LANE 422

SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Summarized from
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
An Introduction to Language and Society
Peter Trudgill
th
4 edition. 2000,
Prepared by
Dr. Abdullah S. Al-Shehri

Chapter 9

Language and Contact

Language Contact
Geographical spread of a language results in a language

contact situation. This means that the spreading language is

used by speakers of other languages.

Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena, including

language convergence, borrowing, and relexification.

The most common products of language contact are pidgins,

creoles, borrowing, code-switching, and code-mixing.

The use of a language by speakers of other languages is often

different from its use by native speakers.

A language that is used non natively by speakers of other

languages for communication is described as a lingua franca.

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What is a lingua franca?

A lingua franca is a language which is used as a

means of communication among people who have no

native language in common.

In the past, Arabic became the "lingua franca" of the

Islamic World (from AD 733 - AD 1492), which at a

certain point spread from the borders of China and
Northern India through Central Asia, Persia, Asia
Minor, Middle East, North Africa all the way to the
Iberian Peninsula in the west.

Presently, English is considered a lingua franca of

the World

Where did the term lingua franca come

from?
Lingua franca referred originally to a mixed language

composed mostly of Italian with a broad vocabulary

drawn from Turkish, French, Spanish, Greek and
Arabic.

This language was limited to the Eastern

Mediterranean as the language of commerce and

diplomacy in and around the Renaissance era.

Franca was the Italian word for Frankish. Its usage in

the term lingua franca originated from its meaning in

Arabic, dating from before the Crusades, whereby all
Europeans were called "Franks" or Firinjah in Arabic.

How is a lingua franca different from other

languages?
The use of a language as a lingua franca reflects a

rather interesting aspect of linguistic phenomena.

Unlike native languages, the use of a language as a

lingua franca is often limited to certain social

situations.

A language used in limited social contexts (as a

lingua franca) usually undergoes a certain amount of

simplification and reduction and will be
characterized by errors caused by interference from
the speakers native languages.
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What is simplification?
Simplification refers to the getting red of

irregularities, such as irregular verb forms,

redundancies, such as grammatical gender,
and the avoidance of certain complex
syntactic structure, in the lingua franca.

What is reduction?
As a result of a reduction in social function, lingua franca

speakers may use the language for doing business or

commerce, but not perhaps for many other purposes.
This means that parts of the language, such as

vocabulary, grammatical structures, and stylistic devices,

will be missing from the usage of non-native speakers.
We can say then that a reduction in the social function of

a lingua franca results in a reduction in form as well.

Language Interference / Errors

The effect of the native language can be on any structural

aspect of the second/foreign language: vocabulary, grammar,

pronunciation etc.

Language interference is most often regarded as a source of

errors.

The greater the differences between the speakers native

language and the second/foreign language, the more negative

the effects of interference are likely to be (negative transfer).

But, where the relevant features of both languages are similar or

the same, this will result in correct second/foreign language

production (positive transfer).

How is a lingua franca affected by

linguistic interference?
Many of the structural characteristics of a lingua

franca are usually the result of linguistic interference.

Linguistic interference is the effect of the non-native

speakers first language on his or her production of

the second or foreign language they are using, which
usually results in errors.

The technical term for the process by which

languages may be subject, in the usage of non-native

speakers, to simplification, reduction and
linguistic interference is pidginization.
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What is a pidginization?
A pidgin language is a lingua franca which has no

native speakers and is used as a means of

communication between people that do not have a
language in common.

It is derived from a normal language through

simplification, reduction and interference or admixture,

often, from the native language, or languages, of
those who use it.

Normally, in the first stages of its development at

least, in which we can refer to it as a pre-pidgin, it is

used only in trading or other limited-contact situations.
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An example of a lingua franca is: Swahili

Swahili is a language that is widely used as a lingua franca in East

Africa.

On parts of the coast of East Africa, Swahili is the native language of

many of the population, who speak it very fluently.

Inland, in Tanzania, it is not widely spoken natively, but it is used to a

considerable extent as a lingua franca.

Compared to the coastal Swahili, this inland lingua franca variety of

Swahili demonstrates some features of simplification, since it is spoken

as a second language, and it is subject to reduction, as it is used in a
more restricted set of circumstances than on the coast.

Further inland still, in eastern Congo, yet another variety of Swahili is

used as a lingua franca. In this case, even more reduction and

simplification have taken place.

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Pidgin Swahili
However, in another part of Congo, in the rural north, a further

lingua franca form of Swahili occurs.

This variety again is more reduced and simplified, relative to

other varieties of Swahili.

The result of this degree of reduction and simplification is that

mutual intelligibility with coastal Swahili is minimal.

When simplification has taken place on a large scale, and when

the result is relatively stabilized form of language consistently

employed as a lingua franca, the resulting variety is called a
pidgin language (in this case Congo pidgin Swahili).

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How do pidgins develop?

The most likely setting for the formation of a pidgin language is a contact

situation involving three or more language groups: one dominant language

and at least two non-dominant languages.

If contact between the speakers of the dominant language and the speakers of

the non dominant languages is minimal, and the imperfectly learned dominant
language is then used as a lingua franca among the non-dominant groups, a
pidgin language might arise.

Over time, in the speech of lingua franca users, the pre-pidgin will acquire a

set of structures and norms for usage which will be accepted by everybody. It
will acquire a fixed form which linguists can describe and write grammars for.

Most of the well-known pidgin languages in the world are the result of travel on

the part of European traders and colonizers.

They are mainly based on languages like English, French and Portuguese,

and are located on the main shipping and trading routes.

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Why have pidgins often been stigmatized?

Pidgins which have been based on English or other

European languages have often been regarded as

bad, debased, corrupt or inferior forms of these
languages.

This is because many people have objected to

pidgins thinking that they have corrupted the purity

of these European languages.

Views like this are often accompanied by sentiments

about racial and cultural purity as well.

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English-Based Pidgins
English-based pidgins were formerly found in North America,

the Caribbean, West Africa, New Zealand and in China.

They are still found in Australia, West Africa, the Solomon

Islands and in New Guinea, where pidgin English is often

referred to by linguists as Tok Pisin.

Tok Pisin is probably the most widely spoken pidgin derived

from English.

Tok Pisin has official status in New Guinea, and is used there on

the radio, in newspapers, and in schools.

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From Pidgin to Creole

World pidgins are at present undergoing a process of creolization.
Creole languages are pidgins that have acquired native speakers.
When acquired by children as their first/native language, the pidgin

will re-acquire all the characteristics of a full, non-pidgin language.

As spoken by adults, the language will have an expanded

vocabulary, a wider range of syntactic structures, and an increased

stylistic repertoire, and will also be used for all purposes in a full
range of social situations.

Creole languages are perfectly normal languages only their

history is somewhat unusual.

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Decreolization
Creolization repairs the simplification and reduction

which take place during pidginization.

Decreolization attacks the simplification and

admixture which occurs during pidginization.

Contact between the base language and a creole

language leads to the gradual introduction into the

creole of structural complexities from the base
language, and the gradual disappearance of
elements derived from languages other than the
base.
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The Decreolization of the African American

Vernacular of English (AAVE)
Linguists have argued that African American

Vernacular English (AAVE) is descended from

an original creole that has become
progressively decreolized, as a result of
centuries of contact with English, so that it is
now clearly a variety of English itself.

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