Lecture Two: Major Concepts in Sociolinguistics

1. Speech Community
It is variously defined on subjective or objective criteria. Objective criteria would group
speakers together in a speech community if the distribution of a variable was consistent with
respect to other factors (e.g., style). Subjective criteria would group speakers as a speech
community if they shared a sense of and belief in co-membership.
Speech is what creates community and mediates between individuals and members of
various subgroups who, as all experience tells us, are able to communicate with each other in
spite of the fact that their codes are not completely congruous.
2. Varieties, Dialect, and Language (brief definitions)
Variety: Relatively neutral term used to refer to languages and dialects. Avoids the problem of
drawing a distinction between the two, and avoids negative attitudes often attached to the term
dialect. So, it can be used for different languages but most frequently used for different forms of
one language (the often referred to as dialects).
Types of variety can be distinguished depending on the social factors which motivate them:
dialects, sociolects, and registers.

Dialects: regional variety

Sociolects: variety which is influenced by a speakers' social background (profession, age, ethnic
group, sex, education, etc) Example: jargon (e.g. special vocabulary used by linguists)
Registers: variety which is influenced by specific speech situation (factors influencing the
choice of a specific register are: topic, relationship between interlocutors and medium (written or
spoken language)
Language: A collection of dialects or varieties (which share central features). Anyone who
speaks an English dialect speaks the English language.
Language vs. dialect: two dialects belong to the same language if they share a common
grammar and vocabulary and if they are mutually intelligible (there is no clear cut distinction).
Dialect vs. accent: 'dialect' includes grammatical and lexical differences, whereas 'accent' only
refers to pronunciation.
Standard variety

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 The variety of language that that has a highest status in a community or nation and which
is usually based on the speech and writing of educated speakers of the language. The standard
variety of a language is described and structured in dictionaries and grammars (standardization).
Standard English is that variety of English which is usually used in print, and which is
normally taught in schools and to non-native speakers learning the language. It is also the variety
which is normally spoken by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other similar
situations. (Trudgill, 2000, pp. 6-7)
The difference between standard and nonstandard, it should be noted, has nothing in
principle to do with differences between formal and colloquial language, or with concepts such
as 'bad language'. Standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants, and Standard
English speakers swear as much as others. (It is worth pointing this out because many people
appear to believe that if someone uses slang expressions or informal turns of phrase this means
that they are not speaking Standard English.). (Trudgill, 2000, pp. 6-7)1
Historically speaking, the standard variety of the language developed out of the English
dialects used in and around London as these were modified through the centuries by speakers at
the court, by scholars from the universities and other writers, and, later on, by the so-called
Public Schools. As time passed, the English used in the upper classes of society in the capital
city came to diverge quite markedly from that used by other social groups and came to be
regarded as the model for all those who wished to speak and write 'well'. When printing became
widespread, it was the form of English most widely used in books, and, although it has
undergone many changes, it has always retained its character as the form of the English language
with the highest profile. (Trudgill, 2000, pp. 6-7)
Generally speaking, Standard English has a widely accepted and codified grammar.
There is a general consensus among educated people, and in particular among those who hold
powerful and influential positions, as to what is Standard English and what is not - Standard
English is, as it were, imposed from above over the range of regional dialects - the dialect
continuum - and for this reason can be called a superposed variety of language. (Trudgill, 2000,
pp. 6-7)
Language vs. Dialect

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SOCIOLINGUISTICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY (Fourth edition)

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 Neither term represents a particularly clear-cut or watertight concept. Dialect term widely
applied to what are considered subvarieties of a single language. Generally, dialect and accent
are distinguished by how much of the linguistic system differs. Dialects differ on more than just
pronunciation, i.e., on the basis of morphosyntactic structure and/or how semantic relations are
mapped into the syntax. As far as dialect is concerned, for example, it is possible, in England, to
speak of 'the Norfolk dialect' or 'the Suffolk dialect'. On the other hand, one can also talk of more
than one 'Norfolk dialect' - 'East Norfolk' or 'South Norfolk', for instance. If you travel from
Norfolk into Suffolk, the county immediately to the south, investigating conservative rural
dialects as you go, you will find, at least at some points, that the linguistic characteristics of
these dialects change gradually from place to place. There is no clear linguistic break between
Norfolk and Suffolk dialects. It is not possible to state in linguistic terms where people stop
speaking Norfolk dialect and start speaking Suffolk dialect. There is, that is, a geographical
dialect continuum. (Trudgill, 2000, p. 5)
The same sort of problem arises with the term language. For example, Dutch and German
are known to be two distinct languages. However, at some places along the Netherlands
Germany frontier the dialects spoken on either side of the border are extremely similar. If we
choose to say that people on one side of the border speak German and those on the other Dutch,
our choice is again based on social and political rather than linguistic factors. This point is
further emphasized by the fact that the ability of speakers from either side of the border to
understand each other will often be considerably greater than that of German speakers from this
area to understand speakers of other German dialects from distant parts of Austria or Switzerland.
(Trudgill, 2000, p. 5)
Now, in attempting to decide which language someone is speaking, we could say that if
two speakers cannot understand one another, then they are speaking different languages.
Similarly, if they can understand each other, we could say that they are speaking dialects of the
same language. The criterion of 'mutual intelligibility', and other purely linguistic criteria, are,
therefore, of less importance in the use of the terms language and dialect than are political and
cultural factors, ((Trudgill, 2000, p. 5)
A more extreme case which illustrates the socio sociopolitical nature of these two terms
can be taken from Scandinavia. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are all autonomous, standard
languages, corresponding to three distinct nation states. Educated speakers of all three, however,

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can communicate freely with each other. But in spite of this mutual intelligibility, it would not
make sense to say that Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are really the same language. This would
constitute a direct contradiction of the political and cultural facts. (Trudgill, 2000, p. 6)
Regional and Social Dialect
People often use a language to signal their membership of particular groups and to
construct different aspects of their social identity. Social status, gender, age, ethnicity and the
kinds of social networks that people belong to turn out to be important dimensions of identity in
many communities. No two people speak exactly the same. There are infinite sources of
variation in speech.
Some features of speech, however, are shared by groups, and become important because
they differentiate one group from another. Just as different languages often serve a unifying and
separating function for their speakers, so do speech characteristics within languages. The
pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of Scottish speakers of English is in some respects quite
distinct from that of people from England, for example.
Regional dialects (Regional Dialectology)
Regional variation takes time to develop. British and US English, for instance, provide
much more evidence of regional variation than New Zealand or Australian English.
Dialectologists can distinguish regional varieties for almost every English county, e.g. Yorkshire,
Lancashire, Northumberland, Somerset, Cornwall and so on, and for many towns too. Some
British dialects, such as Scouse (heard in Liverpool), Cockney and Geordie, even have distinct
names showing how significant they are in distinguishing groups from one another. Within the
London area, the Cockney dialect is quite distinctive with its glottal stop [c] instead of [t]
between vowels in words like bitter and butter , and its rhyming slang: e.g. apples and pears for
‘stairs’, lean and lurch for ‘church’, the undoubtedly sexist trouble and strife for ‘wife’ and the
more ambiguous cows and kisses for ‘the missus’.
Example

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Figure: Words for splinter in English dialects Source : Trudgill (1994: 21).
This figure is a map of England showing where different dialect words are used for the standard
English word splinter. The boundary lines are called isoglosses. This is just one word out of
thousands of linguistic features which vary in different dialects, and which were documented by
Harold Orton’s comprehensive Survey of English Dialects in the 1950s. When all the information
on linguistic regional variation is gathered together on a map, with isoglosses drawn between
areas where different vocabulary, or grammatical usages or pronunciations occur, the result looks
something like a spider’s web. Some of the web’s lines are thicker than others because a number
of boundaries between features coincide. But there is also a great deal of overlap between areas.
The line between an area where people use [a] rather than [a:] in a word like path , for example,
does not coincide with the line which separates areas using have you any sugar? rather than have
you got any sugar? Areas which use the word elevenses rather than snap or snack do not all use
different words for brew or snowflake or manure or splinter . The same vocabulary may be used
throughout an area where contrasts in the pronunciation of words are quite dramatic. In other
words, defining linguistic areas is not at all straightforward.

Social dialect (Social dialectology): The study of linguistic variation in relation to speakers’
participation or membership in social groups, or in relation to other non-linguistic factors.

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 It is easiest to see the evidence for social dialects in places such as Indonesia and India
where social divisions are very clear-cut. In these countries, there are caste systems determined
by birth, and strict social rules govern the kind of behavior appropriate to each group. The rules
cover such matters as the kind of job people can have, who they can marry, how they should
dress, what they should eat, and how they should behave in a range of social situations. Not
surprisingly, these social distinctions have corresponding speech differences. A person’s dialect
is an indication of their social background.
Regional dialects involve features of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar which
differ according to the geographical area the speakers come from. Social dialects are
distinguished by features of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar according to the social
group of the speakers. Social group is usually evaluated on the basis of a range of features, such
as education, occupation, residential area and income level. So people who come from different
social groups speak different social dialects if they use different words, pronunciations, and
grammatical features. Examples of these are discussed in the next section.

Styles , Registers and Genres

The study of dialects is further complicated by the fact that speakers can adopt different
styles and registers of speaking, and both spoken and written language can be seen as belonging
to different genres of language. So while differences in dialect have to do with speakers and
their regional or social identities, styles, registers, and genres have to do with different contexts
of use. Although the terms style, register, and genre have been used in different ways by
different scholars, and there may be overlap between these three terms, we can delineate broad
categories which differentiate them. The term style is most often used to discuss differences in
formality; register generally denotes specific ways of speaking associated with particular
professions or social groups; and genre is understood as a set of co-occurring language features
associated with particular frames (Bauman 2000).
Style
When choosing a style, you can speak very formally or very informally, your choice
being governed by circumstances. Ceremonial occasions almost invariably require very formal
speech, public lectures somewhat less formal, casual conversation quite informal, and
conversations between intimates on matters of little importance may be extremely informal and

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casual. We may try to relate the level of formality chosen to a variety of factors: the kind of
occasion; the various social, age, and other differences that exist between the participants; the
particular task that is involved, for example, writing or speaking; the emotional involvement of
one or more of the participants; and so on.
Register
Register is another complicating factor in any study of language varieties. Generally
speaking, registers are sets of language items associated with discrete occupational or social
groups. Agha (2006, 24) describes a register as ‘a linguistic repertoire that is associated, culture-
internally, with particular social practices and with persons who engage in such practices’.
Speakers learn different registers through socialization in different cultural groups within their
society. What we refer to as ‘legalese’ or ‘personal ads’ are identifiable registers for most people.
Use of such registers thus either conforms to the norms for a particular, socially situated way of
using language, or is a way of invoking the context usually associated with that register. Of
course, one person may control a variety of registers: you can be a stockbroker and an
archeologist, or a mountain climber and an economist. A register helps you to construct an
identity at a specific time or place.
Genre
A related term is genre, which overlaps in meaning with register but is usually associated
with particular linguistic features; thus register focuses more on the social situation, and genre
more on the text type (Ferguson 1994; Lee 2001). However, like a register, a genre can also
function ‘as a routinized vehicle for encoding and expressing a particular order of knowledge and
experience’ (Bauman 2000, 80). For instance, even if we do not understand all of the words, we
all recognize the form of a recipe, a personals ad, a news article, or an infomercial. Thus, while
such ways of speaking do require a certain socialization, it is not necessarily socialization into
a particular social or occupational group but rather an acquired familiarity with certain norms of
language use in particular contexts and for specific functions.

Dialect, style, register, and genre differences are largely independent: you can talk
casually about mountain climbing in a local variety of a language, or you can write a formal
technical study of chocolate making. However, speakers have clear ideas about which ways of
speaking are considered ‘appropriate’ for a particular speech event or social context.

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