Sociolinguistics lane 422

Language and society

Language has a social function: it helps us to
establish and maintain relationships.
Convey information about the speaker.
 Language vs. dialect regional vs. social
Dialect vs. accent
no clear-cut boundaries: dialect continuum
Language continuum, eg. German and dutch
spoken along the Netherlands-Germany
frontier
Criteria to Language
Linguistic criteria Mutual intellegibility &
language, e.g Dutch and German
Political and cultural criteria
1. autonomy and heteronomy (German and Dutch:
non-standard dialects in Germany, Austria and Switzerland)
 Discreteness and continuity
Dialect: grammar, vocabulary and
pronuciation
 Language is closely tied p with the social
structure and value systems of society;
therefore different dialects and accents are
evaluated in different ways.
e.g. non pre-vocalic /r/: car, cart England, not
prestigious
New York, prestigious
 Value judgments are arbitrary, and based on social connotations

Subjective attitudes towards language are important for the study

of language change, explain why dialects change and how, e.g. /r/ in
New York (Labov)
The use of non pre-vocalic /r/ by upper middle class in New York
Labovs study of Marths Vineyard, house , mouth
/u/ ,/au/
subjective attitudes towards the native linguistic form: favorable or
unvavorable
Linguistic change is not always in the direction of a prestigious form.
 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The effect of society on language: how
physical environment is reflected in language
the social environment, kinship terms.
The values of society affect language, e.g
taboo words, the word but not the concept.
Language is variable, is not used in the same
manner by all people in all situations.
 Key sociolinguistic concepts
Variety: a neutral term to refer to any form of language
(languages & dialects)
Speech community: controversial concept:
a community of people who share a linguistic variety as their
own and share social norms.
shared linguistic norms , shared communicative
competence and shared social norms. (can be a city,
neighborhood, region, nation)
Communicative (Sociolinguistic) competence:
speakers underlying knowledge of rules of grammar and
rules for their use in socially appropriate circumstances.
(learned through socialization), e.g. please, thank you.
Greeting formally, informally.
Social knowledge is essential for membership in speech
 boundaries between speech communities are
social rather than linguistic. speech
community language community: e.g Papua
New Guinea mutual intelligibility
Gaelic\English communities in Scotland (rely
on their communicative: the shared norms of
interactions in the community.
 Can we claim the existence of a homogenous
speech community with the attested
heterogeneity in cities and countries?
 Variation and Language
The variable : an abstract representation of
the source of variation, realised by two or
more variants, e.g think // : [], [f].
the variants are the actual realization of a
variable
Constraints on variation: linguistic & social
factors determine the use of variants.
Free variation
Variation is predicable but not with 100 % certainty
Fischers 1958 study of the use of (ng) in New
England. (ng)
singing vs. singin

(ng)

[] [n]
 Variation Studies
Fischers 1958 study of the use of (ng) in New
England.
12 boys, 12 girls aged 3-10.
Interview
Concusions:
Boys used more [in] than girls.
The use of [in] increases with the formality of
situations. The use of [in] increased when relaxed.
[in] is used more with verbs that describe everyday
activities ,e.g hit ; [ing] is used with formal verbs,
e.g criticize.
2. Labov (1966) study of (r) in New
York:
To investigate the incidence of final and post-vocalic
/r/
While most American accents are rhotic, New York (and Boston)
have distinctive non-rhotic accent
Post-Depression, such urban accents lost prestige, and
rhotic midwest accent emerged as standard
Labov showed that rhotic use of /r/ reflected social
class and aspiration, and was more widespread in
younger speakers
Labov (1966) study of (r) in New
York:
Method:
He needed to quickly elicit possible /r/ pronunciations in both
spontaneous and careful speech
Walked around 3 NYC department stores, asking the location of
departments he knew were on the fourth floor
By pretending not to hear, he got each informant to pronounce the
two words twice, once spontaneously, and once carefully
3 stores catering for distinct social groups:
Saks (upper), Macys (middle), S. Klein (lower)
Informants were shop workers at different grades, giving a
further possible stratification
 Results

Use of [r]

100

80

60 never
%

sometimes
40
always
20

0
Saks Macy's S Klein
store

Use of [r] corresponded to higher class of store

 Results
first and second utterances

100
90
80
70 fourth I
60 fourth 2
%

50
40 floor I
30 floor 2
20
10
0
Saks Macy's S Klein
store

use of [r] increases in careful speech

 Pronunciation and style
Adoption of prestige [r] pronunciation by class and style
form increases with 100
formality of style, in 90
80
each case with a 70 0

higher usage by 60 1
2,3

%
50
higher classes 40
4,5
6,8
EXCEPT in one case 30 9
20
10
0
casual careful reading word list minimal
pairs
style
middle class [r] pronunciation by class and style
outperform upper
middle class on word 100
lists and minimal pairs 90
this cross-over due to 80
hypercorrection
70
(according to Labov)
not sure whether 60
6,8
results are statistically
%

50
9
significant 40
30
20
10
0
casual careful reading word list minimal
pairs
style
 Multilingulaism
Multilingualism: the use of more than two languages, e.g.
Nigeria, India, and Philippines have hundreds of languages.
Canada, USA.
How multilingual nations develop? migration, imperialism,
federation
Diglossia: A situation in which two forms of the same
language co-exist in a complementary relationship in a society.
High variety, low variety. Both forms are grammatically
distinct, dont overlap. Classical Arabic
Each variety has its domains, e.g Arabic vernaculars
(dialects)
The term is extended to refer to any two languages, even
related ones, that has this kind of social and functional
distribution.
Triglossia ,Tunisia
Polyglossia: several H and L languages co-exist in a complex
multilingual society, e.g. Singapore L,H, M varieties,e.g.
Mandarin, Tamil and Malay are official languages.
 Which languages will be officially or nationally
recognized in a multilingual society?
Vitality: demographic, social and institutional
strength of a language and its speakers.
Language planning, language policies, in
multilingual communities.
Deliberate, Official government policies in
relation to language
Singapore (Hokkeien)
 Code switching\mixing
The alternation between two varieties across
sentences or clause boundaries.
It implies some degree of competence in the two
varieties even if bilingual fluency is not yet stable.
What determines code switching?
Domain-based or situational code switching.
Domain (social and physical setting), addressee
(interlocutor),
Constraints : switching takes place between
languages with similar structure?
Spanish/Englishbetween determiners and nouns,
Subjects and verbs, but not nouns and adjectives.
Code mixing: alternations within a clause or
phrase, e.g. Spanglish, Franglais, arabizi?

Motivations \functions for a switch between

codes?

Attitudes towards code switching\ mixing.

Stigmitaized or favorable (ethnic identity)
 Sociolinguistic research
An hypothesis is a specific statement of prediction. It describes in concrete
(rather than theoretical) terms what you expect will happen in your study.
Your prediction is that variable A and variable B will be related (you don't
care whether it's a positive or negative relationship). Then the only other
possible outcome would be that variable A and variable B are not related.
Usually, we call the hypothesis that you support (your prediction) the
alternative hypothesis, and we call the hypothesis that describes the
remaining possible outcomes the null hypothesis.
hypothesis formation: one might formulate a hypothesis before beginning
the research project, based on available literature, or ones observations in
the course of collecting, processing, and/or analyzing data might lead to
an interesting, testable hypothesis.
Not all studies have hypotheses. Sometimes a study is designed to be
exploratory
 Sociolinguistic research
Empirical research
Sampling: target population: define the sampling
universe, determine the sample size
Stratified sample by age, sex, region, etc.
random, judgment sampling (snowball sampling)
Methods of data collection
Questionnaire
Face-to-face interview, telephone interviews
population, tape recorded, agreement to participate.
 Sociolinguistic research

The analysis of variation: The quantitative

method
Define your linguistic variables and social
variables
Transcription, coding, counting tokens,
percentages
Excel or word for tables and graphs
 Sociolinguistic research

Interpretation of data, Look for pattern,

correlation between linguistic variable and
social variable.
 Sociolinguistic research

Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism

Linguistic Constraints on Codeswitching and Codemixing

of Bilingual Moroccan Arabic-French Speakers in Canada
www.cascadilla.com/isb4.html

Code Switching Between English and Arabic : An Empirical study on Saudi Female
Students
 Sociolinguistics project

DESCRIPTIVE STUDY. If you choose to do a descriptive study,

it will have the following components:
(1) A description of the speech community, giving enough
information to contextualize the sociolinguistic variables.
(2) A description of the sociolinguistic variables embodied in
this speech community, and an indication of how they have
been identified (e.g. personal observation, previous studies,
general community knowledge, jokes and stereotypes, etc.).
(3) A review of relevant literature concerning this particular
speech community or sociolinguistic configuration. At least 5
sources must be cited.
 Sociolinguistics project

An analysis of the chosen sociolinguistic situation within a

broader context. How does this fit in with the general study
of sociolinguistics? Do the data from your study offer
anything new to sociolinguistics? Would a thorough and
complete analysis of the chosen community require resources
or models not currently contemplated in sociolinguistics?
(5) Suggestions for future research. This can be brief and can
be appended to the analysis in point (4). Every linguistic study
should suggest new directions, unanswered questions, and
future research. Mention the most promising possibilities.
 QUANTITATIVE STUDY
1) A description of the speech community, giving enough
information to contextualize the sociolinguistic variables.

(2) A description of the sociolinguistic variables embodied in

this speech community, and an account of how the data have
been obtained (data collection, number of speakers, coding of
tokens).

(3) A review of relevant literature concerning this particular

speech community or sociolinguistic configuration. At least 5
sources must be cited.

(4) A working hypothesis about the sociolinguistic importance

of the chosen variables, that will be tested against the data.
 (5). A brief interpretation of the quantitative results with
respect to the working hypothesis. Do the quantitative results
support or disconfirm the hypothesis?

(6) Suggestions for future research. Be sure to add any

suggestions for improvement of the study (data collection,
quantitative analysis, interpretation of results).
 Style, context and register
Style, in the most general sense, refers to the
distinctive way of speaking or writing. People adopt
different styles in different contexts.
The influence of the addressee on the speakers
language: solidarity (social closeness) between
participants is an important influence on speech style.
Casual, relaxed, vernacular forms with friends
Standard forms with strangers
Many factors affect social distance\solidarity between
people
 Factors affecting speakers style
Age of addressee: child, elderly vs. adult: simpler vocabulary
and less complex sentences, we vs. you example 4, p.225
Social background of the addressee, example 6 p. 228
Peter Trudgill interviewing people in Norwich, use of [t] in
better, bet. Glottal stop used up to 98% with lower class
interviewees (100%). With higher class (25%), Trudgills use
dropped to 30%. He was accommodating to his interviewees.
Relative status and solidarity between speaker and addressee
Colloquial style: vernacular
social dialect survey in New York Labov elicited the
vernacular: the style in which minimum attention is given to
the monitoring of speech
Observers paradox can be overcome by manipulating the
topic of interview
 Register
Occupational style: a jargon which a group of
specialists develop to talk about their
specialty, eg. Journalese, legalese, sport
commentators.
Example 23
 Speech accommodation theory
The notion of accommodation developed from the work of
Howard Giles and his associates.
Speakers tend to change the way they are speaking depending
on who they are talking to.
Speakers may Converge (modify their speech to sound
similar)or diverge (maintain linguistic distinctiveness to
distinguish themselves from interlocutor e.g. some minority
ethnic groups).
Motivation: in the case of convergence to express solidarity or
reduce social distance, polite speech strategy, sarcastic effect.
Upward convergence, downward convergence
Short-term accommodation vs. long term accommodation
which may lead to permanent linguistic changes.
Dialect contact zones.
 Reactions to speech convergence and
divergence depend on the reasons people
attribute for the convergence or divergence.
Deliberate divergence will be heard as
antagonistic or uncooperative.
 Language contact and dialect levelling

Reduction of differences distinguishing regional

dialects or accents.
The result of mobility, in the 20th century social
changes affected the local dialect diversity which
characterised regions for hundred of years.
Immigration, urbanization, new towns.
The outcome of close daily contact: levelling out of
differences
 Outcomes of Language contact
All variation and change can be viewed as the
outcome of some form of contact between
different individuals or members of different
groups: bilingualism, bidialectlism, code
switching, dialect levelling (e.g. the use of
London variants (ay) PRICE, MOUTH (aw)
by young children in Milton Keynes; stops [t]
and glottal [] in Reading (close to London)
and Hull (far from London, no immigration or
contact with London or south east speakers.
The Fens).
 Contact-induced change: pidgins and creoles
pidgins and creoles are languages that emerge out of
the contact between speakers of more than two
different languages.
Social conditions associated with the contact
Limited social contact: speakers may only be in
contact in a reduced set of social interactions, such
as trading or work. Limited access to native speakers
model of each others languages.
Lack of motivation to acquire native-speaker like
skills in the other language.
How they are learnt.
 Pidgin: a contact language that is not nobodys
first language, no native speakers. Arise in the
conditions of trade and labor related contexts.
Restricted social functions
A creole a contact language which has native
speakers, may be added the community
repertoire resulting in bilingualism.
A creole serves most of the or all of the functions that
any natural human language must serve; everyday
interaction, telling stories, jokes, games, etc.
 Functional definition of pidgins and creoles
Any variety used for business or limited to work place may be
considered a pidgin.
Russenorsk used between Russian and Norwegian sailors in
The Bering Sea during fishing season of the northern summer.
Francais tiraillou torn French used in the military parts of the
French colonies in Africa.
Once a variety is used a as vehicle for all types of
communication, it has become a creole.
Once it acquires its native speakers, it becomes a creole
(nativization).
Creolisation: the process by which a pidgin becomes the first
language of group of speakers. Exansion of a pidgin into a
wider range of social functions.
Vernacularisation: the process by which a contact variety
becomes used with the full range of social functions of the
 Characteristics of Pidgins
Ps have structural norms & must be learned
Pidgins distinct from Input languages by:
Structural reduction, typically in morphology
Lack many semantic and grammatical distinctions
Few stylistic resources (=conventional variation]
Lexical reduction, derivation from dominant groups
00
1. Simplification of superstrate (dominant language)
grammatical structure
2. Retention of substrate (less dominant) grammatical
structures
 Tok Pisin (talk pidgin)
Orait yu yet killim bikinini bilong me
Alright 2s focus kill child poss 1st

all right youre the one who killed my child

 Gulf Pidgin Arabic (Nss, Unn Gyda (2008)

Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) used as a

communication tool between local citizens
and the large Asian immigrant population in
the area for at least 30 years.
Example Asian immigrants in the Omani
border town of Buraimia developed separate
language variety rather than as a collection of
individual attempts of mastering Gulf Arabic.
 three grammatical features of this variety,
possession, negation and the verbal system. to
document systematic reductions and greater
regularity in the grammar of GPA compared to that
of Gulf Arabic, as well as the development of a light
verb system unparalleled in Arabic, but similar to
several of the main substrate languages of GPA such
as Urdu.
GPA grammar and phonology also display several of
the characteristic features of other well-documented
Arabic-based pidgins and creoles such as Juba Arabic,
Nubi and Turku in Arabic-speaking Afr
 Language shift
Language (dialect) shift: when a community who
share a native language abandon it, and collectively
shift to speaking another one instead.
Language shift is always preceded by multilingualism
What effects does language shift have on the
structures of the languages involved?
Language shift can happen raidly or slowly.
Caribbean Creole languages developed within a
century, even less, from African and European
languages. Most African languages were lost in 1-2
generations under the catastrophic conditions of
slavery
 Language shift is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on
for all of recorded history. Whenever two cultures/populations
with different languages come in intense contact, shift is a
possibility.
Typically those who shift are the weaker group, but
sometimes it is the more powerful one who shifts.
Vikings who speak Old Norse invaded in the British isles in
787 kept their language for centuries, then shifted to the
evolving English language. Vikings went to Northern France
became bilingual then shifted to French.
Historical: Language shift to Arabic by Berber population in
North Africa (Morocco) following the Muslim conquest
Language shift to Arabic by Armenians in Jordan.
 Language death (attrition)
Language death is the complete disappearance of a
language. (Latin is not a dead language)
An old phenomenon as old as the recorded history of the
languages of the world.
Often death comes by in a situation of dialect contact and
shifting bilingualism.
Most commonly a gradual process spanning several
generations.
Sudden death: when the last speaker of a language spoken by a
very small and isolated group dies, the death of Ishi the last
wild Indian in North America.
 Radical language death: Sometimes a result of
genocide, the sudden elimination of an entire
population.
Example of language death by genocide: Australian
Aboriginal languages
Over 350 languages were spoken when Capt. Cook
landed in 1770. 200 years later, only 90 survived as
viable languages.
Only 10% of Aboriginal people still speak native
languages.
 Bottom-to-top death: sometimes death affects first the
lower registers of the language leaving for last the
most formal register (Latinate pattern).
Speakers typical of language death situations:
1.Semi-speakers: imperfect speakers with partial
command of the productive skills, but perfect
command of receptive skills.
2. remembers: speakers who may have been at an
early stage fluent speakers, but have lost most of their
earlier linguistic ability. Typical of advanced stage of
language death, found in conditions of isolation.
 The effects of language death on language structure

Loss of registers and language forms

associated with them: the most widespread
case is the loss of higher registers
Lexical Loss
Loss in phonologt
Loss in morphology
Loss in syntax
 Language and gender
Gender has replaced sex in sociolinguistics.
Sex: biologically or physiologically based
distinction between males and females.
Gender: a social and cultural notion. It
indicates the social identity that emerges or is
constructed through social action, and
adherence to certain cultural norms and
proscriptions.
 Gender exclusive and gender preferential
features

Gender exclusive features:

Some linguistic features are used exclusively
by (or to) speakers of a particular sex. e.g.
kinship terms
My Auntie Kath, grandson, niece, cousin,
Cultural differences. You in English vs. Arabic
Such (gender exclusive) linguistic features that
directly index sex, or exclusively used by one
sex rather than another are rare.
 Gender preferential features
Some social dialect studies showed that some
linguistic forms are more used by men or the
opposite.
Generalizations made about preferential
gender differences in relation to the use of
standard variants.
 Principles of Gender and Variation
(Labov 1990,2001)
Principle I. : In stable sociolinguistic variation,
women use the standard more than men
Stable variation vs. change in progress
Examples of sociolinguistic variation
(ing) variable: [in], [I]
(dh) variable : fricative or stop [d] this
(th) variable: fricative or stop [t] thin
Negative concord: didnt do nothing
anything
Mens and womens use of the alveolar variant [In] in three speech styles and
two socio-economic classes in Norwich, England. (source Trudgill 1972)

120

100

80

working-class women
working-class men 60

middle-class women
40
middle-class men

20

casual speech formal speech reading passage

 Explanations for gender differences

Trudgill: in Western society, men are

evaluated more on what they do, and women
on how they appear.
Eckert: women rely on symbolic resources, eg.
Speech, dress, make-up, to establish their
position in their social groups.
Women are aware of what is proscribed
(prohibited) and therefore avoid it more than
men.
 Principle I a. In change in progress above the level of
awareness, women use the standard more than men.

Women use innovative and positively evaluated

variants more then men.

Example: the use of (r) in final pre-consonantal

position in New York city. Used more by higher class,
within each class women used it more than men. Some
exceptions.

New Yorkers talked about [r] presence and absence and

preferred or valued r-full speech than r-less pronunciation.
 Example: the use of glottal stop [] in place of
/t/ is one of the phonological changes in
progress in British English. It is gaining
ground in the cities.
Attitudes towards the glottal stop:
Teen agers show overt awareness of this
feature: my parents dont like me missing
letters out, like if I say wer
Teen agers are aware of the spread of the glottal
stop and that it is not a non-standard form.
Principle I and Ia are not always applicable. Figure
10.4. many factors interact in any variation.
Principle II:
Women use more of the incoming variant form
in changes in progress above the level of
conscious awareness.
Women lead in the use of incoming non-
standard variants if people are not aware of the
variation involved and therefore do not talk
about them.
Example: changes in the vowel system in English,e.g
central vowel [] in bus, is pronounced as boss.
Eckert (2000): this change is restricted to the speech
of a group known as burnouts, and within the group
the use was advanced among the girls than it was
among the boys.
 Figure 10.6
Figure 10.8
In the Arabic speaking world, men use more
standard Arabic than women.
 Language and social class
Sociolect (or social dialect): a socially distinct
variety.
Speaker A speaker B
I done it yesterday I did it yesterday
He aint got it He hasnt got it
Grammatical, phonetic, phonological
differences give us clues about their social
background.
Social class accents
 Why do we have these differences?
Physical barriers and distance
Regional dialect boundaries coincide with
geographical barriers, mountains, swamps, rivers, e.g.
house [hu:s] north of the river Humber vs. [haus]
(diphthong) south of the river.
Social barriers and distance
The diffusion of a linguistic feature through a society
may be halted by social factors including social class.
A linguistic innovation that begins in upper class may
reach the lower class last, if at all.
 Social stratification
Any hierarchical (ranking) ordering of groups
within a society in terms of power, wealth and
status.
In the industrialized societies of the West,
social stratification takes the form of
stratification into social classes and gives rise
linguistically to social-class dialects.
Social class is a controversial concept, no
general agreement as to the exact nature or
definition or existence of social classes.
 Social class stratification is not universal, e.g. India
caste system (hereditary). Rigid separation into
distinct groups, therefore, social distance is more
differentiating than the geographical distance in India.
Unlike the situation in India, in the class societies of
the English speaking world, the linguistic situation is
more complex.
Social classes are not clearly defined,
aggregates of people with similar social and
economic characteristics.
Social mobility is possible, the movement up or
down the social hierarchy.
 In the beginning linguistic complexity was ignored by
focusing on idiolect, or speakers in rural areas
(dialectologists, dialect surveys).
It is only after the Second World War, linguistic
realized that confining dialect studies to rural areas,
they missed important information about the majority
of people who live in towns.
Urban dialectologist faced the problem of describing
fully and accurately the speech of large towns and
cities with heterogeneous populations.
In 1966 the American linguist William Labov
published The Social Stratification of English in New
York city, a large scale survey, tape-recorded
 Representative sample therefore accurate description
of all the varieties in the area.
Labov also developed techniques to elicit normal
speech from people in spite of the recorder.
Developed methods for quantitative measurements of
linguistic data.
Labov showed that variation is not free in the speech
of New Yorkers, e.g guard, beard, and bad.
Variation is not random, but determined by extra-
linguistic factors in a predictable way.
 Social and regional dialect variation
Social variation

highest class: standard dialect

lowest class: most localized non standard

regional variation
 Standard English:
He a man who likes his dog
He a man who likes his dog
Regional non-standard variation is greater than social
variation.
He a man who likes his dog
He a man who likes his dog
He a man at likes his dog
He a man as likes his dog
He a man what likes his dog
He a man he likes his dog
He a man likes his dog
 Social and regional accent variation

social variation higest class :RP

lowest class: most localized variant

Table 3
Home 27 variants, three accent forms, in 7 cities
London
RP houm
Inermediate hum
um
Most locaized aum
 Sociolinguistic studies showed how RP, and
the intermediate and the most localized
accents are related to social class.
To measure linguistic and social phenomena.
Assign individuals a numerical index score on
the basis of income, education, other factors,
then group them with others who have similar
indexes.
 In east Anglia and in AA Detroit the 3rd p.suffix s is
not present in the speech of some people:
She like him very much
He dont know a lot, do he?
It go ever so fast
Since s is standard, and since standard English is
associated with higher classe, we may suspect that
there is a correlation between the usage of s and
social class
Tape record, listen, transcribe, count , Table 4.
 Norwich (%) Detroit (%)
MMC 0 UMC 1
LMC 2 LMC 10
UWC 70 UWC 57
MWC 87 -
LWC 97 LWC 71
 Correlational sociolinguistics
Like regional dialects, social-class dialects are
not distinct entities, they merge into each other
Popular stereotypes of social dialects are
misleading. The Detroit African American
dialect has no third person marker. Detroit
African Americans of all classes use both
forms, it is only proportions that differ.
 Language and ethnicity
Ethnic-group differentiation in a mixed
community is a particular type of social
differentiation and has linguistic
differentiation associated with it.

Experiment carried out in the USA, tape

recordings of two different sets of speakers.
 Two types:
Language as a defining characteristic of the
ethnic group membership, common world
wide,e.g. multilingual Africa, Canada. People
will identify themselves as belonging to a
particular ethnic group on the basis of their
language.
Separate identity of ethnic groups is signalled
by distinct varieties of the same
language,e.g.Jewish, Italians in New York.
 Ethnic groups are fluid entities whose
boundaries change through history.
Example: Yugoslavia, in the centre of the
country the language was Sebo-croat.
Different ethnic groups who speak the same
dialects. With the breakup of Yugoslavia, the
government in Zagreb calls its national
language Croation, Latin alphabet, the
government in Belgrade calls its language
Serbian, Cyrillic alphabet. Moslims of Bosnia
calls their language Bosnian
They stress their separate nationhoods and
 Ethnic groups in New York. Jewish, Italian.
Ethnic groups tend to form separate
communities within the city.
Differences are due to the influence of
substratum varieties, languages spoken before
they become speakers of New York English.
Yiddish or Italia accent accent of the first
generation would lead to hypercorrection of
foreign features by the second generation. The
use of high vowels in bad, bag by Italians
because their fathers used more open vowel
than the English sound.
AAVE
 Language and social networks
Linguistic variation can be analyzed in terms of
social networks: the grouping of people based
on the frequency and quality of interaction.
James and Lesley Milroys 1985 study of
Belfast.
The relationships individuals contract with
others--- through social and geographical
space linking many individuals.
Social networks are defined by who your
friends are, who live near, who you work with.
 Network analyses ask how often the members
of these groups are the same and how often
they are completely different.
The diffusion of Linguistic change happens fast
and efficiently along horizontal channles (
within one age and a social cohort). On the
other hand vertical channels (across
generation, social classes) are comparatively
slow and inefficient with regard to the
transmission of a linguistic innovation.
 How can you identify a social network?
Observe who interacts with who in a community
Note how they are interacting with each other.
Patterns of interaction constitute individualss social
networks.
Let the people define their own social networks. Ask
who are your best friends?
Name all the people you had conversation with
yesterday
A researcher can build a network from all the
answers.
 Dense and Loose social networks
A dense social network is one where all
members know each other. If you ask five
people, each one should mention the other
four.
Loose social network: not all members know
each other
Dense networks slow down or inhibit change.
Members police each others behaviour
(consciously or unconsciously) because of the
intensity of their contact
 Because in dense networks contacts with
outside the network are comparatively
superficial, there is less chance of being
exposed to innovation from outside.

Loose networks make people more open to

change. The ties that individual members have
to other networks provide an opportunity for
them to be exposed to and pick innovations
from outside their network.
 Multiplex and uniplex ties within
networks
Net works can be distinguished in terms of the
quality of the ties between individuals.
Uniplex tie: if the network tie between two
individuals is based on one relationship, e.g.
the two people work together, or are family
members, or have children in the same club.
Multiplex tie: if two people know each other
in several different roles, e.g best friends, and
thy take the same courses at niversity, work
together on weekends. (A three-way tie)
 A loose network based on uniplex ties is going
to be more open to the introduction and
transmission of innovations than dense
networks where members share multiplex
ties.
Language & power/ language & politeness
The social relationship between the speaker and the
hearer is indicated by his/her linguistic choices.

(T/V) distinction: the choice between Tu (familiar form)

and vous (the polite form) forms in languages, e.g.
Latin, French, Italian German, Greek, (English once had
thou/you distinction.

According to Brown and Gilman (1960) it started as a

sing. And plural difference. By medieval times, the upper
classes began to use V with each other to show mutual
respect
 The asymmetrical T/V usage came to
symbolize power relationship.
Symmetrical V usage became polite usage,
spread downward but not to the lowest
classes.
Symmetrical T usage to show intimiacy or
solidarity (strong common interest).
This mutual T came to replace the mutual V of
politeness because solidarity is more
important in personal relationships.
 Address terms
How do you name or address another? By title
(T), first name (FN) by last name (LN),
nickname, by combination of these or by
nothing at all.
What factors govern the choice you make?
Is the address process asymmetrical? Mr.
Smith leads to John, or symmetrical?
Family relationships
Use of kinship terms for use as address terms
 Politeness markers
Politeness is prescribed, rules, norms.
The concept of politeness is associated with Goffman
(1967) study on face.
Brown and Levinson (1987) define face as the public self
image that every member wants to claim for himself
They distinguished between Positive face vs. negative
face.
Positive face the desire to get the approval of others.
Negative face the desire to be unimpeded by others in
ones actions. Freedom of actions and freedom form
impositions.