SOCIOLINGUISTICS

LESSON 9

INSTRUCTOR: LE NGUYEN NHU ANH

LESSON 9
LANGUAGE
CHANGE
Lesson Contents
Key takeaways:

Variation and change

How do changes spread?

How do we study language change?

Reasons for language change

Language change
- Speaker innovation => language users change the way they use language
 More accurate description than language change
 Innovations adopted by others and diffuse through local community and
beyond into other communities => linguistic change as a result
Variation and change
Why do particular
- Language variation in 3 interrelated ways:
changes spread?
- Over time (origins in spatial and social variation)
- Physical space
- Socially
- Areas of variation: Vocabulary and pronunciation
How do linguistic
- Some ephemeral changes spread
- Some persistent => incorporated into the standard dialect through a
- All languages originated from variation community?
- A new form develops alongside an existing form
- New form spread => change in progress
- New form displaces the old form => fait accompli
Variation and change
Changes from above Changes from below

People are conscious of social significance People are not aware of changes
of changes

A feature spreading downwards through the A feature spreading from lower social
social groups in a speech community groups upwards through to higher social
groups
E.g. the case of post-vocalic [r] E.g. the spread of vernacular forms in
Martha’s Vineyard
Variation and change
Koines and koinesation
- Koinesation
- When people who speak different dialects come into contact in monolingual communities – a new dialect/variety
emerges => a koine
- Koine
- Features contributed from each of the contribution dialects (most from the largest group of speakers)
- Involving both linguistic and social processes
- Linguistic process: different types of simplication (e.g. leveling, feature/category simplication)
- Social process: prestige, identity, speech accommodation (towards people they like/respect/admire), relative
status.
- E.g. Where status and education are valued => Socially stigmatized forms disappear; Where being hip, fashionable
and innovative valued => Conservative forms disappear
- Multi-ethnolect: immigrant koine resulting from the mixing of linguistic features among multi-ethnic groups in big cities
- A new type of koine
How do changes spread?
From
group to
group

How
changes
spread?
From word
to word – From style
lexical to style
diffusion
How do changes spread?
From group to group
- Changes spread simultaneously in different directions
- Social factors (age, status, gender, region, etc.) affect the
rates of change
- An individual belongs simultaneously to a particular age
group, region and social group => waves of changes
intersect => change spread from one group to another
(speech of people on the margin between social/regional
groups)

Figure 9.1 The wave-like spread of linguistic changes

Note: A B C D represent different age groups, social
groups or regional groups.
How do changes spread?
From style to style
- In the speech of an individual: Changes spread from one
style to another (more formal to more casual)
- At the same time, spread from one individual to another
within a social group => from one social group to another
- A prestigious change often starts at the top of the speech
community (in the most formal style of the highest status
group and spreads downward)
- A vernacular change tends to begin in people’s more casual
style (may never gain acceptance by the highest status
social groups). Innovating groups: middle of the social class
Figure 9.2 A model of the spread of a vernacular
range change through two speech styles and three social
groups
How do changes spread?
From style to style
How do changes spread?
From word to word – lexical diffusion
- Lexical diffusion: Sound changes spread through different
words one by one
- E.g. English: trough, tough vs. though, bough
- Take decades or even centuries to spread
=> language change = an accumulation of changes in the
speech of individuals
How do we study language change?
Apparent-time studies of language change Language change in real time

Comparing the speech of people from Observations of changes conducted in real

different age groups time (over long periods of time)

Easy to see evidence of spead for prestige Comparing a sample of people in one time
forms, difficult for vernacular form and another similar sample in another time

Intepretation may require examination May build on earlier works; very reliable
reasons of change and other factors beside method of identifying change
age
Reasons for language change

Social
status

Reasons
for
language
change

Interaction Gender
Reasons for language change
Social status and language change
- Members of the group with most social status tend to introduce
changes into a speech community from neighbouring
communities with greater status and prestige
- Lower-class speakers are more influential in spreading less conscious
linguistic changes
- More on solidarity
Reasons for language change
Gender and language change
- Women as innovators => changes towards both prestige and
vernacular forms
- Men as innovators => more often vernacular changes
- 2 types of exception:
- Women may introduce vernacular changes into a community
- Communities where women are not leading linguistic change in
any direction (cases of Iran, India, etc.)
Reasons for language change
Interaction and language change
- Interaction and contact between people = channels for
linguistic change
- Linguistic change progresses most slowly in tightly knit
communities with little contact with the outside world (e.g.
case of Iceland)
- Frequent interaction + positive attitudes to preserving
homogeneity prevent development of differences
- Face-2-face interaction vs media
- Actual changes in people’s speech require face-to-face contact
with real people
- Media may expose viewers/listeners to new forms in the
speech of admired people
 References

• Bodine (1975) on Chiquita(no). See also www.et-

hnologue.com
• Bortoni-Ricardo (1985) on Brasília
Resources • Bradley (2011) on Yanyuwa
• Cheshire (1982a, b) on Reading speech
• Cheshire, Kerswill and Williams (2005) on (th)-
fronting in Milton Keynes
• Coates and Cameron (1988) on explanation in
social dialectology
• Downes (1998) on age-gradingEckert and
McConnell-Ginet (2013) Ch. 10 on Detroit
adolescents’ speech