CHAPTER 3
Language & Social
Variation
• “Burridge (2004) quotation / ‘using the proper
language of the time’ / the ‘slang’ of the time.
– Not everyone in a single geographical area speaks
in the same way in every situation.
– Also education and economic status affect speech
in different ways.
– The differences can be used as indication of
membership in different social groups and speech
communities.
• Speech community:
– A group of people who share a set of norms and
expectations regarding the use of language.
Sociolinguistics
• Sociolinguistics:
– The study of the relationship between language
and society.
– Developed through the interaction of linguistics
with a number of academic fields.
– It has connections with anthropology, sociology,
and social psychology.
• Social dialects:
– Mainly concerned with speakers in towns and
cities.
– Social class mainly used to define groups of
speakers that have sth in common.
– Two groups:
• “middle class”
• “working class”
• “upper” & “lower” used to subdivide based on
economic basis.
• Certain features of language are used in the
analysis of social dialects:
– Pronunciation
– Words
– Structure
– E.g. “home”
• [heim] [aint] lower-working-class speakers
• [hom] middle-class speakers
• Social variable: ‘class’
• Linguistic variable: ‘pronunciation’ & ‘words’
• In studies of social dialect we count how often
speakers in each class use each version of the
linguistic variable.
Education & Occupation
• Idiolect:
– A personal dialect.
– We generally tend to sound like others with whom
we share similar educational backgrounds and/or
occupation.
Education
• 1/ Education:
– people who spent less time in education tend to
use certain patterns that are not frequent in the
speech of more educated ppl.
– Derived from a lot of time spent with the written
language./ “talks like a book”
– E.g.
• “them boys throwed somethin’”
• “it wasn’t us what done it”
Occupation
• 2/ Occupation & Socio-economic status:
– Sociolinguist William Labov study
•
•
•
•
New York department stores (3)
“Where are the women’s shoes?”- “on the fourth floor”
Focused on the linguistic variable: the /r/ sound
Results: there was a regular pattern: the higher the
socio-economic status the more /r/ sounds were
produced, and vice versa.
• British study reverse results
Social Markers
• Social marker:
– When a certain linguistic feature (variable) occurs
frequently in your speech it marks you as a member of
a particular social group.
• Clip
• E.g.
–
–
–
–
/r/
/ing/ ‘sittin’
/h/ dropping- ‘_ad’
Charles Dickens's example (see book)
Speech Style & Style Shifting
• Speech style:
– As a social feature of language use./ Labov.
– Most basic distinction:
• Formal / “careful” style / more attention to ‘how’ we speak
• Informal / “casual” style / less attention
• Style shifting:
– A change from one style to another.
– E.g.
• 1/ Labov “Excuse me”/ to elicit a more “careful” style by repetition
• The frequency of /r/ increased in all groups with paying more
attention to speech - but more in the middle-class speakers
(macys)
• 2/ asking someone to read a text out loud/ more careful pron
Prestige
• Overt prestige:
– When ppl change their speech in the direction of the
form that is more frequent in the speech of ppl having
a higher social status.
• Covert prestige:
– Some groups do not show style-shifting as other
groups
– E.g. ‘lower-working-class’ speakers
– They value the features that mark them as members
of their social group./ avoid changing/ value group
solidarity.
– Esp. younger speakers “I aint doin nottin”
Speech Accommodation
• Speech accommodation:
– Variation in speech style is not only influenced by social
class and attention to speech but also by the speech style
of the listener.
– Our ability to modify our speech style toward or away from
the perceived style of the person we’re talking to.
• Convergence:
– Adopting a speech style to reduce social distance.
– E.g. teenage boy talking to friend’s mother
• Divergence:
– When a speech style is used to emphasize social distance.
– E.g. Scottish teenager talking to his teacher.
Register & Jargon
• Register:
– A conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific
context.
– E.g.
• Situational/ Religious register “Ye shall be blessed”
• Occupational/ Legal register “take the witness stand”
• Topical/ Linguistic register “morphology is the linguistic study of…”
• Jargon:
– special technical vocabulary associated with a specific area of work or
interest/ used by those inside established social groups/ often defined
by professional status.
– ‘insiders’ vs. ‘outsiders’
– Clip
– E.g.
• In medical register “arthritis”
• Other e.g. (technical, religious, academic, culinary…)
Slang
• Slang:
– Words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms
among younger speakers and other groups with special interest. (not
related to profession or occupation)/ “colloquial” speech
– Typically used among those outside higher status groups.
– E.g.
• Bucks (dollars or money)
• Mega- ‘a lot of’ (megabucks)
• Benjamins ($ 100)
– Slang is an aspect of social life that is subject to fashion.
• Esp. adolescents/ to distinguish themselves from others/ share same ideas &
attitudes/ a marker of group identity during a limited stage of life
• Slang expressions ‘grow old’ rather quickly/ (groove, hip, super) Old, became
(awesome, rad, wicked) New
– Thus, the age factor is another important factor involved in social
variation of language use.
• Taboo terms:
– Words and phrases that people avoid for reasons
related to religion, politeness, and prohibited
behavior.
– Often called ‘Swear’ words / ‘bleeped’ in
broadcasting, or ‘starred’ in written context.
– More commonly found among ‘lower-status’
group.
– Differences in male & female usage
African American English
• African American English (AAE) :
– Social variety according to historical origin of the speaker.
– Black English/ Ebonics
– A major variety used by many African Americans in USA./ carries
many characteristic features that form together a distinct set of
social markers.
– Social barriers: Discrimination/ segregation, create differences
between social dialects (just like geographical barriers)
– In AAE, the differences have been called ‘bad’ language by the
dominate groups who described them as being ‘abnormal’
– The social dialect of AAE speakers has ‘covert prestige’
especially among younger speakers/ e.g. ‘music’/ rap…etc.
Vernacular Language
• African American Vernacular English (AAVE):
– The form of AAE that has been most studied.
• Vernacular:
– A term known from the ‘middle ages’ to describe any nonstandard spoken version of a language used by lower
status groups.
– Is a general expression for a kind of social dialect typically
spoken by a lower-status group / treated as “nonstandard”.
– E.g. “Chicano English” and “Asian American English”
– AAVE shares a number of features with other non-standard
varieties./ e.g. in pronunciation (sounds) & grammar.
• The sounds of a vernacular:
– A wide-spread phonological feature in AAVE (and other
vernaculars) is the tendency to reduce final consonant
clusters.
• ‘left’ & ‘hand’ = ‘lef’ & ‘han’
• “I pass the tess”
– Initial consonants pronounced differently
• ‘Think’ & ‘that’ = ‘tink’ & ‘dat’
– Possessive ‘s not used
• ‘John’s friend’ = ‘john friend’
– Third person singular –s not used
• ‘She loves her sister’ = ‘she love …’
– Plural –s usually not used
• ‘Two Guys’ = ‘two guy’
• The grammar of a vernacular:
– Criticized as ‘illogical’ or ‘sloppy’
1/ Double negative construction/ ‘illogical’:
•
•
•
•
“He don’t know nothin.”
“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”
However they are standard forms in other languages, such as, French.
Thus, it is not ‘illogical’/ It allows greater emphasis on the negative
aspect of the msg
2/ Frequent absence of “verb to be”/ ‘sloppy’:
• “you crazy”
• “she workin now”
• However, this feature exists in other languages, such as, Arabic &
Russian / v to be not required.
• Thus, it is not ‘sloppy’
3/ Using ‘be’ & ‘bin’ instead of ‘is’ & ‘was’ to express habitual
action:
• “She be workin downtown now” (habitual action in the present)
• “ She bin workin there” (habitual action that happened in the past)
• They are consistent features in the grammar of AAVE