SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Regional and Social Dialect

By:
Gina Adisty Maharani (11200260000084)
Ikmal Maulana Fajri (11200260000101)
Sabilla Nur Aziza (11200260000097)

Lecturer: Tuty Handayani, M.A.

UNIVERSITY OF ISLAM NEGERI JAKARTA

ENGLISH LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
2022
CONTENT
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CONTENT 1
INTRODUCTION 2
Background of paper 2
Research question 2
Objection 2
DISCUSSION 3
Regional and Social Dialects 3
Regional variation 3
International varieties 3
Intra-national or intra-continental variation 3
cross-continental variation: dialect chains 4
Social variation 4
Rp: a social accent 4
Social Dialects 5
Standard english 5
Caste dialects 6
Social class dialects 6
Social class membership 7
Vocabulary 7
Pronunciation 8
Grammatical patterns 9
CONCLUSION 11
REFERENCES 12

INTRODUCTION

Background of paper
Sociolinguistics is a very broad field, and it can be used to describe many different ways of
studying language. Sociolinguists use a range of methods to analyze patterns of language in
use and attitudes towards language in use. Some sociolinguistic patterns can only be observed
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systematically through close examination of lots of recorded speech and a good

understanding about the speaker’s background or place in a community. (Meyerhoff, 2006,
27) People in this world often use language to indicate or classify someone from their social
identity, such as social status, gender, ethnicity. In this paper, we will discuss the language
variants used by people living in certain areas, or what are called regional dialects, and also
the variety of languages that can distinguish them from other social groups, called social
dialects. Groups that can distinguish this include occupation, gender, age, education, and so
on.

Research question
● What is the explanation regarding regional variation and what is its part?
● What is the explanation of social variation and social accent?
● How are social dialects explained and examples of social class dialects?

Objection
● To know about regional variation and part of it.
● To know about social variation and social accent.
● To know how social dialect explained and example of social class dialect.
DISCUSSION

Regional and Social Dialects

A. Regional variation
1. International varieties
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There are several accounts of errors caused by regional accent variances, some
of which are undoubtedly mythical. Bad sounds like bed, six sounds like
sucks, and a New Zealander's dad sounds like an English person's dead to
British speakers. Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders all recall
instances where British guests received pens rather than pins or pans.
American god, on the other hand, sounds like English guard, and American
ladder is pronounced the same as the latter.

2. Intra-national or intra-continental variation

Many English speakers are likely to be confused by this dialogue between two
Geordies (people from Tyneside in England). Although it is also common in
some regions of the south of the United States, the double modal might is
typical Geordie. Although it is also used in Scotland, the phrase "needs
dumps" and the word "disjasket," which means "worn out" or "totally
destroyed," are also typical Tyneside expressions. Tyneside is known for its
unusual pronunciation of English, possibly most notably for its intonation
patterns. Some people can at least approximate the tune of Geordie speech
because they enjoy the speech featured in television shows like Auf
Wiedersehen Pet, Byker Grove, and Joe Maddison's War. Since the
distinguishing forms involve grammatical usages, lexical items, as well as
pronunciation, we are dealing here not just with distinct accents but also with
dialect differences within a country.
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3. cross-continental variation: dialect chains

Languages are more than just language constructs. They fulfill social roles. It's
critical to consider a language's social and political roles in addition to its
linguistic characteristics when attempting to describe it. Consequently, a
language can be viewed as a collection of dialects that are typically
grammatically similar and are spoken by various social groups that choose to
identify themselves as speakers of the same language in order to communicate
with one another and represent themselves to other groups. This concept is
sociolinguistic rather than linguistic; it divides the languages of Scandinavia,
which are linguistically very close but politically quite diverse variants, from
all the linguistically very different Chinese dialects, which the Chinese define
as one language.

B. Social variation
1. Rp: a social accent

RP stands for Received Pronunciation which that is an accent that been used
by the most educated and classy people in English society, it is called
“received” since the accent was derived from the royal court and sometimes it
was known as “The Queen’s English” because Queen Elizabeth II used that
accent. RP is a social accent, not a regional one.

In English society, there are many linguistic variations which could be found
in the lowest socio-economic level caused by the variety of the region, the
higher the class the less variation there would be. For example, the
pronunciation of the word “grass” in England would have much different
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pronunciation in the working-class, but would be less in the lower-middle-

class and middle-class. Then in the upper classes, the pronunciation of the
word “grass” would be [gra:s] wherever they come from.

C. Social Dialects

Dialect is a term to describe the differences of how people speak caused by the
amount of social groups or classes. While the regional dialects are based on where the
people who used it came from, the social dialects are associated with a variety of
factors, the most important ones are social class, religion, and race or ethnicity. For
example, in India, once they used the caste to differentiate the social classes, the
language they used is having much variation since the social class affects their variety
of language.

1. Standard english

The dialect we call standard English is spoken with a variety of accents.

However, as discussed in the section on regional dialects, there are many
standard Englishes. US standard English differs from South African and
Australian standard English, for example, and all three differ from the British
standard dialect. Linguistic forms that are not part of standard English are, by
definition, non-standard. Because the standard dialect is always the first to be
codified, defining other dialects without contrasting them with the standard is
difficult.
2. Caste dialects

The easiest way to find out how the social dialect works is to take a look at the
country where the social divisions are clear, such as in Indonesia and India.
They use the system where the caste is based on birth and the strict social rules
govern the kind of behavior appropriate to each group. The rules govern how
people can work, who they can marry, how they should dress, what they
should eat, and how they should behave in a variety of social situations. These
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social distinctions, predictably, have corresponding speech differences. A

person's dialect reveals their social background.

Javanese social status is indicated not only by the choice of linguistic forms,
but also by the specific combinations of forms that each social group uses, i.e.
the varieties or stylistic levels that together comprise the group's distinctive
dialect.

In Javanese, there are three different types of social groups and three
associated dialects. The lowest one is the dialect of the peasants and the
uneducated townspeople, which in this status consists of three levels: 1,1a, and
2. While the dialect of the people who lived in town with some education
consists of five levels: 1, 1a, 2, 3, and 3a. And at last, the dialect of the highly
educated people in the highest status of groups consists of five levels: 1, 1a,
1b, 3, and 3a.

3. Social class dialects

Social class is a nation that has its intellectual basis in theories of social and
political economies dating from the nineteenth century, and theories of social
class are associated with figures like Karl and Max Weber.
Although a person's financial condition may play a significant role in
determining what class they belong to, the impact of economic considerations
is muted by a person's lifestyle and chances in life. All three of these elements,
according to Weber, determine a person's standing. Sociolinguists are
particularly interested in the definitional shift from Marx to Weber because
Weber attempts to capture the significance of an individual's participation in a
complex set of associated behaviors, such as speech and lifestyle, as well as
the significance of aspirations and attitudes (life chances).
Example of social dialects :
Speaker A Speaker B
I done it yesterday. I did it yesterday.
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He ain’t got it. He hasn’t got it.

It was her what said it. It was her that said it.

If we heard these speakers say these things, we would guess that B was of
higher social status than A, and we would almost certainly be right. How is it
that we are able to do this sort of thing?
The answer lies in the existence of varieties of language which have come to
be called social-class dialects, or by some writers, sociolects.

4. Social class membership

One of the major problems in talking about social class is that social space is
multi-dimensional whereas systems of social classification are almost always
one-dimensional. As we have seen, at any particular moment, individuals
locate themselves in social space according to the factors that are relevant to
them at that moment.
While they may indeed have certain feelings about being a member of the
lower middle class, at any moment it might be more important to be female, or
to be a member of a particular church or ethnic group, or to be an in-patient in
a hospital, or to be a sister-in-law. That is, creating an identity, role-playing,
networking, and so on, may be far more important than a certain social-class
membership.

a. Vocabulary

The term social class here, is used as a distinction between people

related to differences in social prestige, wealth and education. For
example, in some societies, bank managers do not speak like office
cleaners, and lawyers do not speak in the same way as the criminals
they defend. Class divisions are based on such status differences.
Family background may be a source of status independently of wealth.
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So class is used here as a convenient label for groups of people who

share similarities in economic and social status.
Social dialect research in many different countries has revealed a
consistent relationship between social class and language patterns.
People from different social classes speak differently.
The most obvious differences – in vocabulary – are in many ways the
least illuminating from a sociolinguistic point of view, though they
clearly capture the public imagination.
In the 1950s in England, many pairs of words were identified which, it
was claimed, distinguished the speech of upper-class English people
(‘U speakers’) from the rest (‘non-U speakers’). U speakers used
sitting room rather than lounge (non-U), and referred to the lavatory
rather than the (non-U) toilet. The barriers between groups are not
insurmountable as in caste-based societies. People can move up or
down the social ladder, and this potential mobility is mirrored more
accurately in other aspects of their speech – such as pronunciation.

b. Pronunciation

Example :
Kim : Only uneducated people drop their ‘h’s.
Stephen : Let’s hear you say ‘Have you heard about Hilda’s new house
that her husband left her? It cost her a heck of a lot to fix up.’ If you
don’t drop a single ‘h’ in that sentence you’ll sound like one of Monty
Python’s upper-class twits!
In a study of New York City speech that is now considered as a classic
in sociolinguistics, William Labov was the first to show how various
pronunciations may be grouped into patterns that reveal the
socioeconomic class of their speakers. He created a sociolinguistic
interview to extract a variety of speech patterns from 120 individuals
from various social backgrounds, and he then examined how they
spoke certain consonants and vowels.
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[h]
From a linguistic point of view, taking account only of [h]-dropping,
they sounded as if they came from a lower social group. Averaging
may conceal considerable variation within a group. [h]-dropping, they
sounded as if they came from a lower social group. Averaging may
conceal considerable variation within a group.
[r]
One linguistic form which has proved particularly interesting to
sociolinguists studying English-speaking speech communities is the
variable pronunciation of [r] in words like car and card , for and form .
For our purposes, there are two possible variants of [r]. Either it is
present and pronounced [r], or it is absent. If you listen to a range of
dialects you will find that sometimes people pronounce [r] following a
vowel, and sometimes they don’t. In New York City, Labov also
conducted an interesting experiment demonstrating in a neat and
economical way that pronunciation of post-vocalic [r] varied in the city
according to social group.
Post-vocalic [r] illustrates very clearly the arbitrariness of the
particular forms which are considered standard and prestigious. In
New York City, pronouncing [r] is generally considered prestigious.

c. Grammatical patterns

Example :
Whina is 8 years old and she is telling a visitor the story of a film she
has seen. ‘And then these little flies went to go and they made a house
by theirself, and this big fly was playing his guitar. He play and play.
Then the little flies was making the house, and then the flies um sew
um
these leaves up all together.’
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Whina was one of eighty New Zealand children who were recorded
telling the story of a film they had seen. As the extract shows, this was
a good way of providing a natural context for the children to use a
large number of past tense forms of verbs. It was then possible to
compare the proportion of standard verb forms in the speech of
children from different social groups. On average, it was found that
children from lower-class families used more vernacular verb forms
than children from middle-class families.
Multiple negation is a grammatical construction which has been found
in all English-speaking communities where a social dialect study has
been done. In every community studied, it is much more frequent in
lower-class speech than in middle-class speech. In fact, there is usually
a dramatic contrast (sharp stratification again) between the groups in
the amount of multiple negation used. It is rare in middle-class speech.
Multiple negation is a very ‘salient’ vernacular form. People notice it
when it is used even once, unlike say the use of a glottal stop for the
standard pronunciation [t] at the end of a word, where the percentage
of glottal stops generally needs to be quite high before people register
them. The dramatic split evident between middle-class and lower-class
usage of multiple negation indicates this salience. Middle-class
speakers tend to avoid it, while lower-class speakers use it more
comfortably.
CONCLUSION

Generally speaking, your social background can be determined by the way you speak.
Additionally, there are a variety of speech features that can be interpreted. Sociolinguists
have discovered that virtually every language characteristic in a community that exhibits
variation will vary in frequency from one social group to another in a structured and
predictable way. Some traits appear to have a long-standing, predictable correlation between
their usage patterns and membership in specific social groups. Examples of characteristics
that are often stable are [h]-dropping and variations in the pronunciation of the suffix -ing.
Additionally, grammatical elements like tense markers and multiple negation are frequently
stable.
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REFERENCES

Holmes, J. (2013). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Routledge.

Meyerhoff, M. (2006). Introducing Sociolinguistics. Routledge.

Trousdale, G. (2010). An Introduction to English Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University

Press.

Trudgill, P. (2000). Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. Penguin

Books.

Wardhaugh, R., & Fuller, J. M. (2015). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Wiley Blackwell.