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Sociolinguistics of group 6.pdf
- 1. Lecturer: KONG SEANGENG Master of Education វិទ្យាស្ថ ា ន អាហ្គ ា AGA INSTITUTE Topic: Sociolinguistics Subject: Second Language Acquisition
- 2. Content What is sociolinguistic? •Pronunciation and word Categorizing the ways people speak • Idiolect and sociolect • Standard, non-standard and codification • Prestige, Siamization and language loyalty • Accent, dialect and language planning • Speech community Descriptive tools of language variation • Language variable • Phonological variation • Grammatical variation • Lexical variation • Discoursal variation • Linguistics variation • Social factors that correlate with language variation • Geographical and social mobility • Gender and power • Age • Audience • Identity • Social network relation
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- 4. Sociolinguistics sociolinguistics is thestudy of language variation and language change. language variation language change Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing. Speakers may vary in pronunciation, word choice, or morphology and syntax. Synchronistic linguistics is the study of a language at a particular time. In contrast, diachronic linguistics studies the development of a language over time. Synchronistic linguistics is often descriptive, analyzing how the parts of a language or grammar work together. For example, analyzing the word order in a sentence in Old English only would be a study in synchronistic linguistics. If you looked at how word order changed in a sentence from Old English to Middle English and now to modern English, that would be a diachronic study.
- 5. ❖Old English (500-1100AD) influenced by Latin ❖ Middle English (1100-1500 AD) influenced by French ❖ Modern English (1500-present) developed as a language of its own was spoken from around the 5th century to the 11th century. was spoken from around the 12th century to the late 15th century. which began in the 16th century and continues to the present day.
- 6. Pronunciation and Words OldEnglish: Old English had some silent letters. For example, in sēċean, you will not pronounce c. That means the word is pronounced as ‘seek.’ Modern English: Some letters are not pronounced in Modern English. For example, K in knight is silent. The differences Modern English Old English You Thou Your Thy Yours Thine Yourself Thyself
- 7. Categorizing the wayspeople speak • Idiolect And Sociolect • Standard, Non-standard And Codification • Prestige, Siamization And Language Loyalty • Accent, Dialect And Language Planning • Speech Community
- 8. Idiolect and Sociolect Idiolectand sociolect However, people often use language in ways that they share with many other people: most generally we can call these patterns ‘sociolects’. Individuals speak in characteristic ways that might be peculiar to them in certain circumstances: we call this pattern their ‘idiolect’.
- 9. Standard, Non-standard AndCodification Standard standard language is a variety of language that is used by governments, in the media, in schools and for international communication. Non-Standard Non-standard English is an informal version of English. It usually contains slang and colloquialisms that wouldn't be used in more formal or professional settings. Codification codification refers to the methods by which a language is standardized. Ex: A language used in school. Ex: yeah not yes Ex: I ain’t doing that not I am not going to do that. These methods include the creation and use of dictionaries, style and usage guides. traditional grammar textbooks,
- 10. Prestige, Stigmatization AndLanguage Loyalty The factors of prestige or stigma depended very much on speaker’s attitude to their own variety. People’s attitude to the own language often affects the form of that language. Stigmatizing varieties of language often survive even under institutional pressure because groups have a language loyalty that preserve the varieties in the face of the standardization form.
- 11. Accent, Dialect andLanguage planning Definition Accent refers to pronunciation. Dialect refers to a whole group of language features, including pronunciation, but also differences in vocabulary, grammar, and how the language gets used Example If you say eether and I say iyther, that's accent. We use the same word but pronounce it differently. But if you say I've got a new dustbin and I say I've gotten a new garbage can, that's dialect. The differences While a dialect can include differences in pronunciations from the language it comes from, it also includes differences in vocabulary and grammar. The word accent, however, describes just a distinct way of pronouncing a language. It does not include differences in vocabulary and grammar.
- 12. Language planning In sociolinguistics,language planning (also known as language engineering) is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or language varieties within a speech community. Example if a government chooses to raise the status level of a certain language or change its level of prestige, it can establish a law which requires teachers to teach only in this language or that textbooks are written using only this language's script.
- 13. Speech Community Speech community Speechcommunities are groups that share values and attitudes about language use, varieties and practices. Example a group of people who share rules for conducting and interpreting at least one variety of a language or dialect. The term can be applied to a neighborhood, a city, a region or a nation. We all belong to at least one speech community.
- 14. Descriptive tools oflanguage variation • Language Variable • Phonological Variation • Grammatical Variation • Lexical Variation • Discoursal Variation • Linguistics Variation
- 15. Language Variable The maintool in sociolinguistics has been the concept of the ‘linguistic variable’. This is any single feature of language which could be realized by different choices. some people do not pronounce the /r/ and some do, and there are also variations in the ways the /r/ can be pronounced. This is a linguistic variable which is strongly determined by geographical location: non-/r/-pronouncers are likely to be from England, Wales, Australia. Ex: fork, bird….. /r/-pronouncer are likely from Scottish Highlands or the west of Ireland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M-_QpKsctU
- 16. Phonological Variation Phonological variation Thestudy of phonological variation is an important part of sociolinguistics, as it can provide insights into the way that language is used and understood by different groups of people. Example including the geographical location of the speaker, their social class, their age, or their ethnicity. However, in order to be able to describe accents systematically and precisely, sociolinguists use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
- 17. Grammatical Variation A majorfeature of African–American vernacular English (AAVE) is the non- use of the verb ‘to be’ in some contexts called Zero copula Ex: he a big man – he is a big man Ex: you the teacher – you are the teacher African–American vernacular has developed an invariant ‘be’ to signal habitual states. Ex: he be busy - he be running all day. AAVE shares with many other nonstandard grammars is the requirement for ‘negative concord’: that is, in a negated sentence, every element must be negated Ex: Ain’t nobody going to help you, don’t nobody know me
- 18. Lexical Variation • Lexicalvariation refers to the different words and phrases we use to refer to the same objects/concepts. • For examples: • When making tea, you might stew, mash, brew or draw the tea in boiling water. • Neb in Yorkshire; a square is to Philadelphians what a block is to a New Yorker; an American resume is a British CV, which is South African biodata; South African robots are British traffic lights; American police batons are British truncheons which are Indian lathis and so on • English person would say Are you finished? and an American would say Are you done? or Are you through? tons are British truncheons which are Indian lathis and so on. 18
- 19. Discoursal Variation The studyof discourse variation is the attempt to find patterns of language use that characterize the spoken language of a definable group in a specific setting.
- 20. Discoursal Variation (cont.) •Alternatively, the different ways that men and women organize narratives or conduct conversations or arguments have been investigated to show up apparently different objectives in speech. • Again, gender studies have led the way here, and insights into how politeness (and impoliteness) works have been generalized cross-culturally in comparative studies. The discoursal end of sociolinguistics is considered by some researchers to belong to pragmatics. 20
- 21. Linguistic Variation • Lastly,the entire language can be treated as a variable. Bilingual or multilingual individuals can often move from one language to another within a single utterance and sometimes even within a sentence. This is called ‘code-switching’, and the shift into another language can be used to indicate that a different ‘domain’ of experience is being signalled. 21
- 22. Social Factors thatCorrelate with Language Variation 22 Social Factors that Correlate with Language Variation Geographical and Social Mobility Social Network Relations Identity Audience Age Gender and Power
- 23. Geographical and SocialMobility 23 Dialects within a language are often localized geographically. We can speak of ‘dialect chains’ where the shift from one dialect to the next is not sudden between one town or county or state and the next. The counterpart of hypercorrection is the phenomenon observed when some people use stigmatized forms of language (as a sort of ‘streetwise’ accent signal): this is known as ‘covert prestige’. Factors such as these are major influences on language loyalty and language change.
- 24. Gender and Power 24 Thenotion of a ‘genderlect’ has been proposed to account for some of the apparently systematic differences in the ways men and women use language. These differences can be observed across the whole range of linguistic variables, from plans of narrative and discourse organization, to the different accents that men and women have even from the same area (see Coates and Cameron, 1986; Cameron, 1995; Crawford, 1995; Mills, 1995; Holmes and Meyerhoff, 2003; Coates, 2004).
- 25. Age Older people andyounger people use language differently. When corresponding features of these speakers are compared, such differences can reveal evidence of changes in the language over time. In other words, the ‘snapshot’ of current usage across the age ranges can suggest historical language changes. This is the ‘apparent time hypothesis’; it gives us the ability to observe potential change in progress, which was not thought possible in the past (see Llamas, 2007b). 25
- 26. Audience Taking into accountthe audience and reception of language use provides insights into the ways speakers behave. Most conversations have a ‘recipient design’, that is, speakers plan their utterances with the addressee in mind. This factor often results in speakers adjusting their accent, style or language towards their addressees. This phenomenon is called ‘accommodation’ and it seems that such convergence of accents is an important cause of language change over time (see Auer, 2007). 26
- 27. Identity This is animportant social factor. Not only do linguistic patterns signal social and individual identity, but people’s conscious awareness of their personal, ethnic, geographical, political and family identities is often a factor in their language use. Allegiance and membership of different social groups can be expressed by language patterns, and sometimes those groups are even defined by these patterns, whether this is a language or style or jargon (see Eckert, 2000; Dyer, 2007; Llamas and Watt, 2009; Mullany, 2007). 27
- 28. Social Network Relations 28 Ithas been recognized that the relative strength of relations between individuals within a social group (their ‘social network’) is also important in understanding how linguistic features are maintained, reinforced and spread. Whether individuals have strong or weak ties to the group can be used as a measure of their sociolinguistic influence (see Milroy, 1987; Milroy and Milroy, 1999).
- 29. Thank you Thanks forlistening to our group presentation. Q&A!