Language Variation and

Stylistics

By: Rashid Mahmood

DIALECTAL VARIETIES
&
DIATYPIC VARIETIES (1)
 DIALECTAL VARIETIES
 Individual Dialect-- Idiolect
 Temporal Dialect
 Regional Dialect
 Social Dialect
 Socioeconomic status varieties
 Ethnic varieties
 Gender varieties
 Age varieties
 The Social Meaning of Language Varieties
DIALECTAL VARIETIES
&
DIATYPIC VARIETIES (2)

 Variation due to Formality

 Variation due to Medium
 Variation due to Context
 Registers
Individual Dialect-- Idiolect

 Each speaker or writer will have his or her

own particular voice quality, pitch and stress
patterns, favorite lexical items, and even
grammatical structures
 These traits of speech or writing often point to
a person's individuality which leads to a
person's style. Terms like 'Conrad's
language', 'Hemingway's language' indicate
just this type of variety.
Temporal Dialect

 A variety which correlates with the various

periods of the development of language is
called TEMPORAL DIALECT.
 Language changes over time, and so
description of the language at a given point of
time is likely to give rise to a historical variety.
 In the English language, for instance, there
are Old English, Middle English, Elizabethan
English and Modem English.
Regional Dialect
 Language varies from region to region.
 So far as the English speaking world is concerned,
there are British English, American English,
Australian English, New Zealand English, South
African English, Canadian English, and other
international varieties.
 There are also regional varieties within Great Britain
and the United States , such as cockney in Britain ,
North Midland dialect in USA , etc.
 A variety like this we call Regional Dialect. The lay
term for it is ACCENT, as a dialect is often
associated with a particular accent.
 Examples

words BrE AmE

class /kla:s/ /klaes/
laugh /la:f/ /laef/
tomato /to'ma:tau/ /ta'meitou/
either /'ai 6a / /'i: 6a /
/,aedva't aizmant /
advertisement /ad'va:tismant/
aizmant /
Examples: Vocabulary

BrE AmE
Tin can
Telly TV
chemist's drugstore
biscuits cookies
autumn fall
lift elevator
ground floor first floor
lorry truck
pavement sidewalk
petrol gas (oline)
underground (tube) subway
Social Dialect
 A variety associated with certain social group is referred
to as SOCIAL DIALECT.
 Just as oceans and mountains separate people and can
lead eventually to distinct language habits, so social and
political boundaries separate people and can be
instrumental in promoting different speech habits.
 Different groups tend to have their distinctive ways of
speaking. Hence, socioeconomic status varieties, ethnic
varieties, gender varieties and age varieties occur.
 Restricted Code
 Elaborated Code
Gender varieties
 In most languages, men and woman do not speak
identically. Hence gender varieties occur.
 In English, for example, female speakers tend to
use 'feminine-sounding' words like lovely, darling
and cute.
 Women tend to show extra politeness in their
speech by leaving a decision open rather than
imposing their claims on others. They make frequent
use of expressions like 'I'm afraid that...', 'I'm not
sure, but...' etc; or tag questions like 'The film is
awfully interesting, isn't it?'
Age varieties
 Language evolves with age. So a two-year-old
child's command of language is far from perfect
while a five-year-old in contrast has a much better
command. A ten-year-old's command of grammar
does not differ significantly from that of adults,
though his/her vocabulary is smaller.
 There are language differences, chiefly in
vocabulary, between younger adults and older
adults too. Nowadays some older people still use
icebox to refer to what younger generations call
fridge.
 Younger people tend to pick up newly sprung-up
slangy expressions all the time.
Socioeconomic status varieties

 Different socioeconomic status groups tend to show

different patterns of speech characteristics. An often
quoted example is the well-known case of r -fulness in
New York City.
 New Yorkers sometimes pronounce/r/and sometimes
drop it in words like car, fourth, beer, park (when/r /
follows a vowel, either at the end of a word or preceding
a consonant). Investigation shows that the occurrence
of/r/in the pronunciation of these words is anything but
random and anything but meaningless.
 Labov confirms that members of higher socioeconomic
status groups would pronounce/r/more frequently than
would individuals from lower socioeconomic classes.
Ethnic varieties

 Ethnic groups tend to develop and maintain

distinctive speech ways of their own.
 This is especially true of urban Black
Americans in the US who have actually
developed a most widespread and familiar
ethnic variety of American English i.e. Black
English, with its characteristic phonological,
morphological, and syntactical features, as
well as some vocabulary of its own.
The Social Meaning of Language
Varieties
Hi, how y'all doing?

 l) the period of development of the language in which the speaker/

writer spoke or wrote it (temporal dialect);
 2) the geographical area he or she is from (regional dialect);
 3) the social group he or she belongs to (social dialect);
 4) the range of intelligibility of his or her language (standard or non-
standard dialect);
 5) the activity he or she is engaged in (field);
 6) the medium he or she is using (mode);
 7) the social relationship existing between him or her and his or her
addressee (s) (personal tenor);
 8) the intention in his or her mind in conveying the message
(functional tenor);
 9) the distinctive language habits he or she has shown (idiolect).
Examples
 l) Phonologically, Black English is most salient in its
frequent simplification of consonant clusters as 'des'
for desk , 'pass' for passed, and 'wile' for wild .
 2) The omission of the contracted form in the
present tense ('s),
 That my book (=That's my book).
 The coffee cold (=The coffee's cold).
 3) Verb be is used to show habitual action; as in
 Do they be playing all day?
 ( Do they play all day? )
 4) The use of multiple-negative constructions:
 Don't nobody never help me do my work.
 (Nobody ever helps me do my work.)
DIATYPIC VARIATIONS

 Variation due to Formality

 Formal Speech
 Consultative Speech
 Colloquial Speech
 Slang
 Variation due to Medium
 Spoken
 Written
 Variation due to Context
 Physical Context
 Social context
 Register: is concerned with linguistic choices
according to use.
Variation due to Formality (1)
 Formal Speech

A careful, impersonal and often public mode of speaking used in

certain situations and which may influence pronunciation,
choice of words and sentence structure. For example the
following when said by a speaker at
e.g. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to be here
tonight.
 Consultative Speech

Sometimes used to refer to a style of speaking used with others

who do not share the speaker’s background knowledge or
experience and hence need more background knowledge than is
normally used in Colloquial Speech.
Variation due to Formality (2)
 Colloquial Speech

An informal type of speech used among friends and

others in situations where empathy, rapport or lack of
social barriers are important. Colloquial speech is often
marked by the use of slang or idioms and by other
linguistic characteristics such as deletion of subject or
auxiliaries (e.g. as in “Got the time?” instead of “Do you
have the time?”). Colloquial speech is not necessarily
non-prestige speech and should not be considered as
substandard. Educated native speakers of a language
normally use colloquial speech in informal situations
with friends, fellow workers, and members of the family.
Variation due to Formality (3)
 Slang
Casual, very informal speech, using expressive but
informal words and expressions (slang
words/expressions). For some people, slang is
equivalent to COLLOQUIAL SPEECH but for others,
it means “undesirable speech”. Usually, “colloquial
speech” refers to a speech variety used in informal
situations with colleagues, friends or relatives, and
“slang” is used for a very informal speech variety
which often serves as an “in-group” language for a
particular set of people such as teenagers, army
recruits. pop groups, etc. Most slang is rather unstable
as its words and expressions can change quite rapidly,
for example: Beat it! Scram! Rack off! (for “leave”)
Variation due to Medium
 Difference in medium entails difference in ways and
patterns of expression, and hence variations within the
same language
 Speech vs Writing
 Difference in Hearer/Reader Involvement

 Difference in Linguistic Explicitness

 Difference in Preparedness

 Stylistic Differences
 Difference in Terms of Grammar

 Difference in Terms of Vocabulary

 Difference in Terms of Phonology / Graphology

Speech vs Writing

 Difference in Hearer/Reader Involvement

 Generally most speeches assume the presence of the
hearer.
 The speaker constantly monitors his/her message by
using signals like oh, well, you know, what I mean is,
etc, so as to hold the hearer's attention.
 The speaker will also invite the hearer's active
participation by using questions or commands; items like
yeah, mhm, really?
 A written text, on the other hand, normally presumes the
absence of the reader, and direct feedback from the
reader is not possible.
Speech vs Writing

 Difference in Linguistic Explicitness

 In speech, the participants rely heavily on their common
background knowledge and the immediate context.
 The immediate context can eliminate the ambiguity
carried by implicit linguistic structures, bring some words
with concrete referents (such as demonstratives, like
this, here, now etc).
 The closer the relationship between the participants, the
more they take what they are trying to say for granted,
and the more they rely on subtle reference:
A: What is the time by your watch?
B: Milkman has come.
Speech vs Writing

 Difference in Preparedness
 Speech, especially conversation is often spontaneous.
 There are often random shifts of topics.
 Spoken texts often show a general lack of conscious
planning.
 Writing is on the whole more 'careful' than speaking.
 The writers have a clear idea about the subject matter of
their written text and about the logical arrangement of
their thought.
 With skill and planning, written texts are usually compact
and self-contained.
Stylistic Differences

 Difference in Terms of Grammar

 Speech
 Grammatically in spontaneous spoken texts, sentences tend
to be short, characterized by a large number of loosely
connected clauses.
 Clause structure is simple: usually of the S P (0) (C) (A) type.
Dinner, if you could call it dinner! was not' served until ten o'
clock.
 Nouns are not frequently used as subject rather personal
pronouns, especially I and you are used.
 The preposition in the clause is put at the end, as
The worker you talked to
 Verbal groups are also simple in structure
Stylistic Differences

 Difference in Terms of Grammar

 Writing
 In written language, sentences are usually complete and tend
to be longer than the average spoken sentences.
 The relative clause within the group usually retains the relative
pronoun.
 The preposition in the clause is often put at the beginning; as
in:
The worker to whom the president talked
 Verbal groups can be complex, some consisting of more than
one auxiliary verbs and lexical verbs; as in:
This machine can be easily dismantled and reassembled .
 Contractions are not so frequent as in spoken texts.
Stylistic Differences
 Difference in Terms of Vocabulary
 Speech tends to use simple words and phrases: thing, business, do,
get, go, nice, really, well, cos, OK, I see, I mean, you know, kind of,
just, yeah, the simple truth is, the thing to do, it seems that, etc.
 A large number of phrasal verbs, such as come across (encounter),
get together (accumulate), let down (disappoint), look into
(investigate), make up (compensate), put up with (tolerate), take part
in (participate), etc.
 Vague terms, such as thing, what's-his-name, what-do-you-call-it,
you-know-what-I-mean.
 A great deal of lexical hyperbole, such as absolutely, awfully, great,
lovely, marvelous, magnificent, superb, terrific, wonderful, horrible,
formidable.
 Slang, such as, bread (money), buck (dollar), butter up (flatter), dome
(head), tea-leaf (thief), corked (very drunk), up the creek (in trouble).
Stylistic Differences

 Difference in Terms of Phonology

 In speech more information can be conveyed by
stress and intonation besides the literal meaning
of an utterance.
 Pause and tempo are also meaningful.
 All kinds of paralinguistic features such as
gesture, facial expressions laughs, giggles,
snorts, exclamations of disgust, disapproval, help
convey various attitudinal meanings.
Stylistic Differences

 Difference in Terms of Graphology

 Writing makes use of the multitude of graphological devices
such as punctuation, paragraphing, capitalizing, italics etc.
 The use of different sizes and shapes of type and format can
add prominence to the information conveyed.
 When presenting the speech, 'cues' are put in: paralinguistic
features are indicated by descriptive statements about the
participants of the speech event; as in
In a hoarse voice, he yelped...
 Sometimes, strange-looking spellings are used to show the
dialect speaker; (Eye Dialect) as in
Ah'm goin' to th' 'crick fer water.
(I'm going to the creek for water.)
Variation due to Context

 Physical Context
 Change of place
 From classroom to playground

 Social context
 Change in topic
 Taboos and Politics
REGISTER

 is a variety of a language used for a particular

purpose or in a particular social setting.
 Halliday and Hasan interpret 'register' as 'the
linguistic features which are typically
associated with a configuration of situational
features
Examples
 No inflammation or dermatic condition was found
but there was some pain on palpitation.
 Small-scale, lightly-reinforced concrete members
were introduced into structure.
 The prisoners stands indicted for that he on the
tenth day of November did murder Fred Bloggs.
 Well-appointed, very desirable, residence in up-
market area.
 He just got an inside edge between the keeper and
first slip.