Dialects and Registers - Chapter 2

Dialects and Registers - Chapter 2

Dialects and Registers - Chapter 2

Language and Dialects

Regional Dialects

Social Dialects

Social dialectology - Styles and Registers

Chapter 3 – pidgins, creoles

Lingua franca

Pidgins and creoles: definitions

Geographical distribution and linguistic characteristics

Theories of origin

From pidgin to Creole and beyond

Chapter 4 – choosing a code

Diglossia

Bilingualism and Multilingualism

Code choice, code-switching, and code-mixing

Chapter 5 –Speech Communities

Definitions

Intersecting communities

Networks and Repertoires

Chapter 6 – regional and social variation

Linguistic variable

Reading linguistic variation to social variation

The collection and analysis of data

Chapter 7 – variation studies: some findings and issues

An early study: Fischer

New York City: Labov

Norwich and Reading: Trudgill and Cheshire

A variety of studies

Belfast

The linguistic variable: Some controversies

Chapter 9 – language and culture

The Whorfian Hypothesis

Kinship systems

Taxonomies

Colour terminology

Prototype theory

Taboo and Euphemism

Chapter 10 – ethnography and ethnomethodology

Varieties of talk

The ethnography of communication

Ethnomethodology

Chapter 11 – Solidarity and Politeness

Tu and Vous

Address Terms

Politeness

Chapter 12 – acting and conversing

Speech Acts: Austin and Searle

Dialects and Registers - Chapter 2

Variety - set of linguistic items with similar distribution/anybody of human speech patterns which is sufficiently homogenous to be analyzed by available techniques of synchronic description and which has sufficiently large repertory of elements and their arrangements or processes with broad enough semantic scope to fiction in all formal contexts of communication

Stupid definition of variety - what and how much linguistic difference matters

Language and Dialects

Language – can be used to refer ether to single linguistic norm or to a group of related norms X dialect – refer to one of the norms

Distinction un dialect X un patois (has/has not literary tradition)

Hindi-Urdu situation – almost identical at level of grammar but recognised as two separate languages

Yugoslavia – Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian (but shouldn’t it be Serbian and Croatian??)

Alsace – German at home, but official leader is French

Situation along border between Netherlands and Germany – one language?

Danish, Norwegian and Swedish – very similar, understand each other

Language – citary system of linguistic communication which subsumes number of mutually intelligible varieties

Language families – another problem-maker

Discussing different kinds of languages (maybe they shouldn’t be under one label) – standardization, vitality, historicity, autonomy, reduction, mixture, de facto norms) – dialect is then some sub-variety of one or more of these entities

Standardization – language codified in some way

Norm must be selected and accepted (function!)

Definition of Standard English – p.31

Standard variety of E based on dialect of E that developer after Norman Conquest

Richelieu’s establishment of the Académie Francaise in 1635

Norwegian has two standards – Nynorsk, Bokmal

Standardization – attempt to eliminate diversity and variety

We should accept that language changes and don’t try to stick to old standards

Vitality – existence of living community of speakers

But also dead languages can influence people apod.a lot

Historicity – group of people finds sense of identity through using particular language

Autonomy – subjective, language must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages

Reduction – particular variety may be regarded as sub-variety rather than independent entity

Mixture– feelings speakers have about “purity” of variety they speak

De facto norms – only the good speakers represent norms of proper usage

Modern E – new standard based on dialect of areas surrounding London

Dialect is subordinate variety of language

Vernacular – the speech of particular country or region/formof speech transmitted from parent to child as primary medium of communication

Koiné – form of speech shared by people of different vernaculars (not necessarily standard!)

Regional Dialects

Again dialect-patois distinction (has/hasn’t literary tradition; patois used mainly in France)

Patois – rural forms of speech, refers only to speech of lower strata of society; dialect – wider geographical distribution

Dialect continuum – continuum of dialects sequentially arranged over space

Dialect geography – describes attempts made to map distributions of various linguistic features so as to show their geographical pronouncement

Isoglosses – boundaries around such features

Several isoglosses coincide – dialect boundary

Dialect X accent (Standard E spoken in variety of Access, often with clear regional and social …)

RP – E accent, „non-localized accent“, = the Queen’s E, Oxford E, BBC E

Most generalized accent in NA is „network E“

Social Dialects

Describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes (problem of defying social group or social class)

Hypercorrection – Jews, Italians in USA

Social dialectology - Styles and Registers

Style – level of formality

Register – set of vocabulary items associate with discrete occupational or social group

Dialect, style and register are largely independent

Subtle bias in judging dialects – preference for rural, over urban ones

Sometimes notions of „better“ and „worse“ solidify into those of „correctness“ and „incorrectness“

Classifying – we rely on relatively few cues, presence or absence of certain linguistic features

Our receptive linguistic ability is much greater than our productive ling. ability

Chapter 3 – pidgins, creoles

Till 1930 ignored, not studied (they „lack“ articles, copula, grammatical inflections…) – marginal

Not just a „bad“ variety of language

Lingua franca

Common system of communication for people who speak different languages – „language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate communication between them“

Spoken in variety of ways – mother/second language, pidginized versions of E…

English, Swahili, Greek Koiné, Vulgar Latin, Chinook (coastal NA 19th cent.), Plains Sign Language

Pidgins and creoles: definitions

Pidgin – no native speaker, used in group where everybody speaks some other language, developed for concrete purpose – trade…, three languages required for its formation, one of them dominant, but they must communicate everyone with everyone

Creole – „pidgin that has become first language of new generation of speakers“

Pidginization – reduction in morphology and syntax, tolerance of considerable phonological variation, reduction in number of functions, extensive borrowing of words from local mother-tongues

Creolization – expansion of morphology and syntax, regularization of phonology, deliberate increase in number of functions, development of rational and stable system for increasing vocabulary

DeCamp – descriptions of „clear-cut“ examples – pidgin Juba Arabic, Creole Haiti

Geographical distribution and linguistic characteristics

Equatorial belt

+-127 pidgins and creoles, 35 E-based, 15 French-based, 14 Portuguese-based, 7 Spanish, 5 Dutch, 3 Italian, 6 German

Interesting Caribbean

Southern US (Black E)

Suriname

Language distribution reflects its social and political history

Sounds of pidgin or creoleare likely to be fewer and less complicated in their possible arrangements than those of corresponding standard language

Morphophonemic variation (e.g. different sounds of plural ending in cats, dogs and boxes) – not in pidgins, but development of such variation may be one characteristic of Creolization

Almost a complete lack of inflection in nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives – P65

Sentences are likely to be uncomplicated in clausal structure; development of embedded clauses is one characteristic of process of Creolization

Use of particles is quite frequent; creoles associated with quite different standard languages apparently use identical syntactic device (short particle for expressing e.g.“continuous aspect“

sometimes it’s necessary to use reduplicative pattern to avoid possible confusion or to express certain concepts, repetition or intensification (sip/sip sip – ship/sheep in Tok Pisin)

Theories of origin

people among whom they are found lack ability to learn standard languages with which pidgins are associated

no evidence for any „foreigner-talk“ or „baby-talk“ theory (Europeans deliberately simplifying their languages in order to communicate with others)

all pidgins apparently share some of the same features, no matter which languages they are based on

sub-stratum theory - P and C retain certain characteristics of ancestral African languages – similarities owed to this common African element; Bickerton is against (itis impossible to trace certain basic similarities back to African source, many slave groups in Americas – why one particularly should be more influential than others?, one Creole in Hawaii lacks any connection at all with Afr source)

theory of polygenesis – variety of origins, similarities arise from shared circumstances of their origins (purpose-trade); using of comparative method, proto pidgins („original pidgins from which those that we observe concurrently may be said to be delivered)

monogenesis theory – common origin for pidgins and creoles: nautical jargon – a common lingua franca at ships

theory of relexification – all present European-lang-based P a C derive from single source, lingua franca called Sabir used in Mediterranean in Middle Ages; Portuguese relexified this language – own vocab in the same grammatical structure, then French, E and Spanish; Todd provides even family-tree type model for P and C, which shows them originating in Sabir; there are some problems…

bio program hypothesis=theory of universal language learning – Bickerton (he denies the theory of relexification – too many improbabilities); universal principles of first lang. Acquisition are involved – children born into multilingual environment in which most important language is pidgin are compelled to develop the language because each child has bio program to develop a full lang; e.g.E suppresses child’s innate grammar; pidginization is second-language learning, creolization first-lang

attention when speaking about universals in connection with lang- are they really universals?

From pidgin to Creole and beyond

Pidgin is involved in earliest stage of each Creole

Pidginization seems to happen repeatedly

Not every pidgin eventually becomes a Creole – in fact, very few do

Creolization occurs only when pidgin for some reason becomes the variety of language that children must use in situation in which use of „full“ language is effectively denied them

Tok Pisin – pidgin developer so far as both its forms and functions are concerned; Aitchison – changes:

1. Creoles spoken faster than pidgins, not spoken word by word, processes of assimilation and reduction can be seen in work
2. Expansion of vocabulary resources
3. Development of tense system in verbs
4. Greater sentence complexity is apparent – relative clauses

We can call some language Creole only because we know its origin (pidgin is identifiable by both linguistic and social criteria, Creole only by historical criteria)

Linguistic change is far faster for pidgin than for most lang

Hudson: only one exception to claim that creoles are language just like all other lang: there may be a rather special relationship between Creole and variety which is present-day representative of dominant language on which its parent pidgin was based, if the two coexist in the same country, as they often do – gives rise to post-Creole continuum(there is decreoalization – the standard language exerts considerable influence on the Creole – people start to „improve“ their Creole by using standard lang, whole range of varieties, which form a continuum, is created, with standard on the top and original Creole at the bottom; acrolect – educated, basilect – variety least comprehensible to speaker of standard, mesolects – intermediate varieties; example – Guyanese varieties of SE)/diglossic– total society is highly stratified so that there is little or no contact between groups who speak creolized and standard varieties, and/orif these two varieties have separate and distinct functions in livesof people – no continuum; Haiti)

Speakers control a span of the spectrum, not just one discrete level within it

Jamaica continuum – Jamaicans don’t perceive existence of continuum, just two ends

Hudson – two peculiarities in continuum situation:

1. There are more profound differences between varieties which coexist in community than one might expect in a community fragmented by normal processes of dialect formative
2. Only a single chain of varieties connects Basilect and acrolect, allowing speakers only single linguistic dimension on which to locate themselves with reference to rest of society

Creole can reach stable relationship with language of community (Haitian Creole and French), be extinguished by standard language(Dutch West Indies Dutch, Gullah), become a standard language(Afrikaans, Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia, Maltese), or post-Creole continuum can emerge (Jamaica, Guyana)

Black youth of West Indian origin in England often learn particular variety of West Indian English that differs from that of their parents – they deliberately recreolize E in an attempt to assert their ethnic identity and solidarity because of social situation

Chapter 4 – choosing a code

Code – any kind of system that two or more people employ for communication (or single person too - šifry)

Which factors govern choice of particular code on particular occasion?

Mainly in bilingual/multilingual situations, but also with sub-varieties – dialects, styles, registers

Diglossia

Diglossic situation – in society when it has two distinct codes which show clear functional separation (H – prestige variety, L)

Arabic (H Classical Arabic, L various regional colloquial varieties), Switzerland (H Standard German, L Swiss German), Haitian (H French and L Creole), Greek (H Katharevousa, L Dhimotiki=Demotic)

Two varieties coexist for long period, not ephemeral

Key defining characteristic – two varieties are kept quite apart in their functions

English (L) and Norman French (H) in 14th cent. in England; Chaucer used L

Natural superiority of H is reinforced by fact that considerable body of literature will be found to exist in that variety and almost none in the other

All children learn L; H is „taught“, L is „learned“

Usually no grammars, dictionaries and standardized texts for L (if so, then written by outsiders, „foreign“ linguists)

L often shows tendency to borrow learned words from H (when using L in more formal ways)

Widespread phenomenon in world, attested in both space and time

Ferguson: it is likely to come into being when (1 )there is sizable body of literature in language closely related to natural language of community and when (2) literacy in community is limited to small elite, and suitable period of time, of order of several centuries, passes from establishment of 1 and 2

D reinforces social distinctions – used to assert social position and keep people in their place

Luxemburg – special, H Standard German, H French, L Luxemburgish

Arabic – many L varieties, one H

Bilingualism and Multilingualism

Attempts to distinguish people who are bilingual from those who are bidialectal may fail; bilingual-bidialectal distinction that speakers make reflects social, cultural and political aspirations or realities rather than any linguistic reality

Example – Tukano of northwest Amazon, on border between Columbia and Brazil (marriage outsider their language group)

Paraguay – Guaraní (90%), Spanish (10%) – choice depends on variety of factors: location, formality, sex, status, intimacy, seriousness, type of activity

Effects – language loss, sometimes diffusion

Code choice, code-switching, and code-mixing

Codeswitching is conversational strategy used to establish, cross or destroy group boundaries; to create, evoke or change interpersonal relations with their rights and obligations

Singapore – English, Mandarin variety of Chinese, Tamil, Malay

Study of group of Indonesian graduate student – Indonesian, Javanese, Dutch, English

Kenya – Swahili, English

Clearly bilingual petting – difficult task to choose – negotiation in conversation is playing out of negotiation for position in the community at large

Conventionalization – asking the other which language is preferred – doesn’t work very well in practice – social and political relationships are too complicated to be resolved by such a simple linguistic choice

Choosing – what causes speaker to switch from X to Y? – solidarity with listeners, choice of topic, perceived social and cultural distance, motivation; conscious

Situational code-switching – langs used change according to situations in which the conversants find themselves, quite subconscious (not typical for diglossia, but there is at most); metaphorical code-switching – change of topic requires change in language(usually informal we-type and formal they-type); code-mixing – conversants use both langs together to the extent that they change from one language to the other in course of single utterance

Code-switching – aids meaning to speech through evocation of different emotional tones, values and contexts which are associated with the language systems in their repertoires

Conversational code-mixing – deliberate mixing of two language without associated topic change (e.g. Spanish and English in Puerto Rican community in NY); often unfairly derogatory termed (Franglais, Fragnol, and Spanglish, Tex-Mex

Metaphorical code-switching is deeply ingrained

Examples – Hemnesberget (Norwegia), Gail Valley (Austria, Nera borders of Yugoslavia and Italy)

Code-switching and code-mixing themselves are not uniform phenomena, norms vary from group to group, even within what might be regarded as single community

Fundamental difficulty in understanding the phenomenon of code-switching is accounting for particular choice or switch on particular occasion

Your choice of code also reflects how you want to appeal to others

Language and dialects tap social stereotypes

Matched-guise technique (listeners are affected by code choices when they judge what speakers say to them; someone bilingual listens to discourse in e.g.French/English and judge, who is more… reliable, likely…)

Code-switching may be a very useful social skill 

Chapter 5 –Speech Communities

Speech community – (from Sprachgemeinschaft), social group whose speech character.are of interest and can be described in coherent manner, or: they employ the samecode

Definitions

Lyons: all the people who use a given language(or dialect) - problem when defining lang, and e.g.E is spoken throughout the world without creating SC

Sure is that speakers use linguistic characteristics to achieve group identity with other speakers

Speech markers – social categories of age, sex, ethnicity, social class and situation can be clearly marked on the basis of speech

Labov: speech community is defined by participation in a set of shared norms (they feel they are members of the same SC)

SC doesn’t have to be monolingual, but also bi- or multilingual: SC -> linguistic community