Sociolinguistics Discussion Questions for Seminar Three:

Baron, Dennis. “Language In Its Social Setting” from the PBS special on sociolinguistics, MacNeil/Lehrer productions (2005).

1. How does language express group identity?

2. What are some of the social issues facing AAVE?

3. What are some of the gender issues in the English language?

4. Explain what has happened with the title “Ms”.

5. How has the United States responded to different languages and dialects?

Preston, Dennis R. “They speak really bad English down South and in New York City” from the PBS special on sociolinguistics, MacNeil/Lehrer productions (2005).

1. What is the linguistic myth the author is talking about?

2. What two dialects do people consider bad English?

3. What is one dialect considered good English?

4. What are some of the things people say about Southern English? How do Southerners view their dialect?

5. What are some of the things people say about New York City English?

Kottack, Conrad Phillip, Anthropology: the Exploration of Human Diversity, Ch. 21 “Language: Black English Vernacular” McGraw Hill, Inc. 6^th ed. (1994) pp. 434-435.

1. What is BEV/AAVE?

2. What are some of the differences between BEV/AAVE and Standard English (SE)?

3. What conclusions does the author make about BEV/AAVE?

Linguistic Society of America. “Resolution on the Oakland ‘Ebonics’ Issue Unanimously Adopted at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, Illinois, January 3, 1997.”

1. What does the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) say about the rules in AAVE?

2. What does the LSA say about AAVE and schools?

“New York Dialect” entry from Wikipedia.

1. Who speaks the classic New York dialect?

2. How was the New York dialect formed?

3. What is interesting about Jewish-Americans who speak with a New York accent?

4. How do New Yorker’s phrase indirect questions?

5. What are some of the pronunciation patterns for the New York dialect?

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Handouts Lecture 1. Definitions, Chomsky and Sapir-Whorf

Descriptive terms for language:

5. Phonology—the study of a language’s sounds (phonemes)

6. Morphology—the study of a language’s forms and morphemes. (For example, cats would be described as containing two morphemes. Cat, the name for a kind of animal and –s a morpheme indicating plurality.)

7. Lexicon—the study of the words of a language and their meanings.

8. Syntax/Grammar—the study of the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences.

As Chomsky says,

Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly…To study actual linguistic performance, we must consider the interaction of a variety of factors, of which the underlying competence of the speaker-hearer is only one.

As Sapir says,

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69)

And Whorf,

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and un-stated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf, 1940, pp. 213–14)

CULTURE

3. The arts, customs, and habits that characterize a particular society or nation.

4. The beliefs, values, behavior and material objects that constitute a people's way of life.

SOCIETY

People in general living together in organized communities, with laws and traditions controlling the way they behave towards one another.

LANGUAGE

Language is a code with a set of consciously and unconsciously known rules about sounds, words, syntax and grammar used to communicate between people that is culturally/socially influenced OR influences our culture/society OR both.

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Lecture 2. Linguistic Variation

SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIATION is the study of the way language varies and changes in communities of speakers and concentrates in particular on the interaction of:

• Social factors (such as a speaker's gender, ethnicity, age, degree of integration into their community, etc)

• Linguistic structures (such as sounds, grammatical forms, intonation features, words, etc).

LANGUAGE

A language, as a category, is the larger linguistic family that can contain several dialects and can be considered the standard form of the language.

SEVEN CATEGORIES OF LANGUAGE

8. Standardization: A language that has been standardized.

9. Vitality: Whether a language is alive or dead.

10. Historicity: A language that has a long historical bond with its speakers.

11. Autonomy: A language must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages.

12. Reduction: Reduction is when the speakers of a particular variety of a language regard it as a sub-variety or a dialect.

13. Mixture: Mixture refers to how “mixed” [that is mixed with another language or dialect] the speakers of a language feel it has become.

14. Norms: Norms refers to the feeling that many speakers have that there are both good speakers and poor speakers, and that the good speakers represent the norms of proper usage.

DIALECT

A way of speaking a language that is used only in a particular area or by a particular group and characterized by systemic features, such as phonology (accent), Morphology (word shape), lexicon (words), or grammar (sentence structure), that distinguishes it from other varieties of the same language.

REGIONAL DIALECTS

A Regional dialect is a linguistic variation based upon membership in a long-standing regionally isolated group.

SOCIAL DIALECT

A social dialect is a linguistic variation based upon membership in a long-standing socially isolated group.

IDIOLECT

The speech of any individual speaker is called his idiolect.

LINGUISTIC VARIABLE

A variable is a linguistic item that has identifiable variants. When a certain way of saying something becomes a set way of expressing it, phonetically, grammatically, or with expressions, etc, it is called a linguistic variable. The different ways a linguistic variable is expressed are called variants.

SPEECH COMMUNITY

All the people you talk to everyday that use your language and dialect.

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Lecture 3. When languages collide

CODE: When two or more people communicate with each other in speech we can call that system of communication they employ a code. When two speakers are multilingual, that is they speak two or more languages, then they have access to two or more codes. If they switch between those codes we call that code-switching.

MULTILINGUALISM: Multilingualism is the ability to speak several different languages well. Notice this definition does not require you to be fluent.

SPEECH COMMUNITY: All the people that you talk to everyday who use your language and dialect and now we can add: people who you talk to everyday you who use your language and dialect or languages and dialects.

VERBAL REPERTOIRE: The total range of linguistic resources a person has at his disposal is called a verbal repertoire. This could be another language, or it could be a regional or social dialect.

CODE-MIXING: The mixing of two distinct languages or codes in a sentence.

PIDGIN: a language made up of two or more languages, used as a way of communicating by people whose first languages are different from each other.

The requirements of a Pidgin are:

5. The language is specially constructed by its users to suit the needs of its users. So if it is for trading in cattle, there will be few words for discussing anything else, like the weather, or vegetables, or your favorite painter.

6. It should be as simple and easy to learn as possible.

7. The vocabulary is usually based on the vocabulary of the dominant group—wherever people are speaking the pidgin.

8. It is a compromise language between the language of one group and the other in some way, whether its grammar from one vocabulary from the other, or a mix of both of these.

CREOLE: A language that is a mixture of two or more other languages and is spoken as the first language of a people.

Gullah verb tenses:

Uh h'ep dem -- "I help them/I helped them" (Present/Past Tense)

Uh bin he'p dem -- "I helped them" (Past Tense)

Uh gwine he'p dem -- "I will help them" (Future Tense)

Uh done he'p dem -- "I have helped them" (Perfect Tense)

Uh duh he'p dem -- "I am helping them" (Present Progressive)

Uh binnuh he'p dem -- "I was helping them" (Past Progressive)

LANGUAGE PLANNING: a deliberate, systematic, and theory-based attempt to solve the communication problems of a community by studying the various languages or dialects it uses, and developing a policy concerning their selection and use; also sometimes called language engineering or language treatment. Corpus (‘body’ of the language) planning deals with norm selection and codification, as in the writing or grammars and the standardization of spelling; status planning deals with initial choice of language, including attitudes toward alternative languages and the political implications of various choices.

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Lecture 4. The relationship between language and society, part 1. Speech as social interaction, social identity and solidarity