L ANGUAGE

VARIATION
TERMS

• Language variety: any form of language characterized by systematic

features
– Languages (e.g. Spanish, Mandarin, English)
– Dialects (e.g. New York English, African American English)
• Sociolinguistics: the study of the relationship between language
varieties and social structure
+ the interrelationships among different language varieties
TERMS

• Speech community: a group of people speaking the same language variety

• A language: a spoken or signed communication system shared by a speech
community.
• Dialect: see above + often defined along regional or social lines
– When groups of speakers of a language differ noticeably in their speech
– A language is usually made up of several, mutually intelligible dialects
– Accent = phonetic/phonological aspects of variation (dialect includes all
levels of linguistic structure)
• Idiolect
– The language variety of an individual
– Differs systematically from the idiolects of other native speakers
DIALECT & ACCENT

• Misconceptions
– Dialect ≠ substandard
– Dialect ≠ incorrect
– Dialect ≠ slang

• If you speak at all, you speak a dialect and you have an accent.
LANGUAGES VS DIALECTS

• Linguistic criterion: mutual intelligibility

– Yes = dialects of a language
• American/British/Australian
– No = different languages
BUT…IT’S COMPLICATED

• Degree of mutual intelligibility?

• Dialect continua
– Each dialect mutually intelligible with its neighbors, but the ends of the
continuum are unintelligible to one another.
– Example: Dutch and German
IT’S COMPLICATED

• Non-linguistic criteria (i.e. social, political) often play a role in

conventional use of terms
• Norwegian and Swedish
– Mutually intelligible but conventionally considered 2 languages
• What was Serbo-Croatian is now Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and
Serbian (all mutually intelligible)
• Chinese
– Various varieties (e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese) considered to be dialects, but
there are NOT mutually intelligible
• Do share a writing system
• “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”
– Often attributed to Max Weinreich (Yiddish scholar)
STANDARDS & PRESTIGE

• Linguistically speaking, no one dialect or language is better, more

correct, more systematic, or more logical than any other.
• Every language variety is a rule-governed system and effective means
of communication.
STANDARDS & PRESTIGE

• Standard dialect
– often the variety used by the powerful
• E.g., political leaders, media, higher SES
– Taught in schools and to non-native speakers
– The dialect of (overt) prestige
• Overt vs. covert prestige
– Reality: usually a collection of varieties are considered to be standard
STANDARDS & PRESTIGE

• Standard American English (SAE)

– Not really a well-defined variety
– Defined more clearly in terms of grammar than pronunciation
• Ideally not pronounced with features characteristic of particular regional
varieties, though some variety in pronunciation is tolerated
VARIATION

• Can occur at all levels of linguistic structure

• Start with sound…
– Phonetic & phonological variation = accent
PHONOLOGICAL
VARIATION
• Phonology: system of sounds in a
language
• Differences in categories
– E.g. ɑ-ɔ merger
• Differences in sound sequencing
– Rhotic vs. non-rhotic English varieties
• Difference in application of
phonological rules
– American flap vs. British glottal stop
PHONETIC VARIATION
• Phonetics: how sounds are
produced
• Differences in phonetic
realization of a given phoneme
– /r/ across English dialects
• Differences in speaking style
– Clear vs. conversational
speech
 Bother, father caught hot coffee in the car park.

Where are they from?

Australia Canada England Ireland New Zealand

http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml
14
• Arthur the rat
Arthur the rat: http://dare.wisc.edu/?q=node/44
REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT

• American English: Northern cities

Super Fans
NORTHERN CITIES VOWEL SHIFT
(COURTESY OF WILLIAM L ABOV)

The recordings of Chicago speech presented here were made by Dr. Sharon Ash
of the Penn Linguistics Lab, who interviewed young women at the University
of Illinois, Chicago Circle, and carried out the experiment.

For more information on the CDC project, see Labov, William, and Sharon Ash
1997, “Understanding Birmingham,” in C. Bernstein, T. Nunnalaly, and R. Sabino
(eds.), Language Variety in the South Revisited. Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press, pp. 508-573.

www.cambridge.org/fasold © Cambridge University Press

 Word Phrase Sentence
1 . black _____________ living on one block
2. sacks _____________ had to wear socks
3. dusk _____________ behind the desk
4. bosses _____________ buses with the antennas
5. had _____________ shook her head
 Word Phrase
1 . black _____________
2. sacks _____________
3. dusk _____________
4. bosses _____________
5. had _____________
 Word Phrase Sentence
1 . black _____________ living on one block
2. sacks _____________ had to wear socks
3. dusk _____________ behind the desk
4. bosses _____________ buses with the antennas
5. had _____________ shook her head
 desk busses

bosses

mat head

block
socks

The Northern Cities Shift

 NORTHERN CITIES CHAIN
SHIFT
i u
I U
ey ow
E √
Q A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UoJ1-ZGb1w
22
ANOTHER REGION: PHILLY
Philly dialect
VARIATION: LEXICAL

American ! British British ! American

• Pants • Biscuit
• Pissed • Bonnet
• Knock up • Chips
• Mad
• Nappy
• Rubber
LEXICAL VARIATION

• What do you call sugary, carbonated beverages?

http://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats/total-county.html
26
WHAT DO YOU USE?

• The sweet stuff you spread on top of a cake:

• An insect kids like to catch at night in the summer:
• The night before Halloween:
• The small road parallel to a highway:
• The grass in the middle of a street:
• Something that is diagonally across from you (e.g. at an intersection):
• If you’re talking to a group of friends, you call them:
• Machine you drink water from:
• A remote place:
• Multi-level building for parking cars:
• The strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street:
• Multi-level building for parking cars
– Car park
– Parking lot
– Parking deck
– Parkade
– Indoor parking
– Parking ramp
• The strip of grass between the
sidewalk and the street
– boulevard [chiefly Upper MW, N
Cent]
– devil strip [chiefly neOH]
– grassplot [chiefly Atlantic]
– neutral ground [chiefly LA,
sMS]
– parking [chiefly NW, Plains
States, IA; also N Cent sCA]
– parkway [scattered, but esp
Missip-Ohio Valleys, West]
– street lawn [scattered, but esp
OH]
– swale [FL, AL]
– tax strip [OH, IN]
– terrace [chiefly Gt Lakes, Upper
Missip Valley]
– tree bank [esp IL, WI]
– tree belt [NEast, esp MA]
– tree border [WI, CT]
– tree box [chiefly DC]
– tree court [WI]
– tree lawn [chiefly Gt Lakes, esp
OH]
– tree plot [esp IN]
– tree strip [esp N Cent]
– tree terrace [esp WI]
– verge [esp NEast]
THAT NY TIMES QUIZ…

• http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-
review/dialect-quiz-map.html
• http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-
linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6#this-is-the-deepest-and-most-
obvious-linguistic-divide-in-america-its-also-an-example-of-how-
everyone-in-south-florida-pronounces-things-in-the-northern-us-
style-7
VARIATION IN MORPHOLOGY

• I _______________ the motionless dog out of the water.

• He likes himself vs. hisself.

VARIATION IN SYNTAX

• The room needs cleaned.

• Handout: dialect structure survey

VARIATION IN SYNTAX

• Habitual be: aspect marker

– Used to signal habitual state of affairs
– Not the same as the copula (verb ‘to be’)
– Habitual be also used in Ulster English (N. Ireland)
– Habitual marking also found in Celtic, Slavic, W. African languages,
Creoles
FACTORS
INFLUENCING
VARIATION
FACTORS INFLUENCING
VARIATION
• Regional
• Social
– Age
– Gender
– Ethnicity
REGIONAL FACTORS

• Language varieties most influenced by people you are in face-to-face

communication with
• Settlement patterns
• Physical geography
– isolation
 DIALECTS OF AMERICAN
ENGLISHMidland
North

West New England

Mid-Atlantic
Western
Pennsylvania

South

Florida

37
HISTORY OF DIALECT
VARIATION IN AMERICA
• Current regional dialect boundaries reflect migration
and settlement patterns
– New Englanders moved west along the Erie Canal then
around the Great Lakes
– Pennsylvanians moved west along the National Road (now
I-70)
– Southerners expanded west from Virginia through the
Appalachians and from Savannah across the deep south
– West settled more recently by representatives of all of the
other dialects
HISTORY OF DIALECT
VARIATION IN AMERICA
 DIALECTS OF AMERICAN
ENGLISH Midland
North

West New England

Mid-Atlantic
Western
Pennsylvania

South

Florida
Your book summarizes some features
from each of the major regions. 40
• North
– Northern cities shift
– With + no object
• John is coming with.
– Needs + V+ing
– By: I was by his house yesterday.
• New England
– Overlap with North
– exceptions:
• Cot/caught merger
• Non-rhoticity (eastern New Eng)
• “so don’t I” (as opposed to “so do I”)
• South (excludes Florida)
– Diphthongization of short, front vowels
– Pin/pen merger
– Monophthongization of /ɑɪ/
– Fixin’ to
– Double modal (might could)
• Appalachia
– Primary stress on 1st syllable
• POlice vs. poLICE
– A-prefixing
• I’m a-going
– Preservation of irregular past tenses
• Climb/clumb; head/het
– Multiple negation
• Midland (St. Louis excluded)
– Pennsylvania and New Jersey sometimes separated out into Mid-Atlantic

– /l/ vocalization
• hill = [hɪw]
– Cot/caught near merger
– “All the further”
– Anymore without negation = “these days”
– Needs + V+ed
• West
– Least distinctive, most hybrid
– Mostly resembles Midland pronunciation, except:
• /u/ fronting
• Cot/caught merged
• /ɪ/ before ŋ, more like /i/; other contexts, more like /ɛ/
– Northern California
• Introduction of discourse maker “I’m like” and “I’m all”
SOCIAL FACTORS

• Social dialects
– Speaker characteristics associated with social groups to which speakers
belong
– SES, age, gender, etc.
• Socioeconomic variation
– Labov (1972) NYC R-lessness
– Pronunciation of ‘r’ at ends of syllables = prestige
– Experiment: Saks, Macys, S. Klein
• Ask clerk where to find an item (you know it’s on the 4th floor)
• Ask for clarification.
SES: % R IN “FLOOR”
Casual Careful

Saks 63 64

Macy’s 44 61

S. Klein 8 18
AGE
• Quotative ‘like’ (Dailey-O’Cain, 2000)
– Data from 30-minute sociolinguistic interviews
– 30 speakers, mid/upper class, SE Michigan

Ratio data: how often quotative like occurred relative

to the possible times it could have occurred

Statistics show
that age
difference is
significant;
gender
difference is not
GENDER

• There are a few cases in which the language spoken by men and
women differ in structure.
• Koasati (Muskogean, spoken in Louisiana)
– “lift it”: lakawhol (women) lakawhos (men)
• Bengali
– Women use /l/ at beginning of words where men use /n/
GENDER

• More often: cultural patterns of masculinity and femininity reflected in

language use
• In western cultures, women tend to use more prestige variants
– Trudgill (1974): members of middle class and women more likely to use
“running” as opposed to “runnin’”
– Edwards (1979): perception study
• Adults listen to pre-adolescent kids’ speech and asked to identify kids’
gender
• Good at identifying working-class boys as boys and middle-class girls as girls;
worse at identifying middle-class boys and working-class girls
GENDER

• Why? Possibilities…
– To overcome inferiority
– To teach children and increase their chances of success
– Features simply associated with masculinity/femininity
GENDER

• Lexical variation?
– Brainstorm: lexical usages that are asymmetric between the sexes.
ETHNICITY

• A couple of the varieties discussed in the book:

– African-American English
– Chicano English
• Features of AAE
– Monopthongization: Diphthongs reduced to monophthongs word-finally & before voiced
consonants
• Also found in varieties of speech in American South
– Word-final consonant cluster reduction
• Past tense suffix may create such clusters, and thus be deleted (but those that don’t create clusters
are pronounced)
• Example: past tense of miss, roll vs. wait, fade
– Multiple negation
– Copula absence (absence of inflected present tense form of to be)
• John going to the store.
• Not allowed with first-person pronominal subject
– Habitual be
CHICANO ENGLISH

• English varieties spoken by 2nd/3rd generation speakers of Mexican descent

• Features of Chicano English
– Emblematic language use
– Monophthong /o/
– /ɪ/ pronounced as /i/ before /ŋ/
– /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ merged
– Past participle used where SAE would use simple past tense
• I seen vs. I’ve seen
– Embedded question inversion w/ wh- forms
• I ask myself what would I do if…
– Topicalization
• My cat, she ate all the food.
• To write about myself, it’s a little difficult for me.