Socio. Week 2

Language vs. Dialect, Sociolect, Ethnolect

• Language variety is a neutral term encompassing these.

Five Styles (Joos, 1959)

• Intimate style involves shared knowledge and background in private conversations, like "pillow talk."
• Casual style is typical among peers, including ellipsis and slang.
• Consultative style is standard for informal conversations between strangers, using fewer slang and ellipsis, but still using informal markers of rapport.
• Formal style depends on the setting, using markers like "whom", "may I", "for the purpose of".
• Frozen style is hyper-formal, discourages familiarity.

Early Variationist Assumptions

• Society has a hierarchical structure.
• Hierarchy is based on social class (vs. gender/ethnicity).
• Social class relates to education and income.
• Language variation correlates with social variation.
• Informal styles are greater than formal styles.
• Style correlates with language variation.

Rapid and Anonymous Survey (RAS)

• RAS is fast and uses many informants.
• RAS is anonymous, so personal data is not collected.
• Labov used RAS to study /r/ in NYC department stores.
• Tops used RAS to study /r/ in Flanders.
• Sebregts used RAS to study /r/ in the Netherlands.
• RAS may or may not be conducted with participant knowledge.
• Agreements to participation occurs through informed consent.

Theories on language variation and style

• Monitoring: William (Bill) Labov.
• Speech accommodation: Howard Giles.
• Audience design: Allan Bell.
• Speaker design: Nikolas Coupland.
• Acts of identity: Robert Brock Le Page and Andrée Tabouret-Keller.

Monitoring (William Labov)

• Monitoring refers to attention to speech.
• Style means attention to one's speech.
• Labov's theory is one-dimensional (informal-formal).
• Sociolinguistic interviews elicit style spectrum in speakers.

Sociolinguistic Interview

• Reading style involves:
  • Reading minimal pairs (e.g., raw-law).
  • Reading a word list.
  • Reading a short story.
• Spoken styles include:
  • Casual: between conversation partners who know each other. Conversations deal with life, faith and/or experiences.
  • Formal: between strangers, researchers and/or participants.

Triangulation

• Triangulation combines data from interviews and RAS.

Norms, Status, and Prestige

• Norms are specific guides to action that define acceptable and appropriate behavior in situations.
• Position in society is related to behavioral norms and prestige.
• Norms are learned through socialization. Do good and be rewarded; be bad and be punished.
• A stable society has shared standards.

Overt and Covert Prestige

• Overt prestige involves speakers knowing and adhering to standard, aesthetic and/or moral judgments.
• Covert prestige means speakers adhere to a norm, but the language user is unaware of it.
• Not all non-standard features have covert prestige.

Hypercorrection

• Hypercorrection is the overgeneralization of a situation with high monitoring.
• When speakers attempts to avoid mistakes, they make "mistakes."
  • Example: Dutch (DU) speaker says "soep [zup]" instead of "soep [zup]"
  • Example: English (EN) speaker says "captain [kæptiŋ]" instead of "captain [kæptin]"
• Hypercorrection can occur in second language acquisition.
• Hypercorrection may play a role in language change.

Thoughts on Monitoring

• Monitoring is a useful research method for identifying stylistic spectra within speakers.
• A continuum may exist from controlled to uncontrolled, not necessarily from formal to informal.
• Reading may not be comparable to spontaneous conversation.
• Style depends on the conversation partner, subject, and/or setting.

Speech Accommodation

• Developed by Howard Giles in 1973.
• Speakers focus on norms they associate with conversation partners.
• Speech Accommodation depends on one's attitude towards conversation partners:
  • Psychological integration.
  • Psychological distance.
• Speech Accommodation utilizes can use a linguistic strategy:
  • Convergence.
  • Divergence.
  • Non-accommodation.

Convergence

• Defined as up / down
• Defined as over / under accommodation.
• Defined as relationship effort – value.
• Optimal accommodation level.
• Objective vs. subjective accommodation.

Accommodation Theory

• Accommodation theory is complicated because speakers may not always accommodate in the direction of the conversation partner.
• Accommodation theory is mainly based on social psychological experiments.
• Some scholars view this theory as too little based on everyday language use.
• Different motivations guide convergence or divergence. For example, convergence may be to maintain one's identity/distance without implying hostility (e.g., teacher-student, doctor-patient).

Audience Design

• Developed by Allan Bell in the 1980s.
• Speakers align their speech with the speech of their target audience.
• Style = attention to others.
• Mass media speakers have expectations of audience language use.
  • National broadcasters use standard language.
  • Different programs have different style.

Roles in the audience

• Addressee: Known, ratified, addressed (+, +, +).
• Auditor: Known, ratified, not addressed (+, +, -).
• Overhearer: Known, not ratified, not addressed (+, -, -).
• Eavesdropper: Not known, not ratified, not addressed (-, -, -).

Audience Design Considerations

• Speakers associate classes of topics or settings with classes of persons.
• Speakers shift style when talking on those topics or in those settings.
• Shifts in style suitable to address an employee or teacher occur with topics (e.g., occupation, education) and settings (e.g., office, school).
• Intimate topics or home settings elicit speech for intimate addressees (e.g., family/friends).
• The basis of all style shift depends on audience-designed shift.

Intra- vs. Inter-Speaker Variation

• Is language variation in the individual the result of variation between groups of speakers?
• Is there a systematic and predictable connection between intra- and inter-speaker variation?

Speaker Design

• Nikolas Coupland (1985) studied DJ Radio Cardiff.
• Speakers use different styles to present themselves differently based on the situation and conversation partner.
• "You are doing" style reflects performance and agency.
• Speakers use style to express personal identity.
• Style functions as an act of identity.

Robert B. Le Page & Andrée Tabouret-Keller

• Le Page and Tabouret-Keller studied multilingual language use, including codeswitching.
• Focus was in Caribbean contexts.
• Studies included oral and written language.
• Significant variation occurs between speakers.
• Individuals create linguistic patterns to resemble or distinguish themselves from certain groups (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, 1985).

Topics for Further Thought

• How can one generalize based on one speaker's motivation?
• Speaker motivation is difficult to observe and self-report.
• Issues of validity concern how to confirm conclusions of other researchers.
• How can other researchers recognize and respond to style shifting?

Conclusion

• The relationship between style shifting and language variation and change informs sociolinguistics.
• Theoretical and methodological insights continue to be valid.