Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Language and Society
Language and Society
Use of [r]
100
80
60 never
%
sometimes
40
always
20
0
Saks Macy's S Klein
store
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
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, don’t 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?
• Code Switching Between English and Arabic : An Empirical study on Saudi Female
Students
Sociolinguistics project
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
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
Table 3
‘Home’ 27 variants, three accent forms, in 7 cities
London
RP houm
Inermediate hum
um