Language variation

Taken from Baker, Linguistics,

Chapter 18

 Variables:
region
socio-economic class
ethnic group
sex (gender)
age

Region

(a) dialect description

(b) dialect geography

Standard English Northern varieties

a. John and I say. . . Me and John says. . .
b. They think and strongly believe They think
and strongly believes
Northern varieties : every person of the verb
in
the present tense can take an -s ending,
unless it
is directly adjacent to a personal pronoun

Isogloss: isoglosses show the division

between
areas where a particular pronunciation,
form or
construction occurs and does not or
rarely
occurs

Regional dialect variation can also be found in

sign languages.
Dialect research usually gives a pretty good idea of
the range of variants of language that are used. But
it often does not tell us about the type of
speakers who frequently use a particular variant.
But then, that is invariably not the aim of this kind
of investigation. The particular variant people use
often turns out to be strongly dependent on the
social class to which they belong.

Social class
- Sociolect
- Here we move into the field of socio-dialectology, where
Researchers study the social distribution of language variants,
in
this case regional variants. The aim is not to give a complete
description of the dialects in question, be it Swabian (German),
Yorkshire (British English) or Moroccan (Arabic). The question is
rather: Who uses a particular Yorkshire variant (such as the //
in
cup), under which circumstances and how often?

Ethnic group

 For variants that are typical of the

language of ethnic groups we find,
again, that members of the group do
not always produce that variant, nor
does every member of the group use
the variant.

Age
Age differences may reflect an ongoing process
of language change (see Chapter 19), but they
may also just be age-related forms of language
behaviour.
Lexical differences are very common here. Some
words may be age-related, such as the English
expression cool for all kinds of superlative
properties or situations in the 1960s. (There
could
be changes at all linguistic levels)

Gender
Sex: a biological variable
Gender: a social variable (a social
construction)

In some languages there are clear gender

differences in the lexicon and other areas of
language. In Japanese, for example, the first
person pronoun watashi is a polite form and
also used far more by women. Men use the
second person pronoun kimi far more than
women do; women choose other forms. In
general women use more polite forms than men
in their language.

Situation and linguistic

context

Style: from highly informal to

extremely formal.
Its a way of speaking that is
appropriate to a
certain situation.

Register: where the language belongs to a

certain situation and is often associated with a
group of speakers. We find registers in all sorts
of professional groupings, such as
lawyers, bricklayers, academics, as well as in
many other kinds of groups,
for example mountaineers, stamp collectors
and
cycling fanatics often marked by a terminology
of its own, a jargon.

Social meaning of language

variation
Hypercorrection: when speakers wrongly
exchange a vulgar form with a form that looks
more standard, even though it actually is not.
For example, dropping the phoneme /h/ in
syllable initial position is also seen as non
standard, and is thus sometimes inserted
when
a word begins with a vowel (hexcuse)

Language attitude: the attitude of language

users towards a language variety. This attitude is
based on the social meaning of language forms
associated with a particular social class or group.
Covert prestige: It is not the case that people
always take a negative view of non-standard
language and variants. Non-standard varieties often
enjoy a covert prestige, as an expression of
group identity which distinguishes us from them.