Lecture 6

The synchronic approach to the English vocabulary

Classification of varieties of English as given by Quirk/Greenbaum (1973) (quoted in Lipka, 1990:17) in A University Grammar of English. The varieties co-existing within the linguistic aggregate of Contemporary English are the following: 1. Region (geographical variation) AmE, AusE 2. Education and social standing lit, sl 3. Subject matter register/field law, med 4. Medium mode lit, poet 5. Attitude style fml, humour 6. Interference Fr, Ger

REGION For geographical or regional variation the term dialect is traditionally used: dialect is the language form of a particular group of speakers. Dialect is currently often used in a broad sense, i.e. both for a regional, geographical variety, as well as for a social subclass of a speech community. Variety (neutral term) frequently preferred today since it lacks the negative connotations, or shades of meaning, of dialect. Some examples of differences between British and American English. AmE: railroad, conductor, baggage, package, gas(oline), truck, sidewalk as opposed to BrE: railway, guard, luggage, parcel, petrol, lorry, pavement.
AusE: bring a plate, give me a tick

REGION -Irish: blarney (flattering, cajoling talk), brogue, galore (abundance, sufficiency), colleen (name for a girl), shamrock (trefoil, clover), Tory (originally an Irish robber), banshee (Gaelic bean sidhe, fairy woman). Hooligan is taken from the name of a wild Irish family that became notorious in London during the 1890s. -Welsh: bard, coracle (a kind of boat used on the Dee), flannel. -Scottish Gaelic: loch (lake), bog (wet spongy ground), cairn (mound of stones as a monument or landmark), clan, glen (narrow valley). The word whisky is an Anglicised version of uisgebeatha, water of life: reek (smoke), shank (stalk) and stock (chap, bloke).
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EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STANDING -considerable variation depending on education and social standing =referred to as sociolect or social dialect. A speaker may show more similarity in his language to people from the same social group in a different area than to people from a different social group in the same area. -the so-called subphonemic differences can be said to be socially meaningful. -e.g. the pronunciation of a glottal stop between vowels as an allophone of /t/ (e.g. little /li l/) - a characteristic of many urban accents of England and Scotland; -aitch-dropping at the beginning of words (e.g. give him his hat /giv im iz ht/).

America - William Labov an individuals accent and dialect varies systematically with the formality or informality of the situation in which he finds himself; e.g. New Yorkers - pronunciation or [r] before consonants in farm, father, etc. - Most middle-class New Yorkers have both pronunciations; High social class - great incidence of forms with a pre-consonantal [r] in ones informal and relatively uncontrolled speech. lower middle class: a higher incidence of pre-consonantal [r] than do speakers from the upper middle class in more formal situations; Great Britain - Peter Trudgill (1974). Interesting finding: both in America and in Britain, women are more likely than men to adopt the accent or dialect that is associated, in general, with higher social status. This shows that sex can be considered another dimension of language variation.

SUBJECT MATTER

Varieties according to subject matter = registers. -registers = speech adaptations that depend upon the social and communicative demands of the situation (Andersen, 1978, quoted in Berko Gleason, 1989:330). -registers = differences observable within speakers, across situations. Most of speakers : a single language and often a single dialect, but several registers in order to be socially acceptable. -register - 'varieties according to use', in contrast with dialects, defined as 'varieties according to user' (Halliday, McIntosh & Stevens, 1964 quoted in Hudson, R.A. 1991:48). Slight oversimplification: ones dialect shows who (or what) you are, whilst ones register shows what you are doing.

Speech: conversational language is often: Inexplicit spontaneous: speakers have to think standing up; use of fillers vocabulary of everyday speech tends to be informal, domestic, and limited; interactive nature of conversation requires a great deal of maneuvering which would not usually be found in writing; conversation can use a wide range of tones of voice.

Medium
Writing: - language sufficiently clear and precise that it can be interpreted on its own; - sentences properly constructed, they may have an intricate structure; - writing tends to make greater use of vocabulary whose meaning is precise. - writing has its own ways of organizing the exposition of a text (e.g. preface, summaries, indexes, sub-headings). - there are many written effects which cannot easily be spoken (such as train timetables, graphs, and formulae); - Written language is usually much more permanent and formal than speech
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ATTITUDE -linguistic form may be determined by the speakers attitude to the hearer or reader (the addressee), to the subject matter, or to the purpose of the message. This variety is often marked by the ambiguous label style. -The University Grammar of English (UGE) distinguishes five variants of attitude along the following scale: rigid / FORMAL / neutral / INFORMAL / familiar (of which only the two in capitals are explicitly marked). -Lexicon: finer distinctions are usually drawn in many dictionaries different kinds and different degrees of formality and informality -Etymology: formal words are normally of classical or Romance origin, while informal words usually derive from Anglo-Saxon.

INTERFERENCE = the contact of L1 with a foreign language; it includes varieties caused by the traces left by a speakers native language when speaking English. Thus, speakers of English as a foreign language make unaware attempts to force English into the grammatical patterns of their mother tongue. This tendency is the source of further varieties of English, such as the English spoken by French, vs. that spoken by a Russian/ German/ Romanian. -Interference at the phonological, grammatical and lexical level. -on the lexical level, interference is probably more important than on the phonological and grammatical levels. In this respect loan words and loan translations must be mentioned as the result of interference. The so-called false-friends also belong here. For example, the German words sensibel sensitive, brav good are identified with the English sensible reasonable and brave courageous. The English library (R. bibliotec) is identified with the Romanian librrie, magazine (R. revist) with magazin, and compass (R. busol) with compas, E lentil vs. R lentila.

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