1. Unit 8: Working the
market: Use of
varieties
-The local and the
global
-Language
ideologies and
linguistic varieties
2. The local and
the global
St. Pierre de Soulan
Martha’s Vineyard
Belten High School
3. Bilingualism in St. Pierre de Soulan
Soulan – a small commune in the Pyrenees is
a typical of communities throughout France
in which the local variety (Soulatan) is
sufficiently different from French – two are
mutually incomprehensible.
- Soulatan was the only language of the
community until the late 19th century.
4. French penetrated the village through nationally
controlled institutions. It was the language of global
institutions, education, modern medicine,
government and finance, social programs, salaried
employment, religion, and the media.
Soulatan language along with the way of life it
served, came to be associated with peasant
stereotypes - ignorance, folk medicine, political
isolation, a barter economy, poverty, agricultural
work, and superstition.
5. In the twentieth century language use shifted
from Soulatan to French as people engaged with
increasing regularity in situations and transaction
that required French. People began to avoid using
Soulatan in public situations so as to avoid
humiliation and to raise their children in French in
order to give them a head start into the
mainstream economy.
6. Local language may have been useless in the global
market, but it was the language of family, of community,
of land and homes and of an entire way of life that has
disappeared.
7. As language use shifted over the years, people’s verbal
strategies – choice of French or Soulatan in any
utterance – depend o such things as their own status in
the community and their ideologies. Their strategies also
depend on where they were who they are addressing
and who else was present, the topic, their attitude, their
emotions, and any other number of the other
considerations.
8. Martha’s Vineyard
-an island off the coast of
Massachusetts, relatively
isolated and fiercely
independent island, dominated
by a fishing community of
English descent.
9. Known for its distinctive “accent”
most notably for its pronunciation
of the diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/.
The nucleus [a] of the diphthongs is
centralized (fight: foit; about: a-
boat)
In an ethnographic study of the
speech in the island, William Labov
(1963) found that pronunciation of
/ay/ was playing a prime role in
social changes on the island.
10. Findings
Those who identified most strongly with local island
tradition were intensifying the local pronunciation of
/ay/, while those who were drawn to the new off-island
economy used a pronunciation more like the standard
mainland pronunciation.
11. Striking competition between the local and the global
was played out not just in political arguments but also
subtly in every verbal interaction. One might say that
there was social meaning in every pronunciation of that
particular vowel.
12. Belten High School
-western suburban area around Detroit, Michigan. Serve
an all-white, but socioeconomically diverse, student
population. Socioeconomic class plays out in the student
social order in the form of two dominant and mutually
opposed class-based social categories, which emerge
through opposed responses to the school’s norms and
expectations.
13. There is a series of vowel shifts that constitute a
recognizable regional accent. Newest among the these
shifts is the backing of the vowels /e/ and /^/ (flesh: flush;
lunch: launch) – these vowel shifts play a subtle play a
subtle but palpable role in the social life of the area.
14. Jocks- institutionally based-based community of
practice, basing their identities, activities, and
networks in the school’s extracurricular sphere.
compete for roles, and honors, and form, and
recognized social hierarchy. College bound,
develop friendships as a function of school
expect these friendships to change when they go
college.
15. Burnouts - reject the institution as a locus for
their social lives, basing their friendships,
activities, and social networks in the
and public spaces of the suburban-urban area.
headed for the local workforce after high school.
scool friendship and activities continue with
16. Jocks and burnouts constitutes middle-class and
working-class cultures within the adolescent context,
practices bring into stark contrast values about
friendship, institutional engagement, hierarchy and the
local area.
This contrast has all kinds of symbolic manifestations
(clothing, territory, and musical taste). It is
overwhelmingly manifested in language.
17. Jock’s language is more standard, as befits their institutional
orientation, while burnouts’ is both nonstandard and local as
befits their antischool stance and local orientation.
Burnouts local orientation is manifested in their more
extreme use of the local vowels shifts affecting /e/ and /^/,
jocks tend to use more conservative variants of these vowels.
Different educational orientation is also reflected in the fact
that the jock use overwhelmingly standard grammatical
constructions, while burnouts make far greater use of such
forms as nonstandard negation (I didn’t do nothing).
19. Opposition between local and global is commonly tied up
with socioeconomic class with power struggles and
conflicting interests. Within communities, class
differences are generally related to orientation toward
and participation in local and global networks, activities
and interests.
Members of the professional and elite classes are
engaged in globalizing institutions: education, nonlocal
government, corporations local communities: live of
laborers, tradespeople, small business people etc.
20. Local language represents membership and loyalty to a
local community, practices and relationships that make
up life in that community and the standard language
represents disengagement from the local.
Notion of the linguistic market is based on the fact that
one’s linguistic variety can ultimately enhance one’s
chances for material gain.
Standard language serves as symbolic capital in the
global political and financial markets, vernaculars serve
as symbolic capital in the local markets by facilitating
access to locally controlled resources (privately owned
housing space to local jobs)
21. Each variety ties to its speakers and to its community.
vernacular-speaking communities = place
standard speaking communities = institutions
Bourdieu (1982) – association of an individual with
the institution that makes that individual’s utterances
powerful. The power of the utterances resides in the
fact that speakers do not speak simply on their on
their own account but as the “bearer” of words on
behalf of the group or institution that provides the
basis of power.
22. Vernacular ties its speakers to the local community and
lends local authority and solidarity. Linguistic varieties
are not simply linked to communities and ways of life:
ideological constructs that carry considerable social
weight.
Symbolic value of opposed linguistic resources is
embedded in beliefs about their relation to those who
speak them.
Iconization – creation of an apparently natural
connection between a linguistic variety and th espeakers
who use it.
23. French educators in the turn of 20th century argued that
dialects of southern France were developed of the
illogical and confused peasant mind
American educators – African American Vernacular
English
Since gender is at the center of most social orders,
ideologies associated with linguistic varieties can
generally be expected to interact in a variety of ways
with gender stereotypes. But interaction may be as
varied as the linguistic and gender situations themselves.
