Sociolinguistics
Chapter 6
Regional and social dialects
Activity 6.1
What is a language?
Cecilia Li
Look at the use of the word ‘language’ in the four sentences below. Try to work out
the sense of the word in each sentence.
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.
Activity 6.2
What is a dialect?
Crystal (1980)
A regionally or socially distinctive variety of a language, identified by a particular set
of words and grammatical structures. Spoken dialects are usually also associated with
a distinctive pronunciation, or accent. Any language with a reasonably large number
of speakers will develop dialects, especially if there are geographical barriers
separating groups of people from each other, or if there are divisions of social class.
One dialect may predominate as the official or standard form of the language, and this
is the variety which may come to be written down.
Romaine (1994)
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. These dialects may be of different kinds. A regional dialect is a variety
associated with a place, such as the Yorkshire dialect in England or the Bavarian
dialect in Germany … Boundaries are, however, often of a social nature, e.g., between
different social class groups. In this case we may speak of ‘social dialects’ … Social
dialects say who we are, and regional dialects where we come from.
Weinreich (at a lecture series given between 1943 and 1944)
‘A language is a dialect with an army and navy.’
Do languages develop from dialects or do dialects develop from languages? Answer
this question from the perspective of Crystal, then Weinreich.
Sociolinguistics
Cecilia Li
Social dialects
The work of William Labov is usually regarded as setting the pattern for quantitative
studies of linguistics variations.
Background
There are two possible variants of the post-vocalic [r]. Either it is present and
pronounced [r], or it is absent. Pronouncing the [r] is part of the standard prestige
dialect in New York City.
The experiment
Labov hypothesised that the higher the social class a person belongs, the more
post-vocalic [r] that person is going to pronounce. He set out to test his hypothesis by
walking around three New York City department stores (Saks, Macy’s and S.Klein),
which are rather clearly demarcated by the social class groups to which they cater
(high, middle, and low, respectively), and asking the location of departments he knew
to be situated on the fourth floor. When the shop assistant answered, Labov would
seek a careful repetition of ‘fourth floor’ by pretending not to hear the initial response.
Results
The posher the store, the more people used post-vocalic [r].
Percentage of r-use in three New York City department stores
Store
Percentage of r-use
Saks Fifth Avenue
62%
Macy’s
51%
S. Klein
21%
Source: Labov (1972b, 51)
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