Sociolinguistics Lecture Notes PDF

**INTRODUCTION: KEY CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS** **WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS?**\ Sociolinguistics is a very broad field, and it can be used to describe many different ways of studying language. A lot of linguists might describe themselves as sociolinguists, but the people who call themselves soci...

**INTRODUCTION: KEY CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS** **WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS?**\ Sociolinguistics is a very broad field, and it can be used to describe many different ways of studying language. A lot of linguists might describe themselves as sociolinguists, but the people who call themselves sociolinguists may have rather different interests from each other, and they may use very different methods for collecting and analyzing data. This can be confusing if you are coming new to the field. Sociolinguistics about how individual speakers use language Sociolinguistics about how people use language differently in different towns or regions Sociolinguistics about how a nation decides what languages will be recognized in courts or education Sociolinguists conduct research on any of those topics. For example, if a speaker describes a funny or amusing situation as \"kicksin\',\" I know they are from, or have spent a good deal of time in, the English-speaking Caribbean. I am drawing on sociolinguistic (social and linguistic) knowledge to draw this inference. Everyone can modify the way they speak depending on who they are with or what the situation is. When they do this, they are drawing on their sociolinguistic knowledge. Every time they change the way they speak, depending on their interlocutor or situation, they provide more sociolinguistic information that builds up the sociolinguistic knowledge in the community. **Variables in sociolinguistics** \- Armed with theoretical and methodological knowledge, you only need one more elementary tool. \- This is the notion of the variable. \- There are two types of variables in social investigation. \- The social variable is the factor that determines a variation in language. \- Possible social factors include gender, geography, age, occupation, and so on, \- The linguistic variable is the feature that you want to investigate. \- This might be a language (English, Basque, Hokkien), or a dialect (Irish Hiberno-English, Jamaican Patwa, Parisian French), or a style (formal, careful, casual), or a register (romantic novels, recipes, bank manager talk), or a syntactic pattern (passive, intransitive, verb agreement), or a word or phrase ('neb', 'you-all', 'you know') or a particular sound (/h/, /t/, /a/), for example. \- In particular, many sociolinguistic studies use individual sounds in pronunciation as the linguistic variable. \- It is a relatively easy practical matter to either set up or come across a situation in which many of them will occur. **The importance of sociolinguistics** \- To investigate whether the use of a linguistic feature is caused by a particular social factor, you will need to collect examples of a situation in which the feature has a chance of being used. \- Suppose you are investigating gender usage. \- You must get two groups of informants who are as alike as possible in every respect (the same age, education, social class, political viewpoint, and so on) except that one group is female and the other male. \- In this way, you have controlled for other interfering variables, and any linguistic differences you find are likely to be determined by gender alone. \- In effect, what you have done is focus on the dependent linguistic variable, and manipulated the independent social variable to discover social usage. \- If you do not have a control, for example by having not only both genders but also a range of ages, you cannot be sure which of these two social factors is actually associated with the linguistic variation that you might find. \- Treating the feature as the linguistic variable, you will be faced with two circumstances of its usage. \- Either the feature occurs or not. \- For example, someone says the word 'hotel' by pronouncing the /h/ or by 'dropping' it -- that is, presence or omission, written formally as: x /!. \- Alternatively, the variable is graded so a range of possibilities present themselves: for example, people can pronounce the middle 't' in 'butter' in five different ways: /t/, /d/, /ʔ/, /θ/, or ! -- omitting it altogether \- You can measure the occurrence or frequencies of data like this, and run statistical tests to determine the rules and principles of sociolinguistics: this is quantitative study. \- Alternatively, you can try to gain a more holistic but less precisely measurable view of language use, for example by relying more on subjective analysis of extended discourse: this sort of study is more qualitative. \- Both approaches are common in sociolinguistics. **ACCENT AND DIALECT** \- In common perception, an accent is something other people have. \- You might hear people say things like, 'He's very broad,' 'She has a lovely speaking voice,' 'That's a thick accent.' \- Many of my students deny that they have an accent at all. \- These common judgments are interesting for what they tell us about people's attitudes to language. \- As sociolinguists, we must not share their evaluative biases. \- Apart from sign-language, it is as impossible to speak without an accent as it is to speak without making any sound. \- Since accents are so variable and universal, they are the most productive ground for sociolinguistics. **Describing accents** \- **Phonology** (the study of speech-sound and articulation) provides us with a scientific and objective means of discussing accent, in the form of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). \- Unlike the standard spelling alphabet, the IPA sets out symbols which have a fixed value. \- For example, **though** is a normal alphabetical letter (a grapheme, signaled by those angled brackets around it), it can sound very different in 'six', 'dogs', 'sugar' and 'leisure'. \- In the IPA, we can distinguish these sounds: /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ// (these are phonemes, written within slashed lines as shown). \- The IPA allows us to describe, compare, and contrast accents in a systematic way. \- The IPA chart lists symbols to cover all the various sounds that can be meaningfully produced in the world's languages. -Consonants are described by their place of articulation (using the Latin words for teeth, tongue, lips, and so on) and by their manner of articulation. -For example, the four ways of pronouncing given above are all fricatives: two (/s z/) are alveolar (with the tongue just behind the alveolar ridge) and two (/ʃ /ʒ//) are post-alveolar (a bit behind that). -In each pair, the first sound is unvoiced (whispered) and the second is voiced (with the voice-box engaged). **-Vowels** are described by the position of the tongue in the mouth cavity for each one: so /i/ is a high close front vowel, and /ə/ (known as 'schwa') is a mid-central vowel. -These vowels are single sounds (monophthongs). Other vocalic sounds can be produced by sliding the tongue rapidly from one position to another: these are called diphthongs (for example, /a&/ as in 'bite' in most accents, /\'&/ in 'boy', /aυ/ in 'houseɅ, and so on). **Vowels** -Accent variation is often most noticeably carried in the vocalic elements of pronunciation, and in the glides (/j/, /w/) and liquids (/r/, /l/) that are sort of 'semi-vowels'. -For example, a speaker who says \[f/0rm\] rather than \[f/0m\] is likely to be American or Irish rather than English: their accent is said to be rhotic if they pronounce this sort of non-prevocalic /r/ (/r/ when it is not before a vowel, as in 'farm' or 'car'). -Americans and most Irish people have a 'retroflex' /r/. By contrast, if they 'tap' the 'r' (by flicking the tip of their tongue against the ridge behind their front teeth), the vowel quality is likely to change slightly and they are likely to introduce a vowel between the 'r' and 'm' to make the last two letters syllabic: \[f1\*əm\]. -This is more likely to be a Scottish speaker, or someone influenced by Scots, such as speakers in Ulster (and the square brackets are used to write down actual realisations in speech). **The important of phonetic details** -Phonetic details like these can help you pinpoint the differences between accents. -The crucial factor for sociolinguistics is that accent variation tends not to happen just randomly, but in relation to observable social patterns. \- Accent can often tell us where someone comes from, their age, gender, level of education, social class, and wealth, how well-travelled they are, and whether they are emotionally attached to their home-town, job or political party. -All of these factors can also be carried in someone's dialect. **Dialectology** Just as everyone has an accent, so every form of English (or any language) is a dialect. Where accent refers to the sounds a speaker makes, dialect covers the word-choices, syntactic ordering and all the other grammatical choices a speaker could make. A language consists of one or many dialects, all of which are more or less mutually intelligible to other speakers of the language. The most prestigious dialect in Britain is UK Standard English (UKSE), originally a southern dialect of English which has become the form used in most print media, law and education. It can, of course, be pronounced in any accent. For example, 'It's very dirty' can be pronounced in RP (\[&tsvεri d60ti\]), or in a northern British accent (\[&ʔs vεr& dε0t&\]), but the same sense can be expressed in several dialects: UKSE ('It's very dirty'); Yorkshire (London) ('Tha's right mucky'); or Teesside ('It's hacky'), and so on. Of course, dialects do not suddenly change from area to area. Accents and dialects that are geographically close to one another tend to be similar in form, gradually varying the further you travel away from them. [We can thus talk of **dialect chains** rather than discrete dialects] Are the dialect gradually changes from one city to another it a complete gab between a dialect and another? yes\_ This applies even across national boundaries: The dialects of northern Germany are closer in form to bordering Netherlands than to Bavarian, though the latter is usually counted as the same German language and the former is the foreign language Dutch. Political allegiances have a lot to do with this attitude, of course. Traditionally, dialectologists were able to study different areas of accent and dialect use fairly easily, drawing lines on the map (isoglosses) to separate one form and speech community from another. This is much more difficult in an urban setting, where migration and industrialisation tend to mix up family origins. - Quantitative sociolinguistic methods as outlined in A1 have enabled the study of urban dialectology in these situations. **REGISTER AND STYLE** A dialect is a variety of language defined largely by its users' regional or socioeconomic origins. However, much language variation is a result of differences in the social situation of use. This affects the word-choices and syntactic ordering of utterances (together, the lexicogrammar), and has been called register (or sometimes, by analogy with dialect, it is referred to as diatype). One of the recent findings of corpus linguistics (using a large computer database of actual language examples) is that there is far more variation as a result of register than as a result of dialect. Furthermore, register differences operate within and across different dialects. For example, the lexicogrammatical composition of registers such as 'playing a computer game', 'buying a coffee', or 'writing a letter to a friend' remain constant even in different dialects. People are engaged in similar communicative acts and so tend to use similar linguistic patterns. What is surprising is that people are far more aware of dialectal differences than diatypic differences. People are readily conscious of regional words and phrases, but will only really think about the variant patterns in different registers when they are pointed out to them in a book like this. Of course, register is socially motivated and involves social negotiation among the participants in the discourse, in order to speak or write in an appropriate way. Since these decisions involve a whole range of social perceptions to do with social rank, politeness, and appropriacy, choices of register and stylistic choices are the concern of sociolinguistics. **Register** Register can be defined either [narrowly or broadly]. The narrow definition sees register simply as an occupational variety of language. So, for example, teachers, computer programmers, mechanics or sociolinguists tend to have characteristic ways of speaking which involve certain particular word-choices and grammatical constructions. This is most commonly perceived as **jargon**, and most people associate it with particular word-choices. However, the syntactic ordering and patterns of larger-scale linguistic organisation are also important. A wider definition of register sees it as a sort of social genre of linguistic usage (sometimes specified as a **sociolect** to differentiate it from *dialect*). Examples of registers under this definition would include the language of a newspaper article, the language of a conversation about the weather, academic prose, a recipe in a cookery book It is important that register is defined primarily by the circumstance and purpose of the communicative situation ( field ), rather than by the individual user or ethnic/social group using the variety. In other words, the definition must be a non-linguistic one, against which particular linguistic features can then be set. One way of pinpointing a register is to identify a communicative event along three dimensions: علشان اقول ان ريجيستر موجود ! Field ! Tenor ! Mode [The **field**] is the [social setting and purpose of the interaction] (**target audienceبيحدد**). In the case of an academic article in a professional journal, for example, the field would be the subject matter of the article, and the purpose in publishing [it would be to spread the argument and ideas among academic colleagues.] [ The **tenor**] **(audience)** [refers to the relationship between the participants in the event]. The writer of the article and readers including academic colleagues and students constitute the *tenor* here. Finally, [the **mode**] refers to the medium of communication (as in spoken, written, or emailed). An academic article is in the written mode. Changing this last dimension to the spoken mode would alter the register from an 'article' to a 'lecture', and there would be corresponding and predictable differences in the lexicogrammar: most simply, the sentences are likely to be shorter and contain fewer embedded clauses in speech; word-choice is likely to be slightly less formal and perhaps less technical; there might be more direct interaction with the audience and direct address in the form of 'I' and 'you' Clearly there are further details and sub-types within each set of three dimensions. The context of use is the crucial determinant in identifying register. In this way slight differences in linguistic style can be ascribed to close differences in social function. For example, a recipe basically has the register dimensions of (field) cookery, (tenor) professional cook to amateur cook, (mode) written, as a table of ingredients followed by the method. However, I have a French cookery reference book which clearly assumes a very knowledgeable reader: this variation in tenor makes the register very technical and mainly too difficult for me to use. I also have a cookery book with sumptuous photographs and mouth-watering lyrical prose which is clearly intended as a 'coffee table' book for reading rather than cooking anything practical, and this linguistic variation is determined by the difference in field. Finally, all these register distinctions have to be matched to cultural expectations. A discussion about the weather in Britain contains a very different lexicogrammatical structure from a discussion about the weather in California (as well as the content conveyed). Similarly, I have a recipe book from the Raffles Hotel in Singapore which is clearly intended as a practical cookery manual, but since in Nottingham I cannot get ingredients like green pandan leaves, I read its register as an exotic fiction rather than a cookery book. In this case, the actual tenor has changed. **Style** - Style refers to variations within registers that can represent individual choices along social dimensions. - One stylistic dimension within a register would be the scale of formality -- casualness. - Place the ingredients into a prepared dish' could more casually be: 'Put the mix into the bowl you've got ready'. - The field, tenor and mode (the way is written Vs the way is spoken)of both these utterances could be the same, stylistic variation can occur within a register. - Style is independent of register since the mode of the first utterance could be written and the second spoken. - the written mode tends to be more formal than the spoken mode - Most styles are best thought of as scales or clines, for example from very formal to very casual, with many relative gradations in between. - People are very adept at matching their style as appropriate to the social setting. - Other stylistic scales include impersonal -- intimate, monologic -- dialogic, formulaic -- creative. - All of these can be manifest in the linguistic choices of the utterance. - With both registers and styles, most people have a far greater passive competence than active competence. - Most people can understand a great many more variations than they usually perform, and if put in unfamiliar social situations will often become highly self-conscious and misjudge the pattern they should produce. - Such 'errors' are an important feature of sociolinguistic behaviour. - I have the ability to understand the speaker but I don\`t have the ability to respond, however I have a linguistic reporter, the vocab the grammatical structure why? the social setting gives different responses - ex- English people special British prefer to show empathy while they are talking, in one of the situations one is a native speaker is talking to non- native speaker and told him I wanna cry, the second language user he understand you\... he told him calm down the native speaker said how rude you are. the right thing is it\`s better to you **ETHNICITY AND MULTILINGUALISM العرقيه مهمه** - Many English-speakers living in predominantly monolingual countries such as Britain, the US, or Australia, might think that it is an unusual skill to be able to speak more than one language. - in the apparently monoglot countries , there are huge numbers of people routinely speaking not only a variety of types of English, but also many [indigenous languages] (Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic) as well as community languages brought by large numbers of recent immigrants (especially Spanish in the US, Indian languages such as Punjabi, Urdu, Marathi and other south-east Asian languages in the UK - Language use, then, though seen as a symbol of nationalism, is also the major badge of ethnicity -- that is, racial, cultural or family origins. - An individual might choose to speak in a particular language, or dialect, or register, or accent, or style (let's use the general term code to cover all of these varieties) on different occasions and for different purposes. - The choice of code can be used to claim in-group identity with other speakers. **Code-switching** - Most individuals have a repertoire of codes available to them. Even if you only speak English, you will almost certainly be able to switch from a casual to formal style (if you employ a 'telephone voice' for example), or into different accents (as in telling a story or a joke), or even into different dialects (when moving from writing a message on a note on your fridge door to writing a letter to your bank). - The main point to notice here is that these different uses of different codes are tied to different situations or domains. - One theory of code-switching claims that the choice of code is determined by the domain in which speakers perceive themselves to be. - This means that the choice of code itself is communicatively meaningful, as well as the actual content of what is said. - - For example, I recently overheard a group of three teenage boys on a bus quoting catchphrases from a popular and cultish television comedy show; in doing so, they imitated the accents of the characters when incorporating the phrases into their own speech, switching back and forth from their own voices to the 'comedy' voices. - This went on for some time, but when they approached their bus stop they all switched back into their 'own' voices to make final arrangements for meeting up again that evening. - It was obvious that any arrangements made in 'comedy' voices would not count as real arrangements but would be taken as a joke. - **Another example : the Chinese woman** When a speaker moves from one domain into another, and changes their code as a result, this is situational code-switching. Sometimes, however, a speaker can deliberately change codes in the middle of a situation, in order to indicate to the hearer that they consider a new domain to be in operation. - This is called metaphorical code-switching and (Example ) can be seen in the teenage boys' usage to differentiate 'joke-time' from 'serious-time'. - Conversations are often brought to a close by one participant code-switching into a different variety in order to signal that they want to get away. - Metaphorical code-switching is thus a means of changing the perceived context. - Where a domain is not well defined or two domains could be seen to be operating (such as meeting a family-friend in an expensive and unfamiliar restaurant, or having a work colleague round for a family occasion), speakers can often be heard code-mixing, in which the switch between languages can occur within utterances. **Multilingualism and diglossia** I am ganna sterech the code switching to cover the different language When discussing an individual's ability to speak more than one language, we usually use the terms bilingual or multilingual. A person's native language, which they learnt as a baby, is their vernacular (or 'mother tongue'). This is sometimes referred to as L1. Many people go on to learn another language later in life, to the point at which they become fluent in this L2 language. Such people are compound bilinguals, since there is a definite sequence of linguistic competence. the acquisition of the two languages doesn\`t happen at the time, there is a sequence Example :My sister-in-law Alex is a native English speaker, but is fluent in French and Spanish which she first learnt at school, and has a passive competence in Basque. Some people, however, are born into families in which two or more languages are spoken routinely, and they develop both languages equally as vernaculars. Such people are co-ordinate bilinguals. Example : My friend Urszula was born in York to Polish parents, and is a co-ordinate bilingual in English and Polish; she has never visited Poland. Many people with this ability nevertheless associate each language with different domains (such as English with work and Polish with the children's grandparents), and will then associate each code-choice with particular situations and emotions. An individual speaking more than one( **two**) language is said to be multilingual, but we can also use this term to talk of whole communities in which two languages are commonly spoken by most people. Thus, Switzerland is a multilingual country with French, German and Italian the main languages, and with each language predominating in different areas; though an individual will probably have one of these as a vernacular, they are likely to have a good facility in the others. Multilingual communities include French Canadians Multilingual communities include French Canadians, American Hispanics, many Welsh people, the ethnic Greek community in Sydney, English-Punjabi speakers in Birmingham **Diglossia** In communities in which two language varieties are used by everyone, and there is a distinct and institutionalised functional divergence in usage, this is called diglossia. For example, classical Arabic is the language of the Koran and is reserved for religious purposes, and a range of vernacular Arabic varieties are used for most other purposes across North Africa and the Middle East. In diglossic situations, the code which is used for writing or in prestigious or formal domains is known as the H variety, and the other code is the L variety **VARIATION AND CHANGE** One of the most significant and also most complex determinants of linguistic variation is social class. This is not an easy concept to define precisely or measure accurately, and the stratification of class into different levels varies considerably across nations and cultures. Most language communities, however, have a hierarchy of wealth and power defined in relation to economics and prestige that can be covered by the term class. Most sociolinguistic studies that have investigated the impact of social stratification on language use have employed the variationist method. That is, they have taken a linguistic variable and recorded its variations by placing it alongside a range of apparently independent factors. Variationist sociolinguistics was initially developed by William Labov's investigations of accent variation in various socially stratified situations. In the work described below, the social variables are class stratification and age, respectively, and the linguistic variables are measurable and fixed. **Fixed variables** black or white the social stratification of rhoticity (pronunciation of /r/ when not before a vowel) in New York. Labov's findings show a clear class stratification in rhoticity, confirming its prestige value: generally, more occurrences of /r/ in the higher class store than the lower class one. He also found that there was a greater /r/-stress when the speaker was emphatic and relatively self-aware. **Graded variables** we have the allophone of the same phoneme One of Trudgill's variables was based, not on simple presence or absence (x/!, but on a graded scale of possibilities. He looked at variants of /t/ pronunciation, realised with lots of breath (aspirated as \[t7\]), unaspirated (\[t\]), glottalised (towards the back of the mouth as \[tʔ\]), and as a full glottal stop (\[ʔ\]). These four realisations are graded from the prestige standard to the stigmatised وصمة عار non-standard, and showed similar social stratification in the study. Another form of gradation is apparent in Jenny Cheshire's (1978) study of schoolchildren in Reading. Focusing on verb-form agreement ('I knows, we has, they calls', and so on), she found that usage was not so much a matter of standard and non-standard as a matter of the frequency of use of the various possibilities. Everyday vernacular words were more likely to appear in non-standard form than verbs associated with authority and power, though it was a matter of emphasis rather than being absolutely predictable. And it wasn't that the boys used non-standard forms all the time, but they did use most of them more frequently than the girls. There was also evidence of male covert prestige: girls were quicker to switch to standard forms in formal situations but the boys maintained their non-standard usage. Finally, then, one way of dealing with the complexity of social stratification variation is to follow Labov's 'principle of accountability': We should not simply measure occurrences of a feature. Instead, we should count the number of times a feature occurs, judged against the number of times it could potentially have occurred. In this way, we can distinguish between categorical rules which predict usage absolutely from variable rules which cannot operate on individual prediction but apply more generally across groups in terms of frequencies of usage. **(Explanation:** **To understand the complexity of social differences in language use, we can use Labov\'s \"principe of accountability.** \"This means we shouldn\'t just count how often a language feature appears; instead, we shoud compare how often it appears to how often it could have appeared. This helps us tell the difference between strict rules that predict language use exactly and flexíble rules that apply more generally to groups based on how often features are used.) **Language change** Variationist sociolinguists see the business of the discipline as the investigation of language variation and change. Traditionally, the disciplines of philology and etymology have been concerned with the processes of sound and word change over time, taking a diachronic approach (variation over time) to linguistic study. However, sociolinguistics has been able to develop techniques providing insights into language change by using age variation as a social variable. Sociolinguistic studies tend to be synchronic( describe a language at a specific point of time ) in practice (like a 'freeze-frame' of society at a particular modern moment), but there has also been an interest in exploring how language is in the process of change. **Ways of Analyzing the Change:** Undertaking a longitudinal sociolinguistic study is possible over a few years but more difficult over longer periods. However, **there are two ways** in which sociolinguists can analyse change. One -- a real time study -- would compare older accounts and records of sociolinguistic features with modern studies. The other method is to investigate the variations in usage across the age ranges, since it is supposed that older people will manifest earlier forms of language learnt in their youth: this is known as the apparent time hypothesis **The apparent-time hypothesls** is a methodological construct in sociolinguistics whereby [language change is studied by comparing the speech of individuals of different ages]. in the same time السن و ليس الحقبه If language change is taking place, the apparent-time hypothesis assumes that older [generations will represent an earlier form of the language and that younger generations will represent a later form.] Thus, by comparing younger and older speakers, the direction of language change can be detected. The apparent-time method allows change to be studied by synchronic analysis, which examines the state of the language at a particular point in time. [That contrasts with real-time sociolinguistics], which [compares data from two points in time to observe change directly. ] Apparent-time analysis assumes that most features of language are acquired during childhood and remain relatively unchanged throughout an individual\'s lifetime once that individual is past a certain age. Therefore, a speaker\'s speech is a reflection of speech patterns acquired during language learning as a child. **STANDARDISATION** [Throughout history, people have altered their own language or forced others to change their language because of their own attitudes and beliefs.] first thing we can get from this line the choice of the dialect in order to be standared dialect is mainly based on one of two things one is the attitude or our belief to what we are ganna see Ideological beliefs act as modifying factors in sociolinguistic usage. Self-consciousness changes the way people speak and write. The formality of the context is another important modifying factor. **Two final factors act in opposite directions**: the pressure of standardisation, usually from elsewhere in society; and the language loyalty of individuals to their own local usage **Prestige and stigmatization** Example : I used to teach a Finnish student who told me that there was a community on the Sweden/Finland border whose language was neither 'proper' Finnish nor 'proper' Swedish, and he said that Finns referred to these people as 'half-linguals'from here the stigma comes bec.the domination of the countries on the other one. Clearly this community is not without language, and it is more likely that they speak a particular non-standard dialect. However, it is equally clear that this dialect is enormously [stigmatised in the eyes of Finnish speakers like my student], to the extent that they do not even regard the dialect as a form of language at all. Such opinions of language varieties have behavioural, educational and governmental policy consequences that can have real effects on forms of language **The sociolinguist Roger Bell (1976: 147--57) has suggested several criteria by which the prestige (or stigma) in which a code is held can be measured. These are:** **Standardisation** whether the variety has been approved by institutions, codified into a dictionary or grammar, or been used for prestigious texts (national newspapers, religious books) **Vitality** whether there is a living community of speakers who use the code or whether the language is dead or dying (like Cornish, Latin,) **Historicity** whether speakers have a sense of the longevity of their code (compare Modern Greek with Modern Hebrew); (In Linguistics and communication this can relate to how certain terms or expressions may evolve, lose significance, or gain new meanings as society and culture change. lt\'s about understanding that meanings can change over time.)from the culture change bece. culture is not static **Autonomy** whether speakers consider their code to be substantially different from others (compare the relative status of Standard English / German with Standard English / Scots); Is it seen as a minor dialect of a major dialect or a completely unique language from another language? **Reduction** whether speakers consider the code to be a sub-variety or a full code in its own right; whether it has a reduced set of social functions. For example, it might not have its own writing system (like Geordie or Scouse) or might have only a very reduced function (like a football chant accent) a language used in a specific situation **Mixture** whether speakers consider their language 'pure' (as do the French) or a mixture of other languages (as are creoles); **Unofficial' norms** whether speakers have a sense of 'good' and 'bad' varieties of the code, even if there is no 'official' codification in grammars and dictionaries. Referring to the idea that people often have their own judgments about what is considered correct or incorrect language use a propriate or not a pproriate bec. it\`s a matter of choice not prefer, regardless of whether there are formal rules or standards established in grammar books or dictionaries.) **Standardisation** It is common when a language community roughly corresponds with national boundaries for one dialect to be promoted above all others and attract prestige to the point at which it is regarded as the 'standard' form, even to the extent that it is seen as the 'proper' language and all other dialects 'bad' forms of the language. In Britain, the dialect spoken between the East Midlands and London in the Middle Ages came to be adopted as what we now call Standard English. There was nothing inherently superior about this dialect: it is simply that it was spoken by the emerging middle class and migrants to London, so it developed as a marker of prestigious class, wealth and civilisation. With the expansion of compulsory schooling throughout the nineteenth century, culminating in mass literacy for the first time after the 1870 Education Act, the Standard English dialect came to be adopted for all print media. Spellings were fixed and 'correct' spelling became a marker of good education. The other dialects of Britain were relegated to their spoken form only, and wiped out from the education system and from prestigious texts. Through the twentieth century, a capacity for Standard English came to be regarded almost as a moral imperative. here why the native speakers chosed the midland dialect and London dialect to be standard bec. of prestigious level As sociolinguists, though our analysis must be as descriptive as possible, it is important that common attitudes and perceptions that might have sociolinguistic effects are taken into account. **We can distinguish various degrees of awareness in common perception:** **Stereotypes**: the very obvious features that all speakers are aware of in their own usage (such as Scottish, Irish and American rhoticity); (Example: used to refer to a type of English, in which an r/ is pronounced in all situatiors where there is an " r " in spieling **Markers :** **it is related to an accent\_** obvious identifiable features that are easily measurable and that speakers are aware of only when explicitly discussing their own usage Geordie(Geordie accent with this Newcastle accent)rising intonation popularly described as 'sing-song', /w/ for /l/ in a Cockney accent); **Indicators :** measurable features that are useful for linguists because they are below the normal level of users' awareness (/In/ for /Iŋ/ in Norwich, glottalling /t/ in London-influenced British accents). bec. we don\`t make a comparison between 2 different features from 2 different area instead the comparison between the usage of the feature between 2 different group based on the age gender in the same area why we reached this form or this level **GENDER** A7 **O**ne of the main social changes of the last 50 years, and one which has been extensively studied by sociolinguists, is the role of **gender** as a determinant of linguistic usage. **T**here is certainly enough evidence that we can use the term genderiect to refer to the different lexical and grammatical choices that are characteristically made by men and women. Example: in an early study, Robin Lakoff pointed to certain features she identified as \"women\'s talk in the 1970s US, such as the frequency of particular colour terms (mauve);frequency of certain evaluative adjectives (lovely, sweet); hesitant intonation; pitch associated with surprise and questions; tag-phrases (you know, kind of, sort of): and super politeness (including euphemism, less swearing. more indirectness and hedging). **T**hese early accounts rest on an assumption that women\'s language is deficient in some way relative to the norm of men\'s language. Such a deficit view typically expresses the features of women\'s language as lacking certain elements, being weak in certain respects, having less semantic or logical content, and so on.An approach that focuses on dominance rather than deficit is only marginally better: regarding male discourse as oppressive and women\'s language as subordinated to it moves on from the notion of the masculine as norm and the feminine as marked,butit offers no possibility for variation or the sort of linguistic creativity and shift that does evidently exist. **PIDGINS AND CREOLES** A8 **N**ew languages are continually being born to language families. All natural languages develop from and alongside other languages to which they are closely related. **E**nglish was originally a West Germanic language, which developed directly from the Anglo-Frisian dialects of invaders, and was subsequently heavily **lexicalised** by words borrowed from Norman French, then by French, Latin and Greek, with a few loanwords from the Celtic languages, from Spanish and Italian, and from every language **The evolution of pidgin languages** In situations in which two speech communities come into prolonged contact, a **lingua franca** (common language) usually develops. This can take one of four forms: a **contact language**; an **auxiliary language**; an **international language**; or a **trade language**. **Contact Language: (superiority)** dominance in situation **A**ncient Greek around the Mediterranean basin, or later Latin throughout the Roman Empire, were both **contact languages**. Such languages tend to vary in use in different local contexts, and there is often a great deal of local language interference. **L**atin, for example, later developed many local dialectal forms which eventually became French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and so on. The contact language usually dominates in situations in which the speakers of that language have military or economic power over other language users. is used in varies field and aspect of life **Trade Language: (equal level)** has a restricted use By contrast, a **trade language** such as Swahili on the east coast of Africa often indicates a more equal relationship. This coastal Swahili is only used in commercial contexts, whereas further west into the interior of Africa, Reconstructed Swahili serves as a fully-functional language, and consequently is much more developed in complexity. Where a language is functioning as a trade language, usually only the lexcicogrammatical patterns associated with commerce, negotiation, finance and exchange are fully realised and practised. one of the aspect of live we call it a jargons **An international language**, such as English, is often used as a neutral form, as in India after independence in 1947. Indian English did not privilege any of the native speaker communities, and also gave India a linguistic access to the western world. **Auxiliary languages** include the artificial languages such as Esperanto (largely composed of European elements), Business English, Maritime English (Sea-Speak),and Air-Traffic Control English (as well, coincidentally, as other artificial languages such as those produced by philosophers, fantasy writers and other hobbyists). Such **Englishes for Special Purposes (ESP)** tend to have a highly restricted and technical vocabulary, and exist in a frozen, regulated form **Pidgin:** When the contact between groups of people is prolonged, a hybrid language can develop known as a **pidgin**. These tend to occur in situations where one language dominates, and there are two or more other languages at hand. **E**lements of the syntax and lexis of each language are simplified and combined as speakers struggle to make themselves understood by accommodating towards each speech community; One language (the **lexifier**) tends to provide most of the words in the new pidgin. **T**hough the pidgin might have recognisable elements of existing languages, it is not simply a 'broken' form of one of the languages: pidgins have rule-systems and have to be learnt. **Features of pidgin language:** pidgin languages tend to be restricted in vocabulary لغه فقيره, are usually syntactically simple, and have a limited range of functions (trade, local commerce, marriage negotiations, land disputes, for example). Anyone who uses the pidgin will always have their own native vernacular language, and will switch into the pidgin only when necessary. **Location of Pidgin language:** European imperial powers: French (in Louisiana, Haiti, Seychelles); Dutch (Afrikaans); Spanish (Papiamentu); Portuguese (Guine Crioule, Macau); and English (Melanesian Tok Pisin, West African Krio, Jamaican Patwa). **Creolisation** A pidgin becomes a **creole** as soon as it is learnt as the first language of a new generation. In these circumstances, pidgins rapidly develop a wider range of phonemes, a larger vocabulary, more complex syntax and a greater range of stylistic options to the point at which the creole can be used in every context and to express every requirement of the speaker. However, not every pidgin becomes a creole, and sometimes a pidgin and a creole can co-exist in urban and rural locations. Some creoles rapidly undergo **standardisation**: pronunciations and spellings are judged correct' or 'incorrect'; law and government administration are conducted and recorded in the creole; newspapers, books and prestigious texts are produced in it; Creoles can develop into fully-fledged languages in their own right, like Afrikaans, with little interference from either the European parent (Dutch) or local African Bantu languages. However, many English-based creoles come under pressure from locally-powerful English-speaking standards (America, Australia, or British textbooks). In these circumstances, a **post-creole speech continuum** can develop. Classification within the creoles( which means a complitly new language) we divided it through the social class,we talk about a pidgien which used in the second generation Únd became a creoles مش اللغة العربية في مصر واللهجات المستخدمة في مصر لا Different forms of the creole become socially stratified: the fully-fledged creole is spoken by illiterate manual workers (the **basilectal** variety), and a variety (the **acrolect**) closer to standard English is spoken by the social elites, with a range of varieties (**mesolects**) in between. As described in unit A9 below, the acrolect can evolve into a **New English**, such as Singlish or Jamaican English, for example. This is part of the wider process known as **x-isation** (for example, 'indianisation, sinicisation, americanisation' and so on). If the pressure from the powerful local standard is sufficiently strong, the creole can become **decreolised**, and the basilectal and mesolectal varieties become stigmatised and associated with illiteracy and ignorance. In such situations, local governments often proscribe the use of the creole as 'improper', and the schools and newspapers teach against it. Unless language loyalty or covert prestige sustains it, the creole can disappear and eventually lose all its speakers and die. **decreolised** sawahilli is used as a major language in africa but the pidgien version is used in the border, lets asume that the local there have some sort of belonging the wanna subsitude the pidgien language (creole language) as main language called ( decreolisation) **POLITENESS AND ACCOMMODATION A10** Language choice is motivated by **recipient design** -- that is, users aim for an effective communicative purpose, bearing in mind the target of the utterance. All languages have a range of features available that encode very subtle social and individual relationships, and many areas of sociolinguistics are concerned with encoding **power**. **Name and address** Many languages, including some varieties of English, differentiate singular and plural second person. This is known as the T/V system: \"In sociolinguistics, a T/V distinction describes the situation where a language has second person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee.\" Middle English thou / you Yorkshire English tha / you Liverpool and Dublin English you / youse **These forms can have a variety of functions:** Number differentiating singular (T) and plural (V) Politeness to mark intimate and familiar (T) or respect (V) Social rank V used to superiors, T used to inferiors Solidarity V used outside the group, T used as an in-group marker (this changebile ) English developed its T/V through number to include politeness by the early Middle Ages. It developed as a marker of social rank during the Renaissance, but then became non-differentiated in many dialects (including the dialect that was to become Standard English) beginning around the time of the English civil war (the seventeenth century). In modern times, a T/V distinction is only heard in some dialects (Yorkshire 'thee/you', Liverpool 'you/youse'), and in frozen utterances such as the traditional wedding service, prayers from the Author (The text describes the evolution of the TV distinction in English, which refers to the use of different pronouns to express levels of formality or social hierarchy. Initially, during the early Middle Ages, English developed this distinction as a way to denote politeness. In the Renaissance, it became a marker of social rank, helping to establish status among Speakers. However, from around the seventeenth century. Particularly during the English Civil War, many dialects (including what would become Standard English) began to lose this distinction, resulting in a more uniform use of pronouns.) **Speakers have the choice of:** **Reciprocal T usage** to show equality and familiarity (used by French revolutionaries in 1789 and modern communists) **reciprocal Vusage** to show mutual respect or formality (French aristocrats such as former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing used V to everyone, including, it is reported, to voters, ministers, his wife and passing dogs. Apparently Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir addressed each other using V.) **Asymmetrical T/V usage** to show power difference (based on age and youth, serving staff and customers, boss and worker, professor and student, for example). **Who has the Ability to give permission to the other One ? of course the one who has power** There are cultural variations within this, of course. The rigid متحجرasymmetrical T/V usage is loosening, especially amongst young French speakers. French and Italian speakers are more likely to use T to friends than Germans, but Germans are more likely than them to use T to distant relatives. Norwegian schoolchildren can use T to teachers, but German and Dutch tend not to do so. Male Italian students are likely to use T to female students, but then in general Italians use more T than French or Germans. Speakers who are politically conservative tend also to be linguistically conservative and preserve the T/V asymmetry. This system is echoed in the title and address options which are also available to all English speakers without a T/V system. Politeness is encoded by use of Title, First Name, Last Name, by combinations of these (TLN, TFN, FNLN), or by avoidance (Ø). Again, asymmetrical usage indicates a power inequality, and a switch from a more polite to less polite form must always be initiated by the most powerful person ('Professor Stockwell?' 'Please, call me Peter'). Breaking these norms generates certain social effects: consider, on meeting the Queen of England, 'Alright Betty!' The pragmatics of politeness affects all linguistic choices, including accent and intonation selection and choice of register: consider the real 'Customers are reminded that New Street is a no smoking station. Please extinguish all smoking materials', with a possible alternative, 'Oi you, stop bloody smoking -- get that fag out'. **Face-Act:** One influential model of politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987) is based on the notion of **face**. This is the social role that you present to the world. **[Negative face]** is your desire to be unimpeded in your actions; **[positive face]** is your desire for identification with the community. Any interpersonal event is potentially a **face threatening act (FTA)** which needs to be negotiated with particular politeness strategies: (Any interpersonal event is potentially a face-threatening act (FTA), which refers to actions or utterances that can threaten an individual's \"face\"-their social Identify and self-esteem FTAs can undermine either positive face (the desire to be ked and accepted by others cares with my selfsteam) or negative face (the desire to act freely without Imposition). For example, asking someone for a favor may threaten their negative face by Imposing on their time, while criticizing someone can threaten their positive face by challenging their social Image. To manage these threats, individuals often use politeness strategies, such as softening requests, using indirect language, or employing humor, to help preserve the other person\'s face and maintain social harmony.) **Accommodation** Participants also evolve their strategies and choices in the process of interaction. The most interesting is the phenomenon of **accommodation**, in which participants **converge** their speech styles. This can mean that people with different accents alter their vowel quality towards each other, or begin to echo certain words or phrases used by the other person, or adopt similar discourse and politeness strategies over time. May happen in code switching Incidentally, accommodation causes problems associated with the **observer's paradox (contradiction)** for sociolinguistics, since informants are likely to drift towards the interviewer's speech style in an extended interview (The phrase refers to the \"observer\'s paradox\" In sociolnguistics, which highlights a challenge when studying language use in natural settings. When researchers observe or Interact with Informants, the Informants may unconsciously adjust their speech to align more closely with the interviewer\'s style. This phenomenon is known as **accommodation.** Modification aspect in order to build, give away a successful communication As a result, the speech produced by informants can become less representative of their typical language use, making it difficult for researchers to gather authentic data. The concern is that the presence of the observer influences the Informant\'s natural speech patterns, leading to data that may not accurately reflect how they would normally communicate in different contexts or with different people.) As always, there are cultural differences here of course. For example, in mixed sex conversations, men and women tend to use fewer features of their genderlects and tend to move towards a common norm. In Britain, however, men tend to accommodate more towards women, whereas in the US, women tend to move further towards the male norm. **CONVERSATION** Conversations are comprised not of sentences (which are units of written language) but of utterances -- which are the equivalent of sentences taken in their social context, and including a sense of the situation of the speaker and hearer, the purpose of the utterance, and the effect of the utterance. The unit of analysis in other linguistic disciplines such as syntax or semantics is usually taken to be the clause; in sociolinguistics, the organising unit of conversation is the **turn**. **Organising conversation** Different cultures perceive the norms of conversation differently, of course, but in most English-speaking societies there is only a very short tolerance of silence. Some cultures (North American Indian, Japanese, and even Quaker communities in Britain) regard long pauses in conversation [as normal and polite]. In other cultures, silence can be taken [as hostile, rude or submissive]. In British, American and Australian English, for example, conversations often consist of pairs of turns in which a direct question or elicitation is expected to be answered immediately by a response turn. Such an elicitation-response pattern is known as an **adjacency pair (**relation between elicitation and response pattern), and the pair is rarely divided by a long pause. register, style politeness Since conversation (even argumentative or obstructive speech) is organized to produce conventional responses in the interlocutor, it can be said to be characterized by **recipient design**. In the elicitation turn of an adjacency pair, then, there is often an implicit **preferred response**: giving a dispreferred how can identify the positive response and negative ? response has a social effect. Here, for example, is a real example from one of my more obstructive friends: Ordinary adjacency pairs consisting of an elicitation and a preferred response are often followed by the first speaker providing **feedback** on the response: A: Can you give me a hand? B: Sure. A: Thanks. **Turn-taking** Turns are utterances produced by a speaker, and a conversation consists of two or more turns produced by different speakers. **Turn-taking** in conversation is a linguistic variable that is determined very considerably by social factors, especially *power*. The conventions of turn-taking are so strongly embedded within any given speech community that power can be asserted, maintained or relinquished by the organisation of turn-taking in conversation. APPLYING SOCIOLINGUISTICS Critical discourse analysis Identity and community **Finding an area for study:** The most successful studies tend to be those that are done by students with a direct interest in the area of investigation. This can arise in two different ways: **theory-driven or data-driven.** In a **theory-driven investigation**, students are introduced to key ideas and debates within an area, and are led to further reading of published material. Theory-driven work is often the only practical way a British-based student can investigate, for example, African or Pacific pidgins and creoles, or diglossia, or cross-cultural politeness norms, and so on. The contrary way of approaching an area of sociolinguistics is to discover **the personal sociolinguistics** in a student's life and develop that in a systematic way within the discipline. For example, many of my international students choose to investigate community multilingualism, personal bilingualism and code-switching, or examples of language loyalty towards new Englishes **Planning the study:** Once you have decided on an area for study, it is important that you spend some time planning the investigation. At this point, practical considerations will come into play: how long have you got to complete the fieldwork; do you have any resources, such as friends to help with interviewing, or cash to pay informants; how easy is it for you to get at the data you are interested in; is this the only research work you are engaged in, or are you splitting your time with other subjects? A key question often asked with a fieldwork sample is: how many people should I involve? Given the practical parameters of your circumstances, the design of your fieldwork should be entirely directed at answering a research question. This should be framed in your own mind as precisely as possible. Ideally, you should set down exactly what you are trying to discover as **a hypothesis** -- your educated guess as to what exactly you expect to find. Your study will then be designed to **prove or disprove this hypothesis**. If the factors you are interested in are **not amenable to a 'yes/no' hypothesis**, you should at least have as precise **a research question** as possible. If you have the luxury of time, you can conduct **a pilot-study**, a small-scale version of your eventual study, that will help you to refine your hypothesis and might even bring to light some flaws in your fieldwork plan that you did not anticipate. **ATTITUDES TO ACCENT VARIATION:** The reason why accent variation is so important in sociolinguistics **is because of the significance people attach to different accents**. The case-study below is partly **a replication study of original work in informants' subjective evaluations of accent.** **Replications are a key element in scientific discovery: they test out whether an original investigation is still valid; they can indicate a change over time; and they are good places to start your own sociolinguistic study.** **Evaluative reactions to accents:** As part of my sociolinguistics course, Sarah Wood researched original work done by Giles and Powesland (1975) and others which **used a method of data elicitation known as the matched-guise technique**. Briefly, this involves playing a recording of the same speaker imitating a variety of different accents, and then asking listeners to rate each 'speaker' on a range of different dimensions. These might include their sense of the attractiveness of the speaker, how communicative they were, what their social status seems to be, and so on. **Results:** The findings were that, for many people, standard accents (such as RP) (British accent) were more likely to be considered as belonging to prestigious, aesthetically pleasing and intelligible articulate speakers. The 'broadest' accents and those associated with urban and industrial areas, by contrast, were considered to be used by low status speakers and were regarded as unattractive. **Methodology:** Much of this work was conducted in the 1970s, and Sarah Wood was concerned with discovering the current situation. In general, she replicated Giles' (1970) study but made a few adjustments to improve the analysis. She restricted the recordings to eight native British accents (RP, west London, Norwich, north-east England, Nottingham, Cheshire, Burnley, and Sheffield), and she used genuine native speakers of these accents in the recordings. All speakers read a passage which was specially written to contain many accent-variant features (this 'Goldilocks' passage appears in C2). All speakers and informants were female students in their early twenties, to control for gender, age and some class variation, and the informants included two northern speakers, two southern speakers, and a Midlands speaker. **EUPHEMISM, REGISTER AND CODE:** Register and style are both means of marking out social groups and establishing solidarity. Selection can be seen as a sort of metaphorical system, since one word is chosen to fill a linguistic slot in place of another word. Idioms (the individual words and phrases peculiar to a language variety) often rely for their meaning on **metaphorical interpretations**. **Kick the bucket', for example, has a metaphorical meaning of 'to die.** Conversely, **euphemism** can be seen not so much as a lexical replacement by a dissimilar word as a replacement by a closely associated word (a **metonymy** rather than a metaphor). 'The rest-room' is not a metaphor; rather it conveys slightly different, more pleasant associations than other possibilities ('bog, crapper, shithouse', and many others). **Euphemism and death:** One of my students, Vicki Oliver examined ways of presenting death in 100 obituaries from the British newspapers The Times and The Daily Telegraph on the same day. 1. The main linguistic strategy was euphemism -- 'the saying of something innocuous (Harmless) that either hints at, or establishes a precondition of some previous offensive intended act' (Ortony 1993: 43). 2. Otherwise, the only **conceptual metaphor** used was the notion that "life is a battle" as in the baby who 'bravely fought but sadly lost her battle', and the cancer patient who 'died suddenly after a courageous fight'. This was only applied in the case of illnesses, however, and not in the case of old people who have 'had a good innings', relying on a different conceptual metaphor, "life is a game of cricket". What was immediately noticeable in this small corpus of data was that the word for death was often omitted entirely (omission is itself a form of euphemism). Only 25 of the 100 obituaries used the word 'died' at all, and of these, 12 were qualified by the adverbs 'peacefully' or 'quietly'. In fact, many obituaries simple began with the adverb, omitting the verbal element: 'Mitchell, Eric James, peacefully at Bognor War Memorial hospital'. The standard form, then, is: \"Name \> adverb \> prepositional phrase denoting location \> details of funeral service time and place\'. Variations on the adverb include \'joins Arthur after a long illness,\' and \'reunited with Vic\'. Deviations from this pattern are thus foregrounded: only one obituary used the word \'killed\', in relation to a 19-year old student who \'died tragically after a fall at university\'. Vicki discusses her data using work done by Paul Chilton (1986), in which he identifies in the ideological field a point similar to the notion of a face threatening act (see A10). He calls such moments, when the dominant ideology is potentially transparent, a **critical discourse moment (CDM).** Talking about death is a CDM, a **taboo area** that needs to be linguistically negotiated. Euphemism, argues Vicki Oliver, is a form of **verbal avoidance designed** to preserve **negative face,** or the reader's right to be ideologically unperturbed. **Register and code:** Some of the most influential work in the area of educational linguistics has been done by Basil Bernstein and his colleagues. Observing the difference in educational attainment by middle class and lower working class schoolchildren, Bernstein set out to establish a connection between their school experience and their characteristic language usage. He distinguished two types of linguistic patterns used by schoolchildren: **restricted code and elaborated code** **Restricted code features** -Unfinished and short sentences simple clauses -Commands and questions - Categoric statements -Repetition of conjunctions -Hesitancy -Confusion of reasons and conclusions -Rigid and limited use of adjectives/adverbs -Sympathetic circularity (\'you know\') -Language of implicit meaning **Elaborated code features** -Accurate grammatical order -Complex sentences: coordinate/ superordinacy -Frequent use of prepositions -Impersonal pronouns -Passive constructions -Unusual adjectives and adverbs Elaborated code is explicit and can be communicated without gesturing to the immediate context: it is thus **universalistic**. **Restricted code** is implicit and requires participants who share assumptions and a local context: it is **particularistic.** Bernstein claimed that middle class children have access to both codes, whereas lower working class children only had access to restricted code. Since school life and education generally is 'predicated upon elaborated code', Bernstein asserted that exclusive users of restricted code are likely to do less well at school.