmatics of everyday living and to new settings.
This self is the instrumental self and is attuned to the attainment of ends defined
within the framework of a social context. Lastly, there is the endangered self.
When the adaptation of the situated selves is incompatible with the
enduring self, a conflict will result. The responses that humans make when facing
such conflicts are a reaffirmation of their ethnic identity, compensatory
adaptation, withdrawal, and oppositional behavior. These adaptations are ways of
avoiding self-destruction. Spindler and Spindler (1990: 29-30) state that the ―basic
cultural assumptions and perceptions held by people of different cultures seriously
influence behavior, perceptions and communication. They are the starting point of
13 | P a g e
differential rewards, punishments, oppositions, consequences, and the use of
power to coerce, eliminate, damage, and promote‖.
Identity is not easy to define - it is best seen as a plurality and not a unitary
construct. Identity is the individual‘s concept of the self, as well as the
individual‘s interpretation of the social definition of the self, within his/her inner
group and the larger society. Identity formation is not simply a conscious process
but is influenced by unconscious psychological processes (DeVos 1992). Identity
is a dynamic, complex and ongoing process. Norton (1997: 410) defines identity
as, ―how people understand their relationship to the outside world, how that
relationship is constructed across time and space, and how people understand their
possibilities for the future‖.
1.5 Suggested Further Readings

1. Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
2. Dittmar, N. 1976. Sociolinguistics: A Critical Survey of Theory and
Application. London: Edward Arnold.
3. Eble, Connie. 2005. ―Sociolinguistics Basics:. North Carolina:
Macneil/Lehrer Productions‖. Retrieved on November 7th 2012 from
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/sociolinguistics/
#basics
4. Kim, Lee Su. 2003. ―Exploring the Relationship between Language, Culture
and Identity‖. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 3(2).
5. Saussure, F. de. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-
Hill.
6. Spindler, G., & Spindler, L. 1990. The American Cultural Dialogue and Its
Transmission . London: The Falmer Press.
7. Wardhaugh, Ronald. 2006. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 5th edition.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
1.6 Questions for Discussions

1. In your own words, explain the relationship between language and society!
2. If men and women speak differently, is it because the common language they
share has a gender bias, because boys and girls are brought up differently, or
because part of ―gender marking‖ is the linguistic choices one can – indeed,
must – make?
3. How does language reflect someone‘s identity?
4. Explain the three views of language!
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CHAPTER 2
LANGUAGE, DIALECT, AND VARIATION
2.1 Language and Dialect

When hearing two people talking, I identified different words representing
the same object. I could also capture some different pronunciations of the same
word. This is a part of their conversation.
A: Dima ang bali sampelo ko?
Where did you buy this papaya?
B: Indak babali ge do, babawo dari kampuang. Cubo lah, kalikih tu manih ma!
I didn‘t buy it, I brrought it from my village. Just taste it, it‘s sweet.
A: Iyo bana ko? Den cubo ciek lu. Bilo ang tibo dari kampuang?
Really? I‘ll taste it. When did you return from your village?
B: Potang. Den bawo jo boreh ko ha.
Yesterday. I also brought some rice.
A: Bareh? Lai ka batanak awak kini?
Rice? Are we going to cook rice?
Both of the speakers used the same language i.e. Minangkabaunese.
However, some of the words they used are different in terms of diction and
pronunciation. The first two underlined words refer to the same object, papaya,
for which speaker A said ―sampelo‖ while B said ―kalikih‖. Besides, they also
pronounced the same word differently: ―bareh‖ and ―boreh‖. How could people
speak the same language but use some different words and pronunciations? The
differences in the words and pronunciations within the same language are known
as dialects. So, what is a dialect? Before defining a dialect, let us carefully take a
closer look at the following illustration which is adapted from Gasser (2006):
a. I know words. I have a vocabulary, a set of words which I know how to
pronounce and use appropriately. For example, I know how to say the
word ―sampelo‖ (papaya), I know that it refers to a particular type of fruit,
I come up with this word when I want to refer to a particular papaya, and I
understand it when I hear it.
b. I know how to pronounce words and combinations of words more
generally. That is, there are aspects of pronunciation that go beyond
individual words. For example, I know to pronounce the word ―bareh‖
(rice), and I know other people pronounce ―boreh‖.
15 | P a g e
c. I know how to put words together into sentences in meaningful ways. For
example, I know that if I want to ask where someone bought the papaya, I
can say ―Dima ang bali sampelo ko?‖, but not ―Ang yang mambali
sampelo ko dima?‖
d. I know how to use the language appropriately to achieve my goals. I know
that if I want a friend to taste the papaya, it is better to say ―Cubo lah,
kalikih tu manih ma!‖ than to say ―Cubo se raso kalikih tu, jan banyak
tanyo!‖.
After considering the illustration above, a dialect may be defined as a
variation of a language which is different from another variation in terms of
vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar usage. This is in line with what Crane et.
al (1981) who say that a dialect is a regional variety of language that may differ
from other varieties of the language in features of its vocabulary, grammar, and
pronunciation. Further, dialect may also be seen as a variety of language used by
one occupational group or one social class.
Even though I have defined a dialect in such a way, for some linguists,
such as Haugen, a dialect is nearly synonymous with language. Haugen in
Wardaugh (2006) has pointed out that language and dialect are two ambiguous
terms in linguistics. Ordinary people use these terms quite freely in speech; for
them a dialect is almost certainly no more than a local non-prestigious variety of a
real language. In contrast, scholars often experience considerable difficulty in
deciding whether one term should be used rather than the other in certain
situations. He points out that the confusion goes back to the Ancient Greeks. The
Greek language that we associate with Ancient Greece was actually a group of
distinct local varieties (Ionic, Doric, and Attic) descended by divergence from a
common spoken source with each variety having its own literary traditions and
uses, e.g., Ionic for history, Doric for choral and lyric works, and Attic for
tragedy. Later, Athenian Greek, the koiné – or ―common‖ language – became the
norm for the spoken language as the various spoken varieties converged on the
dialect of the major cultural and administrative center. He further points out that
the Greek situation has provided the model for all later usages of the two terms
with the resulting ambiguity. He came to the conclusion that language can be used
16 | P a g e
to refer either to a single linguistic norm or to a group of related norms, and
dialect to refer to one of the norms.
Haugen adds that the situation of dialect-language distinction is further
confused by the distinction the French make between un dialecte and un patois.
The former is a regional variety of a language that has an associated literary
tradition, whereas the latter is a regional variety that lacks such a literary tradition.
Therefore patois tends to be used pejoratively; it is regarded as something less
than a dialect because of its lack of an associated literature. Even a language like
Breton, a Celtic language still spoken in parts of Brittany, is called a patois
because of its lack of a strong literary tradition and the fact that it is not some
country‘s language. However, dialecte in French, like Dialekt in German, cannot
be used in connection with the standard language, i.e., no speaker of French
considers Standard French to be a dialect of French. In contrast, it is not
uncommon to find references to Standard English being a dialect – admittedly a
very important one – of English.
Haugen points out that, while speakers of English have never seriously
adopted patois as a term to be used in the description of language, they have tried
to employ both language and dialect in a number of conflicting senses. Dialect is
used both for local varieties of English, e.g., Yorkshire dialect, and for various
types of informal, lower-class, or rural speech. ‗In general usage it therefore
remains quite undefined whether such dialects are part of the ―language‖ or not. In
fact, the dialect is often thought of as standing outside the language. As a social
norm, then, a dialect is a language that is excluded from polite society‘ (Haugen,
1966a: 924). It is often equivalent to nonstandard or even substandard, when such
terms are applied to language, and can connote various degrees of inferiority, with
that connotation of inferiority carried over to those who speak a dialect.
We can observe too that questions such as ‗Which language do you
speak?‘ or ‗Which dialect do you speak?‘ may be answered quite differently by
people who appear to speak in an identical manner. As Gumperz (1982a: 20) has
pointed out, many regions of the world provide plenty of evidence for what he
calls ―a bewildering array of language and dialect divisions‖. He adds:
Sociohistorical factors play a crucial role in determining
boundaries. Hindi and Urdu in India, Serbian and Croatian in
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Yugoslavia [of that date], Fanti and Twi in West Africa, Bokmål
and Nynorsk in Norway, Kechwa and Aimara in Peru, to name just
a few, are recognized as discrete languages both popularly and in
law, yet they are almost identical at the level of grammar. On the
other hand, the literary and colloquial forms of Arabic used in Iraq,
Morocco, and Egypt, or the Welsh of North and South Wales, the
local dialects of Rajasthan and Bihar in North India are
grammatically quite separate, yet only one language is recognized
in each case.
The various relationships among languages and dialects discussed above,
as cited in Wardaugh (2006: 30), can be used to show how the concepts of
―power‖ and ―solidarity‖ help us understand what is happening. Power requires
some kind of asymmetrical relationship between entities: one has more of
something that is important, e.g. status, money, influence, etc., than the other or
others. A language has more power than any of its dialects. It is the powerful
dialect but it has become so because of non-linguistic factors. Standard English
and Parisian French are good examples. Solidarity, on the other hand, is a feeling
of equality that people have with one another. They have a common interest
around which they will bond. A feeling of solidarity can lead people to preserve a
local dialect or an endangered language to resist power, or to insist on
independence. It accounts for the persistence of local dialects, the modernization
of Hebrew, and the separation of Serbo-Croatian into Serbian and Croatian.
Bell (1976: 147–57) has listed seven criteria showing the relationship
between language and dialect. The seven criteria are standardization, vitality,
historicity, autonomy, reduction, mixture, and de facto norms. According to him,
these criteria may be used to distinguish certain languages from others. They also
make it possible to speak of some languages as being more ―developed‖ in certain
ways than others, thus addressing a key issue in the language–dialect distinction,
since speakers usually feel that languages are generally ―better‖ than dialects in
some sense.
Standardization refers to the process by which a language has been
codified in some way. That process usually involves the development of such
things as grammars, spelling books, and dictionaries, and possibly a literature. We
can often associate specific items or events with standardization, e.g., Wycliffe‘s
and Luther‘s translations of the Bible into English and German, respectively,
18 | P a g e
Caxton‘s establishment of printing in England, and Dr Johnson‘s dictionary of
English published in 1755. Standardization also requires that a measure of
agreement be achieved about what is in the language and what is not. Once we
have such a codification of the language we tend to see it as almost inevitable, the
result of some process come to fruition, one that has also reached a fixed end
point. Change, therefore, should be resisted since it can only undo what has been
done so laboriously. Milroy (2001: 537) characterizes the resulting ideology as
follows:
The canonical form of the language is a precious inheritance that
has been built up over the generations, not by the millions of native
speakers, but by a select few who have lavished loving care upon it,
polishing, refining, and enriching it until it has become a fine
instrument of expression. This is a view held by people in many
walks of life, including plumbers, politicians and professors of
literature. It is believed that if the canonical variety is not
universally supported and protected, the language will inevitably
decline and decay.
Once a language is standardized it becomes possible to teach it in a
deliberate manner. It takes on ideological dimensions – social, cultural, and
sometimes political – beyond the purely linguistic ones. In Fairclough‘s words
(2001: 47) it becomes ―part of a much wider process of economic, political and
cultural unification . . . of great . . . importance in the establishment of nationhood,
and the nation-state is the favored form of capitalism‖. According to these criteria,
both English and French are quite obviously standardized, Italian somewhat less
so, and the variety known as African American Vernacular English not at all.
Haugen (1966a) has indicated certain steps that must be followed if one
variety of a language is to become the standard for that language. In addition to
what he calls the ―formal‖ matters of codification and elaboration, the former
referring to the development of such things as grammars and dictionaries and the
latter referring to the use of the standard in such areas as literature, the courts,
education, administration, and commerce, Haugen says there are important
matters to do with ―function‖. For example, a norm must be selected and accepted
because neither codification nor elaboration is likely to proceed very far if the
community cannot agree on some kind of model to act as a norm. That norm is
also likely to be – or to become – an idealized norm, one that users of the
19 | P a g e
language are asked to aspire to rather than one that actually accords with their
observed behavior.
Selection of the norm may prove difficult because choosing one vernacular
as a norm means favoring those who speak that variety. It also diminishes all the
other varieties and possible competing norms, and those who use those varieties.
The chosen norm inevitably becomes associated with power and the rejected
alternatives with lack of power. Not surprisingly, it usually happens that a variety
associated with an elite is chosen. Attitudes are all-important, however. A group
that feels intense solidarity may be willing to overcome great linguistic
differences in establishing a norm, whereas one that does not have this feeling
may be unable to overcome relatively small differences and be unable to agree on
a single variety and norm. Serbs and Croats were never able to agree on a norm,
particularly as other differences reinforced linguistic ones. In contrast, we can see
how Indonesia and Malaysia are looking for ways to reduce the differences
between their languages, with their common Islamic bond a strong incentive.
Vitality, the second of Bell‘s seven criteria, refers to the existence of a
living community of speakers. This criterion can be used to distinguish languages
that are ―alive‖ from those that are ―dead‖. Two Celtic languages of the United
Kingdom are now dead: Manx, the old language of the Isle of Man, and Cornish.
Manx died out after World War II, and Cornish disappeared at the end of the
eighteenth century, one date often cited being 1777, when the last known speaker,
Dorothy Pentreath of Mousehole, died. Many of the aboriginal languages of the
Americas are also dead. Latin is dead in this sense too for no one speaks it as a
native language; it exists only in a written form frozen in time, pronounced rather
than spoken, and studied rather than used.
Once a language dies it is gone for all time and not even the so-called
revival of Hebrew contradicts that assertion. Hebrew always existed in a spoken
form as a liturgical language, as did Latin for centuries. Modern Hebrew is an
outgrowth of this liturgical variety. It is after all ―Modern‖ Hebrew and the
necessary secularization of a liturgical language to make it serve the purposes of
modern life has not been an easy and uncontroversial matter. Many languages,
while not dead yet, nevertheless are palpably dying: the number of people who
20 | P a g e
speak them diminishes drastically each year and the process seems irreversible, so
that the best one can say of their vitality is that it is flagging. For example, the
French dialects spoken in the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, and Sark are
rapidly on their way to extinction. Each year that passes brings a decrease in the
number of languages spoken in the world.
Historicity refers to the fact that a particular group of people finds a sense
of identity through using a particular language: it belongs to them. Social,
political, religious, or ethnic ties may also be important for the group, but the
bond provided by a common language may prove to be the strongest tie of all. In
the nineteenth century a German nation was unified around the German language
just as in the previous century Russians had unified around a revitalized Russian
language. Historicity can be long-standing: speakers of the different varieties of
colloquial Arabic make much of a common linguistic ancestry, as obviously do
speakers of Chinese. It can also, as with Hebrew, be appealed to as a unifying
force among a threatened people.
Autonomy is an interesting concept because it is really one of feeling. A
language must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages.
However, this is a very subjective criterion. Ukrainians say their language is quite
different from Russian and deplored its Russification when they were part of the
Soviet Union. Some speakers of African American Vernacular English maintain
that their language is not a variety of English but is a separate language in its own
right and refer to it as Ebonics. In contrast, speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin
deny that they speak different languages: they maintain that Cantonese and
Mandarin are not autonomous languages but are just two dialects of Chinese. As
we will see, creole and pidgin languages cause us not a few problems when we try
to apply this criterion: how autonomous are such languages?
Reduction refers to the fact that a particular variety may be regarded as a
sub-variety rather than as an independent entity. Speakers of Cockney will almost
certainly say that they speak a variety of English, admit that they are not
representative speakers of English, and recognize the existence of other varieties
with equivalent subordinate status. Sometimes the reduction is in the kinds of
opportunities afforded to users of the variety. For example, there may be a
21 | P a g e
reduction of resources; that is, the variety may lack a writing system. Or there
may be considerable restrictions in use; e.g., pidgin languages are very much
reduced in the functions they serve in society in contrast to standardized
languages.
Mixture refers to feelings speakers have about the ‗purity‘ of the variety
they speak. This criterion appears to be more important to speakers of some
languages than of others, e.g., more important to speakers of French and German
than to speakers of English. However, it partly explains why speakers of pidgins
and creoles have difficulty in classifying what they speak as full languages: these
varieties are, in certain respects, quite obviously ‗mixed,‘ and the people who
speak them often feel that the varieties are neither one thing nor another, but
rather are debased, deficient, degenerate, or marginal varieties of some other
standard language.
Finally, having de facto norms refers to the feeling that many speakers
have that there are both ‗good‘ speakers and ‗poor‘ speakers and that the good
speakers represent the norms of proper usage. Sometimes this means focusing on
one particular sub-variety as representing the ‗best‘ usage, e.g., Parisian French or
the Florentine variety of Italian. Standards must not only be established (by the
first criterion above), they must also be observed. When all the speakers of a
language feel that it is badly spoken or badly written almost everywhere, that
language may have considerable difficulty in surviving; in fact, such a feeling is
often associated with a language that is dying. Concern with the norms of
linguistic behavior, ‗linguistic purism‘ (see Thomas 1991), may become very
important among specific segments of society. For example, so far as English is
concerned, there is a very profitable industry devoted to telling people how they
should behave linguistically, what it is ‗correct‘ to say, what to avoid saying, and
so on. As we will see, people‘s feelings about norms have important consequences
for an understanding of both variation and change in language.
Even though dialect and language are ambiguous, the seven criteria
proposed by Bell (1976) give us a clear distinction between these two terms. As
the conclusion, language users can show their identity or nationality through the
language they use, but dialect users cannot. This means that a dialect is a variety
22 | P a g e
of language which distinguishes itself from other variety in terms of
pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar usage.
2.2 Regional Dialects

Dialect distinguishes itself from another is due to two factors: geography
and social status. The first factor leads to the introduction of linguistic term
―geographical or regional dialect‖, and the second introduces the term ―social
dialect‖. As you travel throughout a wide geographical area in which a language is
spoken, and particularly if that language has been spoken in that area for many
hundreds of years, you are almost certain to notice differences in pronunciation, in
the choices and forms of words, and in syntax. There may even be very distinctive
local colorings in the language which you notice as you move from one location
to another. Such distinctive varieties are usually called regional dialects of the
language.
Eble (2005) says that vocabulary sometimes varies by region. The
expression lost bread to refer to French toast is a translation of French pain
perdu, part of the vocabulary of southern Louisiana. Other vocabulary is not
regional but rather is old-fashioned, such as frock for ―a woman‘s dress‖ or tarry
for ―wait‖. Some vocabulary may vary by degree of formality, as in the choice
among the words barf, upchuck, vomit and regurgitate.
Grammatical constructions also vary. In the Midland region of the United
States, speakers use a construction called positive anymore, as in ―Anymore you
see round bales of hay in the fields.‖ In other regions, speakers would say,
―Nowadays you see round bales of hay in the field.‖ A grammatical variation
associated with AAVE omits the verb be, as in ―The teacher in the classroom.‖
Another variation that is widespread in spoken American English is the double
negative, as in ―We don‘t want no more construction on this road.‖ Such
sentences are not Standard American English.
This use of the term dialect to differentiate among regional varieties of
specific languages is perhaps more readily applicable to contemporary conditions
in Europe and some other developed countries than it would have been in
medieval or Renaissance Europe or today in certain other parts of the world,
23 | P a g e
where it was (and still is) possible to travel long distances and, by making only
small changes in speech from location to location, continue to communicate with
the inhabitants. It has been said that at one time a person could travel from the
south of Italy to the north of France in this manner. It is quite clear that such a
person began the journey speaking one language and ended it speaking something
entirely different; however, there was no one point at which the changeover
occurred, nor is there actually any way of determining how many intermediate
dialect areas that person passed through. For an intriguing empirical test of this
idea, one using recent phonetic data from a continuum of Saxon and Franconian
dialects in the Netherlands, see Heeringa and Nerbonne (2001). They conclude
that the traveler ―perceives phonological distance indirectly‖ and that there are
―unsharp borders between dialect areas‖.
Such a situation is often referred to as a dialect continuum. What you have
is a continuum of dialects sequentially arranged over space: A, B, C, D, and so on.
Over large distances the dialects at each end of the continuum may well be
mutually unintelligible, and also some of the intermediate dialects may be
unintelligible with one or both ends, or even with certain other intermediate ones.
In such a distribution, which dialects can be classified together under one
language, and how many such languages are there? Such questions are possibly a
little easier to answer today in certain places than they once were.
The hardening of political boundaries in the modern world as a result of
the growth of states, particularly nation-states rather than multinational or multi-
ethnic states, has led to the hardening of language boundaries. Although residents
of territories on both sides of the Dutch–German border (within the West
Germanic continuum) or the French–Italian border (within the West Romance
continuum) have many similarities in speech even today, they will almost
certainly tell you that they speak dialects of Dutch or German in the one case and
French or Italian in the other. Various pressures – political, social, cultural, and
educational – serve to harden current state boundaries and to make the linguistic
differences among states more, not less, pronounced. Dialects continue therefore
to disappear as national languages arise. They are subject to two kinds of pressure:
24 | P a g e
one from within, to conform to a national standard, and one from without, to
become different from standards elsewhere.
When a language is recognized as being spoken in different varieties, the
issue becomes one of deciding how many varieties and how to classify each
variety. Dialect geography is the term used to describe attempts made to map the
distributions of various linguistic features so as to show their geographical
provenance. For example, in seeking to determine features of the dialects of
English and to show their distributions, dialect geographers try to find answers to
questions such as the following. Is this an r-pronouncing area of English, as in
words like car and cart, or is it not? What past tense form of drink do speakers
prefer? What names do people give to particular objects in the environment, e.g.,
elevator or lift, petrol or gas, carousel or roundabout? Sometimes maps are drawn
to show actual boundaries around such features, boundaries called isoglosses, so
as to distinguish an area in which a certain feature is found from areas in which it
is absent. When several such isoglosses coincide, the result is sometimes called a
dialect boundary. Then we may be tempted to say that speakers on one side of
that boundary speak one dialect and speakers on the other side speak a different
dialect.
There are many difficulties with this kind of work: finding the kinds of
items that appear to distinguish one dialect from another; collecting data; drawing
conclusions from the data we collect; presenting the findings; and so on. It is easy
to see, however, how such a methodology could be used to distinguish British,
American, Australian, and other varieties of English from one another as various
dialects of one language. It could also be used to distinguish Cockney English
from Texas English. But how could you use it to distinguish among the
multifarious varieties of English found in cities like New York and London? Or
even among the varieties we observe to exist in smaller, less complex cities and
towns in which various people who have always resided there are acknowledged
to speak differently from one another?
Finally, the term dialect, particularly when it is used in reference to
regional variation, should not be confused with the term accent. Standard English,
for example, is spoken in a variety of accents, often with clear regional and social
25 | P a g e
associations: there are accents associated with North America, Singapore, India,
Liverpool (Scouse), Tyneside (Geordie), Boston, New York, and so on. However,
many people who live in such places show a remarkable uniformity to one another
in their grammar and vocabulary because they speak Standard English and the
differences are merely those of accent, i.e., how they pronounce what they say.
One English accent has achieved a certain eminence, the accent known as
Received Pronunciation (or RP), the accent of perhaps as few as 3 percent of
those who live in England. (The ‗received‘ in Received Pronunciation is a little bit
of old-fashioned snobbery: it means the accent allows one to be received into the
‗better‘ parts of society!) This accent is of fairly recent origin (see Mugglestone,
1995), becoming established as prestigious only in the late nineteenth century and
not even given its current label until the 1920s. In the United Kingdom at least, it
is ‗usually associated with a higher social or educational background, with the
BBC and the professions, and [is] most commonly taught to students learning
English as a foreign language‘ (Wakelin, 1977, p. 5). For many such students it is
the only accent they are prepared to learn, and a teacher who does not use it may
have difficulty in finding a position as a teacher of English in certain non-English-
speaking countries in which a British accent is preferred over a North American
one. In fact, those who use this accent are often regarded as speaking ‗unaccented‘
English because it lacks a regional association within England. Other names for
this accent are the Queen‟s English, Oxford English, and BBC English. However,
there is no unanimous agreement that the Queen does in fact use RP, a wide
variety of accents can be found among the staff and students at Oxford University,
and regional accents are now widely used in the various BBC services. As Bauer
(1994: 115–21) also shows, RP continues to change. One of its most recent
manifestations has been labeled ―Estuary English‖ (Rosewarne 1994) –
sometimes also called ―Cockneyfied RP‖ – a development of RP along the lower
reaches of the Thames reflecting a power shift in London toward the world of
finance, banking, and commerce and away from that of inherited position, the
Church, law, and traditional bureaucracies. Trudgill (1995: 7) has pointed out
what he considers to be the most interesting characteristics of RP: ―the relatively
very small numbers of speakers who use it do not identify themselves as coming
26 | P a g e
from any particular geographical region‖; ―RP is largely confined to England‖ and
there it is a ―non-localized accent‖; and ―it is . . . not necessary to speak RP to
speak Standard English‖ because ―Standard English can be spoken with any
regional accent, and in the vast majority of cases normally is‖. It is also interesting
to observe that the 1997 English Pronouncing Dictionary published by Cambridge
University Press abandoned the label RP in favor of BBC English even though
this latter term is not unproblematic as the BBC itself has enlarged the accent pool
from which it draws its newsreaders.
The development of Estuary English is one part of a general leveling of
accents within the British Isles. The changes are well documented; see, for
example, Foulkes and Docherty (1999), who review a variety of factors involved
in the changes that are occurring in cities. One feature of Estuary English, the use
of a glottal stop for t (Fabricus 2002), is also not unique to that variety but is
spreading widely, for example to Newcastle, Cardiff, and Glasgow, and even as
far north as rural Aberdeenshire in northeast Scotland (Marshall 2003). Watt
(2000) used the vowels in face and goat to show that Geordie, the Newcastle
accent, levels toward a regional accent norm rather than toward a national one,
almost certainly revealing a preference for establishing a regional identity rather
than either a very limited local identity or a wider national one.
The most generalized accent in North America is sometimes referred to as
General American or, more recently, as network English, the accent associated
with announcers on the major television networks. Other languages often have no
equivalent to RP: for example, German is spoken in a variety of accents, none of
which is deemed inherently any better than any other. Educated regional varieties
are preferred rather than some exclusive upper-class accent that has no clear
relationship to personal achievement.
As a final observation, Wardaugh (2006) says ―I must reiterate that it is
impossible to speak English without an accent‖. There is no such thing as an
―unaccented English‖. RP is an accent, a social one rather than a regional one.
However, we must note that there are different evaluations of the different
accents, evaluations arising from social factors not linguistic ones. Matsuda
(1991: 1361) says it is really an issue of power:
27 | P a g e
When . . . parties are in a relationship of domination and
subordination we tend to say that the dominant is normal, and the
subordinate is different from normal. And so it is with accent. . . .
People in power are perceived as speaking normal, unaccented
English. Any speech that is different from that constructed norm is
called an accent.
2.3 Social Dialect

The term dialect can also be used to describe differences in speech
associated with various social groups or classes. There are social dialects as well
as regional ones. An immediate problem is that of defining social group or social
class, giving proper weight to the various factors that can be used to determine
social position, e.g., occupation, place of residence, education, ―new‖ versus ―old‖
money, income, racial or ethnic origin, cultural background, caste, religion, and so
on. Such factors as these do appear to be related fairly directly to how people
speak. There is a British ―public-school‖ dialect, and there is an ―African
American Vernacular English‖ dialect found in cities such as New York, Detroit,
and Buffalo. Many people also have stereotypical notions of how other people
speak, and there is considerable evidence from work of investigators such as
Labov and Trudgill that social dialects can indeed be described systematically.
Whereas regional dialects are geographically based, social dialects
originate among social groups and are related to a variety of factors, the principal
ones apparently being social class, religion, and ethnicity. In India, for example,
caste, one of the clearest of all social differentiators, quite often determines which
variety of a language a speaker uses. In a city like Baghdad the Christian, Jewish,
and Muslim inhabitants speak different varieties of Arabic. In this case the first
two groups use their variety solely within the group but the Muslim variety serves
as a lingua franca, or common language, among the groups. Consequently,
Christians and Jews who deal with Muslims must use two varieties: their own at
home and the Muslim variety for trade and in all inter-group relationships.
(Wardaugh, 2006)
Each social dialect is adequate as a functional and effective variety of
English. Each serves a communication function as well as a social solidarity
function. It maintains the communication network and the social construct of the
28 | P a g e
community of speakers who use it. Furthermore, each is a symbolic representation
of the historical, social, and cultural background of the speakers. For example,
there is strong evidence that many of the features of Black English represent
linguistic Africanisms. However, society has adopted the linguistic idealization
model that standard English is the linguistic archetype. Standard English is the
linguistic variety used by government, the mass media, business, education,
science, and the arts. Therefore, there may be nonstandard English speakers who
find it advantageous to have access to the use of standard English.
2.4 Linguistic Items and Varieties

Sociolinguists in most cases study social distribution of particular
linguistic items, for example words, sounds, or grammatical constructions. Let us
give some examples of linguistic items. The English pronouns yous ―2nd person
plural‖ and you ―2nd person singular or plural‖ are linguistic items, and they have
different social distributions; the former is found in certain non-standard varieties
of English, while the latter occurs in all standard varieties and some other non-
standard varieties.
If we take a look at a dialect atlas of England (see Upton and Widdowson
1996), we will find that roughly, the word child is used in southern England and
in Midland, while bairn is used in northern England. Child and bairn are different
linguistic items. In England, the sound /ʌ/, as in sun /sʌn/, is a typical southern
sound, found in southern England and in South Midland, while this sound is not
used among speakers of dialects in North Midland and northern England, where,
for example, the word sun is pronounced /sʊn/, with the sound /ʊ/, which is found
in put /pʊt/ in most dialects also in the South (some areas have /ʌ/). The English
phonemes /ʌ/ and /ʊ/ are different linguistic items.
The suffix –ing of written English, as in coming, is pronounced /ɪŋ/ and
/ɪn/, as in /kʌmɪŋ/ and /kʌmɪn/, and the two pronunciations have different social
distributions: the former is a typical standard pronunciation and the latter a typical
non-standard pronunciation. The English suffixes /ɪŋ/ and /ɪn/ are also different
linguistic items. The other example of different linguistic items is found in the use
of past tense of the verb ―catch‖. In the English dialects of England, the most
29 | P a g e
widespread past tense of catch /kæʧ/ is catched /kæʧt/, while the standard dialect
and some other dialects have caught /kɔ:t/. The English past tense forms catched
/kæʧt/ and caught /kɔ:t/ are different linguistic items.
In terms of sentence, we can also provide examples of the existence of
different linguistic items. A sentence ―Give it to me!‖ is an example of a Standard
English grammatical construction, with a verb ―give‖ (here in the imperative)
followed by a pronoun referring to a direct object ―it‖ and a prepositional phrase
containing the preposition ―to‖ plus a pronoun referring to an indirect object
―me‖. In traditional dialects of England, this construction is not very common,
being found primarily in the South-west and in some areas on the south-eastern
coast (including the London area). The construction with the widest geographical
distribution in England is ―Give me it!‖ and ―Give it me!‖. These three sentences,
―Give it to me!‖, ―Give me it!‖, and ―Give it me!‖, are instances of three different
grammatical constructions, each of which is a linguistic item.
Now, let us talk about linguistic variety. There are many ways of speaking,
and each way of speaking is known as a variety. In a more precise manner, a
variety may be defined as, according to Hudson (1996), a set of linguistic items
with similar social distribution. It should be emphasized that a variety is not
necessarily a ―full-fledged language‖, with a large vocabulary and grammar. It
may simply be a small set of linguistic items, as is the case with a slang, which
may typically be defined as a quite restricted set of new words and new meanings
of older words, mixed with linguistic items with a much larger social distribution.
Consider the varieties of language shown in Table 1.
In table 1, we have given some examples of sentences in different varieties
of language. On the basis of these examples, we can ask some important
questions, like: ―Do these varieties represent the same or different languages?‖,
―Do these varieties represent the same or different dialects of the same
language?‖, and so on. More concretely, one could, for example, ask how many
different languages are represented in table 1, and there is no unique answer.
30 | P a g e
Table 1. Varieties of Language
(a) Standard English. ―No one has gone to the post office yet.‖
(b) Jamaican Creole. Nobadi no gaan a puos yet. ―No one has gone to the
post office yet.‖
(c) Southern US white Non-Standard dialect from Atlanta. Nobody
don‘t like a boss hardly. ―Hardly anybody likes a boss.‖
(d) New Guinea Pidgin (Tok Pisin). Papa, min bin mekim sin long God
na long yu. ―Father, I have sinned against God and against you.‖
(e) Older Standard English of the “King James version”Bible. “Father,
I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight.‖
(f) Scots, from Leith. When ah wis a boy ma mither an faither died.
―When I was a boy my mother and father died.‖
(g) Standard English & English slang. Walking 5 miles to work is a real
ball-ache. ―Walking 5 miles to work is really inconvenient.‖
(h) Chadian Spoken Arabic of Ulâd Eli. Amm Muusa dakhalat zeribt al-
bagar. ―Mûsa‘s mother entered the enclosure of the cows.‖
(i) Moroccan Spoken Arabic. Bi:t nәkri sayyara lmuddәt usbu:ῑ. ―I
would like to hire a car for a week.‖
(j) Standard Maltese. Mart is-sultan marida afna. ―The sultan‘s wife is
very ill.‖
(k) Standard Written Arabic. Ra‟aytu insān ghayra sukkāni Makkata. ―I
saw people who were not the inhabitants of Mecca.‖
The varieties in (a) – (g) may all be called English is some sense, but it is
not at evident that these varieties represent the same language. Likewise, the
varieties in (h) – (k) may be characterized as Arabic, but this does not necessarily
mean that only one language is involved, and what we have referred to here as one
variety. Standard Written Arabic in (k), may be divided into at least two different
varieties, Classical Arabic (the language of the Qur‟an and writers like Ibn
Khaldūn) and Modern Literary Arabic (the language of modern newspapers and
many modern authors).

1. Bell, R. T. 1976. Sociolinguistics: Goals, Approaches and Problems. London:
Batsford.
2. Fairclough, N. 2001. Language and Power. 2nd edition. London: Longman.
3. Gasser, Michael. 2006. ―Dialects and Languages‖. Retrieved on November
2nd 2012 from www.indiana.edu/~hlw/Introduction/dialects.html.
4. Gumperz, J. J. 1982a. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
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5. Haugen, E. 1966a. ―Dialect, Language, Nation‖. American Anthropologist,
68: 922–35.
6. Hudson, R. A. 1996. Sociolinguistics. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
7. Matsuda, M. J. 1991. ―Voice of America: Antidiscrimination Law, and a
Jurisprudence for the Last Reconstruction‖. Yale Law Journal, 100:
1329–407.
8. Milroy, J. 2001.‖ Language Ideologies and the Consequences of
Standardization‖. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5(4): 530–55.
9. Upton, C. and J. D. A. Widdowson (eds.) 1996. An Atlas of English Dialects.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1. A survey of the following kind might prove quite revealing. Ask a variety of
people you know questions such as these, and then try to organize their
responses in a systematic way:
a. Which language(s) do you speak?
b. Do you speak a dialect of X?
c. Where is the best X spoken?
d. What is your native language (or mother tongue)?
e. Do you speak X with an accent? If so, what accent?
Try also to get definitions from your informants for each of the terms that you
use!
2. Is Afrikaans a dialect of Dutch or a different language? To attempt an answer
to this question you will have to consider a variety of issues: What is the
origin of Afrikaans? Are Afrikaans and Dutch mutually intelligible? How
different are the orthographies (i.e., systems of spelling), sounds,
vocabularies, and grammars? How important is the factor of the national
consciousness of those who speak Afrikaans? Is the initial question clearly
answerable from the kinds of theories and data that are currently available to
us?
3. Standard languages are usually based on an existing dialect of the language.
For example, the British variety of English is based, historically at least, on
the dialect of the area surrounding London, Continental French on the dialect
of Paris, and Italian on the dialect of Florence or Tuscany (although Rome
and Milan became important influences in the late twentieth century). In other
32 | P a g e
countries the situation is not so clear-cut. What can you find out about the
difficulties of choosing a variety for standardization in Indonesian and
Minangkabaunese language?
4. Each of the following is found in some variety of English. Each is
comprehensible. Which do you yourself use? Which do you not use? Explain
how those utterances you do not use differ from those you do use.
a. I haven‘t spoken to him.
b. I‘ve not spoken to him.
c. Is John at home?
d. Is John home?
e. Give me it!
f. Give it me!
g. Give us it!
h. I wish you would have said so.
i. I wish you‘d said so.
j. Don‘t be troubling yourself!
k. Coming home tomorrow he is.
5. How is regional dialect different from social dialect? Elaborate your answers
by providing examples!
33 | P a g e
CHAPTER 3
PIDGINS AND CREOLES
3.1 Lingua Franca

The original ―Lingua Franca‖ was a language without a nation, without
native speakers, and without literature. Despite these facts, which we may easily
see as severe shortcomings in the linguistics department, it was, however, a
language that served its purpose. According to Kastberg (2012), from the Dark
Ages and until the onset of modernity lingua franca served as the traders‘
Esperanto. As such it was spoken from the Levant across the Mediterranean and
to the Maghreb. Actually, it is a quite convincing track record for a linguistically
challenged language.
It seems that the original lingua franca emerged from the Levant, i.e.
roughly the geographic region and culture zone of the eastern Mediterranean
between Anatolia and Egypt, sometime during the 13th century. Due to the fact
that lingua franca never really became a literary medium, most of what we know
of lingua franca today is anecdotal, but in 1353 we have the first written account
of its existence. Although we lack the proper written documentation, it is believed
that the crusades helped spread lingua franca across the Mediterranean.
Lingua franca literally meant ―speaking like the Franks‖. The Franks in
question were not, as we might expect today, the French; rather, the term was
originally used more broadly to designate all people(s) from the north of modern-
day Italy. The Franks soon became a word used to describe all people(s) from
Western Europe altogether; and, as a consequence of the crusades, ―franchi‖ or
―Franks‖ even ended up being a term used for Catholics. Lingua franca was first
and foremost a language of commerce, a language that grew out of the need of
traders and merchants for haggling, negotiation and bargaining with the many
communities in and around the Mediterranean. Samarin (1968: 661) lists four uses
of lingua franca: it is used as (i) a trade language (e.g., Hausa in West Africa or
Swahili in East Africa); (ii) a contact language (e.g., Greek koiné in the Ancient
World); (iii) an international language (e.g., English throughout much of our
contemporary world); and (iv) an auxiliary language (e.g., Esperanto or Basic
34 | P a g e
English). In short, lingua franca is usually developed as a consequence of
population migration (forced or voluntary) or for purposes of trade.
The fact that lingua franca was not necessarily a written language did not
mean that it was entirely without some kind of grammar or lexicon. In terms of
lexicon, lingua franca was a simplified and reduced version of ―Frankish‖, i.e. a
mixture of – mostly – Italian with some Spanish and vulgar Latin words thrown in
for good measure. Syntactically, scholars seem to agree that lingua franca could
be described as an adaptation of a basic Italian lexicon to a simplified Arabic
syntax. Speaking of grammar, it seems that the only verb form used was the
infinitive, i.e. an infinitive form corresponding roughly to Romance infinitive.
Even if the morphology was reduced, pluralization did occur. Moreover lingua
franca did not feature concord between noun and adjective and only the masculine
form of the adjective seems to have been used. But even if it remained a reduced
language for the duration of its existence, it was not a static language; it did
change over the centuries. In fact, in the hey-day of lingua franca, two main
strands had evolved: One mainly Italian inspired lingua franca, which was to be
found mostly in the Middle East, and one Ibero- Romance version which was
mostly spoken in the Maghreb. And here, in its ―golden days‖ around the 17th
century, it even featured a past and future tense.
The fact that lingua franca can be described as a mixture language is
supported by Bakker (1997) who describes one such language as Michif, a
mixture of Cree and French, is spoken mainly in Canada by under a thousand
people of métis (aboriginal and French) ancestry. Michif is sometimes
characterized as a language that mixes Cree verbs and French nouns but probably
more accurately is one that uses Cree grammar and French vocabulary. Bakker
and Papen (1997: 355) add ―The most obvious way to form a new language was
through mixing the two community languages, Cree and French‖.
From the year 1830 we have the first lexicographical work on Lingua
Franca. It was a word list that comprised over 2000 words and which was
published in Marseilles, France. The word list was meant to assist French-
speaking colonials in their daily interactions with the people of Maghreb. And
even if today, lingua franca is all but a dead language, there are supposedly
35 | P a g e
remnants of the lingua franca numerals to be heard on the streets of old Jerusalem,
where – again supposedly – children (without knowing it) sing out Lingua Franca
numerals in a sort of counting-out rhyme.
Be that as it may, for all intent and purposes the original lingua franca is
today extinct. In many ways, however, its legacy lives on. That is: When we think
of lingua franca today not many among us think of the Esperanto of the
Mediterranean, a language that emerged out of the Levant and spread along the
trade routes of the Med and the Maghreb. Today we probably think of and use
―Lingua Franca‖ as a term for any second language used as a common
denominator, as it were, when communicating across communities, be they
national or cultural. In that sense the original became the mother of all pidgins.
But where does that leave the original lingua franca today?
In a publication concerned with the use of languages in education
published in Paris in 1953, UNESCO defined a lingua franca as ―a language
which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to
facilitate communication between them‖. A variety of other terms can be found
which describe much the same phenomenon.
3.2 Pidgins and Creoles

Look at the following sentences. Can you guess their meaning? Although
many of the words in the following example are unknown, we can recognize few
of them as English words. These lines are taken from a famous comic strip in
Papua New Guinea:
"Sapos yu kaikai planti pinat, bai yu kamap strong olsem phantom."

"Fantom, yu pren tru bilong mi. Inap yu ken helpim mi nau?"
"Fantom, em i go we?"
Translation:
'If you eat plenty of peanuts, you will come up strong like the phantom.'
'Phantom, you are a true friend of mine. Are you able to help me now?'
1Where did he go?'
A simplified language derived from two or more languages is called a

pidgin. Wardaugh (2006) said that a pidgin is a language that has no native
36 | P a g e
speaker. It is a contact language developed and used by people who do not share a
common language in a given geographical area. It has no native speaker as it is
the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish to communicate
must find or improvise a simple code to enable them to do so. A pidgin is
sometimes regarded as a reduced variety of a ―normal‖ language because it is used
in a limited way and the structure is very simplistic. Since they serve a single
simplistic purpose, they usually die out. However, if the pidgin is used long
enough, it begins to evolve into a more rich language with a more complex
structure and richer vocabulary. Once the pidgin has evolved and has acquired
native speakers (the children learn the pidgin as their first language), it is then
called a Creole. When a pidgin becomes the language of newly-born generations
as a mother-tongue or first language, and acquires additional vocabulary and
grammatical structures to serve their various necessary communicative needs
(referential and social functions), it becomes a Creole. An example of this is the
Creole above from Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin, which has become a National
language.
In the nineteenth century, when slaves from Africa were brought over to
North America to work on the plantations, they were separated from the people of
their community and mixed with people of various other communities, therefore
they were unable to communicate with each other. The strategy behind this was so
they couldn't come up with a plot to escape back to their land. Therefore, in order
to finally communicate with their peers on the plantations, and with their bosses,
they needed to form a language in which they could communicate. Pidgins also
arose because of colonization. Prominent languages such as French, Spanish,
Portuguese, English, and Dutch were the languages of the colonizers. They
traveled, and set up ports in coastal towns where shipping and trading routes were
accessible.
There is always a dominant language which contributes most of the
vocabulary of the pidgin; this is called the superstrate language. The superstrate
language from the Papua New Guinea Creole example above is English. The other
minority languages that contribute to the pidgin are called the substrate languages.
37 | P a g e
In the United States, there is a very well known Creole, Louisiana Creole, which
is derived from French and African Languages.
A creole language can be defined as a language that has come into
existence at a point in time that can be established fairly precisely. Non-creole
languages are assumed (often in the absence of detailed knowledge of their
precise development) to have emerged gradually.
So creole languages are different from ordinary languages in that we can
say that they came into existence at some point in time. Applying the techniques
of historical linguistics to creoles is therefore not simple, and in addition
presupposes answering the question of which languages the creole should be
compared with: the language which provided the lexicon, or the language(s)
which were responsible for most aspects of grammatical structure – inasmuch as it
is possible to identify these.
It is clear in fact that creole languages develop as the result of ―linguistic
violence‖ (and as we shall see, frequently social violence too). In other words, we
have to reckon with a break in the natural development of the language, the
natural transmission of a language from generation to generation. The parents of
the first speakers of Sranan were not English speakers at all, but the speakers of
various Afrrcan languages, and what is more important, they did not grow up in
an environment where English was the norm. How creolization, the development
of a creole language, takes place, or at least what the various theories are
concerning how it takes place, we cannot really go into at this juncture.
What is clear is that creole languages are not in the slightest qualitatively
distinguishable from other spoken languages. Many of them tend to have certain
features in common, but creolists are divided as to the interpretation of this fact,
and a language like Chinese resembles many creole languages in its grammar.
This means that before we can claim a language to be a creole, we need to know
something about its history, either linguistic or social, and preferably both. As we
know comparatively little about the detailed development of most languages in
the world, and virtually nothing of the history of most ethnic groups, this
inevitably means that there maybe many unrecognized creole languages around
the world.
38 | P a g e
3.3 Theories of Origin
Linguists who have studied pidgins and creoles have long been intrigued
by the similarities they have found among them. Pidgins from very different parts
of the world exhibit remarkable similarities in structure even when the standard
languages with which they are associated are quite different. Furthermore, pidgins
and creoles based on the same standard language but found in places far distant
from one another may have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, e.g., the
various pidginized and creolized varieties of French found geographically as far
apart as the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific. How can we
account for these similarities?
One theory about the origins of pidgins is easily dismissed. This is the idea
that pidgins arise because the people among whom they are found lack the ability
to learn the standard languages with which the pidgins are associated. Such a view
may sometimes be associated with another one, that European languages are
somehow ―better‖ than others and that many people speak ―primitive‖ languages,
i.e., languages that are ―deficient‖ in certain respects. Such deficiencies may then
be cited as evidence that the people themselves are inferior. We must note that
linguists have been unable to locate a single such ―primitive language‖, that
claims about associated intellectual deficiencies are largely ―racist‖, and that this
theory about the origins of pidgins ignores many important facts.
There is no evidence either for any ―foreigner-talk‖ or ―baby-talk‖ theory
(see Bloomfield, 1933: 472–3) for the origin of pidgins and creoles, i.e., that they
result from Europeans deliberately simplifying their languages in order to
communicate with others. According to this theory, these simplified forms then
serve to provide pidgins with their basic structures and vocabularies. There are too
many structural similarities among pidgins and creoles associated with very
different European languages to make such a theory of origin plausible, e.g.,
between the English-based creole of Jamaica and the French-based one of Haiti. If
there is evidence of simplification, it is evidence of some very different process at
work than any kind of ―talking down‖, ―baby-talk‖, or ―mimicry‖ can explain.
Moreover, pidgins are far less frequently used between Europeans and non-
Europeans than among non-Europeans. In fact, many Europeans who must deal
39 | P a g e
regularly with pidginized varieties of their languages speak them very badly
indeed, failing to understand some of the basic structural characteristics of the
pidgins. Finally, there is plenty of evidence that it is Europeans who learn the
pidgins from non-Europeans rather than the opposite, although the use of so much
European vocabulary may tend to conceal that fact.
One theory, the theory of polygenesis, is that pidgins and creoles have a
variety of origins; any similarities among them arise from the shared
circumstances of their origins. For example, speakers of English have had to make
themselves understood for the purposes of trade and those trading with them have
had to be understood. Consequently, certain simplified forms of English have
developed independently in a number of places, giving rise to varieties of pidgin
English. Because in every case the target language is English, these local varieties
will have certain similarities. In this view a ―pidgin X‖ or ―creolized Y‖ is a
variety of X or Y, much as Cockney English is a variety of English. Then, more
generally, since English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are really not so
different – they are all Indo-European languages – we might expect similarities.
We can go even further to claim that a ―simplification‖ process for any language
would produce much the same results everywhere: a simpler set of sounds, no
inflections, basic word order patterns, short uncomplicated utterances, and so on.
Various other explanations have been offered for the resulting similarities
including the similar social contexts of their origin, the similar communicative
needs of those who use them, and, most plausible of all, a shared substratum.
This last idea seems particularly appropriate to explain many similarities
among the Atlantic Ocean and possibly certain Indian Ocean pidgins and creoles
on the one hand and Pacific Ocean pidgins and creoles on the other. The former
are said to have an African substrate and the latter an Oceanic one, i.e., each
contains certain language characteristics of the native ancestral languages of their
speakers. In this view Atlantic pidgins and creoles retain certain characteristics of
ancestral African languages. African slaves were often multilingual, spoke
languages of similar structure but different vocabulary, and tended to treat English
and French, and to a lesser extent Portuguese, in the same way. Therefore, the
pidgins and creoles are European-language-based and were freshly created in
40 | P a g e
different places. What similarities they have they owe to this fusion of European
and African components (see Holm, 1988, 2004, and Winford, 2003).
We can contrast such polygenetic views with monogenetic ones. One such
view of the similarities among Atlantic pidgins and creoles requires us to examine
the very beginnings of the pidginization process. For example, according to
McWhorter (1995, 2000), their similarities can be accounted for if we look back
to the beginnings of the slave trade and the existence of English and French slave
forts on the West African Coast. In these forts contact languages developed, with
the most important of these from this point of view being West African Pidgin
Portuguese. These contact languages provided the bases for most of the pidgins
and creoles that later developed across the Atlantic. This is his Afrogenesis
hypothesis concerning origin. McWhorter points to the relative paucity of
Spanishbased creoles in the New World as evidence which supports this claim as
well as to the fact that such creoles are also missing from places we might expect
to find them, e.g., Puerto Rico and Cuba. (The Spanish creoles that do exist, e.g.,
Papiamentu, are relexified Portuguese ones.) McWhorter points out that Spain
came late to the sugar industry, did not use labor-intensive cultivation systems,
sometimes took areas from Portugal, and did not have large slave forts and
settlements in Africa. This view of the development of pidgins and creoles is a
monogenetic view, claiming as it does that a single source accounts for the
perceived similarities among the varieties we find.
Another variant of such a monogenetic theory is that the similarities
among pidgins and creoles might be attributable to a common origin in the
language of sailors in some kind of nautical jargon. It is a well-known fact that the
crews of ships were – and sometimes still are – often drawn from a variety of
sources. For example, Nelson‘s flagship Victory is said to have been crewed by
sailors of fourteen different nationalities. A common shipboard lingua franca, or
nautical jargon, developed among the members of the sailing community. In this
view, it was that lingua franca, rather than a pidginized variety of a standard
language, that was carried along the shipping routes. However, the evidence for
this theory is weak, consisting of a few sea-based terms in different pidgins.
Moreover, it almost completely ignores the more serious structural similarities
41 | P a g e
among existing pidgins and creoles, similarities that seem to require a more
profound explanation.
The theory of relexification is an attempt to offer such an explanation.
According to this theory, all the present European-language-based pidgins and
creoles derive from a single source, a lingua franca called Sabir used in the
Mediterranean in the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the
Portuguese relexified this language; that is, they introduced their own vocabulary
into its grammatical structure, so that a Portuguese-based pidgin came into
widespread use as a trade language. Later, this pidgin was in turn relexified into
pidginized French, English, and Spanish. In each case the underlying grammatical
structure remained largely unaffected, but a massive shift occurred in vocabulary
as replacement words were imported from the lexifier language to produce a
conspicuous superstratum. It is also argued that Portuguese relics still remain after
relexification, e.g., savvy and piccaninny (from Portuguese saber, ―know‖, and
pequeño, ―little‖), in English-based creoles.
Such a theory attempts to provide a serious explanation for the fact that
pidgins and creoles associated with different standard languages have certain
common structural features but quite different vocabularies. In this view a pidgin
English is therefore an Anglicized version of the original pidgin and a pidgin
French is a Gallicized version. The theory leads creolists such as Todd (1990) to
go so far as to use a version of the classical comparative method of reconstruction
in an attempt to show how various pidgins and creoles have descended from a
Portuguese-based ancestor. Todd provides a family-tree type model for pidgins
and creoles, which shows them originating in Sabir. Sabir then becomes Proto-
Portuguese Pidgin, which in turn splits into two distinct branches, Atlantic
Portuguese Pidgin and Indo-Pacific Portuguese Pidgin. The former has sub-
branches with Portuguese varieties (e.g., Guiné Crioule), Hispanic varieties (e.g.,
Papiamentu), Anglicized varieties (e.g., Jamaican), and Gallicized ones (e.g.,
Louisiana, Haitian); the latter has its sub-branches too – Gallicized ones (e.g.,
Seychelles), Nederlandized ones (e.g., Afrikaans), and Anglicized ones (e.g., Tok
Pisin).
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The theory of relexification is not without its problems. One is that pidgins
are so stripped down that they lack most of the features that linguists usually rely
on to relate one language to another. The similarities among them are very
general, and it is quite possible that some alternative theory may better explain
them, e.g., some general principles of language acquisition. Relexification also
asks us to believe that, in learning a language, people somehow can learn the
grammar quite independently of the vocabulary and that they do indeed learn the
first but completely replace the second during the process of learning. We might
also expect more Portuguese to have survived.
Lefebvre (1998), after more than twenty years of study of Haitian Creole,
answers some of these objections. He says that there are important factors in the
creation of a creole. Adults relexify to communicate: ―creole languages [are]
created by adult speakers with a mature lexicon‖. A process of dialect leveling
follows, which ―operates on the variation resulting from the relexification of the
various substratum lexicons‖, there usually being several of these. Finally,
speakers reanalyze the resulting language in ―a mental process whereby a
particular form which signals one lexical entry becomes the signal of another
lexical entry‖. In other words, relexification is the starting point of a larger
process.
There is some good evidence that relexification has occurred. If we look at
Saramaccan, it seems to be a pidgin in the process of relexification from
Portuguese to English (hence the disagreement I noted earlier about its
classification). It was ‗frozen‘ in this intermediate, transitional stage when its
speakers were cut off from England in 1667 when the colony became a Dutch
possession. There is also evidence that in parts of West Africa such kinds of
replacement do occur, that people know the vocabularies of different languages
but use a kind of common grammar in speaking them so that when they come
across a new language they employ the ‗new‘ vocabulary in the ‗old‘ grammatical
framework and manage to make themselves understood. We could argue,
however, that all we have in this case is a reintroduction of the substratum theory
in a new and subtle form; in any case, such a theory seems inadequate on other
grounds. There is also no apparent relexification possible for varieties such as
43 | P a g e
Pitcairnese (spoken by descendants of the Bounty mutiny of 1790), Sango, and
Chinook Jargon. At least some pidgins and creoles cannot owe their origin to this
process.
One of the severest condemnations of relexification comes from Bickerton
(1977: 62), who argues that: ‗We are asked to believe that an original contact
language could be disseminated round the entire tropical zone, to peoples of
widely differing language background, and still preserve a virtually complete
identity in its grammatical structure wherever it took root, despite considerable
changes in its phonology and virtually complete changes in its lexicon.‘ Bickerton
considers that relexification asks us to accept too many improbabilities. Instead,
he offers an alternative theory to account for the similarities we find: his
Language Bioprogram hypothesis.
Bickerton (1983) claims that only this hypothesis adequately explains the
similarities among creoles: universal principles of first language acquisition are
involved. Jespersen (1922: 234) had previously pointed out certain similarities
between pidgins and creoles and children‘s language. Bickerton argues that it is
better to focus on what pidgins and creoles have and do than on what they lack.
Typically, creoles are developed by children who find themselves born into a
multilingual environment in which the most important language for peer contact is
a pidgin. Children are compelled to develop that language because each child has
a bioprogram to develop a full language. Children use this bioprogram in the same
way wherever they happen to be and the consequence is that ―the grammatical
structures of creoles are more similar to one another than they are to the structures
of any other language‖ (p. 121). Bickerton further develops this thesis, claiming
that children have certain innate language abilities that they are actually forced to
suppress as they learn languages like English and French. ―It [is] only in pidgin-
speaking communities, where there [is] no grammatical model that could compete
with the child‘s innate grammar, that the innate grammatical model [is] not
eventually suppressed‖ (p. 121). It is in just these circumstances that creoles arise.
Bickerton says that the essential difference between pidginization and creolization
is that pidginization is second-language learning with restricted input and
creolization is first-language learning, also with restricted input. There has been
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much discussion of Bickerton‘s ideas but they have found only lukewarm support;
they are said to give too much weight to the role of children in the development of
creoles and too little to the role of expanded pidgins, the diversity found in
creoles, and the amount of time the creolization process usually requires.
However, at the same time we will see in various chapters that follow that there is
considerable evidence showing that children play an important role in how
languages change.

1. Bakker, P. 1997. A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed
Cree-French Language of the Canadian Métis. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
2. Holm, J. 2000. An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
3. Holmes, Janet. 1992. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman.
4. House, J. 2003. English as a Lingua Franca: A Threat to Multilingualism?
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(4): 556–78.
5. Kastberg, Peter. 2010. ―A Language with a Purpose - the Original Lingua
Franca‖. Retrieved on November 1st 2012 from https://pantherfile.uwm.
edu/corre/www/franca/go.html
6. Lefebvre, C. 2004. Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages.
Amsterdam:John Benjamins.
7. Todd, L. 1990. Pidgins and Creoles. New edition. London: Routledge.
8. Wardhaugh, Ronald. 2006. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th Edition.

1. Explain what lingua franca is?
2. If someone told you that pidginized varieties of a language are ‗corrupt‘ and
‗ungrammatical,‘ and indicated that their speakers are either ‗lazy‘ or
‗inferior,‘ how might you try to show that person how wrong he or she is?
What kinds of evidence would you use?
3. Bickerton (1977: 49) says that, essentially, ‗pidginization is second language
learning with restricted input, and . . . creolization is first-language learning
with restricted input.‘ How valid do you think Bickerton‘s claim is?
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CHAPTER 4
ASPECTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
4.1 Speech Situations, Speech Events, and Speech Acts

In speaking to one another, we make use of utterances. We can attempt to
classify these utterances in any one of a variety of ways. We can try to classify
them by length, e.g., by counting the number of words in each utterance, but that
appears to be of little interest except to those who believe that shorter utterances
are more easily understood than longer ones. We can try to classify them by
grammatical structure along a number of dimensions, e.g., their clausal type and
complexity: active–passive; statement–question–request–exclamatory; various
combinations of these; and so on. We may even try to work out a semantic or
logical structure for each utterance. Furthermore, we use utterances for many
purposes. We tell others what we know or think we know, we express our
feelings, ask questions, make requests, protest, criticize, insult, apologize,
promise, thank, say hello and goodbye.
In the middle of twentieth century, John Austin gave a series of lectures,
the William James Lectures at Harvard, which were published posthumously as a
book entitled How to Do Things with Words in 1962. In his lecture, Austin
presented a new picture of analyzing meaning; meaning is described in a relation
among linguistic conventions correlated with words/sentences, the situation where
the speaker actually says something to the hearer, and associated intentions of the
speaker. The idea that meaning exists among these relations is depicted
successfully by the concept of ―acts‖, known as ―speech acts‖: in uttering a
sentence, that is, in utilizing linguistic conventions, the speaker with an associated
intention performs a linguistic act to the hearer.
Speech act theory has to do with the functions and uses of language, so in
the broadest sense we might say that speech acts are all the acts we perform
through speaking, all the things we do when we speak. Such a definition is too
broad for most purposes, however, for the uses to which we put speech
encompasses most of human activities. We use language to build bridges, to
consolidate political regimes, to carry on arguments, to convey information from
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one person to another, to entertain, in short to communicate. We use speech in
ceremonies, games, recipes, and lectures. On some occasions, in social gatherings,
for example, we use language successively to introduce one person to another,
carry on conversations, tell jokes, criticize and praise the third parties both present
and absent, talk about favorite topics, seduce or attempt to seduce, and say
farewell.
Hymes (1972) has proposed a useful distinction between speech situations,
speech events, and speech acts. Within a community one finds many situations
associated with speech, such as fights, hunts, meals, parties, etc. But it is not
profitable to convert such situations into part of sociolinguistic description by
simply relabeling them in terms of speech, for such situations are not in
themselves governed by consistent rules throughout. The term speech event can
be restricted to activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use
of speech, events such as two party conversations (face-to-face or on the
telephone), lectures, introductions, religious rites, and the like. This notion of
speech event is related to the traditional concept of genre, though Hymes argues
that the two must be treated as analytically independent, and a great deal of
empirical research is needed to classify the relationship between the terms. Speech
acts, in a narrow sense, are the minimal terms of the set: speech situation/event/
act. When we speak, we perform acts such as giving reports, making statements,
asking questions, giving warnings, making promises, approving, regretting, and
apologizing.
Austin (1962) pointed out that there are a great number of speech acts
(illocutionary acts, in his terminology), and in English there are a great number of
verbs which refer to them. Let us consider the following related set of words: ask,
request, direct, require, order, command, suggest, beg, plead, pray. Austin claimed
that there are over a thousand such verbs in English, but while English verbs
provide a useful initial taxonomy for speech acts, the acts are, in fact, not
equivalent to the verbs which frequently name them. Searle (1976) points out that
many verbs are not markers of illocutionary force, but of some other features of
the speech act. ―Insist‖ and ―suggest‖, for example, mark degree of intensity, but
do not mark separate speech act functions or illocutionary points. Both may be
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used with directive function (I suggest/insist that we go to the movies), or with
representative function (I suggest/insist that the answer is found on page 16). We
need to recognize also that speech acts are not identifiable with the sentence, or
any other level of grammatical description. Hymes‘ (1972) position is that the
level of speech acts mediates between the usual levels of grammar and the rest of
a speech event in that it implicates both linguistic form and social norm. Whether
or not a particular utterance has the status of a request, for example, may depend
upon a conventional linguistic formula (How about picking me up early this
afternoon?), but it may also depend upon the social relationship between the
speaker and the hearer.
It needs to be recognized too that speech acts occur within discourse, and
that the interpretation and negotiation of speech act force is often dependent on
the discourse or transactional context. As a minimum, we need to consider the fact
that talk is often recognized into two-part exchanges. As Goffman (1976) points
out, this organizing principle follows from very fundamental requirements of talk
as a communication system. A speaker needs to know that he has received and
understood the message. We, therefore, must recognize such ―adjacency pairs‖ as
summons-answer, statement-reply, question-answer, request-refusal to request,
and so on.
An investigation of speech acts, therefore, leads naturally into questions of
act sequencing (events) and contexts (speech settings or situations). Rehbein and
Ehlich in Candlin (1978) list the different operations that may take place inside a
restaurant when the activity is ordering a meal: entering, looking around, judging,
taking a seat, wanting the menu, asking for the menu, wanting information, asking
for information, consulting, deciding, ordering, transmission, production, delivery,
serving, consuming, wanting to pay, asking for the bill, drawing up the account,
getting the bill, paying, leaving. Norms of linguistic behavior identify various
parts of the sequence. Different participants have different amounts of talking to
do and different types of topics to talk about. Within speech events, there are
norms for opening and closing sequences, sequencing rules, and distribution
frequencies and probabilities for particular speech acts. Assigning the value of
―command‖ to any of a range of possible utterances such as ―hot dogs‖, ―that
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one‖, ―please bring me X‖, ―a diectic gesture‖ is a function of recognizing the
social world of the restaurant with the rights, duties, and social relationship
between the participants, as well as that of being aware of the discoursal position
of the ―act of commanding‖ within the transactional process. (Candlin 1978: 17).
Both speech acts and speech events have been studied extensively in
recent years and have constituted topical foci for scholars from a great number of
disciplines. Speech events have been investigated by anthropologists and
ethnographers, folklorists, literary critics, and sociologists. According to Schmidt
and Richards (2002) the most detailed and perhaps the most provocative analyses
of speech events have been provided by those sociologists who work within the
area of sociology termed ethnomethodology, the primary goal of which is to give
rigorous sociological formulation to the interactional basis of the things people
say and do in the settings of everyday life. Working primarily from the transcripts
of natural conversations, characterizations have been developed for a variety of
conversational activities: turn taking, story telling, opening and closing
conversations, telephone conversations, and many other aspects of the
establishment of social relations through conversational roles. Speech acts, on the
other hand, have been studied primarily by philosophers of language and linguists.
4.2 The Components of Speech Acts

Before explaining the components of speech act, let us take a look at the
concept of speech acts and the felicity conditions for performing them. Austin
(1962) states that to utter a performative sentence can be evaluated in terms of,
what he might call conventionality, actuality, and intentionality of uttering the
sentence. Uttering a performative sentence can further be described in terms of:
(i) associated conventions which are valid (without which the
purported act is disallowed; a violation of the felicity conditions
(A)), (ii) the speaker‘s actual, accurate utterance of the sentence to
the hearer, which induces an associated response from the hearer
(without which the purported act is vitiated; a violation of the
felicity conditions (B)), and (iii) an associated intention of the
speaker (without which the purported act is abused; a violation of
the felicity conditions (Γ)). In Oishi (2006).
Through a description of the success/failure of the speech act purported,
which is explained as a observation/violation of the felicity conditions, Austin
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formulated a method to describe a sentence in terms of the speech situation where
it is uttered: by means of associated linguistic conventions, the speaker, with an
associated intention, actually performs an act to the hearer, which induces a
certain response from the hearer.
Austin‘s idea mentioned above can be interpreted in the following way: by
uttering a performative sentence, the speaker indicates a certain speech situation
where
(i) a certain convention exists, as shown by the felicity condition
(A.1), (ii) there are certain persons and circumstances, as shown by
the felicity condition (A.2), (iii) the speaker performs the act in a
certain way, as shown by the felicity condition (B.1), (iv) the hearer
reacts to it in a certain way, as shown by the felicity condition
(B.2), (v) the speaker has certain thoughts, feelings, or intentions,
as shown by the felicity condition (Γ.1), and (vi) the speaker is
supposed to execute a certain task in the future, as shown by the
felicity condition (Γ.2).
In this frame-work, the success of the purported speech act is explained as
an identification of the present speech situation with the speech situation indicated
by the performative sentence. The failure of the purported speech act is, on the
other hand, explained as a gap between the present speech situation and the
speech situation indicated.
Austin then delineates the concept of performativity. He shows that
performativity does not conflict with statements as the initial distinction between
performatives and constatives suggests. In its extended sense, performativity is
interpreted as a quintessential feature of communication which is expressed with
numerous verbs. So even uttering a sentence of ―I state …‖ can be infelicitous in
six different ways in the same manner as uttering a sentence with a performative
verb. For example, we can imagine a language whose lexicon lacks a verb with a
sense of ―to state‖ in English, although it has verbs with a sense of ―to make a
sound‖, ―to utter‖, or ―to say‖.
The speaker of the language cannot perform the same act that the English
speaker would perform in uttering the sentence ―I state …‖, therefore violating the
felicity condition (A.1), although it is quite likely that she can perform ―similar‖
acts or achieve ―similar‖ effects by uttering the sentence with alternative verbs.
The utterance of ―I state that he is sad‖ or ―I state that such and such happened in
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the year 1651‖ is infelicitous because you cannot ―state‖ something ―in‖ absentia,
so to speak; in this case, another person‘s feelings or an event that took place in
1651, hence a violation of the felicity condition (A.2). I cannot ―state‖ something
if I do not utter the sentence correctly. Imagine that, instead of saying ―I state I
saw Sam and Ellie‖, I, as a slip of the tongue, utter something which sounds more
like ―I state I saw salmonella‖: I did not state ―I saw Sam and Ellie‖, as intended,
therefore violating of the felicity condition (B.1). I cannot state such-and-such if
the hearer is not listening to me, or thinks that I am joking, hence a violation of
the felicity condition (B.2). Also if I state such and such without believing it is the
case, the utterance is infelicitous, hence a violation of the felicity condition (Γ.1).
Similarly, if I state such and such, and later I refuse to make the same statement
under the same circumstances, my earlier statement becomes rather questionable,
therefore in violation of the felicity condition (Γ.2). These exam-ples demonstrate
that even an utterance of the sentence of ―I state …‖, which would appear to be
more directly related to making a statement rather than per-forming an act, is
evaluated in terms of the elements of the speech situation, namely,
conventionality, actuality, and intentionality, and, accordingly, is subject to
infelicities related to them.
After understanding the concept of speech acts and the felicity conditions
for performing them, now let as take a closer look at the components of speech
acts. Austin specifies performativity, formerly introduced as an intuitive idea of
―performing an act‖. He introduces three components of speech acts: locution,
illocution, and perlocution. He also explains the concept of illocutionary acts, and
carefully distinguishes them from locutionary acts and perlocutionary acts.
Locutionary acts include phonetic acts, phatic acts, and rhetic acts. Phonetic acts
are acts of pronouncing sounds, phatic acts are acts of uttering words or sentences
in accordance with the phonological and syntactic rules of the language to which
they belong, and rhetic acts are acts of uttering a sentence with sense and more or
less definite reference. Perlocutionary acts are, on the other hand, acts attributed to
the effect of uttering a sentence.
Furthermore, Austin says that in uttering a sentence the speaker performs
an illocutionary act of having a certain force, which is different from the
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locutionary act of uttering the sentence, which is to have a meaning, and also from
the perlocutionary act performed by uttering the sentence, which is to achieve
certain effects. By these distinctions, Austin shows that, unlike locutionary acts,
illocutionary acts have a force, and, unlike perlocutionary acts, illocutionary acts
are valid and complete without being reduced to the effect of it.
Austin classifies illocutionary acts into five types, i.e., verdictives, exer-
citives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives. Although it is often argued that
Austin‘s classification is not complete and those coined categories are not
mutually exclusive, Austin‘s classification is best seen as an attempt to give a
general picture of illocutionary acts: what types of illocutionary act one can
generally perform in uttering a sentence. One can exercise judgment (Verdictive),
exert influence or exercise power (Exercitive), assume obligation or declare
intention (Commissive), adopt attitude, or express feeling (Behabitive), and
clarify reasons, argument, or communication (Expositive). The long list of
illocutionary verbs in each class also illustrates how many subtly differentiated
illocutionary acts exist in a language like English.
The fact that Austin includes the same word in two different classes and he
does not regard it as a problem suggests that it is not an issue for Austin which
class a particular illocutionary verb/act actually belongs to. The importance of
introducing this classification of illocutionary acts is rather to explicate, as we
explained above, what type of illocutionary act one can generally perform by
uttering a sentence; and, with additional specifications, how much more
diversified illocutionary acts are than we are usually aware of. The purpose of the
classification of illocutionary acts, if interpreted in this manner, is compatible
with Austin‘s beliefs as a major proponent of Ordinary Language Philosophy,
which is typically expressed in remarks such as the following:
Generally speaking, the speech act theorists after Austin focus on
explaining illocutionary acts in a narrow sense. John Searle, a major proponent of
the speech act theory, inherits his ideas from Austin and elaborates on some of
them, but develops the theory in his own fashion: the essence of it being that to
perform an illocutionary act is to express an illocutionary intention (Searle 1979).
Searle‘s notion of the speech act theory is developed along this line, and Searle
52 | P a g e
(1983) and Searle and Vanderveken (1985) attempt to explain illocutionary force
in a formal model which is compatible with the formal analysis of propositional
contents. Schiffer (1972) describes illocutionary acts in terms of the speaker‘s
intention to produce a certain response r in a certain audience, and the value(s) of
«r».
While each of these speech act theories has some merit, they are at odds
with Austin‘s original theory. In giving explanation of illocutionary acts, the
theorists have wittingly or unwittingly reduced them to something else,
specifically, intentions, and they explain how one type of illocutionary act differs
from another in terms of intentionality. This is, ironically, exactly what Austin
criticized. With the concept of performatives, Austin demonstrated that meaning
of a sentence cannot be fully explained by one criterion, i.e., the
propositional/descriptive content it expresses. Austin also emphasized the
importance of describing the total speech act in the total speech situation in which
the language users employ the language: the speaker utters a sentence and
performs a speech act to the hearer. While doing so, Austin proposed
(i) the felicity conditions, which define the elements in the
performance of illocutionary acts, (ii) the distinction between
locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts, which specifies
the sense of illocutionary acts performed in terms of other acts per-
formed in communication, and (iii) the classification of
illocutionary acts, which gives general ideas of what acts are
performed and in terms of what they are specified.
In spite of the possibilities Austin suggested, these speech act theorists
persistently concentrate on explaining an illocutionary act in terms of an intention.
From Austin‘s point of view, it is debatable whether reducing meaning, expressed
by uttering a sentence, to the intention is any better than reducing it to a
propositional/descriptive content which the sentence expresses.
4.3 Rules Governing the Use of Speech Acts

Searle (1965) has attempted to provide analyses of various illocutionary
acts, asking what conditions are necessary and sufficient for a particular act to
have been performed by the uttering of a particular sentence. For promises, the
conditions are identified as follows:
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Normal input and output conditions are obtained, i.e. the speaker
and hearer are not insane, they are not acting, etc.
A speaker expresses a sentence, the propositional content of which
predicates a future act of the speaker.
The hearer would prefer the speaker‘s doing the act to his not doing
the act, and the speaker believes this. Searle calls this a preparatory
condition.
It is not obvious to both speaker and hearer that the speaker will do
the act in the normal course of events.
The speaker intends to do the act. This is the illocutionary point of
promising, which Searle calls the sincerity condition.
The speaker intends that the utterance of the sentence will place
him under an obligation to do the act. This is what Searle calls the
essential condition.
The general type of analysis carries over to other speech acts as well. For
assertions, for example, one condition is that the speaker must have same basis for
supposing the assertions to be true, the sincerity condition is that he must believe
it to be true, and the essential condition is that the utterance counts as an attempt
to inform and convince.
These conditions do not tell us how speech acts are actually used and
understood, however, and the question of how the speaker and hearer assign
appropriate illocutionary value to a speech act remains a topic for speculation
among linguists, philosophers, and ethnomethodologists. Goffman (1976) has
pointed out that a classification of speech acts provides us with an opportunity to
see that how an interchange unfolds will depend somewhat on the type of speech
act involved, but that an attempt must be made ―to uncover the principles which
account for whatever contrast is found on a particular occasion between what is
said, what is usually meant by this, and what in fact is meant on that particular
occasion of use‖.
Searle (1975) talks about inferential strategies and suggests how the
second of the following statements could be taken as a rejection of the proposal
made in the first statement.
Student X : Let‘s go to the movies tonight.
Student Y : I have to study for an exam.
Searle (1975: 63) reconstruct the steps necessary to derive the intended
meaning in the following way (without proposing that these are conscious
operations).
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Step 1 : I have made a proposal to Y, and in response he has made
a statement to the effect that he has to study for an exam
(facts about the conversation).
Step 2 : I assume that Y is cooperating in the conversation and that
therefore his remark is intended to be relevant (principles
of conversational cooperation).
Step 3 : A relevant response must be one of acceptance, rejection,
counter-proposal, further discussion, etc. (theory of speech
acts).
Step 4 : But his literal utterance was not one of these, and so was
not a relevant response (inference from Steps 1 and 3).
Step 5 : Therefore, he probably means more than he says.
Assuming that his remark is relevant, his primary
illocutionary point must differ from his literal one
(inference from Steps 2 and 4).
Step 6 : I know that studying for an exam normally takes a large
amount of time relative to a single evening, and I know
that going to the movies normally takes a large amount of
time relative to a single evening (factual background
information).
Step 7 : Therefore, he probably cannot both go to the movies and
study for an exam in one evening (inference from Step 6).
Step 8 : A preparatory condition on the acceptance of a proposal,
or on any other commissive, is the ability to perform the
act predicted in the propositional content condition (theory
of speech acts).
Step 9 : Therefore, I know that he has said something that has the
consequence that he probably cannot consistently accept
the proposal (inference from Steps 1, 7, and 8).
Step10 : Therefore, his primary illocutionary point is probably to
reject the proposal (inference from Steps 5 and 9).
Such communication is guided by four factors, which Grice (1975) called
―general principles of co-operative behavior―. As speakers and hearers, we are
aware of these principles and of the necessity for them though we do not explicitly
recognize their existence. Grice‘s ―general principles of co-operative behavior‖
likewise attempt to identify presuppositions that enable the participants in a
speech event to assign appropriate illocutionary value to utterances. Grice refers
to four maxims:
Quantity : Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
purpose of the exchange). Do not make your contribution more
informative than is required.
Quality : Make your contribution one that is true.
Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
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Relation : Be relevant.
Manner : Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) and orderly.
The maxim of quantity requires the speaker to give as much information as
the addressee needs but no more. Accordingly, the speaker must have some sense
of what the addressee knows and needs to know. The addressee, being aware of
this maxim, assumes that the speaker is not withholding information and is not
saying more than necessary – unless there is reason to believe otherwise. While
the maxim of quantity focuses on the amount of information, the maxim of quality
emphasizes on the truth of the information i.e. to say only what the speaker
believes to be true. Questions and requests cannot be either true or false, so this
maxim applies only to the giving of information, in the kind of speech act that we
call assertive.
The maxim of relevance requires us, as speakers, to make our utterances
relative to the discourse going on and the contexts in which they occur.
Correspondingly, as addressees, we expect that what we hear has such relevance.
If you offer to help in some project and are told ―Do so only at your own risk‖,
you will have to decide whether involvement in the project is really risky or the
location was meant as a joke. If, instead, you are told ―Too many cooks spoil the
broth‖, you will probably recognize a proverb (certainly so if the making of broth
is not part of the context) and know that the speaker feels the project is already
sufficiently staffed. Thus when locutions are apparently irrelevant, they are likely
to be successful only when the interlocutors share the same cultural information
and/or when they know one another well. If the maxim of relevance is about the
appropriateness of the information toward the context of communication, the
maxim of manner focuses on the appropriate way of giving responses i.e. to be
orderly and clear and to avoid ambiguity. If you ask someone a question and the
reply you receive seems strangely obscure, your interlocutor is either a
disorganized individual or is deliberately avoiding a straight answer.

1. Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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2. Candlin, C. 1978. ―Discoursal Patterning and the Equalizing of Interpretive
Opportunity‖. Paper presented at the Conference on English as an
International Auxiliary language. East West Center. Honolulu. April
1978.
3. Goffman, E. 1976. ―Replies and Responses‖. Language in Society. 5: 257-
314.
4. Grice, H. P. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Cole and Morgan (1975).
5. Hymes, D. H. 1972. On Communicative Competence. In Pride and Holmes
(1972).
6. Oishi, Etsuko. 2006. “Austin‘s Speech Act Theory and the Speech Situation”.
Esercizi Filosofici 1: 1-14. Available at http://www.univ.trieste.it/
~eserfilo/art106/oishi106.pdf
7. Schmidt, Richard W. and Richard Jack C. 1980. ―Speech Acts and Second
Language Learning‖. Applied Linguistics. 1: 2. Reprinted by ProQuest
Information and Leraning Company. 2002. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
8. Searle, J. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.
London: Cambridge University Press.
9. Searle, J. 1975. Indirect Speech Acts. In Cole and Morgan (1975).
10. Searle, John R., 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of
Speech Act. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11. Searle, John R., 1983. Intentionality: An essay in the Philosophy of Mind.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12. Searle, John R., and Daniel Vanderveken. 1985. Foundations of Illocutionary
Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. Vanderveken, Daniel, Kubo, Susumu. 2001. Essays in Speech Act Theory,
Amsterdam: John Benjamins

1. Explain what you know about locution, illocution, and perlocution!
2. What is the possible illocution of these utterances?
a. It‘s too hot here.
b. The lift is full.
3. Mention types of illocutionary acts proposed by Austin (1962). Explain!
4. Here are several ways of offering someone some tea. When, and with whom,
might you prefer one way of offering rather than another? Why?
a: Should I make (us) some tea?
b: Would you like (me to make) some tea?
c: Can I make you some tea?
d: Let‘s have a cup of tea.
e: How about a nice cup of tea?
f: I could make you a cup of tea.
g: Do you drink tea?
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CHAPTER 5
CHOOSING A CODE
5.1 Diglossia
My friend invited me to her party, and I knew she also invited one of our
lecturers to attend her party. (In our culture, it is common to invite our teacher or
lecturer to our party, especially the one who is friendly.) However, I could
identify that she employed different vocabulary and structure while expressing her
invitation.
(1) ―Rusdi, datang ya ke pesta ultahku minggu depan. Awas kau gak datang.‖
(Rusdi, come to my birthday party next week. Don‘t miss it.)
―Oke, aku pasti datang.‖
(OK. I‘ll certainly be there.)
(2) ―Apakah Bapak berkenan datang ke pesta ulang tahun saya minggu depan?‖
(Sir, would you like to come to my birthday party next week?)
―Kalau saya sempat, saya akan datang.‖
(If I am free, I will come.)
Notice how invitation in (1) is delivered by employing a simple structure of
Indonesian language. Besides, the invitation also uses slang words such as
―ultah‖, ―kau‖, and ―gak‖. Meanwhile, the invitation in (2) highlights the use of a
grammatically accepted sentence. This means that the vocabulary and the
structure of the sentences are different when they are addressed to different
persons. This phenomenon of language usage is known as diglossia.
A diglossic situation exists in a society when it has two distinct codes
which show clear functional separation; that is, one code is employed in one set of
circumstances and the other in an entirely different set. Ferguson (1959: 336) has
defined diglossia as follows:
Diglossia is a relatively stable language situation in which, in
addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include
a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly
codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety,
the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either
of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is
learned largely by formal education and is used for most written
and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the
community for ordinary conversation.
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In the same article he identifies four language situations which show the
major characteristics of the diglossic phenomenon: Arabic, Swiss German,
Haitian (French and Creole), and Greek. In each situation there is a ―high‖ variety
(H) of language and a ―low‖ variety (L). Each variety has its own specialized
functions, and each is viewed differently by those who are aware of both.
In the Arabic situation the two varieties are Classical Arabic (H) and the
various regional colloquial varieties (L). In Switzerland they are Standard German
(H) and Swiss German (L). In Haiti the varieties are Standard French (H) and
Haitian Creole (L). In Greece they are the Katharévousa (H) and Dhimotiki, or
Demotic (L), varieties of Greek. In each case the two varieties have coexisted for
a long period, sometimes, as in the case of Arabic, for many centuries.
Consequently, the phenomenon of diglossia is not ephemeral in nature; in fact, the
opposite is true: it appears to be a persistent social and linguistic phenomenon.
A key defining characteristic of diglossia is that the two varieties are kept
quite apart in their functions. One is used in one set of circumstances and the other
in an entirely different set. For example, the H varieties may be used for
delivering sermons and formal lectures, especially in a parliament or legislative
body, for giving political speeches, for broadcasting the news on radio and
television, and for writing poetry, fine literature, and editorials in newspapers. In
contrast, the L varieties may be used in giving instructions to workers in low
prestige occupations or to household servants, in conversation with familiars, in
―soap operas‖ and popular programs on the radio, in captions on political cartoons
in newspapers, and in ―folk literature‖. On occasion, a person may lecture in an H
variety but answer questions about its contents or explain parts of it in an L
variety so as to ensure understanding.
A person does not use an H variety in circumstances calling for an L
variety, e.g., for addressing a servant; nor does he/she usually use an L variety
when an H is called for, e.g., for writing a ―serious‖ work of literature. He/she
may indeed do the latter, but it may be a risky endeavor; it is the kind of thing that
Chaucer did for the English of his day, and it requires a certain willingness, on the
part of both the writer and others, to break away from a diglossic situation by
extending the L variety into functions normally associated only with the H. For
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about three centuries after the Norman Conquest of 1066, English and Norman
French coexisted in England in a diglossic situation with Norman French the H
variety and English the L. However, gradually the L variety assumed more and
more functions associated with the H so that by Chaucer‘s time it had become
possible to use the L variety for a major literary work.
Still about the difference between the H and L varieties, the H variety is
the prestigious, powerful variety; the L variety lacks prestige and power. In fact,
there may be so little prestige attached to the L variety that people may even deny
that they know it although they may be observed to use it far more frequently than
the H variety. Associated with this prestige valuation for the H variety, there is
likely to be a strong feeling that the prestige is deserved because the H variety is
more beautiful, logical, and expressive than the L variety. That is why it is
deemed appropriate for literary use, for religious purposes, and so on. There may
also be considerable and widespread resistance to translating certain books into
the L variety, e.g., the Qur‘an into one or other colloquial varieties of Arabic or
the Bible into Haitian Creole or Demotic Greek.
Another important difference between the H and L varieties is that all
children learn the L variety. Some may concurrently learn the H variety, but many
do not learn it at all; e.g., most Haitians have no knowledge at all of Standard
French but all can speak some variety of Haitian Creole, although some, as I have
said, may deny that they have this ability. The H variety is also likely to be
learned in some kind of formal setting, e.g., in classrooms or as part of a religious
or cultural indoctrination. To that extent, the H variety is ―taught‖, whereas the L
variety is ―learned‖. Teaching requires the availability of grammars, dictionaries,
standardized texts, and some widely accepted view about the nature of what is
being taught and how it is most effectively to be taught. There are usually no
comparable grammars, dictionaries, and standardized texts for the L variety, and
any view of that variety is likely to be highly pejorative in nature. When such
grammars and other aids do exist, they have in many cases been written by
outsiders, e.g., ‗foreign‘ linguists. They are also likely to be neither well known to
the people whose linguistic usage they describe nor well received by those people,
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since such works are unlikely to support some of the myths that accompany
diglossia, particularly the myth that the L variety lacks any kind of ―grammar‖.
The L variety often shows a tendency to borrow learned words from the H
variety, particularly when speakers try to use the L variety in more formal ways.
The result is a certain admixture of H vocabulary into the L. On other occasions,
though, there may be distinctly different pairs of words, i.e., doublets, in the H
and L varieties to refer to very common objects and concepts. Since the domains
of use of the two varieties do not intersect, there will be an L word for use in L
situations and an H word for use in H situations with no possibility of transferring
the one to the other. So far as the pronunciation of the two varieties is concerned,
the L system will often appear to be the more ―basic‖. However, actual
circumstances can vary. Whereas the two varieties of Greek have very similar
sound systems, there is a considerable difference between Classical Arabic and
the colloquial varieties and a still greater difference between High German and
Swiss German.
In short, diglossia is a situation in which two varieties are used with clear
distinctive functions. The H variety is used in formal situation (such as in sermon,
lecture, etc.) and the L variety in informal situation (such as instruction to
servants, conversation with friends, etc.). Related to the prestige, the H is regarded
as superior to L in a number of respects: the H is considered more educated, more
beautiful, more logical, better able to express important thoughts, etc. In the
language acquisition, adults use L in speaking to children and children use L in
speaking to one another because he actual learning of the H variety is chiefly
accomplished by the means of formal education. Besides, the H has grammatical
categories not present in the L and has an inflectional system of nouns and verbs
which is much reduced or totally absent in the L. Furthermore, in the term of
lexicon, H includes in its total lexicon technical terms and learned expressions
which have no regular L equivalents, since the subjects involved are rarely if ever
discussed in pure L. Meanwhile, L includes in its total lexicon popular
expressions and the names of very homely objects or objects of very localized
distribution which have no regular H equivalents, since the subjects involved are
rarely if ever discussed in pure H.
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5.2 Bilingualism and Multilingualism
Before talking about bilingualism and multilingualism, let us take a look at
the term monolingualism. It refers to the ability to use only a single language
code. Perhaps for a few countries, this situation is considered usual; it is
considered remarkable when one individual is able to speak using more than one
language. However, for most of countries nowadays, bilingual or multilingual
individuals may appear more usual. This is supported by the fact that nowadays
there are between 5,000 and 7,000 languages in the world. Besides, there are also
thousands of dialects used by people all over the world. Even, sometimes, it is
difficult to know the exact number of languages because the distinction between a
language and a dialect is not always clear. In fact languages are not isolated
entities and in many cases there are no clear boundaries between them, it is rather
a continuum that extends along a geographical area.
So many languages and dialects used by people bear the term ―diversity‖
of language, and this becomes the object study of linguists, especially
sociolinguists, anthropologists, and ethnologues. Linguistic diversity has been
defined in a broad sense as the ―range of variations exhibited by human
languages‖. Gorter et al. (2008) consider that there are 6,912 languages in the
world today, but some of the languages included are just considered varieties or
dialects in other accounts. The distribution of the languages in the different
continents shows that there are important differences. Table 1 below shows the
distribution of languages by area of origin.
Table 1. Distribution of languages by area of origin
Gorter et al. (2008)
Languages
Continent
Count Percent
Africa 2,092 30.3%
Americas 1,002 14.5%
Asia 2,269 32.8%
Europe 239 3.5%
Pacific 1,310 19.0%
Total 6,912 100.0%
This table shows that Africa and Asia have a much larger number of languages
than Europe. Most of the world‘s languages are spoken in a broad area on either
side of the Equator - in South-east Asia, India, Africa, and South America. The
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languages included in this table are living languages with speakers who have these
languages as a first language and languages are only counted once as their country
of origin even if they are spoken in more than one country.
The diversity of languages in the world and the different vitality of the
languages has important implications for individuals and societies. As there are
between 5,000 and 7,000 languages in the world and only about 200 independent
states thus multilingualism is indeed a very common phenomenon. The countries
where more languages are spoken are the following: Papua New Guinea,
Indonesia, Nigeria, India and Mexico. The governments of many countries give
official recognition to only one or some of the languages spoken in the country
and this creates the impression that multilingualism is not a common
phenomenon. In fact, it would be difficult to find a country which is completely
monolingual because multilingualism is the rule not the exception:
To be bilingual or multilingual is not the aberration supposed by
many (particularly, perhaps, by people in Europe and North
America who speak a ―big‖ language); it is rather a normal and
unremarkable necessity for the majority in the world today
(Edwards 1994: 1).
Most of the world‘s population speaks more than one language but most of
the population in western cultures are monolingual in one of the ‗big‘ languages
in spite of being exposed to other languages mainly in the school context.
Therefore we can say that multilingualism at the sociolinguistic level is more
spread than multilingualism at the individual level but even in this case it is
extremely common. The spread of multilingualism justifies its importance in
research. In fact the study of different aspects of the diversity of languages should
be one of the main goals of linguistics. At the psycholinguistic level this has been
highlighted by Cook in Gorter et al. (2008). ―The primary question for linguistics
should be not Chomsky‘s (1986) ―What constitutes knowledge of language‖, but
―What constitutes knowledge of languages‖.
Multilingualism can be defined in different ways but basically it refers to
the ability to use more than two languages. A basic distinction when discussing
bilingualism and multilingualism is between the individual and societal level. At
the individual level, bilingualism and multilingualism refer to the speaker‘s
competence to use two or more languages. At the societal level the terms
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bilingualism and multilingualism refer to the use of two or more languages in a
speech community and it does not necessary imply that all the speakers in that
community are competent in more than one language.
The idea delivered by Gorter et al. (2008) is still unable to give us a clear
distinction between bilingualism and multilingualism. Let us define each of the
terms separately. Bilingualism is identified by the prefix bi- which means two. It
can be said here that bilingualism is the situation where two languages are used by
a particular society. Paraguay, for example, (see Rubin, 1968) is a country where
bilingual situation exists. Because of its long isolation from Spain and the paucity
of its Spanish-speaking population, an American Indian language, Guarani, has
flourished in Paraguay to the extent that today is the mother tongue of nearly 90
percent of the population and a second language of several additional percent.
Meanwhile, multilingualism is identified by the prefix multi- which means
―many‖. It can be said here that multilingualism is the situation where more than
two languages are used by a particular society. Singapore is one of the countries
where multilingual situation exists. It has been noted that four official languages
are used there: Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, and English language.
Bilingualism and multilingualism, according to Gorter et al. (2008) can be
the result of different factors. Some of them are the following:
a. Historical or political movements such as imperialism or colonialism.
In this case the spread of some languages, such as Spanish to Latin
America, it results in the coexistence of different languages.
b. Economic movements in the case of migration. The weak economics of
some areas and countries results in movement of the population to other
countries and to the development of multilingual and multicultural
communities in the host countries.
c. Increasing communications among different parts of the world and the
need to be competent in languages of wider communication. This is the
case with the development of new technologies and also with science.
English is the main language of wider communication but it is used by
millions of people who use other languages as well.
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d. Social and cultural identity and the interest for maintenance and revival
of minority languages. This interest creates situations in which two or
more languages co-exist and are necessary in everyday communication.
e. Education. Second and foreign languages are part of the curriculum in
many countries.
f. Religion movements that result in people moving to a new country.
Even though bilingualism or multilingualism reflects a prestige in modern
society, a bilingual or multilingual situation still can produce other effects on one
or more of the languages involved. According to Wardaugh (2006) bilingualism
or multilingualism can lead to loss, e.g., language loss among immigrants. But
sometimes it leads to diffusion; that is, certain features spread from one language
to the other (or others) as a result of the contact situation, particularly certain
kinds of syntactic features. This phenomenon has been observed in such areas as
the Balkans, the south of India, and Sri Lanka. Gumperz and Wilson (1971) report
that in Kupwar, a small village of about 3,000 inhabitants in Maharashtra, India,
four languages are spoken: Marathi and Urdu (both of which are Indo-European)
and Kannada (a non- Indo-European language). A few people also speak Telugu
(also a non-Indo- European language). The languages are distributed mainly by
caste. The highest caste, the Jains, speak Kannada and the lowest caste, the
untouchables, speak Marathi. People in different castes must speak to one another
and to the Telugu speaking rope-makers. The Urdu-speaking Muslims must also
be fitted in. Bilingualism or even trilingualism is normal, particularly among the
men, but it is Marathi which dominates inter-group communication. One linguistic
consequence, however, is that there has been some convergence of the languages
that are spoken in the village so far as syntax is concerned, but vocabulary
differences have been maintained (McMahon, 1994: 214–16). It is vocabulary
rather than syntax which now serves to distinguish the groups, and the variety of
multilingualism that has resulted is a special local variety which has developed in
response to local needs.
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5.3 Code Choice, Code Switching, and Code Mixing
As mentioned before that there are four official languages used in
Singapore, but the government policy made Singaporean people must choose one
of the languages to be used in a particular situation. National policy promotes
English as a trade language, Mandarin as the international ―Chinese‖ language,
Malay as the language of the region, and Tamil as the language of one of the
important ethnic groups in the republic. It shows that Singaporean has to consider
the situation where he/she is conversing so that he/she can choose a particular
language. This situation leads to the phenomenon of code choice.
Then, we are turning to the issue of what might cause a speaker to switch
from language A to language B. What might cause a speaker to mix language A
and language B? A number of answers have been suggested, including solidarity
with listeners, choice of topic, and perceived social and cultural distance. It can be
said code switching takes place when the speaker switch from one language to the
other, and code mixing occurs when the speaker mix two languages in one
utterance.
Code-switching can be divided into two kinds: situational code-switching
and metaphorical code-switching. Situational code-switching occurs when the
languages used change according to the situations in which the conversants find
themselves. Therefore, no topic change is involved. This type of code-mixing
often happens in the classroom where a particular foreign language is being
learned. For example, in giving a lecture on sociolinguistics to the students, the
lecturer uses English language; however, he/she also uses Indonesian language as
a students‘ mother tongue. The process of switching from English into Indonesian
is intended to give better understanding to the students. On the other hand,
metaphorical code-switching takes place when a change of a topic requires a
change in the language used.
Code-mixing occurs when conversants use both languages together to the
extent that they change from one language to the other in the course of a single
utterance. The key point here is a single utterance. It means that it must be
integrated in one sentence; for example, I don‘t want you pergi kesana.
Undoubtedly, since it is found in a single utterance, it occurs without an
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associated topic change. Wardaugh cited that the primary usage of code-mixing is
as a solidarity marker; that is, the speaker wants to show the sense of intimacy to
the interlocutor.
From the options discussed one can see that language choice depends very
much on the prevailing situation and the business at hand. There is, however,
constant overlapping in language use, again, depending on the prevailing situation
in the environment. Essien (1995:271) defines code-switching as ―the process by
which the speaker or the initiator of speech, changes or switches from one
language or code to another, depending on the situation, audience, subject matter
etc.‖ Similar changes in language use may also take place within a sentence. Such
a switch is known as code-mixing, which Essien (1995:272) defines as ―a
language phenomenon in which two codes or languages are used for the same
message or communication‖.
Code-switching and code-mixing, therefore, are commonly expected
phenomena, being the expression of the communicative need and adaptability of
language, determined by the ―bounds of limitless avenues and patterns of social
interaction and the unfathomable depth of human creative reservoir‖ (Adekunle
1990:240). In effect, human beings are always involved in numerous efforts to
make language a more effective tool of communication. Code mixing is usually
the infusion of single words or items from the donor language into the L1
construction. Code-switching is the lifting of phrasal, clausal or sentential
structures. In syntactic terms, code switching occurs in a discourse which is made
up of sentences in languages A and B.
According to Bentahila and Davies (1983) code-switching has sometimes
been used to register the bilingual‘s ability to choose one or the other of these two
languages in a particular situation. Code-mixing on the other hand is the random
alternation of two languages within a sentence. Pfaff (1983) says this language
behavior is governed by linguistic and sociolinguistic factors. Banjo (1983) calls it
language mixing, and that it occurs in a sentence made of elements of languages
A and B. Code switching is the result of a speaker‘s movement from one language
or dialect of another language to another. This movement is conditioned by social
as well as linguistic constraints. Linguistic constraints are those of proficiency and
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mastery of both systems. Social constraints are primarily those of topic, situation,
participants, education, sex etc. The basic difference between code switching and
code-mixing is the composition of the elements intermingled and the arrangement
of such intermingling.
Essien (2000) observes that code switching in Nigeria should be viewed as
a normal sociolinguistic phenomenon in communities in which more than one
language or dialect is spoken. As a result of increased trade and communication,
Nigerians are speaking other languages. In Biase, one can hardly separate the twin
phenomena of code-switching and code-mixing as they are commonly found
within the speech community. The twin phenomena of code-switching and code-
mixing are particularly high in Biase owing to the multiplicity of
languages/dialects in the Local Government Area coupled with the use of English,
Efik, NP and even Igbo.
In Biase, there are coordinate bilinguals and the languages used function
independently side by side, expressing distinct backgrounds and ways of life.
Code-switching and code-mixing are, therefore, viewed as natural linguistic
behavior of the people. For example, where three parties may understand the
common language, English, as long as there are two participants in the speech
situation who share a common L1, socio-cultural practice or norm demands that
these two speak in their L1 which the third party may not understand. In such a
situation code-switching and even code-mixing serve both a linguistic function as
well as a sociocultural one.
Sometimes in order not to offend the third party who does not understand
the L1, the pivot speaker not only code-switches between the L1 and English for
both listeners he may also code-mix for the listener (A) who shares his L1, using
both the L1 and English. This way the other listener (B) does not feel completely
isolated when the pivot speaker communicates with listener (A). Sometimes, the
pivot speaker may feel somewhat embarrassed and may apologize to one or the
other party as he moves from one to the other party. However, this kind of
bidimensional communication is being increasingly understood and accepted as
part of sociolinguistic and socio-cultural norms as we try to cope with
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multilingualism in Biase in particular and Nigeria in general. See example below.
Data for the Biase language (Agwagune) have been provided by native speakers.
Muysken (2000) suggests that there are three main code-mixing patterns
which may be found in bilingual speech communities: insertion, alternation and
congruent lexicalization. One pattern will usually dominate, though not
necessarily to the exclusion of other patterns. In the insertion pattern, one
language determines the overall structure into which constituents from the other
language are inserted: this is illustrated in Figure 1, based on Muysken (2000:7).
This pattern is assumed by the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) theory proposed by
Myers-Scotton (1993).
Figure 1: the insertion pattern
A B C
This pattern can be illustrated in (1) by a Swahili-English example from
...a...
Myers-Scotton (1993b: 86):
...b... ...c...
(1) A-na-ku-l-a plate m-bili z-a murram
3s-PRES-INFIN-eat-INDIC plate CL 10-two CL 10-of maize
‗He eats two plates of maize‘
In this example the word order is as in Swahili, including the phrase plate
m-bili ‗two plates‘, and all the inflectional morphology is from Swahili. The
asymmetry between the two languages involved in the insertional pattern is
captured in the MLF by labeling the main language the ―matrix‖ language and the
other the ―embedded‖ language.
In the alternation pattern, both languages occur alternately, each with
their own structure, as illustrated in Figure 2 based on Muysken (2000:7).
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Figure 2: the alternation pattern
A B
This type of code-mixing is assumed in Poplack‘s work (e.g. 1980) and is well
represented in her data in examples like (3) (Poplack:1980:589):
...a... ...b...
(2) Why make Carol sentarse atrás pa’ que everybody has to move pa’ que se salga?
sit-REFL at-back so-that for that REFL get-out-SUBJUNC
‗Why make Carol sit in the back so that everybody has to move for her to get out?‘
In this example each language stretch, whether English or Spanish, has its own
language-specific syntax and morphology, with neither language providing an
overall structural frame for the utterance.
In the third type of code-mixing, congruent lexicalization, ―the
grammatical structure is shared by languages A and B, and words from both
languages a and b are inserted more or less randomly‖ (Muysken 2000:8). This is
illustrated in Figure 3 based on Muysken (2000:8). Muysken proposes this type
with reference mainly to standard/dialect mixing.
Figure 3: the congruent lexicalization pattern
A/B
This type can be illustrated by example (4) from the Ottersum dialect (in bold)
and standard Dutch:
...a... ...b...
(3) ja maar bij ouwe mensen komt dat gauwer tot stilstand als bij jonge mense wa ...a... ...b
yes but with / older people/ comes that /more quickly to a halt than /with younger people eh
(Giesbers 1989:147 in Muysken 2000:130).
In this example the fragments from each variety apparently have no internal
grammatical cohesion as is expected in this type of mixing.
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1. Edwards, J. (1994) Multilingualism. London: Routledge.
2. Gorter, D., J. Cenoz, P. Nunes, P. Riganti, L. Onofri, B. Puzzo, and R.
Sachdeva. 2008. ―Benefits of Linguistic Diversity and
Multilingualism‖. Position Paper of Research Task 1.2. Sustainable
Development in a Diverse World (SUS.DIV). Netherland: Fryske
Akademy.
3. Gumperz, J. J. and D. H. Hymes (eds.) 1972. Directions in Sociolinguistics:
The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston.
4. Hudson, A. (1992). Diglossia: A Bibliographic Review. Language in Society,
21: 611–74.
5. Muysken, Pieter 2000. Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing.
Cambridge: CUP.
6. Myers-Scotton, C. 1993b. Social Motivation for Code-Switching. Oxford:
Clarendon.
7. Rubin, J. 1968. National Bilingualism in Paraguay. The Hague: Mouton.
8. Ugot, Mercy. 2009. ―Language Choice, Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in
Biase‖. Global Journal of Humanities. 8/2: 27-35.

1. If someone were to tell you that diglossia is but a simple reflection of the
social, cultural, or political oppression of a people, how might you answer?
2. What phenomenon of choosing a code in the following expressions:
a. She always asked me why kamu menyukai everything I did.
b. As a student, you must be able to develop your creativity because only
creative people will be employed by prestigious companies. Sebagai
siswa kamu harus bias meningkatkan kreatifitas kamu karena nantinya
perusahaan-perusahaan bonafit yang ada sekarang ini hanya
membutuhkan insan-insan yang kreatif.
c. I can‘t say that for sure because I didn‘t witness it myself.
d. They are crying karena mereka merasa nobody loves them anymore.
3. How ‗diglossic‘ are classroom situations in which children who come to
school speaking only a regional or social variety of English well removed
from the standard variety are taught the standard variety and its various uses,
particularly its use in writing?
4. Is it possible to have a society in which everyone is completely bilingual in
the same two languages and there is no diglossia? How stable would such a
situation be?
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5. When you visit a foreign country whose language you know either well or
poorly, when do you use that language and when do you not? What factors
govern your choice?
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CHAPTER 6
SPEECH COMMUNITIES
6.1 Definitions
Language is the most effective means of communication as it can provide
all what we want to communicate to others. In accordance to this, we are
expecting that we can communicate with all of people in the world with the same
language, the same dialect, or the same variety. However, our expectation is
almost impossible to meet as our world is too large to accommodate only a single
group of people, or a community. As a result, we have to live in different
community that employs different code (language, dialect, or variety). Not only
are we different in using the code, we, as the result of different code usage, also
share different norms, expectations, and purposes. This phenomenon leads us to
understand the singularity or the uniqueness of every single community. The
singularity in the use of the code, therefore, introduces us such a linguistic as a
speech community. As its names suggests, the term ―speech community‖ is only
used in the people‘s interaction involving verbal communication. Gumperz (1968)
says that a speech community is any human aggregate characterized by regular
and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off
from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage.
The concept of speech community has a long and chequered history in
sociolinguistics. It was one of the discipline‘s early cornerstones, much debated
by some linguists. Speech community became established as a core concept
before it achieved a lasting, consensual definition, and in fact it has never
achieved this. Its most enduring meaning is simply in referring to a site of
sociolinguistic inquiry and a targeted group of speakers. Feagin (2002) has been
able to write about ‗entering the community‘ as the basic empirical procedure in
sociolinguistic research, without considering any particular criteria against which
―community‖ might need to be precisely defined. In variationist practice, as
Feagin says, the researcher selects a ―community‖ (treated as a self-evident, pre-
existing social structure) and selects ―speakers‖ within it, then proceeds to observe
language use (with a minimum of intrusiveness, in deference to the well-known
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observer‘s paradox). Most critical debate around the notion of speech community
has in fact focused on what ―speech‖ might signify in this connection, while
taking the concept of ―community‖ for granted.
Even though the linguists have proposed various definitions of speech
community, the key term of defining speech community, according to Gumperz
(1968), is the singularity in the language usage shown by a group of speakers. He
argues that most groups of any permanence, whether they are small bands
bounded by face-to-face contact, modern nations divisible into smaller sub-
regions, or even occupational associations or neighborhood gangs, may be treated
as speech communities, if they show linguistic peculiarities that warrant special
study. The verbal behavior of such groups always constitutes a system. It must be
based on finite sets of grammatical rules that underlie the production of well-
formed sentences, or else messages will not be intelligible. The description of
such rules is a precondition for the study of all types of linguistic phenomena. But
it is only the starting point in the sociolinguistic analysis of language behavior.
In the same tone, Patrick (2002) points out that variationists‘ use of the
speech community concept served their own purposes well at the levels of
methodology and analysis while it was less successful at the level of explaining
and interpreting language variation and change. He also argues that the
variationist model of speech community was empirically valid, in the sense that
groups labeled speech communities have tended to show a vigorous and
significant pattern of unity in terms of patterns of variation and/or shared
evaluative norms. Urban and rural localities, large and small, whole ethnic or
gender groups, but also highly local ones, have been treated as speech
communities, to the extent that Patrick concedes that it is a concept that is
―evidently fraught with difficulties‖. In the past, evolving sociolinguistic
definitions sometimes emphasized formal linguistic similarity as a criterion for
recognizing a speech community, but ―people speaking the same way‖, even in a
relatively abstract sense, always seemed to defeat the main goal of variationism,
which has been to show structured diversity.
More pervasively and persuasively, Labov (1994) defended two criteria of
how a speech community is defined. He says that, in defining speech community,
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there was an appeal to (a) participation in a system of structured linguistic
variation (the idea that people in an urban enclave fit into a sociolinguistic system
that, at least in an abstract sense, binds them together), and (b) the existence of
shared interpretive norms about language use (the idea that people who speak
differently in the same enclave at least share an understanding of what it means to
use particular varieties of language in the system).
Although they offer some principled basis for linking the term ―speech‖ to
some concept of social structure, they make few demands on the specific concept
of community. Patrick argues that the litany of hostile reactions to the Labovian
model of speech community, including the now-common view articulated by
Milroy and Milroy (1998) that the model inappropriately presumes a social
consensus about social class, for the most part miss the point. He makes it clear
that Labov‘s conceptualization of speech community is not even a social one. He
quotes Labov saying that sociolinguists need to ―avoid any error which would
arise in assuming that a group of people who speak alike is a fundamental unit of
social behavior‖ (see Labov 1994: 4-5; Patrick 2002: 585). So in the social
dimension, structured linguistic variation and shared speech norms apart, we are
left, once again, with speech community being treated as any site of
sociolinguistic engagement where some pre-defined but weakly theorized social
group has been identified – this is community-as-demography, the weakest
interpretation of community.
If speech communities are defined solely by their linguistic characteristics,
we must acknowledge the inherent circularity of any such definition in that
language itself is a communal possession. We must also acknowledge that using
linguistic characteristics alone to determine what is or is not a speech community
has proved so far to be quite impossible because people do not necessarily feel
any such direct relationship between linguistic characteristics A, B, C, and so on,
and speech community X (Wardaugh 2006). What we can be sure of is that
speakers do use linguistic characteristics to achieve group identity with, and group
differentiation from, other speakers, but they use other characteristics as well:
social, cultural, political and ethnic, to name a few. Referring to what they call
speech markers, Giles, Scherer, and Taylor (1979: 351) say:
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... through speech markers functionally important social
categorizations are discriminated, and . . . these have important
implications for social organization. For humans, speech markers
have clear parallels . . . it is evident that social categories of age, sex,
ethnicity, social class, and situation can be clearly marked on the
basis of speech, and that such categorization is fundamental to social
organization even though many of the categories are also easily
discriminated on other bases.
Our search must be for criteria other than, or at least in addition to,
linguistic criteria if we are to gain a useful understanding of ―speech community‖.
For very specific sociolinguistic purposes we might want to try to draw
quite narrow and extremely precise bounds around what we consider to be a
speech community. We might require that only a single language be spoken (and
employ a very restrictive definition of language in doing so), and that the speakers
in the community share some kind of common feeling about linguistic behavior in
the community, that is, observe certain linguistic norms. This appeal to norms
forms an essential part of Labov‘s definition of speech community (1972b: 120–
1):
The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in
the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set
of shared norms; these norms may be observed in overt types of
evaluative behavior, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of
variation which are invariant in respect to particular levels of
usage.
This definition shifts the emphasis away from an exclusive use of
linguistic criteria to a search for the various characteristics which make
individuals feel that they are members of the same community. Milroy (1987: 13)
has indicated some consequences of such a view:
Thus, all New York speakers from the highest to lowest status are
said to constitute a single speech community because, for example,
they agree in viewing presence of post vocalic [r] as prestigious.
They also agree on the social value of a large number of other
linguistic elements. Southern British English speakers cannot be
said to belong to the same speech community as New Yorkers,
since they do not attach the same social meanings to, for example,
(r): on the contrary, the highest prestige accent in Southern England
(RP) is non-rhotic. Yet, the Southern British speech community
may be said to be united by a common evaluation of the variable
(h); h-dropping is stigmatized in Southern England . . . but is
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irrelevant in New York City or, for that matter, in Glasgow or
Belfast.
In this sense, ‗speech community‘ is a very abstract concept, one likely to
create not a few problems, because the particular norms that a community uses
may or may not be exclusively linguistic in nature, and even the linguistic norms
themselves may vary considerably among small sub-groups. For example,
speakers of Hindi will separate themselves entirely from speakers of Urdu; most
Ukrainians will separate themselves from most Russians (but possibly not vice
versa); and most Chinese will see themselves as members of the same community
as all other Chinese, even though speakers of Cantonese or Hokkien might not be
able to express that sense of community to a speaker of Mandarin or to each other
except through their shared writing system.
Regardless of the linguistic differences among them, the speech varieties
employed within a speech community form a system because they are related to a
shared set of social norms. Hence, they can be classified according to their usage,
their origins, and the relationship between speech and social action that they
reflect. They become indices of social patterns of interaction in the speech
community.
6.2 Intersecting Communities

The fact that people do use expressions such as New York speech, London
speech, and South African speech indicates that they have some idea of how a
―typical‖ person from each place speaks, that is, of what it is like to be a member
of a particular speech community somewhat loosely defined. Such a person may
be said to be typical by virtue of observing the linguistic norms one associates
with the particular place in question. But just what are these norms? Wardaugh
(2006) has noted the work of Preston (1989, 1999, 2002) which shows that a
person‘s perceptions of the language characteristics of particular areas do not
always accord with linguistic facts. Rosen (1980: 56–7) has also indicated some
of the problems you find in trying to call a city like London a speech community
and in describing exactly what characterizes its speech. He says that such cities
cannot be thought of as linguistic patchwork maps, ghetto afterghetto, not only
because languages and dialects have no simple geographical distribution but also
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because interaction between them blurs whatever boundaries might be drawn.
Both a geographical model and a social class model would be false, though each
could contribute to an understanding. In such places, dialects and languages are
beginning to influence each other. Urbanization is a great eroder of linguistic
frontiers. The result is the creation of thousands of bilingual and to a certain
extent bidialectal speakers on a scale and of a diversity unprecedented in our
history. Which dialect of English they learn depends in the main on their social
class position in this country. It is common practice to talk of the ―target
language‖ of a second-language learner. In London it will be a moving target,
though undoubtedly most by virtue of their social position will have as their chief
model London working-class speech.
London is a community in some senses but not in others; however, with its
300 languages or more it is in no sense a single speech community (see Baker and
Eversley 2000). It is just too big and fragmented. On the other hand, if we say it
must be a composite of small speech communities, we may not be any better off.
Are these smaller communities geographical, social, ethnic, religious, or
occupational in orientation? That is, how do any linguistic factors we might
isolate relate to such social factors? Are the communities static or fluid? If they
are static, how do they maintain themselves, and if they are fluid, what inferences
must we draw concerning any concept we might have of ―speech community‖?
Are their boundaries strong and clear or are they weak and permeable? Moreover,
London is no different from most large cities anywhere in the world, a world
which is increasingly a world of large cities, heterogeneously populated.
We can easily see how difficult it is to relate the concept of ―speech
community‖ directly to language or languages spoken and even to groups and
norms if we refer back to the linguistic situation among the Tukano, for example.
In that situation, which requires one to take as a marriage partner someone who
speaks an entirely different language and furthermore requires the female to join
the male‘s household, multilingualism is endemic and normal. However, each
residential community has its unique multilingual mix and no language equates in
distribution to a specific residential community. Such a situation is not unique.
Many other parts of the world would have some of the same multilingual
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characteristics; e.g., the Balkans, large areas of the Indian subcontinent, and Papua
New Guinea. The actual equation of language to community is perhaps most
easily seen in certain modern states which have insisted that language be used to
express some concept of ―nationhood‖ and, in doing so, have tried to standardize
and promote a particular language (or particular languages) at the expense of
competitors. But such solutions are not always lasting or uncontroversial, as we
can see in countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and
the United States, all of which have recently had to acknowledge in one way or
another the presence of people who do not speak the standard variety (or varieties)
but who are, nevertheless, very much part of the larger communities.
Perhaps the concept of ―speech community‖ is less useful than it might be
and we should return to the concept of ―group‖ as any set of individuals united for
a common end, that end being quite distinct from ends pursued by other groups.
Consequently, a person may belong at any one time to many different groups
depending on the particular ends in view. We can illustrate this approach as
follows. At home, a person may live in a bilingual setting and switch easily back
and forth between two languages. She – let this be a female person – may shop in
one of the languages but work in the other. Her accent in one of the languages
may indicate that she can be classified as an immigrant to the society in which she
lives, an immigrant, moreover, from a specific country. Her accent in the other
language shows her to be a native of region Y in country Z. Outside country Z,
however, as she now is, she regards herself (and others from Z agree with her) as
speaking not a Y variety of Z but as speaking Z itself. She may also have had
extensive technical training in her new country and in her second language and be
quite unable to use her first language in work related to this specialty. In the
course of the day, she will switch her identification from one group to another,
possibly even, as we saw in the preceding chapter, in the course of a single
utterance. She belongs to one group at one moment and to a different one at
another. But to how many groups does she belong to?
The concept must be flexible because individuals find it advantageous to
shift their identities quite freely. As Bolinger (1975: 333) says,
There is no limit to the ways in which human beings league
themselves together for self-identification, security, gain,
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amusement, worship, or any of the other purposes that are held in
common; consequently there is no limit to the number and variety
of speech communities that are to be found in a society.
Saville-Troike (1996: 357) places even more importance on the need for
individuals to identify themselves with various others but her views are essentially
the same as those of Bolinger:
Individuals may belong to several speech communities (which may
be discrete or overlapping), just as they may participate in a variety
of social settings. Which one or ones individuals orient themselves
to at any given moment – which set of social and communicative
rules they use – is part of the strategy of communication. To
understand this phenomenon, one must recognize that each member
of a community has a repertoire of social identities and that each
identity in a given context is associated with a number of
appropriate verbal and nonverbal forms of expression.
A very interesting variant of this notion is the idea that speakers participate
in various communities of practice. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1998: 490)
define a community of practice as ―an aggregate of people who come together
around mutual engagements in some common endeavor. Ways of doing things,
ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in
the course of their joint activity around that endeavor‖. A community of practice
is at the same time its members and what its members are doing to make them a
community: a group of workers in a factory, an extended family, an adolescent
gang, a women‘s fitness group, a classroom, etc. They add, ―Rather than seeing
the individual as some disconnected entity floating around in social space, or as a
location in a network, or as a member of a particular group or set of groups, or as
a bundle of social characteristics, we need to focus on communities of practice‖.
(See Meyerhoff 2002: 527–30, for additional details.) It is such communities of
practice that shape individuals, provide them with their identities, and often
circumscribe what they can do.
If there is no limit to the ways in which individuals can classify themselves
and speakers must constantly create and recreate social identities for themselves,
then it may be almost impossible to predict which group or community an
individual will consider himself (or herself) to belong to at a particular moment.
The group chosen to identify with will change according to situation: at one
moment religion may be important; at another, regional origin; and at still another,
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perhaps membership in a particular profession or social class. An individual may
also attempt to bond with others because all possess a set of characteristics, or
even just a single characteristic, e.g., be of the same gender, or even because all
lack a certain characteristic, e.g., not be of white skin color. The bonding can
therefore be positive, as when the individuals share some feature or features, or
negative, as when the individuals lack some feature or features. Language
bonding appears to be no different. In one case command of a particular dialect or
language may provide a bond and therefore a sense of community or solidarity
with others; in another case the lack of such command may exclude you from a
community of speakers, e.g., of RP users or speakers of Yoruba if all you speak is
Brooklynese. But even sharing the same dialect might be of no significance: if the
circumstances require you to discuss astrophysics and you lack the language of
astrophysics, you will not be able to enter the community of astrophysicists.
Speakers of Yoruba may also find themselves with speakers of Japanese and
Arabic within an English-speaking foreign-student speech community at a North
American or European university.
Each individual therefore is a member of many different groups. It is in the
best interests of most people to be able to identify themselves on one occasion as
members of one group and on another as members of another group. Such groups
may or may not overlap. One of the consequences of the intersecting
identifications is, of course, linguistic variation: people do not speak alike, nor
does any individual always speak in the same way on every occasion. The
variation we see in language must partly reflect a need that people have to be seen
as the same as certain other people on some occasions and as different from them
on other occasions.
6.3 Networks and Repertoires

Another way of viewing how an individual relates to other individuals in
society is to ask what networks he or she participates in. That is, how and on what
occasions does a specific individual A interact now with B, then with C, and then
again with D? How intensive are the various relationships: does A interact more
frequently with B than with C or D? How extensive is A‘s relationship with B in
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the sense of how many other individuals interact with both A and B in whatever
activity brings them together? If, in a situation in which A, B, C, D, and E are
linked in a network, as in figure 1, are they all equally linked as in (1) in that
illustration; strongly linked but with the link through A predominant, as in (2);
weakly linked, with the link to A providing all the connections, as in (3); or, as in
(4), is the link from A to E achieved through C?
Figure 1 Simple Network Relationships (See Wardaugh 2006:130)
A A
E BE B
A A
(1) D C (2) D C
E DB B
(3) D C
You are said to be involved in a dense network if the people you know and
interact with also know and interact with one another. If they do not the network
(4) in a multiplex network if the
is a loose one. You are also said to be involved
E
people within it are tied together in more than one way, i.e., not just through work
but also through other social activities. People who go to school together, marry
each other‘s siblings, and work and play together participate in dense multiplex
networks. In England these are said to be found at the extremes of the social-class
structure. Such networks indicate strong social cohesion, produce feelings of
solidarity, and encourage individuals to identify with others within the network.
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On the other hand, middle-class networks are likely to be loose and simplex;
therefore, social cohesion is reduced and there are weaker feelings of solidarity
and identity.
Dubois and Horvath (1999: 307) acknowledge that while the concept of
social networks seems to be useful in studying language behavior in urban
settings, its effectiveness in nonurban settings, in their case among English–
French bilingual Cajuns in rural Louisiana, is not so clear. They say:
The notion of network is strongly conditioned by the effects of
scale and place. Being a member of an open or closed network is
quite different if you live in New Orleans . . . , Lafayette . . . ,
Eunice . . . , or Iota. . . .We do not wish to imply that the notion of
network loses its methodological importance in nonurban settings,
but only that the linguistic effect of closed and open networks is
intimately related to the type of community under study.
Much linguistic behavior seems explicable in terms of network structure
and how valuable the concept of ―social network‖ is when we consider matters of
language variation and change (see Milroy 2002, for additional details). Milroy
and Gordon (2003: 119) also point out that the ‗concepts of network and
community of practice are . . . closely related, and the differences between them
are chiefly method and focus. Network analysis typically deals with structural and
content properties of the ties that constitute egocentric personal networks . . . [but]
cannot address the issues of how and where linguistic variants are employed . . . to
construct local social meanings. Rather, it is concerned with how informal social
groups . . . support local norms or . . . facilitate linguistic change.‘
It is quite apparent that no two individuals are exactly alike in their
linguistic capabilities, just as no two social situations are exactly alike. People are
separated from one another by fine gradations of social class, regional origin, and
occupation; by factors such as religion, gender, nationality, and ethnicity; by
psychological differences such as particular kinds of linguistic skills, e.g.,
verbality or literacy; and by personality characteristics. These are but some of the
more obvious differences that affect individual variation in speech.
An individual also has a speech repertoire; that is, he or she controls a
number of varieties of a language or of two or more languages. Quite often, many
individuals will have virtually identical repertoires. In this case it may be possible
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to argue, as Platt and Platt (1975: 35) do, that ―A speech repertoire is the range of
linguistic varieties which the speaker has at his disposal and which he may
appropriately use as a member of his speech community‖.
The concept of ‗speech repertoire‘ may be most useful when applied to
individuals rather than to groups. We can use it to describe the communicative
competence of individual speakers. Each person will then have a distinctive
speech repertoire. Since Platt and Platt (1975: 36) find both a community‘s speech
repertoire and an individual‘s speech repertoire worthy of sociolinguistic
consideration, they actually propose the following distinction:
We . . . suggest the term speech repertoire for the repertoire of
linguistic varieties utilized by a speech community which its
speakers, as members of the community, may appropriately use,
and the term verbal repertoire for the linguistic varieties which are
at a particular speaker‘s disposal.
In this view each individual has his or her own distinctive verbal repertoire and
each speech community in which that person participates has its distinctive speech
repertoire; in fact, one could argue that this repertoire is its defining feature.
Focusing on the repertoires of individuals and specifically on the precise
linguistic choices they make in well-defined circumstances does seem to offer us
some hope of explaining how people use linguistic choices to bond themselves to
others in very subtle ways. A speaker‘s choice of a particular sound, word, or
expression marks that speaker in some way. It can say ―I am like you‖ or ―I am
not like you‖. When the speaker also has some kind of range within which to
choose, and that choice itself helps to define the occasion, then many different
outcomes are possible. A particular choice may say ―I am an X just like you‖ or it
may say ―I am an X but you are a Y‖. It may even be possible that a particular
choice may say ―Up till now I have been an X but from now on you must regard
me as a Y‖, as when, for example, someone pretends to be something he or she is
not and then slips up. However, it also seems that it is not merely a simple matter
of always choosing X rather than Y – for example, of never saying singin‟ but
always saying singing. Rather, it may be a matter of proportion: you will say
singin‟ a certain percent of the time and singing the rest of the time. In other
words, the social bonding that results from the linguistic choices you make may
depend on the quantity of certain linguistic characteristics as well as their quality.
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We have seen that ―speech community‖ may be an impossibly difficult
concept to define. But in attempting to do so, we have also become aware that it
may be just as difficult to characterize the speech of a single individual. Perhaps
that second failure follows inevitably from the first. We should be very cautious
therefore about definitive statements we may be tempted to make about how a
particular individual speaks, the classic concept of ―idiolect‖. Just what kinds of
data should you collect? How much? In what circumstances? And what kind of
claims can you make? We will need to find answers to questions such as these
before we can proceed very far. Any attempt to study how even a single
individual speaks in a rather limited set of circumstances is likely to convince us
rather quickly that language is rather ―messy‖ stuff. For certain theoretical reasons
it might be desirable to ignore a lot of that mess, as Chomsky insists that we do;
but it would be unwise for sociolinguists always to do so since that is, in one
sense, what sociolinguistics is all about: trying to work out either the social
significance of various uses of language or the linguistic significance of various
social factors. The following three chapters will address some of these issues.
6.4 Suggested further readings

1. Chambers, J. K., P. Trudgill, N. Schilling-Estes (eds.) 2002. The Handbook of
Language Variation. Oxford: Blackwell.
2. Coates, J. (ed.) 1998. Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
3. Dubois, S. and B. Horvath 1999. ―When the Music Changes, You Can
Change Too: Gender and Language Change in Cajun English‖.
Language Variation and Change, 11(3): 287–313.
4. Giglioli, P. P. (ed.) 1972. Language and Social Context: Selected Readings.
Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.
5. Meyerhoff, M. 2002. Communities of Practice. In Chambers et al. (2002).
6. Milroy, J. 2001. ‖Language Ideologies and the Consequences of
Standardization‖. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5(4): 530–55.
7. Platt, J. T. and H. K. Platt. 1975. The Social Significance of Speech: An
Introduction to and Workbook in Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam: North-
Holland.
6.5 Questions for discussions

1. Describe the linguistic uses of some bilinguals with whom you are familiar.
When do they use each of the languages? If you are bilingual yourself, in
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what ways do you identify with people who show the same range of linguistic
abilities? A different range?
2. Is it possible for a person to be involved in more than one speech community?
Why or why not?
3. Explain the idea that a community or group must be defined partly in relation
to some other community or group and to circumstances!
4. Try to construct a network of your linguistic relationships in an attempt to
represent the different varieties of language you use and the relative
proportions of use among those varieties!
5. Most of us know someone who has a repertoire of linguistic abilities that we
admire, possibly envy. Try to specify some of these abilities that you yourself
seem to lack. Why does the other have these abilities and you do not?
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CHAPTER 7
LANGUAGE CHANGE
7.1 The Traditional View

Languages always change. On a personal level, in day-to-day
communication, this may not be easily apparent or obvious. We are so intimately
connected to our language that we may fail to see its changes, in much the same
way that our closeness to our children obscures perception of their development.
But languages do indeed change. Some languages flourish and expand and some
languages die. The above illustration depicts how the communication pattern in
one family shifts from one language to another until communication between
generations becomes difficult or ceases altogether. This is often the case in
immigrant families as the children integrate into mainstream society and begin to
lose their home language. Another example of language change is the observation
in Pohnpei that the ―high language‖ of respect used by the royal clan and also to
address them is slowly dying out with a diminishing number of people capable of
speaking it (Tawerilmang 1996).
The study of language change, rather than the analysis of specific instances
of change, had already been undertaken in the 19th century. Hermann Paul‘s
Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (1880), ―Principles of language history‖, shows a
linguist standing back from the monumental task of comparing and reconstructing
the many Indo-European languages and discussing the underlying principles of
this enterprise (Baldi, 1991). It came to be perceived as the definitive statement on
the historical approach to language analysis which saw the notion of sound law,
German Lautgesetz, as central and stressed the exceptionless nature of this,
German Ausnahmslosigkeit.
It was not until Edward Sapir‘s Language of 1921 that a major twentieth-
century work reflected specifically on aspects of language change, although
Saussure‘s seminal work on structuralism (compiled posthumously and published
in 1916) provided the theoretical framework for all studies until well into the
second half of the 20th century and for many linguists still does (Hickey, 2001).
Sapir‘s most significant contribution to language change is the notion of drift, an
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imperceptible and slow movement in a particular direction which a language can
show over centuries and which can change its typology. Although the notion is
controversial and prone to vagueness, a sympathetic interpretation would see it as
an abstraction of the tendency in each generation to favor certain types of variants
present in a language, and importantly, for some speakers to (unconsciously)
select the more innovative of these variants. The latter can then offer a principled
account of how drift comes to be observed over long periods of time. It should be
stressed that notions of drift, which lie outside of the data of a language, are
vacuous and misleading.
With hindsight one can see that later American structuralism was restricted
in its range, though what it achieved was obviously significant and important for
the practical work of language recording and description. Leonard Bloomfield, as
the major figure of the inter-war years, neglected semantics, which he saw as a
domain of psychology and his accounts of language change were mechanistic. It
was not until the 1960‘s with the work of William Labov, when sociolinguistics
was established as an independent sub-discipline within linguistics, that a
theoretical framework for language change with an innovative approach was
presented (see Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968). This has led to a paradigm in
linguistics in which scholars extrapolate from small present-day changes in
language use to larger attested cases of language change in history.
As with any other discipline, there are certain recurrent themes in language
change. These have to do with the sources of change, the nature of the factors
involved and, importantly, the significance attributed to the latter. They tend to
come in pairs because they represent opposing or complementary forces.
Furthermore, the relative weight accorded to certain factors varies among
scholars. For instance, the question of just what constitutes simplicity or
symmetry in language change is a matter of much debate (see the discussions in
Lass 1997). What follows are some factors leading to language change:
Internal and external factors
Perhaps the first division to be made among factors in language change is
that between those, which operate from within the language (internal factors), and
those, which are active from outside (external factors). These factors are different
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in themselves (Gerritsen and Stein eds. 1992). For example, internal factors have
very often to do with the establishment of morphological regularity (analogical
leveling and possible analogical extension, Campbell 1998: 92-9) or with the
reshuffling of items in a word field (re-alignment of sense relations). External
factors have primarily to do with the symbolic role of language in society. The
levels of language first affected are usually phonetics and phonology, though
others may be later embraced by change.
Simplicity and symmetry
Internal change, on a morphological level, has first and foremost to do
with the establishment of regularity within paradigms. This is probably due to the
intuitive grasp which speakers have of word classes and sets of forms within their
language. Symmetry in the linguistic sense would thus be interpreted as a force
which seeks to establish regularity and predictability in the paradigms of a
language. Speakers removing irregularity across paradigms, frequently during first
language acquisition, this then being adopted into adult forms of language do this.
There are many well-known cases of this: for instance, umlaut in Middle High
German spread from nouns such as Haus : Häuser to others like Baum : Bäume as
speakers assumed similarity in paradigms which showed formal similarity.
Simplicity, in the sense of a lack of formal complexity, is something which
is much more difficult to quantify in language change. Certainly morphological
complexity does not appear to be a sufficient condition for language change, as
complex languages such as German, Finnish or Turkish amply testify. Perhaps it
is better in the context of language change not to speak of simplicity but rather of
the dominance of certain patterns. For instance, it is questionable whether strong
verbs in Germanic are more complex than weak ones. But the latter are certainly
the dominant pattern and in the history of the Germanic languages there has been
a general tendency to replace strong by weak verbs. Talking of dominant patterns
does, however, shift the question to another level: the reason why a weak pattern
has become dominant has not to do with putative inherent simplicity but rather
with the fact that it maintains the constancy of the lexical stem on inflection. Stem
constancy would seem to be valued by language learners, because early in the
acquisition process they produce weak verbs. It might be more prudent then not to
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refer to simplicity but rather to a valued principle in language organization. The
issue of frequency is important also here as this has a snowball effect: once a
pattern begins to be dominant it accrues instances and these in turn cause more to
be drawn into the orbit of the pattern.
Iconicity and indexicality
While it is true that the principle of onomatopoeia is not regarded as being
of great significance to modern languages, iconicity is regarded as something
which is still visible (Haiman, 1985; Fischer and Nänny, 2001). It is important
here to distinguish between two types of iconicity. The first is what is called
‗direct‘ or ‗imagic‘ iconicity and can be observed where there is an extra-
linguistic motivation in the use of certain structural features which establish a
parallelism between linguistic form and what is signified (Croft in Hickey, 2001).
A good example of this is the word for ‗soft‘ in Irish, a monosyllable which only
contains voiced consonants, bog. Equally the word for ‗hard‘, crua, begins with a
voiceless velar. However, one should not be too adamant about the validity of this
principle, for instance the English word big contradicts iconicity as it has a short
front high vowel, usually associated with smallness, cf. bit.
The second type of iconicity is what is termed ‗diagrammatic‘ iconicity
(Haiman, 1983) where there is a plurality of signs and where the relationship
between these signs mirrors a similar relation between objects or actions. An
example of this can be seen in syntax when there is a correlation between the
linear order of elements and the sequence of events. For instance, in John hit Bill,
John initiated an action which resulted in Bill being hit. Again while recognizing
this correlation there is no way it can be seen as a restraining force on language
change. Indeed it is the dominance of other aspects of syntactic organization, such
as topicalization, which has often led to the rise of alternative word orders, such as
VSO. In semiotics an index is understood as something which points to something
else it is closely associated with, e.g. smoke is an index of fire. In this sense, a
certain element can become an index of another and be preferred over other
elements. For instance, word-final /-s/ is an index of a grammatical inflection in
English and probably attained this role from the high phonetic salience of /s/,
hence the preference for it in present-tense verbal inflections and of course in the
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plural. Another element which is frequently an index of a grammatical category is
final /-qn/ in German which can be the realization of many verbal endings, weak
adjectives, nasal plurals, etc. It should be stressed that an index in language is a
linguistic convention without a causal connection sign and what is signified.
Markedness and naturalness
Among the terms especially appealed to in explanations of language
change are markedness and naturalness. The difficulty with these terms lies in
determining exactly what they refer to. The matter is compounded by the fact that
the terms are frequently not defined. For the present discussion the term marked is
taken to apply to an element which is cross-linguistically unusual, that is, which is
statistically rare in the world‘s languages. This fact of course leads to the question
as to why this is the case. For example, dental fricatives do not occur very
frequently in the languages of the world. The reason for this may have to do with
their low acoustic salience, especially when compared to sibilants.
However, the reason for the rise in frequency of such unusual segments
may well be linked to a very common process itself. Here intervocalic lenition can
lead to dental stops becoming fricatives as happened historically in Spanish. This
highlights another aspect of the term marked: it is inherently comparative, that is
it is a statement about the relative significance of a feature in one language when
compared to its possible occurrence in a larger set of languages. But there is also
local markedness, a feature can be unusual within the context of a single
language. The nasal ending as in ox : oxen is highly marked in English, however,
in German this nasal ending is much more frequent, cf. die Frau : die Frauen ‗the
woman‘, ‗the women‘.
The term natural is even more fraught with difficulties. A process can be
said to be natural when it is not unexpected. Judging what is ‗unexpected‘ of
course rests on the experience of the individual linguist and this factor in language
change is even more difficult to quantify than markedness. One objective
yardstick for measuring naturalness could be based on correlations and group
affiliation. For instance, it is common for a language which has the word order
VSO to have adjectives following nouns and the genitive following the
nominative. These correlations have to do with the principle of post-specification.
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The recognition of group affiliation has led to the notion of natural class. This can
be seen quite clearly with phonological segments: the set of voiceless stops forms
a natural class as all its elements share a lack of voice and an interruption of the
airflow and are typically found in syllable onsets.
The correlations one finds between sets of elements has been used as a
basis for postulating implicational universals, statements about the structure of
languages which seem always to hold. For instance, if a language has voiced stops
(B), then it will always have voiceless ones (A), or if a language has nasal vowels
(B) then it will have oral vowels (A). The justification for such implicational
universals is seen in the fact that in the development of languages over time,
elements of the (B) sets are derived from those of the (A) sets.
7.2 The Mechanism of Change

How is the language changed? In this section, the discussion will be about
the method or the mechanism of language change, and to talk about it I follow
Hickey‘s (2001) article. Traditionally there are two main methods, (i) the
comparative method (Durie and Ross, 1996; Campbell 1998: 108-62) and (ii)
internal reconstruction (Campbell 1998: 201-25). Both of these are legacies of
19th-century linguistics when the methods were developed and optimized for
research into the Indo-European languages.
Comparative method
The comparative method rests essentially on comparing two or more
languages in the attempt to extrapolate backwards and postulated earlier forms
common to these languages. It is a legitimate heuristic given certain provisos. It
rests on the assumption that there are regular correspondences between languages,
and the observation of these led to the formulation of sound laws in the 19th
century. These in essence stated the regular correspondences across stages of
languages. Because sound laws are not without exception the value in
comparative linguistics is relative. However, by considering other factors, such as
the internal factor of analogy, one can arrive at a fair degree of certainty with
regard to earlier postulated forms of non-attested languages. Thus by looking at
English three, thou, thin, German drei, du, dünn and Latin tres, tu, tenuis one can
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find evidence for the Germanic Sound Shift which led to inherited /t/ of Indo-
European becoming /θ/ in the early phase of Germanic. Looking at the German
data also shows that German (along with Dutch and the North Germanic
languages) later fortified and voiced the dental fricative, hence du in is the form
cognate with thou in English and tu in Latin in these languages.
The comparative method requires that one take various, possibly
conflicting developments at different stages of languages into account. For
instance, present-day Danish has an ambidental fricative, despite the fortition of
Germanic /θ/, but this is the result of a later lenition of stops in positions of high
sonority, cf. Danish mad /mað/ ‗food‘, Swedish mat /mɑ:t/ ‗food‘, English meat.
The importance of chronological sequencing in change was recognized
early on by historical linguists. But it is frequently difficult to determine the point
in time at which a change occurred by using the comparative method. Instead of
trying to attempt an absolute chronology linguists are very often content with
relative chronology, that is with saying that, of two changes or events, one
preceded or followed the other. For instance, in Old English one can say that
umlaut followed palatalization so that the word cyning ‗king‘ from /kuniŋ/ did not
have a front vowel at the time palatalization was active and hence did not become
/ʧyniŋ/. Another instance is English blood from Middle English /blu:d/. With the
lowering of /u/ to /ʌ/ in the south of England in the 17th century this word was
altered to /blʌd/ because the /u:/ had been shortened beforehand. In the case of
took the shortening occurred much later and was unaffected by the lowering of /u/
to /ʌ/, hence the pronunciation /tuk/. Relative chronology can also be useful when
dealing with borrowings, for instance, English wine is a Latin loanword, vinum,
borrowed in continental Germanic when Latin v was /w/. The word vine is a later
borrowing of the same word in the Middle English period from Latin via Old
French where the pronunciation of v was /v/.
Internal reconstruction
In its type of argumentation, internal reconstruction is similar to
comparative method, but applied to a single language (Campbell 1998: 201). It
uses similar techniques, by comparing sound changes, by looking at the operation
of analogy and in general by considering the likelihood of certain process to have
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taken place. One of the best uses of internal reconstruction is to explain present-
day irregularity, that is alternations which are synchronically unmotivated. An
example would be stem-final voicing of fricatives in plurals in present-day
English as in knife : knives, wife : wives. This goes back to an intervocalic voicing
rule of Old English which has long since become inactive but whose reflex can be
recognized today in these plurals.
When applying the comparative method and/or internal reconstruction the
operation of analogy is often to be observed. Traditionally, two types of analogy
are recognized (Campbell 1998: 90f.). Proportional analogy is operative when a
fourth term is created/altered on the basis of the second term of a four-term
formula, e.g. drive : drove :: dive : (dived >) dove. The second type of analogy is
non-proportional and has various terms such as analogical creation or analogical
leveling depending on what is involved (Trask 1996: 106-9). If analogy leads to a
new form being created then one is dealing with the former, e.g. female is a word
created in analogy with male, the original French word, its source, is femelle.
Analogical leveling can be seen where diverse terms in a series are made to
conform to a dominant pattern. For instance, in Irish there is a process — called
nasalisation — where after certain numerals a nasal is prefixed to a word, e.g. dún
‗castle‘ but seacht ndún ‗seven castles‘. This process was triggered by the
numerals 7, 9 and 10, which originally ended in a nasal, cf. Latin septem, novem,
decem. The number 8 also causes nasalization in Irish although it did not
originally end in a nasal, cf. Latin octo. However, the analogy with 7, 9 and 10
meant that it was brought into line with the numbers preceding and following it,
hence acht ndún ‗eight castles‘.

1. Baldi, Philip (ed.) 1991. Patterns of change. Change of patterns. Linguistic
change and reconstruction methodology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
2. Campbell, Lyle 1998. Historical Linguistics. An Introduction. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
3. Durie, Mark and Malcolm Ross (eds) 1996. The Comparative Method
Reviewed. Regularity and Irregularity in Language Change. Oxford:
University Press.
4. Haiman, John. 1983. ‗Iconic and economic motivation‘, Language 59: 781-
819.
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5. Hickey, R. 2001. ―Language Change‖. In Verschueren et al. eds (2001)
6. Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge:
7. Tawerilmang, T. 1996. National Language Policy in the Federated States of
Micronesia: A Conceptual Framework. In Federated States of
Micronesia Language Policy. (1997)
8. Verschueren, J., Östman, Jan-Ola, and Blommaert, J. (eds) 2001. Handbook
of Pragmatics. Amsterdam. John Benjamins.
9. Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov and Marvin Herzog. 1968. ―Empirical
foundations for a theory of language change‖. In Lehmann and Malkiel
(eds), pp. 95-195.

1. Why does language change?
2. Explain some factors causing language change!
3. How is the comparative method different from the internal reconstruction.
Give your logical reasons!
4. Observe your language! Can you find any changes? Apply the comparative
method and the internal reconstruction for the changes!
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CHAPTER 8
LANGUAGE SHIFT, DEATH, AND REVIVAL
8.1 Language Shift

Language shift has been a research topic within linguistics for
approximately half a century, but a clear and universal definition seems to be
lacking. However, there are three issues that frequently come up in discussions of
language shift (Weinreich 1968; Mackey 1980; Sasse 1992; and Clyne 2003).
The first is ―changing patterns of language use‖. This is based on the idea
that there is a pattern of which language variety people use in what situations
(―domains‖, Fishman 1972b: 247-8). In a language shift, there is a change in the
allocation of varieties to domains. In traditional accounts of language shift by
Fishman (1972a: 79-88), for example, it is seen as a very neat domain-by-domain
shift, so that the abandoned language is gradually replaced by the target language.
In reality, there are issues like code-switching and code-mixing that mean that the
shift is not as neat as described by Fishman, but it is still possible to use a catch-
all phrase like ―changing patterns of language use‖.
The second issue is the idea that language shift happens in a speech
community. Language shift can, of course, be studied psycholinguistically at the
level of the individual speaker, but for sociolinguistic studies it only becomes
interesting once the shift happens community-wide, cf. the distinction between
speaker innovation and language change by Labov (1972a:277).
The third and final issue is that language shift happens in a situation of
language contact. If a community is to shift language, they need to have a
language available to them to shift to; in other words, there needs to be language
contact. The way language shift is to be understood in the context of this paper,
then, is as gradually changing patterns of language use in a speech community in
a language contact situation.
In broad terms, three types of research into language shift can be
distinguished. The first type of research, of which Joshua Fishman is the main
exponent, was very descriptive and was mainly concerned with the actual changes
in the patterns of language use. Charting the changes in the answers to Fishman‘s
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famous question ―who speaks what language to whom, and when‖ over a period
of (real or apparent) time allows us to see a language shift spread through the
domains.
The explanatory framework in this type of research, however, is rather
slim, and seems to be based on the assumption that the language used in high-
prestige domains is naturally so attractive that will replace the language used in
lesser prestige domains, cf. the emphasis on the use of minority languages in high
prestige domains in Fishman‘s ―reversing language shift‖ work (1991: 87).
Research was then done into the correlation of language choice and a wide
range of social factors, such as the number and geographical spread of the
language‘s speakers, whether languages were written or not, whether the
dominant group was in any way suppressing the minority group, etc. This way of
thinking was pioneered by Kloss (1966) and became dominant from the 1970s.
Haugen‘s (1972) model of language ecology was the first model devised to
look at language in its interaction with its speakers and their community. Giles et
al. (1977) looked at a (minority) language‘s ethnolinguistic vitality on the axes of
status, demography and institutional support. Giles et al.‘s model is based on
objective data, and they recognized the need for a subjective counterpart, which
was worked out by Bourhis et al. (1981). A number of alternative models is
available, of which Knooihuizen (2006) mentions as the ―typology of language
endangerment‖.
From the late 1970s, commencing with Gal (1979), language shift research
has also either explicitly or implicitly drawn on social network theory (see
Govindasamy & Nambiar, 2003: 26-28. for a concise but incomplete overview).
Although some studies posit the existence of two separate social networks for
immigrant individuals, one in their home country and one in their new country,
which has not allowed for clear correlations to be identified (Hulsen et al., 2002;
Stoessel, 2002), most studies use a one-network analysis. In these cases, the
general tendencies from other social network studies apply (Milroy, 1987b: 170-1;
Govindasamy and Nambiar, 2003: 29): dense, multiplex networks of L1 contacts
facilitate language maintenance, whereas sparse, pauciplex networks correlate
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with language change in the direction of the standard, in this case language shift
in the direction of monoglot L2 use.
These three methods look at language shift from different angles, so they
can be used complementarily rather than substitutionally.
8.2 Language Death

Languages represent vast storehouses of human knowledge. Some of
languages are not written down, but live only in the memories and cultural
practices of human communities – groups of people who over millennia have
devised unique systems of survival in difficult circumstances. Human languages
are catalogs of plants, animals, insects, people‘s stories, weather patterns,
diseases, social paradigms, songs, jokes, aphorisms, strategies for war and peace,
practices of trade and negotiation.
Human language diversity was at its peak in pre-colonial times. It is now
well past its prime. ―Language death‖ has accelerated to a current rate of 2
languages lost per month (Sargent 2008). As last speakers die, carrying their
languages to their graves, repositories of information and understanding that took
thousands of years to gather… gone. From a probable peak of 20,000 we are
already down to only 6 or 7 thousand extinct languages. Experts estimate that of
these, 3,000 more will become extinct in the next 30 years, further gutting the
storehouse of human knowledge.
Sargent‘s idea support Krauss (1992), who predicts that as many as 95% of
the world‘s estimated 6000 languages will be lost at the end of 20th century, and
that of the remaining 5% half of these will fall under just two language families
(Indo-European and Niger-Congo), linguists seem to have embarked on an
accelerated effort to document, catalogue, revitalize and maintain moribund
languages. Although much of this work had already been ongoing, in the last
fifteen years the topic has gained in international notoriety, leading to numerous
reports in the popular press on the future of endangered languages (such as
Wilford 2007, among others), many of them following the release of The
Linguists, a film featuring two linguists (K. David Harrison and Greg Anderson)
in what one magazine described as their ―around-the-world race to make audio
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recordings of dying languages, giving us a glimpse of how technology can
promote language diversity‖ (Kaufman 2009).
Environmental changes make our current landscapes susceptible to rapid
change. Access to ever scarcer resources creates flash points of tension. By
diminishing the range of human perspectives available to solve human and
environmental challenges, language death heightens the dangers faced by our
future generations as they struggle to survive in a rapidly changing world.
The potential value in preserving linguistic diversity has been the subject
of some discussion. Most linguists will agree that from the perspective of the
science, language preservation (or at least documentation) is quite necessary; for
linguists, a loss of linguistic diversity means, quite simply, a loss of a great deal of
potential data. But Hale (1992) goes further in suggesting that the protection of
linguistic diversity is of paramount importance to humankind, akin to the
preservation of biological diversity. He believes that the loss of local languages
and ―the cultural systems they represent‖ represents a loss of intellectual and
cultural wealth, and the ―products of human mental industry‖ (1992: 36). Thus by
letting local languages die we are letting go of a wealth of information encoded in
those languages. Ladefoged (1992), however, challenges as paternalistic some of
the assumptions made by Hale et al, and asks how we as linguists can tell speakers
to protect linguistic diversity when it may be at the expense of their own upward
socioeconomic mobility. He gives the example of a speaker of Dahalo, a dying
Cushitic language, who was asked by Ladefoged whether his teen-age sons speak
the language: ―‗No,‘ he said, ‗They can still hear it, but they cannot speak it. They
speak only Swahili.‘ He was smiling when he said it, and did not seem to regret it.
He was proud that his sons had been to school, and knew things that he did not.
Who am I to say that he was wrong?‖ (Ladefoged, 1992: 811).
Acknowledging that the case for preserving linguistic diversity may often
be strong on humanitarian grounds, Ladefoged focuses on the fact that for
linguists, the focus should be on preserving diversity on linguistic grounds. Of
course preserving diversity for linguistic reasons may serve a secondary
humanitarian purpose for a community if one considers the observations of
Mithun (2009), who in recounting her experiences with Central Pomo speakers in
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California remarked that in some cases younger members of a language
community may not have an interest in preserving and/or revitalizing their
ancestral language until it is too late and fluent speakers are no longer living.
Although these are not likely to be ideal conditions for a revitalization of the
language as a primary means of communication, any previous documentation by a
linguist might give community members at least a chance of revitalizing the
language in some sphere.
In addition to descriptive research that documents endangered languages,
studies of language obsolescence generally fall under two major categories –
assessment of the vitality of a language in a particular speech community (such as
those in Goodfellow, 2009; Grenoble and Whaley, 1998), and studies of the effect
of obsolescence on linguistic structure (such as those in Dorian, 1989). In 2002-
2003 UNESCO convened an Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages,
charged with developing a framework for determining the vitality of a language.
Such models of linguistic vitality (including UNESCO, 2003; Grenoble and
Whaley, 1998; Fishman, 1985; Edwards, 1992) generally focus entirely on micro
and macro social factors affecting the language community.
These include social and economic pressures both internal and external to
the speech community, but do not take into account features of the (changing)
linguistic structure. Conversely, discussions of the effect of language
obsolescence on linguistic structure are generally focused on the linguistic
features themselves at the price of excluding considerations of the social factors
influencing use of particular variants in the speech community.
8.3 Language Revival

As mentioned before, the process of language extinction often happens so
subtly and rapidly that the community is unaware of the serious danger of
language death. A language is endangered when children no longer learn it and is
dead when the last elderly speaker passes away. Faced with this irreparable loss,
some communities are determined to bring back their languages. ―Language
Revival‖ is the creation of a living language community where such a community
has ceased to exist. Over the past two decades, language revitalization has become
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increasingly visible to the public eye as many communities try to reverse the
steady erosion of their heritage language. Linguists and language activists,
however, have not paid as much attention to the idea of bringing back a language
after the language has already died. The data on language endangerment indicates
that many Native American languages are moving from a language revitalization
scenario to a language revival scenario. It is therefore time to discuss the distinct
methods and processes involved in language revival.
In order to determine what exactly revival means, it is first necessary to
define the terms living language and dead language. In order to arrive at adequate
definitions for these terms, we must first examine what it means to be fluent in a
language and whether or not this is that same as being a native speaker of a
language. We can classify any language in any speaker‘s linguistic inventory as
either the speaker‘s first language or as an acquired, or second language. This first
language - also called the native tongue or mother tongue - is the LI. All other
languages that are not a native language for the speaker is referred to as an L2.
Knowledge of an L2 language can run the gamut from a few memorized words all
the way to near-native fluency. Some might use the terms proficient speaker or
fluent speaker to refer to a given speaker‘s knowledge of a language. Although
these terms can be hard to define precisely, for our purposes we can say that
proficiency is limited to a good communicative command of a second language.
(Montgomery-Anderson, 2008).
The term fluent speaker, however, could refer to an LI or an L2 speaker.
Crystal (2001) defines fluency as ―smooth, rapid, effortless, accurate use of
language‖. It is important to note, however, that the term fluent speaker is not
synonymous with the term native speaker. A native speaker will be a fluent
speaker, but a fluent speaker will not always be a native speaker. Let us take a
college student from Korea who majors in Indonesian and then spends a year in an
intensive immersion program in Jakarta as an example. Such experience can
produce a fluent speaker but will not, by definition of the term itself, produce a
native Indonesian speaker. Our hypothetical foreign exchange student could
conceivably speak and write Indonesian with near-native fluency, yet would not
be able to produce puns, slang terms or poems. A native speaker is able to play
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and create with the language, whereas a merely fluent speaker would have a
mastery of the language while at the same time not being able to create with it.
This distinction will be important when we examine the difference between a dead
language and a living language.
On a larger scale, a living language is a language that children are
acquiring as their native language, whereas an endangered/dying language is a
language that children are no longer acquiring as their native language. An extinct
or dead language no longer has any native speakers. Keeping in mind the above
definitions, we can see that a dead language can have fluent speakers and/or
proficient speakers. For example, we can find many priests and scholars in the
Vatican who have a superb command of Latin and who even speak it among
themselves. None of these speakers, however, learned Latin as their first
language. In like fashion, enthusiasts of dead Celtic languages (i.e. Cornish and
Manx) have made these languages into hobby languages but, as of the date of this
writing, there have been no children who speak Cornish or Manx as their first
language.
Krauss (1996) created the most commonly used classification of the
language level of endangerment. His system classifies languages on a scale from
―Category A‖ - languages actively learned by the majority of children - to
―Category E‖ - languages that are extinct. The determining factor in the
classification is who speaks the language as an LI language. In Category A,
children are LI speakers. In category B the parental generation is the youngest
generation speaking the language as a mother tongue, while in category C only
grandparents have retained the LI language. Category D languages are, for
practical purposes, quite similar to extinct languages: ―Category D languages are
those spoken only by a few of the very oldest people. These elders often do not
have the chance to talk much to each other. The language may be completely out
of use, or it may be only remembered, so not quite extinct‖. A category D
language is technically alive, yet the loss of speakers has already very much
altered the language. The extinct languages are found in category E.
Other scholars also have created classifications of their own using their
own terminology. Although they have different names, they all share a five-part
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classification. In Table 1 we can see various terms of typology of languages
according to their level of endangerment are matched. Although each
classification has a different emphasis, they all represent a five-part process:
Table 1: Comparison of Language Viability Typologies
Krauss Kincade Wurm
A Viable Potentially endangered
B Viable but Small Endangered
C Endangered Seriously endangered
D Nearly Extinct Moribund
E Extinct Extinct
In this book, the Krauss classification is adopted as it offers simple terminology in

classifying the level of language endangerment. In Table 2 we can see how this
categorization represents an increasing aging of LI speakers:
Table 2: Language Viability Classification according to Krauss (1996)
L1 SPEAKERS?
Language Category
Children Parents Grandparents Very Elderly
A Yes Yes Yes Yes
B No Yes Yes Yes
C No No Yes Yes
D No No No Yes
E No No No No
The similarities between moribund and dead languages become more

apparent when we examine methods for reintroducing these languages. In both
cases there are no longer language teachers available, at least in the normal sense
of the word. Remaining LI speakers will be extremely advanced in years and
unable to teach in a classroom setting. These speakers will be incapable of raising
a generation of L1 - speaking children. In both situations (moribund languages
and dead languages) it is necessary to create a new generation of adult speakers
(L2 speakers) who will in turn become teachers to LI - speaking children. Keep in
mind that children represent the crucial distinction between a natural, living
language and a dead language, no matter how many fluent speakers that dead
language might have (i.e. a hobby language). In order to bring a language back to
life, it is necessary to create a situation in which children will acquire the
language as their first language.
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The conditions necessary to create such an environment are fundamentally
different from those we encounter with the B or C - Category endangered
languages. In those situations the community needs to make a decision to start
teaching the heritage language; the heritage language is alive in the community,
but the community has for whatever reason not taken steps to transmit it to the
children. For our category D and E languages, however, the community needs to
recover the language itself before passing it on to the children. For this reason,
Montgomery-Anderson (2008) uses the term language revival to refer to, a)
languages that are extinct and, b) languages in such a serious stage of
obsolescence that the community no longer uses them as a living tool of
communication. Language revitalization is what happens when a community
realizes that their language is losing speakers and decides to focus its resources on
teaching a new generation the heritage language. In language revival, on the other
hand, the community language is already dead. In other words, all the knowledge
of the language is contained in archives or remembered by a few remaining LI
speakers.
A community must have a clear idea of its goals before attempting either
language revitalization or language revival. In both cases there are three possible
goals. The most ambitious goal is the creation of Native Speakers. According to
our criteria, children need to learn the language as their first language in order for
this to happen. A less ambitious but still demanding goal is creating Fluent or
Proficient Speakers. This goal is possible if committed individuals learn their
heritage language as an L2 language. Many communities, however, may opt for
the third goal, creating Symbolic Speakers of the language. In this situation the
community will reintroduce words into various aspects of everyday or ceremonial
life but will not actually produce any speakers. In this paper I will limit my
discussion to the most ambitious goal - the creation of native speakers.
A Model for Language Revival

Montgomery-Anderson (2008) proposes some models for language
revival: (i) creating archives, (ii) creating L2 speakers/teachers, and (iii) creating
native speakers. The first step in language revival is gathering and preparing our
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database of the language, ―creating archives‖. Databases come in two varieties:
human and recorded. Table 3 lists the possibilities of available material. Keep in
mind that various combinations of these categories can exist as well. A question
mark indicates that the possibility of revival is ambitious and/or dependent on the
quality, quantity and accessibility of those materials. We can base our goals for
language revival on the quality of material we have to work with.
Table 3. Material Availability and Language Revival Goals
Quality of Available Material Language Revival Goals
A few elderly speakers, but no real Native Speakers
language community. Speakers have Fluent Speakers
strong knowledge of language along Proficient Speakers
with repertoire of various verbal arts Symbolic Speakers
(poems, stories, songs, etc.)
Elderly speakers with passive or semi- Native Speakers (?)
forgotten knowledge. Knowledge of Fluent Speakers
verbal arts is small or non-existent. Proficient Speakers
Symbolic Speakers
Video, audio, and written archives Native Speakers (?)
Fluent Speakers (?)
Proficient Speakers
Symbolic Speakers
Audio and written archives Native Speakers (?)
Fluent Speakers (?)
Proficient Speakers (?)
Symbolic Speakers
Written archives Native Speakers (?)
Fluent Speakers (?)
Proficient Speakers (?)
Symbolic Speakers
Word lists Symbolic Speakers
The second stage of our model involves creating a generation of new

teachers. These new teachers will probably be the same individuals involved in
language documentation and these first two stages may occur simultaneously.
California, for example, has more seriously moribund languages than any other
region of North America. Because there are so few speakers, the solution has been
to team individual speakers with learners in what has become known as the
Master-Apprentice Program. To date adult learners have had the opportunity to
acquire twenty different languages. The basic model of this program is to match a
fluent elder with a younger learner in situations which emphasize oral learning in
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real-life situations, often performing traditional tasks or skills. No English is
allowed. The program directors encourage students to record sessions, both for
their own use as well as a means to add to the linguistic archive of the language.
An important idea behind the program is to bridge the generation gap that has
resulted from rapid and traumatic cultural change.
These new speakers, however, will not become fluent speakers, even after
years of involvement with the program. Hinton (2001) offers a realistic
assessment of the expected results of such a program:
The desired results of the program is that by the end of three years,
the apprentices will be at least conversationally proficient in their
language and ready to be language teachers to other people.
However, never could we expect an apprentice to be so fluent as to
equal the ability of the master.
The Master-Apprentice program is making wonderful gains in keeping
knowledge of the language alive; nevertheless, it is apparent that with only this
knowledge the language will still die. The Master-Apprentice program, in and of
itself, does not assure language survival in the true sense. A living language needs
to have fluent speakers; in order for this to happen, children must learn the
language as their primary language. Because those involved in the program are
already adults, they could become highly proficient in the language, but not
fluent. Perhaps we should view the Master-Apprentice program as preparation for
a period of ―language hibernation‖. After the last native speaker dies, the language
will technically be dead, although there will be individuals with knowledge and
even proficiency in the language. Unfortunately, proficiency does not make a
living language: a living language requires speakers to imagine and dream in it, to
create with it and create new meanings for it. In other words, it requires fluent
speakers.
The hibernation model associated with the Master-Apprentice program
remains, however, the language revival situation with the greatest chance of
success. A second type of language revival situation exists where the language has
already been dead for many years; if the community is lucky, there will be
documents available for study and possible language revival. In the worst case
scenario, the language has died out with no documentation and is entirely and
irrevocably extinct. Unfortunately, such a situation is the case for the majority of
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extinct American Indian languages. For those communities with documentation
available, there is the possibility to reconstruct the language from records, learn it
and pass it on to children. In such a case the period of hibernation will be greater,
the learners/speakers less proficient and the transformation of the language into a
new form even more profound.
Technology is providing the means for these new L2 speakers to learn
from the elders as well as keep in contact with each other. Certain language
communities are making use of the telephone to communicate with elders over
great distances. Montgomery-Anderson (2008) states that in Alaska a group of
students have been learning by phone to speak Deg Xinag, the language of the
Deg Hit‘an (Ingalik Athabaskan). The Deg Hit‘an are Athabaskan peoples of
Western Central Alaska who live near the meeting of the Innoko and Yukon
Rivers. There is only a handful of elderly Deg Xinag speakers and the learners are
geographically too far spread apart to make it practical to get together face-to-
face. The University of Alaska, Interior Campus McGrath Center, organized a
one-credit distance delivery class to make it possible to speak with the elders
telephonically. Although these learning conditions, according to Taff (1997), were
far from ideal, the telephone did allow a learning situation to exist where it would
not have otherwise been possible. These learners are using the telephone to create
a virtual speech community. Not only can learners interact with elders located far
away, but different learners in other areas as well can all participate in the same
call-in lesson. Moreover, the creation of these communities creates a sense of
solidarity among community members and gives the language a real presence in
the modern world.
Another contribution of technology in language revival is internet. The
Internet is becoming a powerful resource for those interested in the general
problems and methodologies surrounding language revival. Indigenous groups
can now have a presence on the web that is easy to locate where they can post
information about the language as well as lesson plans. For example, the Miami
nation has decided to revive their language, extinct since the mid-twentieth
century, and has created a web site (http://www.myaamiaproject.com/) that
contains basic greetings and phrases as well as information about revival projects.
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Part of Montgomery-Anderson‘s (2008) reasoning for grouping Category D
languages with extinct languages is that the few elderly speakers of the category
language have no framework in which to use the language. Buszard-Welcher
(2001) suggests that the Web can be used to create a virtual speech community, ―a
constructed immersion where members of the speech community meet, interact,
and communicate in the native language‖.
She points out that the Internet can help to reverse the negative effects of
television, a medium that ―invades‖ the home and imposes outside linguistic
dominance. Moreover, she adds, the Internet is different from television.
Television is a one-way information flow from the network to a passive home
audience. The Internet is not one-way, nor is it passive. People receive
information, but they create and send it too. The Web is a very social place that
encourages participation and community building. The Internet is thus becoming
essential in creating a virtual domain from the language where one had not existed
before.
In addition, Crystal (2000: 142) believes there are currently at least 500
languages with an Internet presence. He points out that the Web circumvents the
normally prohibitive costs associated with traditional communication media like
radio and television:
Only the ―better-off languages could afford to make routine use of
these media. But with the Internet, everyone is equal. The cost of a
Web page is the same, whether the contributor is writing in
English, Spanish, Welsh, or Navajo. It is perfectly possible for a
minority language to make its presence felt on the Internet.... What
is significant, of course, is that the Net provides an identity which
is no longer linked to a geographical location. People can maintain
a linguistic diversity with their relatives, friends, and colleagues,
wherever they may be in the world.
Besides, the Internet has allowed numerous groups interested in language
revival and revitalization to make available resources and information that would
have been otherwise difficult and time-consuming to locate. Just a few examples
would include the Indigenous Language Institute for the Preservation of the
Languages of the Americas (http://www.indigenous-language.org), the
Foundation for Endangered Languages (http://www.ogmios.org/1810.htm) or the
Linguistic Society of America (http://www.lsadc.org/). Montgomery-Anderson‘s
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(2008: 37) mentions his personal example of the power of the Internet in language
revival:
I learned about the California language Mutsun through surfing the
web, contacted the linguists working on it via email and received
emails from them containing, as attachments, the Mutsun
dictionary and workbook that they have been developing.
Furthermore, the library at my University has on microfilm the
Harrington notes on Mutsun that have been transferred from
aluminum disc. Thus I have all the linguistic documentation
available on Mutsun at my disposal and can work on materials for a
California language without ever visiting that state.
The last method as proposed by Montgomery-Anderson‘s (2008) is
―creating native speakers‖. If language revivalists complete the first two steps, and
if the community supports the necessary commitment, an immersion style
environment can be created to teach the language to the next generation. Given
our definitions of a living language and our stated goals for language revival, this
is the only manner in which to revive a language.
A true language revival means that committed adult learners will take their
knowledge and create a learning environment for children. Once there are enough
adults who know the language there will be the possibility of creating school and/
or home environments to pass on the language to children. Children can learn a
language fluently from non-fluent speakers, but there needs to be other children to
interact with as well as adults with a high level of commitment. To understand
this dedication, try to imagine bringing up your children in a language you are not
fluent in yourself. Such a learning environment did take place in the 60‘s when a
group of eleven families in Belfast, Northern Ireland, decided to raise their
children as Irish speakers. These parents were themselves not fluent in Irish and
were living in a city of monolingual English speakers. The level of dedication was
such that not only did the children acquire the language, but the group as a whole
precipitated a shift in the local area towards Irish. Maguire in Montgomery-
Anderson‘s (2008: 38) points out the high degree of motivation necessary for the
success of this program:
Community members were motivated by the recognition that the
creation of a socially cohesive speech community was necessary if
they were to have any chance of bringing up Irish-speaking
families in Belfast. The project proved successful. Not only did the
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community of eleven families survive the pressures of being rooted
in an English speaking community.
In addition, it exerted a significant impact upon the surrounding
neighborhoods, contributing to a wider shift towards bilingualism. Furthermore,
the Shaw‘s road community inspired other community enterprises throughout the
North, particularly in the area of Irish medium education. Of course, Irish in this
situation was not a dead language; it had only lost fluent speakers on a local level
Unfortunately, for the Indigenous communities we are examining, there is no
―homeland‖ where there is still a pool of native speakers. The responsibility for
the future vitality of the language rests entirely on their shoulders.
Because the children will be learning from non-fluent speakers, the
children will have to take the simpler proficiency-level language they are learning
and transform it into a more complex fluency-level language, a process that could
involve a profound transformation of the language itself. This process is similar to
the transformation of a Pidgin into a Creole. A pidgin is a language that two or
more distinct language communities create when trying to interact with one
another.
Because the goals are limited and practical (trade, for example) and the
speakers of the pidgin already have an LI, the pidgin will necessarily have a
simplified rule structure and limited power of expression. If children acquire this
language as their first language, however, they will expand it and make it more
complex because it will be their primary means of comprehending reality and
expressing themselves. Pinker (1994:33) discusses this process:
... the linguist Derek Bickerton has presented evidence that in many
cases a pidgin can be transmuted into a full complex language in
one fell swoop: all it takes is for a group of children to be exposed
to the pidgin at the age when they acquire their mother tongue Not
content to reproduce the fragmentary word strings, the children
injected grammatical complexity where none existed before,
resulting in a brand-new, richly expressive languages. The
language that results when children make a pidgin their native
tongue is called a Creole.
The distinguishing feature of a pidgin is that is has no native speakers;
Creoles, on the other hand, are pidgins that children learn as their first language
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and turn into ―real‖ languages. The language turns into something new through
the creolization process.
At this point we can perceive a possible positive outcome for the survival,
revival and perpetuation of Native American languages. Children, of course, are
the ultimate target learners in order for the native language to revive. The adults
are learning the language in order to pass it on to the children; in a certain sense it
is ―too late‖ for the adult learners. Children, on the other hand, will acquire as
their native language the language around them. In language revival the language
that the adult learners are re-learning will be a pidgin language in the sense that it
will be, linguistically speaking, a simpler language. As non-fluent speakers they
will know all of the language that there is to know, so the language will be
necessarily less complex than a ―natural‖ language with fluent native speakers. If
the adults teach the simplified ―pidginized‖ form of the language to their children
and allow the children to interact with each other in the language, the children will
naturally turn the language into a complex, full-blooded natural human language.
This process of pidginization and creolization is a process that many Native
American languages have undergone under intense pressure from European
languages.
Goodfellow and Alfred (2002:213) point out that this same regenerative
power of language can offer new life to language communities who are willing to
accept such a transformation:
What often happens is that they learn Native vocabulary but
maintain English grammatical structures and phonological
distinctions. Are they speaking the Native language? Are they
speaking English? Or are they speaking a ―mixed‖ language?
Pidgins, Creoles, and mixed languages are examples of how new
languages develop over time through language contact. Perhaps the
Native languages as spoken by young people can be regarded as
types of pidgin languages. If we look at language learning in this
way and realize that all languages change over time due to various
influences, perhaps we can be more accepting of the way that
Native languages are spoken today and encourage young people to
continue speaking the language, in whatever form.
It would be a cliche to say that children are necessary to revive a language
and to keep it alive for the future. As it turns out, children (not the adult learners
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and the linguists) are also the essential component for reconstructing the
language.
In conclusion, language revival offers the chance to turn language death
into a process of skipping a generation (or two or three) and not permanent
extinction. Many of these communities do not really think that their language will
die out; hopefully, many will take the opportunity to bring back the old (new?)
language once they realize the immensity of language loss. Fishman (1996:81)
eloquently describes the essential role that language plays in Indigenous culture:
The most important relationship between language and culture that
gets to the heart of what is lost when you lose a language is that
most of the culture is in the language and is expressed in the
language. Take it away from the culture, and you take away its
greetings, its curses, its praises, its laws, its literature, its songs, its
riddles, its proverbs, its cures, its wisdom, its prayers. The culture
could not be expressed and handed on in any other way. What
would be left? When you are talking about the language, most of
what you are talking about is the culture. That is, you are losing all
those things that essentially are the way of life, the way of thought,
the way of valuing, and the human reality that you are talking
about.
Regardless of the difficulties, the rebirth of a language not only is a
workable alternative to permanent extinction but also could be the way in which
many Indigenous languages will be able to survive in the future. The language
revival model could become a progressively more relevant approach for
increasingly endangered language communities. It appears probable that many
Indigenous languages in danger of extinction will in fact die out. A language
revival program, however, offers these languages the chance to transform
themselves and live again.

1. Clyne, M. 2003. Dynamics of Language Contact: English and Immigrant
Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Crystal, D. 2000. Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Giles, H., R.Y. Bourhis and D.M. Taylor. 1977. ―Towards a theory of
language in ethnic group relations‖. In H. Giles (ed.), Language,
Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press, 307-348.
4. Hale, K., M. Krauss, L. J. Watahomigie, A. Y. Yamamoto, C. Craig, L. M.
Jeanne, and N. C. England. 1992. ―Endangered Languages.‖ Language
68(1): 1-42.
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5. Haugen, E. 1972. ―The ecology of language‖. In Anwar S. Dil (ed.), The
ecology of language: essays by Einar Haugen. Stanford OL: Stanford
University Press, 325-339.
6. Knooihuizen, Remco. 2006. ―Language shift, ethnolinguistic vitality and
historical sociolinguistics: testing the models‖. LEL Postgraduate
Conference.
7. Krauss, M. 1996. ―Status of Native American Language Endangerment‖.
Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona
University Center for Excellence in Education.
8. Montgomery-Anderson, B. 2008. ―A Model for Indigenous Language
Revival‖. Indigenous Nations Journal, 6 (1): 23-44.
9. Mutsun language Foundation. <http://www.mutsunlanguage.com/pages/
944594/index.htm>
10. Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov and Marvin Herzog. 1968. ―Empirical
(eds), pp. 95-195.

1. There are three issues that frequently come up in discussions of language
shift, and one of them is ―changing patterns of language use‖. Explain what
you know about this issue!
2. What are the differences between the three types of research in language shift
pioneered by Fishman (1991), Kloss (1966), and Gal (1979)?
3. What are the causes of language death?
4. What are the goals of language revival? Explain!
5. Explain three models for langauge revival as proposed by Montgomery-
Anderson (2008)!
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CHAPTER 9
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
9.1 The Whorfian Hypothesis

One long-standing claim concerning the relationship between language and
culture is that the structure of a language determines the way in which speakers of
that language view the world. A somewhat weaker version is that the structure
does not determine the world-view but is still extremely influential in
predisposing speakers of a language toward adopting a particular world-view.
This claim has intrigued many anthropologists and linguists and there is a fairly
extensive literature concerning it. The opposite claim would be that the culture of
a people finds reflection in the language they employ: because they value certain
things and do them in a certain way, they come to use their language in ways that
reflect what they value and what they do. In this view, cultural requirements do
not determine the structure of a language – the claim is never that strong – but
they certainly influence how a language is used and perhaps determine why
specific bits and pieces are the way they are. A third, ―neutral‖, claim would be
that there is little or no relationship between language and culture.
(Wardaugh 2006: 221-2)
The claim that the structure of a language influences how its speakers view
the world is today most usually associated with the linguist Sapir and his student
Whorf. Today, the claim is usually referred to as the Linguistic relativity
hypothesis, Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or the Whorfian hypothesis. In linguistics,
the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that there are certain thoughts of an individual
in one language that cannot be understood by those who live in another language.
The hypothesis states that the way people think is strongly affected by their native
languages. It is a controversial theory championed by linguist Edward Sapir and
his student Benjamin Whorf.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is named after its creators ―Edwar Sapir and his
student Benjamin Whorf‖. The hypothesis was first discussed by Sapir in 1929.
However, at that time, it was not so popular that almost none of the linguists tried
to test it. The hypothesis became popular in the 1950s following posthumous
publication of Whorf's writings on the subject. After vigorous attack from
followers of Noam Chomsky in the following decades, the hypothesis is now
believed by most linguists only in the weak sense that language can have some
small effect on thought.
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Edward Sapir (1884-1939) is an American anthropologist-linguist even
though he was born in Lauenberg, Germany. He is a leader in American structural
linguistics and an author of Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. He
was a pupil of Franz Boas who has different of view of relationship between
language and culture. Boas (1911) has pointed out that there was no necessary
connection between language and culture or between language and race. His
student, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), graduated from the MIT in 1918 with
a degree in Chemical Engineering and shortly afterwards began work as a fire
prevention engineer (inspector). Although he met, and later studied with Edward
Sapir, he never took up linguistics as a profession. Whorf's primary area of
interest in linguistics was the study of native American languages. He became
quite well known for his work on the Hopi language. He was considered to be a
captivating speaker and did much to popularize his linguistic ideas through
popular lectures and articles written to be accessible to lay readers.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis I is about ―linguistic relativity‖: (i) structural
differences between languages are paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive
differences (the structure of the language itself effects cognition); (ii) the number
and the type of the basic color words of a language determine how a subject sees
the rain bow. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis II is about ―linguistic determinism‖: (i) the
structure of a language can strongly influence or determine someone‘s world
view; (ii) A world view describes a (hopefully) consistent and integral sense of
existence and provides a theoretical framework for generating, sustaining and
applying knowledge; (iii) the Inuit can think more intelligently about snow
because their language contains more sophisticated and subtle words
distinguishing various forms of it, etc. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis III is about
―arbitrariness‖: (i) the semantic systems of different languages vary without
constraint; (ii) this hypothesis must be tacitly assumed, because otherwise the
claim that Linguistic Relativity makes is rather undramatic; (iii) for each
decomposition of the spectrum of the rain bow a natural system of color words is
possible.
Kay & Kempton (1984) conducted two experiments to test the Sapir-
Whorf Hypothesis. The first experiment is aimed at testing whether ―linguistic
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relativity‖ exists. To achieve their objective, they did the experiment on
distinctions in color terminology between English and Tarahumara. From their
findings, they concluded that a Whorfian effect is shown through this experiment:
―English speakers tended to exaggerate the discrimination of colors close to the
lexical category boundary, while Tarahumara did not. This conclusion leads to a
question, ―What cognitive mechanism may have caused this difference?‖ To
answer this question, they did the second experiment.
The second experiment is aimed at testing whether ―name strategy‖ can be
used as the explanation for the underlying cognitive mechanism in the first
experiment. They hypothesized that the English speakers used a ―name strategy‖
by discriminating between colors according to their lexical category. The result of
their findings show that there was no Worfian effect shown in this experiment.
The subjects made distinctions based on the distance between colors and not on
the lexical category. The subjects showed the same results as the Tarahumara did
in the first experiment.
The most valid conclusion concerning the Whorfian hypothesis is that it is
still unproved. It appears to be quite possible to talk about anything in any
language provided a speaker is willing to use some degree of circumlocution.
However, some concepts may be more ―codable‖, that is, easier to express, in
some languages than in others. A speaker, of course, will not be aware of such
circumlocution in the absence of familiarity with another language that uses a
more succinct means of expression. Every natural language not only provides its
speakers with a language for talking about every other language, that is, a
metalanguage, but also provides them with an entirely adequate system for
making any kinds of observations that they need to make about the world. If such
is the case, every natural language must be an extremely rich system, one that
allows its users to overcome any predispositions that exist and to do this without
much difficulty.
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9.2 Kinship Terms
Let us consider the following conversation:
Ali : Pak Uwo, dima Toni?
Uncle, is Toni?
Pak Uwo : Inyo pai ka rumah Pak Eteknyo.
He‘s visiting his uncle.
Ali : Mak Uwo lai sihaik-sihaik se?
How are you, Aunt?
Mak Uwo : Alhamdulillah, lai. Naiklah ka rumah dulu. Mak Etek ado di dalam.
Just fine. Please come in. Your aunt is at home.
Ali : Ndak usahlah Mak Uwo, bisuak-bisuak se lah Mak Uwo yo. Salam se
untuk Mak Etek.
No, thanks. May be tomorrow. Just send my greeting to my aunt.
Mak Uwo : Iyo lah. Hati-hati yo.
Ok. Be careful.
The underlined words are address terms which are used to addressed the
relatives or family members. In this conversation, we can find a unique as well as
an interesting phenomenon of the language usage. The terms ―Pak Uwo‖ and
―Pak Etek‖ in Minangkabaunese language are translated into the term ―uncle‖ in
English; in the same way, ―Mak Uwo‖ and ―Mak Etek‖ are translated ―aunt‖. The
use of these terms are related to the cultural context where the language is used.
Unlike, English, Minangkabaunese is a culture which is rich of address terms
among relatives. This is one of the discussions in understanding the concept of
kinship in linguistics.
One interesting way in which people use language in daily living is to refer
to various kinds of kin. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a considerable
literature on kinship terminology, describing how people in various parts of the
world refer to relatives by blood (or descent) and marriage. Kinship systems are a
universal feature of languages, because kinship is so important in social
organization. Some systems are much richer than others, but all make use of such
factors as gender, age, generation, blood, and marriage in their organization. One
of the attractions that kinship systems have for investigators is that these factors
are fairly readily ascertainable. You can therefore relate them with considerable
confidence to the actual words that people use to describe a particular kin
relationship.
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There may be certain difficulties, of course. You can ask a particular
person what he or she calls others who have known relationships to that person,
for example, that person‘s father (Fa), or mother‘s brother (MoBr), or mother‘s
sister‘s husband (MoSiHu), in an attempt to show how individuals employ various
terms, but without trying to specify anything concerning the semantic composition
of those terms: for example, in English, both your father‘s father (FaFa) and your
mother‘s father (MoFa) are called grandfather, but that term includes another
term, father. You will find, too, in English that your brother‘s wife‘s father
(BrWiFa) cannot be referred to directly; brother‟s wife‟s father (or sister-in-law‟s
father) is a circumlocution rather than the kind of term that is of interest in kinship
terminology.
This kind of approach sometimes runs into serious difficulties. According
to Wardaugh (2005) it is often virtually impossible to devise an exhaustive
account of a particular system. You may also be unable to account for the many
instances you may find of terms which are very obviously kinship terms but are
used with people who are very obviously not kin by any of the criteria usually
employed, e.g., the Vietnamese use of terms equivalent to English sister, brother,
uncle, and aunt in various social relationships. Such an approach also misses the
fact that certain terms recur to mark different relationships; for example, English
uncle is used to designate FaBr, MoBr, FaSiHu, and MoSiHu, and also non-kin
relationships, as when children are sometimes taught to use it for close friends of
their parents. A rather different approach to kinship terminology is therefore often
employed.
In this latter approach, an investigator seeks to explain why sometimes
different relationships are described by the same term, e.g., why Spanish tío is
equivalent to both English uncle and either father‘s or mother‘s male cousin, and
why similar relationships are described by different terms. Burling (1970: 21–7)
describes the kinship system of the Njamal, a tribe of Australian aborigines, in
this way. To understand why the Njamal use the terms they do, you must know
that every Njamal belongs to one of two ‗moieties,‘ that of his (or her) father; the
mother belongs to the other moiety. Marriage must be with someone from the
other moiety so that husbands and wives and fathers and mothers represent
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different moiety membership. This fact, and the need also to indicate the
generation, and sometimes the sex, of the reference or ego (i.e., the person from
whom the relationship is expressed), and occasionally the other‘s age relative to
the ego (i.e., as being younger or older), provide the keys to understanding the
Njamal system.
One consequence is that a young Njamal man calls by the same name,
njuba, his mother‘s brother‘s daughter (MoBrDa) and his father‘s sister‘s
daughter (FaSiDa), which are both English cousin. But he uses turda for his
father‘s brother‘s daughter (FaBrDa) and his mother‘s sister‘s daughter (MoSiDa)
when both are older than he is. He calls any such daughters who are younger than
he is maraga. All of these are cousins in English. He may marry a njuba, since a
cross-cousin is of the opposite moiety, but he cannot marry a turda or a maraga, a
parallel cousin of the same moiety. Moiety membership is the overriding
consideration in the classification system, being stronger than sex. For example, a
term like maili is marked as ‗male,‘ e.g., FaFa, FaMoHu, or FaMoBrWiBr when
used to refer to someone in an ascending generation and in the same moiety. In a
descending generation, however, maili is also used to designate membership in
the same moiety, but in this case it can be applied to both males and females, to
DaDaHu, BrSoDa, and DaSoWiSi.
In such an approach, we collect the various kinship terms in use in a
particular society and then attempt to determine the basic components of each
term. We may go even further. For example, as Hudson (1996, pp. 85–6) points
out, in various societies, including the Seminole Indians of Florida and Oklahoma
and the Trobriand Islanders of the Pacific, a single term may refer to a very
different type of relationship, e.g., father (Fa), father‘s brother (FaBr), and so on
to include even father‘s father‘s sister‘s son‘s son (FaFaSiSoSo), but to exclude
father‘s father (FaFa).
Hudson points out that the key to understanding such a system is to
assume that there is some typical concept as ‗father‘ and that there are certain
‗equivalence rules‘ such that (a) a man‘s sister is equivalent to his mother; (b)
siblings of the same sex are equivalent to each other; and (c) half-siblings are
equivalent to full siblings. Since same-sex siblings are equivalent, ‗father‘s
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brother‘ equals ‗father.‘ The complicated ‗father‘s father‘s sister‘s son‘s son‘
reduces to the term for ‗father,‘ as can be seen in table 1. In this system the same
term is used for all the relationships shown in the table. We might feel it strange
that one should refer to so many different kinds of relationship with a single term,
but this is because we live in very different circumstances, in which not knowing
who your father‘s father‘s sister‘s son‘s son is may be more usual than knowing
this information. Then too, having to use such a potent term as father to refer to
that person, who may well be younger than oneself, would cause us additional
concern. Some people do, of course, use father to people other than their male
biological parents, e.g., to in-laws, adoptive parents, and priests; but these usages
tend to be marked, i.e., rather special, in ways that the above usage is not.
Table 1 Relationships and equivalences in
a kinship system
Relationship Equivalences
father’s father’s sister’s son’s son
↓ (a) sister = mother
father’s father’s mother’s son’s son
↓ (c) mother‘s son = brother
father’s father’s brother’s son
↓ (b) father‘s brother = father
father’s father’s son
↓ (c) father‘s son = brother
father’s brother
↓ (b) father‘s brother = father
Father
Source: based on Hudson (1996: 86)
It is important to remember that when a term like father, brother, or older

brother is used in a kinship system, it carries with it ideas about how such people
ought to behave toward others in the society that uses that system. Fathers,
brothers, and older brothers are assumed to have certain rights and duties. In
practice, of course, they may behave otherwise. It is the kinship system which
determines who is called what; it is not the behavior of individuals which leads
them to be called this or that.
As social conditions change, we can expect kinship systems to change to
reflect the new conditions. The profound social change in Russian society in the
last century produced certain changes in Russian kinship designation. At one time
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it was very important to identify certain in-laws. There were separate words for
your wife‘s brother, shurin, and for your brother‘s wife, nevestka. In modern
Russian these unitary terms are no longer used. Instead, the phrases brat zheny
‗brother of wife‘ and zhena brata ‗wife of brother‘ are used. Likewise, yatrov
‗husband‘s brother‘s wife‘ has totally disappeared, and the term svoyak is now
used to refer to any male relative by marriage when previously it could be used
only for your wife‘s sister‘s husband. It is now no longer necessary to refer
constantly to such relatives or to be so precise as to a particular relationship.
Changing family structures have removed them from daily contact.
The new longer phrasal terms also indicate the current lack of importance
given to certain kinship relationships, in keeping with a general linguistic
principle that truly important objects and relationships tend to be expressed
through single words rather than through phrases.
9.3 Color Terminology

The issue addressed in the lead articles by both Kowalski and Zimiles
(2006) and O‘Hanlon and Roberson (2006), but in particular by Kowalski and
Zimiles, is the developmental relation between color terms and color concepts.
The issue has been of considerable interest to Davidoff, Roberson, and their
colleagues. In their work (e.g., Davidoff, Davies, & Roberson, 1999; Roberson &
Davidoff, 2000; Roberson, Davidoff, Davies, & Shapiro, 2005), possession of a
color concept goes hand-in-hand with the demonstration of within-category
similarity and between-category dissimilarity, that is, categorical perception.
Davidoff and colleagues (1999) found that memory and perceived (category)
similarity were simply predicted by the color terms in a speaker‘s language. Their
neo-Whorfian stance (Davidoff, 2001) derived from the cases where categorical
perception is or is not found and has provoked some controversy (Franklin,
Clifford, Williamson, & Davies, 2005; Pilling, Wiggett, O¨zgen, & Davies, 2003).
Pilling and colleagues (2003) disputed the apparent contention in
Roberson and Davidoff (2000) that categorical perception for color derives from
matching the stimulus to a color label. However, simple verbal labeling as an
explanation of categorical perception is not really what those authors claimed. The
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current commentary gives a needed opportunity for clarification of their position.
On the one hand, there is reason to believe from their data (Roberson et al., 2005)
that color labels are much involved. To borrow a phrase from visual
neurophysiology, Roberson and colleagues (2005) showed an ‗‗exquisite tuning‘‘
between color labels and categorical perception within a narrow range of
categories. On the other hand, their other data would imply that color labels per se
were not important for production of categorical perception. For example, one of
Roberson and Davidoff‘s (2000) experiments showed that interference from
noncolor words was equally effective as that from color words in removing
categorical perception. Furthermore, O‘Hanlon and Roberson (2006) give several
examples, particularly from developmental studies, where there is no clear
relation between performance on color tasks and the speaker‘s basic color
knowledge. A reflection on these conflicting directions is given here from a
consideration of what might at first seem to be a quite different field of research.
A similar conflict about the role of color labels was shown in a patient,
LEW, who could neither produce nor comprehend color terms, and although he
was unable to understand color category similarity, he nevertheless showed
normal categorical perception (Roberson, Davidoff, & Braisby, 1999). Thus,
evidence from neuropsychology may be critical to understanding the relation
between color terms and abstract color concepts. The important evidence comes
from studies of patients with language impairment (aphasia) in categorization
tasks. These tasks have been used by many neuropsychologists because an
inability to categorize was considered crucial to the debate concerning the
relations between impaired language and thought. During the early days of
modern neuropsychological research, Wernicke considered aphasia to be a lexical
impairment (see Davidoff & Roberson, 2004). In contrast, Hughlings Jackson
(cited in Zangwill, 1964, p. 261) declared that aphasics, by having lost language,
were ‗‗lame in thinking.‘‘ The argument was considered one of the most crucial in
neuropsychology and surfaced many times during the subsequent 100 years.
Indeed, Goldstein (1948) considered that a loss of abstract processing was the
core deficit in aphasia.
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As Goldstein (1948) noted, there are two main types of categorization task.
One type can be ‗‗solved‘‘ simply by episodic knowledge and what he called a
concrete attitude, and the other type required an abstract attitude. According to
Goldstein, after certain types of aphasic damage, the patient maintained only a
concrete attitude. For color tasks, the consequence is that judgments are based on
perceptual similarity. For other tasks, the patient‘s judgments are based on what
are now termed thematic associations (Markman & Huchison, 1984) or on
personal associations. For example, Goldstein (1948) described a patient who kept
both a hammer and a saucepan in the kitchen and therefore erroneously placed
them together in a categorization task. Another example, where the use of
episodic (visual) associations arrives at correct categorization, is from LEW
(Roberson et al., 1999), who was able to sort animals into British versus foreign
by virtue of whether he had seen them in a zoo.
LEW was completely unable to sort colors (Roberson et al., 1999). A
further examination of the patient (Davidoff & Roberson, 2004) showed clearly
that the difficulty in sorting colors was part of a general difficulty in taxonomic
classification. His difficulty was not explained by a general intellectual deficit.
LEW was also asked to do analogical reasoning tasks of the type used by Gentner
(see Kowalski & Zimiles, 2006). Although his level of performance on analogical
reasoning was only that of a 4- or 5-year-old, it far surpassed his ability to follow
rules of perceptual classification. It was therefore argued that taxonomic
classifications cannot be driven by the development of analogical reasoning.
However, LEW behaved like a 3-year-old in a task that directly contrasted
thematic and taxonomic classification (Markman & Huchison, 1984). LEW
showed a preference for thematic classification. In fact, there was no evidence of
any substantial ability to make taxonomic color classifications despite evidence
for good preservation of the associated object–color knowledge (e.g., red went
with strawberry). The reason is that tasks involving colors, as opposed to object–
colors, allow only a limited number of procedures to achieve correct
categorization. For example, artifacts and animals, because of their multiple
associations and properties, allow multiple routes for categorization. Indeed,
allocation of objects to categories is always context dependent; there are an
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infinite number of ways in which they may be divided into categories. Colors are
not like objects because there is not the variety of episodic knowledge to use in
color categorization tasks. Thus, the failure of the patients is more extreme for
perceptual categories because there are no associations, such as are seen in a zoo,
that can be used in the task of color categorization.
These important differences between objects and colors with respect to
categorization are laid down in the model of color processing proposed by
Davidoff (1991). That model proposed an internal color space that would organize
together perceptual hues defined as similar. Thus, access to the color space was
required to produce a common lexical entry to many different hues. However, the
model may be incorrect in showing that color terms can be accessed only by
reference to the internal color space. It must be possible to ‗‗parrot‘‘ a color term
without its understanding. So, it might be better put to say that the internal color
space is used only when, to use Goldstein‘s (1948) terms, we adopt an abstract
attitude for color naming. Goldstein contended that when a person ‗‗truly ‗names‘
an object, he has the experience of a word which ‗means‘ this object. . . .
Otherwise, he experiences the word as a sound complex belonging to an object‘‘
(p. 61). Goldstein referred to the type of naming that is preserved without access
to the semantic features of an object as ‗‗pseudonaming,‘‘ in contrast to true
naming that requires an abstract attitude.
Goldstein (1948) claimed that when pseudonaming, the names do not
affect thought. The consequence is that the label given to the color patch does not
influence categorization. For example, Goldstein reported a patient who placed
colors in the same group despite an unwillingness to call them by the same name.
When asked whether the colors in the group could not all be called red, the patient
replied ‗‗No, these are red, this one is pink, this one is maroon.‘‘ LEW‘s poor
color sorting was carried out in much the same way and likewise gave away his
inability to employ an abstract attitude. Goldstein warned that the patient‘s
placing of color stimuli in a line according to some similarity dimension should
not lead the examiner to believe that the colors were categorized; rather, the
reverse is the case. He argued that the patient‘s sorting behavior differed from that
used in normal categorization. When asked to sort many colors, we normally
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make piles of colors; this is possible because the task is driven by some internal
categorization mechanism, possibly the name. The person has no need to see the
colors already classified. In contrast, the patient with only concrete abilities needs
to make visual, and apparently only pairwise, comparisons. The patient‘s concrete
sorting procedure requires that stimuli that have already been classified be in
sight.
LEW‘s sorting of colors (and shapes) was restricted to that which can be
achieved by perceptual similarity. The normal person also has the ability to sort
categorically but can adopt either mode. Kay and Kempton (1984), by varying
task instructions and procedures, were able to induce normal adults to make ‗‗odd
one out‘‘ color judgments based either on perceptual or linguistic (categorical)
differences. Recently, these two types of judgment have been again related to a
language versus a perceptual attitude to processing with consequent implication
for hemispheric differences (Gilbert, Regier, Kay, & Ivry, 2006). The categorical
effects were found only for left hemisphere presentations.
The neuropsychological evidence would seem to give priority for a general
semiotic ability responsible for color concepts that could precede the acquisition
of color terms. Therefore, as both lead articles in this issue show, children may
understand about color before knowing color terms. However, things are not that
simple. One needs to explain the origin of the particular color concepts. Roberson
and colleagues (1999) argued that there was no other source for the origin of color
categories besides labels unless the concepts had some innate basis as, for
example, proposed by Franklin and colleagues (2005). One argument against an
innate basis is that it would mean a considerable amount of unlearning for
speakers of most of the world‘s languages where categories (e.g., blue, green) do
not exist in the adult‘s language.
Recently, Fagot, Goldstein, Davidoff, and Pickering (in press) examined
the question of whether color categories are innate from a different approach by
observing the similarity matching of baboons and humans. They used as standards
a typical green and a typical blue. The interest was in the match of the
intermediary colors. None of the baboons, despite having color discrimination as
good as that of humans, showed any inclination to match any but very close colors
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to the standard. Humans showed quite different performance, with a sharp
division of the intermediary colors at the appropriate boundary between green and
blue. At the very least, Fagot and colleagues showed that the possession of a
trichromatic visual system like that of humans does not by itself produce color
categories. So, one is drawn back to the argument that, at the very least, labels
generate the range of each color category.
In light of this work, what are the conclusions that we ought to draw from
the Kowalski and Zimiles article and the O‘Hanlon and Roberson article?
Kowalski and Zimiles show that 3-year-olds have an idea about color and can
extract color as a feature and use it in an identity match. Specific color labels do
not seem to map neatly onto those specific color concepts, but overall there is a
good relation between the two abilities. Importantly, there is a priority for the
abstract representation. The current commentary does not disagree with these
conclusions, but it cautions that the relation between concepts and terms may be
more profound than is shown in their study. A similar caution may be given to the
studies of O‘Hanlon and Roberson in which they assign the relative importance of
linguistic or attentional factors to the acquisition of new color labels. Their tasks,
like those of Kowalski and Zimiles, do not allow us to know whether children
really understand about redness, blueness, beigeness, and the like. To be sure
about that level of abstraction, we need to examine the range of the match. So, if
the interest is to examine the question of whether labels are necessarily required
for color category instantiation, a more demanding task—one that uses similarity
rather than identity matching—could show a precise connection.
9.4 Taboo and Euphemisms

Language users always avoid using words and expressions which are
unpleasant, inappropriate or embarrassing to them or to whom they are
conversing. This censoring of language occurs primarily unconsciously through
applying euphemistic expressions. The contribution of euphemisms to
maintaining interpersonal interactions on safe grounds is undeniable. Fear, shame,
and disgust are three principal factors motivating the use of euphemisms.
However, in spite of being known as ―linguistic fig leaves‖ or ―means of sweet
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talking‖, euphemisms are utilized, in a thoroughly distinct function, by people in
power to convert the reality and to deceive ordinary people. In nondemocratic
societies, the term ―expediency‖ is an ever substitute for ―lie‖ and doublespeak
artists picture a fake world to make the laymen believe in the dominant ideology.
Indirectness is a communicative strategy by means of which, speakers
avoid being outspoken and attempt to hold a correspondence between their talk
and face considerations. Adopting indirectness strategy through using euphemistic
terms helps: (i) speakers prevent from mentioning socially distasteful topics; (ii)
minimize the threat of overt confrontation. By virtue of euphemisms, as part of
each language‘s politeness system, one finds it easier to communicate his intents
without affronting the hearer‘s face and get rid of unpleasant terms with too
negative overtones.
Almost all traditional definitions of euphemism consider it as a merely
lexical substitution which results from the speaker‘s reluctance to insult the
hearer. (Rawson, 1981). But Allan and Burridge (2006) have adopted a pragmatic
approach towards studying euphemisms which is simultaneously both speaker-
oriented and hearer oriented. In other words, euphemism is a face saving
mechanism which emphasizes mutual cooperation in a conversation. Quoting
Allan and Burridge‘s (2006) definition of euphemism can illuminate our face-
centered discussion of euphemisms: ―They are words or phrases used as an
alternative to a dispreferred expression. They avoid possible loss of face by the
speaker and also the hearer or some third party‖.
Obviously, a social interaction is generally oriented towards maintaining
face and language speakers, according to an implicit mutual agreement, highly
concern their face wants. Referring to an inappropriate topic is a threat to positive
face and substituting a euphemism for a blunt term is a common strategy for
reducing positive face threat (Brown & Levinson 1987). For example, when a
Persian speaker mentions a disgusting topic like ―defecation‖ by using a
dysphemistic expression like ‖beramberinam” (I want to shit), rather than
―servisakojast?”(where is the restroom?) which is the politest form of raising the
topic, he is threatening the participants‘ concerns for positive face. Whereas the
latter expression indicates the speaker‘s commitment to maintaining the positive
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face since this question conceals the nature of the work and the place either. Of
course it should be noted that politeness depends on social status and is
determined by factors like the relationship between participants, topic, setting, and
the medium, so there would not be the same reactions once a taboo topic is raised.
For a linguistic expression to function as a euphemism and to be
communicatively efficient, it should necessarily contain some features. These
structural traits determine the euphemistic force of a given expression. We
examine these crucial features in the form of three principles:
Distance principle
Euphemism is an alternative to socially distasteful terms. In contrary to
taboo words where the signifier and the referent are closely connected, in a
euphemism, this distance is much farther. This very distance determines the
mitigating capacity of a euphemistic expression and the amount of a given word‘s
ambiguity in referring to a taboo area. Ambiguity is a defining feature of
euphemisms as a linguistic phenomenon, a term acts as a euphemism because, in a
given context, it is capable of generating an ambiguity which suggests that there
may be a distasteful concept beneath and thus it permits the mitigation of the
taboo (Fernandez 2006:16). This contrast between a linguistic term and its taboo
referent is satisfactorily maintained through making novel metaphors. For
example, ―aslahe‖ (weapon) or ―folan‖ (an abstract term meaning something
unknown) can communicate a taboo body part like ―penis‖, and at the same time
function a euphemism in a specific context.
Metaphoric euphemisms can maintain their mitigating capacity in a given
pragmatic context. The ambiguity resulted from making new metaphoric
euphemisms flout the cooperation principle and give rise to conversational
implicatures (Brown & Levinson 1987:216). Nevertheless, it acts in accordance
with the politeness principle. Therefore, we can say that euphemism is the
representation and the result of politeness principle. Among Persian speakers a
euphemistic expression like ―moshkel e zanane‖ (a female problem) in a formal
and polite gathering is appropriately used to refer to ‗‘womb related diseases‖
which is highly considered taboo. This metonymically based euphemism greatly
veils the specific organ to which the problem is pertained.
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Correlation principle
As it was stated, there is a direct relationship between the euphemistic
force of a term and the level of contrast between a signifier and its taboo referent.
However, too much distance leading to an uncommon ambiguity runs the risk of
not properly communicating and being misunderstood by the hearer(s). A
euphemistic term chosen should be relevant to the taboo concept for which it has
been substituted and its interpretation in the immediate context should be possible
for the audience. If we consider euphemisms as basically metaphorical, there
ought to be a similarity between source and target concepts, for example, in a
statement like “ shab too rakht e khabeshbarounmiad” (it‘s raining in his bed at
nights), the word ―baroun‖ (raining) is interpreted as ―urination‖ because of the
similarity which is held between different aspects of these two concepts. On the
other hand, substituting the same statement with another word like ―sang‖ (stone)
in place of ―baroun‖ (raining) will never have the same euphemistic effect mainly
because the above mentioned aspects of similarity are not observed anymore.
Pleasantness principle
Each euphemism must have more positive connotations compared to its
taboo counterpart or at least less negative overtones. Various linguistic devices
such as remodeling, circumlocution, omission, figurative language and so on are
applied to ameliorate the most unpleasing connotations of a dysphemistic term
and fit it in the context and also avoid the stylistic discord that might come along
as a result of using a coarse word with too negative connotations. For example,
―ghooz fish‖ is a remodeled form of ―goozpich‖ (literally fart turned) which means
―completely confused‖; the distorted form has lost too many of its unpleasant
connotations and has turned into a more appropriate expression to be used in a
rather polite friendly conversation. Or an evasive statement like
―darayetab‟egarm― (with a warm temperament) is a frequently used substitute for
“hashari‖ (horny) which is too nasty to utter in a male-female talk.
Communicative functions of euphemisms

Based on what has been stated so far, euphemizing process, through some
particular linguistic devices, attempts to maintain the face wants of interlocutors
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and not to transgress the depicted cultural boundaries. Language users acquire
sufficient means of censoring their behavior and their tongue by virtue of being
aware of taboo as well as permitted cultural domains.
Bakhtiar (2012) did a research on the euphemism used in Persian and
found three communicative functions of euphemism.
Taboo prevention
Taboos arise out of social constraints on the individual‘s behavior where it
can cause discomfort, harm or injury (Allan & Burridge, 2006: 1). Some
particular topics are constrained or thoroughly censored out mainly because they
evoke fear, shame or disgust in participants. Taboo language is offensive,
dysphemistic and against politeness standards, therefore, it is condemned and
replaced by euphemisms. Fatal diseases, death, and holy persons and places are
three fear based taboos among Persian speakers which are usually talked about
with too much care and highly euphemistically. The unknown sources of some
diseases (in the past), the lack of an absolute treatment for them and primarily the
association of these with death has led to an evasive language to mention them.
Applying medical jargons and circumlocutions are common ways of avoiding this
taboo topic. The first of each following pair indicates a taboo word and the second
one is the Persian euphemistic counterpart:
Saratan:kanser (cancer) eidz : HIV mosbat (AIDS positive)
Saktemaghzi:esterok (stroke)
Of course there are other diseases which are euphemized because of being
in association to taboo body parts and here fear is not involved as a motivating
factor. For example, Suzak and Siflis are the name of two diseases pertaining to
sexual organs and are replaced by ―amraz e mogharebati‖ (intercourse diseases)
which refers indirectly to the cause of the disease rather than naming them. Farsi
speakers also utilize some preventive statements before mentioning the name of
the disease which double the euphemistic force of the expressions:
Nasibnashe! Ye bimari e laaalaajgerefte.
(I wish no one gets it! He has an uncurable disease).
In Lori dialect (spoken in some western cities of Iran) people use some
interesting wishing expressions as preventive statements while talking about
cancer:
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Gorg e biabounham nabine!Saratan dare.
(I wish not even a wolf in desert gets it! He has Cancer)
In the above statement, the initial wishing expression neutralizes the
negative effect of naming a fatal disease, i.e. cancer.
Death is another area which evokes fear and nervousness. Most of death
language in Persian is created by virtue of euphemistic metaphors, moreover,
circumlocutions, jargons and expressions with implicature are also widely used to
refer to death in the most pleasant and distant way:
Vaghtibaba raft, man bacheboudam.Doktorjavabeshkarde
(When dad went, I was just a kid) (Doctor has rejected him)
In Iranian hospitals, ―des shodan‖ (to die) is euphemistically referred to
the each case of death. ―des‖ is the Farsi pronunciation of ―death‖. In daily
conversation, people most often use the following hyperbolic statement to refer to
someone‘s death:
Omresho dad be shoma (he gave his life time to you)
Since people traditionally believe that taboo of death is transmitted
through mentioning its name, Farsi speakers immune the hearer against the taboo
by granting the dead‘s total life time to him. The other frequently used euphemism
is again a kind of preventive statement which precedes any death related word:
Hezar sale bashid! Khandidanetshabiheounkhodabiamorze
(I wish you to be alive for 1000 years! Your way of smiling is similar to that
Godblessed).
Dour azjoon! Age chizitbeshe man chekarkonam?
(I wish it to be far away from you! If something happens to you, what should I
do?)
“It” in the above sentence refers to death.
Conceptual metaphors like ―death is passing‖ and ―death is a trip‖ are the
bases of most of the euphemisms formed in Persian especially in formal contexts;
euphemistic metaphors like ―dargozashtan‖ and ―safarkardan‖ are the linguistic
manifestations of the above conceptual metaphors respectively.
Although there might exist some other fear based taboos, most of
euphemisms are currently used to avoid affronting the face wants of both speaker
and hearer in a particular context and not because of the fear of a possible physical
injury (Allan & Burrige, 1991; 2006). Taboo body parts, bodily functions and
effluvia, sexual acts are among the most censored areas in Farsi. It seems that a
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particular religion based version of morality has enormously influenced the degree
of abandonment. Religious jargons (which are Arabic borrowed terms) have
provided a rich source of linguistic substitutes for the topics deemed taboo. For
example, ―aalat‖ (tool), ―posht‖ (behind), ―jelo‖ (front) are used to
euphemistically refer to ―sexual organs of either male or female‖, ―ass‖ and
―female sexual organ‖ respectively. More examples are as follows:
―Seda‖ (sound) refers to ―fart‖ seks (sex) refers to sexual intercourse
―Madfou‖ (what comes out) refers to ―faeces‖
―refleks‖ (reflex) refers to ―vomit‖
Most of Iranian females usually say ―I‘m not feeling well‖ or ―I‘m sick‖
when they want to talk about their monthly period.
Stylistic marker
A large number of euphemisms are not responding to taboos, rather they
have more positive connotations and seem to be more appropriate in a particular
context. So, euphemism interacts with style and each certain style defines the set
of euphemisms which are conventional within that style (Allan & Burridge,
2007). Accordingly, these kind of euphemisms result from the speaker‘s stylistic
considerations to maintain politeness in the conversation; stylistic euphemisms are
utilized to promote the denotatum, for they carry more positive connotations.
When speaker and hearer don‘t possess equal social status, they attempt not to
cause misunderstanding through picking up an improper style. The first kinds of
words which are euphemized through stylistic euphemisms (or kind words) are
low jobs. In Persian, some occupations are replaced by the superordinate
organization where those people are working for. For example, instead of
―sofour‖ (garbage collector), ―mordeshour‖ (dead washer), a new euphemism
―karmand e shahrdari‖ (municipality clerk) is used. Or instead of ―ashpazi‖
(cooking) as job, ―keitering‖ (Catering) is applied. As a result of changing
attitudes towards jobs, many of jobs‘ names altered into kinder more respectable
names. Right now, the word ―karegar‖ (worker) is not as frequently used as it
used to and is mostly replaced by ―karmand‖ (clerk). A ―farrash‖ (janitor) is now
―baba ye madrese‖ (school‘s dad). Physical and personality traits are also
stylistically changed by means of understatement. For example, ―kammou‖
(having few hair), ―roshanzamir‖ (with a light inside), ―naashenava‖ (not able to
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hear) are used to refer to ―bald‖, ―blind‖ and ―deaf‖ people respectively. In
relation to personality traits many replacements are made in Persian not to
humiliate people‘s unusual features. For instance, “khaas― (especial) is referred to
a crazy person; ―poreshteha‖ (having much appetite) is referred to a person who
eats unusually; ―sade del‖ (simple hearted) is used to refer to a stupid and naïve
person; ―gheirati‖ (having manly biases which is a component feature of Iranian
men) instead of a ―dogmatic person‖.
Doublespeak
All of what have been presented so far as euphemisms were to avoid
threatening participants‘ face by hiding the unpleasant aspects of a taboo topic or
applying words with more positive connotations to fit in words with their style of
use. But a euphemism can be used to mislead or deceive the audience; this way it
becomes a doublespeak. According to Lutz (1989) its real intent is at variance
with its apparent intent. It is language designed to alter our perception of reality.
This particular function of euphemisms plays an important role in distorting
political and military realities through magnifying trivial matters, understating
significant problems and reducing the precision; that is why they are appropriately
called ―cosmetic words‖. In the communication made through doublespeak,
speaker (person in power) has direct access to realities and information and the
audience (usually ordinary people) receive the information via the version that
they have presented. ―circumlocution‖, ―Jargon‖ and ―gobbledygook‖ are three
popular techniques of building doublespeak. Constructing fake concepts like
―doshman‖ (enemy), ―tahajome e farhangi‖ (cultural attack) are among the most
popular concepts which each Iranian is born with. It fabricates an unknown and
invisible enemy which has established a base right behind the borders and cruelly
intends to take everything valuable and sacred they possess from them. Moreover,
this enemy is to demolish our nation‘s identity and culture. In Iran there is a
especial police which is called ―gasht e amniat e ejtemaie‖ (social security
patrol),this police promotes social security through patrolling in city streets,
stopping girls and women and fining them for what is believed to be ―bad hijabi‖
(having an improper hijab). Police also interrogate the criminals by ―bazjooi e
fannipolisi‖ (technical-police interrogation) and rarely anyone can resist it. If you
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happen to break a law while driving, you are not ―fined‖ but you are given a
“barg e ekhtariye‖ (a note paper); any kind of arrest without legal or court
permission is called ―hamle ye ghafelgirane‖ (unexpected attack).
The government needs to design more pleasant words to force people to
pay more or to tolerate more; last year the government performed a program to
remove the subsidies and called it ―hadafmandkardan e yaraneha‖ (making
subsidies purposeful) and hiding the most immediate consequence of this
program, that is, inflation and steady price increasing. People are also invited to
―contribute to the country‘ prosperity ―by paying more taxes. In the realm of
business, second hand items or fake brands are called ―tejari‖ (business like) or
―estok‖ (in stock); this way they never lose customers and those items still have
the chance of being sold. Sometimes when reality is blurred words are employed
for specific ideological purposes as Palestinians‘ suicide bombing attacks are
interpreted as ―amalyat e shahadattalabane‖ (martyrdom-wanting operation).

1. Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge. 1991. Euphemism and Dysphemism:
Language Used as Shield and Weapon. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
2. Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge. 2006. Forbidden Words: Taboo and The
Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Bakhtiar, M. 2012. ―Communicative Functions of Euphemisms in Persian‖.
The Journal of International Social Research. 5/20.
4. Brown, P. & Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage.
5. Kay, P and W. Kempton. 1984. ―What is the Sapir-Whorfhypothesis?‖
American Anthropologist, 86: 65-79.
6. Lutz, William. 1989. Doublespeak. New York: Harper and Row Publications.
7. Rawson, H. 1981. .A Dictionary of Euphemism and Other Doubletalk. New
York: Crown.

1. If a language uses a term equivalent to English mother to cover MoSi,
MoBrDa, and MoBrSiDa, and a term equivalent to English sister to cover
FaBrDa, FaFaSi, and FaSi, what hypotheses might you be tempted to make
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concerning differences between the family structure of speakers of such a
language and your own family structure?
2. A language like English makes use of ‗natural gender‘; German and French
employ ‗grammatical gender‘; and Chinese does without either. What do such
facts tell us about the ‗world-views‘ of those who speak English, German,
French, and Chinese?
3. Many people in the world are completely bilingual or even multilingual in
languages with very different structures. Consider this fact in relation to the
Whorfian hypothesis. What are some of the implications? How might you
attempt to test these experimentally?
4. Is euphemism needed? Why or Why not? Is the choice of euphemism
influenced by culture? Explain!
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CHAPTER 10
SOLIDARITY AND POLITENESS
10.1 Solidarity
Solidarity is a social term which is used to show familiarity, intimacy or
closeness between people. However it is difficult to measure the social distance
between people because there are various factors determining their social distance.
So we have to consider: (i) how much experience they have shared; (ii) how many
social interactions they have had; (iii) how many social characteristics they share
(e.g. a shared religion, social class, sex, age, region of origin, race, occupation,
interest etc); and (iv) how close to each other they are willing to get.
One of the widely popular examples in the discussion of ―solidarity‖ is the
distinction of T/V pronouns. The T/V pronouns are the tu and vous forms in
French, that is the ―familiar‖ tu and the ―polite‖ and plural form vous. Other
languages with a similar T/V distinction (as cited in Wardaugh 2006) are Latin
(tu/vos), Russian (ty/vy), Italian (tu/Lei), German (du/Sie), Swedish (du/ni), and
Greek (esi/esis). English, itself, once had such a distinction, the thou/you
distinction. However, nowadays the pronoun ―thou‖ is no longer used in the social
interaction using English.
According to Brown and Gilman (1960:25), the T/V distinction began as a
genuine difference between singular and plural. However, a complication arose,
which they explain as follows:
In the Latin of antiquity there was only tu in the singular. The
plural vos as a form of address to one person was first directed to
the emperor, and there are several theories . . . about how this may
have come about. The use of the plural to the emperor began in the
fourth century. By that time there were actually two emperors; the
ruler of the eastern empire had his seat in Constantinople and the
ruler of the west sat in Rome. Because of Diocletian‘s reforms the
imperial office, although vested in two men, was administratively
unified. Words addressed to one man were, by implication,
addressed to both. The choice of vos as a form of address may have
been in response to this implicit plurality. An emperor is also plural
in another sense; he is the summation of his people and can speak
as their representative. Royal persons sometimes say ‗we‘ where an
ordinary man would say ‗I.‘ The Roman emperor sometimes spoke
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of himself as nos, and the reverential vos is the simple reciprocal of
this.
The consequence of this usage was that by medieval times the upper classes
apparently began to use V forms with each other to show mutual respect and
politeness. However, T forms persisted, so that the upper classes used mutual V,
the lower classes used mutual T, and the upper classes addressed the lower classes
with T but received V. This latter asymmetrical T/V usage therefore came to
symbolize a power relationship. It was extended to such situations as people to
animals, master or mistress to servants, parents to children, priest to penitent,
officer to soldier, and even God to angels, with, in each case, the first mentioned
giving T but receiving V.
Symmetrical V usage became ―polite‖ usage. This polite usage spread
downward in society, but not all the way down, so that in certain classes, but
never the lowest, it became expected between husband and wife, parents and
children, and lovers. Symmetrical T usage was always available to show intimacy,
and its use for that purpose also spread to situations in which two people agreed
they had strong common interests, i.e., a feeling of solidarity. This mutual T for
solidarity gradually came to replace the mutual V of politeness, since solidarity is
often more important than politeness in personal relationships. Moreover, the use
of the asymmetrical T/V to express power decreased and mutual V was often used
in its place, as between officer and soldier. Today we can still find asymmetrical
T/V uses, but solidarity has tended to replace power, so that now mutual T is
found quite often in relationships which previously had asymmetrical usage, e.g.,
father and son, and employer and employee.
Brown and Gilman‘s (1960:263) study of how upper-class French,
German, and Italian youth described their use of T/V forms clearly indicates the
importance of solidarity over power. They observe as follows:
The many particular differences among the three languages are
susceptible of a general characterization. Let us first contrast
German and French. The German T is more reliably applied within
the family than is the French T; in addition to the significantly
higher T scores for grandfather and elder brother‘s wife, there are
smaller differences showing a higher score for the German T on
father, mother, wife, married elder brother, and remote male
cousin. The French T is not automatically applied to remote
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relatives, but it is more likely than the German pronoun to be used
to express the camaraderie of fellow students, fellow clerks, fellow
countrymen abroad, and fellow soldiers. In general it may be said
that the solidarity coded by the German T is an ascribed solidarity
of family relationships. The French T, in greater degree, codes an
acquired solidarity, not founded on family relationships but
developing out of some sort of shared fate. As for the Italian T, it
very nearly equals the German in family solidarity and it surpasses
the French in camaraderie. The camaraderie of the Italian male,
incidentally, is extended to the Italian female; unlike the French or
German student, the Italian says T to the co-ed almost as readily as
to the male fellow student.
Because solidarity is so important, it sometimes falls on one party to
initiate the use of ―T‖. Brown and Gilman (1960:260) explain how such a change
may be initiated, i.e., the change from asymmetrical T/V or polite V/V to mutual
―T‖:
There is an interesting residual of the power relation in the
contemporary notion that the right to initiate the reciprocal T
belongs to the member of the dyad having the better power-based
claim to say T without reciprocation. The suggestion that solidarity
be recognized comes more gracefully from the elder than from the
younger, from the richer than from the poorer, from the employer
than from the employee, from the noble than from the commoner,
from the female than from the male.
The above quotation clearly shows that solidarity is much influenced by power
and distance. The interesting part of all this is how and when people decide to use
one form over the other.
Furthermore, someone‘s status in society or their social closeness or
solidarity to another person is also reflected in the physical distance between
speakers. It is safe to say that, in most cases, the physical distance between
speakers is proportional to social distance, so that people who feel ―close‖ to each
other socially, generally stand physically nearer to each other in conversation than
people who are not close, or if there is a difference in their power relationships.
What varies, often from culture to culture, is the distance that is
appropriate for a particular degree of solidarity. For instance Arabs generally set
the distance much lower than Americans. It is not strange to see two men who
have a close relationship holding hands while walking down the street. This is
only suggestive that they know each other well as friends. In America, the
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distance between people, even people who are close, is much greater. A person
will always give even his closest male friend about an arm-length of space. The
distance is of course greater if the person does not know the other person.
Another similar situation exists for what we call someone using his or her
name. If we do not know someone‘s name, we tend to use the polite form of
address ―Sir‖ or ―Miss‖, or for an older woman ―Mam‖. In the case if we know
what they do for a living, we tend to address them Doctor, Professor, Colonel, Mr.
President, etc. For example, when we saw a man dropping his keys, we might say
―Excuse me Sir, I think you dropped your keys‖.
In an English introduction, in formal settings, for example for business
purposes, we usually use the most polite form of a name with a title, and often
include the first name. So we say ―Mr. Adam Smith, I am Ms. Sarah Kelly, your
new business partner‖. In another situation, in all formal communications, the two
speakers might use the title followed only by their last names ―Mr. Smith‖ or ―Ms.
Kelly‖. This may change, however, as the two people get to know each other, and
one of them gives the other person a ―cue‖ that it is okay if they wish, to become
more informal—this is a switch to a more solidarity based relationship. A cue
might be ―Oh, call me Smith‖, or ―Oh, call me Kelly‖. Or, it may be subtler.
Perhaps one of them writes the other a letter and signs it Adam—this often
happens in e-mail correspondence. The other person may then address them by
their first name in the next letter. These examples suggest that the agreement
between the speaker
Moreover, a whole society undergoing social change is also likely to show
that change in the way people address each other. One such society is modern
China. The Communist Party of China has promoted the use of ―comrade‖ to
replace all other titles of power, such as the titles of address for ―boss‖, i.e. the
equivalents of ―director‖, ―manager‖, ―chief‖, and honorific titles such as the
equivalent of ―mister.‖ The party wants to put everyone on an equal footing
through encouraging the use of an address form that implies no social or
economic differences and unites all politically. Comrade is a term intended to
invoke solidarity.
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The most obvious names that show solidarity are the use of first names and
nicknames. Sterling (2000) says:
When you are on a first name basis with someone, while it can
often be for the sake of convenience, it is also a sign that you feel
some level of familiarity with them. In fact, it is really the first step
to beginning any kind of closer relationship. Nicknames or pet
names, show a particularly high level of solidarity. When you allow
someone to call you by a ―special‖ name you are acknowledging a
special level of solidarity. If you do not have that level of
solidarity, using a pet name can be considered extremely rude.
Besides, a person also has a role-based name within his or her family. That
name in English may be father or son, mother or daughter, grandmother,
grandfather, husband, wife, cousin, aunt, etc. Each name has a level of power and
or solidarity that is part of that name within the family structure. Older brother
usually has more power than younger sister. Dad usually has more power than
son. Brother has more solidarity than cousin, depending on the culture. In Nuer
society, a tribe from Sudan, a person can have several names: (i) a personal name
or birth name, given by the parents; (ii) a second name, given by the maternal
grandparents; (iii) a social name, when a child becomes an adult; (iv) a clan name
used only in wedding ceremonies and initiations; and (v) an ―Ox‖ name chosen by
the person to suggest some triumph in war or sport or hunting and used by friends.
All of these names are used at different times by different people.
In short, solidarity is a linguistic term which shows the intimacy or the
familiarity among the people. Solidarity has close relationship with ―power‖ and
―politeness‖ (discussed in the next sub-chapter). Culture also plays important
roles to show solidarity in the language usage.
10.2 Politeness
Politeness is one of the interesting topics in the learning of sociolinguistics
because it much influences the society to describe its definition. Politeness in
using language must be conducted in a society. Unlike grammatical structures
which can be easily judged only from how they are formulated or constructed. In
term of politeness, we cannot say someone is impolite or polite when he doesn‘t
interact with another person.
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As human beings, we can avoid having a relationship with others. The
main instrument used to make relationship with others is, undoubtedly, language.
Again, in communication with language, the choice of expression is important
because two or more people involved. Through our choice of pronominal forms
when a distinction exists in the terms of addresser and addressee, we can show our
feelings toward others – solidarity, power, distance, respect, and so on – and our
awareness of social customs. Such awareness is also shown through the general
politeness with which we use language. Politeness itself is socially prescribed.
This does not mean, of course, that we must always be polite, for we may be quite
impolite to others on occasion. However, we could not be so if there were no rules
of politeness to be broken. Impoliteness depends on the existence of standards, or
norms, of politeness. Therefore, the term politeness and impoliteness depends on
the social context. There will be no term of politeness or impoliteness in language
usage, before it is used in conversation.
Some languages seem to have built into them very complex systems of
politeness. One of the languages that pay much attention to the use of polite
language is Javanese. Javanese, one of the principal languages of Indonesia, is a
language in which, as Geertz (1960:248) says ―it is nearly impossible to say
anything without indicating the social relationship between the speaker and the
listener in terms of status and familiarity‖. Javanese language seems very
complicated. Many aspects should be considered before producing utterance.
Before one Javanese speaks to another, he or she must decide on an appropriate
speech style: high, middle, or low. Such a decision is necessary because for many
words there are three basic distinct variants according to style. For example, the
equivalent to the English word ―now” is “samenika” in high style, ―saniki” in
middle style, and “saiki” in low style. You cannot freely shift styles, so the choice
of “saiki” will require the speaker to use ―arep” for the verb equivalent to “go”
rather than “adjeng” or bade”, which would be required by the choices of “saiki”
and “samenika”, respectively.
In English, the word ―please‖ seems to show politeness; however, it isn‘t
always considered as politeness. For example, when we speak with our close
friend, the use of the word ―please‖ is not very important since we, as a speaker,
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and our friend, as an interlocutor, feel it too formal to speak with the word
―please‖. Therefore, we usually ignore the word ―please‖, but it doesn‘t mean that
we never show politeness to our friends. Therefore, the term politeness much
depends on the situation where the conversation takes place or the participants
involved in the conversation.
The Japanese are also always described as being an extremely ―polite‖
people. Martin (1964) has summarized some of the ways in which the Japanese
use language to show this politeness: honorific forms incorporating negatives
(analogous to English ―Wouldn‘t you like to ……….?) are more polite than those
without negatives; the longer the utterance the more polite it is felt to be;
utterances with local dialect in them are less polite and those with a few Chinese
loan words in them are more polite; you are more polite to strangers than to
acquaintances; your sex determines your use of honorifics, with men
differentiating more than women among the available honorifics. Whereas
knowledge of honorifics is associated with education, attitudes towards using
them vary with age. Politeness is most expected when women address men, the
young address the old, the members of the lower class address members of the
upper class.
In Indonesian language, the term politeness in language much depends on
the addresser and the addressee. One expression is considered polite depends on
to whom that expression is addressed. The expressions ―Bersediakah anda datang
ke pesta ulang tahun saya?‖ (Would you please come to my birthday party?) or
―Jika ada waktu, saya mengharapkan anda dapat datang ke pesta ulang tahun
saya.‖ (If there is a chance, I wish you would come to my birthday party) are not
always considered polite. The politeness itself depends on the conversation
context. It will be fine if a student who wants to invite his teacher to come to his
party uses those expressions, or an employee who invites his manager. In other
words, it can be said that those expressions are used only in formal conversation.
On the other hand, it will sound strange if those expressions are used by
someone who wants to invite his friends. Instead, they will say ―Datang ya ke
pesta ulang tahun saya.‖ (Come to my party). They will be much happier if they
are invited by using that expression. However, the term politeness does not
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involve the difference between sexes, like what happens in Japanese language,
since Indonesian address both male and female by the same expression. The term
politeness in Indonesian language is based on the level of age and social level.
In everyday conversation, for example, there are ways to go about getting
the things we want. When we are with a group of friends, we can say to them, ―Go
get me that plate!‖, or ―Shut-up!‖ However, when we are surrounded by a group
of adults at a formal function, in which our parents are attending, we must say,
―Could you please pass me that plate, if you don‘t mind?‖ and ―I‘m sorry, I don‘t
mean to interrupt, but I am not able to hear the speaker in the front of the room‖.
In different social situations, we are obligated to adjust our use of words to fit the
occasion. It would seem socially unacceptable if the phrases above were reversed.
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), politeness strategies are
developed in order to save the hearers‘ ―face‖. Face refers to the respect that an
individual has for him or herself, and maintaining that ―self-esteem‖ in public or
in private situations. Usually you try to avoid embarrassing the other person, or
making them feel uncomfortable. Face Threatening Acts (FTA‘s) are acts that
infringe on the hearers' need to maintain his/her self esteem, and be respected.
Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing with these
FTA‘s. What would you do if you saw a cup of pens on your teacher‘s desk, and
you wanted to use one, would you
a. say, ―Ooh, I want to use one of those!‖
b. say, ―So, is it O.K. if I use one of those pens?‖
c. say, ―I‘m sorry to bother you but, I just wanted to ask you if I could use
one of those pens?‖
d. Indirectly say, ―Hmm, I sure could use a blue pen right now‖.
There are four types of politeness strategies, described by Brown and
Levinson (1987), that sum up human ―politeness‖ behavior: Bald On Record,
Negative Politeness, Positive Politeness, and Off-Record-indirect strategy. If you
answered A, you used what is called the Bald On-Record strategy which provides
no effort to minimize threats to your teachers‘ ―face‖.
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If you answered B, you used the Positive Politeness strategy. In this
situation you recognize that your teacher has a desire to be respected. It also
confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses group reciprocity.
If you answered C, you used the Negative Politeness strategy which
similar to Positive Politeness in that you recognize that they want to be respected
however, you also assume that you are in some way imposing on them. Some
other examples would be to say, ―I don‘t want to bother you but...‖ or ―I was
wondering if ...‖
If you answered D, you used Off-Record indirect strategies. The main
purpose is to take some of the pressure off of you. You are trying not to directly
impose by asking for a pen. Instead you would rather it be offered to you once the
teacher realizes you need one, and you are looking to find one. A great example of
this strategy is something that almost everyone has done or will do when you
have, on purpose, decided not to return someone‘s phone call, therefore you say,
―I tried to call a hundred times, but there was never any answer‖.
―Politeness‖ seems to be very important principle in language use; we
must consider others‘ feelings. In using a language, we make use of the devices
that language employs to show certain relationship to others and our attitudes
toward them. Indeed, to use language properly, we must do so. In using French
and Indonesian, we cannot avoid the addresser-addressee distinction; in English,
we must refer to others and address them on occasion; in speaking Javanese or
Japanese, we must observe the conventions having to do with the correct choice of
speech level and honorifics, in parliamentary debate we must pay our attention to
the way or attitude while we are speaking. In other words, it can be said that the
politeness does not take place if there is no conversation. For some occasion,
some expressions are considered polite, but not for some others. It is quite
possible that we may not like what we must do and find the demands made either
onerous or undemocratic, or both. It is also possible that such systems will change
over a period of time, but that kind of change is slow and, when it does occur not
at all easy. There seems to be little doubt that language use and certain aspects of
social structure are intimately related. The exact nature of that relationship may
continue to intrigue us.
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10.3 Address Terms
How do you name or address another? By title (T), by first name (FN), by
last name (LN), by a nickname, by some combination of these, or by nothing at
all, so deliberately avoiding the problem? What factors govern the choice you
make? Is the address process asymmetrical; that is, if I call you Pak Indra, (Mr
Indra), do you call me Amir? Or is it symmetrical, so that Pak Indra (Mr Indra)
leads to Pak Jufri (Mr Jufri) and Amir to Anto? All kinds of combinations are
possible in Indonesian: Pak Indra, Indra Rustam, Indra, Bapak, Ibu, Dokter Andi,
Pak Dokter, Bu Dokter, Dokter, Abang, Kakak, and so on. Pak Indra (Mr Indra)
himself might also expect Pak or Bapak (Sir) from his students, Papa (Dad) from
his son, Abang (Brother) from his younger brother or sister, Sayang (Dear) from
his wife, Indra from his friend. However, he might be rather surprised if any one
of these is substituted for any other, e.g., ―Maaf Sayang, saya mau menanyakan
tentang sosiolinguistik‖ (―Excuse me, dear, I want to know about
sociolinguistics‖) from his student.
What I mentioned above are some examples of how address terms are used
by people in Indonesia which are different from other languages, e.g. English.
Address terms are terms we use to address other people which are much
influenced by the culture to which we belong. In this book, I would like to discuss
address terms used mostly by American and European based on the research done
by Eleanor Dickey. Dickey (1996) did a research in which the data concerned two
types of interaction, that among family members and that among students and
faculty in academic institutions.
Family interaction
Within families the main divisions in usage appeared to follow
generational lines. Family members of a younger generation than the speaker were
almost always addressed by first name (FN), a nickname, or a term of endearment.
Reference to younger family members was also by FN (or nicknames), regardless
of the person to whom the speaker was talking at the time the reference was made.
It appeared that nicknames used in address were also employed in reference by the
same speakers, but the data on this point were not extensive. It was also possible
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for parents to have names for young children which did not occur in address and
were used only between the parents. Such names were generally unflattering.
Only one other type of reference emerged, from an informant who reported that
she sometimes referred to her two older children as brother and sister (not your
brother or your sister) when speaking to the youngest child. She did not use these
terms when speaking to the older children about their younger sibling.
Family members of the same generation as the speaker were also
addressed with FN, nicknames, or (in the case of spouses) terms of endearment.
Terms of endearment were virtually never used in reference, even when they were
standard in address. Same-generation relatives were normally referred to with FN
by speakers addressing members of their own or ascending generations, but with
kinship terms by speakers addressing members of younger generations. The
kinship term used was that with which the younger family member would have
addressed the referent. In the case of addressees who were children, this adaption
to the addressee‘s name for the referent was virtually universal; in the case of
adult addressees it was common but admitted of a number of exceptions. Upon
investigation of those exceptions it usually transpired that forms of reference used
towards that addressee had been different when he or she was a child. In families
where children addressed their elders by FN, no such adaption to the viewpoint of
the addressee in reference was possible, and parents referred to each other by
name when speaking to children. Such families, however, were rare among the
observation data and absent from the interview data.
Family members of ascending generations were normally addressed with
kinship terms. (The term ―kinship term‖ here, as generally in address research,
includes words such as Mum and Dad as well as mother, father, etc.) Speakers
referred to these family members with kinship terms as well; in talking to
members of the same or older generations they generally used the same kinship
terms in reference as they would have used to address the older family member,
but in talking to members of younger generations they tended to use the kinship
term by which the younger relative would have addressed the referent.
There was, however, some individual variation in this category. Although
virtually all the informants addressed their parents with kinship terms, these terms
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were sometimes avoided or modified in reference, especially in families with an
unusual structure resulting from divorce or other causes. Thus it was not
uncommon for children of divorced parents to use different sets of terminology in
the different halves of their families and to employ in conversation with family
members terms such as my mother (kinship terms with possessive modifiers),
which in most families were restricted to conversations with outsiders. Children in
such families were also likely to refer to parents by name despite using kinship
terms in address.
One informant maintained that in her family, which included children of
four different parents, there was a consistent system of address and reference
whereby each child addressed his or her genetic parents with kinship terms and
step-parents with FN; step-parents were referred to by name at all times, while
genetic parents were referred to with kinship terms to addressees for whom these
were also the genetic and}or acting parents and with FN or terms such as my
mother when the referent had no real connection with the addressee. Another
informant addressed her father with kinship terms and referred to him in the same
way within the family in which she had grown up; when talking to his children by
another marriage, however, she used my father or our father. A third informant
spoke one language to her mother and another to her father; she used kinship
terms in one language to address her mother and kinship terms in another
language to refer to her mother when talking to her father.
Despite these variations, the general tendencies of family address were
clear; they are summarized in Table 1
Table 1 Family interaction
Address Form of
Relationship
used reference used Relationship Relationship
between A
from A by A for C in between A and B between B and C
and C
to C talking to B
A>C FN FN A = B, A > B, B = C, B > C,
AC
A=C FN FN A = B, A C
KT 2 A>B B<C
A<C KT 1 KT 1 A = B, A C,
B>C
KT 2 A>B B<C
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In other words, family members were addressed and referred to in the
same way, except in conversations with a relative of a younger generation. In
those cases the term used in reference was generally that which the younger
member of the dyad would have employed in address. Although informants from
different countries obviously differed in specific terms used, there was a high
degree of agreement on the general principle that the same term would be used in
reference as in address unless the speaker was talking to members of younger
generations about their elders. The age of the informants did not seem to make a
difference either, indicating that this principle has remained stable for some time.
Academic interaction
The important dimension in the academic setting was not that of age but of
position in the academic hierarchy, with the basic division being one of teacher
and student. This division was somewhat complicated by the fact that graduate
students could function in both roles, but in most situations graduates usually
operated as one or the other.
Most teachers used FN in addressing their students, regardless of whether
the teachers were graduate students or senior faculty members or of whether the
students were graduate or undergraduate. The exceptions were a few older faculty
members in both Britain and America who reported using title and last name
(TLN) to students, at least until a personal acquaintance was established. A
number of British faculty members used TLN to all students in particularly formal
settings, such as meetings with administrative officials, and those teachers who
normally used TLN to students often switched to FN in informal settings or casual
encounters in which they were not actively engaged in teaching the student.
In reference three main possibilities emerged: FN, TLN and a combination
of first and last name (FNLN). The last of these was often used in cases where
there might be doubt as to the identity of the student under discussion; such cases
do not properly belong to the subject of this study, but they occur very frequently
in real life and so had a tendency to appear in the data despite all efforts to
eliminate them. This fact indicates something also borne out by observation,
namely that FNLN for clarity may be used out of sheer habit even in situations in
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which the identity of the student is clear. These instances are to be distinguished
from the use of FNLN as a compromise between FN and TLN, discussed below.
Otherwise, FN was the most common way for teachers to refer to students,
whether in speaking to colleagues, superiors, or other students. Teachers who
normally addressed students with TLN, however, had a tendency to refer to them
with TLN as well, and situations which were formal enough to require the use of
TLN in address usually required it in reference too. This convergence between
address and reference, however, was not complete, for FNLN could be used as an
intermediate level between FN and TLN in reference, being more formal than FN
and less formal than TLN. In a few instances teachers reported having nicknames
for some of their students, as little Jimmy, the agent of Satan. These nicknames
were not used to address the students and were generally used only in talking to
colleagues about them. In one case, however, a graduate student and her faculty
advisor shared their nicknames for undergraduates. Such nicknames were rare
(although it is possible that they could have been under-reported in the interviews)
and applied only to students who caused the teacher particular stress or suffering.
Graduate students provided a special case of name usage. If a senior
faculty member talked about a graduate student to an undergraduate who would
not be able to address that graduate with FN, TLN or FNLN was used. People of
the same academic status as the speaker (colleagues or fellowstudents) normally
received FN in address. Nicknames were however possible between close friends,
and TLN occurred in certain formal settings and sometimes in Britain between
distant acquaintances at more senior levels. When talking to people of higher
academic status about friends or colleagues, speakers generally used FN in
reference, but FNLN was also common, again because it was perceived to be
more formal than FN. TLN was used in some especially formal settings, such as
large meetings of academic or administrative bodies.
When speaker, addressee, and referent were all at the same academic level,
FN was generally used in reference, but TLN and nicknames were also possible,
particularly if these were the ways in which the speaker normally addressed the
referent. The use of nicknames was somewhat restricted, for a close friend
addressed with a nickname would often be referred to with FN to someone who
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did not have the option of using that nickname. TLN would be used in situations
formal enough to require the use of TLN in address.
There were also a number of alternatives to names in this case. A
particularly British form of reference was the referent‘s initials (used in oral as
well as written communication), but it was also possible to use a title with a
definite article and without the name of the referent (for example, the
vicechancellor), as well as individual nicknames. These alternatives seemed to be
more frequent in Britain than in America, but in both countries they were less
common than FN.
When talking about colleagues to students, teachers tended to use the
names by which the students would be expected to address those colleagues,
usually TLN. This tendency was stronger in the case of undergraduate than of
graduate students; several informants referred to their colleagues with TLN to
undergraduates and with FN to graduates, despite the fact that the graduates
concerned addressed those colleagues with TLN. Other informants, however,
indicated that they made a conscious effort to remember the way that a particular
student addressed a particular colleague and to use that name when talking to that
student.
Some teachers employed FNLN when talking to students about a colleague
whom the students would be expected to address with TLN. These informants
commented that they considered FNLN a compromise, since FN was too informal
and TLN too awkward. The ―awkwardness‖ of reference to colleagues with TLN
was felt especially by very young teachers who were having to refer to their
friends by TLN for the first time; these teachers often used inconsistent patterns of
address, feeling that they should employ TLN but then forgetting and using FN
instead.
Students addressing teachers could use either FN or TLN, depending on
the status of the teacher (graduate student teachers were more likely than
distinguished professors to be addressed with FN), the level of the student
(graduate students were much more likely than undergraduates to use FN),
institutional and departmental norms, and individual preferences on the part of
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both teacher and student. Norms of address were more variable on this point than
on others, and usage in reference was even more diverse than that in address.
When talking to faculty members, students most often referred to other
teachers with FN or TLN, but FNLN was not infrequent, both from students who
used TLN in address and from those who used FN. In the case of FN and TLN
there was a general tendency for students to use the same terms in reference as in
address, but this tendency was less strong than in the other cases we have so far
observed. Occasionally students conversing with faculty members used FN to
refer to teachers whom they addressed with TLN, and this appeared to be due to
the fact that the addressee was referring to those teachers with FN.
Only the graduate students were in the position of talking about a referent
of higher status to an addressee of lower status. Here there was a strong tendency
to use TLN (or, less often, FNLN) in reference, regardless of the form of address.
In cases where all members of the academic community addressed the faculty
member concerned with FN, FN was used in reference as well.
In talking to addressees of equal status about referents of higher status,
speakers used a large variety of terms. FN was prevalent in the case of speakers
who used FN to address the referent, and TLN was common in the case of
speakers who used TLN to address the referent, but nicknames and FNLN were
also frequent. Nicknames and FN were used both by students who employed TLN
in address and by those who employed FN. There was a higher percentage of
nicknames here than in any other category of reference, and one notable feature
was the way that one student could have as many as four or five different ways of
referring to a single faculty member. Sometimes these terms were
interchangeable, sometimes they depended on the addressee, and sometimes they
depended on the level of animosity felt by the student towards the faculty member
at a given moment. Nicknames were by no means always unflattering.
Tension could be observed in situations where one member of a student
dyad addressed a faculty member with FN and the other used TLN; often this was
resolved by the student who used TLN in address switching to FN in reference.
On the other hand one informant reported using TLN to refer to a faculty member
whom she addressed with FN; she ascribed the reason for this usage partly to
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habit (she had only recently shifted to using FN to address the referent) and partly
to a desire to avoid annoying her friends, who did not have the privilege of using
FN, by flaunting it.
Despite the multitude of different usages, there were certain general
tendencies of academic address, which are summarized in Table 2.
Table 2 Academic interaction
Address Form of
Relationship Relationship Relationship
used reference used
between between between
from by A for C in
A and C A and B B and C
A to C talking to B
A>C FN FN A = B, A < B, B = C, B > C,
TLN / FNLN A>B B>C
A=C FN FN A = B, A C
TLN / FNLN A>B B<C
A<C FN FN / FNLN A C,
TLN A>B B<C
FN / FNLN / NN A=B B<C
TLN TLN / FNLN / FN A C
TLN A>B B<C
FN / FNLN / TLN / NN A=B B<C
It thus appears that the prevailing usage among all members of the
academic community was to refer to people in the same way that they addressed
them, unless they took in reference the perspective of an addressee of lower
status. Exceptions to this tendency generally involved nicknames which were used
behind the referent‘s back or an adjustment towards the form of reference used by
the other member of a dyad. The tendency to take the perspective of addressees of
lower status parallels closely the similar tendency in family interaction.
One possible form of reference which appeared very rarely in the
interview data was the last name alone, without a title, as Smith or Jones (LN).
Observation showed that this type of reference was used primarily for men rather
than women and could be applied to superiors, inferiors or equals. In most
contexts, however, its use characterized the speaker as coming from a certain type
of elite background, and for many speakers the issue of whether or not they
wished to signal membership in that type of society appeared to be a primary
factor governing the usage of this term. The data collected on LN usage in this
experiment are insufficient to do justice to this phenomenon, but it would amply
reward further study.
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Nicknames were more noticeable in academic than in family interaction
and came in three varieties: those used primarily in address, those used only in
reference, and those used generally. The first type of nickname indicated intimacy
between speaker and addressee, an intimacy not shared by those speakers who did
not have the right to use the nickname; it was normally used in reference only
between speakers both of whom shared the right to use it as an address. The third
type replaced FN within the community and carried no meaning distinguishable
from that of FN address for other people; this type of nickname also occurred
within the family.
The second type was generally used among close associates to refer to a
person fairly important in their lives, whether because of that person‘s power over
them (nicknames were used more for powerful superiors than for others) or
because of the trouble that person caused them (nicknames for students were
virtually restricted to ones who caused teachers distress).
Parents' alternative names for young children are probably to be put in this
category as well. Nicknames appeared to be more common in academic than in
family interaction, but they were consistently under-reported in interviews (―Are
you going to tell her what I call her?‖ was a common query), and it may be that
the smaller amount of observation data on family interaction has distorted the
evidence on this point.
Nicknames which were diminutives of FN, as Julie or Jimmy, could
function as any one of the three types and were the sort of nickname most likely to
replace FN altogether in the community. Nicknames bearing less relationship to
the person‘s name, such as Juno, Himself, or the fish, were more likely to belong
to the first or second type. As in the case of family interaction, academic
interaction did not show fundamental differences in different countries. Certain
forms were more likely to occur in certain places, and some were apparently
unique to a particular location, but the general principles for when reference forms
differed from address forms and when they remained the same were remarkably
consistent. The same was true of variation due to age; while some older
informants reported having as students used more TLN and less FN to superiors
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than was the norm among current students, there was no difference in the way that
the reference forms of older and younger speakers related to their address forms.

2. Brown, R. and A. Gilman. 1960. ―The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity‖. In
Giglioli (1972).
3. Dickey, E. 1996. ―Forms of address and terms of reference‖. J. Linguistics 33
(1997), 255-274.
4. Geertz, C. 1960. The Religion of Java. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Excerpted in
Wardaugh, R. (2006).
5. Martin, S. 1964. ―Speech Levels and Social Structure in Japan and Korea‖. In
Hymes (1964a).
6. Sterling, Polly. 2000. ―Identity in Language: An Exploration into the Social
Implications of Linguistic Variation.‖ TAMU press. Available at
www.tamu.edu/chr/agora/winter00/sterling.pdf

1. How do we show solidarity in language?
2. When you meet someone for the first time which form do you use?
3. How do you know when to switch to the ―T‖ form?
4. Which form do you use with a colleague at work, maybe a fellow teacher
when you first meet them?
5. What about people who are older than you?
6. How is solidarity different from politeness?
7. What are the address terms used in the family interaction in your culture?
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CHAPTER 11
LANGUAGE AND SEX
11.1 Language, Sex, and Gender

One explanation that can be dismissed relatively easily is Chambers‘
(1995: 132–3) view that women‘s greater verbal abilities are responsible for the
differences. For Chambers then, the differences are sex-based or biological rather
than culturally derived or gender-based. Although there was little recognition or
critical discussion of the notion of gender as a social and cultural construct in
most of the early sociolinguistic literature, sociolinguists often invoked
explanations based on women‘s supposed greater status consciousness, greater
awareness of the social significance of variants, and concern for politeness. When
asked to say which forms they used themselves, Norwich women, for instance,
tended to ―over-report‖ their usage and claimed that they used more standard
forms than they actually did. Men, however, were likely to under-report their use
of standard forms. This led Trudgill (1972) to argue that for men, speaking non-
standardly has ―covert‖ prestige, while the ―overt‖ prestige associated with
speaking the standard variety is more important to women.
Thus, women may be using linguistic means as a way to achieve status
denied to them through other outlets. Since women have long been denied
equality with men as far as educational and employment opportunities are
concerned, these are not reliable indicators of a woman‘s status or the status she
aspires to. Although the marketplace establishes the value of men in economic
terms, the only kind of capital a woman can accumulate is symbolic. She can be a
―good‖ housewife, a ―good‖ mother, a ―good‖ wife, and so on, with respect to the
community‘s norms and stereotypes for appropriate female behavior.
In this sense, the use of the standard might be seen as yet another
reflection of women‘s powerlessness in the public sphere. This interpretation
accorded well with one of the assumptions made by early gender scholars such as
Lakoff (1975), who saw women‘s language as the ―language of powerlessness,‖ a
reflection of their subordinate place in relation to men. The importance of power
rather than gender per se emerged in O‘Barr and Atkins‘s (1980) finding that
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some of the features thought to be part of ―women‘s language‖ were also used by
males when in a subordinate position.
Further examination of the historical context provides ample support for
the association between perceived femininity and the use of standard English. In
the Victorian era ―speaking properly‖ became associated with being female, and
with being a lady, in particular (see Mugglestone 1995). That is why Sweet in
Romaine (2003), for instance, considered it far worse for a woman to drop initial
/h/ in words such as house or heart.
Because a woman aspirant to the status of lady could not attain it
independently, but only through marriage, it was incumbent on her to behave and
speak like a lady. George Bernard Shaw‘s Pygmalion in Romaine (2003) and the
popular musical made from it, My Fair Lady, illustrate the power of accent in
social transformation. Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle is trained by a
phonetics professor, Henry Higgins (based on Henry Sweet), to speak like a
―lady.‖ As long as she pronounces her vowels and consonants correctly, Doolittle
does not betray her working-class East London origins and is indeed received in
the best of society. Doolittle‘s transformation is enabled partly through changes
brought about by the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century Britain which
opened up new avenues for the accumulation of wealth, prestige, and power other
than those based on hereditary landed titles. Thanks to the Universal Education
Act of 1872, there were greater educational opportunities for a wider portion of
the social spectrum. This facilitated the spread of what Wyld (1920) called the
―newfangled English,‖ that is, the newly codified standard. Yet it was not the
highest-ranking social groups of the day but instead the nouveau riche or
bourgeoisie who eagerly sought the refinements the grammarians had to offer, as
signs of their emergent status as educated persons. Good grammar and the right
accent became social capital in an age in which the definitions of ―gentleman‖ and
―lady‖ were no longer based entirely on hereditary titles and land.
Anyone with money, ambition, and the right connections or education
could aspire to be a gentleman or a lady – even Eliza Doolittle. The changing
times brought about a semantic shift in the meanings of the terms gentleman and
lady. Titles once associated with the aristocracy became terms of social approval
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and moral approbation. In a letter to his sister Hannah in 1833, historian Thomas
Macaulay wrote that ―the curse of England is the obstinate determination of the
middle classes to make their sons what they call gentlemen‖ (cited in Trevelyan
1878: 338). Likewise, Sarah Ellis (1839: 107), a contemporary of Macaulay,
commented on the metamorphosis in the meaning of the social label lady brought
about by modern schools:
Amongst the changes introduced by modern taste, it is not the least
striking, that all daughters of tradespeople, when sent to school, are
no longer girls, but young ladies. The linen-draper whose worthy
consort occupies her daily post behind the counter, receives her
child from Mrs. Montagu‘s establishment – a young lady. At the
same elegant and expensive seminary, music and Italian are taught
to Hannah Smith, whose father deals in Yarmouth herrings; and
there is the butcher‘s daughter, too, perhaps the most ladylike of
them all.
It is striking that the daughters of the butcher, the herring seller, and other
categories of tradespeople mentioned would all belong to the upper working class
and lower middle class, precisely those levels within the social hierarchy where
modern sociolinguistics finds the greatest differentiation in male and female
speech (see Romaine 1996).
11.2 The Roles of Men and Women and the Functions of Prestige Varieties
The part played by women or men per se in linguistic innovation as well as
their relation to the standard seems, however, to depend very much on their roles
and the symbolic functions of prestige varieties in the community concerned. Just
as scholars may have erred in assuming sex-based differences to be derived from
social class differences, some may have misinterpreted gender differences as sex
differences. A critical variable is whether women have access to education, or
other institutions and contexts, where standard or prestigious forms of speech can
be acquired and used.
In many contemporary non-Western cultures women are further away
from the prestige norms of society. This is true, for example, in parts of the
Middle East and Africa today, just as it was also true historically in Britain, where
even high-ranking women did not often have as much education as men and were
therefore further away from the norms of the written language. In a study I carried
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out of letters written by men and women to Mary Queen of Scots in sixteenth-
century Scotland, I found a higher incidence among women of non-standard
features of the kind which in other texts were associated with persons of low
social status (Romaine 1982).
Nordberg and Sundgren (1998: 17) also found some interesting patterns of
sex differentiation in relation to age in Eskilstuna. When they looked at the
youngest age group in 1996, they found that the men used slightly more standard
forms than the women, and many more than men in other age groups. In 1967, it
was the oldest men in social groups II and III who used more standard forms than
women. While they comment that the more recent pattern is difficult to explain,
they see the earlier pattern as a reflection of the fact that the oldest women in 1967
were less active outside the home, and thus retained more local features in their
speech.
Nichols‘s (1983) study of the Gullah Creole spoken in parts of the
southeastern United States also revealed that older women were the heaviest users
of Gullah because they worked in domestic and agricultural positions. Older men
worked mostly in construction. Younger people of both sexes had more access to
whitecollar jobs and service positions which brought them into contact with
standard English. Younger women were ahead of the younger men in their
adoption of a more standard form of English.
A more sophisticated understanding of the different functions standard
speech plays for men and women in different contexts has likewise illuminated
our understanding of language change, as well as the connections between race,
class, and sex in the distribution of linguistic variables. Milroy, Milroy, and
Hartley (1994) have found, for example, that glottalization, a long stigmatized
feature of urban varieties of British English with origins in working-class London
speech, is on the increase in middle-class speech in Cardiff. They believe that the
greater presence of glottal stops in female speech has led to a reversal of the
stigma attached to it. Similarly, Holmes‘s (1995a) study of New Zealand English
reveals that young working-class speakers are leading the introduction of
glottalized variants of word-final /t/, e.g. pat. They use more of these variants than
do middle-class speakers, but young women in both the working and middle
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classes are ahead of men. Here we have a case where a once vernacular feature
has changed its status, first by losing stigma, then gaining prestige as a feature of
the new variety. Milroy et al. (1994) suggest that it is the fact that women adopt a
variant which gives it prestige rather than the fact that females favor prestige
forms. In other words, women create prestige norms rather than follow them.
Thus, they are norm-makers, whatever social connotations the forms may
originally have had.
Others have proposed that it may not be so much the supposed prestige
connotations of the standard that attracts women, but the stigma of non-standard
speech that women are avoiding. Although this explanation would not account for
why women would adopt a highly stigmatized feature such as glottalization, when
we look at cases where women have led in shifts to more prestigious languages,
we can see how those aspiring to be ladies had to escape both literally and
figuratively from their status as rural peasants by leaving the land and their
language behind. Modern European languages such as Norwegian,
French, and English became symbols of modernity, in particular of the
newly emergent European nation-states, at the same time as they were associated
with urbanity, finery, and higher social status (see Romaine 1998). In a study
where listeners were asked to identify the sex of children from tape-recordings of
their speech, Edwards (1979) found that boys who were misidentified as girls
tended to be middle-class, whereas girls who sounded like boys tended to be
working-class. Gordon (1994) showed how the clothes and accent associated with
working-class females elicited stereotypical judgments about their morality. One
ten-year-old girl in Edinburgh told me, in answer to the question of why her
mother did not like her to speak ―rough,‖ that is, to use local Scots vernacular
outside the home (Romaine 1984b): ―Well, if I speak rough, she doesn‘t like it
when other people are in because they think that we‘re rough tatties in the stair.‖ I
found clear sex differentiation in the use of certain variables in children as young
as six years in this community.
The standard may also function differently for men and women. In some
communities women use standard speech to gain respect and exert influence on
others. Larson‘s (1982) study of two villages in Norway revealed that while
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women‘s speech was on the whole more standard than that of men, women
produced more features of standard speech when they were trying to get someone
to do something or to persuade someone to believe something. Men rarely used
speech in this way.
This suggests that linguistic choices need to be seen in the light of multiple
roles available to women and men and in terms of the communicative functions
expressed by certain forms used in particular contexts by specific speakers (see
the chapters by Kendall, Thimm, and Wodak, this volume). Naive counting of
variants reveals only a superficial understanding of the relationship between
language and gender. A case in point is the use of tag questions, the subject of
numerous studies sparked by Lakoff‘s (1975) belief that women used more of
them than men. Because many researchers simply counted the number of tag
questions used by men and women without paying attention to either the function
or the context in which they were used, the results were inconclusive on the issue
of whether tags showed gender-differentiated usage (see, however, Holmes 1986).
The same linguistic features can, when used by different persons in different
contexts and cultures, often mean very different things. On closer examination,
there are few, if any, context-independent gender differences in language.
Another methodological bias may derive from the fact that most of the
early sociolinguistic studies were carried out by men and many of the questions
asked of both men and women reflected a masculine bias. For example, in the
New York City study, Labov (1966) asked both men and women to read a passage
ending with a very unflattering comparison between dogs and a boy‘s first
girlfriend: ―I suppose it‘s the same thing with most of us: your first dog is like
your first girl. She‘s more trouble than she‘s worth, but you can‘t seem to forget
her.‖ In other parts of the interview men and women were asked about their words
for different things. Women were asked about childhood games, while men,
among other things, were asked about terms for girls and even on occasion, terms
for female sex organs. Naturally, researchers have since questioned the nature of
the relationship established between male sociolinguists and the women they
interviewed. It is not likely that a discussion of hopscotch would establish the
same kind of rapport between the male interviewer and a female interviewee as
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talk about obscene language would between two men. Holmes‘s (1995b) research
on the amount of talk in single-sex and mixed-sex interviews has suggested that at
least in more formal interaction, members of each sex speak least in situations
they find most uncomfortable.
11.3 Men and Women in Relation to Social Class

The Eskilstuna study demonstrates that language is not simply a passive
reflector of society, it also creates it. There is a constant interaction between
society and language. To expect that language will come to reflect whatever
changes take place in society oversimplifies the complexity of the interface
between language and society. (Note that a similar simplification is behind one
common argument against linguistic reform. We should leave language alone
because once more women become doctors, business managers, etc., linguistic
discrimination will disappear as language comes to reflect the improved status of
women.) In this scenario society has to change first, and that is what triggers
language change.
In trying to account for the increase in sex differentiation and decrease in
social class stratification in Eskilstuna, it would also be a mistake to concentrate
only on women and their changing relation to the standard and the socio-
economic structure, while assuming that the relationship of men to the socio-
economic structure has remained the same. Masculinity is no less a historically
and socially constructed script than femininity. As post-industrial economies have
shifted from being societies organized around industry to ones organized around
electronic technology, they have been characterized by increasing rates of female
employment and male unemployment. Although most western European countries
have experienced far higher rates of unemployment than the USA, even with the
lowest unemployment figures accompanying unprecedented prosperity for some
in the new US economy, millions of men were left behind as old-economy
industries such as shipbuilding and aerospace engineering ―downsized.‖ Massive
corporate restructurings led to the lay-off of millions of white- and blue-collar
workers. The deindustrialization and restructuring of the final decades of the
twentieth century affected huge sectors of industrial America, including not only
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the defense industry, but also steel and auto plants in the mid-West, and
eliminated millions of workers in corporate giants such as IBM, AT & T, and
General Motors. Between 1995 and 1997, for instance, about eight million people
were laid off (Faludi 1999: 52, 60, 153).
Loss of income caused by unemployment has serious and far-reaching
effects, including loss of self-esteem, disruption of family life leading to social
exclusion, as well as accentuation of racial tensions and gender asymmetries. If
sociolinguists are right that male identity is vested more in occupation, once status
and income in the marketplace lose their capacity to define traditional
masculinity, we might expect men to compensate linguistically for the loss of
authority derived from the family breadwinner role. Masculinity in the old
economy organized around industry was defined more generally in terms of
providing for a family, and specifically, with the production of manufactured
goods such as airplanes, ships, and automobiles. Interestingly, Faludi (1999)
characterizes the economic shift from industry to service as one leading from
―heavy-lifting‖ masculine labor to ―feminine‖ aid and assistance. She stresses also
that participation in the Second World War and the Vietnam
War were defining events of different kinds of masculinity for their
respective male generations. Those who fought in the Second World War had a
common mission with a clearly identifiable enemy as well as endorsement by
society at large. While Second World War veterans returned home victorious,
those who went to Vietnam not only did not enjoy broad support at home, but
were also tainted by the stigma of defeat. Those who avoided serving in Vietnam,
either legally or illegally, were branded with the stigma of not having done their
duty.
Class-based approaches to variation have often taken for granted that
individuals can be grouped into social classes based on the prestige and status
associated with occupation, income, and so on, on the assumption that those in the
same group will behave similarly. The case of Nathan B. noted above, however,
shows the need for a closer look at individuals, as do the results of Nordberg and
Sundgren‘s (1998) research in Eskilstuna. Members of the same sex or social
class can have quite different outlooks and orientations toward language and
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different degrees of integration into the local setting. The concept of ―social
network,‖ adopted from anthropology into sociolinguistics, takes into account
different socializing habits of individuals and their degree of involvement in the
local community.
Milroy (1980) applied network analysis to the study of three working-class
communities in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She examined the different types of
networks within which individuals socialized and correlated network strength
with linguistic variables. She devised a measure of network strength which took
into account the density and multiplexity of different network types. For example,
a dense network is one in which the people whom a given speaker knows and
interacts with also know each other. A multiplex network is one in which the
individuals who interact are tied to one another in other ways. Thus, if two men in
a network interact both as workmates at the same factory and as cousins, there is
more than one basis to their relationship with one another.
The results in table 4.3 show how two working-class women, Hannah and
Paula, who live in the same type of housing in the same area of Belfast and have
similar employment, nevertheless behave quite differently from one another
linguistically. Hannah is much more standard in her speech than Paula. Scores for
only two of the eight variables of the study are given here: (th) refers to the
absence of intervocalic th in words such as mother, and (e) refers to the frequency
of a low vowel in words such as peck, which then merges with pack. Higher
scores indicate a more localized or non-standard usage.
Table 1 Two Belfast women compared (percentage of non-standard usage)
(from Milroy 1980)
(th) (e)
Hannah 0 66.7
Paula 58.34 100
The explanation of the difference lies in their differing socialization

patterns. Paula, whose speech is more non-standard, is a member of a local bingo
playing group and has extensive kin ties in the area. Hannah has no kin in the area
and does not associate with local people. In fact, she stays at home a lot watching
TV. In general, those with high network scores indicating the strength of
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association with the local community used more local, non-standard forms of
speech. Those whose networks were more open and less locally constrained used
more standard speech. Networks in which individuals interact locally within a
well-defined territory and whose members are linked to each other in several
capacities, for example as kin, neighbor, workmate, and so on, act as a powerful
influence on the maintenance of local norms. If these networks are disrupted, then
people will be more open to the influence of standard speech. Speakers use their
local accents as a means of affirming identity and loyalty to local groups.
Some patterns of social class stratification are actually better accounted for
as gender differences. In the Belfast study there was in fact one group of working-
class women, who had tighter and denser networks than all the other men and who
also used more non-standard forms than men. Thus, gender differentiation may be
prior to class difference, with some variants being primarily gender- rather than
class-marked. There is, however, a broad link between network and social class to
the extent that middle-class speakers tend to have looser networks than the
working class. Nevertheless, dense networks may also be found at the upper levels
of society, as in Britain, where the so-called ―old boy network‖, whose members
have usually been educated at English public schools (i.e. private schools) and at
Oxford or Cambridge University, gives rise to an equally distinctive speech
variety, RP (received pronunciation). More men than women had dense networks
in Belfast, which suggests an explanation for some of the patterns of sex
differentiation other sociolinguists have found. The network approach has also
been applied in non-Western settings such as Africa and Brazil. Bortoni-Ricardo
(1985) used it in Brazil, for example, to study the extent to which rural migrants
to urban areas assimilated to urban standard speech norms. Change has been
slower for migrant women, who have fewer social contacts than men.
The notion of network is thus more useful than that of social class and it
applies equally well to multilingual and monolingual settings. At a more general
level, we can say that the same kinds of processes must operate on speakers of
different cultures. Dense networks can be found at any level of society, whether it
is among working-class speakers in Belfast, upper-class British RP speakers, or
teenagers in Harlem (see Labov 1972b), to produce a focused set of linguistic
164 | P a g e
norms. Speakers whose norms are more diffuse participate in networks whose
members are geographically and socially more mobile, for example women in
Oberwart and Belfast. In the village of Oberwart, where young women with social
aspirations have been fueling a shift away from Hungarian toward German, the
fewer peasant contacts a person has, the greater the likelihood that German will be
used (Gal 1979).
In non-Western cultures, however, the relationship between gender,
modernity, and mobility may be such that women‘s departures from traditional
community norms are devalued and stigmatized. Keenan (1974) reported such a
case in Madagascar, where it is women who are norm-breakers (see the papers by
Besnier, and Leap, this volume).
The relationship between female speech and social dialects also needs
critical re-examination from a new non-class-based standpoint because men‘s and
women‘s relations to the class structure are unequal. Despite the gains made in the
women‘s movement, women are still concentrated in specific occupations,
particularly in poorly paid white-collar work, and of course housework, generally
unpaid and unrecognized as related to the prevailing economic structure.
It is only within the last few decades since the modern feminist movement
that government departments and academic disciplines such as sociology have
come to see women‘s relationship to social classes as a political issue and a
technical problem for official statistics. Censuses and other surveys rely on a
patriarchal concept of social class, where the family is the basic unit of analysis,
the man is regarded as the head of a household, and his occupation determines the
family‘s social class. Women disappear in the analysis since their own
achievements are not taken into account and their status is defined by their
husband‘s job.
According to the 1971 British census, however, more than half of all
couples had discrepant social classes. The concept of the traditional nuclear
family of man, woman, and children is also outdated. Studies in both the UK and
the USA have shown that even by the late 1960s the majority of families in both
countries were not of this type, and over the past few years government inquiries
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have been mounted expressing concern that the break-up of this family structure
has serious consequences for society (see Romaine 2003).
In a large-scale survey of around 200 married couples from the upper
working and lower middle class in the Netherlands, most of the women in the
sample were actually better educated than their husbands (Brouwer and Van Hout
1992). Nevertheless, more of these Dutch women who worked were in lower-
status part-time jobs. Since level of education correlates well with degree of use of
standard language, if there were similar discrepancies in the other surveys I
mentioned, then this could easily account for the finding that women are closer to
the standard than men.
Another factor seldom considered is the effect of children, with respect to
both employment patterns as well as language use in families. The Dutch study
found that when a couple had children, both parents used more standard language.
One of the reasons why women may adopt a more prestigious variety of language
is to increase their children‘s social and educational prospects. Similar findings
have emerged from studies of language shift, such as Bull‘s (1991) in northern
Norway, where Sami-speaking women tried to raise their children in Norwegian
to enhance their children‘s success in school at a time when all education was in
Norwegian. Interactions between gender, age, and taking care of children require
more detailed study. Older women with no responsibilities for children may also
not be concerned with using prestige varieties.

9. Chambers, J. K. 1995. Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
10. Dickey, E. 1996. ―Forms of address and terms of reference‖. J. Linguistics 33
(1997), 255-274.
11. Faludi, S. 1999. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York:
William Morrow.
12. Geertz, C. (1960). The Religion of Java. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Excerpted
in Wardaugh, R. (2006).
13. Holmes, Janet. 1995b. Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
14. Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and Woman‟s Place. New York: Harper and Row.
15. Martin, S. 1964. ―Speech Levels and Social Structure in Japan and Korea‖. In
Hymes (1964a).
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16. Romaine, S. 2003. ―Variation in language and gender‖. In Holmes, Janet and
Meyerhoff, Miriam (eds.) The Handbook of Language and Gender.
Oxford: Blackwell. Chapter 4: 98-119.
17. Trudgill, P. 1972. ―Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban
British English of Norwich‖. Language in Society 1: 179–95.

1. Chambers (1995: 132–3) says that women‘s greater verbal abilities are
responsible for the differences. What does this statement mean?
2. Trudgill (1972) argues that for men, speaking non-standardly has ―covert‖
prestige, while the ―overt‖ prestige associated with speaking the standard
variety is more important to women. What do ―covert‖ prestige and ―overt‖
prestige mean?
3. Why were younger women ahead of the younger men in their adoption of a
more standard form of language?
4. Mention some differences between men and women in relation to their social
class!
5. Do you find differences when you see the way your male friend and female
friend using the language? Explain!
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CHAPTER 12
PLAYING WITH LANGUAGE
12.1 Introduction
In this chapter we shall consider some uses of language for humorous and
other special effects. Playing about with language is a common activity. Included
in this chapter are the telling of jokes and funny stories, the asking of riddles, the
singing of comic songs and so on. However, it includes all kinds of activities such
as making up nonsense words, giving people nicknames, etc.
It is not the purpose of this chapter to try to offer psychological
explanations of humor but to look at a number of types of playing with language
from a sociolinguistics point of view. We can first consider phenomena which
would not be classified at jokes. Sometimes, these phenomena are meant to have a
humorous effect but sometimes they may be used to create attitudes of friendship
or solidarity or to show attitudes of dislike.
12.2 Nicknames
Nicknames show a particularly high level of solidarity. When you allow
someone to call you by a ―special‖ name you are acknowledging a special level of
solidarity. The term solidarity is closely related to intimacy, i.e. the close social
relation between the speakers. In a dictionary, ―nickname‖ is defined as ―name
added to or substituted for person‘s, place‘s or thing‘s proper name, abbreviation
or familiar form of religious name. This definition is, obviously, not sufficient as
there are a number of aspects which have to be considered as well when looking
at the concept of ―nickname‖. Apart from the actual structuring principles, there
are also the speaker‘s attitude to the nicknamed object as well as the adequacy of
the naming, i.e. the nickname has to be logically acceptable to those knowing the
nicknamed object.
Platt and Platt (1975: 151-2) mention a procedure involving some different
principles in forming nicknames. The first principle is the rearrangement of letters
of the name. Nerts, for example, is a nickname for Mr. Stern. In the same way,
Skram is a nickname for someone with the surname imarks. The second principle
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is the combination of the initials of a person‘s name: CR for Cristiano Ronaldo,
RNR for Rusdi Noor Rosa, etc. The thrird principle is the combination of the
initials of a person‘s name as a word. For example, Jep is a nickname for a person
whose name is Joni Eka Putra. The fourth principle is the formation somehow
based on the other name (sometimes popular name). This means that the name
does not have explicit relationship with the ―real name‖ of a person. For example,
Ike is a nickname of President Eisenhower; Ming, the first syllable of the Scottish
pronunciation of the name Menzies, is a nickname of a former Australian prime
Minister. The fifth principle is the addition of /i:/, spelt y or ie to a person‘s
surname such as Smithy for Smith or Johny for John. However, Platts note some
restrictions for this principle: the name must be monosyllabic and must end in a
consonant. The sixth principle is using rhyme or assonance or some other
resemblance such as Dim Sin for Jim or Mr. Hamburger for Mr. Hausberger. The
seventh principle, the last principle, is the extension of a person‘s name.
Fieldmouse, for example, is a nick name which is extended from the person‘s
name Field.
Furthermore, in addition to the principle mentioned above, many cases of
nicknaming show quite clearly the attitude that the ―namer‖ (who is not
necessarily the speaker) had when the name was first used, e.g. Cuddles,
Honeybun, and Birdie, would generally suggest a favourable attitude of the
speaker/namer. On the other hand, Beerguts, Old Misery, and The Butcher, would
generally be indicative of a negative attitude. Prosodic features need to be taken
into account as they often indicate whether the original meaning of the concept is
intended or a reversal of it. For example, by giving certain prosodic features, the
following apparently derogatory nicknames could be used quite affectionately:
Stinker, Faceache, Fatso. Moreover, it is necessary for a nickname to be, for some
extent, appropriate for the nicknamed object. For example, a very tall, mascular
person may be called Lofty or (using the technique of opposite) Shorty, but Fatty,
Fatso, Tubby would not be appropriate.
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12.3 Puns
Puns can be found everywhere in modern society, and it is difficult to
imagine advertising, sitcoms, and even comedy without them. Punning has been
described as the lowest form of wit and humor, but it has nonetheless continued to
pervade both literary and popular culture for generations. The definition of pun
given in most high school classrooms is ―a play on words‖, and while this is
perfectly right, it is so general as to be vague and largely unhelpful. After all, what
does the phrase ―play on words‖ mean? To remain somewhat general while
introducing a technically more accurate and useful definition, Yale (2010) defines
a pun as ―the intentional confusion or conflation of a word or phrase with another,
based on similar sounds, resulting in the attribution of inappropriate and
humorous meanings to the word or words in question‖.
Let us look at the simple example from contemporary advertising is the
product name ―Quackers‖. Just reading the word, we can quickly see what is
going on, and what the product might be: ―Quackers are crackers shaped like
ducks‖. Here, the company has found a similar sound in the word cracker and the
work quack, and combined them to make a new word, ―Quackers‖. Puns have to
work on two levels, and this word accomplishes that because it combines the
sound a duck makes with the word crackers, resulting in a word that expresses
both ducks and crackers. Also, since ducks quack, even though it is not a proper
English word, we can imagine that they could be referred to as ―quackers‖, that is,
things that quack.
In addition, puns often exploit homonyms (two words that sound identical
but which carry different meanings and spellings) because the sound similarity (as
mentioned in the long definition above) is perfect. For example, we might end a
story about a dog being rescued from an abandoned mineshaft by a miner with the
sentence ―As Fido leapt from the man‘s arms into the bright open air, everyone
cheered; they knew they had all been witnesses to a miner miracle‖. The pun here
relies on the homonyms miner and minor, the first referring to the person who
works in a mine, the second to something small or of relatively little importance.
Both of these meanings are appropriate here, since the rescue was completed by a
miner in a mine, and since the rescue of a dog (especially considering how much
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more important the rescue of people in a mine would be) is a relatively minor
accomplishment. This pun becomes even more effective because it employs a
commonly used phrase, ―minor miracle‖. This phrase is used to describe an
outcome which, while not truly miraculous or impossible, is still positive and
unlikely. The rescue is a minor miracle in the usual sense, as well as a miracle
performed by miners, so the pun works to bring both levels of meaning together.
Note that in cases like these, the way the word is spelled is important. If the word
had been spelled ―minor‖ like it usually is in the phrase ―minor miracle‖, the pun
would not have been so obvious, since we expect this kind of phrase. By changing
its spelling in context with the word miracle, however, the pun stands out, and
causes us to consider both meanings.
Gruner (1997:131) differentiates three major types of puns, which are the
homograph, the homophone, and the double-sound pun. The first type of puns,
homograph, according to Stein (1961: 216), is ―a word of the same written form
as another, but of different origin and signification‖. In more operational
definition, Gruner (1997: 131) states that the homograph ―employs a word or
words with two or more meanings‖. These different meanings are expressed by
identical words:
―Who was the first man to bear arms?‖
―Adam. He had two.‖
In this example, the noun ―arms‖ is used as a pun because in the question it
stands for ―weapons‖, whereas in the answer it stands for the ―human limbs‖. In
this example, Gruner uses a homonym (a form identical in spelling and
pronunciation) of which only one meaning is appropriate to the joke‘s context so
that the other meaning serves to express incongruity.
The second type of puns, homophone ―combines two words of different
meanings and spellings but which sound alike‖. As an example, Gruner (1997:
132) uses the following:
―What is black and white and red (read) all over?‖
―A newspaper.‖
―A bloody zebra.‖
The example above provides homophone of ―red‖ and ―read‖. Both of the words
are pronounced similarly, but they have different spellings and meanings.
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Whereas the first answer ―A newspaper‖ refers to the meaning of the irregular
past participle form of the verb ―to read‖, the second answer ―A bloody zebra‖
refers to the adjective ―red‖. Humor derives here from the phonological identity of
both words.
The last type of puns is double-sound pun, which is considered to be more
complicated because it ―can be a word that puns on a pun‖ (Gruner 1997:132). He
provides as an example the word ―punnery‖, which is a pun on ―nunnery‖. It is
interesting to see that Lederer (1988) used the same ideas in the title of his work
Get thee to a punnery, which deals in detail with all sorts of puns and their
differentiation.
So we can conclude that puns consist of an intentional confusion of similar
words or phrases for a humorous rhetorical effect and have to do with
misinterpretation and misunderstanding, and can often display an aggressive
effect. Norrick (2003:1348) also refers to the last-mentioned point of aggression
by noting that ―punning as a type of word play may function either to amuse or to
verbally attack‖. But normally, puns should enhance rapport and make the talk
enjoyable for all the speakers. Nilsen and Nilsen (2000:239) state that ―the best
puns are those that fit so well into a conversation that they increase the level of
understanding for those who catch on without interrupting the conversation‘s flow
for those who miss the point‖. Often, one pun leads to another and can relax a
serious topic so that it develops amusement and enjoyment. An example in which
a pun is used to interrupt serious talk, can be found in Isaac Asimov‘s Treasury of
Humor (1971:160):
Some years ago, New York‘s Third Avenue elevated railway was
taken down. Visiting the city some time later to lunch with an
editor, I was amazed to note the unaccustomed nakedness of the
vista when I faced east.
Thoughtfully, I said to my lunch companion, ―Third Avenue
reminds me of Christmas‖.
Surprised, he said, ―Why?‖
―No el,‖ I said.
In this example, the basis for the successful pun that we find in the last line
is already laid in the first line when the speaker mentions the ―elevated railway‖.
At this point, nobody is conscious of the importance of this expression. The use of
the term ―No el‖ in the last line refers to the first line. It serves as an abbreviation
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for ―No elevated railway‖, but also for the French word for ―Christmas‖, which is
―Noël‖. This double meaning explains the other person‘s statement that Third
Avenue reminds him of Christmas. This example also shows how different society
or culture may have different interpretation of a particular term; therefore, puns
must be semantically incompatible in social context.
12.4 Jokes
Jokes are all of verbal expressions that can make laughter. Jokes are
sometimes identical with lies, but they are not. St. Augustine in Sanders (1995)
says:
Jokes should never be accounted lies, seeing they bear with them in
the tone of voice, and in the very mood of the joker, a most evident
indication that he means no deceit, although the thing he utters be
not true. . . .A person should not be thought to lie, who lieth not.
This idea is supported by Sanders (1995) who says, ―Jokes, though untrue, were
not sins since we don‘t expect them to be true‖. This means that the lies can be
measured when the expressions are expected to be true. Jokes are delivered just
for fun, not to get the truth.
Jokes are social activities because through jokes a person may be able to
build up a close, warm relationship with others. The ability of telling jokes may
also act as one of characteristics of friendliness and hospitality. These facts prove
how jokes are parts of the social interactions. Furthermore, jokes have many
societal aspects. Linguistic features of jokes, according to Platt and Platt
(1975:162), are closely related to contextual features such as ethnic background,
sex, and age of interlocutors. Besides, jokes are also related societal attitudes to
certain religious and ethnic groups. This means that jokes are much influenced by
the social factors.
―Ethnic joke‖, for example, contains phonetic features which are closely
integrated with attitudes to certain ethnic groups and appropriateness of situation.
Ethnic joke is not only shared within groups to establish the superiority of the
members of a group, however. As Leveen (1996) points out, ―four basic
combinations of joke relationships exist: (i) a group member telling a joke to
another member; (ii) a member telling a joke to a nonmember; (iii) a nonmember
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telling a joke to a member; and (iv) a non-member telling a joke to a non-
member‖. Each of those four relationships may regulate which jokes are told, and
it may change the purpose and the effect of the joke. Non-members of a dominant
culture or group telling jokes to other non-members have the highest chance of
expressing hostility and criticism; members telling jokes to other members of the
same group have the highest chance of being self-laudatory or only mildly critical.
In fact, the same joke may be told in different settings with different
effects. Consider the following joke collected in the South before the civil rights
movement changed voter registration requirements that were often contrived to
prevent blacks from voting. A black man is attempting to register to vote in
Mississippi. He quickly passes the literacy test which the registrars give him. So
the registrars confer for a moment and give him a Chinese newspaper, asking him
if he knows what the headline means. ―Yeah, I know what it means,‖ he replies,
―It means niggers don‘t vote in Mississippi again this year‖ (Leveen 1996). If that
joke is told among whites, it might be told with pride at the successful ruse which
kept undesirables from voting. If the joke is told among African-Americans, it
would express bitterness, hopelessness and grief.
Now, let us see how jokes are made, i.e. jokes‘ internal structures. Jokes,
as cited in Hockett (1960) have three different components: (i) build-up, (ii) pivot,
and (iii) punch line. The ―build-up‖ forms the body of the joke. It is the sentence
which introduces the joke and presents the orientation and much of the
complicating action. Then, the ―pivot‖ signifies the word or phrase around which
the ambiguity is created. Finally, the ―punch line‖ serves to conclude the joke and
often introduces ―a conflicting point of view or a new scene entirely‖, as Norrick
explains in his work (1989:118). The punch line therefore represents a surprise
effect for the audience and is responsible for their amusement and appreciation,
normally expressed in general laughter.
To clarify the structure, let us see an example from Alexander (1997:42):
After waiting for half an hour in a Soho restaurant the customer
called over to the waiter: ―How long will my spaghetti be?‖ he
asked. ―How should I know‖, replied the waiter.
―I never measure it.‖
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The three components of the internal structure can be seen in the example above:
―After waiting for half an hour in a Soho restaurant the customer called over to
the waiter:‖ is a build up of the joke; ―How long will my spaghetti be? he asked.‖
acts as a pivot; and ―How should I know‖", replied the waiter. ―I never measure
it.‖ is a punch line of the joke.
The build-up consists here of the orientation section and much of the
complication action. It informs the recipient about a customer who is waiting for
his spaghetti in a restaurant. His question ―How long will my spaghetti be?‖
represents the pivot of the joke, because the waiter misinterprets the question. The
waiter‘s answer forms the punch which concludes the joke. It serves as its
resolution.
The joke mentioned above also contains some structures of narrative as
defined by Labov (1972b). There is an orientation and a complication unit, which
is represented by the build-up, and there is a resolution, which is represented by
the punch line. According to Sacks (1974:337), the joke structure is similar to the
form of a story. He describes joke telling as being composed, as with stories, ―of
three serially ordered and adjacently placed types of sequences‖. The three
sequences are called the preface, the telling, and the response sequence. The
telling of a joke normally concludes with a punch line that builds its response
sequence. So the punch line serves to conclude the joke and is intended to cause
laughter which in turn emphasizes the recipients‘ understanding and appreciation
of the joke. But Sacks points out that not every recipient has to laugh.
Eventhough Labov and Sacks argue that jokes are similar to narratives, it
is important to realize that not all jokes are necessarily narrative. There are also
jokes which are not narrative in their form, such as riddle jokes which will be
dealt with in detail in the following section.
12.5 Riddles
Riddle is another type of playing with language that may cause laughter.
Riddle can represent a further form what jokes can take. Shultz (in Chapman and
Foot 1977:19) defines riddles as ―a form of humor which is somewhere between
problem solving and the appreciation of jokes; it‘s a problem whose solution
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evokes a good deal of pleasure and humor‖. The solution of the riddle generally
elicits laughter through its incongruity. The unexpected and surprising end forces
the recipients to figure out the way in which it really makes sense. Often the
recipient has to detect linguistic ambiguity to resolve the incongruous element.
This process justifies the categorization of riddles within the incongruity-
resolution model.
Green and Pepicello (1979) define the riddle as a humorous form that is:
(i) based on the question-answer format; (ii) potentially solvable
from the information included in the question, if the riddle is able
to determine the witty devices for confusion employed in the
riddle; (iii) solvable by virtue of participation in a cultural system
(i.e., shared language, world view, and tropes); and (iv) placed in a
conventional locus within a particular tradition in a performance
context. So a riddle consists of a short question and answer
exchange between two people. It is important to mention that its
purpose is not for the recipient to give the answer. Normally, the
answer is provided by the person who asked the riddle unless the
recipient has already heard the joke before.
Originally, the riddle started as a word game which was formulated in
rhyme, as shown in an example taken from Geller (1985:71):
Riddle me, riddle me
riddle me ree,
I saw a nut cracker
up in a tree.
What the riddle describes is a squirrel. It is interesting to analyze the structure of
this riddle as far as the repetitive pattern in the first two lines is concerned. The
humorist repeats the same term three times before adding the nonsense syllable
―ree‖, which is necessary to complete a regular rhyme scheme. Neither example is
funny in the real sense. It is only the wordplay and their strict rhyme schemes
which are responsible for the amusement of the readers and the listeners. In the
latter example, humor derives from the play on the word ―nut cracker‖ which is
used as a riddle word for the solution ―squirrel‖. Moreover, it represents at the
same time a sort of absurdity and is thus covered by the incongruity theory. The
absurdity can be found in the idea of a ―nut cracker‖ sitting up in a tree.
Roberts and Forman (1972) say that there are relationships between the
incidence of riddles and certain cultural variables such as strong responsibility
training (of children), high political integration, the use of oaths, and games of
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strategy. They also list some cultures according to riddling as presented in the
table 1 below:
Level of Using Riddles The Number of Cultures
Definitely having riddles 71
Indeterminate 13
Definitely absent 3
Unreported 110
Moreover, they mention that in some cultures, there are riddling contests.
However, they do not give any classification of riddles themselves nor the
sequencing in riddle play.
According to Platt and Platt (1975: 156), the sequencing of riddles is
typically like the following:
Interlocutor A Interlocutor B
Asks riddle Cannot give answer
OR
Supplies ―correct‖ answer Gives ―wrong‖ answer
OR
Should credit B Gives a ―right‖ answer not
previously known by A
OR
Credits B Gives ―right‖ answer

1. Bauman, R. and J. Sherzer (eds.). 1974. Explorations in the Ethnography of
Speaking. London: Cambridge University Press.
2. Geller, L. G. 1985. Wordplay and language learning for children. Illinois:
National Council of Teachers of English.
3. Green, T.A. and W.J. Pepicello. 1979. ―The folk-riddle: a redefinition of
terms‖. Western Folklore 38: 3-20.
4. Gruner, C. R. 1997. The game of humor: a comprehensive theory of why we
laugh. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
5. Norrick, N. R. 1989. ―Intertextuality in Humor‖. Humor 2: 117-139.
6. Platt, J. T. and H. K. Platt. 1975. The Social Significance of Speech: An
Holland.
7. Roberts, J.M. and M.L. Forman. 1972. ―Riddles: Expressive Models of
Interrogation‖. In Gumperz and Hymes (1972).
8. Yale, D. R. 2010. The Art & Craft of Punning. New York: A Healthy
Relationship Press LLC. Available at http://custompapers.com/writing-
tutorial/pun/
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1. Do you know any types of nicknaming in other languages? Are there any
particular patterns of nicknaming? Do these relate to attitude towards the
nicknamed persons or things?
2. We have given examples of nicknaming of people. Are there patterns of
popular names or abbreviated names for places in some particular regions?
3. What are the ways of making good puns? Do they depend only on phonic
matters?
4. What ethnic groups are joked about in your area? Give examples. Are there
distinctions on a scale of ―kind – unkind‖ in those jokes regarding different
groups?
5. How are puns different from riddles?
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CHAPTER 13
SOME FINDINGS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS RESEARCHES
The previous researches on sociolinguistics have a very significant role in

the science development, especially in the field of sociolinguistic studies. They
provide new insights for the readers about the phenomena taking place in the
society nowadays that contribute to the improvement of their social interactions.
They also provide various helpful ideas that can inspire everybody who wants to
do the other researches. Then, the other researches may continue or expand the
previous researches that have been limited to certain purposes. Besides, the next
researches may also focus on the other parts which have not been studied in the
previous researches. This chapter lists some findings or results of the researches
that have been reported.
13.1 Language, Dialect and Society

The first study on language, dialect and society mentioned in this book is
taken from the work, a doctoral research, done by Su Kim Lee (2001). She set out
to investigate the impact of the English language on the construction of the
sociocultural identities of a selected group of ESL learners in Malaysia. Using a
qualitative research approach, 14 Malaysian participants were interviewed using
critical ethnography research methods proposed by Carspecken (1997), personal
narratives and a questionnaire. The findings reveal that in a multicultural, post-
colonial society like Malaysia, identity issues are complex and multi-layered.
Identity shifts take place frequently in strategic and non-strategic ways, and
identity constructions of the participants are heavily dependent on the localized
contexts. The participants possess a range of diverse identities depending on the
contexts and the reference groups they are interacting with, and have to subtly
manage the complexities of their multiple identities in order to fit in or belong to
the group they were interacting with.
The findings revealed that within certain contexts, it is the non-use rather
than the use of the English language that enhances conformity and acceptance.
Using the English language within certain contexts where there is resentment
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towards the English language may bring about hostility, marginalization and even
alienation. Effective acquisition of the English language then acquires a new
meaning as an effective user in post-colonial multicultural societies means
someone who knows not just how and when to use it but also when NOT to use it .
The findings also reveal that knowing English affects identity in non-interactive
ways: it offers the user a certain ―neutrality‖ as it frees the user from the cultural
and moral stance of one‘s native tongues, and allows the user a means of direct
self-expression other than the mother tongue. Participants reported that knowing
English makes a person more ―open-minded‖, allows access to alternative views
and ideas, and facilitates a more reflective and critical attitude towards one‘s own
culture.
The second study was done by Wendy Baker, David Eddington, and
Lindsey Noy (2007) entitled ―Dialect identification: The effects of region of
origin and amount of experience‖. This study examines whether two factors,
region of origin (i.e., being from either Utah, Western states, or non-Western
states) and amount of experience (having less than 1, more than 1 but less than 5,
or over 5 years living in Utah), influence how well listeners are able to distinguish
between Utah and non-Utah speakers and what phonetic characteristics they use
to do so. The results suggest that the more similar the listener‘s dialect is to Utah
English, the better their ability to identify Utah speakers. Moreover, it was found
that listeners from Utah use less stereotypical characteristics of Utah English for
identifying Utahns from non-Utahns; those from the Western United States and
other locations use more. This study also demonstrates that listeners with more
experience with Utah English are better able to identify Utah speakers than those
with less experience. These findings are also examined in light of stereotypical
perceptions of both Utah English and the phonetic characteristics examined in this
study.
Another study was done by Julie M. Groves (2008) entitled ―Language or
Dialect—or Topolect? A Comparison of the Attitudes of Hong Kongers and
Mainland Chinese towards the Status of Cantonese‖. This study has investigated
the attitudes of three groups of Chinese (Hong Kong Cantonese speakers,
Mainland Chinese Cantonese speakers, and Mainland Chinese Putonghua
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speakers) towards the status of Cantonese as a language or dialect. The two most
significant findings relate to the research question of this study: The attitude
differences between the three groups towards Cantonese as a language or dialect,
and whether reclassification of Cantonese as a topolect would match the
respondents‘ concepts of Cantonese better than the traditional language-dialect
choice.
Based on her findings, she draws two important conclusions of her
research. The first conclusion is the mainland Putonghua speakers‘ opinions
conformed much more to the common view that Cantonese is a dialect. However,
the Cantonese speakers challenged the pervasiveness of this traditional belief,
with only two-fifths to half the Cantonese mainlanders and from half to three-
quarters of Hong Kongers clearly preferring the dialect label. While some
differences in attitude between groups had been anticipated, the high status given
to Cantonese by the Mainland Cantonese speakers in particular was unexpected.
In sum, attitudes vary much more widely than has previously been acknowledged
in the literature. The Putonghua speakers‘ attitudes are relatively ―classic‖ and
more conservative than the Cantonese speakers, especially the Mainlanders, who
hold much more divergent views. Apart from this obvious difference between the
groups, there were more subtle differences in the reasons behind their choice of
classification, and their perceptions of sociolinguistic features. The varied
perspectives held by each group can be traced to their different political and
linguistic situations, which touch issues of identity.
The second conclusion of this study results from the attitude differences
found between the groups. The subjects‘ uncertainty in classifying Cantonese on a
language-dialect continuum scale seems to reflect a problem with applying
Western terms and concepts to a Chinese cultural context, and is rooted in the fact
that the concepts of language and dialect (and fangyan) are socially, not
linguistically determined. Consequently, the Chinese term fangyan defies exact
translation into English; Mair (1991:15) contends that ―fangyan and dialect
represent radically different concepts‖. Therefore the term topolect is
recommended instead. It can be incorporated into Bell‘s Sociolinguistic Typology
between classical and vernacular, exactly halfway between language and dialect
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on the ―scale of social prestige‖. It fits the evidence more faithfully with respect to
both linguistic and sociolinguistic factors, including crucial Chinese political and
cultural considerations. Most importantly for this study, it matches the research
data, including both the respondents‘ concepts of fangyan and the fact that a
considerable number of respondents chose a neutral, mid-point classification of
Cantonese.
Another study on language and dialect was done by Brahim Chakrani
(2011) entitled ―Covert Language Attitudes: A New Outlook on the
Sociolinguistic Space of Morocco‖. This research was done to find the empirical
evidence from the Moroccan contact situation to challenge the current theoretical
understanding whereby local languages, such as Standard Arabic (SA), are
presented as iconic of local identity and synonymous to cultural authenticity,
while French, the excolonial code, is portrayed as imbued with status-bearing
traits and is aspectual of modernity. The results of this study show that the social
reality of the Moroccan linguistic landscape does not support the theoretical
understanding of covert language attitudes toward Standard Arabic (SA),
Moroccan Arabic (MA), and French. In fact, these results show that the current
linguistic realities in Morocco challenge the uniformly dichotomous portrayal of
French as representing status traits, while SA and MA are iconic of solidarity
traits. Based on the matched-guise test, the Moroccan sociolinguistic ecology is
far too complex to be captured within a model that views status and solidarity as
the only plausible organizing dynamic for these codes. In fact, the ideology of
modernity is accelerating the acculturation of French lifestyle within Morocco.
The ideology of modernity is limiting the appropriation of SA and MA to
the ascription of overt prestige, which allows French to compete for in-group
solidarity. The results of the present study show, contrary to standard orthodoxies,
that languages do not cluster neatly into the status and solidarity paradigms, but
are competing to index both. This necessitates a revision and reanalysis of the
dynamic and distribution of language attitudes in terms of colonial ideologies and
local influences, where each code's exclusive legitimacy and dominance in a given
domain is continually being contested, negotiated, and policed. These results
show that unless Morocco and other Arab states actively change language policies
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to widen the scope of the use of SA beyond the official and inject modern
attributes to local languages, such as SA, MA and Berber, they will likely decline.
Unless SA is placed as a global language, French will persist as a dominant
language in higher education, business, and foreign affairs, with English as its
only potential contender in the present, globalized Morocco.
13.2 Lingua Franca

Another study which was done under ―Lingua Franca‖ topic was done by
Alessia Cogo (2010) entitled ―Strategic Use And Perceptions Of English As A
Lingua Franca‖. This study has attempted to give an idea of current research in
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), basing it on two recent research projects
concerning the strategic use and perceptions of ELF. As to the strategic use,
speakers show that they can use ELF in their own ways by also drawing on their
shared multilingual repertoires. They perform sophisticated strategic behavior to
enhance understanding, create supportive and cooperative communication and
display community membership in discourse. Effective interactional work is
carried out through various strategies in a supportive manner, so that meaning is
explored, clarified and eventually understanding is promoted. In other words, the
findings suggest that these speakers are appropriating English for their own
purposes, they are signaling their identities through the language and creatively
making use of it.
In terms of ELF perceptions, the findings are generally positive: priority is
attributed to effective communicative skills, rather than English native speaker‘s
(NS) correctness, and ELF speakers were seen as fluent and confident. However,
the results also show a certain ambiguity in respondents‘ comments: on the one
hand, they are aware that ―good English‖ and ―almost perfect fluency‖ are
themselves value judgment that result from a native speaker ideology, but, on the
other, they comment favorably on their foreign accents.
The orientation towards NS fluency as the yardstick against which ELF
performance should be measured is still pervasive. The lay perceptions of fluency
and competence expressed in this study also refer to an idealised version of
individual, native-like, fluency, which is not contextually sensitive. However, on a
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more positive note, it seems that young multilingual participants are more
receptive towards ELF‘s emphasis on difference rather than deficiency, and its use
and negotiation of speakers‘ shared repertoire and are even starting to look down
on NSs of English for their pervasive monolingualism. This also takes us to a
view of ELF which is complementary to studies of bilingualism and
multilingualism, where this medium of communication is used not instead of other
linguistic resources, but works together with those to achieve certain
communicative aims. These also involve the construction and negotiation of
knowledge, the expansion of meaning, and, last but not least, the purpose of
rapport-building and identity construction in contexts of linguistic and cultural
diversity.
In conclusion, future research in this field must take into account both the
use and perceptions of ELF in specific communities of practice. In this paper, I
have provided a brief overview of these areas from two communities of practice
constituted by linguistic professionals: the first of language teachers, the second of
language students. More indepth ethnographic studies of different communities of
practice, both linguists and nonlinguists, are needed to capture both the situated
use and the sociolinguistic practices of these communities. Moreover, since
scholars have argued the key role that language attitudes play as a basis for
intervention in language policy and planning, it is essential that future
recommendations in language policy and language education, especially at the
European level, take into considerations the latest developments in this field.
Findings from my own research, and others mentioned before, have shown how
multilingual Europeans are appropriating English and how language contact
among them is leading to language change. This, together with positive
perceptions of European ELF and attitudes towards it, makes a strong case for an
acknowledgement of ELF in European policy and its effective integration in the
multilingual European ecology.
The other study on lingua franca was done by Sabine Fiedler (2011)
entitled ―English as a lingua franca – a native-culture-free code? Language of
communication vs. language of identification‖. This study has shown that ELF
interactions contain a considerable amount of phraseology. It demonstrates that a
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lingua franca can also serve expressive purposes. People want to be expressive
and creative when they communicate, even in a foreign language, and phraseology
because of its imagery and its connotative potential is a means of achieving this.
In addition, pre-fabricated speech has a processing advantage over productively
generated language, which holds true for native and non-native speakers. We have
seen that ELF speakers use culture-specific L2 expressions and transfer
phraseological units associated with their own mother tongues and cultures into
English to express identity. Furthermore, there are uses of phraseology that might
be called ELF-specific, as they result from the particular character of
communication, in an L2, especially from the lexical gap interactors experience.
In sum, phraseology in ELF is used according to speakers‘ communicative needs.
On the one hand, this result is unexpected, as general descriptions or
opinion about ELF include the notion that this form of English lacks idioms and
metaphors. For example, Kecskes (2007: 213), in his study of formulaic language
in ELF, finds that ―lingua franca communicators avoid formulaic language‖. He
explains this with the fact that conversational routines and formulas require shared
background knowledge, of which ELF users do not have much.
On the other hand, this result does not come as a surprise, and this is for
two reasons. First, a number of ELF researchers have recently shown that
phraseology is relevant (e.g. Prodromou 2007; Seidlhofer & Widdowson 2007;
Pitzl 2009). Prodromou (2007: 23) compares idiomaticity to a ―minefield‖;
nonnative speakers ―are penalized‖ for not using idioms correctly, as he says. In
contrast to this, Pitzl (2009), in her article on metaphor and idioms argues that
formal deviations are not to be seen as errors, but as linguistic innovations that
fulfill a variety of communicative functions. Working on the basis of the Vienna-
Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), she gives examples of ELF
speakers who transfer idioms from their L1s into English in order to bring their
native culture into the discourse and discusses the use of existing English idioms
differing in form as well as the coining of new expressions.
Second, research that has been done into lingua franca communication in
planned languages throws some light on the phenomenon. Esperanto speakers
make extensive use of phraseology. There are parallels with some of the features
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of ELF that were described above, such as the techniques applied to secure
intelligibility. Creative-innovative language use in Esperanto, which constitutes
the culture of the speech community, is certainly favored by the flexible syntax
and the productive word formation system of the planned language and certain
inherent linguistic possibilities for the construction of language-dependent humor.
Above all, however, it results from the fact that there is no native speaker of
Esperanto in the sense of a norm-providing corrective. This gives the speakers of
the planned language the opportunity to be productive and creative in a self-
confident way.
The more ELF is seen as a form of English ―in its own right‖ (Jenkins
2007), detached from native speakers and their norms, the richer and more
independent the use of phraseology will be in ELF interactions.
13.3 Diglossia and Code

J. Sneddon (2003) did a research on diglossia in Indonesia. The finding of
this research shows that all the characteristics of diglossia listed by Ferguson are
applicable to Indonesian, except those relating to diachronic context (literary
heritage and stability), which have not been considered. The only difference is
that in Indonesian there is a continuüm between the H and L extremes, at least in
the speech of educated Jakartans. While there is a continuüm, a series of discrete
stages cannot be identified; rather, as the social situation becomes more formal, H
elements appear more and more frequently, though at an unpredictable rate, there
being considerable variation in the speech of different individuals.
While some writers have regarded rigid separation of H and L as an
essential characteristic of diglossia, Ferguson (1991) acknowledges a continuüm
in his four defining languages and others have commented on a continuüm in
Arabic. There thus appears no good reason to exclude Indonesian solely because
of the continuüm; on the contrary, the concept of diglossia provides an excellent
framework for description of the Indonesian sociolinguistic situation.
Hüdson (1991:13) states that rigid compartmentalization is perhaps a
necessary prerequisite for long-term maintenance of a diglossic situation. While
research is needed into the origins of diglossia in Indonesian the present situation
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has been in existence since before independence, its origins certainly lying in part
in the choice of High (Riau) Malay as the language of education in the nineteenth
century. As to how long the present situation will last one can at present only
speculate. In some domains where H was once the rule elements of L are
becoming more common. Television dramas depicting real life are increasingly
inclined to have characters use more natural informal language, as are some
publications, particularly those for young readers.
This trend has already been commented on by some researchers. Adelaar
and Prenrice (1996:678) write of colloquial Jakartan Indonesian. It has become a
prestige dialect among the urban elite in Jakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia. It
often serves as an informal counterpart to the formal and stilted official
Indonesian on which it exerts a strong influence. Jakartan Indonesian is
increasingly being used in popular literature, comics, popular songs and
performing arts.
Militating against the spread of L is the fact that all education is strictly in
H. Nevertheless, this could change. As mentioned, large sections of the
community feel alienated from the formal language. If authorities ever conclude
that the national interest would be better served by a more positive attitude to
colloquial speech, as advocated by Harimurti Kridalaksana, the result could well
be a major shift away from H in the education system, which would have
profound consequences for the future of the language.
Until the present there has been no study of the gradual intrusion of
elements of L Indonesian into siruations formerly closely associated with H nor of
official attitudes to this development. Study of such phenomena could well give
valuable insights into future trends.
Another study was done on code mixing. Margaret Deuchar (2005) did a
research entitled ―Minority Language Survival: Code-mixing in Welsh‖. The main
objective of this research is to determine which structural pattern of code-mixing
is predominant in Welsh-English code-mixing. To achieve this objective, she used
a quantitative adaptation of Muysken‘s typological approach to code-mixing as
the technique of data analysis. The finding of her research has shown that
insertion is the dominant pattern in a preliminary analysis of Welsh-English data
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from informal conversation. This is the pattern predicted on the structural grounds
of typological distance between Welsh and English as well as the extralinguistic
grounds of a postcolonial situation. Some evidence for congruent lexicalization
was found as a secondary pattern, and is compatible with other features reflecting
prolonged language contact.
Another research is about code-switching. Cecilia Montes-Alcalá (2005)
did a research entitled ―Dear Amigo: Exploring Code-switching in Personal
Letters‖. Given the small scope of the present study, one can only hope that more
research be carried out in this less-explored area in order to be able to extrapolate
these results to the Spanish-English bilingual population. However, when
analyzing personal letters and notes exchanged among bilingual individuals, there
are a few evident conclusions. First, the results of this research are consistent with
those found in Anacta‘s work. Although the socio-pragmatic functions considered
are not identical, in both studies code-switching emerges as a valid strategy
among educated bilinguals to communicate in writing. Second, both of the initial
hypotheses are reaffirmed. It has been revealed that those individuals who
normally code-switch when speaking will do so when writing. Moreover, the
findings have shown that even those subjects who usually do not engage in oral
code-switching will shift languages when writing to another bilingual speaker.
Hence, a third conclusion emerges as the speculation that while code switching
has often carried a social stigma in oral production, such stigma does not seem to
obtain in informal (private) written communication. It appears that in this
medium, that is by definition supposed to be removed from society—i.e. not
observable by others—code-switching serves also as an in-group, more intimate
code.
Despite the different backgrounds of the subjects analyzed, and despite the
variety of degrees and types of bilingualism displayed, a common feature in all of
them was their ability to manipulate the two languages for both stylistic and
communicative effects. Thus, another conclusion of this study is the fact that these
bilingual individuals possess sufficient linguistic and cultural knowledge of the
nuances of both Spanish and English, and that their writing exposes specific social
and stylistic functions similar to those attested in oral code-switching. This should
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not come as a surprise, given the nature of this type of texts, which constitute a
sort of dialogue between two bilingual individuals, much like in oral conversation.
Last but not least, we have observed how biculturalism plays a central role in
code-switching. Therefore, referring back to the aforementioned quote by
Zentella, we can now broaden it by claiming that not only should bilinguals not be
forced to give up any of their languages, but also none of their cultures.
Another study involves both code mixing and code switching. Mónica
Stella Cárdenas-Claros and Neny Isharyanti (2009) did a study on code under the
title ―Code switching and code mixing in Internet chatting: between ‗yes‘, ‗ya‘,
and ‗si‘ a case study‖. The findings of their research show that Indonesian
participants shifted code more often than Spanish speaking participants. While
Spanish speakers switched code 116 times, Indonesians switched code 174 times.
This result is interesting, considering that the number of exchanges of the
Spanish-speaking participants is longer than the Indonesian ones (1935 lines,
9113 words vs. 1035 lines, 4119 words). A closer look at the data indicates that
most code alternation was triggered when participants used the function of the
language ―confirming‖. This can be explained by the phonetic similarity between
Indonesian and English ―yes‖, ―yeah‖, and ―ya‖ if compared to ―yes‖ and ―Si‖ in
Spanish.
The personalities and individual interests of the researchers can be
considered as factors that may have influenced the results of the study. While the
Indonesian researcher tends to be more inquisitive and asks many questions at
once, the Spanish-speaking researcher tends to follow turn taking conventions.
This fact could explain the difference between the percentage of researcher-
initiated code switching occurrences that were not followed by the participants in
both languages (22 % for Spanish and 49% for Indonesians). Also, while the
Spanish speaking researcher is academically-oriented and has a passion for
reading and swimming – two highly individual activities – the Indonesian
researcher has interests in more group oriented activities like band playing, sports,
and computer social networking. These individual interests are somehow reflected
in the topics selected from participants of each cultural background. Spanish-
speaking participants talked about academic-related topics and used the function
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of the language ―asking questions‖ during their chatting conversations. In
contrast, Indonesian participants preferred to talk about non-academic topics, such
as sports and sharing their feelings in the chatting activities. Topics such as sports
and academic matters that were not shared by the participants from both linguistic
backgrounds also reflect the individual interests the participants have.
Interestingly, participant-initiated code switching is higher for Latin
Americans (72% compared to 36% for Indonesians). Most of the code switching
was done from Spanish to English when academic topics were discussed. It seems
that the shared academic background with two of the participants with the
researcher can account for this.
Most words used for saying goodbye such as ―bye‖, ―see you‖, and ―talk
to you later‖ as well as computer-related terms such as ―email‖, ―PC‖, and
―attachment‖ have been borrowed from English by both languages and their use
has spread rapidly. Evidence of this is that Spanish and Indonesian speaking
participants whose linguistic and cultural backgrounds are different use them
indistinctly. Topics such as relationships and friendships initiated by the
researchers that did not trigger code change seem to reflect the participants‘
tendency to use their first language when it comes to intimacy.
Regarding code mixing categories, a possible explanation for the number
of insertion occurrences compared to the number of occurrences of alternation and
congruent lexicalization might be that inserting a word from one language to
another requires minimal competence at a lexical level, whereas for alternation
and congruent lexicalization individuals need to fully master the language at
grammatical and semantic levels. Moreover, given the chatting characteristics of
the MSN Messenger program where written language follows the features of
spoken language (short sentences, grammatically incorrect sentences, individual
words used in response to complete utterances, among others), the possibilities for
categories such as alternation and congruent lexicalization to occur are limited.
Moreover, neither language shares marked grammatical structures with English.
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13.4 Language Change
Erika Sólyom (2004) did a research on language change entitled ―A
Sociolinguistic Study of Shifting Formalities in Hungarian Urban Discourse‖. The
results of the preliminary interviewees (both with customers and service
providers) seems to support her original hypothesis, i.e. with the advent of a more
westernized economic structure, in the post-1989 Budapest public discourse, there
appears to have been a shift from formal to a more informal language use.
Although the attitude tests were not conducted in the form of questionnaires, it
appears from the interviews that people have strong reactions to this change.
While the younger generation is more neutral, older people, especially women,
find this shift rude, irritating and unacceptable. Of course, the small sample of the
preliminary interviews and the accompanying qualitative analysis limits
generalizations about all the aspects of this linguistic change. On the other hand,
however, her ethnography does not seem to support her original hypothesis
insofar. The qualitative analyses of the participant observation of the past months
do not point into a new direction, where common or familiar discourse is winning
popularity. This poses an intriguing contradiction for this research.
In sum, this linguistic transformation from formal to informal discourse
may be closely linked with globalization as well as the ongoing democratic
changes taking place in Hungarian society. Although the effects and general
tendencies of globalization are without question noticeable both on societal and
linguistic levels, countercurrents of anti-global tones are also present and there is
still a definite thread of local traditional values and reminiscence of styles of the
former years. They may have an influential effect on language as well. The
simultaneous embracing and rejecting of the global influence is an interesting
paradox.
13.5 Euphemism
Rommayasin Kaosa-Ad (2009) did a research on euphemism entitled
―English Euphemism as Used by Native Speakers of English and of Thai‖. The
findings of this research are presented following the objectives of the study.
Regarding the first objective, to survey the use of English euphemisms by both
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native-speakers of English and the Thais, 20 copies of an open-ended
questionnaire asking about the use of euphemisms were distributed to the
informants of this study, ten English native-speakers and ten non-native speakers
who were instructors at state universities in Thailand. In all, 561 euphemisms
received from the two groups were analyzed based on their frequencies of
occurrence.
With regard to the second objective, five types of euphemistic words—
shortening, remodeling, circumlocution, semantic change, and borrowing—were
categorized. The most frequently used type in both groups was semantic change
which accounted for 85.47% of the answers of the native-speakers of English and
88.96% of the Thai‘s answers.
Finally, in regard to the third objective, the English euphemisms acquired
from the two groups were analyzed and compared. It appeared that the English
native speakers and the Thais had a similar collection of euphemisms. For
example, euphemisms found used by both groups were almost the same. These
were euphemisms referring to buttocks, man‟s outer sexual organ, bosom, fat,
feces, short, die, stupid, and handicapped.
Another study on euphemism was done by Mohsen Bakhtiar (2012) under
the title ―Communicative Functions of Euphemisms in Persian‖. His findings
show that Persian speakers apply euphemisms to meet different communicative
intentions. Except for doublespeak which is considered as a distinct
communicative function of euphemisms, Farsi speakers employ euphemisms to
prevent from mentioning a taboo area in their culture. Although some of these
euphemistic expressions are utilized to mitigate a fear based taboo like death,
most of euphemisms in Persian are used to consider the face wants of participants
in a conversation where no fear of physical harm is involved and their
commitment to politeness is the primary motivating factor for using them. In
some other function, euphemisms are used in Persian to mark different styles from
euphemistic to thoroughly dysphemistic. Here, euphemisms are not a response to
taboo words but they are considered words with more pleasant and positive
connotations and seek to promote the denotatum of words to fit in a particular
context. Finally, in Farsi like most other languages, euphemisms can be used as
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means of deceiving ordinary people and making them believe in altered realities.
Doublespeak is used in Persian to accept a specific version of ideology as the real
one and the true one.
13.6 Solidarity and Politeness

The research on solidarity we quote in this section was a research done by
Merril Silverstein and Vern L. Bengtson (1997) entitled ―Intergenerational
Solidarity and the Structure of Adult Child–Parent Relationships in American
Families‖. In this analysis they have capitalized on the conceptual model of
intergenerational solidarity (1) to develop a multidimensional typology of adult
intergenerational relations in American society, (2) to develop a nomenclature to
describe five empirically generated types, and (3) to examine individual and
social-structural characteristics that differentiate the types.
They have drawn on modified-extended models of the family to
incorporate latent forms of intergenerational attachment in describing family
relationships. While they propose that latent dimensions of solidarity will serve as
a cognitive-emotional blueprint for future action (particularly as a response to
emergent needs and crises experienced by family members) the transition between
latent and active solidarity is clearly probabilistic; not all families with great
support potential will become great support providers. The longitudinal analysis
of intergenerational types is necessary to discover the degree to which this
transition is actually made.
Other questions remain concerning the state of the contemporary
multigenerational family. The analysis of this research examined the point of view
of only one partner of the intergenerational dyad—the adult child. Would the
same typology hold if the responses of parents were analyzed? Existing evidence
reveals that the same factor structure of the dimensions of solidarity holds for both
generational perspectives, suggesting that the family position of the informant
may make little difference to the relational typology. And how about adult
intergenerational step relations? Given the proliferation of complex family
structures resulting from the rise in divorce and remarriage rates in American
society, it would be instructive to examine relations of adult children with their
193 | P a g e
stepparents as well. Are these relations weaker than relations with biological
parents? Does the gender of the stepparent make a difference?
They hope that future research will incorporate multiple family
perspectives and include step relations in considering the strength of
intergenerational relationships. They have used in this research a typological
approach to the investigation of family relationships. How useful is this
epistemological strategy in studying intergenerational relationships compared to
more conventional assessments of individual survey items? They feel there are
three important benefits of such an approach: (1) it applies multiple indicators to
complex and multifaceted family phenomena, (2) it derives from a grounded
theoretical perspective concerning family interactions and sentiment, and (3) it
reflects a more holistic empirical approach to the study of family relationships.
They urge future researchers of family structure and process to take advantage of
the opportunities and challenges of typological investigation.
In summary, the findings of this research portray adult intergenerational
relationships in American families as diverse but reflecting five principal types
based on affinal, structural, and functional dimensions of solidarity. At the
broadest level, heterogeneity in intergenerational relationships can be attributed to
historical trends over the past century, such as geographic and economic mobility
of generations, the surge in divorce rates, increasing numbers of later-life families,
and a shift away from the family of orientation as the basis for everyday social life
in adulthood. For intergenerational families, particularly in paternal relations,
these trends may have increased the uncertainty associated with enactment of
supportive roles. On the other hand, this research demonstrates that adult children,
especially daughters, serve as significant elements in the kin matrix of mothers.
This suggests that the primacy of the mother-daughter bond—rooted in biosocial
mechanisms of early socialization—extends through much of the adult life course.
Finally, this research concludes that latent kin attachment is an important
aspect of intergenerational family life, as it represents an enduring form of
solidarity and a possible prelude to action and support. Research that focuses
exclusively on (more episodic) functional exchange is likely to underestimate the
strength of intergenerational bonds and exaggerate the extent to which the family
194 | P a g e
is in decline. This research strongly suggests that multiple dimensions of
solidarity be considered when assessing intergenerational relations in the modern
family.
13.7 Language and Gender

Caroline Smith (2009) did a research on language and gender under the
title ―Sociolinguistics: Gender and profanity‖. She specifically examines the use
of the f-word among 218 subjects ages 18-25, in order to determine the frequency
of use among subjects. This is accomplished by giving each subject a confidential
questionnaire assessing his/her use of the word in 16 different circumstances.
Each subject indicates on a Likert scale, from 1 to 5, how frequently he/she uses
the f-word in each setting. The scale is described as: 1 = never, not at all; 3 =
sometimes; 5 = frequently. The average response codes are summarized in the
table below.
Female Friend Female Friend Male Friend Male Friend
Gender
Casual Setting Formal Setting Casual Setting Formal Setting
Female 2.92 1.17 2.92 1.22
Male 2.95 1.42 3.70 1.58
These results generally support the hypotheses of this research. Men are
more likely to use the f-word than women in every circumstance, and both men
and women are more likely to use the word in casual settings than in formal
settings. Both men and women are more likely to use profanity in the company of
male friends than with female friends, with one exception, which leads to a
surprising result. The average response code given by female subjects when
assessing their own use of the f-word in casual settings is the exact same when
they are in the presence of female friends and when they are in the presence of
male friends. The average response code for these scenarios is 2.92. This result
contrasts with the responses given by male subjects. In casual settings, the average
response code given by male subjects is 3.70 when in the presence of male
friends; but when in the presence of female friends, it dramatically drops to 2.95.
These results indicate that men curtail their use of the f-word when in the presence
of females in casual settings, while women do not restrict their use of the word
based on gender in casual settings.
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This finding raises new questions, and in this paper, Smith suggests
several interpretations of the result of this research. One interpretation is that the
f-word is not a bonding variable for women, so their use of it is not gender
specific. A second interpretation is that this result is due to audience design –
women may have felt uncomfortable saying that they not only speak differently
than men, but that they speak differently in the presence of men. A third
interpretation of this anomaly is that neither gender nor the use of profanity is as
salient as she expected – subjects may have difficulty assessing the frequency of
their own usage of the word in different contexts.
1. Bakhtiar, Mohsen. 2012. ―Communicative Functions of Euphemisms in

Persian‖. The Journal of International Social Research, 5(20): 7-12.
2. Cárdenas-Claros, Mónica Stella and Neny Isharyanti. 2009. ―Code switching
and code mixing in Internet chatting: between ‗yes‘, ‗ya‘, and ‗si‘ a case
study‖. The Jalt Call Journal, 5(3): 67-78.
3. Chakrani, Brahim. 2011. ―Covert Language Attitudes: A New Outlook on the
Sociolinguistic Space of Morocco‖. Selected Proceedings of the 40th
Annual Conference on African Linguistics, In Eyamba G. Bokamba et
al. (eds.), 168-177. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
4. Cogo, Alessia. 2010. ―Strategic Use And Perceptions Of English As A
Lingua Franca‖. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 46(3):
295–312.
5. Deuchar, Margaret. 2005. ―Minority Language Survival: Code-mixing in
Welsh‖ In Cohen et al.: 608-620. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
6. Fiedler, Sabine. 2011. ―English as a lingua franca – a native-culture-free
code? Language of communication vs. language of identification‖.
Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies, 5(3): 79-97.
7. Kaosa-Ad, Rommayasin. 2009. ―English Euphemism as Used by Native
Speakers of English and of Thai‖. A Master‟s Project. Bangkok:
Srinakharinwirot University.
8. Lee, Su Kim. 2001. ―A qualitative study of the impact of the English
language on the construction of the sociocultural identities of ESL
speakers‖. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Houston: University of
Houston.
9. Montes-Alcalá, Cecilia. 2005. ―Dear Amigo: Exploring Code-switching in
Personal Letters‖. In Sayahi and Westmoreland: 102-108. Somerville,
MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
10. Silverstein, Merril and Vern L. Bengtson. 1997. ―Intergenerational
Solidarity and the Structure of Adult Child–Parent Relationships in
American Families‖. AJS, 103(2): 429-60.
196 | P a g e
11. Smith, Caroline. 2009. ―Sociolinguistics: Gender and profanity‖. The 3rd
Annual Linguistics Department Graduate Student Conference 2009.
12. Sneddon, J. 2003. ―Diglossia in Indonesian‖. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde, 159 (4): 519-549.
13. Sólyom, Erika. 2004. ―A Sociolinguistic Study of Shifting Formalities in
Hungarian Urban Discourse‖. A Student Conference. (2004).
13.9 A Question for Discussions

1. This chapter presents some findings and conclusions of previous researches
about topics in sociolinguistic study. Read them carefully, and try to
formulate some possible titles for your research!
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INTRODUCTION TO

Praise is to the Almighty God, by saying Alhamdulillahi rabbil alalamin,

Padang, December 2012

1.1 Linguistics and Sociolinguistics: A Brief Overview ................................. 1

2. LANGUAGE, DIALECT, AND VARIATION

2.1 Language and Dialect .............................................................................. 15

3. PIDGINS AND CREOLES

4. ASPECTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

8. LANGUAGE SHIFT, DEATH, AND REVIVAL

9. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

11. LANGUAGE AND SEX

12. PLAYING WITH LANGUAGE

13. SOME FINDINGS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS RESEARCHES

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................... 198

1.1 Linguistics and Sociolinguistics: A Brief Overview

1.2 Language and Society

1.3 Three Views of Language

1.5 Suggested Further Readings

1.6 Questions for Discussions

2.1 Language and Dialect

2.2 Regional Dialects

2.3 Social Dialect

2.4 Linguistic Items and Varieties

2.5 Suggested Further Readings

2.6 Questions for Discussions

3.1 Lingua Franca

3.2 Pidgins and Creoles

"Sapos yu kaikai planti pinat, bai yu kamap strong olsem phantom."

A simplified language derived from two or more languages is called a

3.4 Suggested Further Readings

3.5 Questions for Discussions

4.1 Speech Situations, Speech Events, and Speech Acts

4.2 The Components of Speech Acts

4.3 Rules Governing the Use of Speech Acts

4.4 Suggested Further Readings

4.5 Questions for Discussions

This pattern can be illustrated in (1) by a Swahili-English example from

5.5 Questions for Discussions

6.2 Intersecting Communities

6.3 Networks and Repertoires

6.4 Suggested further readings

6.5 Questions for discussions

7.1 The Traditional View

7.2 The Mechanism of Change

7.3 Suggested Further Readings

7.5 Questions for Discussions

8.1 Language Shift

8.2 Language Death

8.3 Language Revival

In this book, the Krauss classification is adopted as it offers simple terminology in

The similarities between moribund and dead languages become more

A Model for Language Revival

The second stage of our model involves creating a generation of new

8.4 Suggested Further Readings

8.5 Questions for Discussions

9.1 The Whorfian Hypothesis

It is important to remember that when a term like father, brother, or older

9.3 Color Terminology

9.4 Taboo and Euphemisms

Communicative functions of euphemisms

9.5 Suggested Further Readings

9.6 Questions for Discussions

10.4 Suggested Further Readings

10.5 Questions for Discussions