Linguistic variation

1. Interpersonal variation:

a. Regional dialects (Boston, Texas)b. Social dialects/Sociolects (AAVE, Chicano)

2. Intrapersonal variation:

a. Styles (Level of formality)b. Registers (“situational dialects”)

Your idiolect No 2 people have exactly the same language

experience.- We all know slightly different sets of the words &

constructions- depending on your age, job, education level, region where

you live or grew up, …

All this combines into something new and unlike any other person’s way of speaking, your idiolect.

Regional variation (Dialects)

In all larger languages

Takes time to develop (Western U.S.)

Traditionally studied in dialectology

>1960s: Sociolinguistics

Dialects - “Say what?”

British football

British words – American words

Test your British language skillsWhat are these?

Chips Crisps A vest A fag A loo roll Dual carriageway ahead A theatre Pudding

How would you ask for

Bell peppers Gas station Eraser Cookies The subway A tow truck Pants an ATM

Wanna be British?Shonky pomsDo Australians speak English? Not according to the government[Economist, Aug 26th 2004]

FOREIGNERS wanting British citizenship must know English. But what if they've been speaking it all their lives? The government is in a tangle over how to apply new naturalisation rules to applicants from countries such as Australia. Foreigners who have learnt English must take tests. But those from English-speaking countries are to be certified by a responsible person such as a judge, teacher or elected official.For many of the applicants concerned, the very idea of having to prove that they speak English has an unpleasant whiff of colonial condescension. … Newspapers in Australia and New Zealand have mocked the new rule. No other English-speaking country insists on a language test for would-be citizens with British nationality.Even more annoyingly, … [a] native-speaker could end up being certified by someone less fluent …The government is unapologetic, … [but] the new rule still seems odd: once in force, it will be open to abuse, while inconveniencing a desirable bunch of would-be citizens for no good reason.

American dialects: Texas

Dialect words

brushfire wildfire bushfire

Southern words

cokebuggy

sweeperbarbeque

a cookout (not “a barbeque”)

“Oh foot, I got that one wrong too.”

SoCal words – SigAlert, June Gloom

ASL ‘pizza’

Dialects – Sound changes

Dialect syntax Even Texans is Americans.

(Texas)

I'm done dinner.(Canada)

Me no like him.(Jamaica)

My car wants mending.(Britain)

They were fixin’ to leave without us.(U.S. South)

Reasons for dialect differentiation1. Settlement patterns

(Boston, Philadelphia, Virginia)

2. Migration patterns (Connecticut river as barrier: east /pα:k/ vs. west /pαrk/)

3. Language contact (NY Yiddish: shlep; New Orleans French: beignet)

4. Physical/social isolation: New Orleans: swamps, Catholic, unlike Southern U.S.

American regional dialects

Dialects of Mexican SpanishMajor Dialect GroupsNorthern

(Northeast, Northwest)Baja Californian Central

(Western, Lowlands, Central)CoastalYucatanChiapas

Spanish dialectsSpanish names for ‘turkey’:

pavo cócono (Mexico) guajolote (from Nahuatl) chumpe (Southern Mexico) chompipe (Central America) pisco (Venezuela, Colombia) guanajo (Cuba)

Sound changes – Pronouncing the /r/

Dialect leveling Stigmatization

e.g., abandoning rural forms when moving to the city

Changing identitiese.g., Jordanian & Palestinian Arabic merging in Amman (symbol of a new national identity)

Increased mobilitye.g., emergence of large, homogenized dialect areas

Exposure to “modern” formse.g., spread of standard forms through, media and education

Key terms Variety:

neutral cover term for the speech patterns of a group of people

Accent:differences in pronunciation /bαrn/ vs. /bα:n/

Dialect:a native variety of a language spoken in a particular area or by a particular group of people

Language:a set of mutually intelligible (?) varieties

Problems with mutual intelligibility Intelligibility in speech vs. in writing

(Chinese, “Serbo-Croatian”)

Intelligibility not always mutual(British vs. American English)

Degrees of intelligibility Dialect chains

(Romance from Sicily to NW Spain)

Political & cultural affinities(Swiss German; Scandinavian languages)

Language and dialect“A language is a dialect with an army and a

navy.” Dictum attributed to Antoine Meillet, Max Weinreich and

others.

1st documented appearance in Weinreich (1945):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy

Bell Factors for evaluatingthe status of a variety (1976)

1. Standardization (grammars, dictionaries, literature)

2. Vitality (living speech community)

3. Historicity (Sense of identity: Arabic, Chinese)

4. Autonomy (Feeling of separateness: Ukraine)

5. Reduction (D is a subvariety of L: Ebonics?)

6. Mixture (Purity of a variety)

7. De facto norms (Good/poor speakers)

Social dialectsCaution: Do not confuse with situational

dialects/registers

British Upper Class speech Baghdad: Muslim, Christian dialects AAVE Chicano English

British Upper classmen

Tamil Brahmin dialect

Styles / Formality Casual - spontaneous conversation

(laughter, fast speech, breathiness, emotional)

Careful - interview response Reading a text aloud Word list Minimal word pairs (bet – bat)

Styles / Formality: examples (1) He donated numerous volumes to the institution.

(2) He gave some books to the library.

(1) Then he heated the mixture.(2) The mixture was then heated.

(1) I am writing to inform you ...(2) I just wanted to let you know …

(1) Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?(2) Get me the damn mustard, ahole.

timepiece

Slang - dope

Slang - fried

Slang:(1) There is hella homework due

tomorrow.hella ‘‘very, a lot’

(2) Wow, you live in the cuts!the cuts ‘middle of nowhere’

(3) Ew, why are they cupcaking, that’s hella gross.cupcaking ‘couple having a lot of PDA’

(4) Let’s go swoop Joseph.swoop ‘pick up’

(5) Wow, this song hella slaps.slaps ‘rocks’

(6) A: Can you swoop me at 5? B: Fasho.fasho ‘yes, okay’

(7) Riding in my new whip.whip ‘car’

(8) You tryna eat?tryna ‘trying to’

(9) We out here mobbing.mobbing ‘going out with your friends’

East Bay slang (NorCal)[thanks to Kristen Hill, 2018]

Usage: Slang going mainstreamlike

Registers (Situational dialects) Medical jargon

(1a) Perfed appy evident, secondary hemiparesis noted.(1b) The patient has a burst appendix that’s infected, partial

paralysis is present.https://ayers.edu/medical-jargon-appropriate-use-with-patients/

Legalese(2a) Purchaser will provide a written waiver of the contingency

on the sale and close of Purchaser’s property or this agreement will terminate without further notice and deposits will be returned according to paragraph 15 of this agreement.

https://dlr.sd.gov/realestate/forms/purchase_agreement.pdf

Registers (Situational dialects) Baby talk

It’s time for our meal. Open wide. Open wide. Mmm, that’s good. We love applesauce, don’t we?

Airplane talkWe DO ask that you put your trays IN the upright position and remain seated UNTIL the aircraft HAS come to a complete stop AT the gate.

Star TrekCaptain, warp core breach is imminent.

Textinglol, g2g, pos.French: JTM

Register - abseiler

Registers: How to chooseFactors governing register choice include:

Purpose of the interaction (Why?) Mode: Speech or writing (How?) Style / Tone (To whom?)

Terms of addressDr. Toussaint, Sir, Toussaint, Alvin, hey you, honey, boy

Register: How to chooseTwo letters from a consultant surgeon

To the patient’s primary doctor:Mr. L’s Thoracic Spine MRI shows significantly lower spinal

stenosis especially at TH/12. His cervical spine MRI is really not that bad and I think consideration for a lower Thoracic Laminectomy is worthwhile. Yours sincerely, Dr. FN, FRCS

To the patient:There is one part of your spine that does not show up on

the MRI scan. It is recommended that we do an MRI at this level, and if you agree we will do this as soon as possible. Yours sincerely, Dr. FNSource: Stockwell, P. 2002. Sociolinguistics: A resource book for students. Routledge.

Exercise: Rewrite the following text for an audience of children on a school trip

From the exhibition catalogue of the International Currents in Contemporary Art exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum:

For more than fifteen years, German conceptual artist Andreas Slominski has been reinterpreting the concept of the trap. Slominski, who designs his own functional traps for all kinds of animals (foxes, birds, insects), has found a perfect metaphor for art: like art, the trap seduces and deceives. Hermetic and humorous, the work lures its viewers, asking them to ponder the very limits of what constitutes the absurd and, hence, to contemplate the boundaries of art.

Usage & social evaluation What social evaluation, if any, is attached

to each of the following usages:1. pólice, gúitar, Détroit2. aluminum, aluminium3. farm pronounced as fahm4. Cuba pronounced as Cuber5. fishing, fishin’6. butter, budder, bu’er

Language and identity Your Idiolect (personal way of speaking)

[what words you know & use, how you pronounce them, etc.]derives from

Your Language community[skateboarders, students, professors, Spanish speakers, …]

Monolingual vs. bilingual communities Heritage language Endangered languages

Do you speak American? H.L. Mencken The American Language.

LING 305 English Language in America Scottish English

What if Scotland became its own country?Trainspotting

Sample paper topics Lights, Camera, Action: The Register of the Film Industry NorCal Slang Hawaiian Pidgin English in Today’s Hawai’i The Register of Draftology (Football) 10-4: The Ins and Outs of Cop Talk Language Varieties in Taiwan Hindi-Urdu: One Language or Two? Applying the Bell Criteria to Ebonics Konglish Dialect in Huckleberry Finn The role of Language in Middle Earth

Write about the language of … Military slang and jargon Online dating Drag queens Boy scouts Jazz musicians versus classical musicians Disney “cast members” Hair stylists

Different looks, body parts, techniques, materials usedFringe, jooge, edgy, dusting, upsweep, fillers, graduation, tipping, Giselle waves

In case you are interested … Fringe bangs Jooge rubbing the hair between fingers for texture Edgy trendy, non-conventional Dusting cutting hair only slightly Upsweep loose gathering of hair on top of the head Fillers used to even out hair color Graduation a technique to build up weight, 45 from head

shape (for face framing, side-swept bangs, etc.) Tipping a lightening technique done freehand with color

on the hair tips Giselle waves waves like Giselle Bündchen has

A great source for a paper