Social networks

Example 9
Tom lives in Ballymacarrett, a Protestant area east of River Lagan in Belfast. He is 18 years old and
works as an apprentice in the shipyard. He got the job through his uncle Bob who works there too. He
and Mike live in the same street and most nights they have a beer together after work. They also run a
disco with two friends, Jo and Gerry, and that means that several nights a week they travel across
town to perform at different venues.
Networks in socialinguistics refer to the pattern of informal relationships people are involved
in on a regular basis. There are two technical terms which have proved very useful for
describing different types of networks-density and plexity. Density refers to whether
members of a persons network are in touch with each other. Do your friends know each
other independently of you? If so your network is a dense one. Toms friends and relations
know and interect regularly with each other, as well as with him. He clearly belongs to a
danse network. This is reflected in the various connections between Mike and Tom and Uncle
Bob in figure 8.2.
Jo Cousin Mike


Tom

Garry Uncle Bob
Figure 8.2 : an example of social network
Plexity is a measure of the range of different types of transaction people are involved inwith
different individuals. A uniplex relationship is one where the link with the other person is in
only one area. You could be linked to someone else only because you work together, for
axample, or you might only play badminton together, and never meet in any other context. If
most transaction in a community are of this type the network would be characterised as
uniplex. Multiplex relationships, by contrast, involve interactions with others along several
dimensions. A workmate might also be someone you play tenis with and meet at church
regularly. If most transactions in a community are of this type, the network would be
considered multiplex. Toms network is multiplex since the people he works with are also his
pub-mates, his relations and his neighbours.
It is not surprising that peoples speech should reflect the types of networks they belong to.
The people we interect with are one important influence on our speech. When the people we
mix with regulerly belong to a homogencous group, we will generally speak the way the rest
of the group does provided we want to belong to the group and like the people in it. A
students for example, may she use more standard forms with her friends at university, and
more local, venecular forms when she goes home to the small town or village where her
family lives.
A study which examined language shift in Oberwart on the Austrian and Hungarian border
made good use of the concept of social networks. The researcher noted who talk to whom
over set period of time. The patterns of social interaction which emerged acconted for
peoples language preferences. Some people in Oberwart area worked in the fields and kept
farm animal as their parents had before them-they continued to cling to a peasent way of life.
Other worked in the industries which had become esthablished in the town. Those people
who interacted more with peasents were more likely to prefer Hungarian as their primarly
language, while those who had more contacts with people involved in industrial jobs tended
to prefer German.
Example 10
Marry is a teenage girl who live in a working class Black community on an island in the Waccamaw
river in south Carolina. Most of men work at construction jobs on the mainland to which they
commute daily across the river. The women work in the seasonal tourist industry on the mainland as
servants or clerks. No-one in Marys community is very well off. She has seven brothers and sisters.
Like everyone else on the island Marys family own a small motor boat which her mother and father
use to travel to the mainland for work each day. She goes to school on the schoolboat,and like almost
all her island friends, she qualifies for a free lunch.
In her class at school she meets Tracy who come from the mainland white community up the river.
Tracy has three younger brothers and her mother doesnt have a paid job. She stays home and looks
after the boys and the house. Tracys granded was a cotton farmer and her dad had expected to carry
on working the farm, but cotton farming bussines went bust and they had to sell the farm, like most
others in the area. So her father works as a supervaisor at one of the hotels in the tourist area. They
arent rich, but theyre a bit better off than marys family. They have a relaible car and they can
afford regular holiday.
If we examine the speech of Marys parents and Tracys parents we will find some interesting
patterns. There are differences between the speech of the black parents and white parents.
Tracys fathers speech is much closer to Marys motherss speech rather than to Tracys
mothers speech. Both Tracys Dad and Marys Mum use more standard form their spouses.
Marys Dad uses a great many creole form, while Tracys mother uses local vernecular
dialect forms.
The patteren in this communities are best explained not by sex or by ethnicity, but by the
interactive network sthe two sets of parents are involved in. Black women interact in their
daily work with tourists and middle class Americans who use standard english forms. White
men and young white women similarly work in service industries, interacting not with
members of their own community but with strangers and outsiders. Their network are neither
dense nor multiplex. The people they work with are different from the people they live with
and play with. On the other hand there are many middle-age white woman work as
housewivesin their own communities and they interact with each other regularly at the shops,
for coffe, on the phone and in shared community and child-caring activities. Black men also
interact with each other in their work on construction sites. Bothe these groups have much
denser and more multiplax network than the white men, the young white women and the
black woman.
In this last example I have tried to draw together a range of social factor covered in this
section of the book. The social class background, sex, and ethnicity of the speaker are all
relevant, but this example illustrated very clearly the over-riding influence which social
networks play in acconting for patterns of speech. Who we talk and listen to regularly is
finally a very important influence on the way we speak.