LING 101:Sociolinguistics

This page was prepared by William Idsardi as a study resource for his LING 101 course at UDel. You may find it useful when pareparing for exams. Note that the material covered by these notes may not exactly match the topics covered in LING 101 when taught by other instructors. To return to the "Study notes" page use the navigation bar at the left.

Social Psychology of Language

Recall that linguistics is the study of language as a PSYCHOLOGICAL phenomenon. Linguistics studies what people KNOW about language.
We have seen that people know about FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS (phonemes, morphemes, words, features) and that they know RULES for combining elements.
Since this knowlege resides in each person's mind/brain, SOCIOLINGUISTICS is the study of the SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY of language.
There are three general questions of sociolinguistics:
1. How similar is the knowledge of language shared by different people?
2. How do people change their grammars in response to different social factors?
3. How does people's language affect how people perceive them?
Since language is located in the mind/brain one thing that we can do is to compare how similar different people's languages (IDIOLECTS) are.
When a sufficient number of people share knowledge of language we call this a DIALECT or LANGUAGE. One criterion commonly used for defining a social language is mutual intelligibility.
However language (as a social construct--not as a psychological object) is difficult to define. Some possibilities are:
- a dialect with social prestige
- a dialect with socal power
Shared knowledge areises from close social contact, so many dialect features are GEOGRAPHICAL.
Increased mobility has reduced the significance of the geographical factor.

Dialect Differences

Because dialect difference are differences in the knowledge of language between spekers, we expect:
Dialects can differ anywhere languages can differ: lexicon, morphology, syntax, semantics, phonology, ...
Distinctive attributes of dialects can be found in other languages of the world.
That is, a dialect is just another possible human language.
Linguistics does NOT define "good" or "bad" languages, it simply explains how languages work in general.
"Good" and "bad" are judgements about language, social statements, not linguistic statments.
As with other social statements, judgements about other people's languages tell you more about the people making the judgements than about the people who are being judged.
Because dialects are just possible languages, each person's language belongs to some dialect.
That is, EVERYONE speaks with an accent.
The accent is just more or less similar to someone else's accent.

Why do dialects differ?

Languages are allowed to make certain choices in their lexicon and grammar. Therefore languages differ because they can differ.
Communication between two people is enhanced when their languages are more similar.
But people are unique. Having distinctive traits marks you as yourself.
Communication and individualism are in conflict.

Some difference in dialects of English

How do English dialects differ?
In all aspects of language.
Lexical differences
lift / elevator
lorry / truck
cabinet / milkshake
antigogglin / skewed
schlep / carry
sofa / couch / chesterfield
dinner / supper
...
Phonological differences:
Different phonemes: In some dialects
"cot" = "caught"
"Mary" = "merry" = "marry"
Different rules:
r --> 0: "I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd."
Canadian raising: write = [r^jt]; ride = [rajd]
Morphological differences:
Latin/Greek plurals: criterion/criteria, datum/data
Past tenses: learned/learnt, dived/dove
Syntactic differences:
"Has he a car?" versus "Does he have a car?"
"between you and me" or "between you and I"
Double negatives
Many people criticize dialects employing "double" negatives as "illogical"-- two negatives make a positive. But "double" negatives are really negative AGREEMENT (like subject-verb agreement) and are displayed in MANY languages (including older versions of English). For example in both French and English we can answer a question negatively:
Who arrived? Nobody.
Qui est arrivé? Personne.
But the standard languages differ on how to form negative statements:
I did not see anybody.
Je n'ai vu personne.
Standard English uses "anybody" instead of "nobody" whereas standard French uses "personne" in both places. Notice that the French sentence is equivalent to:
I did not see nobody.
which is exactly what some dialects of English use, the "double" negative. So the "double" negative dialects are exactly like other languages (e.g. standard French) in this respect. They are not illogical or stupid. They simply have a rule of negative agreement that standard English does not have. Just as Boston dialects have a rule dropping r that standard American English does not have.
Negative agreement is used in many dialects of English (and in many other languages), including Black English.
Another feature of Black English is the dropping of "be" in sentences such as:
He late. (Black English)
He is late. (Standard American English)
Again, many people see this as a negative trait, "lazy" speech, but the absence of "be" in such sentence is a feature of many other languages, including Russian:
ja doktor
I doctor
"I am a doctor"
In fact, Black English is more expressive than Standard English:
John late. = John is late right now.
John be late. = John is usually/often/habitually late.

Standard Languages

Prescriptive grammarians often choose the dialect spoken by powerful classes as the "correct" or "standard" language.
Dictionaries or PEDAGOGICAL grammars also describe the "standard" language, such as Standard American English (SAE).
But in a strict sense NOBODY speaks SAE, because everyone has idiosyncrasies in their idiolect.
The notion of a "standar" language has been around for centuries, and it has been used to suppress other languages. One recent example was the banning of indiginous Native American languages in schools, even in schools that were exclusively for Salish children for example. The "English Only" movement is a current example of a group that seeks to promote English by banning the use of other languages.
Even without political laws banning languages there can be considerable social pressure to conform to the majority dialect. People can have trouble getting jobs, get poorer marks in school, etc. all because they speak a different dialect, and people judge them harshly because of their speech.
Some countries go so far as to set up political bodies to regulate the use of language, such as the french academy. However, the edicts issued by such regulatory bodies (such as against "le shopping") have not had much effect on actual use of language.
Occasionally political efforts are made to revive a language that has historical and national importance. Hebrew is the most successful example of this. Similar efforts have been made in Ireland, but with much less success. Reviving language often means creating new words for modern devices, like telephones, and often word-forms are borrowed (often from English) for these terms.

Some Black English Features

Migration from other countries can cause new dialects of English to arise. Two notable cases in the US are Black English and Hispanic English. Though these languages/dialects share many features with SAE they alse differ from SAE in systematic ways.
We have already discussed some syntactic features that Black English has:
- "double negatives" (negative agreement)
- "missing be" (zero copula)
and we noticed that these syntactic characteristics are also found in other languages (French and Russian, respectively).
Black English also has several characteristic phonological rules.
- r-deletion ("guard" pronounced the same as "god")
  This rule is also characteristic of other dialects, such as Boston and Atlanta.
- l-deletion ("toll" pronounced the same as "toe")
  This rule (an extension of r-deletion to all liquids) is also observed in several other British English dialects.
- consonant cluster simplification ("mend" and "meant" pronounced the same as "men")
  Many languages (called CV languages) do not allow any consonant clusters at all.
- glide deletion ("why" and "wow" pronounced as [wa])
  This change can be compared to the vowel changes in some dialects of Australian English.
- loss of distinction between front lax vowels before nasals ("pin" and "pen"pronounced the same)
  Compare the collapse of distinctions in lax vowels before /r/ in many dialects-- "herd", "bird", "word", and "curd" all rhyme.
- interdental fricatives become labiodental ("Ruth" pronounced the same as "roof")
  
  This is also observed in Cockney English. The interdental fricatives are relatively rare in languages. Notice that this change is different from the behavior of French speakers learning English, who substitute dental stops for the interdental fricatives.

Some Hispanic English Features

There is a great deal of bilingualism within the Spanish-American community. This has effects on the English dialect that they speak.
There is also frequent CODE SWITCHING between Spanish and English.
Hispanic speakers frequently substitute the 5 vowel system of Spanish for the English vowel system.
and are exchanged.
As in French learners of English, not as in Black English.
Final devoicing ("guys" rhymes with "rice")
Consonant cluster simplification, as in Black English.
Some rules of Spanish phonology are used, such as initial epenthesis
Syntactic differences occur as well, including negative agreement.

Lingua Franca

A language used as a second language, usually for trading purposes.
English is now the principal lingua franca of the world.

Pidgin Languages

Languages created by adults when they share no common language.
Pidgins are not "complete" languages, they lack true syntax in a general rule-governed sense.

Creole Languages

When children learn a pidgin language as a first language it becomes a creole language.
Because the children learn as their first (or only) language, they add to the pidgin all of the complex resources of human language, including a true, complete recursive syntax.