Prof. I. AlFallay 1

 Sociolinguistics only exists as a field of study because there are choices in using language.
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 Societal multilingualism refers to the fact that there can be several languages in a society.
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 In diglossia, there are High and Low varieties.
Speakers have to choose.
Prof. I. AlFallay 2

 There are choices that can be made in a society among language varieties.
 Language choice investigates what makes people in a society choose to use one language rather than another in a given instance.
Prof. I. AlFallay 3

 Three kinds of language choice
 1- Whole languages = total shift = code-switching: one clause has the grammatical structure of one language and the next is constructed according to the grammar of another. It happens between/among languages.
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 2- code-mixing = conversational code-switching: pieces of one language are used while a speaker is basically using another language. The language 'pieces' taken from another language are often words, but they can also be phrases or larger units. It happens between/among languages.
 3- variation within the same language = intra-language variation: a speaker must choose which set of variants to
use within a single language in any given situation. It happens between/among dialects and styles.
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 These three kinds of choice cannot be cleanly separated from each other.
 The three kinds of choice are best viewed as points on a continuum from relatively large-scale to relatively small-scale choices. The middle category, code-mixing, is very difficult to distinguish from the other two.
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 Borrowing: words are taken from one language while a speaker is basically using another.
 Three types of vocabulary borrowing
 1- Foreign words become indistinguishable from the native vocabulary due to repeated/frequent use; for example, thug (from Hindi), stucco (from Italian) and
patio (from Spanish).
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 2- Foreign words are used without awareness of their origins, but can be identified as such with a little reflection; for example, bouquet (from French).
 3- Foreign words are consciously imported from other languages; when written, they are often underlined or printed in italics; when spoken, some attempt is usually made to imitate the pronunciation of the original language, and any diacritical marks that would appear in the orthography of the lending language are retained ; for example, raison d'etre (from
French); gemutlichkeit (from German).
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These orthographic and pronunciation conventions might be used as criteria for true examples of switching.
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 Language choice is studied by three different disciplines/approaches
 1- Sociology
 2- Social psychology
 3- Anthropology
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1- Sociology: domain analysis
Methodology: sociologists would search for a social structure, such as domains, conduct a survey of a sample of the target population relating to the proposed social structure, and do a statistical analysis of the results
 Fishman introduced the examination of language choice from the sociologist's point of view.
 Fishman proposed that there were certain domains
(institutional contexts in which one language variety is more likely to be appropriate than another).
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 Domains are taken to be constellations of factors such as location, topic, and participants.
 Example ( family domain): If a speaker is at home talking to another member of her family about an everyday topic, that speaker is said to be in the family domain.
 Domain analysis is related to diglossia, and some domains are more formal than others.
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 In a community with diglossia, the Low language is the one that will be selected in the family domain, whereas the High language will most often be used in a more formal domain, perhaps education.
 Three studies have approached language choice from a sociological point of view.
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 1- Greenfield's research (1972): in New York City: among Puerto Ricans
 Aim: to investigate the choice between Spanish and at least three congruent components: persons, places, and topics, to test whether a combination of these three factors were actually associated in the minds of members of the community.
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 Methodology: Greenfield distributed a questionnaire in which subjects were given two congruent factors and asked to select the third, and also the language that they would use in that combination of circumstances.
 Example: subjects were told to think of a conversation with
a parent (person) on a family matter (topic) and asked to select the place from among 'home', 'beach', 'church',
'school', and 'work-place'. Then, the subjects were asked to indicate which language went with that domain (English –
Spanish). 100 per cent of the subjects selected the expected location and language.
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 Greenfield proposed five domains:
 Two intimate: family & friendship
 Three status: religion, education & employment
 Results:
 1- The validity of the five domains as real in the minds of the subjects.
 2- Spanish is significantly more likely to be chosen in situations when intimacy is salient, and English where a status difference is involved.
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 2- Parasher (1980): in two cities in south India
 Aim: to investigate people's language choice (language: English –
Hindi – regional language – mother tongue – other language) in various domains
 Methodology: Parasher used self-reported questionnaire data and attempted to determine people's language use in seven domains: (1) family, (2) friendship, (3) neighborhood, (4) transactions, (5) education, (6) government, and (7) employment. Parasher's domains, instead of being explicitly composed of persons, places, and topics as Greenfield's are, are simply the total of a set of similar situations.
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 Example: friendship domain: Q: Which language do you usually use in the following five situations?
 1- conversing with friends and acquaintances;
 2- conversing with people at clubs and social gatherings;
 3- introducing friends to others;
 4- discussing personal problems with friends/colleagues;
 5- arguing with friends/colleagues in heated discussions.
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 Results:
 1- Mother tongue dominates in the family domain.
 2- English dominates in all other domains. (English dominated in the friendship and neighborhood domains because (1) most of the educated bilinguals in the sample did not share a mother tongue with their friends (2) any discussion with friends concerning a topic from a more formal domain, such as education, science, or technology, is likely to trigger the selection of English no matter what the setting or how close the speaker is to the people he is talking to.)
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 3- Laosa (1975): Cuban Americans in Miami; Mexican
Americans in Austin, Texas; and, New York City Puerto
Ricans: elementary-school children
 Aim: to examine the language used by elementaryschool children from three Spanish-speaking communities in the United States (Cuban Americans in Miami; Mexican Americans in Austin, Texas; and,
New York City Puerto Ricans)
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 Methodology: Examining language selection between
Spanish and English in three contexts - within the family, in the classroom, and in recreation activities at school
 Results: Laosa found that the use of Spanish was most often reported in the family context, less often in the recreation context, and least often in the classroom, in all three communities. The difference between the family and the two school contexts was greater than the difference between classroom and recreation at school.
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 2- Social psychology:
 Methodology: Social psychologists are more interested in people's psychological processes than in large societal categories and they search for
individual motivations rather than social structures.
Social psychological research on language choice is more person-centered than society-centered.
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 Two studies:
 1- Simon Herman - overlapping situations (1968)
 Herman sees the problem of language choice as a result when a bilingual speaker finds himself in more than one psychological situation simultaneously.
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Herman talks about three kinds of situation:
(1) Personal needs: concerned with the speaker's personal needs. In a given situation, a speaker may feel herself pulled in different directions by her personal desire to speak the language she knows best and the language expected of her by the social group.
(2) Background situation: the group may be the
immediate one, that is, the people who are actually there at the time, or the 'background' group: 'groups in the wider social milieu that are not directly involved in the immediate situation but yet may influence the behavior -
"hidden committees".
A speaker may want to be seen as a member of some social group that is not present, or may want to dissociate himself from that group.
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 (3) Immediate situation: task-orientated.
 Ex. asking a fellow worker to pass a tool. The speaker will use whatever language he normally uses in that situation, without worrying about what group associations that language has, or what language he personally feels most comfortable with (task orientation).
 If two people always use a particular language between themselves, then that language will be selected whenever they talk to each other; the immediate situation takes precedence over background and personal considerations
(established relationships).
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 Since these situations overlap, there ought to be a consideration of the circumstances that cause one of the three situations to gain salience at the expense of the other two. The situation with salience is the most prominent one at a particular time and the one that the speaker will respond to.
 Example: Israeli immigrants use of Hebrew or native language: native language at home (private setting), but Hebrew on a bus (public setting).
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 Circumstances causing an increase in salience for one of three psychological situations
Situation
Personal needs
Circumstances
1 - Setting is private rather than public.
2 - The situation provokes insecurity, high tension, or frustration.
3- The situation touches the central rather than the peripheral layers of the personality.
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Background situation 1 - The activity takes place in a public rather than a private setting.
Immediate situation
2 - The behavior in the situation may be interpreted as providing cues to group identifications.
3 - The person involved in the activity wishes to identify with a particular group or be dissociated from it.
1 - The person is not concerned about group identifications.
2 - The behavior is task oriented.
3 - Well-established patterns of behavior characterize a relationship.
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 There is a potential conflict between choosing a language that is most comfortable for the speaker, that allows her to 'be herself and choosing a language that identifies her with one or another of the society's sociocultural groups.
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2- Howard Giles and his associates (Giles 1973; Giles,
Bourhis and Taylor 1977)
Giles's accommodation theory: refers to accommodation in linguistic behavior which takes the form of convergence or divergence.
Convergence: a speaker will choose a language or language variety that seems to suit the needs of the person being spoken to.
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 Divergence: a person might make no effort at all to adjust his speech for the benefit of the other person and might even deliberately make his speech maximally unlike the other person's.
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 This will happen when the speaker wants to emphasize his loyalty to his own group and dissociate himself from his interlocutors' group.
 Convergence and divergence do not require the selection of one choice (that is, convergence, nonconvergence, and divergence). It is possible to make numerous combinations of choices among the variants within a language, as well as to use strategies such as translating portions of one's discourse or slowing down the rate of speech.
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 Possible degrees of accommodation in terms of a speaker's interaction with an outgroup member
(someone from a different sociocultural group).
Linguistic dimensions Increasing convergence
Increasing divergence native-like pronunciation
Outgroup language with features of ingroup pronunciation
Ingroup language with slow speech rate
Ingroup language with normal speech rate
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Speakers can adjust their linguistic behavior in reaction to the person they are talking to by changing to a different language, using words or larger units from another language , selecting among withinlanguage variants in one direction or another; and using strategies such as short-passage translation, modifying rate of speech, and maximizing or minimizing their accent.
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 When is a speaker likely to use convergent, nonconvergent, or divergent strategies?
 To answer the question, we should know (1) whether the speaker is a member of a dominant or subordinate sociocultural group in the society and (2) whether or not he thinks social change is possible.
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Perception of social change
No possibility of social change perceived
Possibility of social change perceived
(favorably)
Possibility of social change perceived
(unfavorably)
Dominant group
Nonconvergence
Divergence
Subordinate group
Convergence
'Downward' convergence Divergence
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