Language and Social CultureLanguage and Social Culture

Chapter 7

Language Varieties • Variety is a generic term for a particular

coherent form of language that can be defined by specific extralinguistic criteria.

• For example, a geographically defined variety is known as a dialect, a variety with a social basis as a sociolect, a functional variety as a jargon or a sublanguage, a situative variety as a register.

• David (1992: 76) defines variety as a system of linguistic expression whose use is governed by situational variables, such as regional, occupational or social class.

Language Varieties

• A language is typically composed of a number of dialects.

• The language differences associated with dialect may occur on any level of language, thus including pronunciation, grammatical, semantic, and language use differences.

Language Varieties

• A regional dialect refers to the language variety used in a geographical region.

• A regional dialect differs from language in that the former is considered a distinct entity, yet not distinct enough to be regarded as a different language.

Language Varieties

• The term social dialect is used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes.

• Whereas regional dialects are geographically based, social dialects originate among social groups and are related to a variety of factors such as gender, age, ethnic group, religion, and class.

• In India, for example, caste, one of the clearest of all social differentiators, quite often determines which variety of a language a speaker uses.

Register

• Register refers the functional variety of language that is defined according to the use of language in context.

• For example, a physician may use technical terms when he is talking with his fellow physicians, but he may use ordinary vocabulary when he is talking to his patients.

• When talking about salt, a chemist may use "NaCl" in writing, but he may use the word "salt" before a preschool child.

Ethnic Varieties

• Speech variation may arise due to different ethnic backgrounds.

• Ethnic varieties are used by ethnic groups and regarded as social dialects.

• AAVE• It has a few distinctive phonological, morphological

and syntactic features.• Consonant deletion • "past" and "passed" are both pronounced as "pass“;

"Meant" and "mend" are both pronounced as "men.”

• absence of "be" is one of its prominent syntactic features. • "it is" = "there is“; for example:

• a. Is it a Mr. Harris in this office?• b. Diana's been a wonderful lady and it's

nothin' too good for her.

• double negation constructions:

• a. Cronin don't know nothing. (Cronin doesn't know anything.)

• b. I ain't afraid of no devils. (I'm not afraid of any devils.)

Language and Culture

• The language used by a speech community is closely related to the culture of that community.

• Culture consists of what it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves.

Language and Culture

• Language and culture are inextricably related. • The two are in a dialectical relationship. Every

language is part of a culture, and it serves and reflects cultural needs.

Language and Culture

• The relationship between language and culture was distinctive in the work of Sapir.

• Even though he believes that language and culture are not intrinsically associated, he believed that language and our thought-grooves are too much involved as to be impossible to untie each other, and are, in a sense, one and the same.

• The association of a specific culture with a specific language was not given by nature but was a historical coincidence.

Language and Culture

• In fact, there were and still are areas in the world where societies share a very similar cultural orientation and yet speak different languages.

• Estonians and Lapps speak related languages, but their cultures are quite different.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• linguistic determinism + linguistic relativity

• Linguistic determinism• The strong version: Language determines thought; language

and thought are identical. • The weak version: Thought is only affected by language.

• Linguistic relativity: Distinctions encoded in one language are unique to that language alone, and there is no limit to the structural diversity of languages.

Language Change

• Language is in a state of constant change.• Three major periods in the development of

English: • Old English period: 449 – 1100; • Middle English: 1100 – 1500; • Modern English: 1500 to the present.

• The world is changing and the causes of language change are many. • Some of the main causes of language change:

• ● historical cause • ● social cause • ● pragmatic and psychological cause • ● scientific and technological development • ● the increase of international contact

• historical cause• Historically, English has been changing

throughout its history.

• social cause

• Language change may result from the change from one social group to another or the interaction of one social group with other groups.

• pragmatic and psychological cause• The avoidance of particular words for social

reasons seems to occur in all languages and euphemisms arise in their place.

• scientific and technological development

• Scientific and technological development can be one of the causes of language change. New technical terms keep coming into people's daily life.

• the increase of international contact • Communication with speakers of other

languages could lead to language change. • During the sixteenth century, English

borrowed many words from French and Italian because Englishmen were in contact with speakers of these languages.

Lexical Change

• New words may be added. Some words may become obsolete. And a new dimension in meaning may be attached to an existing word.

• Words may become archaic or extinct. When a new word comes into use, its unusual presence draws attention; but a word may be lost through inattention.

• Borrowing• In the area of foods and cooking, English has

borrowed a large number of words from French. • During the Middle English period such words entered

the language: dinner, supper, broil, baste, appetite, salmon, sardine, pork, beef, veal, mutton, poultry, grape, orange.

• Creation of New Words• Apart from borrowing, new words have made their

entry into English via word formation rules such as compound, derivation, blending, abbreviation, clipping, back-formation, and coinage, etc..

• Some new words are created from the brand-name or trade-mark of a product. For example, the invention of Kodak.

• Shifts in Meaning• Amelioration: a word is assigned to a more

favorable class of objects than previously. • Nimble (Old English word niman, meaning "to

take“) now means adroit. • Pejoration: a word becomes attached to a less

favorable class of objects than previously. • Spinster (the girl who spins) now means an older

unmarried woman.

• Generalization: a word is related to a larger class of objects than previously.

• A place was originally the same thing as a plaza, and a butcher was a person who slaughtered goats.

• Specialization: a word is related to a smaller class of objects.

• A wife was originally any woman, and disease was lack of ease for any reason.

Sound Change

• Words such as table and face, which had at the time of borrowing, underwent a sound change in English during the fifteenth century. The vowel was raised and fronted to [ei].

•

Syntactical change

• A syntactic rule that has been lost from English is the rule of adjective agreement.

• The rule: the endings of adjectives must agree with the head noun in case, number, and gender.

Language Planning

• The term language planning refers to a deliberate attempt to affect language use in order to prevent or to solve some problems of communication.

Standard Language

• The standard language can be said to be a superposed, socially prestigious dialect of language.

• Because it functions as the public means of communication, it is subject to extensive normalization especially in grammar, pronunciation, and spelling.

• Command of the standard language is the goal of formal language instruction.

National Language and Official Language

• A national language is considered as a national identity. • An official language is the language that

is used in official situations in a nation or an institution.

• End of Lecture