Lecture 1

Language and Society

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Language
- Language- Structured System
- Innate Human Capacity
- Individual and Social Entity
Arbitrariness
Productivity
Displacement
(Design Features, C.F. Hockett)

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• Grammaticality vs. Acceptability
• A Sentence is possible out of its social context-but will remain
unacceptable
• “ Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” (Chomsky, 1965)

• Acceptability- Governed by social rules

• Use of second person pronoun in Hindi- Context Dependent

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• SOCIETY
• For the purpose of study of language- A group of at least two persons drawn
together for a purpose
• Interaction for the purpose of interaction itself

• SPEECH COMMUNITY
• Individuals who speak a language/dialect/variety
• Behaves alike
• An individual can belong to MANY speech communities

• IDENTITY
• Linguistic Construction of membership in or more social group(s)
• Identity vs. Identities

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Language Use

Education Family

Profession Government

Media Friends

Community

Religion
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Variations of Language
Region

Social
Community
Group

Situation Individual

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Dialect
• The Problem:
• All natural languages are acquired in the same manner
• One be a language and other be a dialect?

A language is a dialect with an army and navy

All languages are dialects
Everyone speaks a dialect

Language vs. Dialect: The Criteria?????

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Language Vs. Dialect

Dialect: Socially and Politically

Loaded

-Mutual Intelligibility

Pronunciation
Vocabulary
Grammar
…

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World Englishes
Feature British English American English Indian English
Spelling Colour, centre, travelled Color, center, traveled Colour, center, travelled
Lift (elevator), flat
Vocabulary Lift, flat, lorry Elevator, apartment, truck
(apartment), lorry (truck)

Varied, influenced by
Pronunciation 'ɑː' in path, 'æ' in bath 'æ' in path, 'ɑː' in bath
regional languages

Day/Month/Year (e.g., Month/Day/Year (e.g., Varied, commonly

Dates
1st January 2024) January 1st, 2024) Day/Month/Year

"Excuse me, could you "Excuse me, could you

"Excuse me, can you pass
Spoken conventions please pass me the please pass me the
me the biscuits?"
biscuits?" cookies?"

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Lecture II
06 Feb 2024

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Dialects
• Varieties of a language spoken by a specific group of people,
characterized by differences in vocabulary, grammar, and
pronunciation.

• Regional Dialects
• Social Dialects

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• Idiolects - Individual
• Register - Contextual

• Diglossia

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John Fischer(1958)
• Variation in the pronunciation of the progressive marker in New
England Village
• 12 Boys; 12 Girls
• Aged between 3-10

• Coming vs. Comin

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 ing in
- Girls - Boys
- Kids from higher socio-economic - Kids from lower socio-economic
background background
- Formal situations - Informal; everyday usages
-

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William Labov: Study of [r] in the New York
City
i. ∅
• Post-vocalic [r]
ii. [r] “Fourth Floor”

• Non-rhotic accent in the New York City

• Social Class- Gender- Age and Social Aspiration
• 3 Stores catering to different class of people
• Saks (Upper)- Macy’s (Middle)- S. Klein (Lower)

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 Minimal Pairs

Park-Part
Car- Cash
Word-list

Reading

Careful Speech

Casual Speech

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Fluidity and Continuum
1652 Languages (Grierson)

~800 languages (PSIL)

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• Counting languages is not an easy task.
• Do not know where one language stops and the other begins.

• Fluidity: When two/more languages/dialects/ varieties interacts each other

• Mixing (Word level and Sentence level)

• Language Continuum
• Hindi: Kabul-Kohima-Rangun…
• Tami: Tirupati-Chennai-Madurai-Kanyakumari…

• Across Language families: Asamese- Bangla- Odiya- Telugu…

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Convergence
• Languages/Dialects merge into one another

• Across language families/languages

• Potential to create new languages
• Asamese and Naga= Nagamese
• Tulu and Marathi = Konkani

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Dialect Area
• A series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area
• Mutually intelligible
• Chain of dialects- Dialect continuum: Isogloss

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India as a linguistic Area
Emeneau

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Lecture III
09 Feb 2024

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India as a Linguistic Area

Andamanese

Language Isolates
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• 1652 Languages (Grierson)

• ~800 languages (PSIL)

• Loss/Death of language?

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India as a Linguistic Area
• India has the second highest number of languages (780), after Papua
New Guinea (840).

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 William Jones (1786)

Anglo-Welsh philologist in Bengal

Common ancestry of Sanskrit,

Greek, Latin, Gothic, the Celtic
languages, and Old Persian

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• Language Classification Genetic Relations- “Cognates”
Typological Similarities
Isolating- one morpheme one word
Agglutinative- one morpheme one meaning
Inflectional- no one to one correspondence
between the morpheme and the word

• Common Features and Structures

• Continuum and Mixing

• Tibeto-Burman: Distinct Features from other families in the subcontinent

• Indo-Aryan+ Dravidian: 90% of the population

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Language Families in India
Movements in the geographical region

Source:/www.education.gov.in

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• Multilingualism in India
• Language Policy and Language Planning
• Scheduled languages and official languages

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India

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• Article 343 of the Constitution of India:
the official language of the Union is Hindi in Devanagari script, with official use
of English to continue for 15 years from 1947.
Later, a constitutional amendment, The Official Languages Act, 1963, allowed
for the continuation of English alongside Hindi in the Indian government
indefinitely

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Lecture 4
HS481

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Mother Tongue
• Mother Tongue

• Name of your language

• What we speak vs. what we think we speak

• Mother Tongue > First Language > First Language(s)

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Domains of Language Use
FORMAL INFORMAL
Cognitively Loaded Cognitively less loaded
Education Family
Business Friends
Government Community
Office
Media
Religion

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Standard Language: “Myth” and Reality
• Language has script
• Language has literature
• Language has more number of speakers Super Structure
Sub-Structures
• Language used in formal domains
• Pervasiveness- Expansion
Special Purpose Cognition
• Intelligibility General Purpose Cognition

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“Standardisation” of Language
• Reduce variation and diversity
• Synchronic and diachronic variations
• Old English-Middle English-Modern English – Further Variations
• Standard English
§ Used in print/formal writings
§ Used in news broadcast
§ Taught in schools
§ Learned by non-native speakers
§ Spoken by educated people

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 English Kachru’s Model World English

Standard: RP
Non-Standard English

World English(es)

English- Native- Second and

Foreign Language

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Dialect
• How are natural languages acquired?
• How one becomes a language and the other becomes a dialect?
• What is the distinction?

• “A language is a dialect with an army and navy.”

• Socially loaded term

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Dialects
• Local/regional
• Variety, Vernacular, Non-standard
• Non-prestigious
• Language of the poor, underprivileged
• Non Standard and non formal
• Subordinate variety

• Dialect Continuum: Regional, social, political, …

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Lecture 5
14 Feb 2024

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Language Contact

• Geographical Contact
• Isogloss
• Language Continuum
• Dialect/Linguistic Area

• Convergence

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Language Contact-
Not only limited to geographical contact
• Borrowings/Translations (Form and/or Meaning)
• Mixing
• Blending
• Relexification
• Code Switching
• Code Mixing

• Lingua-Franca

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• Economic-Trade Reasons
• Colonialization
• World Wars
• Globalization
• Mass Media
• Technological Developments
• New Media

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Lingua Franca
• Specified social situations

• Simplification- Reducing irregular

forms, redundancies, structural
complexities PIDGIN
• Reduction
• Native Language Interference
• Errors/Mistakes

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 CREOLIZATION
Stages
Ø Different History
PRE-PIDGIN Ø Native Speakers
Ø Structure vs. Vocabulary

PIDGIN

CREOLE

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 https://chat.openai.com/share/afd5dbd0-452b-4878-8065-9693dcce528d

DECREOLIZATION

§ Defends simplification

§ “African American Vernacular English”

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Story of ESPERANTO
• 1870s
• Easy flexible language
• Reduce “time and labour we spend in learning foreign tongues”

• Lexically Romanic
• Morphologically Agglutinative- and sometimes isolating
• SVO
• Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary and Semantics- Based on Indo-
European Languages

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 Interrelation
Lecbetween
6 language
and identity
Language and Identity

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Interrelation Parents Peers

between language
and identity Gender Region

Occupation Class

Ethnicity

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 Social Identity Theory

Henri Tajfel in the 1970s.

• Individuals categorize themselves and others into social groups based on
shared characteristics, leading to the formation of social identity.
• In-Group and Out-Group Dynamics: In-group bias.

• Language is a crucial tool for expressing and reinforcing social identity. It

can serve to signal group membership and foster communication within the
in-group.

• Application to Language and Identity:

• Accent and Dialect
• Slang, jargon and argot
• Language Attitudes SHSS|IITI|TJ
• Sociolect
• Social+Dialect. The term refers to language use that is specific to
people belonging to the same social group and share the same
social factors, such as class, age, or occupation.
• Idiolect
• refers to the specific way an individual speaks. Idiolects have
language features from different social groups, creating a unique
mix of features.

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Accommodation Theory

• Proposed by Howard Giles in the 1970s.

• People adjust their communication styles to either converge with or
diverge from the communication styles of others in an interaction.

• Accommodation is influenced by social identity and the desire for

social approval.

Application to Language and Identity:

• Code-Switching
• Communication Styles
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Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory
• Developed by Giles, Bourhis, and Taylor in the 1970s.

• Ethnolinguistic vitality refers to the strength of a language within a particular

social group or community.
• Factors Influencing Vitality: demographic strength, institutional support, and
attitudes towards the language that contribute to the vitality of a language.
• Impact on Identity: Ethnolinguistic vitality is intertwined with the social
identity of a community, influencing how individuals perceive their own
identity in relation to language.

Application to Language and Identity:

• Language Maintenance and Shift
• Prestige and Attitudes

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 Language
Attitudes

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 Why are language attitudes important?

BEHAVIOUR BIAS PRESTIGE EDUCATIONAL LANGUAGE

POLICIES VITALITY

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Language
Purism?

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Linguistic
Imperialism?

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 Meyerhoff, M. (2011). Introducing
Sociolinguistics (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Suggested
Readings Garrett, P. (2010). Attitudes to Language.
Cambridge University Press.

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