Sociolinguistic :

❖ Linguistics: The scientific study of language.

❖ Society: The community of people living in a particular region and having shared
customs, laws and organizations .
❖ What do sociolinguists study?
1) Linguistic variables ( pronunciation, syntax, morphology… etc.)
2) Social variables (age, gender, education, class, ethnicity… etc.)
❖ Sociolinguistics: a term that refers to the study of the relationship
between language and society, and how language is used in multilingual
speech communities.
➢ language and society are intertwined because a society moves
with language ,a language defines the linguistic behavior of a
group of people in a given society.
➢ Sociolinguistic is a developing branch of linguistics which
examines the individuals and social variation of language .it is
the study of the relationship between language and society ,it
concerned with how language use interacts with or is affected by
social factors (gender ,ethnicity ,age or social class…)
➢ Sociolinguistics is also considered as a branch of sociology ,it
shows the relationship between language use and the social basis
for such use .
➢ just one region variation of language can give a lot of information
about the place the speaker is from, social variation tells about
the roles performed by a given speaker within one community..
➢ sociolinguistics is a practical, scientific branch which researches
into the language that is actually used in order to formulate
theories about language changes.
➢ Sociolinguists are interested in explaining why people speak
differently in different social contexts. And the effect of social
factors such as (social distance, social status, age, gender, class)
on language varieties (dialects, registers, genres, etc), and they
are concerned with identifying the social functions of language
and the way they are used to convey social meanings.
 society

-Language and people :-Age -Place :-Region ,occasion -Social system : Power,
,gender ,race ,nationality ,class… ideology, policy, politness

❖ Speech as shourthand for identification:

➢ how you speak tells listeners much more about you.
➢ our impression of people are strongly shaped by the speech they use ,the
relationship we form with others is most likely influenced by their speech.
❖ Language variation:
➢ This variation typically refers to unnoticed features such as which
vowels you use ,whether or not you glottalize sounds or when you
delete consonants that appear in cluster at the end of a word ;these
kind of variations are typically less overtly recognized by nonlinguists
but they are indicative of your social place and social relationship.
➢ We learn linguistic rules early in life as a product of our interactional
experiences. They become so habitualized that we follow them
without even being aware that we are doing so.
➢ Much of our language socialization depends on our location, age,
class, gender, ethnicity, and experience within institutions.
➢ We don’t simply pick and choose among linguistic variants but must
acquire them as part of our native linguistic systems.
➢ Different forms of linguistic variation:
• Pronunciation Differences in pronunciation only are attributed to accents
• Words
• Grammar
• Dialect: Linguistic varieties which are distinguishable by their vocabulary,
grammar and pronunciation.  A dialect can be of a particular district (regional
dialect), a class (social dialect) or a group of people (ethnic dialect )
• Language
❖ The social consideration for the choice of language:
➢ The participants: a; Who is speaking? (speaker, writer) b; Who are they speaking
to? (listener , reader) - Age, gender, education, occupation, social status , social
distance, ethnicity …etc. can all affect the linguistic choices of the participants.
➢ The setting or social context of the interaction:
Where are they speaking? - Home, school, mosque, shop, office, cafe…etc.
➢ The topic: What is being talked about? -studying for an exam, going to a party,
inviting a friend, …etc.
 ➢ The function: Why are they speaking? -Give information, order, offer, express
feelings …etc. (language functions).
❖ Sociolinguistics use the term variety or sometimes code to refer to language in
context that standard language is a variety too(a variety can be a language, an accent,
a dialect… etc.)
❖ A variety is a set of linguistic forms used under specific social circumstances, with a
distinctive social distribution.
❖ Variety is a set of broad term which includes different accents, different linguistic
style, different dialect and even different languages which contrast with each other
for social reasons.

▪ 2 DOES LANGUAGE INFLUENCE WORLD VIEW:

❖ Language:
❖ Language as a reflection of society
➢ How we use language is shaped by our social roles.
➢ Your social context determine how you speak.
➢ The way society is organized influences language.
➢ What influences society influences language.
➢ How we process the social world is not not independent of the language system.
❖ Society as a reflection of language
➢ Most of the idioms metaphorically encode culturally important concepts and
beliefs of a particular language.
❖ Linguistic relativity
➢ language influences the minds of its speakers.
➢ the grammatical categories a language provide shape how its speakers organize
and perceive the world.
➢ The concept of language influencing thought is known as the sapir-whorf
hypothesis ,or linguistic relativity ,it suggests that language embodies a world view
➢ Our language shapes the way we perceive and interact as a society
➢ Every human language has its own unique combination of sounds used to
pronounce the words of that language
➢ The social effects of our linguistic system go beyond simply altering how we hear
sounds ,that system also with our social categories to alter our perceptions of
nonnative speaker , often I negative way .
❖ The extent of language influence
➢ Learning a second language that represents the word through a different
grammatical and conceptual lens that we realize how much our language has
influenced us.
➢ The grammar of a language itself can work in subtle ways to impose constraints on
our social world based on that language’s habitual patterns of use and categories.
❖ The conditioning force of language

➢ the idea of language determinism determining thought seems to be fairly easy to

dismiss people are able to overcome most cross-language misconception and
mistranslation but they can not dismiss the conditioning force of language.
➢ Language direct people’s thought to certain habitual, comfortable patterns.
➢ Society clearly influences language ,but language itself is also a social force.
▪ 3 WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS
❖ Language is an academic object of study as both a mental and a social
system
❖ Theoretical linguistics and sociolinguistics:
➢ Theoretical linguistics is a static model ,it is concerned with the world of language
potential(what our cognitive system can produce ,not what it actually produces )
❖ Grammar
➢ Linguists refers to language system as our grammar.
➢ Grammar is what every speaker of a language knows: the rules and principles for
constructing sounds, words, and sentences.
➢ grammar is not concerned with social expectations and and norms for how people
speak; rather, it refers to the cognitive programming they are born with.
❖ Language as a social entity:
➢ mental grammar is useful as a social tool only when it is put to work to produce an
act of communication ( looking at language through a social lens).
➢ Language is communication only once it becomes a social entity ;an actual code
(created by the grammar) used by a community of speakers ,language is a social
resource developed and maintained by those who use it.
➢ each speaker uses out of his or her mental grammar varies depending on the
speech community. This is the point of intersection between language as a
conceptual system and language as a social system. We are born with the same
cognitive abilities, but we realize different aspects of this potential. The resulting
system is what is referred to as linguistic performance—what speakers actually use
out of their competence (the mental grammar in full).
❖ Social convention and boundedness:
➢ what is important to know between language conceptually and language socially is
the idea that underlying cognitive rules drive the creation of words and sentences,
but social convention drives our interpretation of them.
➢ The relationship between a word and the thing represented by it is purely
arbitrary and gets meaning only as part of collective agreement among speakers
Group (that led to share some sense of membership in a community between the
groups of speakers)
 ➢ Building on this idea of social consensus, another concept that is important in
sociolinguistics is that of the boundedness of our social awareness. The idea here is that
there are many things that surround us in our daily world, but we select only a portion of
them as important in giving coherence to our experience.
❖ Speech communities:
➢ speech community refers to a group of people who interact linguistically and show
agreement on social conventions.(the term speech community has fuzzy
boundaries)
➢ The notion (linguistic norms or share ideas about meaning of speech) of a speech
community combines both social and linguistic aspects. This concept centers on
the idea of a social unit with members that interact and, through prolonged
interaction, construct a shared system of meaning socially and culturally.
▪ 4 FOUR LEVELS OF LANGUAGE VARIATION
❖ Phonetics and phonology: the areas of linguistics concerned with the sounds of
language are phonetics and phonology;
➢ Phonetics centers on how sounds are actually produced
➢ Phonetic difference=linguistic shibboleth (a speech form that is recognizable as
being associated with a particular type of speaker or as signaling a particular social
identity.
➢ Phonology is the area of linguistics that is concerned with how human speech
sounds are organized into unique systems In language.
➢ phonology can mark a difference between two languages. This difference may, in
turn, be taken to suggest certain things socially about the speaker, such as level of
cultural awareness and, in some cases, even competence ,in reality ;an adult
learner of English is simply obliged by a first-language system that make exact
reproduction of second language impossible.
❖ Spoken versus written language
➢ Written language is tied into the norms associated with standard formal English
not the version we use in our day-to-day, face-to face interactions.
➢ We tend to think of writing as informing us of the rules of how to speak, The type
of rule system that drives our oral versus written knowledge of language is vastly
different.
➢ These linguistic rules are different than social rules. Such rules as “don’t split
infinitives” are social rules of grammar not linguistic rules , when you violate
grammar rules you violate the conventional grammar rules that our educational
and institutional systems have established as the social norm.
➢ Linguists refer to this difference as the difference between prescriptive and
descriptive rules.

-Prescriptive rules are those established by grammarians to control the output of speakers
by assigning prestige based on the use of prescribed language norms.
Descriptive rules describe how language works and is used by speakers—what you already
know unconsciously as a speaker of a human language.

➢ every language and every dialect is systematic and rule governed ,but rules driving
dialects differ.
➢ There can be a great deal of difference in rules between linguistic systems; such as
ENGLISH and ARABIC ,or there can be fewer difference system between BRITISH
and AMERICAN English
❖ SYNTAX
➢ Syntax is the study of sentence formation in addition to knowing possible speech
sounds, we also have knowledge of the structure of phrases, syntax is the toolkit
that tells us what goes where and how.
➢ An important feature of syntax is grammaticality judgment, both universal rules
and language specific rules that we can male judgment whether a sentence we
hear or see is grammatical or not.
➢ Different language and even ad even dialects have different rules that can apply to
make sentences that would not be acceptable structures for another speaker.
➢ The possible variation in syntactic structures is constrained by the possibilities
allowed by our universal grammar.
❖ MORPHOLOGY
➢ Morphology is the study of how words are formed and created, in this field
,linguists look at slang or novel words
➢ New words, when they enter the language through borrowing or through
invention, are also subject to linguistic rules. When a new word, such as Google,
enters the language, it belongs to a particular category (to form the past tense, we
add –ed , and to form the progressive, we add –ing. We are also able to make the word
into a noun by adding a “noun-type” ending; for example, one who Googles may be called
a Googler.) We can be quite creative with new words but only insofar as is allowed
by our linguistic constraints on word formation.
➢ morphology is also an area where languages and dialects can differ substantially.
Many languages use more affixes than english does to express meaning(infixes ,
circumfixes …) this is not something we find in English unless we count slang
expressions (I guaran-damn-tee it!!)
▪ 5 HOW DO DIALECT DEVELOP
❖ The term language, used generally, often means something like “a system of
conventional vocal signs by means of which we communicate.”
❖ Language can also refer to specific kinds of codes used by groups of speakers such as
Chinese language and English language ,language is a cover term for a unique set of
linguistic rules.
❖ when we use the word language, we are drawing attention to the way an individual
or a group of speakers uses that particular code.
❖ language is not just a set of cognitive rules but an evolving social entity .
❖ Defining dialect:
➢ Dialects and languages may share common developmental histories, but some
linguistic changes over time result in entirely new languages, while others result
in different varieties of the same language.
➢ We typically think of language differences as somehow larger than dialect
differences. We tend to think that people who speak different languages are
unable to understand one another, while we think of different dialects in the
same language as being mutually comprehensible .We might say, that speakers
of the same language are those who share a common code, while those who
can’t understand one another must speak separate languages. Unfortunately,
what we call Chinese is actually several different languages
➢ There is much more to how we define language than shred linguistic properties in
the system itself .
➢ To make the distinction between languages and dialects, we need to consider the
social political and historical facts from which different systems emerged.
▪ Social and linguistic factors in language development:
➢ Dialect are most likely to develop where we find separation among group of
speakers (geographic separation or more commonly social ) ,any time distance is
maintained among speakers linguistic differences will arise that work in tandem
with social distinction to contribute to dialect divergence. Among the key factors
that give rise to dialect are initial settlement patterns:
➢ The original settlers generally create cultural and linguistic areas that persist over
time; this is what is known as the founder’s effect. Although many things about
the culture may change, the original demarcation of different cultural and
linguistic areas within a nation is retained.
➢ Continuing the influence of initial settlement ,migratory routes also play a role in
the development of dialect patterns.
➢ Geographic factors large physical barriers play a major role in the development of
dialects , Geography serves to physically separate groups of speakers, creating a
situation where languages develop differences within each group that differ from
changes taking place in other groups.
➢ Language contact :in some cases one language can have such widespread
influence over another that it doesn’t characterize specific dialects ,linguistic
interaction may influence the development of a dialect characterized by contact
with that language/culture
➢ Dialect formation is dependent not just on how often people come in contact
but on the type of contact (economic ,ecology….)
➢ Vernacular use can be strong factors in language change and dialect development
➢ Vernacular language: It generally refers to a language which has not been
standardized or codified and which does not have official status (uncodified or
 standardized variety). It generally refers to the most colloquial variety in a
person's linguistic repertoire.
➢ communication networks(patterns of interaction in communities, We talk most
like those we interact with on a daily basis and in many different contexts) and
group reference (adoption of certain linguistic behaviors that serve to identify
speakers of a particular group as being unique or having a particular identity)are
strong influences on dialect development.
➢ even in the absence of social factors, languages still evolve in distinct ways.
Typically, it is underlying cognitive and physiological pressures that result in
changes to our language system; how these are realized varies based on the
geographical and social factors. These cognitive and physiological pressures
include such phenomena as( rule extension, analogy, reduction of linguistic
redundancy, and changes in pronunciation of sounds over time…)
➢ Language changes constantly as a result of internal and external pressures, and
groups of speakers may develop certain features while other groups develop
different ones. This is what leads to differences in how sounds, words, or
sentences are constructed across groups that share a common tongue these
differences can become greater as groups become more socially or geographically
dispersed, and in this way, dialect differences can eventually branch off into
different languages.
▪ 6 LANGUAGE CGANGE : WHAT IS NEW IS OLD AGAIN
❖ Old English
➢ The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain
developed into what we now call Old English.
➢ half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old
English roots.
➢ originally speakers of old norse ,the Vikings, old orse contributed to
the development of old English by adding vocabulary.
➢ the norms invasion in 1066 this invasion brought French to the land
❖ the shift from old English to middle English
➢ loss of most of the unaccented case and gender inflections that had existed in
old English.
➢ the change in pronunciation in old English.
➢ inflectional information was eliminated, other methods of indicating case,
tense, and other sentential relations became necessary.
➢ in addition to grammatical and phonological changes to English the influence of
French was vast thousand of words we find in English today were borrowed
from French
❖ middle English
➢ the period beginning with Norman conquest became known as the middle
English period 1100to1500 AD
 ➢ a lot of regional dialects +the shift of political power from Wessex to London
➢ The Middle English period ended in response to drastic pronunciation changes
➢ English based on the London dialect and established the sense of a national
standard language
❖ Early modern English
➢ the Early Modern period, spelling was still not highly standardized a number of
factors though , influenced the move toward the recognition of a standard form
of English and the selection of London’s east midland dialect as the model .
➢ Developing a set of uniform written practices to follow by the chancery clerks in
Westminster.
➢ William Caxton used spelling convention in printing based on the dialect of
London.
❖ Modern English
➢ Modern English is, in many ways, a result of war, colonization, and social and
economic prominence. Sociohistorical events played a significant role in
defining how we speak today.
➢ language can change because of internal cognitive or physiological pressures.
Further, we often see large-scale linguistic changes occur because of social
pressures— language contact, social or geographic isolation, and class
differences. This basic tendency toward change in language is known as
inherent variability.
➢ social factors such as migration settlement geography ,group reference and
social class ,are significant factors in dialect development
• The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons migrated and settled in a new land, Britain. They
brought their native tongue with them, integrating some Celtic words and
developing a new cultural area that persisted through time
• The invaders’ dialects showed the effects of geographic separation from other
speakers who remained on the European continent. These dialects also
diverged through further language contact with and borrowings from new
groups, such as the Scandinavians and the French. And internal migration led
to emergent differences and innovations, resulting in several distinct old
English dialect areas.
• class satisfaction and group references factors also took their turn in the
historical development of English. During French rule, the separation of
languages by the French ruling elite and the English-speaking commoners led
to changes in phonological, lexical, and grammatical patterns. With the return
of English as the language of the land, we see the effects of class and group
reference as the language continued to develop through the Middle English
period.
▪ VARIATION:
 ❖ People use a variety to signal membership ofa particular group and construct social
identity
❖ The social identity includes ( Social Status ,Gender, Ethnicity (race) ,Education
,Occupation ,Religion …etc.
❖ A speaker speaks one language but differs in the varieties of that language.
Differences can be due to:
❖ 1- Regional variation: It identifies the speaker regionally or geographically.
❖ 2- Social variation: It identifies the speakers’ status in society.
❖ 3- Register: It is the variety used by a group of people with common interests or jobs.
❖ 4- Style of language: It is to change the variety across the formality scale from formal
to informal and vice versa.
❖ Regional variation: Regional variation develops because people are separated
by a common barrier like physical barriers, historical barriers, racial barriers or
religious barriers.
-Differences in pronunciation only are attributed to accents
-Differences in vocabulary and grammar are attributed to dialects
❖ Social variation:
➢ -Social dialect : A dialect that varies according to the speaker’s social class.
➢ -Class: The speaker’s social prestige, status, or respect within community .
➢ -the speakers’ socio-economic level will affect the way they speak.
➢ -The lower the socio-economic level is, the more regional variation there is. The higher
the level is, the less regional variation we have because upper class people mostly use
RP.(social accent)
➢ -Standard English = RP (Received Pronunciation), (the Queen’s English), (BBC English)
➢ -Linguistic forms which are not part of standard English are by definition non-standard.
➢ -To avoid that implication the label (non-standard) has, sociolinguists use the term
“vernacular” to refer to non-standard forms.; In English speaking communities, it was
found that children from lower-class families used more vernacular verb forms than
children from middle-class families.
❖ Social variation –terms:
➢ Sociolect (social dialect): A dialect that varies according to the speaker’s social class.
➢ A sociolect is different from a dialect because dialects belong to certain regions
geographically (regional variation).
➢ Idiolect: A variety of a language that is unique to a person.  No two speakers speak the
same. A person’s idiolect depends on:

1- Regional background 2- Ethnic background 3- Education

4- Occupation 5-Religion 6- Psychology 7- Personality

❖ Register
➢ occupational style using specialized or technical jargon, it describes the language of
groups of people with common interests or jobs, or the language used in situations
associated with such groups, such as the language of doctors, engineers, journals,
legalese, etc
➢ Some linguists use the term register to refer to the style of speech from slang to
elevated variety. Others restrict it to specialized vocabulary.
➢ The difference: Style is analyzed along a scale of formality. Register, when
distinguished from style, is associated with the language of a particular group of
people.
❖ style
➢ Speakers can convey the same information differently. They change the style of their
speech according to the : 1- Addressee /2- Context
➢ Style: The range of variation within the speech of an individual speaker. A variation of
language from formal to informal.
➢ People’s styles of speech [stylistic features] reflect NOT ONLY aspects of their identity
such as their ethnicity, age, gender, and social background, but also indicate the
contexts in which language is being used.
❖ The addressee as an influence on style;
➢ The better you know someone, the more casual and relaxed the speech style you will
use with them.
➢ People use more standard forms to the people they do not know well and more
vernacular forms to their friends.
➢ When the addressee is the influence, a speaker will choose the appropriate style based
on:
1- Relationship between the speaker and addressee .
2- How well the speaker knows the addressee .
3- How close the speaker feels to the addressee (solidarity and social distance).
4- Age of the addressee
5- Social background of the addressee.
❖ Age of the addressee
➢ People talk differently to children and to adults:
-Children: Talking to a child would likely be in a sing-song intonation and “baby
talk” and when writing to them, we use shorter explicit sentences, simple
grammar and common vocabulary items.
- Elderly people: It is noticed that people tend to employ similar stylistic features
when they talk to children like using simpler vocabulary, less complex grammar
and the use of “we” to refer to the addressee
❖ Based on the social role, status and background of the addressee, the speaker
either chooses to modify his/ her speech towards or away from the style of the
addressee. / This style modification is known as the Accommodation Theory.
 ❖ Accommodation theory:
➢ Speech Convergence: Adapting a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance
by using forms that are similar to those used by the person we are talking to.
 It is a politeness strategy that tends to happen when the speakers like one
another or where one of them wants to please the other by putting them at ease.
 People converge their speech DOWNWARDS towards the lesser linguistic
proficiency of their addresses who are often of a lower status.
Example: When a doctor addresses a patient and simplifies the vocabulary items
he is using instead of using the jargon of the medical field.
 People converge their speech UPWARDS towards the more sophisticated
linguistic proficiency of their addresses who are often of a higher status.
➢ Speech Divergence: Deliberately choosing a different language style not used by the
addressee to increase social distance.
 It is considered an uncooperative speech behaviour and tends to happen when a
person wants to show his cultural distinctiveness, social status, ethnic identity…
etc,
 People who aspire to a higher social status will diverge upwards from the speech
of those from the same social class.
❖ Language and gender
➢ Sex is biologically determined. One is born a male or a female.
➢ Gender is socially determined. One chooses to speak either in a feminine or a
masculine way.
*Notes on Gender:
- It involves a consideration of the psychological, social, and cultural differences
between men and women.
- It is a construction
- We create our gender identity through the language we speak. This is culturally
determined and reinforced by socialisation practices.
❖ Differences and features
➢ Men and women speak differently. These differences can be:
- Phonological - Lexical - Morphological - Syntactic – Pragmatic
➢ Gender features in a language fall under two categories:
1- Exclusive features: Features associated with speakers of a PARTICULAR gender.
Example: kinship terms: -females=Mother, niece, aunt
- males=Father ,nephew, uncle = males
(Contrasted with ‘cousin’ which can be for a male or a female).
2- Preferential features: Features distributed across speakers of BOTH genders but
used more frequently by one than the other.
Example: Standard forms are used by both genders but women tend to use it more
than men and by definition men use more vernacular forms than women do .
 ❖ Differences between men and women
➢ When they speak, men and women differ in many aspects such as:
1. Turn-taking and interruption
2. Minimal responses
3. Using hedges
4. Giving compliments
5. Asking questions
6. Apologising
➢ Turn-Taking and Interruption
-There are two types of interruption:
1. Disruptive interruption: It restricts the contribution of the interrupted speaker.
2. Supportive interruption: It is meant to encourage the speaker to keep the
conversation going on.
- Who interrupts more?
_Men interrupt more than women disruptively because they want to dominate
and give themselves authority.
_Women interrupt more than men supportively because they consider feelings
and are more sensitive than men.
➢ Minimal responses
*Minimal responses:
-They are monosyllabic utterances such as “yeah” and “huh” associated with
cooperative language use.
-Minimal responses are used mainly to show agreement.
*Who uses more minimal responses?
-Women use minimal responses more than men as they support and sympathise
more with the speaker. Men prefer to keep silent until given the turn or choose to
interrupt if not.
➢ Using hedges
*Hedges: A word or a clause that is meant to lessen the effect of an utterance. =
Softeners
Example: I think, I guess, you know, maybe, sort of, somewhat… etc
*Who uses more hedges?
Women use hedges more than men because women care more about pursuing a
style of interaction based on mutual agreement and support.
➢ Giving complement
-Compliment: A polite expression of praise or admiration.
-Compliments fall under positive politeness strategies which are directed at:
(1) Approving of the listener’s appearance “I like your hair today!”, ability
“excellent shot!”, possession “Nice car”.
 (2) Stressing friend lines and the desire of being treated as a member of a group
rather than as a single individual.
* Who gives more compliments?
-Compliments are most appropriate among people who know each other well.
Women are mostly either the speaker, addressee or both. So women give more
compliments.
-Compliments have different functions. They can express:
1. Solidarity 3. Envy 2. Admiration 4. Harassment
➢ Asking question
Questions can be asked to:
1. Support the speaker
2. Show skepticism
3. Challenge the speaker
- For men, questions are usually a request for information whereas for women
they can also be a means of encouraging the other’s conversational contribution or
acquiring attention from others conversationally involved.
-Who asks more questions? Women ask more questions to support the speaker
whereas men ask more questions to challenge him/her.
➢ Apologizing :
-Apology: A speech act that is used to remedy an offence for which the speaker
takes responsibility. Example: “I’m sorry”, “I apologise” Apologising depends on
factors such as:
1. Power relationship
2. Gender of recipient
3. Social distance
4. Seriousness of the offence
-Who apologises more?
_Women apologise more than men.
➢ Other differences
-Other features of women language according to Lakoff :
1. Tag questions, “she is very nice, isn’t she?”
2. Rising intonation on declaratives, “it’s really good.”
3. Empty adjectives, . “nice”, “lovely”, “cute”.
4. Precise color terms, “magenta”, “aquamarine”.
5. Intensifiers “just” , “so”.
6. Hypercorrect grammar, consistent use of standard verb forms.
7. Super-polite forms, indirect requests, euphemisms.
8. Avoidance of strong swear words, “fudge”, “sugar” .
9. Emphatic stress, “it was a BRILLIANT performance.”