UNIT 2

1. SOME VARIABLES IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Style: Every individual has a typical way in which s/he does things. The speaker can
decide on a level of formality depending on a number of factors (the particular occasion,
social differences, the interlocutor's age or other determining factors as the type of
discourse chosen). Native users usually make use of the range of styles they have at
their disposal when they speak & they can easily accommodate their language to the
required degree of formality. It is also possible to predict the stylistic features that a
native speaker will bring to bear on certain occasions.
Style implies a choice on the part of the speaker to say something. For instance, in
the sentence “Can you pass me the salt?”. If the speaker changes can for could, would or
simple says “pass me the salt”, it implies a difference in style as well as other factors such
as the degree of formality/relationship between interlocutors.
As a result of the literary tradition in most cultures, the question of style has been often
associated with the study of literary writing. But style is linked to all linguistic behavior,
whether written or spoken.
Register: It is a set of language features, mainly the choice of lexical items or
syntactic ordering of utterances, whose use tends to be associated with a specific
interest group (professionals with a particular occupation & a particular working context;
doctors, lawyers...). It is characterized by the circumstance & purpose of the
communicative situation & contrasts with variation by individual user, geographical
or socio-economic variation. The amount of information to which we are exposed in
society favors the appearance of registers. Specialization is encouraged & the number of
technical words & acronyms sometimes makes difficult for a lay person to follow a
conversation on any topic that requires a specific register. Apart from specific language
domains, register is socially motivated as it entails a social negotiation among the
participants to accommodate the adequate register in written/spoken discourse.
 Register can be conceived from 2 different perspectives:
 Narrow sense of the word: type of language used by a group of professionals who
employ certain linguistic features, not commonly used in other settings. It is related
to JARGON & tends to be associated with word choice rather than syntactic
ordering.
 Broad sense of the word: understood as a social genre, a sociolect that bears
upon lexical choice & syntactic ordering. Example: language of newspaper
articles, academic prose or legal language.
 Register can be depicted by means of 3 main dimensions:
 Field: related to the social activity performed, the setting & the aim of the
interaction.
 Tenor: refers to the social roles enacted & the relationship between the
participants
 Mode: refers to the medium of the language in that situation.
Example: newspaper article. Field: the subject matter of the article that informs the
reader; Tenor: comprises the journalist that wrote the article & the intended audience;
Mode the piece of written work printed in the newspaper & that reaches the reader.
Style & register are related in the sense that stylistic variations can occur within a
register, as the writer/speaker can choose different degrees of formality or casualness
within register.
Gender: There is some evidence that marks language as sexist (or their users). Both
sexes don’t speak the same way & this cannot be attributed to stylistic or individual
differences. However, language should not be considered as inherently sexist but it is
used in a sexist way or it reflects a sexist world.
Patterns of variation between men & women are much more evident in some parts of
the world (as Japan) but differences can be much more subtle.
 Trudgill found out that women tended to be more conservative in terms of language
use, as men were reported to show most language change. He argued that women had a
clear tendency to overreport their use of prestige forms while men were inclined to
underreport theirs. He concluded that women tended to respond to standard-language
prestige norms, whereas men were liable to react to vernacular prestige forms. The former
type of language was associated with refinement, sophistication & adherence to the
standard-language, whereas the latter type was associated with roughness & toughness,
considered as desirable masculine attributes. The reason for women's adherence to the
standard could be motivated to their powerless position in life.
The study of gender is a complex developing issue given the fact that a number of
social variables converge & it does not have a uniform effect on linguistic behavior. The
study of gender & variation arises from the different roles, norms & expectations
upon the sexes. Gender-based variation has not received so much scientific attention & as
a result many of the conceptions about gender & variation are based upon popular belief
rather than on a sound sociolinguistic analysis. In the last decades this has changed &
there is a considerable amount of research incorporating sex as biological category in
sociolinguistics, discourse analysis & pragmatics.
Traditionally the term Sex → biological & anatomical differences between men &
women & Gender → psychological & socio-cultural differences between the sexes. This
approach proves to be a little simplistic for sociolinguistic research, as one of its aim is to
describe the relation between these two. Sex is a biological category that constitutes the
base for the differentiation of roles, norms & expectations within a speech
community, & these social roles, norms & expectations compose the idea of gender.
Recent studies have shown neurophysiologic differences in the way males & females
process language. It seems that phonological processing in males relates to the left
hemisphere whereas it involves both hemispheres in the case of females. But no evidence
has been shown that biological differences have an effect on male-female language
processing & speech. Dissimilarity is a result of social factors, educational factors or
power.
These differences suggest that typical lexical & grammatical choices characteristic
from men/women lead to the formation of genderlects. Robin Lakoff identified features
distinguishing women's talk in terms of word choice (frequency of certain colors, certain
evaluative adjectives, hesitant intonation, frequency of tag phrases, politeness & use of
more polite noises). Men tend to be more direct & dominate turn-taking, understand
language as information gathering rather than a mechanism to initiate/support their
relationship with others. There is a difference between the language used by men & women
& the language used to refer to them.
In the past, masculine has often been considered as a common gender, & therefore
unmarked, & feminine as marked. In most Indo-European languages, the masculine is
used to refer to both male & female.
Language reflects the way the society is organized & to what extent language
shows the power of stereotyping. In a changing world where women are taking jobs
attributed to men language reflects a change.

2. SPEECH ACCOMODATION
It consists of the modification of one’s own speech or other communicative
behaviors to the ones used by the person one is interacting with. It can give way to
speech convergence or speech divergence, depending on the intentions of the speaker &
the results of the communication encounter There are many ways of performing speech
accommodation & results vary on contextual factors (doctors, lawyers can accommodate
their speech to communicate with clients; Speakers of non-standard variety may change
their speech to facilitate comprehension when interacting with a speaker of a standard
variety).
Adjusting to a given register or style is also a way of accommodating speech. It
shows a speaker’s need for social integration &/or identification with another or others.
This modification of speech expresses a conscious & deliberate process but an unconscious
behavior.
Converging speech accommodation can increase the speaker's perceived
attractiveness, predictability & supportiveness, level of personal involvement,
intelligibility & comprehensibility, & the speaker's ability to gain their listeners'
compliance.
Speech divergence are fostered where the participants in the communication
encounter stem from different social or working backgrounds giving way to a strategy
of intergroup distinctiveness. Members of an in-group can intensify their inclusion in the
relevant group while excluding others. This target can be attained with the use of a specific
slang, jargon, grammatical complexity or accent.