Language Variation and Change Taken and adapted from Hauptseminar, WS 2007/8, Campus EssenRaymond Hickey, English Linguistics

Sociolinguists describe how language works in society to better understand society, but also to investigate the social aspect of language and its use, structure and evolution. The Sociolinguistics of Society concerns the role of languages in societies: societal multilingualism attitudes toward national languages and dialects language planning, language choice, language shift, language death, language education The Sociolinguistics of Language concerns language function and variation in the social context of the speech community: forms of address speech acts and speech events language and gender, language and power, politeness, language, thought and reality language varieties and change Sociolinguistics

Language Variation and Change Lang. Variation refers to a change when referring or labeling things. Causes and variables for Language variation are: 1. Social motivation: - socio-economic status/power English as spoken by upper working class women in Norwich, by saleswomen in New York department stores 2. Variables - gender - ethnicity - region - Education - Age

Linguistic Variation Variation through time: stages or periods of a language Old English Middle English Variation in space: regional dialects English as spoken in Norwich, Norfolk, New England, New York City Variation through contact - Pidgin language - Creole language

VARIATION AND VARIETY Variation occurs in the speech of a particular person from a particular place in a particular group and situation Variety refers to linguistic characteristics of the variation. Varieties often differ by high versus low probability for specific items (this indicates necessity of counting!)

VARIETIES Varieties may differ in any kind of linguistic item: pronunciation, word choice, word form and syntax Working class men in Norwich tend to pronounce thin and thing the same way in conversation BE speakers say tube, while AE speakers say subway White rural speakers in the Midwest U.S. say She come home yesterday instead of the standard She came home yesterday Black vernacular speakers say I aks her did she know him, while standard speakers say I asked her if she knew him

Basic concepts you should know: Dialect: any variety of language spoken by a group of people that is characterized by systematic differences from other varieties of the same language in terms of structural, phonological or lexical features. Dialect continuum: Situation in which a large number of contiguous dialects exist, each mutually intelligible with the next, but with the dialects at either end of the continuum not being mutually intelligible, i.e. a large area, where the spoken language differs only slightly from village to village, but over a longer distance the differences become that huge, that mutual intelligibility is not possible. Example: Dutch v/s German

Mutual intelligibility: Despite dialectal and idiolectal variations in the language of native speakers of a language, their similarities in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar are enough to permit mutual intelligibility. They do not need to study or make extraordinary effort to understand each other. E.g. A person from New York speaking with a person from Texas. E.g. In china Mandarin vs. Cantonese(they are considered different dialects of the same language). - In China: Madarin and Cantonese, a special case Mutual intelligibility

an idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of vocabulary or idiom selection (the individual's lexicon), grammar, or pronunciations that are unique to the individual. Idiolect

Class and Style 2.1 Class and style  In sociolinguistic studies, class is determined by rating status characteristics like occupation, education, residence, and income on numerical scales  Styles reflect different degrees of formality and awareness of speakers about how they're speaking, what they're saying based on where they are.  Most formal is word list style, next reading style, then careful style as in an interview, and finally casual style  As particular sociolinguistic variable, we can consider class stratification within social classes.

Overt v/s Covert prestige - Overt prestige: Type of prestige attached to a particular variety by the community that defines how people should speak in order to gain status in the wider community (standard dialects) - Covert prestige Type of prestige that exists among members of nonstandard- speaking communities that defines how people should speak in order to be considered members of those particular communities. e.g. the young boy in American Tongues African American speech community

Pidgin vs. Creole language  Pidgin language: Language developed by speakers of distinct language who come into contact with one another and share no common language among them with the purpose of doing business. - originates to overcome communication barriers - typically spring up in trading centers - made of mixtures of elements from all of the languages in contact - most of the vocabulary derived from socially or economically dominant language

Creole language  Creole language: A language that develops from contact between speakers of different languages and serves as the primary means of communication for a particular group of speakers - different from pidgin, Creole language serves as the first language for speakers. For example: Slave plantation in USA, where Africans from linguistically diverse backgrounds could only communicate in a pidgin as a L1.

INTERMISSION

Types of speech communities: Bilingualism A type of linguistic situation in which two languages co-exist in a country or language community without there being a notable distribution according to function or social class. Within Europe Belgium, in those parts where French and Flemish are spoken side by side, provides an example of bilingualism. Do not confuse this with diglossia. A bilingual is an individual who speaks two languages almost equally and does not show a functional distribution of the languages. One must stress 'almost equally' as one language nearly always predominates with any given individual. True bilingualism can be seen as an ideal state which one can approach but never entirely reach.

Types of speech communities: Diglossia A type of linguistic situation in which there is a division between two languages or two varieties of a language such that one variety, the so- called 'high' or H variety, is used in public life — in addresses, in the media, in schools and universities, etc. — and another variety, the so- called 'low' variety or L variety, is used in domestic life — with family and friends. Examples of diglossic situations are to be found in Switzerland (Hochdeutsch and Schwizerdütsch), in various Arabian countries (Classical Arabic and the local dialect of Arabic), Paraguay (Spanish and Guaraní), in Haiti, there is the Haitian creole French and Standard French.

Types of speech communities: Language Maintenance The extent to which immigrant speakers of a certain language retain knowledge of the original language in the host country into the following generations. Here language communities vary. The Irish, for example, gave up their native language immediately in the United States whereas the Estonians have shown a remarkable degree of language maintenance. The reasons for this have to do with the attitude of the respective groups to their original language. For the Irish their native language was associated with a background of poverty and deprivation and so they switched gladly to English in America.

Sociolinguistic of Society or Sociolinguistics of language? SS or SL 1)It is important to notice how language and society interacts, how social attitudes, social ambition and social bonding affect the manner in which people speak. 2)Language Variation and change may affect the internal structure of language as a consequence of external social factors. 3)Insightful is to examine closely how speakers use social networks to strengthen their identification with the social group to which they feel they belong. 4)To evidence wider context in which societies are embedded and how language relates to culture in general (linguistic anthropology. 5) To express the relationship of gender and language use 6) To explain how the phenomena of politeness is evidenced in language samples.

Case studies r-Lessness in New York City: lack of [r] in words as four, card etc. in New York dialect - misconception: there is a total lack of [r] in those words for speakers of the dialect. - Labov: speakers vary their use of [r] according to their social status. high status: the use of [r] low status: the lack of [r] hypothesis: salespeople tend to reflect the prestige of their customers. Salespeople from the highest prestige store would exhibit the highest incidence of [r] in their speech, while those from the lowest prestige store would exhibit the lowest incidence of [r]

Case: New York Department stores Percentage of [r]s in floor Casual Careful Saks Macy ’ s S. Klein 8 18

Pau Princivalli case: - bomb threats were made in repeated telephone calls to the Pan American counter at the Los Angeles airport. - Paul Prinzivalli, a cargo handler who was thought by Pan American to be a "disgruntled employee," was accused of the crime, and he was jailed. - Evidence: Princivalli ’ s voice sounded like the tape recordings of the bomb threat caller - Labov ’ s defense: Pau Princivalli: New York bomb threat caller: the Boston area of Eastern New England - Linguistic fingerprint