Key Sociolinguistics Concepts PDF

Key Sociolinguistics Concepts A. Lingua Franca A lingua franca is a shared language used by people from diverse linguistic backgrounds to converse with one another. It is the language that unites speakers of many tongues. A lingua franca is a word used in ordinary speech t...

Key Sociolinguistics Concepts A. Lingua Franca A lingua franca is a shared language used by people from diverse linguistic backgrounds to converse with one another. It is the language that unites speakers of many tongues. A lingua franca is a word used in ordinary speech to refer to an auxiliary language used to facilitate communication between two groups of individuals who speak different native languages (Crystal, 2008). Lingua francas both have national and international uses. English is now widely used as a lingua franca in many portions of the world. It is a native language for some speakers, and a foreign language or a second language for others (Wardhaugh, 2010). Examples: In Indonesia – The national language, Bahasa Indonesia, serves as the country's lingua franca, giving the country's diverse ethnic groups a means of communication in the same language. In India – Hindi is the official language, but English is also used as a common language In China – Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, is utilized as a lingua franca to facilitate communication among speakers of various Chinese dialects. In multilingual nations of East Africa – many other tongues are spoken, but Ki- Swahili is used as the lingua franca or common language. In the Philippines – Filipino and English are the two languages that link the country's various linguistic populations. The two are the principal languages in schools and of media. In addition, as part of the Department of Education's (DepEd) Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) initiative, twelve Philippine languages are employed as the primary medium of instruction in public schools from kindergarten through Grade 3 (Ronda, 2012). These are Tagalog, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Iloko, Bikol, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Tausug, Maguindanaon, Maranao, and Chabacano.  Within Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – People who were not native English speakers have acquired and learned the language in order to interact with others in these communities. As a result, a Thai and an Indonesian, a Filipino and a Vietnamese, and so on, may decide to use English as their lingua franca or common language while speaking with one another. B. Native Varieties Native varieties are the "traditional" Englishes used by native speakers (McArthur, 1999). The world is home to many different varieties of English. British English, used in the United Kingdom, is the oldest variant. The English variety that has the most native speakers is American English. British English and American English Variations British English American English -oe-/-ae- (e.g., anaemia, diarrhoea, -e- (e.g., anemia, diarrhea, encyclopedia) encyclopaedia) -t (e.g., burnt, dreamt, leapt) -ed (e.g., burned, dreamed, leaped) -ence (e.g., defence, offence, licence) -ense (e.g., defense, offense, license) -ell- (e.g., cancelled, jeweller, marvellous) -el- (e.g., canceled, jeweler, marvelous) -ise (e.g., appetiser, familiarise, organise) -ize (e.g., appetizer, familiarize, organize) -l- (e.g., enrol, fulfil, skilful) -ll- (e.g., enroll, fulfill, skilfull) -ogue (e.g., analogue, monologue, -og (e.g., analog, monolog, catalog) catalogue) *Note that American English also recognizes words spelled with -ogue -ou (e.g., colour, behaviour, mould) -o (e.g., color, behavior, mold) -re (e.g., metre, fibre, centre) -er (e.g., meter, fiber, center) -y- (e.g., tyre) -i- (e.g., tire) Some British and American English Lexicons British English American English aeroplane airplane Bill check Biscuit cookie  car park parking lot Chips French fries Cinema movie theatre Footway Sidewalk football soccer Mum mom Garden yarn/ lawn Holiday vacation Petrol gas/ gasoline post box mailbox racing car race car Railway railroad sailing boat sailboat Sweet candy Trainers sneakers Effective method of identifying vocabulary differences between British English and American English mainly includes the judgment period according to the content of the statement, and judgment method according to syntactic relation. The addition of u in British English words is the influence of French in England. American spelling was invented as a form of protest and showing independence from British rule. American spelling is reflecting the way the word is said. Additionally, American English has the following unique features: a. American English intonation does not rise or fall as much as that of British English, it sounds more monotonous. b. American voices usually have a higher pitch that is why, it is often too emphatic, and seems louder than British English. c. American pronunciation is more nasalized. d. There are certain differences in the pronunciation of vowels and consonants. The other significant features of British and American Englishes are as follows:  Features British English (BE) American English (AE) BE uses the present perfect I’ve eaten too much. I ate too much. tense (i.e., has/have + past I’ve been to the shop. I went to the store. participle). AE uses the simple past Have you got the Did you get the tense. newspaper? newspaper? BE uses the present perfect A: Are they going to the show tonight? tense with the words B: No. They already saw it. already, just, and yet. A: Are they going to the show tonight? B: No. They’ve already seen it. A: Is Samantha here? B: No, she just left. A: Is Samantha here? B: No, she’s just left. A: Can I borrow your book? B: No, I didn’t read it yet. A: Can I borrow your book? B: No, I haven’t read it yet. BE’s collective noun The government are doing The government is doing normally governs a verb everything they can during everything it can during that is plural because it this crisis. this crisis. denotes a collection of My team are winning. My team is winning. individuals AE uses the singular verb for collective nouns because it is taken as one/ a whole. In BE, the preposition at is I’m going to a party at the I’m going to a party on the used with many time weekend. weekend. expressions, as well as with What are you doing at What are you doing on to and from with the Christmas? Christmas? adjective different. In AE, the preposition on is Monday to Friday. Monday through Friday. always used, as well as It’s different from/ to the It’s different from/ than from and than. others. the others. English spoken in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India are some of the other major varieties of the language. The following are some examples. Australian English Lexicon  1. Ta – thanks 2. Sunnies – shades/ sunglasses 3. Danny – CR 4. Aryo – afternoon 5. Sauce – ketchup South African Lexicon 1. Robot – stoplight/ traffic lights 2. Raw – inexperienced 3. Airtime – load/ phone credit 4. Garage – convenient store 5. Eat in – dine in Indian English Kinship Semantics 1. Big- mother; big- father 2. Cousin- brother; cousin sister English is classified as a native variety according to two criteria: 1. that the native variety has existed for a long time; and 2. that it has had some impact on more recent or younger varieties of English. C. Nativized Varieties The term nativized varieties refers to more recent variants that originated in locales where English was not the native tongue, and were impacted by local languages and cultures of the people who have developed the particular variety (McArthur, 1999). This phenomenon is also known as acculturation or indigenization. Thus, a form of English that has been nativized, acculturated, or indigenized has been influenced by the local cultures in which it has evolved. According to this concept, nativization refers to all English varieties that are spoken by a distinct speech community/ group. English undergoes a process known as nativization in which a speaker's original tongue adopts a linguistic structure (such as lexicon, syntax, or other features of grammar) from English (Sankoff & Laberge, 1974 as cited in Jenkins, 1999). Studies of nativized varieties are framed in terms of cultural conceptualizations from a cultural linguistics approach. According to the analytical framework of cultural linguistics, nativized varieties of English are those that contain cultural conceptualizations of the speech community for whom English has developed a communicative role for intracultural and intercultural communication. D. Native Speakers A person who has mastered English since early childhood is referred to as a native speaker of English. It is the principal mechanism of concept generation and communication, yet this does not necessarily imply that it is the speaker's only language. It denotes having spent one's formative years in a truly English-speaking environment, allowing one to acquire the language with ease. According to Cook (1999), a native speaker or L1 user of English is someone who learned the language as their first language while still a child. The ability to speak a language fluently as a native speaker is thus a biodevelopmental reality that cannot be altered later on in life through instruction or learning. This also suggests that no one can ever acquire fluency in a language other than the first one learned. People can be native speakers of two or more languages if they learned both languages as children. Bilinguals is a term for people who speak two languages. Native speaker is a contentious term used in language studies to describe someone who speaks and writes in his/ her native tongue (or mother tongue). The conventional wisdom holds that a person's native language is determined by their place of birth. Simply stated, a native speaker is someone who speaks English as his first language, and is a citizen of one of the following countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, or New Zealand. Even if one is a citizen of India, the Philippines, or the Caribbean islands and has English as his or her first language, technically, he or she is not considered a native English speaker. E. Non- Native Speakers Non-native speakers of the language are those who have learned a specific language as a second or third language but whose mother (native) tongue is another. A second language (L2) can never replace one's native language, even with lifelong effort. The line between a native speaker and non-native speaker blurs when someone learns a second language at an early age. As long as the acquisition process begins early, Davies (1991) claims that a child can be a native speaker of multiple languages. "After puberty, becoming a native speaker is challenging—not impossible, but highly challenging (Birdsong, 1992; Felix, 1987; The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, 2004). F. Pidgin Languages A pidgin language is often described as a simple language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but is a contact language (Wardhaugh, 2010). Pidgin is a variety of a language that developed for a practical purpose such as trade, but which has no native speakers, in contrast to a creole (Yule, 2010).  According to Crystal (2008), pidgin is a term used in sociolinguistics to refer to a language with a markedly reduced grammatical structure, lexicon and stylistic range, compared with other languages, and which is the native language of no one. It is a variety created for every practical and immediate purposes of communication between people who otherwise would have no common language (Hudson, 1996). A pidgin is a language which has no native speaker, and which is developed as a means of communication between people between people who do not have a common language (Holmes, 2013). Pidgins emerge as a form of interlanguage communication between speakers of different tongues. When two groups communicating in conditions where a third dominant language is present, pidgins appear to occur. Pidgins emerged along seacoasts in multilingual settings as a means of communication between traders who spoke colonial languages like Spanish, Portuguese, or English and the Indians, Chinese, African, or American Indians they were trading with (Holmes, 2013). G. Creole Languages A creole is normally defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers (Wardhaugh, 2010). Yule (2010), defines creole as a variant of a language that originated from a pidgin and a community of native speakers use it as their first language. According to Crystal (2008), creole is a word used in sociolinguistics to refer to a pidgin language that has evolved into the mother tongue of a speech community, as is the situation in Jamaica, Haiti, Dominica, and several other former colonial regions of the world. A creole is a pidgin that has evolved in structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions necessary for a first language (Holmes, 1992). Creoles are fully developed speech forms with so much restructuring that they bear little grammatical resemblance to their lexifiers. Creolization is the transformation of pidgins into creoles. Decreolization occurs when creole speakers are under intense pressure to adjust or shift their speech in the direction of standard variety (Yule, 2010), and choose the variant that is most similar to the standard type as Acrolect, and the more fundamental variety as Basilect (Crystal, 2006).  The Distinctive Features of Pidgin and Creole (Wardhaugh, 2010): 1. A creole has native speakers, but pidgin does not. 2. The vocabulary of creoles is growing and a lot of technical vocabulary is being borrowed. 3. The tense system for verbs has developed in creole. For instance, "Bin" denotes the past while "bai" denotes the future. 4. Creole shows greater complexity in its sentences. 5. Creoles appear to be a simple language with a similar level of grammatical complexity to other natural languages. H. The Functions of Language and the Identity- Communication Continuum Individuals can customarily speak more than one variety of a language and will choose the variety they speak based on the context and functions they want the variety to be performed. Three major functions of language: 1. Communication – people use language to communicate with one another. 2. Identity – people use language to signal to other people who they are and what they and what group(s) they belong to. 3. Culture – people use language to express their culture Each of these functions may require a diverse variety or register, and these functions may conflict at times. For instance, the communicative function will frequently necessitate the reduction of the identity function. When identity is the primary function of language use, the variety chosen by the speaker may be incomprehensible to speakers outside that specific group. "The two functions can be viewed as complementary, as they address different needs" (Crystal, 2008).  Figure 1. The identity- communication continuum The relationship between function and variety can be depicted on the 'identity- communication continuum,' which represents two of the functions of language (Kirkpatrick, 2006). Communication is the term for one end of the spectrum because being understandable is the most important aspect of the communicative function. Standardized or educated varieties are more likely to be better suited for communication. Broad, informal varieties or job- and class-specific registers are more likely to be suitable for expressing identity. The fewer participants there are in a communication act and the closer the social distance between them, the greater the identity function of their speech will be. However, the more participants there are and the greater the social gap between them, the greater the intelligibility function of their speech will be in any communication act. Each of these three requirements must be met for a variety of English to succeed. This implies that any variety of English itself is made up of several others. It is critical to realize that linguistic diversity is both common and inevitable. There are differences on a personal level because we all speak our native languages in unique ways. On a functional level, we have seen how we select a certain language variety based on the purpose we want the variety to serve. Contextually speaking (contextual level), we have seen how the context affects the type or register of language we employ. The language people use in official settings and the language they use in extremely casual settings varies significantly. Social and interactional factors can influence why people employ the particular type or variation that they do (Cheshire, 2003 as cited in Jenkins, 1999). There are many different ways to categorize the numerous language types. The educated variety frequently serves the purpose of communication, whereas the broad variety frequently serves the function of identification. Register is used in conjunction with the word variety. It is connected to specific employment kinds (i.e., lawyers to use legal registers and doctors to use medical registers). Register is a significant indicator of professional identification in this setting.