Language Variation

preface

 Regional dialect marks off the residents of one region from those of

other regions

 Social dialect would be a variety associated with a specific social class or

group, marking their class or group off from other classes or group.

 Language variation tells the important things about language and how

they change.
 Regional Variation

 Dialect geography has employed assumption and methods drawn from

historical linguistics, and many of its result have been used to confirm
findings drawn from other historical sources.
 Speakers distance themselves from one another over time and over
space
 Dialects become new languages
 Unintelligible to one another
 E.g., Latin became French in Frances, Spanish in Spain, Italian in Italy
 Historical Linguistics tells how language changes over time and how
languages relate to one another.
 i.e: American and British variation (some factors that influence of those
variation such as distance, time, and political factors)
 Traditional Model of Linguistic Change

 ‘Family Tree’
 e.g., Latin has branched into French, Spanish, and Italian

 Phonemic ‘split’
 e.g., English /f/ and /v/ are distinctive phonemes

 The ‘comparative method’ of reconstruction

 e.g., English Knave and German Knabe come from the same source

 Internal reconstruction
 e.g., mouse and mice have different vowel sounds
 Dialect Atlases

 Dialect Atlases show the geographical boundaries of the distribution of

a particular linguistic feature by drawing a line on a map
 Such a line is called an isogloss: on one side of the line people say one
thing, on the other they say a different thing
 The isoglosses show a considerable amount of crisscrossing caused a
number of coincid
 The coincide called a bundle of isoglosses
 A bundle is often said to marks a dialect boundary
 Set of Isoglos
 The Rhenish Fan
 Rhenish Fan is the best-known sets of
isoglosses in Europe which Low
German set to the north from High
German to the south.
 In Low German, it gives variant forms
using [p,t,k], but in High German, it
gives variant forms using [f,x,s]
 E.g : ‘make’ [makƏn], [maxƏn]; ‘that’
[dat], [das]; ‘village’ [dorp], [dorf];
and ‘I’ [ik], [ix].
 The boundaries of rhenish fan
coincide with old ecclesiastical and
political boundaries
 Set of Isogloss

 Focal area
 an area whose dialect has exerted influence on the dialects of surrounding areas, as
reflected in a set of is oglosses more or less concentrically surrounding it.
 Relic area
 an area isolated from the influences of any focal area and preserving older linguistic
forms that have been lost in other regions
 A transition area
 an area whose dialect has been influenced by the dialect of one or more neighboring
focal areas
 Regional Varietion

 International varieties
 Pronounciation and vocabulary differences are probably the differences people
aremoat aware of between different dialects of English, but there are grammatical
differences too.
 Example 2 on page 132 in Holmes’ book

 To British visitor, when the New Zealander’s said ‘dad’, it sounds like ‘dead’

 Intra-national or intra-continental variation

 Here the focus is on the dialect differences within one country.

 Example 4 on page 134 in Holmes’ book

 Regional Varietion

 Cross-continental variation: dialect chains

 We have three dialect chains across Europe:
 1. One links all dialects of German, Dutch and Flemish from Switzerland through Austria
and Germany to the Netherlands and Belgium.
 2. One links dialects of Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian.
 3. A Scandinavian chain links between Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. Therefore, the
Swedes and Norwegians
 Social Variation

 RP (Received Pronunciation) : a
social accent:
 It is the accent of the best educated
and the most prestigious members
of English society. The label
derives from the accent which was
“received” at the royal court. The
RP was promoted by the BBC for
decades. It is a social accent not a
regional one, and it conceals a
speaker’s regional origin.
 Social Dialects
 Dialects are linguistic varieties which are
linguistically distinguishable by their
vocabulary, grammar and punctuation.
 RP is a social accent.
 The Standard English is a social
dialect. Standard English is more
accommodating than RP, and allows for
some variation within its boundaries. It is
estimated that up to 15 percent of the
British regularly use standard British
English. In Standard English, a limited
amount of grammatical variation is
acceptable. The dialect “standard
English” is spoken with different accents.
Also, there are many standard Englishes.
 Standard English

 The American Standard English differs from Australian Standard

English. Both also differ fro the British Standard English.
 Non standard dialects: Any linguistic form that is not a part of Standard English is
regarded as “non-standard”. The standard dialect is the first to be codified, so other
dialects are always compared to the standard dialect.
 Non standard is a term that gives negative connotations. This is because the term is
related to the less prestigious classes. But we must understand that there is nothing
regarded as bad or inferior in linguistics. Therefore, linguistically speaking these non
standard forms are regarded as different. Some sociolinguists use the
term“vernacular” rather than “non standard” to avoid any negative implication.
 Vernacular forms have features that differ from those of the standard forms. They
tend to be learnt at home and used in informal and casual contexts. Vernacular
dialects, like vernacular languages, lack public or overt prestige although they are
valued by their users, especially as a means of expressing solidarity.
 Standard English

 There is a patterned variation in the way people speak. This variation

reflects social factors. There is a relation between speech and social
status:
 A- Castes: People can be grouped together on the basis of similar social and economic
factors. People’s languages reflect their social grouping when they use different social
dialects. Social dialects can be seen clearly in Indonesia or India where social
groupings are very clear. In these countries there area caste systems determined by
birth, and strict social rules govern the behavior of each group.
 In example 9 the Indonesian student at a British university says that he has to choose
different patterns or styles while speaking to different groups. In Javanese there are
distinguishable stylistic levels.
 Standard English

 There are 3 distinct social groups and 3 associated dialects.

 1- The dialect of the lowest status group (peasants, uneducated town people). It
consists of three stylistic levels.
 2- The dialect of urbanized people with some education. It has 5 stylistic levels.
Some of them are shared with the previous dialect.
 3- The dialect of the highly educated people. It consists of five stylistic levels. They
are different from the stylistic levels of the urbanized people dialect.
 B- Social Class: The term (class) refers to a group of people who share similarities
in economic and social status. Status differences are in relation to (family
background, wealth, education). There is a strong relationship between social
class and language patter, and that’s why people of different social classes do not
speak the same way.
 Standard English

 There are 3 distinct social groups and 3 associated dialects.

 On the level of vocabulary, For example, in England there were words that marked the
upper class English people (U speakers) from the (non U speakers). For example, (U
speakers) used “sitting room” rather than “lounge”. They used “writing paper” instead of
“note paper”, “bag” instead of “Hand bag”, and “sofa” instead of “settee”. However, the
barriers between social groups are not fixed, because you can move up or down the social
ladder. This is because the choice of vocabulary is superficial and can conceal/ hide social
class membership.
 On the level of pronunciation, the speech of different social groups is distinguished by
frequency which they use particular features.
 For example, the feature of “h dropping” reflects the social class of the speaker. In West
Yorkshire and Norwich, unlike the highest social group (the upper middle class UMC), the
lowest social group (which are the low or working class) dropped most of their “h”s.
 Standard English

 The figure 6.4 explains that:

 1. The “h-dropping” feature is studied in five social groupings in the West Yorkshire and
Norwich.
 2. The label used for the lowest social group is (lower or working class).
 3. The label given for the highest social group is (UMC).
 4. The lowest social group (which is the low or working class) dropped most of their “h”s.

 5.The highest social group (the upper middle class UMC), dropped the least number of
“h”s.
 6. The pattern is the same all over England. Although the two places differ in the
percentage of h dropping, the pattern is the same in the two places, as the UMC drops the
least number of “h”s and the working class drops the most of them.
 7. In each social group, you will have individual social variable. For example, a person
from the third social group would drop all his/her “h”s although he doesn’t belong to the
working class.
 Standard English

 Pronouncing vowels is also one of the features. Labov in a study ofNew Yorkers’ speech measured
the slight differences in the way people pronounce the same vowel. He made a score system to rank
the vowel pronunciation in relation to the most prestigious or standard pronunciation.
 In New Zealand, a similar scoring system was used in surveying around 140 people
living in the South Island to measure their pronunciation of diphthongs in words like
“boat”, “bite” and “bout”. The result revealed the social grouping as the highest social
group scored high percentage, and they were closer to the standard pronunciation RP,
while the low social group scored less. The higher score was allocated to the
pronunciation that was close to RP and vice versa. The highest social group scored high,
and the lowest social group scored less. In New Zealand, the RP is regarded as a social
norm.
 - In Paris, the pronunciation of the first vowel in words like “Casser” or “pas” varies from
one social group to another. Some people would pronounce them as “cosser” and “po”.
 Standard English

 On the level of grammatical patterns, there is also a variable that prove social
grouping. The higher social groups use more of the standard grammatical forms
and few of non-standard or vernacular forms. For example, the Standard English
would use “she walks every day”, “I finished my homework”, while the vernacular
would use “ she walk” and “I finish”.
 There is a pattern of negation called “negative concord” which means double
negation. It is not used by Standard English as it only uses one negation form.
However, most vernacular dialects can have more than one negative form. It is
much more frequent in lower class rather than UMC.
 In standard pronunciation, the glottal stop is avoided, while used more
comfortably in vernacular.
 The linguistics variable

 Linguistic variable is a linguistics item which has identifiable variants.

For instance:
singing  singin’
Fishing  fishin’
Farm and far  sometimes these words give r-less pronunciation and
zero pronunciation.
 The linguistics variable

 Labov (1971) linguistics variable factors:

 An indicator: a linguistic variable to which little or no social import is attached

 A marker: carry with it social significance.

 A stereotype: consious characterization of the speech of particular group

 E.g New York boid for bird or Toitytoid Street

 Linguistics and social variation

 Gumperz shows how rather small differences in speech can effectively

distinguish sub-groups in society from one another in a study of
linguistic usage in the village of khalapur, 80 miles north of Delhi. This
study shows a relation between linguistics variation and caste
membership.
 In that place, there are some Hidndu caste membership with Brahma,
Rajputs, Vaishya, and several groups of artisans and laborers lower
down. And three untouchable caste; Chamars (landless labor), Jatia
chamars (leather workers and shoe markers), and Bhangis (sweepers).
 For instance, in jatia chamers have a characteristics pronounciation of
words that end in [æ] in all other viallage varieties.
 Quantifiable factors in society

 Social-class membership
 Gender
 Age
 Ethnicity, and etc
 Linguistics variable

 (Wardoough, 2006) states that the variable of gender and age are fairly
easy to relate the occurrence rather than race and ethnicity are most
subjective and less easily quantifiable. In addition, the most
complicated factor of all is social-class membership.
 Before we conduct social-class membership, we have to use a number of
different scale of classifying people when they attempt to place
individuals somewhere within social system such as an occupational
scale, an educational scale, income level.
 Cont…

 An occupational scale deals with a job that someone have. Someone

may work as professional and executive businesses; semi-professionals;
technician and owner of small business.
 An educational scale deals levels of education; graduate or professional
education; college or university degree; attendance at college but no
degree; high school education; less than seven years of formal
education.
 Income levels deals with salary that focus on how much money people
have. Regarding income levels, instigators must concern with both type
of housing and its location.
 Social grouping

 (Wolfram and Fasold ,1974, p. 44) point out that ‘there are other objective
approaches [to establishing social groupings] not exclusively dependent on
socio-economic ranking. . . . An investigator may look at such things as
church membership, leisure-time activities, or community organizations.’

 (Wardaough, 2006) points out all scale to measure social groups such as
educational achievement, professional training, occupation (sometimes
parental occupation too), ‘blue’- or ‘white’-collar work, salary or income level,
source of that salary, income, or wage (this difference also being important),
gender, age, residential area, race, and ethnicity.
 Cont..

 In his study of linguistic variation in New York, (Labov, 1966) used the
three criteria of education, occupation, and income to set up ten social
class.
 In his study of linguistics variation in Norwich, England, (Trudgill,
1974) distinguishes five social classes: middle middle class (MMC),
lower middle class (LMC), upper working class (UWC), middle working
class (MWC), and lower working class (LWC). He interviewed ten of
each electoral plus ten school-age children from two schools. Trudgill
uses 6 factors to score (0-5); those factors are occupation, education,
income, type of housing, locality, and father’s occupation.
 Cont..

 (Shuy et al.., 1968) took sample in Detroit and used 702 informants.
They used to set there criteria to classify social criteria; those criteria
are amount of education, occupation, and place of residents.
 The drawbacks of socio-class designations

 (Bainbridge, 1994: 4023) says that sociolinguists consider social class

as independent variable, with variations in speech dependent upon
class variations. They seldom attempt anything theories why socio-class
should have an impact.
 (Woolard, 1985, 738) expresses that sociolinguists have often borrowed
sociological concepts. She adds (p. 739), ‘However, to say that our
underlying social theories are in need of examination, elaboration, or
reconsideration is not to say that the work sociolinguists have done or
the concepts we have employed are without merit.’
 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

 Questionnaire designed is usual kind of data collection device.

 Questionnaire must be designed in a variety of circumstances such as
 1. A casual situation (very casual speech), with sub-categories such as
speech outside the formal interview, or conversation with a third party.
 2. An interview situation (more formal speech)
 3. The reading aloud of a story (the most formal speech all)
 4. The reading aloud of lists of words and of pairs words (the most
formal speech all)
 Cont..

 The part of linguists’ task is sampling: finding representative of group

of speakers.
 Random sample is the best of all. In a random sample everyone in the
population to be sampled has an equal chance of being selected.
 Judgment sample, the investigator chooses the subjects according to a
set of criteria. e.g., age, gender, social class, education, and so on.
Experts Year Random Informants Location
Sampling
Labov 1966 Did not use 89 New York
completely
random
sample
Shuy et all 1968 Random 702 (only 36 Detroit
sampling selected by the
investigators)
Wolfram 1969 Random 48 black Detroit
sampling informants
plus 12 white
informants
(60)