This document discusses regional and social variations in language, specifically focusing on variations within monolingual communities. It provides several examples of regional variations in pronunciation and vocabulary between different dialects of English spoken in places like Scotland, Ireland, Britain, the US, Australia and New Zealand. It also discusses social variations between groups defined by factors like social status, gender, age and ethnicity. The document outlines different levels of linguistic variation including international, intra-national and intra-continental variations. It provides examples of regional dialects within countries and discusses concepts like dialect boundaries, isoglosses and dialect continua.

1. Regional and social
variations 1
(linguistic varieties in monolingual communities)
Sociolinguistics

2. • How can language signal the speakers' membership of particular
groups and construct different aspects of their social identities,
such as social status, gender, age, and ethnicity?
Introduction:

3. • Example 1:
• Telephone rings.
• Pat: Hello.
• Caller: Hello, is Mark there?
• Pat: Yes. Just hold on a minute.
• Pat (to Mark): There’s a rather well-educated young lady from
Scotland on the phone for you.
• What information did Pat deduce about the caller based on one
short utterance?

4. •Since languages vary from one place to another, from one social
group to another, and from one situation to another, there are
different types of variation, among them:
Regional variation.
Social variation.

5. Regional variation.
(Variation according to geographical areas)

6. Variation within a monolingual
community:
Usually there are certain features of speech shared by groups of
speakers and they serve to differentiate one group from another.
What kinds of groups are meant?
A group of speakers may consist of inhabitants of a certain
geographical area. In this case, their variety of language is called
a “regional variety”.

7. For example,
Scottish speakers of English constitute the group of English speakers
who live in Scotland. Their variety of English has certain
pronunciation and grammar features, e.g. A Scot is far more likely
to say I'll not do it than I won't do it.
Irish speakers of English also use a variety that has some
pronunciation features which are different from Standard English,
e.g.
map [ma:rp]
bag [beg]
bad [bod]

8. First: International varieties:
(different nations)
Example 2.
A British visitor to New Zealand decided that while he was in Auckland, he would
look up an old friend from his war days. He found the address, walked up the path
and knocked on the door. ‘Gidday,’ said the young man who opened the door. ‘What
can I do for you?’ ‘I’ve called to see me old mate Don Stone,’ said the visitor. ‘Oh
he’s dead now mate,’ said the young man. The visitor was about to express
condolences when he was thumped on the back by Don Stone himself. The young
man had said, ‘Here’s dad now mate’, as his father came in the gate.
What level of variation is involved?

9. Examples of pronunciation variation between British English on the
one hand and American, Australian, and New Zealand English, on the
other:
British English New World English
Dad [dæd] [ded]
Pan [pæn] [pen]
Pin [pin] [pen]
God [gɔd] [gɑ:d] (American)
Ladder [ˈlædə] [lædər] (American)
Latter [ˈlætə] [lædər] (American)

10. 1. British English: single parents.
Australian English: sole parents.
New Zealand English: solo parents.
2. British English: traffic lights.
South African English: robot.
3. British English: wellies (Wellington boots).
New Zealand English: gummies (gumboots). Stopped here section
101
Variation at the level of vocabulary:

11. Examples of vocabulary differences between
British and American English:
Exercise 1:
You may like to check out the extent of US vs British influence on vocabulary in your
region. The following questions provide a simple way of measuring this. Ask ten of your
friends to answer them and work out how many US items vs how many British items
they choose.
(a) When you go window-shopping do you walk on the pavement or the sidewalk ?
(b) Do you put your shopping in the car’s trunk or in the boot ?
(c) Do you fill up the car with gas or with petrol ?
(d) When the baby is wet does it need a dry diaper or nappy ?
(e) Do you get to the top of the building in an elevator or a lift ?
(f) When the children are hungry do you open a can or a tin of beans?
(g) When you’ve made an error do you remove it with an eraser or a rubber ?

12. Variation at the level of grammar:
Example 3:
(a) Do you have a match?
(b) Have you got a cigarette?
(c) She has gotten used to the noise.
(d) She’s got used to the noise.
(e) He dove in, head first.
(f) He dived in head first.
(g) Did you eat yet?
(h) Have you eaten yet?

13. Some regional dialects in Britain:
1. Geordie /ˈdʒɔrdi/: is both a
regional nickname for a person from the larger
Tyneside region of North East England and the
name of the Northern English dialect spoken by
its inhabitants.
Second: Intra-national or intra-continental variation:
(within the same nation or continent)

14. Example 4,
Rob : This wheel’s completely disjaskit.
Alan : I might could get it changed.
Rob : You couldn’t do nothing of the sort. It needs dumped.
What do you think of the grammaticality of the three utterances?
Are there any vocabulary items that look unfamiliar?

15. 2. Scouse /ˈskaʊs/also, in academic sources,
called Liverpool English is an accent and
dialect of English found primarily in the
Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and
closely associated with the city of Liverpool.
3. Cockney: Linguistically, Cockney English
refers to the accent or dialect of English
traditionally spoken by working-class
Londoners.

16. Some regional dialects in the USA:
Main dialect areas of American English:
Northern, Midland, and Southern.
Within each area, different states can have different dialects, and
within each state different cities can have different dialects.
Even within the same city, different areas can have different dialects.

17. What is Brooklynese? The dialect of American English spoken in
the district of Brooklyn in New York.
- Appalachian English /æpəˈleɪtʃɪən/
It is spoken primarily in the Central
and Southern Appalachian Mountain
region of the Eastern United States.

18. How is Appalachian classified?
Appalachian English has long been derided as an inferior dialect.
American writers throughout the 20th century have used the dialect
as the chosen speech of uneducated and unsophisticated characters.
While research has largely disproven these stereotypes, use of the
Appalachian dialect is still often an impediment to educational and
social advancement.

19. Dialects in Australia and New Zealand
Why is there less regional variation in Australia and New Zealand
than in Britain and the USA?
There are two main reasons for this:
1. The high level of intra-national communication.
2. The relatively small population.

20. Dialect maps and isoglosses:
Regional dialectology refers to the identification and mapping of
boundaries (using isoglosses) between different varieties on the basis
of a group of similar and different linguistic features found in a
particular geographical area, (e.g. a town or a village).
- In the past, dialectologists focused their study of language variation
on geographical dialects of rural areas. They were concerned to
record many dialect features before they were lost.
-They investigated the local linguistic features in the rural region by
interviewing old people who are less likely to have been exposed to
outside influences and the results are plotted on maps.

21. Dialectologist found that regional-dialect boundaries often coincide
with the geographical barriers, such as mountains, swamps or rivers.
The collected information from such surveys served as the basis of
‘Linguistic Atlases’ of whole countries.
Dialectologists, then, began to incorporate social as well as
geographical information into their dialect surveys. This paved the
way for urban dialectology which then became ‘sociolinguistics’.

22. Isoglosses:
Isoglosses refer to the lines on a map marking the boundary between
different linguistic items.
Isoglosses are the lines showing the boundaries of areas where a
particular linguistic form is used.
Example:
The word “BATH” in South and North English varieties in England:
A speaker from the north of England will pronounce the word bath as
[bæθ], whereas a southerner will pronounce it as [bɑ:θ].

24. The drawing of isoglosses and dialect boundaries is quite useful in
establishing a broad view of regional dialects, but it tends to
obscure the fact that, at most dialect boundary areas, one dialect or
language variety merges into another.
Keeping this in mind, we can view regional variation as existing
along a dialect continuum rather than as having sharp breaks from
one region to the other.

25. • Sometimes, there is no clear linguistic breakdown between one
dialect or language and another.
• Speakers from neighbouring areas can communicate without
problems. But speakers from one end of a wide geographical area
may have problems communicating with speakers from the other
end. If you travel from NW France to SE Italy or SW Spain, you will
notice that adjacent villages can understand each other regardless of
where the political borders are. BUT Paris, Madrid and Rome
speak varieties that are not mutually intelligible (i.e. separate
languages).

27. Dialect continuum is a chain of dialects (one dialect merges into another),
“continuum ” is anything that goes through a gradual transition from one
condition, to a different condition, without any abrupt changes.
E.g. dialects A–G, where speakers of dialects A and B understand each other
extremely well. The same applies to B and C, to C and D…etc. Speakers of A and
C understand each other rather less well. Speakers of dialect A and E understand
each other less well again. There comes to a point, at dialect G area, where dialect
A is no longer intelligible to the local people of dialect G area and vice versa.
Note: comprehensibility vary from person to person depending on the degree of exposure to other dialects
C D E F G
A B

28. ‘Geographical barriers and distance’ are very important elements in
causing language variation.
-When a linguistic innovation (a new phenomena in a language
initiated usually by speakers in the urban centers) occurs in one
area, it may subsequently spread to other areas, particularly those
nearest to it, if there is no serious barriers and distance.
A good example of a linguistic innovation that has spread geographically
in England is the loss of English post-vocalic /r/ in words like cart, car,
farm, and yard.

29. Such linguistic innovation often spreads initially from one urban
center to another, and only later reaches the countryside. This is
due to the economic, demographic and cultural dominance of
town over country, and the intensity of communication network
between towns.
The spread of linguistic features from one area to another is
therefore not (always) dependent on geographical proximity.