Sociolinguistics
Chapter 6
Regional and Social Dialects
Regional variation
 International varieties

Pronunciation
Example 2

Vocabulary
Australia – sole parent
Britain – single parent
New Zealand – solo parent

Grammar
Example 3
Regional variation
 Intranational or intra-continental variation
 Britain
Example 4
 United States
Northern, Midland, Southern
 Australia and New Zealand
Less variation in English than in Maori
Regional variation
 Isoglosses
The boundary lines that mark regional
variation
 Dialect chains
Example 5
Language vs. Dialect
What is a language?
What is a dialect?
Activity 6.1
Look at the use of the word ‘language’ in the
four sentences. Try to work out the sense of
the word in each sentence.
What is a language?
1 Chinese is his native language.
2 When the teacher spoke to the class, the
language she used was very informal.
3 If you want to know the rules of the language,
you should get a good grammar book.
4 In England the language they speak is called
English; in China the language they speak is
called Chinese.
What is a language?
1. The word ‘language’ is used in different
ways by different people, e.g., writers,
journalists, educationalists, teachers and
linguists.
2. The meaning of the term ‘language’ is often
very vague.
3. The meanings of ‘language’ often overlap.
Dialect
A regionally or socially distinctive variety of a
language, identified by a particular set of
words and grammatical structures. […] Any
language with a reasonably large number of
speakers will develop dialects. (Crystal, 1980)
More on dialect
“The term ‘dialect’ has generally been used to
refer to a subordinate variety of a language.
For example, we are accustomed to saying
that the English language has many dialects.”
(Romaine, 1994)
West Germanic Dialect Continuum
German
Dutch
Dutch dialects
Netherlands
German dialects
Germany
What makes a language?
 Linguistic factors?



Pronunciation
Vocabulary
Grammatical system
 Mutual intelligibility?
What makes a language?
 ‘A language is a dialect with an army and
navy.’ (Weinreich)
 Language has a political dimension
 Language is political, not a linguistic
categorisation
What makes a language?
The Dutch dialects are heteronomous with
respect to standard Dutch, and the German
dialects to standard German. (Chambers and
Trudgill, 1980: 10-11)
Influence of political factors on languages
Yugoslavia
Under communism,
Serbian and Croatian  Serbo-Croatian
After civil war,
Serbo-Croatian  Serbian and Croatian
Languages in Hong Kong
Putonghua
Chinese
Cantonese
Official
Languages
English
English
Languages in Hong Kong
Modern
Standard
Chinese
Cantonese
Written
Modern
Standard
Chinese
Written
Cantonese
Putonghua
Spoken
Cantonese
Activity 6.2
Do languages develop from dialects or do
dialects develop from languages? Answer
this question from the perspective of Crystal,
then Weinreich.
Variety/Code
Sociolinguists use the term variety (or
sometimes code) to refer to any set of
linguistic forms which patterns according to
social factors.
Social dialects
Social dialects are varieties which reflect
people’s social backgrounds: social prestige,
wealth, education, occupation, income level,
residential area.
Received Pronunciation (RP)
A prestigious social accent used by less than
5% of the population in Britain
Figure 6.2
Figure 6.3
Social dialects
 Vocabulary
U vs. Non-U in 1950s England
 Pronunciation
[h]-dropping
Example 12
Figure 6.4
[in]
Table 6.2
 Grammatical patterns
Department Store Study
 Sociolinguistic study by William Labov in
1960’s
 The phrase fourth floor was elicited from
sales people at three department stores
Rise and fall of r
 New York City was r-pronouncing in 18th century
 r-less in 19th century until World War II
 r-pronouncing again after World War II
 The prestigious New York dialect (and Standard
American English) is now rhotic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W68VaOuY6ew
The Battleground
High prestige: Sak’s Fifth Avenue
Middle prestige: Macy’s
Low prestige: S. Klein
Percentage of r-use
70
60
50
40
% of r-use
30
20
10
0
Saks
Macy's
S.Klein
R-results
 Social variation
Sak’s > Macy’s > S. Klein
floorwalkers > salesclerks > stockboys
 Gender
women > men
 Age
younger > older
 Level of formality
more “r”s in careful pronunciation
Arbitrariness
 There is nothing inherently bad or good about
the pronunciation of any sound.
 The different status of [r]-pronunciation in
different cities illustrates this point.
Figure 6.5
Social dialects
 Grammatical patterns
Vernacular present tense verb forms
Figure 6.6
Figure 6.7
References
Chambers, J.K. and P. Trudgill. (1980).
Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Crystal, D. (1980). A first dictionary of linguistics
and phonetics. London: André Deutsch.
Labov, W. (1972b), Sociolinguistic patterns,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Romaine, S. (1994). Language in society: An
introduction to sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.