Sociolinguistics

Language Variants and Speech Communities

Social Class – Problems?

What problems can you envision with social class categories?

The Great British survey

Results:1. “It says the traditional categories of working,

middle and upper class are outdated, fitting 39% of people.”

2. Found seven new categories 3. Still have the elite at the top and the

proletariat at the bottom4. Too simplistic, need for new dimensions

The new classes are defined as:• Elite - the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six

classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals

• Established middle class - the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital

• Technical middle class - a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy

• New affluent workers - a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital

• Traditional working class - scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66

• Emergent service workers - a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital

• Precariat, or precarious proletariat - the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital

Social Mobility

Mockney

Speech Communities

Social organisation

• Routine• Pattern • Continuity

• People develop patterns of behavior among themselves over time

• Social action is dependent on the situation. Our actions change as the audience changes.

• Definition: Action with others in mind.

- Ex. dressing up to create an impression.

• Social InteractionI do things because of you, and you do things because of me, we have social interaction, i.e. mutual social action

Social organization is patterned - 1

• Sociologists say that social organization is patterned, i.e. the same actions occur over and over again.

• Patterns begin to take on a life of their own … they are like new additional forces that have arisen among people.

Social organization is patterned - 2

• In most situations, we already have patterns set for us which we have to learn. These patterns influence what we do.

Levels of social organization - Dyads

• Dyads are formed when there is patterned social interaction between two people over time, from minutes to a long time.

Levels of social organization - Groups

• A group is made up of three or more people who interact and who form patterns.

• Dyad - if 1 member leaves, dyad disappears.

• Dyad - both members must agree before anything can be done.

• Dyad - more intense, more emotional involvement, more personal.

• Group - can survive if a member leaves or is replaced.

• Group - can continue even if 1 member doesn’t agree.

• Group - less personal, group is more important than individual

Social organizations are hierarchical

SocietyCommunity

Formal OrganizationsGroup

DyadDyad

Networks

• Loose network: A network in which individuals relate in only a single way; casual and diffuse relationships.

- E.g. Buying food from the same shop

• Dense network: A network in which the people you know also know each other and relate to each other closely.

- E.g. Fellow students at school

• Multiplex network- close-knit network, ties are said to be strong, where they maintain vernacular features

• Uniplex network – loose-knit network, are usually non-territorially based and show weakening in the strength of ties

- Characterised as mobile, urban, middle-class speakers, open to influence and mainstream

Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages

edited by Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens, Paul Kerswill

Question

• What is one loose network you participate in? Which section of your verbal repertoire do you use to relate?

• What is one dense network you participate in? Which section(s) of your verbal repertoire do you use to relate?

What a speech community is not…

“Speech communities do not exist simplybecause individuals share the same language or dialect. Although this idea was put forward as an early definition of a speech community (Lyons 1970)…In order to come to a justifiable sociolinguistic definition of a speech community, categories other than just language need to be considered.”

Speech Community

The essential criterion for ‘community’ is that some significant dimension of experience has to be shared, and for the ‘speech community’ that the shared dimension be related to ways in which members of the group use, value or interpret language.

(Saville-Troike 2003: 15)

“A community of speakers who share the same verbal repertoire, and who also share the same norms for linguistic behavior, including both general norms for language use of the type studied in the ethnography of speaking, and more detailed norms for activities such as style shifting of the type studied by secular linguistics. It is an important term in both the ethnography of speaking and in secular linguistics.”

(Peter TRUDGILL 2003:126)

MY FAIR LADY

Dialect Variation and its EvaluationDialect Variation and its EvaluationThe way that people talk depends on where they come from and where they belong in their society. Other people notice -- and evaluate -- ways of talking that are different from their own: in the (1916) preface to his play Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw wrote that:

The way that people talk depends on where they come from and where they belong in their society. Other people notice -- and evaluate -- ways of talking that are different from their own: in the (1916) preface to his play Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw wrote that:

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

As the phonetician Henry Higgins says in the play's first act:

"You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets."

• Evaluate them• Usually in a negative • Hostile way

Higgins speaking to the cockney flower-peddler Eliza Doolittle, he says:

“A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere—no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.”

"[p]eople are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

"[p]eople are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

Questions• Please use your question sheet