2. Linguistics
What is Sociolinguistics?
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Cognitive Sciences
Philosophy of
Mind
Psychology Anthropology
Neuroscience
Theoretical Applied Historical
Syntax, Semantics,
Phonetics, Phonology,
Morphology …
Psycholinguistics, Language
Acquisition, Sociolinguistics,
Discourse Analysis …
Language change,
Linguistic reconstruction …
3. Sociolinguistics
• So far, we have looked at formal aspects of speakers’ knowledge of language
• Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics = Theoretical Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Language Acquisition, Discourse Analysis = Applied
Linguistics
Applied Linguistics: studies different aspects of language use
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4. I-language vs. E-language
• I-language: speakers’ tacit knowledge of language
• A speaker’s ability to produce and parse grammatical strings in his/her native
language(s)
• Competence
• “In the brain”
• E-language: the way grammatical strings (a “language”) is used in interaction
with other speakers
• Performance
• “In the world”
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5. Sociolinguistics
• Sociolinguistics: the subfield of Applied Linguistics that studies how language
interacts with social factors such as ethnicity, class, region, age, gender, etc.
• We have said so far that “language” is a property of an individual’s brain
• So no two speakers have exactly the same grammar
• … and yet people from the same region tend to sound the same and can
communicate with each other
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6. Literature
• Holmes, Janet (2013), An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 4th
ed., Routledge.
• Labov, William (1972), Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press
(French translation: Sociolinguistique. Paris: Editions de Minuit.)
• Trousdale, Graeme (2010), An Introduction to English Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh
University Press.
• Trudgill, Peter (2000), Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society.
4th
ed., Penguin.
• Wardhaugh, Ronald (2009), An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 6th ed., Wiley-Blackwell.
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7. Idiolects
• No two speakers speak exactly the same way.
• Parameters of variation include:
• Age
• Gender
• Emotional state
• Lexicon
• Grammatical rules
Idiolect = a person’s individual way of speaking
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8. Recap: Prescriptivism/Descriptivism
Prescriptivism
• Telling people how to talk
• “It’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition.”
• “It’s wrong to use double negation”
Descriptivism
• Recounting how people do talk
• Describing linguistic variation.
• Further step: explaining variation in terms of the linguistic computational component of the
brain (theoretical linguistics)
… people don’t usually like being told that they speak “wrong”.
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9. Linguistic variation
• Macrovariation: variation between different languages
• Microvariation: “local” variation between dialects, idiolects, sociolects … etc.
• We should study cross-linguistic variation in as unbiased a manner as possible
• No reason to assume that variation or non-standard features are “bad”
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10. Dialects
• Different groups of people who speak the same language speak it differently
• Dialect (or variety): the shared linguistic characteristics of a language
community
• Usually defined in terms of geography, “regional varieties”
• But remember that the distinction between “dialect” and “language” cannot
be defined from a linguistic point of view
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11. Dialect vs. language
• No clear-cut distinction, but sometimes intelligibility is invoked
• Varieties that are mutually intelligible (to some degree?) = different dialects
of the same language
• Varieties that are not mutually intelligible: different languages
Problems:
• Intelligibility may be asymmetrical
• Norwegians understand Danish better than Danes understand Norwegian
• Laos understand Thai better than Thais understand Lao
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12. Dialect vs. language
• Nationhood is clearly relevant
• Norwegian and Swedish are mutually intelligible, but they are spoken in different countries
• Hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of “Chinese”
Very distinct grammars; considered “dialects” of a single language
• Arabic of Iraq, Morocco, and Egypt
• Welsh of North and South Wales
Nearly identical grammars; considered distinct languages
• Fanti and Twi (Ghana and the Ivory Coast)
• Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian
• Hindi and Urdu (India and Pakistan)
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13. Dialects
• Dialectal diversity develops when people are separated
• Geographically
• Socially
• “Accent”: sometimes used synonymously with “dialect”, implies that the
difference is (mainly) phonological
• … but dialects also vary w.r.t. morphology, syntax, and the lexicon.
• Everyone speaks a dialect (you may speak the standard dialect, but it is a
dialect)
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14. Regional varieties & stigmatization
• “accent bias”: speakers are biased in favour of or against particular regional
varieties or foreign accents
• Favourable bias: British English, Irish English (?)
• Negative bias: AAE, Cockney, “valley girl” …
Sociolinguists have shown again and again that these biases influence how
speakers judge an individual’s intelligence/communication skills
https://www.braindecoder.com/judged-by-the-sound-of-your-voice-1446330758.html
http://
www.researchgate.net/publication/227141745_Nonlanguage_Factors_Affecting_Undergraduates%27_Judg
ments_of_Nonnative_English-Speaking_Teaching_Assistants
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15. The Standard
• The standard dialect (prestige dialect)
• Associated with the dominant social and political group
• The dialect used by political leaders and national newscasters
• The dialect used in school
• The dialect taught to L2 learners
• Dialect closest to the written form of the language
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16. Standard vs. non-standard
• Whether something is considered “standard” or not has nothing to do with the
linguistic system itself
• it is determined entirely by historical and socio-political factors
To make a linguistic argument that one dialect is “better” than another, you would have to argue
that having a particular phoneme is “better” than another, or a word that has that sound is
“better” than a word that does not have it. Can we make such an argument?
• uvular vs. apical <r>
• /ɑ/ vs. /ɔ/
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17. Standard vs. non-standard
How not to do it: “America’s ugliest accent”
http://
gawker.com/americas-ugliest-accent-round-one-boston-baltimore-1637730517
… apparently Boston wins.
•Boston (and other areas of New England): loss of /r/ in coda position (end of a
word or syllable)
•= non-rhotic dialects (rho = Greek name for the letter <r>)
•When the /r/ is deleted the vowel is often lengthened and this is represented by the colon
•“hard” /hard/ vs. /ha:d/, /park/ “park” vs. /pa:k/
•“butter” /bəɾər/ vs. /bəɾə:/
•But: “red” /rεd/, “flora” /flɔrə/
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18. Standard vs. non-standard
• What non-subjective criteria could we have for saying that rhotic dialects are
better than non-rhotic ones?
• None. There aren’t any.
• No really there aren’t any.
• Whether or not you think a given variety sounds “nice” or “ugly” is entirely
subjective
• ... But it usually reflects some power/hierarchy relations within society
(a good reply to gawker: Raffaela Zanuttini, “Our language prejudices don’t make no sense”,
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/language-prejudices-dont-make-sense-negative-aks-ask-racist-92881/)
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19. Prestige
• Standard varieties are usually associated with more prestige than non-standard
varieties
• Prestige variety: associated with high-status people within a society or speech
community
• Standard Canadian English (SCE)
• Standard American English (SAE)
• British English: Received Pronounciation (RP)
… but prestige is also at work within non-standard varieties.
• Example: vocal fry/ “valley girl”: stigmatized/negative connotations by speakers of SAE, but
prestigious within speech communities that have this feature
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20. Dialectology
• Dialectology: the study of different regional dialects
• Traditional dialectology concentrated on older speakers in rural areas
• Urban areas were avoided because it was felt that there was too much variation
• Too many variables
• Difficult to find “representative” speakers
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21. Regional Dialects
• Regional dialects are geographically based
•Instead of clear distinctions between regional dialects you typically find a dialect
continuum
A B C D E
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22. Regional dialects
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The “cot-caught” merger:
• No difference in the
pronounciation of /ɔ/ and /ɑ/
• also in Canada
• Red dots: merged (no distinction
• Blue dot: not merged (there is a
distinction)
23. Isoglosses
• Isogloss = a linguistic feature that is shared by a (group of) dialect(s) to the
exclusion of other dialects
(Greek: ísos “similar” + glōssa “tongue; language”)
• Isoglosses often correlate with and are named after geographical boundaries
Examples:
• Benrath line (Germany):
• Dialects north of the line: maken [makǝn] “make”
• Dialects south of the line: machen [maxǝn] “make”
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25. Regional varieties: “Englishes”
Also for morphology/syntax:
• dative presentative: Here’s you some water. (Southern American English)
• “needs washed”: This car needs washed. (Mid-West)
• “done my homework”: I’m done my homework (Canada, Eastern seabord)
• Liketa: I liketa had a heart attack! (Southern, Appalachian, AAE)
… these and many more are collected by the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project:
http://microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/
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26. Englishes
Some obvious places of regional variation:
◦ North American
◦ Great Britian
◦ Australia
◦ New Zealand
◦ South Africa
… but there are many others:
◦ India and Pakistan, parts of the Caribbean, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe,
Singapore, Hong Kong …
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27. Nearby Englishes
Nearby Englishes
• Central/Western Canada & North/Central US
• Quebec
• New England
Other well-known varieties
• Southern
• London English
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28. Nearby Englishes
• Variation in different areas of grammar:
Phonology
• Canadian Raising
Lexical
• Pop vs. Soda
• Eavestrough vs. Gutter
• Invigilate vs. Proctor
Morphological
• This cake is some good
Syntactic
• I’m finished my homework vs. I’m finished with my homework
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29. North American English
• Almost every North American English has “flapping”
• Recap: “Flapping” turns an alveolar stop into a flap /ɾ/ between two vowels
(syllabic /r/, /l/ count as well), if the following vowel is unstressed
•Examples:
“butter” /bəɾər/
“barter” /barɾər/
“buddy” /bəɾi/
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30. Quebec English
Merry-marry-Mary diagnostic
• Mary is pronounced /meri/
• merry is pronounced /mεri/
• marry /mæri/
OR...
• Mary is pronounced /meri/
• merry and marry are pronounced /mεri/
Some other regions only have /mεri/
Test this! Do you have a distinction between “merry”, “marry” and “Mary”?
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31. New England
• Non-rhotic: /pa:k/ “park”, /ka:/ “car”
• non-rhotic varities are stigmatized, but used to be prestigious
• “Intrusive-r”
• In otherwise non-rhotic dialects, /r/ is inserted between a word that ends
with a vowel and a word that begins with a vowel
• “His idea is bad”: /hız aıdijər ız bæd/
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32. Southern
• Typical southern varieties (i.e., the deep south) are non-rhotic
• Final lax /ı/ diagnostic
Where some other varieties have /i/ at the end of words, Southerns have /ı/
• “pretty” /prıɾı/ vs. /prıɾi/
• Monophthongization
• Turning a diphthong (a vowel with two parts) into a monophthong (a simple vowel)
• Tend to lengthen the vowel that has been monophthongized (indicated with a colon)
• Ex. /aj/ becomes /a:/ : “fight” /fa:t/ vs. /fajt/
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33. African American English (AAE)
• African American English (AAE)
• Distinct dialect of American English associated with the African American community
• Not all African Americans speak AAE
• Not only African Americans speak AAE
Phonological features:
• No “th” (/ð/ or /θ/)
• Where SAE uses /θ/, AAE uses /f/: “bath” /bæf/ “birthday” /brfdeɪ/
• Where SAE uses /ð/, AAE uses /d/: “these” /diz/ “that” /dæt/
• Monophthongization
• “down” /dɑ:n/, “side” /sɑ:d/, “rise” /rɑ:z/
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34. AAE
• Cluster reduction
• A cluster is an onset or coda with more than one consonant
• “cast” /kæs/, “told” /tol/, “desk” /dɛs/
Morphological features
• no 3rd person agreement
• In SNAE the agreement morpheme –s is added to the verb when the subject is third
person.
• The president’s clothing looks expensive
• AAE does not use this morpheme
• The president clothing look expensive
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35. AAE
Syntactic features:
Double negation
• AAE
• I can’t afford to lose no more time.
• Children don’t know no better.
• SNAE
• I can’t afford to lose any more time
• Children don’t know any better
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36. AAE
Copula deletion vs. reduction: where SNAE can reduce the copula “be,” AAE can
delete it entirely
• My team is the best team
• SNAE = My team’s the best team.
• AAE = My team the best team.
•What time is it in New York?
• SNAE = *What time’s it in New York?
• AAE = *What time it in New York?
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37. AAE: Habitual “be”
Habitual “be”
• AAE uses the unconjugated form of the verb “be” to refer to habitual or
regularly occurring events
◦ SNAE: Our linguistics teacher is always talking about language
◦ AAE: Our linguistics teacher always be talking about language
• …. but not to refer to events that are taking place right now:
◦ We be playing football (usually, regularly, often...)
◦ We playing football (right now)
◦ *We be playing football tonight at 6:00 p.m.
38. AAE: habitual “be” and copula drop
• If something is a regularly occurring event, AAE speakers use habitual “be”
• If something is an intrinsic property, the copula is dropped
• My team (*is/*be) the best team
David Pesetsky (MIT) illustrates this with a great scene from the TV show The Wire,
with subtitles that show you the two different contexts.
The use of “be” in AAE is rule-governed – like in any other language
• … and that’s why non-native speakers tend to make mistakes when they use AAE!
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/04/how-a-white-australian-rapper-
mastered-her-blaccent
/
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39. Frenches
• Phonological differences between Quebec French and Metropolitan French
(“Continental French”)
• Affrication
• Laxing
• Diphthongization
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40. Frenches
Canadian French
• Quebec French
• Acadian
• Chiac (English influenced Acadian)
• Brayon (Acadian + Quebec French)
• Métis French (Cree/French “mixed language”; endangered)
There is no such thing as a “pure” language
• Every language is changing constantly
• Historical Linguistics: The field of linguistics that studies language change
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41. Features of Quebec French: Affrication
Before /i/ /ɪ/ /y/ and /ʏ/
• /t/ becomes /ts
/
• /d/ becomes /dz
/
dit “say” /dz
i/
du “some; of” /dz
y/
tu “you” /ts
y/
petit “small” /pœts
i/, /pǝts
i/
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42. Laxing
Recap: “tense” and “lax” vowels
• Examples from English: /i/ and /ɪ/; /u/ and /ʊ/
• Examples from Quebec French: /i/ and /ɪ/; /y/ and /ʏ/; /u/ and /ʊ/
Certain tense vowels turn into lax vowels in Quebec French:
• /i/ becomes /ɪ/
• /y/ becomes /ʏ/
• /u/ becomes /ʊ/
Obligatory in closed syllables (= syllables that end in a consonant), except
before /v, z, ʒ, r/
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44. Diphthongization
Long vowels are produced as diphthongs when they are stressed:
• neige “snow” QF: /najʒ/ CF: /nɛ:ʒ/
• fête “party” QF: /fajt/ CF: /fɛ:t/
• teinte “tint” QF: /tɛ̃jt/ CF: /tɛ̃t/
• honte “shame” QF: /ɔ̃wt/ CF: /ɔ̃
t/
• bien “well” QF: /bjɛ̃j/ CF: /bjɛ̃:/
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45. Regional varieties & stigmatization
It is often the case that regional varieties are undervalued or stigmatized
• Non-rhotic varieties of English
• (varieties of) Quebec French
• African American English
• One of the reasons to learn about the regularities in language variation is to
see that there is no linguistic basis for the stigmatization
• People have social biases, language is a great indicator of social group
• People apply their social biases to the language of the social group they are
biased against
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46. Sociolects
Sociolects (“social dialects”) are associated with different social groups or classes
• class
• place of residence (neighborhood)
• education
• income
• “new” vs. “old” money
• racial or ethnic origin
• religion
• caste
… all these factors may intersect.
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47. Distance and boundaries
Regional dialects
• Distance: The greater the geographical distance between two groups; the
greater the variation
• Boundaries: The existence of geographical boundaries increases the likelihood
of variation (e.g. mountains)
Social variation is influenced by “distance” and “boundaries” as well:
• Boundaries: race, religion, age, class, education, etc.
• Distance: The degree of variation in education (e.g., high school education vs.
PhD); the degree of difference in age (e.g., 20s vs. 70s), etc.
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48. Register
• Register refers to the way an individual speaks, i.e., what grammatical “choices”
(lexical, phonological, syntactic, etc.) the speakers makes depending on
• Context of the exchange: formal vs. informal
• Relationship between the participants: social hierarchy, age, kinship, etc.
• Code-switching: speakers may use different registers/sociolects depending on
context
• The extent to which you can code-switch depends to some degree on your
social status/privilege
• … because code-switching depends on having access to the prestige variety
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49. Formality scale
• Social setting
• Formal transaction, public speaking, coffee
date, religious ceremony, waiting at the bus
stop, etc.
• Non-standard features
Formal
High formality
Informal
Low formality
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50. Solidarity scale
• Relationships between participants
• How well two people know each other or feel
themselves to be similar influences linguistic
choices
• Non-standard features
Intimate
High solidarity
Unfamiliar
Low solidarity
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51. Labov & Modern sociolinguistics
• William Labov (University of Pennsylvania): paradigm change in sociolinguistics
• studied language variation in urban areas
• took diverse social factors like age, class, and gender into account
• dismissed the idea that dialectologists should only work with “pure” or
“representative” speakers
The “New York Department Store Study”
• Studied the use of rhotic vs. non-rhotic varities in different social settings
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52. The “New York Department Store Study”
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- “Excuse me, do you know where the women’s dresses are?
- “They’re on the [fɔθ flɔ:]. (= casual speech)
- “Excuse me?”
- “They’re on the [fɔrθ flɔr].” (= careful speech)
Labov’s results:
53. The “New York Department Store Study”
• r-lessness used to be associated with prestige, so older upper and upper-middle
class speakers tend to be more r-less than younger ones
• younger upper middle class speakers tend to be rhotic (67%)
• working class speakers are mostly non-rhotic (column 3)
In careful speech, this changes: lower middle/working class speakers tend to
switch to the more prestigious rhotic variant
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54. Language and gender
• Another important parameter for linguistic variation: gender
• Speech of various genders differ in their social uses
• Linguistic features: intonation, structural differences
• Communication styles: interrupting, turn-taking, gossip, cursing
• This is socially conditioned
• “genderlects”, “gendered speech”:
• Women tend to avoid stigmatized features more consistently than men
• Women underreport their own use of stigmatized forms, men overreport their
use of stigmatized forms
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55. Genderlects
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• Variation in the use of /-ɪŋ/ vs. /-ɪn/ (“running” vs. “runnin’”, etc.)
• Working class (WC) tends to use /-ɪn/ (lower prestige), middle class (MC) tends to
use /-ɪŋ/
• Women of both classes tend to use /-ɪŋ/ more than men
• Women underreport uses of /-ɪn/, men overreport it
(Data from Trudgill (1996))
56. Covert prestige
• Why do men overreport their use of stigmatized forms?
Non-standard varieties enjoy a covert prestige
• The prestige is covert, because what they value in speech deviates from
predicted social order
• Most common among working-class men
• Code-switching: women switch “up”, men switch “down”
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57. Conclusion
• Linguistics treats all dialectal/sociolectal varieties as equal from a linguistic
point of view
• … but they differ in prestige (= a social variable)
• (Features of) non-standard dialects are often stigmatized
• Nonetheless, there is no sense in which standard and non-standard dialects
differ in terms of being
• Logical
• Consistent
• Legitimate
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