Language in Society

Look at this conversation

‘And what do you do for a living?’

-Her new acquaintance asked.
-Feeling somewhat pained by the man’s inability to see she wasn’t
interested in talking to him, she replied tersely: ‘I’m a sociolinguist.’

-He doesn’t get the message.

‘Oh, yes?’ (A charming smile.)
‘And what does a sociolinguist do?’

-She pauses, then levels a steely look at him:

‘It means I listen to the way people talk and I judge them on it.
Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society.

Sociolinguistics is concerned in explaining why we speak differently in different

social contexts, with identifying the social functions of language and the ways it is
used to convey social meaning.

This provides information about the way language works, as well as about the
social relationships in a community and the way people convey and construct
aspects of their social identity through their language.

This data is analyzed to make generalizations about language in society, and about
the different variations found in language.
In the following example Ray is talking to his mum about his teacher.

Ray: Hi mum.
Mum: Hi. You are late.
Ray: Yeah, that bastard Sootbucket kept us in again.
Mum: Nana’s here.
Ray: Oh sorry. Where is she?

The description of Ray’s teacher would have been expressed differently if he had
realized his grandmother could hear him.

The way people talk is influenced by the social context in which they are talking.
We use different styles in different social contexts.

Ray now is talking to the principal:

Ray: Good afternoon sir.

Principal: What are you doing here at this time?

Ray: Mr. Sutton kept us in, sir.

So, Sociolinguistics is concerned with the relationship between language

and the context in which it is used.
Language and Gender
In pairs answer these questions:

•Is ‘women’s language’ a distinct style or register of a language?

•Are women more polite than men?
•Are there any differences in the way women and men interact?
•How do we signal our gender and our sexuality through our linguistic
choices?
•How is language used to refer to women and men?
•What message does the language used about women convey about their
status in the community?
•What can you conclude after answering these questions?
Social dialect research focuses on differences between women’s and men’s speech
in the areas of pronunciation (such as [in] vs [iŋ]) and morphology (such as past
tense forms), with some attention to syntactic constructions (such as multiple
negation).

Robin Lakoff, an American linguist, shifted the focus to syntax,

semantics and style. She suggested that women’s subordinate social
status in US society is indicated by the language women use, as well
as in the language used about them.

She identified a number of linguistic features which she claimed were used more
often by women than by men, and which in her opinion expressed uncertainty and
lack of confidence.
Exercise 1. Read the following dialogue of two witnesses answering questions to
a lawyer. What difference do you notice?

Lawyer : What was the nature of your acquaintance with the late Mrs E. D.?
Witness A : Well, we were, uh, very close friends. Uh she was even sort of like a
mother to me.

Lawyer : And had the heart not been functioning, in other words, had the heart been
stopped, there would have been no blood to have come from that region?
Witness B: It may leak down depending on the position of the body after death. But
the presence of blood in the alveoli indicates that some active respiratory
action had to take place.

Answer: Both witnesses are female, but witness A uses features of what Lakoff
labelled ‘women’s language’, while witness B does not.
Exercise 2.- Consider the following sentences as said by a female F or by a male M .
(a) Close the door.
(b) That’s an adorable dog.
(c) Oh dear, the TV set’s broken.
(d) I’ll be damned there’s a friend of mine!
The stereotype suggests
(e) I was very tired. sentences (b), (c), (f),
(f) Won’t you please get me that pencil? (g), (i), (j) and (k) were
produced by women.
(g) They did the right thing didn’t they?
(h) You’re damn right! (a), (d), (e), (h) and (l)
were men’s utterances.
(i) I was just exhausted.
(j) My goodness, there’s the Prime Minister!
(k) I was so mad.
(l) Damn it, I’ve lost my keys!
Lakoff suggested that women’s speech was characterized by linguistic features such as
the following:
Hedges provide a way out, should disagreements arise

(a) Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know , sort of , well , you see.
(b) Tag questions, e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?
(c) Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it’s really good.
Empty adjectives
(d) ‘Empty’ adjectives, e.g. divine , charming , cute. are used to soften
sentences and do not
(e) Precise color terms, e.g. magenta , aquamarine. add any meaningful
content
(f) Intensifiers such as just and so , e.g. I like him so much .
(g) ‘Hypercorrect’ grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms.
(h) ‘Superpolite’ forms, e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms.
(i) Avoidance of strong swear words, e.g. fudge , my goodness.
(j) Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance.
Much of this initial research was methodologically unsatisfactory because, a) most
of the subjects were university students, and b) speech was recorded in laboratory
conditions with assigned topics, and sometimes rather artificial constraints (such as
a screen between the speakers).
Consequently, it was difficult to make generalizations from the results.

But Lakoff’s fundamental point was to identify a number of linguistic features

which were unified by their function of expressing lack of confidence and
uncertainty.
The internal coherence of the features Lakoff identified can be illustrated by
dividing them into two groups: a) linguistic devices which may be used for hedging
or reducing the force of an utterance, and b) features which may intensify a
proposition’s force.
Lakoff argued that both kinds of modifiers, hedging devices and boosting devices
were evidence of an unconfident speaker.

Hedging devices explicitly signal lack of confidence, while boosting devices

express the speaker’s anticipation that the addressee may remain unconvinced
and therefore supply extra reassurance.

So, she suggested, women use hedging devices to express uncertainty, and they
use intensifying devices because they think that otherwise they will not be heard
or paid attention or to persuade their addressee to take them seriously.

Thus, according to Lakoff, both hedges and boosters express women’s lack of
confidence.
It is not surprising, given the range of methods used to collect and analyze the
data, that the research results were often contradictory, because a) in some
studies, women were reported as using more tag questions and hedges than
men, and b) while in others men used more than women.

Nevertheless, the same linguistic features can, when used by different

persons in different contexts and cultures, often mean very different things.

Some tags facilitate contributions from hearers, e.g. one friend to another,
you’ve bought a new house, haven’t you?,
while others more aggressively force replies or challenge the hearer, e.g.
police officer to a teenager caught shoplifting, you’re not ever going to do that
again, are you?
Romaine (2001) states that much of language is ambiguous and depends on
context for its interpretation, a factor far more important than gender.
On closer examination, there are few, if any, context-independent gender
differences in language.
The same words can take on different meanings and significance depending
on who uses them in a particular context.
Imagine the words ‘How about meeting for a drink later, honey?’ said by a
male customer to a waitress he does not know or said by a woman to her
husband as they talk over their schedules for the day.
According to Romaine, such examples suggest that we need to seek our
explanations for gender differences in terms of the communicative
functions expressed by certain forms used in particular contexts by specific
speakers.
It is Romaine’s view that those in a position of authority define the world from their
perspective and so it is not surprising that academic disciplines are not only male
centric but Eurocentric too since European males have defined the world’s
civilization in their own terms.
Because modern linguistic theory is essentially a product of nineteenth-century
European scholarship, some notions basic to linguistic analysis such as the
arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and theories of markedness are also embedded in
this master narrative of masculinist science.
Women occupy what might be called a problematic or negative semantic space.
They are seen as derivative of men, or inferior versions of men.
In practically all fields of research, it is women’s differences from men and masculine
norms which are seen as standing in need of some explanation.
Because women (and other minority groups in society) are devalued, so is their
language says Romaine (2001).
But how much of what is believed to be characteristic of women’s speech
actually is?
Some of the features thought to be part of ‘women’s language’ can be found in
used by males when those males are in a subordinate position. Thus, maybe
women’s language is really the ‘language of powerlessness’?
Women typically use the speech style they do because they are in less powerful
positions in relation to men.
Nevertheless, many feminists now argue that languages such as English have
been literally ‘man-made’ and are still primarily under male control.
In their view, only radical reforms can create a situation in which women are not
obliged to use a language which forces them to express themselves only as
deficient males rather than in their own terms.
Linguistic variation
Linguistic variation occurs at different levels of linguistic analysis. In vocabulary
(as we saw with the example of Ray talking about his teacher differently to his
mother and the principal) in pronunciation, in word-structure, and in grammar.

Can you explain the following example of variation in pronunciation?

Answer: Sam drops the [h]s which conveys social information: Sam is a coal-miner
and Jim is a professional who lives in London.
The nineteenth century was a particularly good time in the history of the study of
regional variation in language. Some very large projects were initiated in Europe.

The Altas Linguistique de la France or ‘Alf’, as it is commonly called was begun by

Jules Gillieron and the data collection was carried out by a fieldworker, Edmond
Edmont.

He bicycled all around France stopping in small villages where he interviewed older
speakers and asked them what the local word was for a number of vocabulary items
and then carefully noted the local pronunciation of different words.

Edmont was trained to use a consistent system for transcribing regional

pronunciations, and at every point in his fieldwork he administered the same
questionnaire.
No, really? One of the ALPI fieldworkers found out firsthand how badly people can
misunderstand linguistic research.

Following the military coup in Spain in 1936, Aníbal Otero (1911–1974) was arrested while
undertaking fieldwork in northern Portugal. Otero’s suspicious notebooks full of
incomprehensible notes in ‘code’ were ‘evidence’ that he was a spy. He was convicted of
treason and sentenced to death by firing squad.

The testimony of scholars that Otero’s notebooks were not in fact a spy’s code, but rather
linguistic transcriptions, enabled him to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

Otero somehow managed to continue his research during his years in various military prisons:
he surveyed different fellow prisoners’ speech, carefully noting each subject’s place of birth
and other characteristics.

After being released, Otero’s health never recovered and he returned to live a private life in
his home village, Lugo.
Shibboleth

A shibboleth is a linguistic variable that can be used as a diagnostic of where someone

comes from.

The story goes that the Ephraimites lost to the Gileadites in a battle.

They tried to flee, but the Gileadites were able to unmask them because they pronounced
the word shibboleth with an /s/ and not an /ʃ/.

Wucker (1999) tells a similar modern story from Hispaniola, where during a pogrom
Haitians in the Dominican Republic were identified partly by their pronunciation of <r>.

Dominican soldiers would hold up some parsley, perejil in Spanish, and ask people to name
it. If they could not produce the trilled Spanish /r/, the person was killed.
This is an example of variation in grammar and vocabulary
1. What is the syntactic and semantic difference between (a) and (b)? (6p)
2. What is the speech function (asking directions, giving directions, ordering,
requesting? Etc.)
3. Are both statements interchangeable?
(a) Refuse should be deposited in the receptacle provided.

(b) Put your rubbish in the bin, Jilly.

1. (a) uses a passive grammatical structure; (b) uses an imperative form, a possessive
pronoun, an address form (Jilly) and the use of more formal and less frequent words:
refuse, deposited and receptacle for rubbish, put and bin.
2. The speech function is giving directions.
3. They are not interchangeable. If your mother said to you sentence (a) you would
probably assume she was being sarcastic or humorous.
Example of linguistic variation in
Norway that involves two dialects
https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/tour/ahJzfmd3ZWItdG91cmJ1aWxkZXJyEQsSBFRvdXIYgIDAws2U6gkM
In northern Norway, there is a village, Hemnesberget, which has become
famous among sociolinguists because the language used by the villagers was
described in great detail by two sociolinguists, Blom and Gumperz, in the late
1960s.
Blom and Gumperz reported that the Hemnesberget villagers knew and used
two distinct kinds of Norwegian: firstly, the local dialect, Ranamål ( Rana is
the district, mål is the Norwegian word for ‘language’), and secondly, the
standard dialect or standard Norwegian, Bokmål (literally ‘book-language’).

Bokmål was used by the teachers in school, it was the language of the
textbooks and, after a little exposure, it was the kind of Norwegian that the
pupils used to discuss school topics in school too.

Bokmål was used in church services and sermons.

Bokmål was used when people went into the local government offices to
transact official business. It was used on radio and television, and it was used
to strangers and visitors from outside Hemnesberget.
So what did that leave for Ranamål?

Ranamål was the kind of Norwegian that people used to speak to their family,
friends and neighbors most of the time. As the local dialect, it signaled
membership in the local speech community.

People used Ranamål to each other at breakfast, to local shopkeepers when

buying their newspapers and vegetables, to the mechanic in the local garage,
and to the local people they met in the street.
A local person who used Bokmål to buy petrol would be regarded as ‘stuck up’
or ‘putting on airs’.
Linguistic variation is not only in pronunciation differences, or vocabulary choices, or
grammatical variation. It also involves the use of different dialects.
Ranamål, the local dialect, differs from Bokmål, the standard dialect, in a number of
quite specific ways.
Each has its own pronunciation features: Ranamål, for instance, has a palatal nasal
sound [q] (as in Spanish señor ), which Bokmål does not have.
Each dialect has distinctive word-forms or morphological features: the plural of the
horses is hestene in Bokmål but hæstan in Ranamål.
The Bokmål word for she is hun , while in Ranamål she is ho ; the Bokmål word for
he is men , the Ranamål word is mænn .
Factors such as who is being talked to, the topic of discussion, where and for what
reasons, are important when selecting one dialect or the other.
The linguistic variation involved in Hemnesberget is simply a matter of scale, and the
reasons for the choice of one dialect rather than another involve similar social
considerations – the participants, the social setting and the topic or purpose of the
interaction.
Because of these similarities, sociolinguists use the term variety (or sometimes
code) to refer to any set of linguistic forms which patterns according to social
factors.
In other words, variety is a sociolinguistic term referring to language in context.
Variety is therefore a broad term which includes different accents, different
linguistic styles, different dialects and even different languages which contrast with
each other for social reasons.
It has proved to be a very useful sociolinguistic term because it is linguistically
neutral and covers all the different realizations of the abstract concept ‘language’ in
different social contexts.
Example of linguistic variation that
involves distinct languages
 Sauris

https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/tour/ahJzfmd3ZWItdG91cmJ1aWxkZXJyEQsSBFRvdXIYgIDAws2U6gkM

Listen to Friulan languge

Before 1866, the village Sauris had been part of the Austrian empire, and its
villagers all spoke German. Now Sauris is part of Italy and the adults are all
trilingual.

In the late 1960s, they still used a German dialect at home, with neighbors and
fellow villagers. They also used the regional language Friulian with people from
the surrounding area outside the village, and the young men tended to use it to
each other in the pub.

These men had gone to secondary school together in Ampezzo, a nearby town, and
Friulilan had become for them a language of friendship and solidarity.

Italian was the language people used to talk to those from beyond the region, and
for reading and writing. Because their village was now part of Italy, Italian was a
the language of the church and the school.
In the last example, the different linguistic varieties used in Sauris are distinct
languages. They are distinguishable from each other in their sounds, their
grammar and their vocabulary. Italians from outside the area would not be able
to understand the German dialect, nor even the Friulian, although, like Italian, it
is a Romance language.

The varieties are also distinguishable by the way they are used –their social
distribution is different. The local people select the appropriate variety for any
particular interaction according to similar social factors: who are they talking to,
in what kind of setting, and for what purposes.

The example illustrate the range of linguistic variation which can be observed in
different speech communities. People may use different pronunciations,
vocabulary, grammar or styles of a language for different purposes, in different
contexts, and according to the situation in which they are speaking.
Social factors and Social dimensions
 Social factors
Certain social factors are relevant in accounting for the particular variety used.
Some relate to the users of language –the participants; others relate to its uses –
the social setting and function of the interaction. And in some cases, the topic has
proved an influence on language choice.

In any situation, linguistic choices generally indicate people’s awareness of the

influence of one or more of the following components:
1. The participants: who is speaking and who are they speaking to?
2. The setting or social context of the interaction: where are they speaking?
3. The topic: what is being talked about?
4. the function: why are they speaking?
Social dimensions
In addition to the social factors, it is useful to take account of four different social
dimensions:
1. A social distance scale concerned with participant relationships.
Intimate Distant
High solidarity Low solidarity

2. A status scale concerned with participant relationships.

Superior High status

Subordinate Low status

3. A formality scale relating to the setting or type of interaction.
Formal High formality

Informal Low formality

4. Two functional scales relating to the purposes or topic of interaction.

Referential
High information content Low information content

Affective
Low affective content High affective content
Ray’s utterance Yeah, that bastard Sootbucket kept us in again conveys referential
information of why Ray was late, but it also conveys feelings about the teacher
referred to.
Gossip may provide a great deal of new referential information, while also clearly
conveying how the speaker feels about those referred to.

It is very common for utterances to work like this, giving referential and affective
information, though often one function will dominate. In general, the more
referentially oriented an interaction is, the less it tends to express the feelings of the
speaker.
Radio broadcasts of the weather forecast tend to put the emphasis on information
(the referential function), and a talk between neighbors over the fence at the
weekend about the weather is more likely to be mainly affective in function.
WORKSHOP

Read the following utterances and use the four social dimensions to analyze them.
Employ words and/or structures from the utterances as resources to support your
answers.

(a) Here is the forecast for the Wellington district until midnight Tuesday issued by
the meteorological service at 6 o’clock on Monday evening. “It will be rather cloudy
overnight with some drizzle, becoming fine again on Tuesday morning. The outlook
for Wednesday –a few morning showers then fine.”
(b) Good morning little one –you had a good big sleep, didn’t you, pet?
(c) Excuse me, Mr. Clayton. I’ve finished your letters, sir.
The Functions of Speech
 Example:
Boss : Good morning Sue. Lovely day.
Secretary : Yes it’s beautiful. Makes you wonder what we’re doing here
doesn’t it.
Boss : Mm, that’s right. Look I wonder if you could possibly sort this
lot out by ten. I need them for a meeting.
Secretary : Yes sure. No problem.
Boss : Thanks that’s great.
•This dialogue is typical of many everyday interactions in that it serves both an
affective or social function (the greetings and comments on the weather) and a
referential function.
•It is possible to distinguish a great variety of different functions which language
serves, and any utterance may express more than one function.
•There are a number of ways of categorizing the functions of speech:
1. Expressive utterances express the speaker’s •Phatic speech is closely related to expressive
feelings, e.g. I’m feeling great today. speech. However, the main difference is that
2. Directive utterances attempt to get phatic speech is focused on the well-being of
someone to do something, e.g. Clear the others while expressive speech focuses on
table. the feelings of the person speaking.
3. Referential utterances provide information. •The first three functions are recognized by
4. Metalinguistic utterances comment on many linguists, and seem to be fundamental
language itself, e.g. ‘Hegemony’ is not a functions of language, perhaps because they
common word. derive from the basic components of any
5. Poetic utterances focus on aesthetic interaction – the speaker ( expressive ), the
features of language, e.g. a poem, an ear- addressee ( directive ) and the message
catching motto, a rhyme. (referential).
6. Phatic utterances express solidarity and
empathy with others. They serve a social •The phatic function is, however, equally
function, such as small talk, but they don’t important from a sociolinguistic perspective
seek or offer information of value, e.g. Hi, how because it conveys social message rather
are you, lovely day isn’t it! than a referential one.
Example:
Boss : Good morning Sue. Lovely day.
Secretary : Yes it’s beautiful. Makes
you wonder what we’re doing here
doesn’t it.
Boss : Mm, that’s right. Look I wonder
if you could possibly sort this lot out
by ten. I need them for a meeting.
Secretary : Yes sure. No problem.
Boss : Thanks that’s great.
Workshop: Identify:
(1) Utterances that serve the
expressive function.
(2) Utterances that serve the phatic
function.
(3) An utterance which serves a
primarily directive function.
(4) An utterance which serves a
primarily referential function.
Directives
•Directives are concerned with getting
people to do things.

•The speech acts which express directive

force vary in strength.

•We can attempt to get people to sit down,

for instance, by suggesting or inviting them
to do so, or by ordering or commanding
them to sit down.

•Orders and commands are speech acts

which are generally expressed in
imperative form.

•Polite attempts to get people to do

something in English tend to use I’m sorry to bother you, but could you move your foot a
interrogatives or declaratives. little either way because somehow mine seems to have
got caught under yours.
•How do people decide which form to use in
a particular context?
•What are the social factors which affect a
speaker’s choice of the appropriate form of
directive?
•A number of factors have been suggested.
•The social distance between participants,
their relative status, and the social
dimensions are usually relevant.
Where status differences are clearly
marked and accepted, superiors tend to
use imperatives to subordinates. Teachers
often use imperatives to pupils: ‘open your
books’, ‘shut the door’, ‘stop talking please’.
•People who are close friends or intimates
use more imperatives, for instance.
•The following utterances were all produced
within a family, were (almost!) all said
without malice, and caused no offence.
(a) Roll over.
(b) Shut up you fool.
(c) Set the table, Finn.
(d) Clap hands Nico.
(e) Wash your hands for dinner, children.
(f) Turn that blessed radio down.
(g) Bugger off idiot.
( Bugger off is not usually regarded as an
offensive expression in New Zealand)
•Just as imperatives are used between people who know each other well or to
subordinates, interrogatives and declaratives, including hints, tend to be
used between those who are less familiar with each other, or where there is
some reason to feel the task being requested is not routine.

•Hints may also be used for humorous effect between people who are close
friends:
(a) To someone blocking the light out:
You make a better door than a window.
(b) Mother to teenage son:
I’m not sure that a couple of smelly socks in the middle of the lounge floor
can be beaten as a center piece for our dinner party. What do you think, Tim?
•It has also been noted that girls and women tend to favor more polite and less direct forms
of directives than males – at least in many of the middle class contexts investigated.

•These are examples of children’s utterances to each other in a play center:

(a) Tom : Give me that. I need it now.

(b) Seymour : Get off that car.
(c) Grant : Get out of my house.
(d) Maria : You finished with that rolling pin now?
(e) Lisa : My turn now eh?
(f) Meg : It’s time for tea so you’ll have to go home now.
•Swear words have different sociolinguistic functions
such as annoyance, aggression and insult; they may
also express solidarity and friendliness.

•Different ways people can swear (linguistically

speaking): “descriptively (Let’s fuck), idiomatically
(It’s fucked up), abusively (Fuck you…!), emphatically
(This is fucking amazing), and cathartically (Fuck!!!).

•In most languages, tag questions can be indicators of

politeness, hedging, consensus seeking, solidarity,
emphasis and/or irony, confidence or lack of
confidence; they may be confrontational, defensive
or tentative; they can also be rhetorical (not
expecting an answer).
WORKSHOP we’re in teams boys right?
we got fucking nothing to lose here
•Read the following excerpt it’s a fucking game today alright?
from the pre-match pep talk by let’s fucking go out there and we’ll show them
the captain of a regional New
how fucking mean and how fucking good we are boys eh?
Zealand rugby team and
identify: we put forty minutes together last week
let’s put fucking eighty together this week eh?
•a)the linguistic function of the
word fucking
•b) its sociolinguistic function
•c) words to substitute the word
•d) the function of the tag eh?
AUTONOMOUS WORK:
Consider the form of directives, i.e. how people get others to do things in your community.

(a) First make some observations in a range of different contexts (your place of work, at the
mall, with friends, etc.), writing down the form of the directives and the situations in which
they occur. Then try to make some generalizations about the reasons for any patterns you
observe.

(b) Note the form of the directives used in your family by both adults and children on three
different days. List the different social factors (e.g. relative status/power, degree of solidarity,
degree of formality, urgency, etc.) which you consider influence the forms of the directives.