1. Today  Sociolinguistics, Day 3  Correction  Finish Inter-group Variation: some patterns of variation associated with social class  Intra-Speaker Variation: shifting style

2. coke popsoft drink soda tonic cocola

3. Lexical differences  Words for ‘sweetened carbonated beverage’ ‘Coke’ – CA, New Eng. ‘Soda’ – South, East ‘Pop’ – Midland North, West ‘Tonic’ – Boston ‘Cocola’ – Georgia, Tennessee

4. Overt vs. Covert prestige  Overt prestige: Value attached to a particular dialect by the community at large that defines how people should speak to gain status in that community.  Covert prestige: Value attached to a particular dialect or minority group language by a subset of the community (local group, ethnic group).

5. Social class and dialect William Labov  New York City ‘r’-lessness  Studied variation in [r] pronunciation as it relates to socioeconomic class

6. Dept Store study - Method  Interviewed salespeople at Saks 5 th Ave., (upper), Macy’s (middle), S. Klein (lower class) “Excuse me, where are the [women’s shoes]?” “Fourth floor.” (casual speech) “Excuse me?” “Fourth floor.” (careful speech with emphasis)

7. Dept Store study - Results KleinMacy’sSaks Casual8%44%63% Careful18%61%64% Percentage of [r]’s produced Lower Middle Upper Interspeaker Variation Intraspeaker Variation

8. Dept Store study - Conclusions  Pronunciation of [r] increased… …w/ level of socio-economic class …w/ attention level paid to speech (careful or casual) …w/ listener (perceived middle-class)  Variation most prominent among lower class speakers Why? Overt prestige

9. Phonological markers of style  Casual, informal style marked by increased speech rate unstressed vowels deleted, replaced with schwa, e.g., casual [ptHeIR´] vs. careful [pH´tHeIRoU] deletion of word final consonants, unstressed syllables (jus’, don’) use of contractions (wanna, gonna, coulda) ‘potato’

10. Phonological markers of style  pronunciation of (-ing) vs. (-in’) in 3 different speech situations casual style vs. interview vs. reading [®idIn] [®idIN] pronounciation of [-ing] increased as formality/ attention paid to speech increased

11. Lexical markers of style  Slang: words and expressions used in very informal settings (common slang), often to indicate membership in a particular social group (in-group slang) usually has short lifespan  swell, neat-o, groovy  daddy-o  It stinks! can become standardized  phone, fridge, fan, blimp, hot dog

12. Syntactic markers of style  Casual speech characterized by increased use of non-standard constructions (e.g., double negatives, double modals) shorter, more concise sentences

13.  …but Social Class Ethnicity Formality of setting Topic Age Can cause speakers to shift in other ways, too…

14. Code-switching as style-shifting  Code-switching: alternation between two or more languages (or dialects) in a single sentence or conversation.  Occurs for the same reasons monolinguals shift styles: change in formality of the situation, listener, topic

15. Examples  English~Spanish “Sometimes I begin my sentences in English, y termino en español.”  Swahili (Kenya)~English: employee  employee (same ethnicity): Swahili employee  employee (differing ethnicity): mixed Swahili~English employee  supervisor: mixed Swahili~English

16. Examples  Fanakalo (South Africa)~English Foreman: Hau, Wena… Foreman: Ini ndaba you late lafa lo job, hey? Employee: My abject apologies, Sir, I encountered extreme difficulty In obtaining transport.

17. Hypercorrection  The act of producing nonstandard forms by way of false analogy, often to imitate the standard dialect Phonological: r-insertion ‘Cuba(r)’, ‘idea(r)’ Grammatical: ‘Lets keep this between you and I.’ ‘I don’t know whom he is.’

18. Martha’s Vineyard study William Labov  Martha’s Vineyard, MA diphthong centralization: [´I], [[´U] in why, wow (compare w/ standard: [ a I], [aU])

19. Martha’s Vineyard study - Results  Native islanders centralized, tourists didn’t regional effect  Students planning to go to college and return to island centralized more than students not planning to return  Portuguese immigrant community showed high degree of centralization

20. Martha’s Vineyard study - Conclusions  How closely speakers identified w/ island was positively correlated w/ degree of centralization  seeking covert prestige  Dialect is an important factor in group identity

21. Summary  Standard vs. non-standard dialects  Overt vs. covert prestige  Dept. store study – influence of standard dialect, overt prestige  Martha’s Vineyard study – influence of non-standard dialect, covert prestige