LANGUAGE AND REGIONAL VARIATION

THE STANDARD LANGUAGE

- is the idealized variety of language that is considered correct (E.g. Hochdeutsch). It is the version we
believe is found in newspapers, news reports, schools. It is the variety we teach to people who wish
to learn the language as a second or foreign language. Standard American/British/Indian English.

ACCENT AND DIALECT

- Accent is technically restricted to the aspects of pronunciation that identify where an individual
speaker is from (regionally/socially). Everyone has one. There is no accent less version of language.
Dialect in addition to pronunciation also describes features of grammar and vocabulary. Basically,
two people with a different accent will pronounce a phrase in standard British English differently.
Two people with a different dialect however, will also write it differently, and use different
vocabulary. An example of the Scottish dialect. “How long are youse here?” Note how the phrase
actually asks how long one has been here, not how long they will stay here. Different grammar.
‘Youse’ is also different vocabulary.

DIALECTOLOGY

- One general criteria to term something a dialect and not a different language is if two speakers with
different dialects can understand each other. If they don’t, it’s usually a different language they are
speaking.

- The dialect that becomes the standard is usually the more socially prestigious one, think capital
cities, or the dialect spoken by the aristocracy. However, no dialect is objectively superior to another.

REGIONAL DIALECTS

- The informants in the major dialect surveys of the 20th century tended to be NORMS (non-mobile,
older, rural, male, speakers). This group was believed to be the least likely to be influenced from
outside their region. Unfortunately, this has led to the data being gathered being of an older variety
(NolderRMS).

ISOGLOSSES AND DIALECT BOUNDARIES

- An isogloss is a line that represents a boundary between the areas in regard to one particular
linguistic item. In this case, the usage of paper bag, or paper sack.

- When a number of isoglosses come together, one can use them to indicate a dialect boundary.

- In the illustration, circles are used to represent paper bag, while plus-signs are used to represent
paper sacks.

- Note that one uses here the average. There might well be people who use paper sack in the north
and people who use paper bag in the south. They are just in the minority.
THE DIALECT CONTINUUM

- Isoglosses and dialect boundaries obfuscate the fact that dialects merge into each other and are not
as simply to distinguish as, ‘over there they speak that, and over there they speak that’. Regional
variations exist along a dialect continuum rather than having sharp breaks.

- Dialect continuums can be easily seen along political borders, such as between Holland and
Germany. The dialect changes slowly from Dutch into Deutsch as one moves from one country to the
other. People who speak both dialects are called bidialectal. Most people grow up bidialectal,
speaking one dialect with family, and another in school. In some places one speaks two different
languages in the street and in the school. People who grow up like that are bilingual.

BILINGUALISM AND DIGLOSSIA

- There are countries where regions don’t only differ in dialect, but also in languages. Such as Canada.
The French are a minority, and in cases like this, bilingualism is mostly a feature of the minority
group.

- Diglossia is when there is a low variety of the language used for every-day affairs and a high variety
for business and important affairs. E.g. Arabic countries, where Arabic is spoken in
religious/business/political affairs, and the local version (Lebanese/Egyptian-Arabic) in every-day
ones. Such a situation also used to exist in Europe, with Latin.

LANGUAGE PLANNING

- Perhaps because the standard language of a country is often the most often-spoken, many citizens
may feel that their country is monolingual, while it is not. For a minority that speaks the
second/third/fourth language however, the country is clearly bilingual. What happens when on a
state level the language spoken is not the language mostly spoken on the national level. E.g. Spanish
in Texas is spoken more than English. This brings organizational difficulties. Which language should
official announcements/educational systems be held in? If it is decided that school will be held in
Spanish, the question arises if the English-speakers go into the system with an early disadvantage.
Questions of this type require answers on some basis of language planning. Government, legal and
educational organizations in many countries have to plan which language to use. Careful though. It
might spark riots, or even wars, no matter what choice you make.

- The introduction of a new official language has five stages: Selection; codification (basic grammars
and dictionaries are written); elaboration (the standard variety is developed for use in all aspects of
social life); implementation (mostly governmental attempts to encourage use of the standard’;
acceptance is the final stage where the majority considers it he national language.

PIDGINS AND CREOLES

- A pidgin is a variety of language that developed for some practical purpose, e.g. trading for people
who had a lot of contact but didn’t speak each other’s languages. An example is Tok Pisin in New
Guinea. Pidgin is one of the only varieties of language that has no native speakers.

- A pidgin is described as an English pidgin if English is the lexifier language, that is, the main source
of words. Careful, that does not mean that words keep the same meaning or pronunciation. Gras for
example means not only grass, but also hair. Pidgin’s are often very simplified in terms of
morphology and syntax.

- A creole is a pidgin that developed beyond its original conception to become the first language of a
group (creolization). A creole develops as the first language of the children of pidgin speakers. A
French creole is spoken by the majority of the population of Haiti and English creoles are used in
Jamaica and Sierra Leone.

THE POST CREOLE CONTINUUM

- An interesting phenomenon is the push-back against the usage of the creole by people who have
access to the standard version of the language that it originated from and the social prestige usually
associated therewith. For example, in Jamaica, you may speak the English creole, but there will be
Jamaicans trying to speak standard British English to show off. This process is called decreolization, it
leads at one extreme to a variety that is closer to the external standard model and leaves, at the
other extreme, a basic variety with more basic creole features. This range of varieties, evolving after
the creole has come into existence is called post-creole continuum.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. /

2. An accent is a difference of pronunciation, while a dialect is also a difference of grammar and

vocabulary.

3. The disadvantage of using NORMS in survey studies is that one will attain an outdated version of
the speech used by solely male speakers.
4. An isogloss on a linguistic atlas represents a line between two regions according to one specific
linguistic item difference, such as saying paper bag instead of paper sack.

5. The first two stages of language planning in the process of adopting a national language are
‘selection’ and ‘codification’

6. In contrast to a creole a pidgin is a language that has no native speakers. The former develops
from the later.

RESEARCH TASKS

A. Wenker researched German dialects by sending a page of sentences to different schoolmasters in

the Reich and asked them to transcribe the sentences into their regional dialect. Gillieron mapped
out the most used words in France. I imagine we use Gillieron’s method today, what with the
isoglosses and the dialect boundaries.

C. Languages involved in the formation of pidgins and creoles are also referred to as superstrate and
substrate. The terms are connected to the extent of socio-political power ascribed to the groups of
speakers in a language contact situation. The European colonizers had socio-political power and their
language, as the dominant language in contact situations, constitutes the superstrate. The
indigenous non-European languages are the substrate which is the less dominant language in a
contact situation.

D.