Sociolinguistics General Definition of sociolinguistics   :

The field of sociolinguistics studies the relationship between language and

society, the aim of this field is to study how people speak differently in different

social contexts, and how language functions in society, and how language is

affected by the social facets.

This trend was developed as a rejection to Chomsky’s claim toward an ideal-

speaker listener who knows everything about his language in a completely

homogeneous speech community, labov identified the social aspects mainly as

contributors to as factors that are used with language; that is to say language in

use(performance) not like what Chomsky said: idealized speaker hearer.

Varieties

Language and dialect

Vernacular refers to the language that everyone uses to in his or her daily life,

social interaction.

Language and dialect according to Haugan are different in term of prestige; he

considered dialects a local non-prestigious and powerless variety of language.

Language is considered to mean a standard and subordinate variety, dialects are

nonstandard and subordinate to language

Sociolinguists have different view since they considered all dialects dialects

including the standard

Mutual intelligibility: a criterion used to determine a language from a

dialect to manifest if two varieties are dialect of the same language. However it

faces several problems.

Accent:

It refers to the way a speech community differs from another why in term of

speaking the same language ex: English in Britain and America. Yet, not to be

confused with dialects

Style:

The style of choosing the way we speak a language, that is to say the formality

of language is governed by some social circumstances

Register:

It refers to the specific vocabulary that distinguishes one speech community

from another that speaks the same language. It can help to construct and identity

in a specific time and place

Outline:

Language variation

Language in contact:

Diglossia

Pidgin and Creole

Language attitude

Ethnography

Language and gender

Language variation:

Linguistics variables

Labov attempted to describe how language varies in any community.

A linguistic variable is a linguistic item which identify variants, which are the

different form that the speaker can use in a certain environment

Example: words like (singing) and (fishing) can be pronounced as /singin/ and

/fishin/, the meaning remained the same

r-less pronunciation: / farm/ can be pronounced as / fam/

Nasalization: French nasalized consonants

The vowels: frontness/ backness/rounding

The principle of accountability:

This principle refers to the important of the usage of all the variants even if they

don’t occur (zero variant)

Example:

The copula of verb “to be” is (am, is, are)

The variants should all be counted in the variable analyses

Types of variables:

Phonological variables:

Consonant variables:

/ng/ has been widely used according to labov then /ɲ/

Also /r/ has been much used then /NOTHING/

Also /h/ in words like House and Honest are much used then / nothing/

Vowels variables:

They area variants of vowels used differently like / e/ in words like MEN and

Pen or /o/ in words like dog and coffee

Syntactic variables:

Examples were accounted for like:

He happy he be happy he is happy

Variants of negation in English:

Don’t ain’t doesn’t do not

Variants of relative clauses:

Whom that /nothing/ / punctuation/

Labov study of linguistics variants in New York:

Labov chose five phonological variables:

The /th/ variable,/dh/ variable /r/ variable /a/ and /o/

/th/ variables in the initial word like: thin and three

/dh/ the initial consonant of the word like: there and then

/r/ while it is present or absent

/a/ in bad and back

/o/ in words like caught and dog

Some of them are discrete variants like /r/ variant and some like the vowels

require the researcher to quantify the variants because the variation is

continuous phenomenon example like /a; which can be raised, lowed, backed or

even sometimes nasalized

Indicators, markers, and stereotypes

Indicators are linguistic variants that carry no social information and not socially

attached too, only linguists are aware of indicators, while marker carries some

sort of social information. However, stereotypes are conscious characteristics of

speech for a group of people; example from New York is to be illustrative:

Water === /wota/ bird====/boid/

Social variation:

How linguistics variables are related to social variation

R-lessness as an example can be related to a particular social factor as gender or

age in a certain social group.

Social class membership

Social classes are not to be determined because they are always changing

historically, regionally and socially.

The example of English society in 50s is different from the current one and it

will change in the future .besides, it differs from country to another.

Scales to determine social classes:

Occupational scale:

1-professional with large businesses

2-lesser professional with meduimised business

3-owner of small business

4-skilled workers

5-semi skilled and unskilled workers

Educational scale:

1-College-high education with degree

2-College-high education without degree

3-High school attendance

4-Less than seven years of formal education

However, we need to be cautious in classifying the scales, since the historical

aspect plays a role to identify these classes from time to time

Other classes that are called late modernity:

Leisure time, church membership, community activities and consumption of

goods, appearance.

The sociolinguistic interview:

The method sociolinguists used to interview the informants is to provide speech

in a context. to address the issue of the stylistic variation. He aim is to make the

interviewees focus more on how the speak, a casual interview is involved for

that operation more than a question and answer

Labov introduce the topic of “the danger of death” question to make the

informants feel more comfortable: to see how emotionally they become when

they talk about a situation in which they were in a danger.

Informants were asked to read too, to see how speakers shape their speech to in

some way to fit or suit their purposes

Sociolinguists intended to follow a new method, that is to say data collection

Sampling:

Sampling is a critical aspect of sociolinguistic research; it’s a method of finding

a group of speakers, to account for the behavior of that group. When the sample

is good, so that the results will be.

Types of sampling

Random sampling: it is considered as the best type to sample, since it cover all

characteristics the researcher wants to involve in the research including every

type of the informant so that the results would be more general and obtain much

acceptance in the findings.

Judgment sampling: known as the quota sampling; the investigator choose a

certain type of informants according to a set of criteria (age, gender, income)

this type is less accepted since it leads to bias the findings to certain level.

Stratified sampling: this type of sampling includes characteristics from both

random and quota sampling.

Labov didn’t use a completely random sample in his research because he may

include some subject that were not native in the area, so he used a stratified

sampling, he avoided the quota sampling some that he won’t bias the finding.

Diglossia

Definition

Diglossia is a situation in which there are two distinct codes (languages), with

clear separate functions. That is to say one code is used in a certain

circumstances and the other is entirely different.

These codes are referred to as High and Low varieties each of these varieties is

used under certain condition.

We must use the right variety in the right situation, either it’s formal or informal

to avoid being ridicule.

It’s typical to get informed and read information from a newspaper for example

in H variety and discuss it in L variety

We use L variety to explain works that are written in H variety “education in the

Arab world”: books are written in H variety but the teacher discusses them with

low variety.

H variety is considered a prestigious variety then the low one; since in

Diaglossia the inhabitant in Haitian even though they know their Haitian creole,

they use French instead because it seems more prestigious.

H variety is considered beautiful, effective in politic speeches, and probably

used in poetry.

In literature we use H variety that is almost considered in Arabic as the

standard variety

In acquisition, we use the low variety that is learned by children via their

parents in the first place, H variety is considered to be acquired via formal

education.

The grammar of the H variety is to be explicit in term of concepts, and mainly to

be taught in schools while the low variety is unconscious, and without any

explicit discussion of items (grammar items like, NP, VP)

Standardization: for the high variety, there are grammar dictionaries and

punctuation that stylized the language, which limit the variation of this variety,

while in contrast, the low variety lacks the factors mentioned before, which give

rise to create many varieties in a certain diglossic community.

Stability:

Diglossia seems to be stable, evidences show that it can persist for a thousand

year. Also, it solve the communicative tension; we may use some intermediate

form of language that are neither low, nor high

Grammar: H variety settled its grammar and norms that are totally absent in the

low variety

Lexicon:

There are items in the High variety that has no equivalent in the low variety

lexicon, and the opposite. They are some words that form both the high and the

low varieties, and denote the same meaning

Phonology: the phonologies of both varieties are determined differently

according to each community; they may be close like in Greek, different like in

Arabic or divergent like in Suisse German.

Pidgin and Creole:

Pidgin is a system in its own right and own linguistic norms, it arises when a

group of people who don4t speak a common language come to contact with each

other, the creation of a pidgin depends on the contact of two intelligible

languages.

The form of pidgin is different from L2 acquisition, which mean that L2 is

learned, when a pidgin is not targeted as a language that exist.

The aim of creating pidgin is to communicate instead of learning a new

language.

Pidgin doesn’t resemble any language in term of its structure; it’s a result of

language mixing,

No one speak pidgin as a first language

Types of pidgins:

Jargon: pre-pidgin:

Limited vocabulary, unstable structure and using more gestures.

Stable pidgin:

Recognizable structure, developed vocabulary, limited in few domains

“workshops”, markets.

Expended pidgin:

More sophisticated in structure and vocabulary. And used in more contexts

formal and informal.

Creole: result of pidgin that leaded to become a first language of a speech

community, pidgin and Creole rose with the development of trade, and slavery.

Historical background:

Slavery is related to the new world slavery

Caribbean, Africa, Europe ( the triangle sale)

Colonization:

European settled their colonies in the new world in the 17 century for plantation

like tea and tobacco.

Native Americans resisted this, but they got killed, those who survived got

affected by the European diseases that were brought by them.

Capitalism and plantation leads to slavery, because these plantation were to

serve the European market

The sale triangle:

The system into which slavery was incorporated was involved in a triangle

system of plantation. (From Europe to Africa to Caribbean)

20% of them died in the hulls en route, they were put there to save space.

The third part is to take the plantation from the Caribbean to Europe. Like sugar,

tea, tobacco, indigo, rum….

Type of communication in pidgin:

Vertical communication (from master to the slave)

Horizontal communication (between slaves themselves)

Since masters and slaves do not share any language in common, and the same

case for slaves. Pidgin should be developed, in the slave factories and the new

plantations

Fort Creole: developed in the slave factories,

Plantation Creole: developed in the new world plantation, under the dominance

of the European languages which are considered (superstrate) language, while

the language of Africans is to be called (substrate).

Pidginization: it’s a process that is probably based on the Portuguese pidgin that

was the first to develop in this context. It occurs in both horizontal and vertical

communications (the dominant European language with the substrate African

languages)

Language segregation: keeping apart the same group of Africans in to avoid

insurrection, which may intensify the slaves for a need for a lingua franca?

Theories of origin:

Pidgin is compared to full languages to show the characteristics of it that make it

easy to master.

The structure of pidgin:

The size of pidgin vocabulary is small. But it developed some process to extend

the words to mean more objects in the world

Polysemy:

Many pidgin words are polysemous, that is to see to explain more things and to

mean more than one thing.

Many words in pidgin are multifunctional words, they ought to have more

functions in grammar (one word can be functioning as noun or adjective)

Circumlocution: using more words to that are necessary to convey a meaning.

Compounding: it’s widely used in many pidgins to denote abstractions and also

gender of nouns:

Grammatical structure:

Pidgins have few suffixes and grammar markers that are very important in the

input of a language; tense is almost inferred in the context or adverbs.

Theories of origin of pidgin:

Monogenetic theory: all pidgins derived from the Portuguese pidgin in term of

its vocabulary. Because the Portuguese were first to explore the new world, it

was believed to be connected to Sabir and lingua franca, which was the link

between the Muslims and Christians in Europe in the 14 century.

It was considered a pidgin to form the basis of all the later pidgin (model).

Relexification: a process of changing vocabulary from language that are

substrate to the European languages (dominant)

2 hypotheses were to be known:

One hypothesis is that the slaves learnt the Portuguese pidgin when they were in

the forts (factories) then taken to the plantations, after that this pidgin adapted to

the Portuguese pidgin. Alternatively, the sailors adopted this pidgin and exposed

the slaves to it.

Independent parallel development:

This theory claimed that pidginization and Creolization occur in different places

and in different time, and some circumstances that parallel them; many of the

languages taken to the Atlantic colonies belong to the same group named West-

African languages, and in the pacific side called the Austronesia Family.

There was a parallel between the European languages within the substrate

languages and the circumstances to learn them.

Some scholars said that European languages have a great role in the input of the

pidgin and Creole, other claimed the opposite.

This theory received more acceptances by the scholars since we can accept that

all pidgins are based on one pidgin. Because, circumstances are changing all the

time

Linguistic universals:

It refers instead to the inherent linguistic skills of all humans, and the slaves did

simplify their languages in some way to produce a pidgin. Rather than learning a

new language.

Creole: structures and theories of origin:

Creole is an expansion of the pre-existing pidgins. A Creole community needs a

language to fulfill all the aspects of it. Not like a stable pidgin (words that are

related to certain fields).

The most important part of the process of Creolisation, is the grammar it has

( explicit tense marker and verbal system. Complex sentences,

Crealisation turns pidgin to be a fully-language with a grammatical and

semantic capacity.

The bioprogramme:

It claims that pidgin is to some extent different from Creole, since the pidgin is

considered second language learning with restricted input, and Creole is a First

language learning with a restricted input.

Language attitude:

Language attitude is our attitude toward languages, speakers of those languages,

or even the policy or the planning of those languages.

Attitude toward languages in a bilingualism or multilingualism speech

community is rather to be important as a case of study. Because they may have

an impact on education or even creating stereotypes toward a certain language.

Attitudes denote also the behavior toward language: loyalty, choice, or even

rejection of a language.

Language attitude covered all the social and psychological aspects; we know

how to put ourselves socially (social) and how to interact toward others

(psychological).

The mentalist and the behaviorist theories:

The mentalist views an attitude as a state of readiness: it depends on the person’s

response toward a language, it can’t be observed by interfered.

The mentalist view is a multicomponental view in which attitude have 3

components:

The affective (feeling) – the cognitive (system of belief and knowledge) – the

conative (action).

The advantages of this theory is when an attitude is a mental/internal state, it is

difficult to be examined.

The behaviorist view:

It views an attitude as an observable response to a social situation. Thus, it

makes the research easier to be undertaken, analyzed by through a behavior.

This theory, unlike the previous one has only one component: which is the

affective component. Which lead it to be criticized because it was not sufficient

to examine a verbal conduct?

Methods of language attitude research:

Indirect methods: (Lambert)

The matched-guised technique: listeners are asked to react to speakers, not

languages. (They are not aware of that the same speaker talks in both languages.

The case took place in Canada (French and English).

This method was implemented also to study not only languages but also dialects

and accents.

Niceness and intelligence, social status and leadership and personality, physical

appearance, are factors to be evaluated using this method.

Direct methods:

Questionnaires (closed or open), and interviews are to be considered a direct

methods.

Semantic differential scale:

The form of listener responses that is very often used with the matched-guised

method includes this scale.

See page 5 and 6 from Handouts given by the Professor.

Ethnography:

The origin of the term lies in the 19 century western anthropology.

It was a descriptive account of a community or a culture. It describes the

community or the culture outside the west (USA and Europe)

The anthropologist himself should do the ethnographic work.

Ethnology, which study it historical and the comparative analyses of the non-

western communities. Because it’s considered the core of the anthropological

work.

Anthropologists give up working with ethnology and move on to ethnography.

Because it covers the theoretical that deals with the social organization and

culture and the practical facet to investigate it.

Fieldwork of the anthropologists was to live with people for a period of time,

and study their way of life beliefs, values integral to them.

It becomes a model to some researchers in the western sociology, (the

community study movement); which involved study of villages, towns in the

United States and Europe in relation to the impact of urbanism and

industrialization.

Ethnography approach ====== Dell Hymes who was a sociolinguist and

anthropologist.

Each community has cultural values of speaking. And it changes across

communities in speaking.

Ethnography of speaking becomes the ethnography of communication to include

the non-verbal aspects of communication.

Intergenerational conversation: conversations between generations

Each community has each own speech events which are instants of patterned

communication.

Speech events: examples of communication:

This approach introduced the participant observation (to live with the

communication, to understand it, to communicate).

Dell hymes proposed the acronym (SPEAKING) which analyzes language in

term of the speech events.

S: the setting and the scene: (the setting: the physical in which the speech

occurs), and the scene (the cultural situation).

P: participants: the speaker and the listener.

E: ends: the goals and expected outcomes.

A: act sequence: the form and the content of the speech event.

K: key: attitude, tone and manner in which the speech event is transmitted.

I: instrumentalities: Oral and written that are employed in the speech event, also

the language and the dialect or register that is chosen.

N: norms of interaction: the behaviors and the properties of speech event.

G: genre: type of utterance :( riddles, prayers, lectures)

Communicative units:

The largest unit is the speech situation; the social context in which the speech

occurs, the speech event; which is governed by the rules above, and speech act ,

which could be a question or greeting …..

Language and gender:

Sex: is the biological masculinity or femininity

Gender: a social acquisition.

Gender differences are partly based on sex differences.

Gender differs from society to another, continuum of masculine and feminine

(you can be more or less man) culturally, but not biologically.

Sex categories are determined to be either a woman or a man (biological

status).where gender refers to the social and the cultural traits.

Sexism in language:

The social reception to Sexism in language is totally different.

Women are mostly and negatively rejected. Examples:

Lord/lady Sir/madam Master/mistress

The masculine words receive more respect than the feminine ones.

Male-female linguistic differences.

Man speak more than woman,

When man talk, he focus more on subjects like: teasing, sports, aggression and

doing things

For woman: the self, feelings, affiliation, home and family

When both interact:

Man reduces to talk about aggression, and competition. When woman reduces to

talk about home and family. Man tends to be the first, who talk,

Accommodation is to be achieved as far as topics are concerned

Man tend to explain to woman things while tend to apologize more

Interruptions are related to man as one of his characteristics.

In the cross-sex conversations:

Woman tends to ask more question the man, encourage him to continue

speaking by using words like (mmhhmm).

Man tends to interrupt, challenge, dispute and ignore. Moreover, to control

topic’s discussion

Man and woman show the normal power relationship that exists in a society.

(Man dominant and woman as a subservient). This is the way they are brought

to life to behave.

The end.