1. Regional and Social Dialects
Sociolinguistics
Chapter 6
Regional and Social Dialects

2. Regional variation International varieties Pronunciation Example 2
Vocabulary
Australia – sole parent
Britain – single parent
New Zealand – solo parent
Grammar
Example 3 2

3. Regional variation Intranational or intra-continental variation
Britain
Example 4
United States
Northern, Midland, Southern
Australia and New Zealand
Less variation in English than in Maori 3

4. Regional variation Isoglosses
The boundary lines that mark regional variation
Dialect chains
Example 5 4

5. Language vs. Dialect
What is a language?
What is a dialect?

6. Activity 6.1
Look at the use of the word ‘language’ in the four sentences. Try to work out the sense of the word in each sentence.

7. What is a language? 1 Chinese is his native language.
2 When the teacher spoke to the class, the language she used was very informal.
3 If you want to know the rules of the language, you should get a good grammar book.
4 In England the language they speak is called English; in China the language they speak is called Chinese.

8. What is a language?
1. The word ‘language’ is used in different ways by different people, e.g., writers, journalists, educationalists, teachers and linguists.
2. The meaning of the term ‘language’ is often very vague.
3. The meanings of ‘language’ often overlap.

9. Dialect
A regionally or socially distinctive variety of a language, identified by a particular set of words and grammatical structures. […] Any language with a reasonably large number of speakers will develop dialects. (Crystal, 1980)

10. More on dialect
“The term ‘dialect’ has generally been used to refer to a subordinate variety of a language. For example, we are accustomed to saying that the English language has many dialects.” (Romaine, 1994)

11. West Germanic Dialect Continuum
Dutch
German dialects
Dutch dialects
Netherlands Germany

12. What makes a language? Linguistic factors? Mutual intelligibility?
Pronunciation
Vocabulary
Grammatical system
Mutual intelligibility?

13. What makes a language?
‘A language is a dialect with an army and navy.’ (Weinreich)
Language has a political dimension
Language is political, not a linguistic categorisation

14. What makes a language?
The Dutch dialects are heteronomous with respect to standard Dutch, and the German dialects to standard German. (Chambers and Trudgill, 1980: 10-11)

16. Influence of political factors on languages
Yugoslavia
Under communism,
Serbian and Croatian  Serbo-Croatian
After civil war,
Serbo-Croatian  Serbian and Croatian

17. Languages in Hong Kong Official Languages Chinese Putonghua Cantonese
English

18. Languages in Hong Kong Modern Standard Chinese
Written Modern Standard Chinese
Putonghua
Cantonese
Written Cantonese
Spoken Cantonese

19. Activity 6.2
Do languages develop from dialects or do dialects develop from languages? Answer this question from the perspective of Crystal, then Weinreich.

20. Variety/Code
Sociolinguists use the term variety (or sometimes code) to refer to any set of linguistic forms which patterns according to social factors.

21. Social dialects
Social dialects are varieties which reflect people’s social backgrounds: social prestige, wealth, education, occupation, income level, residential area.

22. Received Pronunciation (RP)
A prestigious social accent used by less than 5% of the population in Britain
Figure 6.2
Figure 6.3

23. Social dialects Vocabulary U vs. Non-U in 1950s England Pronunciation
[h]-dropping
Example 12
Figure 6.4
[in]
Table 6.2
Grammatical patterns

24. Department Store Study
Sociolinguistic study by William Labov in 1960’s
The phrase fourth floor was elicited from sales people at three department stores

25. Rise and fall of r New York City was r-pronouncing in 18th century
r-less in 19th century until World War II
r-pronouncing again after World War II
The prestigious New York dialect (and Standard American English) is now rhotic

26. The Battleground High prestige: Sak’s Fifth Avenue
Middle prestige: Macy’s
Low prestige: S. Klein

27. Percentage of r-use

28. R-results Social variation Sak’s > Macy’s > S. Klein
floorwalkers > salesclerks > stockboys
Gender
women > men
Age
younger > older
Level of formality
more “r”s in careful pronunciation

29. Arbitrariness
There is nothing inherently bad or good about the pronunciation of any sound.
The different status of [r]-pronunciation in different cities illustrates this point.
Figure 6.5

30. Social dialects Grammatical patterns
Vernacular present tense verb forms
Figure 6.6
Figure 6.7

31. References
Chambers, J.K. and P. Trudgill. (1980). Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (1980). A first dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. London: André Deutsch.
Labov, W. (1972b), Sociolinguistic patterns, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Romaine, S. (1994). Language in society: An introduction to sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.