Language Variation Dr. Katie Welch LING

Listening Exercise When listening to these sound files, are you able to identify the gender, age, ethnicity, or regional- affiliation of the speakers? Do you have any emotional reaction when you hear the different varieties? Fear? Contempt? Respect?

Sociolinguistics The study of the interrelationships of language varieties and social structure Language variety is a term used to refer to many different type of language variation—any form of language characterized by systematic features Language variety looks at accent, dialects, idiolect, slang, jargon, etc.

Dialect How do we know if two languages are dialects of the same language or two distinct languages? Mutual Intelligibility is one criterion, but not the only one. A group of people speaking the same dialect is known as a speech community.

Prestige No one dialect or language is better, more correct, more systematic, or more logical than any other. Yet, we do make a distinction between standard and nonstandard dialects Generally, the standard dialect is perceived as more prestigious because it is used by the powerful, wealthy, and educated. Nonstandard dialects are usually associated with the language of the lower socioeconomic class. The standard English dialect is SAE.

Prestige, cont. There are two types of prestige: covert and overt Overt prestige is when speakers perceive the “standard” language as being prestigious Cover prestige is when speakers in a speech community perceive the “non-standard” language as being prestigious Typically an expression of solidarity More often seen in a tight-knit community

Think about your native language Do you have a standard and non- standard dialect? Who speaks the standard? Who speaks the nonstandard? What are some of the linguistic features of each?

Variation at Different Levels of Linguistic Structure Phonetic Phonological Morphological Syntactic Lexical (exercises on page )

Social Factors Socioeconomic (Labov’s study) Age- youth tend to be “trendsetters” when it comes to language Gender- women tend to use the standard variant; men tend to use nonstandard Ethnic

Examples of Ethnic Variants African American English; Chicano English; Lumbee English all ethnic variants found in the US Just because a person belongs to an ethnic group does not mean that they will inevitably embrace the variant Likewise, a person who does not belong to the ethnic group may embrace the variant Boils down to what type of exposure the person has had; not what type of genetics they possess

African American English Even though AAE is nonstandard, it is just as systematic as SAE. Includes features such as the absence of third person singular suffixes (He need; She want), multiple negation ( I didn't go nowhere), copula absence (John going to the store)