Introduction to linguistics

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Lecture 9: Sociolinguistics 2

Sources

• Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of

language, pp. 24-25, 28-33, 38-43.

• Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams.

2003. An introduction to language.

– Chapter 10: Language in society

•

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/pidgin-
languages

•

http://www.forvo.com/

(listening to words of

various languages of the world, including pidgins
and creoles)

Language varieties

• Last time:

accents, dialects

– spoken by a

particular social group.

• Language variety used by an individual

speaker –

idiolect

– the linguistic system of an individual speaker:

one's personal dialect.

– Each speaker uses different syntactic structures,

vocabulary and/or pronunciation.

Language varieties

• A language may vary depending on:

– a

particular purpose

for which is is used or

– a

particular social setting

in which the speakers

find themselves.

• You may speak differently when talking to a

friend than when you’re talking at a job
interview.

• Such „situation dialects” are called

styles

registers

”Situational dialects”

• Style

(register) – formal, informal, casual, etc.

• Speakers may alternate between styles in

order to achieve a particular effect, e.g.:

– Going to a job interview, addressing a secretary:

Excuse me, is the manager in his office? I have an
appointment

– Speaking to a friend about a friend:

Yo, is that lazy

dog still in bed? I gotta see him about something

”Situational dialects”

• Slang

– a variant of carelessly used colloquial

language.

– Usually very informal.
– Has a distinct function of reinforcing group

identity or to mark its speaker as unconventional.

• Jargon

– an occupational variety of lg;

– Every profession develops their own special terms

that refer to their activity, e.g.:

– IT specialists, the police, chat-room users, etc.

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Languages in contact

• A situation in which speakers of two (or more)

languages live close to each other.

• The languages start influencing each other:

– Words are borrowed.
– There may be phonological or grammatical

changes.

– People may become bilingual.
– Mixed forms of language (pidgins and creoles)

may appear.

Languages in contact

• Diglossia

– a situation in which two different

language varieties co-occur in a single speech
community, each with a distinct range of
social function.

• Both languages (or dialects) are standardised

to some degree, and are felt to be alternatives
by native-speakers.

• They are called

high (H)

and

low (L) varieties,

corresponding to a difference in formality.

Diglossia

• The

high variety

is taught in school, tends to be

used in church, on radio programmes, and in
serious literature, etc. – it has greater prestige.

• The

low variety

– used in family conversation and

other informal settings.

• Diglossic situations:

– Greek.
– Arabic (H: classical, L: colloquial).
– Standard German (H) vs Swiss German (L),
– Haiti (H: French, L: Creole).

Terms

• Monolingual

– a person who speaks only one

language.

• Bilingual

– a person who can speak two

languages.

• Multilingual

- a person who can speak more

than one language.

• Polyglot

- a person who can speak and write

several languages with a high level of
proficiency.

Bilingualism

• The ability to speak 2 languages.

– Over 70% of the Earth’s population are bilingual or

multilingual.

– Multi- or bilingualism has probably been the norm

for most people for the last few millenia.

– Children raised bilingually tend to be more

expressive, more original and better
communicators than monolingual ones.

Bilingualism

• B. may refer to individual speakers or groups

of speakers.

• It is not the same as diglossia:

– B. does not involve the whole speech community
– Neither of the languages the bilingual can speak

can be regarded as a high or low variety.

– If a group of people living in Italy can speak

perfect Russian, it is bilingualism, not diglossia.

– Diglossia often reflects social stratification.

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Bilingualism

• There are different degrees of bilingualism:

– A speaker may

be equally fluent

in both

languages (though many linguists say this is hard
to achieve).

– Or a speaker may be

more comfortable in one lg

This lg is called a

dominant

one.

Code switching

• A bilingual may change back and forth

between two languages in a single
conversation.

• This is called

code-switching

(code = language

or a variety of lg).

• It shows that the grammars and vocabularies

of the two languages work simultaneously.

– It does not mean that the bilingual’s languages are

broken.

Pidgin

• When people speaking different languages

(mutually unintelligible ones) want to
communicate, they may use elements from
both of their languages in a mixed manner.

– They use words from both languages,
– mix morphology and syntax,
– use the simplest sounds from both languages.

• Such a language created by people with no

language in common is called

pidgin

Pidgin: characteristics

• Limited vocabulary.
• Simple grammatical rules.
• A small set of speech sounds.
• Spoken by a small part of the community.
• Used for specific purposess, such as trade or

religion.

• Becuse their functions are limited, pidgin

languages usually do not last long: rarely more
than several decades.

Some pidgin languages

• Patois (Jamaican and English)
• Basque-Icelandic pidgin (Basque, Germanic

and Romance)

• Béarlachas (Gaelic Irish and

English)

• Nigerian (English and Nigeria Krio)

Creole

• Once a pidgin is learned as the first language

by the children of pidgin-speaking parents, a
pidgin becomes a

creole

• A

creole language

– a stable natural language

developed from the mixing of parent
languages.

– Creoles differs from pidgins in that creoles have

been acquired by children as their mother tongue.