Carmen Lara Natalia Santibañez Sociolinguistics Llamas, C. and Stockwell, P Carmen Lara Natalia Santibañez

WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS?

Diachonic and synchonic Diachonic : Dimension corresponding to the ways in which language changes over time. Synchonic: Dimension which is often contemporary, and is like taking a picture to an specific moment in time.

Key concepts IDIOLECT AND SOCIOLECT STANDARD, NON-STANDARD AND CODIFICATION PRESTIGE DIALRECT, ACCENT ANDLANGUAGE PLANNING SPEECH COMMUNITIES

Descriptive tools of language variation: Language element - Linguistic sub-discipline Discourse - Discourse analysis Text - Text linguistics Utterance - Pragmatics Sentence Meaning - Semantics Clause & Phrase Structure - Syntax Word/lexeme - Lexicology Morpheme - Morphology Sound/phoneme - Phonology Letter/grapheme - Graphology

THE LINGUISTIC VARIABLE: PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION: Easier to record and to obtain data and also more naturalistic and reliable. GRAMMATICAL VARIATION:Speech communities are marked by the frequent use of certain realizations of linguistic variables LEXICAL VARIATION:Dialectical variation depends on the different lexical items used from region to region. DISCOURSAL VARIATION: Strategies of conversational structure, aspects of politeness and social solidarity, etc. LINGUISTIC VARIATION: When the entire Language is treated as a variable.

Social Factors that Correlate with Language Variation: Geographical and Social Mobility (Dialect Chain) Gender and Power (Genderlect) Age Audience Identity Social Network Relations

Working with Sociolinguistic Data: Collecting and analysing sociolinguistic data: Experimental elicitation techniques include: interviews, questionnaires, TOL/TAP, etc. Interpreting Sociolinguistic Data: Why does language variation exist? What function does the variation serve? How do languages change? What processes are involved? Does the data we collect from one speech community have wider implications? Models and Frameworks: Language is variable at all times. Variation implies the potential for change, which means causes and effects of language change, central concerns to the sociolinguistics. “Dialect levelling model”. “Gravity model” of “diffusion”. “Dialect contact”.

The Teesside study: Design of the fieldwork simple: Middlesbrough: The major urban centre of conurbation around the River Tees. Middlesbrough English (MbE). Two social variables: age and gender. A simple of 32 speakers: homogenous group and working-class. Design of the fieldwork simple: Old middle-aged Young adult adolescent (60-80) (32-45) (19-22) (16-17) Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female

The labio-dental approximant [ʋ] is new variant. (young speakers) Five levels of Rank scale: phonology, morphologu, syntax, lexicology and discoursal variation. Sense Relation Network sheet: tired, throw away or tell to be quiet. Intervocalic / r /: The alveolar tap [ɾ]: the “localized variant”. (Northern England and Scotland). The alveolar approximant [ɹ]: the non- localized or standrad variant. The labio-dental approximant [ʋ]: the spreading variant, from the south of England. This variation is both gender- correlated and age-correlated. The age variation: The alveolar tap [ɾ] is in steady and dramatic decline. (Old speakers). The labio-dental approximant [ʋ] is new variant. (young speakers) A change appears to involve the processes of both levelling and diffusion. The gender variation: Females lead in the levelling out of variants, with males following (lower female use of [ɾ] ) Males lead in the diffusion of new variants into the vernacular, with females following (higher use of [ʋ] among young males).

Distribution of variants of /p/ in Middlesbrough English The woman show preference for the standard variant [p], whereas the men favour the localized [?p]. Young women are acting quite differently from the old and middle-aged women. The young women demonstrate a much higher use of the localized north-eastern[?p]. Distribution of variants of /p/ in Middlesbrough English 4. Increase in usage that [?p] is the preferred variant of the adolescent women compared with a 4,6 per cent use among the old female speakers

Results Speakers realize their sociolinguistic identity and are able to Project the linguistic identity they choose to the outside world. The increasing variants, [ʋ] and [?p], are different – one is new to MbE and the other is local to MbE – one thing they have in common is that they are both non-standard forms.

Questions for debate. Do languages tend to lose the distinction between formal and informal language? How sociolinguistics deals with language teaching?.