Sociolinguistics

oft# Speech community

Speech community

Coherent group of people who share the same speech variety/varieties and (more or less) the same norms of language use

Conditions to have a speech community

• shared community membership
• shared language norms

Speech community can refer to groups of radically differently sizes.

All the speakers of English in the world

A person can belong to multiple speech communities at the same time.

Each speech community exhibits group-internal linguistic norms that differ systematically from the norms of the other speech communities.

AAVE

Systematic differences in speech patterns can be demonstrated between different groups, allowing for speech to identify us as belonging to a particular speech communities.

Distinguishing language

Mutual intelligibility

Linguistic criteria for determining which two speech varieties are considered by the same language

Can speaker of speech variety A understand speaker of speech variety B, and vice-versa?

If two varieties are

• linguistically distinct
• not mutually intelligible they are classified as separate languages (instead of dialects of the same language).

Sharing same writing system is irrelevant

Language exists without writing - the focus is on phonological, lexical, syntactical differences.

Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien...

Not mutually intelligible - and thus classified as separate languages. However, they share similarities as the are part of the same language family.

Dialect

Variety of a given language

British English, American English

Refers to an entire language variety, which features on all levels of language patterning, not just

• slang (refers to words used non-conventionally)
• jargon (refers to words associated with a particular sphere of activity)
• accent (phonological level only)

Differences

• lexical (meaning of words)
• phonological
• morphosyntactic

Dialects exhibit their own phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic peculiarities, but these differences are not great enough to prevent mutual intelligibility.

Dialect continuum

Neighbouring varieties may be mutually intelligible with small differences, but differences can accumulate over distance, such that varieties that are further apart may not be mutually intelligible.

Standard dialect

Version of the language taught in schools, used in governments

All dialects of a language, standard or otherwise, are equally complex, regularly patterned, and capable of serving as vehicles for expression.

Social meaning of linguistic variety is determined mostly by social status of the people who use it

Language attitudes

Judgment about people are made based on their speech

Linguistic profiling

Types of Social Variation

• geographical/regional variation
  • patterns of regional variation correlate quite well with whether speakers belong to dense and multiplex social networks
  • shared community membership and interaction
• class-based variation
• gender-variation
  • entrenched as gender expectations
  • can differ between cultures
• situational/registerial variation
  • factors associated with the user
  • style-shifting: changing speech styles/registers depending on the domain
    • the topic of conversation
    • formality of situation
    • speaker involved in conversation
  • socio-psychological factors
    • accomodation - speaker’s speech pattern converges with their addressee’s
    • divergence - creating distance

Communicative competence

Fluent speakers of a language need to know

• the grammatical structure of a language
• the appropriate use of language in different situations

Code-switching

Bilingualism/multilingualism

The use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or a group of speakers

Creates a situation where there is contact between speakers of different languages

• need to achieve communicative efficiency
• need to preserve one’s sense of group identity

This leads to

• language maintenance
• language shift
• language creation

Language maintenance

Continue to use the languages they speak

• use languages in isolation
  • can lead to diglossia - where each language becomes specialized for use in particular domains/functions
• borrow from other languages
  • borrowings/loanwords
    • integration into recipient language
• use languages together
  • code-switching
    • not permanent phenomenon

Language shift

One language comes to be used in a significantly smaller or wider range of circumstances

Language endangerment

• number of users using the language
• number and nature of situations where the language is used.

Language revival/revitalisation

Efforts to arrest the processes of language shift and endangerment

Pidgin

Highly reduced language developed for use in specific interactions, typically trade and slavery.

Pidgins develop quickly out of necessity as speakers of the substrate language are forced to learn vocabular of the superstrate.

Generally, they have small vocabularies, and no native speakers.

Creole

When a pidgin is passed on to the next generation and becomes the first language of a community

A nativised contact language, that emerges from the restructuring of mutually unintelligible languages.

The creole then becomes more complex than the pidgin due to

• expansion of vocabulary
• morphosyntactic developments
• new novel features

The superstrate for Jamaican creole is English, with substrates such as Akan (West African Language).

Decreolization

Retreat from the use of the creole by those who have greater ocntact with a standard variety of the language.

Post-Creole Continuum

Range of varieties used in a creole-speaking community, evolving after creol comes into existence.