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Sociolinguistics 3: Classification: Social Groups, Languages and Dialects
Sociolinguistics 3: Classification: Social Groups, Languages and Dialects
Sociolinguistics 3: Classification: Social Groups, Languages and Dialects
Language can distort reality, e.g. it is digital, so doesnt always fit the analog world. E.g:
Shingle or pebbles? Drizzle or rain? Classical music or jazz or pop?
Can we use them in sociolinguistics for saying who uses what kind of language?
Sub-varieties of a language
A dialect is a sub-variety based on social groups, e.g. geography, social class.
An accent is a way of pronouncing a dialect e.g. RP.
A register is a sub-variety based on social situations, e.g. chat, essay, prayer A standard dialect/register is a sub-variety with high social status.
dialect
French speaker
.....
American
French-person ...
Person
and this
and this
So what? (1)
We organise our knowledge about language (mass) in terms of languages. But is that how the world organises them?
Transcription
And so couldnt gather their own supper and another of the fairies said er ??? supper ???
and this
Holide Karent Affairs: Thursday January 15, 2004 = Holiday current affairs
continued
long despela program....I luk olsem Papua New Guinea bai mari mari long ol "illegal immigrants" -- pipal bilong narapela kantri husat i bin burukim loa na go stap long PNG = About this programme It shows that PNG will ?? because of people of another country who have broken the law to live in PNG
and this?
Ws dis ealond geo gewurad mid am elestrum ceastrum, twega wana rittigum, a e wron Was this island once made-splendid with the noblest castles, two less-than thirty, that there were.
So what? (2)
Intelligibility is a matter of degree. Intelligibility depends on prior experience. Varieties can vary continuously in
Space Time
New varieties such as pidgins and creoles are especially hard to classify. So languages are fictions, not fact.
and this?
So what? (3)
All native speakers of a language recognise some dialects. But these are learned from experience, so we recognise different dialects. The more experience we have, the more distinctions we make. So how do these mental distinctions compare with reality?
Dialect geography
Dialectologists traditionally recorded the words and pronunciations of elderly speakers in remote villages. They showed their findings on maps, with a different map for each feature. They drew lines separating different areas of use: isoglosses.
So what? (4)
Every isogloss follows a different path. Every variable linguistic feature has a different social distribution. Dialect boundaries cant be defined by bundles of isoglosses. Dialects are fictions, not facts. But they have some value in thinking and talking about language variation.
And registers?
Folk sociolinguistics recognises some registers by name:
Slang Baby-talk Chatting, lecturing, preaching, etc.
So what?
Folk sociolinguistics recognises global categories as related to each other:
varieties of language social categories (people, situations)
But these are fictions rather than facts. The facts show much more complex relations between linguistic items and social characteristics.
Coming shortly
Week 4: How we look after each others faces. Week 5: Power and solidarity.