Lecture: Sociolinguistics Professor Dr. Neal R. Norrick _____________________________________

Sociolinguistics Universität des Saarlandes Dept. 4.3: English Linguistics WS 2008/09 Lecture: Sociolinguistics Professor Dr. Neal R. Norrick_____________________________________

Organization • Website: script, bibliography, PowerPoint presentation • attendance, quiz, certificates/credits

1. Introduction 1.1 What is Sociolinguistics? Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society.

Sociolinguistics studies: • the social importance of language to groups of people, from small sociocultural groups to entire nations and commonwealths • language as part of the character of a nation, a culture, a sub-culture • the development of national standard languages and their relation to regional and local dialects • attitudes toward variants and choice of which to use where

how individual ways of speaking reveal membership in social groups: working class versus middle class, urban versus rural, old versus young, female versus male • how certain varieties and forms enjoy prestige, while others are stigmatized • ongoing change in the forms and varieties of language, interrelationships between varieties • See Trudgill's "two Englishmen on a train" story

Sociolinguistics also studies: • language structures in relation to interaction • how speakers construct identities through discourse in interaction with one another • how speakers and listeners use language to define their relationship and establish the character and direction of their talk • how talk conveys attitudes about the context, the participants and their relationship in terms of membership, power and solidarity

Compare: Could I ask you to bring me the paint, please? Get me the paint, wouldja? • how listeners interpret talk and draw inferences from it about the ongoing interaction • Sociolinguists describe how language works in society to better understand society, but also to investigate the social aspect of language to better understand its use, structure and development

1.2 The Sociolinguistics of Society versus the Sociolinguistics of Language • The Sociolinguistics of Society concerns the role of languages in societies: • societal multilingualism • attitudes toward national languages and dialects • language planning, language choice, language shift, language death, language education

The Sociolinguistics of Language concerns language function and variation in the social context of the speech community: • forms of address • speech acts and speech events • language and gender, language and power, politeness, language, thought and reality • language varieties and change

My treatment of Sociolinguistics of Society will focus on England, USA and Commonwealth nations • Main focus on the Sociolinguistics of Language: particularly forms, functions and varieties of English • Labov and Trudgill as premiere sociolinguists  hence: variation in New York City, Black English, language and social stratification in Norwich • Really we'll be doing the Sociolinguistics of English

1.3 Sociolinguistics within Linguistics • Sociolinguistics as "hyphenated linguistics" compare: • psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, computational linguistics • Sociolinguistics as interdisciplinary: • roots in dialect geography • anthropology and sociology • philosophy of language • linguistic pragmatics and discourse analysis

Since language is the basic vehicle of social cohesion and interaction, any linguistics should be sociolinguistics • As Labov puts it: sociolinguistics is "a somewhat misleading use of an oddly redundant term“ • language always exists in varieties • language is always changing • any adequate linguistic theory should be sociolinguistic • describing variation by speaker, class, region and time • failure to account for variation and change should render a linguistic description useless • but Sociolinguistics outside "mainstream linguistics" till recently

1.4 Saussure's dichotomies and non-socio-linguistics • The Neo-Grammarians (Junggrammatiker) insisted: • speakers are unaware of change • and change can not be observed in progress

Saussure inaugurated "modern linguistics" around 1900, distinguishing synchronic and diachronic linguistics • This useful distinction in the 1900’s became a program for ignoring the fundamentally dynamic nature of language • Like binary distinctions generally, this dichotomy privileged one half of the pair, namely synchronic linguistics

Saussure also distinguished langue and parole • This dichotomy privileged langue, the language as a system, and marginalized parole, language in use • this distinction became a program for ignoring the fundamentally social and behavioral nature of language

Linguistics as the synchronic study of langue: • language as an abstraction without variation by speaker, region or time • language as a non-cultural, non-social, static, depersonalized fact independent of context and discourse

"Saussurian Paradox" • If we all share knowledge of the communal langue, one can obtain all the data necessary for linguistic description from a single person--perhaps oneself; but one can obtain data on individualistic parole only by studying linguistic behavior in the community. • The social aspect of language is studied by observing a single speaker, but the individual aspect only by observing language in its social context. • Labov (1972: 185-87)

"categorial" versus "variationist" views with regard to language history and description: Phonological: room with long u as in pool with short u as in book Morphological: -ing with velar nasal ng (-ing)with alveolar nasal n (-in)

1.5 Development of Sociolinguistics in USA • Structuralist linguistic theory in US (like Saussure) • stressed synchronic study of langue • focused on the system of language

American structuralism also followed Logical Positivism • Bloomfield insisted on “scientific” linguistics • linguistic description as mathematical • formal rules • discrete input and output • no variables or "free variation" • But in descriptions of native Amerindian languages, social factors appeared as part of the anthropological context

from late 1950's, Chomsky's generative transformational grammar further marginalized sociolinguistics • grammar as creative aspect of language and the center of linguistic attention • restatement of Saussure's dichotomy of langue and parole as a distinction between competence and performance • Competence: language user's innate knowledge of grammar, and the only proper object of linguistic research • Performance: disorganized, error-ridden talk not amenable to systematic description • the speaker was "an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly" (Chomsky 1965: 3)

These idealizations: • banished variation from linguistics • removed talk from society and local context • made language an abstraction • But Ethnography of Speaking recognized: • language functions and speech events • linguistic behavior, social function, context • Communicative competence versus Chomsky's grammatical competence

Dialect geographers (or dialectologists, areal linguists) continued to describe systematic variation by region • Sociological research on language and society: • Fishman on language contact, societal multilingualism • Goffman, Sacks on language in social interaction • From mid 1960's: Sociolinguistics of language: • Weinreich, Labov • Urban dialectology, Black English Vernacular • Linguistic Pragmatics, conversation analysis • Interactional Sociolinguistics

1.6 Development of Sociolinguistics in UK • Linguistic theory in UK never really followed Saussure; philological tradition and applied linguistics in language teaching and anthropology • Dichotomies of synchronic and diachronic,langue and parole not systematically observed

Malinowski: • phatic communion as social meaning • context of situation basis of meaning • Firth: • context of situation central to meaning • meaning central to language description • conversation as key to understanding language • Halliday: • interpersonal meaning alongside ideational • Language as a social semiotic • Trudgill: social stratification and variation • Sinclair, Crystal, Quirk et al.: • conversational organization • transactional analysis

2. Linguistic Variation • Variation through time: stages or periods of a language • Old English 449-1150 • Middle English 1150-1500 • Variation in space: regional dialects • English as spoken in Norwich, Norfolk, • New England, New York City

Variation by group: sociolects (social dialects) • English as spoken by upper working class women in Norwich, • by saleswomen in New York department stores • Variation by situation: register • English as spoken in television sports reporting • as written in business letters • in personal e-mail

variation even occurs in the speech of a particular person from a particular place in a particular group and situation • so varieties often differ by high versus low probability for specific items (this indicates necessity of counting!) • variety = set of linguistic items with characteristic social distribution

Varieties may differ in any kind of linguistic item: pronunciation, word choice, word form and syntax • Working class men in Norwich tend to pronounce thin and thing the same way in conversation • BE speakers say tube, while AE speakers say subway • White rural speakers in the Midwest U.S. say She come home yesterday instead of the standard She came homeyesterday • Black vernacular speakers say I aks her did she know him, while standard speakers say I asked her if she knew him

Sociolinguistic Variables are particular items known to reflect particular social contrasts • Presence or absence of 3rd person singular -s inconstructions like: she goes versus she go • Presence or absence of [r]inpronunciations ofwords and phrases like: theater theater is the idea of

Again we find patterns of variation • from group to group • from one speaker to the next • from one style to the next in the group (again indicates necessity for quantification)

2.1 Class and style • In sociolinguistic studies, class is determined by rating status characteristics like occupation, education, residence, and income on numerical scales • Styles reflect different degrees of formality and awareness of speakers about how they're speaking versus what they're saying • Most formal is word list style, next reading style, then careful style as in an interview, and finally casual style • A particular sociolinguistic variable will display class stratification across social classes and styles, as shown in diagrams like the one below

Labov (1972: 239) ing

In every style, class members differ predictably • In every class, style shifting occurs predictably • the same variable distinguishes classes and styles • a single signal has no fixed value • a single variable may mark • a casual middle-class speaker • a careful lower-class speaker

Syntactic, morphological and phonological factors: • monosyllabic verb sing • indefinite something • present participle suffix –ing • at the end of a phrase • preceding a vowel • preceding a consonant She tried to find something She tried to find something in town She tried to find something she liked

2.2 Variation and change • Some variation leads to permanent change • one variant gains acceptance and others disappear • The "embedding problem" • describe the matrix of social and linguistic behavior (changes and constants) in which language change takes place

Linguistic factors • Universal constraints on change (based on past changes) • front vowels tend to rise • stop consonants tend to lose voicing • Local changes may affect the whole system, e.g. • change in diphthong /ay/ leads to parallel change in /aw/ • Social factors: • group member with high prestige provides model • pressure from outside group encourages solidary behavior

2.3 Prestige and stigmatization • Change begins as irregular fluctuation below level of conscious awareness • no stylistic stratification • When variation comes to conscious awareness, due to association with certain groups or speakers, one variant gains prestige, another is stigmatized • Pronouncing "aitches" versus "dropping aitches" in words like hotel and house

General axiom of sociolinguistic structure: • uniform agreement in subjective reactions to a variable correlate with regular stratification • one finds stylistic stratification • speakers use more prestige variants in careful styles than in casual styles hypercorrection • speakers insert prestige variants where they don't belong (where prestige speakers don't use them) pronouncing "aitches" in words like honor, hour and if

2.4 The actuation of change "The actuation problem" What sets change in motion? Social factors account for change in a general way, e.g. A. Pressure from new group produces greater solidarity in original group, and members signal this through distinctive behavior, including speech patterns B. Commuters accommodate speech patterns to focal point, usually a major city, and introduce patterns at home C. "Linguistic missionaries" return from living in focal point city with high status and new speech patterns

Linguistic factors may favor certain changes • regularizing a pattern • like /ay/ causing parallel change in /aw/ • but even taken together they can't predict that change will occur or in which direction • even knowing the linguistic and social matrix doesn't explain why one specific feature changes and another doesn't

pronunciation of vowel in words like craft • changed from [æ] in OE to [a] in ME • back to [æ] in EModE • back to [a] in the 18th Century (in southern England, but not in America or northern England) • speakers in southwest England drop -r in posh pronunciation, careful speakers in NYC are reintroducing the sound • historically stigmatized constructions like the comparative and superlative forms funner and funnest become standard in the course of a single generation (in AE)

2.5 Variable rules • Language as a system of rules • Constitutive rules versus regulative rules • Assume full forms are stored in memory and reduced in speech, e.g. by rules for contraction: She + is  she's we + have + been  we've been and by rules for deletion: we've been  we been last + time  las' time

Phonological rule for final consonant cluster simplification, as in las' time: C Φ / C ___ ## C Read: delete a consonant following a consonant at the end of a word, if the next word begins with a consonant.

Some dialects allowconsonant cluster simplification even if the next word begins with a vowel, as in las' of all, so we could write: C Φ / C ___ ## • This rule fails to say that deletion is far more likely before a consonant than a vowel - in every dialect; so we need variable rules, relating differences in application to differences in the environment, as in: C  <Φ> / C ___ ## <C> Read: delete a consonant following a consonant at the end of a word, more often before a consonant than a vowel.

In addition, the rule is far less likely if the consonant to be deleted represents the past tense suffix -t,d, as in: liked [laykt] seemed [simd]) • This suggests a revision of the rule as: C  <Φ> / C <~#> ___ ## <C> Read: delete a consonant following a consonant at the end of a word, more often if there's no morpheme boundary between the consonants, and more often before a consonant than a vowel.

Further, deletion is more likely for speakers of Black Vernacular than for white speakers, and more likely for younger speakers than for older speakers. • Labov itemizes such constraints on variable rules in tables includes both internal linguistic factors and external social factors

Labov 1972: 222 Thus variable rules can describe the behavior of a sociolinguistic variable for a whole speech community.

3. The social motivation of language change (Labov 1972b) • Till Labov, no one had tried to explain language change • When linguists described change, they cited internal (systematic linguistic), not external (social) factors • Linguists claimed language change was imperceptible, its origins obscure to speakers and linguistics alike (Saussure: language as mutable and immutable) • Linguists claimed language change proceeded from above, from higher classes to lower classes

But according to popular belief, vernacular speakers cause language change, or language deterioration, through lack of education, laziness, unclear thinking • Double negation: She never saw nobody try it • ain’t for am not, aren’t, isn’t, hasn’t, haven’t • I ain’t going, she ain’t seen them, it ain’t me • so-called language experts see change as corruption • any deviation from standard is undesirable • standard language is pure, better, more logical than dialects

Lecture: Sociolinguistics Professor Dr. Neal R. Norrick _____________________________________