Lippi-Green - Linguistic Facts of Life.pdf

English with an Accent Language, ideology, and discrimination 1 The linguistic facts of life in the United States Rosina Lippi-Green Language is very difficult to put into words....

English with an Accent Language, ideology, and discrimination 1 The linguistic facts of life in the United States Rosina Lippi-Green Language is very difficult to put into words. Voltaire This study is about the English language as it is spoken and written in the United States. 1 Nevertheless, the linguistic principles which provide groundwork for the discussion are not limited to English. Instead, they are generalizations about all human language, and they need to be under- stood before we proceed. There are some obstacles to laying out these ideas, however, and some ironies which bear consideration. Linguists do not form a homogenous club. Like any other group of scholars divided by a common subject matter, there are great rivalries, ancient quarrels, picky arguments, and plain differences of opinion. It could hardly be otherwise in a discipline diverse enough to include topics such as neurological structures and linguistic capacity, grammaticalized strategies for encoding social information in systems of address, and creolization. Thus it should be no surprise that those who study the rules which generate the ordering of' words into sentences (syntacticians and cognitive grammarians, for example) are often openly disdainful of each other's approach, on theoretical grounds, and of the study of the social life of language, more generally. Linguists concerned with the relationship between structured variation in language and social identity (sociolinguists, variationists, some anthropological linguists) chide both syntacticians and cognitive grammarians for what they see as unreason- able abstractions and lack of reproducible results; phoneticians go about their business of understanding and theorizing the way humans produce and perceive sound - the architects and engineers of linguistics - and wonder what all the noise is about; historical linguists concern themselves with the written data of lost language communities and write complex formulas for the reconstruction of sounds that might have been heard London and New York around the early Roman explorations of central Europe, or in more extreme cases, when the first people wandered from Asia to the North 10)97 American land mass. 8 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 9 However, there is a great deal that linguists do agree about, in simply often impatient when they are cornered at cocktail parties and asked to factual terms. For example, the statement All living languages change is debat~ lan~uage issues which to them brook no debate, just as geologists one that no linguist would counter, unless they were to ask for a defini- an~ bIOlogists.would be hard-pressed to debate (with any degree of tion of "living" and to debate the parameters and implications of that senous.n.ess or mterest) arguments against evolutionary theory based on term, just for the fun of it. And, of course, not all linguists find the fact t?e wntmgs of the Bible. Linguists claim some authority in the descrip- that all living languages change to be equally interesting or worthy of tion of language based on observation, experimentation, and deduction, study. Nonetheless, that statement is part of the core of knowledge about so that the claim All living languages change is not a matter of faith or language, hard won, with which all linguists begin. opi.nion or. aes~hetics, but observable fact (which is not to say that all It is also true that the very subject of this book - how people think claIms by hngUlsts are equally supportable by fact). about language, how and why they try to control it, to what social ends, The rest of this chapter is an attempt to pull together some statements and with what linguistic and social repercussions - has often been put about language which enjoy widespread support of the majority (but prob- aside as uninteresting by linguists themselves. Traditionally, linguists ably not all) linguists and which are demonstrably true, in as much as draw a strict line in the sand between what they hope is their own objective anything can be demonstrated as consistently true for any social behavior: description of language phenomena and subjective, usually prescrip- that is, the nature of linguistic argumentation is probabilistic and not tivist limits on language by misinformed or underinformed lay persons predictive. (language "mavens" or "shamans").2 More recently, however, some lin- This small collection of "facts" is where most linguists would come guists have put aside this strict division in recognition of the fact that toget?er. :rhe irony is that where linguists settle down to an uneasy truce, how people think about language is in fact relevant to the study of non-lmgUlsts take up the battle cry. The least disputed issues around language as a social construct, and that claims of objectivity on the part of language structure and function, the ones linguists argue about least, are linguists are sometimes suspiciously self-protective. Deborah Cameron those which are most often challenged by non-linguists, and with the points out, for example, that the descriptive/prescriptive line used by greatest vehemence and emotion. linguists to validate their own pursuit of knowledge about language This phenomenon has been observed widely. In The Language Instinct: and devalue or dismiss other types of discourses about language can be How the mind creates language, Steven Pinker notes to his readers: challenged: Most educated people already have opinions about language. They the overt anti-prescriptive stance of linguists is in some respects not kno:v that it is man's most important cultural invention, the quintes- unlike the prescriptivism they criticize. The point is that both prescrip- sential example of his capacity to use symbols, and a biologically tivism and anti-prescriptivism invoke certain norms and circulate unprecedented event irrevocably separating him from other animals. particular notions about how language ought to work. Of course, the They know that language pervades thought, with different languages norms are different (and in the case of linguistics, they are often covert). causing their speakers to construe reality in different ways. They know But both sets feed into the more general arguments that influence that children learn to talk from role models and caregivers. They everyday ideas about language. On that level, "description" and know that grammatical sophistication used to be nurtured in the "prescription" turn out to be aspects of a single (and normative) schools, but sagging educational standards and the debasements of activity: a struggle to control language by defining its nature. popular culture have led to a frightening decline in the ability of the (1995: 8) average person to construct a... grammatical sentence. They also know that English is a zany, logic-defying tongue.... In the pages that follow, Cameron's observations are accurate on many levels: the struggle between I will try to convince you that everyone of these common opinions is linguists and non-linguists are often about authority. The issues she raises wrong! are relevant ones for sociolinguists and other linguists interested in the (1994: 17-18) relationship between power and language to think about, but she is not the first to raise them. 3 An extreme representation might be that prescrip- My purpose in this book is somewhat less comprehensive than Pinker's: tivists claim the right to tell people how to talk, and that linguists claim I will concern myself primarily with the part of common beliefs about the right to tell prescriptivists what not to say. language which concern attitudes towards language variation, and the per- There is a qualitative difference between the two approaches, however. sonal and institutionalized behaviors resulting from these beliefs. More- 1be linguist and the non-linguist claim different kinds and sources of over, I will outline only those linguistic facts of life which are essential to authority to validate their individual approaches to language. Linguists are the arguments which follow in the remainder of this book. 10 Linguistic.)~ language, and ideology The linguistic facts of l~fe 11 The linguistic facts of life which are of central concern to the issues in Table 1.1 The English language changing over time this book are the following: 1480 As it is knowen how many maner of peple ben in the jlonde ther All spoken language changes over time. ben also so many langages and tonges... All spoken languages are equal in linguistic terms. (William Caxton, Of the languages of maners & Vsage of the people Grammaticality and communicative effectiveness are distinct and inde- of Y' Londe) pendent issues. 1596 I doe not well know, but by ghesse, what you doe meane by these Written language and spoken language are historically, structurally, and termes... therefore I pray you explaine them. functionally fundamentally different creatures. (Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland) Variation is intrinsic to all spoken language at every level. 1640 Custome is the most certaine Mistressc of Language, as the publicke stampe makes the current money. (Ben Jonson, Timber or Discoveries) ALL SPOKEN LANGUAGE CHANGES OVER TIME 1740 The Opportunities we have lost for propagating our Language on the Continent, are more to be lamented, since perhaps the same, or All language changes over time, in terms of lexicon, sound structures, tone, so great, may never again be offer'd... how easily might we have rhythm, the way sentences are put together, the social markings of vari- made the Frenchmen eat their own Words, and obliged them to ants, and the meanings assigned to words. Only unused, dead languages speak plain English. (M. Briton, "An apology for the English language," London are static. 4 This is true in Great Britain as it is on the North American Magazine. Quoted also in Bailey 1991: 99) continent, as it is for every other spoken language in the world. 1818 Man have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Even the most conservative of language observers cannot argue that Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Woolf, Wharton, and Morrison (to been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing. take us from the fourteenth to the twentieth century), some of the men (Jane Austen, Persuasion) and women who wrote what is commonly regarded as the great literature 1990 His voice was clear and ringing, not Scots, full of what Roland of the English-speaking world, wrote the same English. From there it might inaccurately have called toffee-nosed sounds, or plummy follows that they did not speak the same English. It is not conceivable sounds, sounds he had spent his childhood learning to imitate that anyone would care to argue that because Toni Morrison does not derisorily, hooting, curtailed, drawling, chipping sounds that pricked write or talk like Shakespeare did that her English is bad, less efficient, his non-existent hackles with class hostility. (A. S. Byatt, Possession) less capable of carrying out the functions for which it is needed. Table 1.1 provides examples which demonstrate how written language changes over time. Language changes whether we like it or not. Attempts to stop spoken language from changing are not unknown in the history of the world, but ALL SPOKEN LANGUAGES ARE EQUAL IN LINGUISTIC they are universally without success, unless they are instituted by means TERMS of genocide. 5 Sometimes languages die a less sudden death, for example All spoken languages are equally capable of expressing a full range of when the community of speakers who use them disperse, succumb to ideas and experiences, and of developing to meet new needs as they arise. plague, or otherwise are forcibly assimilated into dominating cultures (as This claim by linguists is usually countered by non-linguists with examples in the case of most of the languages indigenous to this continent); of languages which reportedly have no terms for snow, or for which a languages are born, for example through the processes of pidginization vocabulary to discuss nuclear fusion does not exist. Try talking about the and subsequent creolization. Geneva Convention '.I' guidelines on chemical weapons in Arawakan, this Language standardization, which is in some ways an attempt to s:op argument goes, and see if English or French or Chinese are not more language change, or at least to fossilize language by means of controllmg capable of carrying the discussion. The fact is, however, that English has variation, will be considered in more depth in the next chapters. That not always had the vocabulary necessary to talk about chemical weapons, discussion will be part of a more in-depth consideration of the ideologi- or aeronautical engineering, or genetic mapping - just as speakers of cal structures which make such a process seem good and necessary. Germanic languages in central Europe once had no terms with which to discuss Christian theology. Language is an incredibly flexible and respon- sive social tool; we make or borrow what we don't have. In this flexibility  The linguistic facts of life 13 12 Linguistics, language, and ideology In the first case, use of the indicative mood indicates that the speaker and ability to change and adapt when necessity or will arises, all languages believes the report he or she is passing on to be factually true. Using the are equal. If through a sudden and unexpected shift in the world's present subjunctive, however, indicates that the report is being passed on economy the Arawakan speakers of Peru suddenly were sole possessors neutrally. A good, idiomatic translation of this would be "I am told he is of some resource everyone else needed, then Arawakan would de~elop a working; I do not know if this is true or not true." The third option, variety of new vocabularies and grammatical strategies to deal wIth new however, says very clearly that the speaker is passing on the report but challenges.. does not believe it; Thus, Alemannic speakers, when asked to report some- Languages are similar and different from one anoth~r.1O many ways thing said by another speaker, must take a stance on the truth value of beyond matters of vocabulary, however. Nevertheless, It IS no~ a usef~l what they are reporting. exercise to compare Swahili to Tagalog in order to find out whIch one IS It is a credit to the power of language prescriptivists that many native the "better" or "more efficient" language: these are not cars. We can~ot speakers of English will look at this example and say, well yes, now that compare manufacturing costs, gas mileage.' performance on rough terralO. you mention it - in this particular instance, English is less effective or Each language is suited to its commumty of speakers; each language systematic than Alemannic. changes in pace as that communjty and the ~emands of the speakers But let's consider some facts. First, a language which does not have an evolve. This applies not just to languages whIch are unrelated t~ one overt strategy for dealing with a grammatical or semantic distinction will another but also to varieties of a single language. Cockney and the dIalect have other ways of doing just that. We cannot claim that English speakers of Chic~go, or African American Vernacular English an? ~he dialect. of are incapable of making themselves clear on just who it is they are inviting Smith's Island in Chesapeake Bay, while very different vanetIes of EnglIsh to dinner, or what they believe about the reports they pass on. Social and in many ways, are all equally efficient as languages, although they do not regional varieties of English have developed a multitude of strategies for enjoy the same degree of wider social acceptance... dealing with the singular/plural distinction. For example, in Belfast and If efficiency and clarity in communication are an ultImate g.oal.10 some parts of the US you and youse; in the midwest and some parts of language use (an idea which will be considered below), the~ a non-llOgu~st the far west you and you guys; in much of the southern US you and might argue that English is neither efficient nor clear 10 te~ms of ItS you'uns or ya'll; in parts of Pennsylvania you and yousns. Intonation pronouns, as a speaker cannot make clear, in purely gramm~tIcal terms, and lexical choice will make it clear whether or not the speaker believes if she is addressing her comments to one speaker or more ( Would you George is actually working, or just cutting class. An additional strategy like to have dinner with me?"); further, this statement is completely employed by all speakers of English would involve a range of lexical without any indication of the social relationship between the speaker and choices which might not engender negative social reactions, but which the person she wants to have dinner with. Other languages are not ~o lax: show strategic maneuvering: "Would you folks/people/chaps/fellows/kids most of the Germanic and Romance languages, as well as the SlaVIC and like to..." many Asian languages, distinguish between singular and plural pers~nal It is true that these examples all come from regionally restricted "dialects" pronouns, and many languages also have a compl.ex sys~em of ho.nonfics of English, not "standard" English (with the possible exception of some of which requires that speakers situate themselves 10 socIal space 10 rela- the lexical strategies in the last example). Could we then claim that supra- tionship to the person addressed..... regional or standardized English - bound by adherence to a sometimes Another example of a lack of grammatIcal compleXIty I.n Eng~lsh has inflexible grammar - is not as efficient as the social and regional dialects? to do with the issue of verb mood. If asked why George IS not 10 class, This is a tempting argument, but it cannot survive close examination. his classmates may answer "He's working." If George's classmates are All language, even standardized and idealized language, will cope with trying to be helpful to him, they may say this in a way which passes on ambiguity of all kinds. If socially motivated rules forbid reliance on certain no additional information about the truth value of the statement. In some grammatical strategies or lexical terms, then discourse, intonation, and spoken varieties of German, however, they have no ch~ic~ but to take a body-language strategies can be called into play: stance on their report. In Alemannic (the spoken vanetIeS of German "Would you [single eye contact] like to have a meal with me?" used in eastern Switzerland, western Austria and some parts of south- "Would you [multiple eye contact] like to have a meal with me?" western Germany) there are three possibilities: It is a strange and interesting thing that we should think about language Ar ischt am schaffa indicative as if it were a machine invented to serve the purpose of communication, Ar sii am schaffa present subjunctive and thus open to criticism on the same grounds in which we talk about Ar war am schaffa past subjunctive 14 Linguistic~~ language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 15 our lawn mowers and food processors. In the next sections we will see Linguists and non-linguists both see grammar as a set of rules that these misconceptions have less to do with inherent qualities of which must be obeyed, but they differ on the nature and origination of language than they do with a preoccupation with functional aspects.of those rules. When linguists talk about grammar, they are conceptualizing language use, which in turn originates in part with struggles over authonty the internalized, rule-driven structure of a language which facilitates the in the determination of language and social identity. generation of all possible sentences for that particular language, and at the same time, rules out sentences like *lizard the leaped, for English? (There are no varieties of English which allow a definite article to be GRAMMATICALITY AND COMMUNICATIVE EFFECTIVENESS placed after the noun to which it belongs, although Swedish, another ARE DISTINCT AND INDEPENDENT ISSUES Germanic language, does this as a matter of course.) For non-linguists, There are two interrelated concepts which must be distinguished: first, grammar rules are usually socially constructed, having more in common what constitutes the rules of a grammar, and the violation of those rules; with norms that forbid men to wear skirts in public or people to eat and second, the lack of relationship between some kinds of grammati- mashed potatoes with their fingers in restaurants. Pinker (1995) uses the cality and the inherent value, content, and purpose of the message example of a taxicab to illustrate this distinction, and as it is a useful contained in the utterance. The first issue, grammaticality, has been illustration I have adapted it here: discussed widely, but will be outlined here briefly. Evaluation of language The Taxicab Maxim content is brought up in this context less often, but because the two A taxicab must obey the laws of physics, but it can flout the laws of issues are so often confused in public discourse, this subject will be the state of Michigan (or Florida, or London, etc.). explored. Thus it is never necessary to remind a child about language-internal, rule- governed grammaticality (*Susie! Stop putting your articles after your Grammaticality nouns!), but it may seem very necessary, in social terms, to stop that same Linguists use the term grammatical to refer to any utterance which could child from announcing "I gotta pee" during religious services, or for saying occur in a given language. In terms of linguistic grammaticality, the "I ain't got none" if she is asked about her brothers and sisters by a following are perfectly functional utterances in English: 6 stranger; although these two instances invite correction for different reasons, none of those reasons have to do with linguistic grammaticality. Ain't no way he's gonna. Both "I gotta pee" and "I ain't got none" are completely viable, for Danny gone - he be working down to the factory. English. Social conventions around language, however, are less tolerant. Whatsa matter you? In terms of language, as for social behaviors like dress and eating behav- He said he may can have these by the first of the month (Feagin 1979: iors, there are complex histories and rationalizations underlying each point 335). of authority, and mechanisms for enforcing them which are quite effective. Between you and I, he's wrong. Thus it is useful to make a distinction between linguistic grammaticality Coffee I can always drink, so pour me. and socially constructed grammaticality.K Meat's so expensive anymore that we eat a lot of macaroni. Danny gone he be working down to the factory is linguistically gram- Down the shore everything's all right. matical because it follows from the rule-governed structure of African Those boots sure are fly (Morgan and DeBerry 1995: 12). American Vernacular English (AAVE), known also as Black English or If you're going out, I'm coming with. Black English Vernacular (BEV). AAVE has complex morphosyntactic Mrs. Vincent took a heart attack. rules which contrast with those for other varieties of US English in many So she goes, like, no, it's way late for that. ways. So for example we see in this sentence a grammatical distinction in TIle data shows that the hypothesis can't be supported. the conjugation of the verb "to be" in Danny gone and he be working. Put it in your pocket. In the first case, AAVE allows deletion of the copula where other varieties To non-linguists, the "mistakes" in these sentences would be more or less of US English allow contraction ("Danny's gone")Y In the case of he be obvious, with the possible exception of the last two examples. In those working, AAVE provides a grammatical strategy to distinguish between cases, academics especially would argue that the noun data must be used durative and non-durative action: Danny working down to the factory as a plural, with a plural verb; particularly hard-line prescriptivists would means that he is there right now; Danny be working down to the factory be sure to point out that things are put into a pocket. means he goes there daily, that this is an on-going, repetitive action. lo 16 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 17 A non-linguist would very likely call Danny gone - he be working down Is it persuasive? to the factory ungrammatical because it violates subject-verb ag:eement Is its delivery pleasing? rules which are functional in other varieties of English. The question then The five possible responses provided for the question Can I have your becomes: is there only one valid variety of English, with one set of phone number? could be judged on the basis of clarity, logic, conciseness, morphological rules, and can all spoken language varieties be held to that persuasiveness, and delivery, but not until we have more information, single set of rules?.. because the communicative intent of both the question posed and the That is a question for the later chapters m thIS book. For ~he momen,t, answer received are multidimensional. It is possible to imagine many it is enough to note that linguists reserve the term ungrammatIcal for those underlying purposes to the question Can I have your phone number? constructions or usages which do not occur in the language at all, and depending on the context in which it is asked, and the relationship of cannot be generated from its grammar. speaker to listener. In one possible situation (in which one person is trying to establish a romantic or sexual relationship), the answer "Dh, well, I'm not sure - what is my phone number, it's - ah- I don't -" may not be Content concise (in the sense of "succinct"), but the underlying message is, after I have put forth as facts that any language is capable of adapting to ~ny all, a complex one: I have evaluated you as a potential mate and found linguistic need, and that every native speaker produces utterances wh~ch that you are not acceptable, but I have no wish to insult you directly or are by their very nature grammatical. What I have not an~ c~nnot claIm, embarrass you, and in fact I am afraid of the social consequences of doing is that message content can be judged in the same way. T~IS IS where, the so. Within its social context, the reply is very clear, and it is also concise potential of the language and the grammar as abs.trac~IOns.come I.nto in that it gets its message across with fewer lexical items than the alternate conflict with language as it is used by individuals. Lmgmsts dIffere~tIate proposed. Alternatively "When hell freezes over" is a longer answer than between language system and language use, which may ~e loosely I~ter­ "No" but it is also much more descriptive. A simple negation leaves room preted as the acknowledgement that eac~ u~terance, wh~le grammatIcal, for interpretation of motive; "When hell freezes over" leaves very little mayor may not fulfill the purpose for whI~h It was conce~ved and for~u­ doubt about the evaluation of the question. lated, for a wide variety of reasons. ConsIder the followmg hypothetIcal In the medieval and early modern periods, liberal arts consisted in part responses (BI-B5) to a simple question (A): of the study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the trivium), where rhetoric A: "Can I have your phone number?" is taken to mean language used effectively and persuasively. This concern with "effective" language persists, although the term remains, as always, Bl: "I'll have a beer." B2: "Dh, well, I'm not sure - what is my phone number, it's - ah - I a subjective one.]l If effectiveness in language is the sum of more specific qualifiers (clarity, logic, conciseness, persuasiveness, and delivery), then don't -" B3: "What's a phone, and why does it have a number?" calculation of effectiveness is complicated by the fact that these are subjec- B4: "When hell freezes over." tive rather than objective measures. Whether or not these are reasonable B5: "It's 555-3333." demands of language as a vehicle of communication is also debatable. 12 Is language more effective when sentences are short, or long? When it is To determine linguistic grammaticality, a very simple question suffices: spoken fast, or slow? When the vocabulary used is primarily Germanic Can this utterance be generated by the grammar of the language? Eac~ of (help!), or Romance (assistance!)? the responses above is a grammatical constr~ction for my own, va:Iety I will argue at various points in this study that the evaluation of language of English, and for many others. But an evaluatIOn.of conte~t and soczally- effectiveness - while sometimes quite relevant - is often a covert way of construed well-formedness or efficiency moves to Issues of mtent, ~ompo­ judging not the delivery of the message, but the social identity of the sition, and delivery. In each case, we could ask a number of questIOns to messenger. It is a basic truth about language that the variety ofthe language evaluate the responses given. spoken cannot predict the effectiveness of the message. Is the message clear? It is not hard to get people to acknowledge that an individual who Is it easily broken down i~to its constituents?..? speaks a variety of English which is highly evaluated in social terms is Does one point follow logIcally from the preVIOUS pomt. not necessarily a good speaker, or that a socially "right" variety of English Is it couched in concise language and free of excess and overly complex does not automatically bring with it the ability to write well. The National construction? Council of Teachers of English put out a publication called Quarterly 18 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 19 Review of Doublespeak which is dedicated to documenting how spoken Prin.ce Charles often demonstrates this tendency in public speeches, as we and written language are used to obscure poor reasoning and to deliber- s.e~ 111 the following example given when he was judging a reading compe- ately mislead. The persons who are quoted in these pages are speakers tItIOn: of what would be called an educated, mainstream US English, for example If English is spoken in heaven... God undoubtedly employs Cranmer the following transcript of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun: as his speechwriter. The angels of the lesser ministries probably use the Today's majority... decides that the forced repatriation of the Haitian language of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book refugees is perfectly legal, because the word "return" does not mean for internal memos. return, because the opposite of "within the United States" is not outside (Tytler 1989: 1) the United States, and because the official charged with controlling I suppose we must be fair and point out that the Prince of Wales does not immigration has no role in enforcing an order to control immigration. automatically assume that English is spoken in heaven. Nevertheless, his (Justice Harry Blackmun, The Progressive, August 1993: 10, further assumptions are quite interesting. It is useful to point out first that as cited in Quarterly Review of Doublespeak, October 1993: 2-3) those language authorities cited here as perfect all draw their power from Political debate provides daily examples of highly educated and religious institutions. Thomas Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury powerful people who speak what is generally considered "the best" (the h~ad of the Anglican Church) under Henry VIII, and he is cited by English, who are still incapable of expressing simple ideas clearly, at least the PrInce of Wales as an authority because he simplified and translated in a public forum. When former Vice President Dan Quayle stated with the Latin prayer books into one English volume, the Book of Common great confidence: "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more Prayer, which eventually became the only book used, by means of freedom and democracy - but that could change" (Slansky and Radlauer England's Act of Uniformity (1662). It is also interesting that the written 1992: 41) many people shook their heads at his doublespeak, but no one documents which are cited here as appropriate models for the spoken lan- called his English ungrammatical. When the media drew attention to guage are British ones (in other places, Prince Charles has been very critical Quayle's language use it was not because of the kind of English he speaks, of what has been done to English by its speakers on the North American but more usually because of his lack of logic, poor information, mala- continent). But most important to the discussion immediately at hand is propisms, or on one highly publicized occasion, his inability to spell.J3 the way this picture of language perfection assumes that the various medi- Of course, there are many speakers of what would generally be called ums of language are one and the same. Here we see mention of spoken Standard US English who also are capable of expressing their thoughts language, speeches (which can be given as planned but extemporaneous clearly and concisely, both in speech and writing. But can effective speech, or the reading out loud of written language), and written language. messages be given in AAVE? In Appalachian English, or Chicano This proclamation by the future king of England also builds on a tradi- English? What happens when the message comes in a variety of English tion of drawing on divine authority in language which goes back to which is not highly evaluated in social terms? Socrates, who in writing about the self-sufficiency and perfection of clas- In the course of this book, I will argue that the statement the variety sical Greek makes the argument that it is the language "in which the Gods of the language spoken cannot predict the effectiveness of the message, while must clearly be supposed to call things by their right and natural names" true, is only a partial truth. The variety of the language spoken cannot (Plato 1970: 138). More recently, in an event which has been quoted so predict the effectiveness of the message, but it can predict some of the widely as to have passed into linguistic legend, a congressman in Texas social evaluation the listener brings to the message, and his or her will- (or, in some accounts, Oklahoma) is said to have expressed the decisive ingness to listen. argument against bilingual education (and unwittingly, for more and better history and geography instruction) by drawing on the ultimate authority: "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ," he intoned, "then it's good WRITTEN LANGUAGE AND SPOKEN LANGUAGE ARE enough for the schoolchildren of Texas." HISTORICALLY, STRUCTURALLY, AND FUNCTIONALLY The issue of rightful authority in determining standards for language FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT CREATURES obscures one primary issue: written and spoken language lend themselves This point is easy enough to bolster with factual evidence, but it is perhaps differently to standardization. Why should this be? Halliday points out the single most difficult point for non-linguists to fully understand and that "writing and speaking are not just alternative ways of doing the same accept. In our minds the spoken and written languages are so intertwined things; rather, they are ways of doing different things" (1989: xv). Before that we seem sometimes incapable of distinguishing between them. we examine what it is that they do differently, an overview of the major 20 Linguistic~~ language, and ideology The linguistic facts of l~fe 21 differences between the two language channels will be useful, as seen in Writing systems are a strategy developed in response to demands arising Box 1.1: from social, technological, and economic change. The purpose of writing Box 1.2 A comparison of written and spoken language systems is to convey decontextualized information over time and space. We write love letters, laundry lists, historical monographs, novels, family trees, car-care manuals, menus, "out to lunch" signs, biochemistry text- Spoken language... Written language... books. We write these things down because our memories are not capable of storing such masses of information for ourselves or those who come is an innate human capacity which is not universal, and must be is acquired by all human children consciously and rigorously taught; after us, or because we consider the message one worthy of preserving who are not isolated from other it is a skill which will be acquired past the limitations of memory. language users during the critical with differing degrees of success The demands made on written language are considerable: we want it acquisition period to span time and space, and we want it to do that in a social vacuum, draws heavily on paralinguistic cannot rely on these resources and without the aid of paralinguistic features and often without shared context features to convey information in must use punctuation, additional of any kind. Thus, the argument goes, written language needs to be free more than one way: tone of voice, lexical items or constructions when of excessive variation: it must be consistent in every way, from spelling body language written letters alone do not suffice to sentence structure. 14 The process of learning how to write involves is primarily a social activity, carried is carried out as a solitary pursuit, learning a new set of rules which in effect translate the spoken language out between two or more persons with an audience removed in time into a written language form. The acquisition of this skill is a complex and space one that demonstrates the differences between the two mediums, as seen below in the writings of one school-aged Michigan child, Robert, as he allows confusion and ambiguity does not allow confusion and moves from second to fourth grade. 15 to be resolved directly by repair ambiguity to be immediately and confirmation procedures resolved We prettended we we[re] explorers and Jesse's house was the world is used in a social and temporal is contextless and thus more prone and went all the way around the world. We had a little bit of popcorn context, and thus brings with it a to ambiguity; intolerant of ellipses and we played some other stuff. About the funniest thing was when great deal of background we made products and we made up a story about are [our] products information; draws on context to and told while we were presenting our products after about two hours complement meaning and fill in and I went home. ellipses (second grade) can be planned or spontaneous is by nature planned is ephemeral is permanent Bicicles come in all sizes and colors. It is easy to ride with training wheels, because they [are] hard to tip. Riding without training wheels is inherently and unavoidably actively suppresses and discourages variable on every level, language variation of all kinds is easy to[ 0], once you get the hang of it. internally (structurally) and (early third grade) externally (socially); exploits variation to pass on information in At last, when night fell Richard came to the top of the mountain. There addition to that of the surface he saw that it was not a mountain after all, it was a volcano! For in message the center of it there was an ab[y]ss, and when Richard stared down into it, he saw nothing but an ebony void. All of a sudden an immense cloud of smoke blasted out, streaking toward the heavens.... (late third grade) In the first example, composed when he was in the second grade, Robert While written and spoken language seem on the surface to be very writes of a visit to a friend in the same relaxed and easy manner he might similar, a comparison of one with the other soon demonstrates how have told these same details to his family over dinner. There are no para- different they are. Why should this be the case? graph breaks at logical points, and there is little punctuation, although he 22 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 23 shows an unusually early awareness of the function of apostrophes to While the pragmatic, emotional, cognitive and social functions of speech mark possessive s. The final sentence is actually in four distinct thoughts, can and do co-occur in single utterances, sociolinguists seem to agree that joined by the conjunction and, as is common in spoken language. There no matter how strictly pragmatic or cognitive, the majority of utterances is only one subordinate clause. have some element of the social in them. The social life of language often The second example was written barely six months later when Robert exists in subtle shifts and choices below the level of consciousness, in the was in third grade, and it demonstrates that he has learned how to divide way our vowels and consonants are pronounced and in the intonational language into the chunks which are expected of a written description. He patterns we use. Newspaper! Get your newspaper! is not the same utter- uses commas to set off dependent clauses. ance in Portland, New Orleans, Iowa City, San Diego, or Missoula, because In the final example, written late in the third-grade school year, Robert it is not the same person calling out this very pragmatic message. has mastered many narrative techniques unique to the written language: So what is the confusion between spoken and written language? It seems at last, when night fell, and there he saw are the type of construction rarely straightforward enough: we write things that tax our ability to remember, heard in spontaneous oral discourse. Robert has learned to use exclama- or to project our thoughts through space. We speak everything else. But tion points when in an oral narrative he might raise an arm or his voice aren't they the same thing, just as water is water whether it flows, or to signal a high point in the story. He begins a new paragraph to signal freezes so that we can walk on it? Isn't it just a matter of presentation? a pause or change of direction in the narration. Can't speech and writing be treated as different manifestations of the The transition from spoken to written language is the acquisition of a same mental phenomenon? Wouldn't spoken language be more efficient skill; it is, in broad terms, learning to plan an otherwise spontaneous if we treated it like written language? activity with extreme attention to detail. Generally, all language can be We might think of the difference between spoken and written language divided into two rough categories, planned and unplanned, but writing as the difference between walking and machines built for the purpose of predominates on the planned side, and the spoken language is usually transporting human beings. Unless a child suffers a terrible turn of fate, unplanned. For the most part planned speech occurs in particularly formal he or she will learn to walk without focused instruction. People move or stylized contexts, for example, a traditional marriage proposal or a themselves over space to pursue food and shelter, to associate with each presentation before a bank's board of directors. In this case, spoken other, to explore their world, Over time, the human race developed a language often shows traces of syntactical constructions or lexical items series of technologies to improve the ability to move themselves: they normally reserved for the written language. tamed horses, camels, oxen; they built carts, carriages, boats, trains, While writing is planned language, most speech is unplanned, and fulfills bicycles, cars, airplanes. All of these things are faster than walking, and, a wide range of possible functions. Many (or, some linguists would claim, if speed is the primary criterion by which we judge efficiency of move- all) of these are communicative in nature. 16 There are distinct functions, ment, they are superior to the skill all humans have in common. But it which in the Jakobsonian model include would not occur to us to set up standards for walking on the basis of the speed of any of these vehicles: it is a physical impossibility to walk The pragmatic functions, in which commands or requests are made, 60 miles an hour for any amount of time. We cannot walk like we ride. things are sold, or warnings are issued. Newspaper! Get your news- Why then do we not think anything of Prince Charles telling us that in paper! Put it here! or Your hair is on ,fire! are all examples of speech heaven, people will speak like they write, as if this were the ultimate good, functioning in a pragmatic way. the ideal? 2 Emotional components, which serve to express an internal state on the In their seminal work on authority in language, James and Lesley Milroy part of the speaker or instill an emotional state on the part of the point to the underlying issue which may explain - in part - why we are decoder, as in I could just spit! so willing to see the spoken language subordinated to the written. 3 Cognitive aspects, in which the use of speech is to convey information associated with thought, theory, data, or other facts. This subsumes the As writing skills are difficult, our educational systems have concen- explanation of procedures and the expression of opinion, such as I like trated on inculcating a relatively high degree of literacy, with little it like that, or Giraffes have longer necks than turtles. attention paid to the nature of spoken language as an everyday social 4 Speech as a tool to establish, maintain, and reaffirm social roles within activity. Training in the use of "English"... is usually assumed to be an organized society. Salutations (Hey! Look who the cat dragged in! training in the use of written English.... Spoken language is taken for How are you today? Girlfriend! Good afternoon, gentlemen) which seem granted. As a result of this constant emphasis on written language, to be pragmatic or cognitive are often in fact primarily social. there is an understandable tendency for people to believe that writing 24 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 25 is somehow more complicated and difficult (and more important) than literacy is claimed to lead to logical, analytic, critical and rational speech. thinking, general and abstract uses of language, a skeptical and questioning attitude, a distinction between myth and history, the recog- (1991: 65-66) nition of the importance of time and space, complex and modern The preoccupation of the schools with the written language to the exclu- governments... political democracy and greater social equity, economic sion of the spoken is quite easy to document. The National Council of development, wealth and productivity, political stability, urbanization, Teachers of English, for example, publishes guidelines for the curriculum and contraception (a lower birth rate). It is also supposed to lead to in English on a regular basis; of the twelve points addressed, only three people who are innovative, achievement oriented, productive, include mention of spoken language skills, and then in a very vague and cosmopolitan, media and politically aware... with more liberal and indirect way (a topic which will be taken up in more detail in Chapter 6). humane social attitudes, less likely to commit a crime, and more likely From the spoken to the written language is a large step; it is another to take education, and the rights and duties of citizenship, seriously. significant step from the written language to the possession of literacy.J7 The common popular and scholarly conception that literacy has such However, the possession of a skill, and facility to use that skill to construct powerful effects as these constitutes what Harvey Graff has called, the a product, are cultural resources not equally available to all persons, and "literacy myth." are heavily endowed with social currencies. Generally, the public does not (32) consider oral cultures as equal to literate ones, and there has been schol- What is of interest in this study is the force of a literacy myth (Graff arly work in linguistics and education which would seem to provide 1987a, b) which has brought about the subordination of the spoken evidence for the inherent validity of this position. Some scholars have language to norms - in themselves sometimes arbitrary, and with differing argued, with differing degrees of subtlety, that certain kinds or modes of degrees of effectiveness - which were developed for the written language. thought cannot develop in oral cultures, and that for this reason literate This process is part of what Foucault has called the disciplining of cultures are superior. This type of argument has come under attack on discourse, or the way we decide who has the right to talk, and to be both methodological and theoretical grounds. Most relevant here is listened to (1984, and elsewhere), the major topic of interest in the second Bernstein's theory of restricted and elaborated codes, which attempted and third parts of this book. (and failed) to establish that children who spoke "elaborated" languages at home (those more syntactically complex) were more capable of logical thought (among other cognitive advantages) and that children VARIATION IS INTRINSIC TO ALL SPOKEN LANGUAGE AT who heard only "restricted" codes in the home were at a disadvantage. EVERY LEVEL While Bernstein never made explicit the connection between languages of oral cultures and "restricted" codes, or languages of literate cultures Spoken language varies for every speaker in terms of speech sounds, sound and "elaborated" codes, this reading of his work is not an unusual one. patterns, word and sentence structure, intonation, and meaning, from Gordon (1981) provides an excellent review of Bernstein's work and the utterance to utterance. This is not a frivolous or useless feature of literature. 18 language. 19 Quite the contrary: "Heterogeneity is an integral part of It is demonstrably true that in a literate culture, illiteracy is a social the linguistic economy of the community, necessary to satisfy the linguistic brand like few others. Cameron calls what goes on around the written demands of everyday life" (Labov 1982a: 17). ll1ere are three sources of language "a circle of intimidation": variation in language: first, language-internal pressures, arising in part from the mechanics of production and perception; second, language-external mastering a complex and difficult craft gives you an inbuilt incentive influences on language, as a social behavior subject to normative and other to defend its practices. If I have invested time and effort learning how formative social pressures; and third, variation arising from language as to write according to a particular set of prescriptions, I will take some a creative vehicle of free expression. These forces can and do function in convincing that those prescriptions are not necessary and desirable; to tandem, and any good study of language change in progress will consider admit that the rules are both arbitrary and pointless is to devalue my at least the first two together. own accomplishment in mastering them. There is great similarity in the way we produce and perceive the sounds (1995: 14) of language, because the human neurological and vocal apparatus used in Gee (1990) goes a step farther when he outlines the complex associations speech is architecturally and structurally universal. As a child acquiring and expectations of literacy: language, every person has potentially available to them the full range of 26 Linguistic.s~ language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 27 front central back example, the words Mary, merry and marry are pronounced exactly the same. Currently, there is a great deal of activity in US English for the \ \ u vowels in the words cot and caught, or hock and hawk, whereby the vowel high \ of caught and hawk is being replaced by the vowel in cot and hock. For \ \ I some readers of this book, this may be a meaningless statement because t \ I ID the merger will already be complete, and the whole process came and mid-high -------,--------~----- e \ I 0 went without ever drawing attention to itself. For them, it must be pointed \ g I out that cot and caught are not the same word for everybody: some \ I mid \ I pronounce the first word with the sound and the second with [;:'l]. (See \ I Figure 1.1 for a schematic representation of these and other sounds.) This £ \ I :; change is moving through the language lexical item by lexical item (which mid-low ------~-----~----- \ I \ 1\ I is only one way in which phonological change is realized). In my own \ I speech, best termed "Midwest Northern Cities," it has already come to \ I o pass for the words hot and solitary; it is variable for the words water and low \ I \ a I a hog, but not yet active for the words fought, awkward, dawn, or horrible (although I have heard used in those words by others, including my seven-year-old daughter). This is part of the large-scale vocalic system Figure 1.] International Phonetic Symbols for the vowels of English, showing shift discussed at length in Labov (1991). relative vowel qualities Source: Ladefoged ]982: 34 The short-forty and the park the car variables possible sounds. The sounds which will eventually survive and become For some varieties of US English the combination of [or] with a following part of the child's language are arranged into language-specific systems, consonant triggers variation between two possible realizations of the each sound standing in relation to the other sounds. In linguistic terms, vowel, or (a low, back, slightly rounded vowel) in words such as the study of production and perception of speech sounds is the science of short, forty, orchestra, and corporation with subsequent addition of an phonetics; concern with how sounds are organized into systems is called "off-glide" in monosyllables (Laferriere 1986). In a related set of phonology. It is in the production and perception of speech sounds as phenomena, the sound (r) is often deleted after vowels, and sometimes systematic entities functioning in relationship to each other that there is inserted where none is expected. 20 An example of this particular vari- perhaps the greatest potential for variation in language, and following ation known to many is John Kennedy's Boston variety of English; aware from that, variation leading to change. of the way his own accent was perceived by the puBlic, he once noted We begin with brief descriptions of some points of phonological or that Bostonians "saved all the r's paaking aa caa/ in Haaavaad yaad morpho-phonological variation currently active in all or parts of the US, [parking our cars in Harvard yard] in order to put them on the end of as well as descriptions of two grammatical points and one stylistic point. idear and Cuber [idea and Cuba]." If variation in language were "free" (a term often used in those branches of linguistics uninterested in the social life of language, where variation The walkin' and talkin' variable is seen as a kind of "noise in the channel"), then it would follow logically that the social structures of the communities in which the language func- English uses "ing" suffixes of verbs in a number of ways: as gerunds (Skiing tions could not predict any of the variation. is hard work), or in the progressive verbal construction (He:s' playing games again). The suffix written with three letters has a number of possible realizations in speech: the one which is considered "proper" [il)] does not Phonological variation actually have a "hard g sound", or stop, at its end. The second most common realization is [in], often represented in writing as walkin' and The cot-caught merger talkin' as if a g had been deleted, when in fact one sound, [n], has been When two distinct, meaning-bearing sounds - vowels in this case - begin substituted for another, [I)]. There is in fact a third possible realization of to merge, homonyms may result. For much of the midwestern US, for this suffix as [il)g], but it is limited in geographic and perhaps social ways.21 28 Lingu is ticc\; language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 29 This variation is not active where -ing is part of the root of the word None of us ever had any trouble about pulling out a knife. rather than a suffix: we do not find the variable pair ring [rilJ] and rin' Not one of us ever had any trouble about pulling out a knife. [rin]. Whether t~e variety of English in question allows multiple negation or not, there IS a great deal of variation available in the process. The coupon variable For a subset of lexical items with the sound [u] in a stressed syllable, there Invariant forms of "to be" is at least a possibility of adding a "glide" or a y sound before that vowel, so that duke has two possible realizations: [duk] and [djuk] ("dyook"). Another point of variation in verb usage is commonly called "subject- This variation works below the level of consciousness, for the most part, verb" agreement. For example, a standardized US English requires that with the exception of one lexical item: people do seem to be aware of the past tense of the. verb "to be" distinguish between plural and singular; the choice between coupon and c-y-oupon. first, second, and thIrd persons: I was, you (singular) were, he/she/it was, we wer~, you (plural) were, they were. There are, however, both social and regIOnal dialects which tend toward what has been called "invariant Grammatical variation was,': or th.e use of the singular form regardless of the subject, as in We While variation in grammatical structure is quite salient, it is less oftert wa~ zn a~ ldeal place for it or Was you a majorette? (Feagin 1979: 204). studied than phonological variation. Variations in verbal morphology are 1?IS part~cular point of variation shows up more widely in conjunction probably some of the most productive grammatical points of change in WIth the Impersonal subject there, as in There was twenty dollars in my progress, and also the most complex. purse when I l~st looked. This is true as well for the present tense, where the verb form IS often contracted: There's donuts left if you're hungry or There's stars out tonight. Multiple negation Generally in mainstream, non-stigmatized varieties of US and other Lexical variation Englishes, a single negative element is all that is allowed when we negate a sentence, although there are usually a number of possible strategies in This is the kind of linguistic variation which people are most often aware negation available. In fact negation is a very complex business in any of, and which causes heated discussion at cocktail parties. In southeastern variety of English, and it is further complicated by prescriptivist, socially Michigan, there are often good-natured classroom arguments on the use motivated grammatical rules which insist, for example, that two negatives of pop (the variant most likely found farther west) versus soda (the variant make a positive, a piece of logic borrowed rather oddly - from math- found to the east); people seem to find discussions of the distribution of ematics. The fact that two negatives do not make a positive in a variety the.ro~ghl~ equal terms tennis shoe, gym shoe, sneaker quite interesting. of other languages does not seem to shake the public's firm commitment SocIOlm.gmsts find this kind of variation less compelling, unless there is to this rule of thumb; nevertheless, mainstream varieties of spoken correlatIon to other points of variation which are more socially or English do sometimes allow multiple negation of the sort found in Nobody geographically complex. much likes Harry, I don't think. Further, if one person rages "No, no, no There are lexical items which function as discourse markers, however no no no!" it is not likely that his or her audience would then determine ~nd ~hich are so complex in structural, social, and stylistic terms tha~ that the six "no's" (a number divisible by two) render this a positive Imgmsts spend a lot of time worrying over them. Terms like you know, statement. well, ~nd but sho,:" us "how speakers and hearers jointly integrate forms, In other, stigmatized varieties of English, a single underlying negation meamngs, and actIOns to make overall sense out of what is said" (Schiffrin may be realized at multiple points in an utterance: We ain't never had no 1987: 49). A particularly interesting but not widely studied discourse trouble about none of us pulling' out no knife (Wolfram 1969: 153). marker is the use of like, as in the sentence Most of them like maybe like In non-stigmatized US English the possible variants for this sentence drink and stuff (California Style Collective 1993: 8). At first glance it would include: seem that this must be nothing more than a random and strictly age- graded phenomenon and devoid of any meaning, but first glances are often We never had any trouble about pulling out a knife. deceptive. We didn't have any trouble about pulling out a knife. 30 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 31 STRUCTURED VARIATION: THE HIDDEN LIFE OF Sociolinguistics becomes complicated as soon as we recognize that social LANGUAGE identities only begin with questions of geography, gender, and age. In many years of studying the way structured variation in language reflects The examples of variation in language provided above might seem, at first the social structures of the community, it has become clear that language glance, to be obvious and uninteresting in any real way. People say things can serve to mark a number of kinds of identity. The way individuals different ways at different times, but the meaning of the utterance remains situate themselves in relationship to others, the way they group them- the same whether we are told that Republicans don't like liberals or Ain't selves, the powers they claim for themselves and the powers they stipulate no Republican likes no liberal. to others are all embedded in language. National origin, socioeconomic But language isn't simple, and variation isn't without consequences. class, communication networks based on the workplace and occupation, Human beings choose among thousands of points of variation available degree of integration into kinship structures: all these things and many to them not because the human mind is sloppy, or language is imprecise: more can be marked by means of variation in very clear ways. To add to just the opposite. We exploit linguistic variation available to us in order this complexity, topic and setting put their own demands on variation. to send a complex series of messages about ourselves and the way we Figures 1.2 through 1.9 provide data from a variety of sociolinguistic position ourselves in the world we live in. We perceive variation in the studies conducted in the US, with a range of relevant variables. What speech of others and we use it to structure our knowledge about that should be striking here is that for each case of variation (which we must person. Listening to strangers calling into talk-radio programs, it is more recall is a small portion of the total range of variation happening in any than grammar and vowel sounds that we evaluate, more than the content of the speech communities at a given time) another constellation of of their comments that we walk away with. "What's a Dago know about possible social, stylistic, and geographic factors are at play. the price of oil?" my father asked once while listening to an anonymous Laferriere's 1979 study of the short-forty variable active in Boston found caller to a talk-radio program rant about the gasoline crunch in the late that the use of the innovative or newer value, , for a less regionally- 1970s. My father, a native speaker of Italian, recognized the caller as marked , was not random, but correlated strongly with one of three socially and ethnically similar to himself and made a series of evaluations. ethnic identities and formality of the speech event: We all have experiences like this: it is part of speaking a language. The inability to use or recognize the social markings of linguistic variants is All groups use the dialect variant most frequently in casual speech, one of the most significant problems of second-language learners, and one as expected, and least in formal speech; but the three groups contrast that is rarely dealt with in the classroom, where the myth of standard in the degree to which they use the variant. Jewish speakers have the lowest percentages of in all styles; Italians have the highest; and language has a stronghold. 111e parameters of linguistic variation are multidimensional. In large-scale Irish speakers have values parallel to and between the other two. terms, these are social, stylistic, geographic, or temporal, and in anyone (60S) case of active variation, more than one of these factors is probably at play, We see in Figure 1.2 that stylistic formality is consistently relevant to and works in complex ways with language-internal influences on variation. a person's participation in this variation, regardless of ethnicity. Again and Social parameters of linguistic variation can be approached a number again, sociolinguistic studies have shown that amount of attention paid to of ways. There is a great deal of discussion among sociolinguists about speech is a crucial factor in the propagation of any change in progress. the underlying conceptions of the language community and the method- Is there some more general relevance of this particular variable to ologies for approaching and quantifying the community's language. What ethnicity? To the vowel sound before [r]? Absolutely not. When a soci- is relevant here is not a history of the theory and methodology of socio- olinguist goes into a community to study variation in the language, there linguistic inquiry (that has been done elsewhere, and with great care; see is no way to predict what elements will be changing, in what directions, for example Chambers 1995), but what generalizations are possible about or based on what social differences between speakers. But because we the relationship between linguistic variation and social identity based on have seen time and time again that certain kinds of social contrasts are some thirty..five years of inquiry. We know, for example, that gender, age, likely to be embodied in linguistic variation, we would hypothesize that and geographical loyalties are often coded by means of language variation. large ethnic populations with distinct "personalities" will distinguish them- When we choose among variants available to us, we take those that will selves linguistically. Knack (1991) found that for the Jewish and Gentile effectively mark us as belonging to specific social groupings. We do this populations of Grand Rapids, Michigan there were linguistic ways to mark sometimes even when we are trying not to (in the next chapters we will this ethnicity which were very different from the Boston pattern. In addi- return to tbis very relevant subject of mutability of language). tion to variation in the pronunciation of a particular vowel, the devoicing 32 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 33 % to be a good indicator of an individual's commitment to the vernacular 100 - ,.. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -.. , culture. "Lames" in Labov's study are individuals who remove themselves from the social context of the communication networks in which they 90 would otherwise be integrated: 80 They are not hip, since they do not hang out. It is only by virtue of being available and on the street every day that anyone can acquire 70 the deep familiarity with local doings and the sure command of local slang that are needed to participate in vernacular culture. To be "lame" 60 means to be outside of the central group and its culture; it is a negative characterization... 50 (1973: 84) Jewish 40 Figures 1.3 and 1.4 indicate how clearly lames use language to distance themselves symbolically: R-Iessness is common all along the eastern 30 seaboard, but it is a variable which shows very fine social and stylistic distributions, as is particularly salient in African American sociolinguistic 20 marking. Labov notes that the African American communities usually show a higher degree of r-Iessness, as well as a more distinct style shifting 10 toward using (r) in reading styles. "In general, it can be said that the (r) 0-+---------..-----------.--------1 variables are more important in the Black community than anywhere else Casual Reading Formal as indicators of formal, educated speech. This is even more true in Black communities in r-pronouncing areas, such as Philadelphia or Los Angeles" (1973: 89). In Figure 1.3, the "1390 Lames" (a reference to the building Figure 1.2 Use of new vowel in three speech styles for Italian, Irish, and they live in) use postvocalic (r) in greater proportions than members of Jewish speakers in the short-forty variable in Boston Source: Adapted from Laferriere 1986 % 60,---------------------. of voiced (z) to unvoiced (s) between vowels is a way to signal Jewish _ T-Birds 50 ------- identity. For example, Knack found that in Grand Rapids most Gentile ___ VDC Series speakers pronounce the [s] in the sentence She is. over there with a voiced (z), whereas Jews will sometimes pronounce "is" with (z) and sometimes 40 --. - - - - - - - - - -. - 1390 Lames with (s). Jewish men are much more likely to use (z), and the more inte- grated the Jewish males are into the social and political Grand Rapids -+- Aces 30 community, the less of the (s) variant they use. Jewish women, on the other hand, use more of the (s) variant when they are well integrated into the community. Knack hypothesizes that this distinction between Jewish men and women has to do with the role of Jewish women as responsible for maintaining the faith, "and thus [they] have a need to persist more 10 obviously than Jewish men in their Jewish behavior, including its lingusitic aspects. Devoiced (z), considered stereotypically Jewish, could be one of o.:I--~~:=:;:::==~-___r---___l these aspects" (1991: 266). Conversation (r) Reading style (r) Word lists (r) Some of the very earliest quantitative studies of sociolinguistic variation looked at the walkin' and talkin' variable. In his study of adolescent male Figure 1.3 Use of postvocalic (r) by style for gang members in Harlem groups in Harlem and their language behavior, Labov found this variable Source: Adapted from Laboy 1973 34 Linguistics, language, and ideology The linguistic facts of life 35 % (a) Respondents born in or before 1945 25 - , - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - , 20 15 5 % of respondents using the innovative form O-l---IlI"'--,...------..-----,-----j 1390 Lames VDC Series Aces T-Birds o less than 33% 33- 66% Figure 1.4 Use of -in for -ing in reading style for gang members in Harlem III above66% Source: Adapted from Laboy 1973 (b) Respondents born in or after 1946 any of the three gangs (VDC Series, T-Birds, Aces) do, and shift more strongly toward (r) use with increasing attention paid to speech. In a similar way, we see in Figure 1.4 that the 1390 Lames show no participation at all in the walkin' and talkin' variable for the most formal reading style. Of the gangs, the T-Birds approach 25 percent use of the full form -ing in this style. Studies of distribution of social variants over space are necessarily more limited because of the technological challenge they represent, but when they are done they provide some interesting data, as in Bailey et