Sociolinguistics and Language Variation

Objectives

By the end of the lecture:

 Students will understand how language and social factors are interrelated;
 They will understand basic concepts in sociolinguistics,
 They will be aware of the effects of the social norms and the contextual facts on their
linguistic behaviors.

1. Language Variation

Language variation is one of the major areas in sociolinguistic research.

Sociolinguists seek to explain how language use varies in different social, regional and
contextual situations, within and across social groups. No one uses the same linguistic forms
all the time. As Wardhaugh (2006, p. 5) explained, "when we look closely at any language,
will discover time and time again that there is considerable internal variation and that
speakers make constant use of many different possibilities offered to them." linguistic
variation is noticed at the lexical, grammatical and phonological levels of language.
Sociolinguists argue that variation is not meaningless or random as Chomsky said. It is
patterned according to social parameters to covey a social meaning. The use of one variant
(linguistic feature) of a linguistic variable leads to language variation. In any speech
community, there exist a range of distinguished linguistic features that characterize the speech
of its members. These linguistic features can be dialects, accents or languages in multilingual
societies. Moreover the same speaker employs different linguistic forms depending on the
communicative context where language is used. These contextual varieties are registers and
styles.

William Labov is considered as the founder of variationist sociolinguistics. In his

study of the social stratification of English in New York City (1966), he introduced the
quantitative approach to test the relationship between the social class of the speaker and the
linguistic variable (r). His research revealed that the pronunciation of (r) is frequently used in
the speech of people from the upper classes. On the other hand, the omission of (r) is related
to the speech of speakers from the lower classes.

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 2. Variety

Variety is a general term that is used in sociolinguistics to describe social, regional or

contextual linguistic forms. It can refer to dialects, accents, registers or styles. Some varieties
are standard and formal others are nonstandard and colloquial. This neutral term is used in
many situations to avoid problems related to language-dialect distinction. We mention some
definitions of this concept proposed by sociolinguists:

 It is a neutral term we apply to any particular kind of language which we wish, for
some purpose, to consider as a single entity (Chambers and Trudgill, 1998, p. 5.).
 It is a set of linguistic items with similar social distribution (Hudson, 1996).
 Anybody of human speech patterns which is sufficiently homogeneous to be analyzed
by available techniques of synchronic arrangements or processes with broad enough
semantic scope to function in all forma contexts of communication (Ferguson, 1972).
 A linguistic system used by a certain group of speakers or in certain social contexts
(Swann et al. 2004).

A variety is a set of linguistic items that constitute a linguistic system whose use is
associated with regional, social and contextual factors.

3. Interspeakers Variation and Intra-speaker Variation

The way people use language differs from one social group to another and from one
region to another. Therefore, the use of a particular variety indicates the social background of
the speaker such as his age, gender, social class, ethnicity as well as the region where he
comes from. This type of variety is users-related variety or intergroup variation (variation
according to users). On the other hand, variation occurs in the speech of the same speaker.
Varieties that are used by the same speaker depending on the context of language use are use-
related varieties or intra-speaker variation (variation according to use)

4. Language Variation According to Users

Dialects and accents are used to refer to linguistic varieties that are used across
regional and social groups. Geographical location, social class, age, gender and ethnicity are
the main factors that affect our linguistic choices, which results in the use of different dialects
and accents.

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 4.1.Dialects

Many speakers can face some difficulties to classify the variety they use as being a
dialect or a language. Sociolinguists set some criteria to make the distinction between dialect
and language. Haugen (1966) claimed that language is a single linguistic norm or a set of
linguistic norms, while dialect is one of these linguistic norms. This means that language is a
collection of dialects. Thus, language is larger more prestigious than dialect (Hudson, 2001).
Each dialect is distinguished by its grammar, vocabulary and phonology. Although dialects of
a given language can be linguistically similar, they have different social meanings. They
present important information about the speakers' identity.

4.1.1. Mutual Intelligibility

Many researchers assert that dialects of the same language should be mutually
intelligible. This means that speakers of these dialects can understand each other. According
to this criterion, when varieties are mutually intelligible, they are dialects of the same
language. However, the criterion of mutual intelligibility cannot work in all situations since
they are many languages which are mutually intelligible such as Danish, Norwegian, and
Swedish. . In addition, speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin in china use dialects of the same
language although they cannot understand each other when they communicate verbally, but
they share the same writing system. For these reasons, Trudgill (1995, p. 4) insisted that "the
criterion of 'mutual intelligibility', and other purely linguistic criteria, are … of less
importance in the use of the terms language and dialect and they are political and cultural
factors, of which the two most important are autonomy and heteronomy." For example
Serbian and Croatian are autonomous language because of political reasons. In this vein,
Spolsky states that "a language… is a dialect with a flag, or even better, with an army" (2010,
p. 30). Thus, political, social and ethic criteria are more important than the linguistic one in
language-dialect distinction.

Sociolinguists made the distinction between regional and social dialects. Chambers
and Trudgill (1995, p. 45) explain that:

All dialects are both regional and social, all speakers have a social background
as well as regional location, and in their speech they often identify themselves
not only as natives or inhabitants of particular place, but also as members of

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 particular social class, age group, ethnic background, or other social
characteristics.

4.1.2. Regional Dialects

The study of the regional distribution of dialects is known as regional dialectology.

Regional dialect refers to language variation on the basis of the geographical boundaries
where speakers live. It is a language variety spoken by a group of people who live in the same
regions. It differs from the other existing regional dialects by its own grammatical, lexical and
phonological features. At the lexical level, the word child is used in Southern England while
in Northern England, they use the term bairn. The word pail is used in New England, and the
word bucket is used in Texas. Lift is used in British English, and elevator is used American
English. At the phonological level, In a northern area in the eastern United States, ‘grease’
and ‘greasy’ are pronounced with a /s/, in a transitional zone, ‘grease is pronounced with a /s/
and ‘greasy’ with a / z/, and in southern, both are pronounced as /z/. At the grammatical level,
in British English, we say 'should we go?', but we use 'shall we go?' in American English.

4.1.3. Dialect Continuum

The term dialect continuum is used to refer to a chain of dialects used in many regions. Users
of these dialects can understand each other especially in the neighboring regions on the
boundaries because they are mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, the degree of mutual
intelligibility decreases in distant regions; therefore, speakers of these dialects face many
problems to understand each other. For example, the different dialects spoken in Arab
countries constitute dialect continuum. Algerians can easily understand speakers from
neighboring countries like Tunisia and Morocco, but dialects spoken in Iraq or Ymen are less
intelligible for them

References

Chambers, J. K., & Trudgill, P. (1998). Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Haugen, E. (1966). Dialect, language, nation. American anthropologist, 68 (4), 922-935.

American Anthropological Association.

Holmes, J. (2013). An introduction to sociolinguistics. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Hudson , R.A . (2001). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Labov, W. (1966). The Social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.:
Center for Applied Linguistics.

Spolsky, B. (Ed). Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Swann, J., Deumert, A., Lillis, T., & Mesthrie, R. (2004). A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics. (1
ed.) Edinburgh University Press.

Trudgill, P. (1995). Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society. England:

Penguin Books.

Wardhaugh, R. (2006). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford, Cambridge USA:

Blackwell.