Language and Social Culture Lecture 7

Language Varieties  Variety is a generic term for a particular coherent form of language in which specific extralinguistic criteria can be used to define it as a variety. For example, a geographically defined variety is known as a dialect, a variety with a social basis as a sociolect, a functional variety as jargon or a sublanguage, a situative variety as a register. David (1992: 76) defines variety as a system of linguistic expression whose use is governed by situational variables, such as regional, occupational or social class.

Language Varieties  A language is typically composed of a number of dialects. Dialect refers to any regional, social or ethnic variety of a language. All languages spoken by more than one small homogeneous community are found to consist of two or more dialects. The language differences associated with dialect may occur on any level of language, thus including pronunciation, grammatical, semantic, and language use differences.

Language Varieties  A regional dialect refers to the language variety used in a geographical region. When people are separated from each other geographically, dialectal diversity develops. When enough differences give the language spoken in a particular region, for example, the city of Chicago or New York its own "flavor," that version of the language is called a regional dialect. A regional dialect differs from language in that the former is considered a distinct entity, yet not distinct enough from other dialects of the language to be regarded as a different language.

Language Varieties  The term social dialect is used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes. Whereas regional dialects are geographically based, social dialects originate among social groups and are related to a variety of factors. Social dialect could be further distinguished by gender, age, ethnic group, religion, and class. In India, for example, caste, one of the clearest of all social differentiators, quite often determines which variety of a language a speaker uses.

Register  Register refers the functional variety of language that is defined according to use of language in context. People participating in recurrent communication situations tend to use similar vocabularies and ways of saying. For example, a physician may use technical terms when he is talking with his fellow physicians, but he may use ordinary vocabulary when he is talking to his patients. When talking about salt, a chemist may use "NaCl" in writing, but he may use the word "salt" before a preschool child.

Language and Culture  The language used by a speech community is closely related to the culture of that community. A community's culture consists of what it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves.

Language and Culture  The close relationship between language and culture has long been the focus of linguistic study. Many linguists have come to realize that language and culture are so inextricably related that you cannot understand or appreciate the one without a knowledge of the other. Language and culture is in a dialectical relationship. Every language is part of a culture, and it serves and reflects cultural needs.

Language and Culture  The relationship between language and culture was distinctive in the work of Sapir. Even though he believes that language and culture are not intrinsically associated, he believed that language and our thought-grooves are too much involved as to be impossible to untie each other, and are, in a sense, one and the same. The association of a specific culture with a specific language was not given by nature but was a historical coincidence. They believed that that each particular language serves a particular community and is instrumental in aiding the youngest members learn to operate within the society's culture, some relationship between the language and the culture may be expected to develop.

Language and Culture  Although it is true that human culture in its great complexity could not have developed and is unthinkable without the aid of language, no correlation has yet been established between cultures of a certain type and a certain type of language. In fact, there were and still are areas in the world where societies share a very similar cultural orientation and yet speak languages that are not only mutually unintelligible but completely unrelated and structurally different.

Language and Culture  For example, the North American Indians of the Great Plains possessed many of the same or very similar cultural characteristics but their languages belonged to at least six different language families. The opposite may also hold true: Estonians and Lapps speak related languages (both belong to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric subfamily of the Uralic family of languages), but their cultures are quite different.

Language Change  Language is in state of constant change.  The development of English is usually divided into three major periods. Old English period is considered to have lasted from 449 to Middle English period is from 1100 to 1500, and the Modern English from 1500 to the present. The characterization of the changes that a language can go through may involve distinguishing sorts of change.

Language Change  There is a constant change in the vocabulary of the language. New words may be added. Some words may become obsolete. And a new dimension in meaning may be attached to an existing word.

Language Change  Words may become archaic or extinct. When a new word comes into use, its unusual presence draws attention; but a word may be lost through inattention-nobody thinks of it; nobody uses it; and it fades out of the language. If we read Shakespeare, we may find many of the words are no longer used nowadays, such as beseem, mammet, wot, gyve, fain, and wherefore.

Language Planning  Language planning may be classified into the branch of applied sociolinguistics, for it is the most common form of it. The term language planning refers to a deliberate attempt, usually at the level of the state or government administration, to affect language use in order to prevent or to solve some problems of communication. The desire for language planning and the formulation of language policies has been rapidly increasing.

 The standard language can be said to be a superposed, socially prestigious dialect of language. It is the language used by the government and the judiciary system, by the mass media, and in educational institutions. Because it functions as the public means of communication, it is subject to extensive normalization especially in grammar, pronunciation, and spelling. The process of normalization is controlled and passed on via the public media and institutions, but above all through the school systems. Command of the standard language is the goal of formal language instruction.

National Language and Official Language  A national language is considered as a national identity. An official language is the language that is used in official situations in a nation or an institution.

 Today in Kenya, both Swahili and English serve as official languages, but Swahili is the national language. To promote and institutionalize Swahili as the national language of Kenya has called for a variety of government policies ranging from the preparation of instructional materials to ensure that the Swahili used in official dealings is "good" Kenyan Swahili.

 End of Lecture