Varieties of English
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
• Study of accent and dialect is part of
sociolinguistics
• Mostly so far we have looked purely
descriptively at accents/dialects
• Clearly just below the surface is the fact
that varieties of language are connected in
some way to sociological issues
• We will look at these issues for the next
few sessions
2/16
Language and dialect
• We prefer to think
– Languages have various dialects.
– There are actually a range of varieties that people consider to be
standard.
– What is considered standard is associated with prestige, a nonlinguistic factor.
– From a linguistic standpoint, what is considered standard has
NOTHING to do with correctness or superiority.
– From a linguistic standpoint, ALL DIALECTS are equally correct,
equally expressive, equally complex, equally logical and so forth.
That is, the term non-standard dialect means just that, not the
standard dialect. It DOES NOT MEAN inferior or sub-standard.
– Non-standard dialects are not simply offshoots from the
standard. In fact, often the opposite is true
3/16
Language and dialect
• Some common misconceptions
– A language is composed of a "standard" dialect from
which all of the other non-standard dialects emerge.
– The standard dialect is the "correct" way to speak the
language.
– The other dialects represent erroneous or inferior
ways of speaking the language.
– The standard language is more complex, more
logical, more expressive than the non-standard
dialects.
– Non-standard dialects are a product of "lazy" speech.
4/16
Factors in classifying dialects
• Geography
– Dialectology
– Effects still surprisingly strong despite global
communications and mobility
• Ethnicity
– Often closely tied to geography
– Various features associated with certain ethnic groups
cut across geographical boundaries
– Self identity often an important effect here
• Social class
– Socio-economic factors
– Class consciousness, identity and aspirations
5/16
History of Sociolinguistics
• Usually said to start with Labov (1966), but actually
dates back to 1900s
• Saussure’s langue~parole distinction reflects difference
between abstract and “language in use”
• Dialect geographers of the 1930s commented on social
aspects of dialect differences
• At the same time, anthropological linguists couldn’t help
but note socially conditioned aspects of “exotic”
languages
• Also, researches interested in bilingualism (1930s) noted
a sociological aspect
6/16
History of Sociolinguistics
• 1960s/1970s saw much work in
– Language and social context (Hymes,
Fishman)
– Language and class (Labov, Bernstein)
– Language and gender (Lakoff)
– Issue of dialect vs language (status)
– Pidgins and creoles
– Bilingualism, code shifting
7/16
History of Sociolinguistics
• Focus in late 1970s/1980s reflects contemporary social
issues
– Studies of Black English (Ebonics, and other names)
• emphasize linguistic integrity of nonstandard forms
• link between language and identity
• similarities across regions, plus certain features suggest it may be a
creole rather than a (number of) dialect(s)
– Language and gender
• How language reveals, embodies and sustains attitudes to gender.
• How language users speak or write in (different and distinctive)
ways that reflect their sex
• Latterly, including gay and lesbian issues
– Language and politics
• All of the above, plus: How language reveals, embodies and
sustains attitudes to political positions (eg marxist, colonialist, …)
8/16
Fundamental concepts
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Speech community
Prestige
Internal vs external language
Class
Age
Gender
9/16
Speech community
• Group of people who share some identifiable aspect of
their linguistic communication
• More importantly: there should be some self
identification as a community …
• and there may be some degree of deliberate exclusion of
outsiders
• Speech communities can be defined by geography,
ethnicity, socio-economic class, but also occupation,
gender, religion, etc.
• It follows that individuals can identify with multiple
speech communities …
• … and can adjust their language according to the
circumstances, so as to identify in the most appropriate
way
10/16
Prestige
• Dialects are often classified according to the
prestige associated with them
• Within vs outside the speech community
– Conforming to the speech habits of one’s peer group
may accord prestige and acceptance
– Some speech habits are viewed as prestigious by
outsiders, who then aspire to those speech habits
• Prestige may be measured on a scale rather
than fixed points (more~less rather than
high~low)
11/16
Internal vs external language
• Chomskyan distinction
– I-language: abstraction of language as mentally
represented knowledge in a native speaker
– E-language: language in social contexts
– Related to competence~performance distinction
– Assumption that all native speakers are quite
homogeneous in how they process and perceive
language; E-language explains why this is
assumption appears to be contradicted by actual use
• Many sociolinguists reject this as a false
distinction
12/16
Class
• Socio-economic class now more prevalent than
geography in dialect studies (since 1960s)
• Undisputable (but still controversial) link
between lower classes and less standard
language – think about why this is, though!
• Labov (1966) first showed that social aspirations
influence speech patterns
• Highly controversial theory (Bernstein 1971) that
elaborated vs restricted codes reflect
fundamentally different mental organization of
language
• We’ll look at these studies in more detail
13/16
Age
• Language change often traceable by studying
differences in language use according to age of
speaker
• Speech communities (cf above), as defined by
age, are a factor (issues of identity, exclusion)
• Slang comes and goes …
• But more significantly, changes are often more
prevalent in speech of younger people
– Phonetic changes: Vowel shifts, intonation patterns
– Changes in meanings of words
– Grammatical changes
14/16
Gender
• It has long been acknowledged that there may be
differences in language usage between men and
women: quite extreme in languages other than
English
• Lakoff (1975) identified extensive differences not
just in grammar and lexis, but in aspects of style,
register, and (especially in dialogues) dynamic roles
• Studies have adapted to the broader social agenda:
early theories relating to power relationships
between sexes (Lakoff) now giving way to view that
there is a cultural difference (Tannen)
• We’ll look at this issue in more detail later
15/16
Coming up in the next few sessions
• We’ll look in more detail at the work of
– Labov
– Bernstein
• Language change
• Language and gender
• etc
16/16