Language, Dialects, Varieties

1. Language, Dialects, Varieties

2. Language and Dialect Ambiguous terms Language: unitary system of linguistic communication which subsumes a number of mutually intelligible varieties (single linguistic norm or group of related norms ) Dialect: a local non-prestigious variety of a real language (one of the norms -differences in pronunciation, in the choices and forms of words, syntax) Confusion from Ancient Greek – a group of distinct local varieties: Ionic (history), Doric (choral and lyric work) and Attic (tragedy). Later Athenian Greek became the norm for the spoken language • E.g. Serbia and Croatia – Serbo-Croatian language (first 1 country, then 2 different countries, 1 language, then 2 separate languages) • E.g. Cantonese and Mandarin – will tell you they speak dialects of Chinese, not different languages, but if one of them knew only Cantonese and the other one only Mandarin, they wouldn’t be able to understand each other • Sociopolitical factors rather than linguistic factors!

3. Power vs. Solidarity • A language has more power over a dialect (status, money, influence etc.) • Solidarity - a feeling of equality that people have with one another- a common interest around which they will bond (a feeling of solidarity can lead people to preserve a local dialect or an endangered language to resist power, or to insist on independence (Serbo-Croatian), (Macedonian resisted the influence of the Turkish, Bulgarian etc.). E.g. Scandinavia – Danish, Norwegian and Swedish – different languages Danish and Norwegian – similar vocabulary, different pronunciation Norwegian and Swedish – similar pronunciation, different vocabulary Danes and Swedes comprehend Norwegians but do not really comprehend each other > > > these differences reflect power relationships: Denmark long dominated Norway, Sweden – the most influential and Denmark – the least powerful E.g. German and Dutch are not mutually intelligible (people on one side of the border say they speak a variety of Dutch and those on the other side of the border will say they speak a variety of German)-more similarities between the local varieties spoken on each side of the border than between one dialect of Dutch and standard Dutch, and one dialect of German and standard German

4. Bell (1976, pp.147-57) 7 criteria that may be useful in discussing different kinds of languages: • Standardization • Vitality • Historicity • Autonomy • Reduction • Mixture • De facto norms …because not every variety we may want to call a language has the same status as any other variety – every language (English, Chinese, Macedonian, Latin, TokPisin etc.) satisfies a different sub-set of criteria from the list. Not all languages are equal socially.

5. 1. Standardization • process by which a language is codified (development of grammars, spelling books and dictionaries, and literature) • formal matters of codification and elaboration (used usually in print, taught in schools and to non-native speakers learning the language). • English language: Standard variety is based on the dialect of English that developed after the Norman Conquest resulted in the permanent removal of the Court from Winchester to London. --- Wycliffe’s and Luther’s translations of the Bible into English (and German), Caxton’s establishment of printing in England and Dr. Johnson’s dictionary of English published 1755. • sometimes deliberately undertaken for political reasons • 19th cent. Finns – independence from Swedes and Russians • today –attempts for rapid standardization: India (Hindi), Israel (Hebrew), Tanzania (Swahili) etc. Some languages – more than one standardized variety: e.g. Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmal), Yugoslavia, Canada etc.

6. 2. Vitality Existence of a living community of speakers • Alive vs. dead languages 2 Celtic languages of the UK are dead: Manx and Cornish Many aboriginal languages of the America Latin Do you know any other dead languages or languages in extinction? • Once dead cannot be revived exception: Hebrew – liturgical language (modern Hebrew outgrowth of this liturgical variety) • Many languages are dyingor in extinction (e.g. the French dialects spoken in the Channel Islands of Jersey) • Some languages can remain a force even after they are declared dead e.g. Classical Greek and Latin in the Western world, Sanskrit to the speakers of Hindi, Classical Chinese has influenced modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

7. 3. Historicity • A particular group of people find a sense of identity through using a particular language • 19th century – a German nation was unified around the German language, In the 18th century- Russians had unified around a revitalized Russian language. 4. Autonomy • A language must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages e.g. Ukranians claim their language is different from Russian; Some speakers of Black English say that their language is not a variety of English 5. Reduction • A particular variety may be regarded as a sub-variety rather than an independent entity. (Cockney – a variety of English) 6. Mixture • Feeling speakers have about the ‘purity’ of the variety they speak. More important to speakers of French and German than to English speakers. 7. De facto norms • ‘Good speakers’ represent the norms of proper usage compared to ‘poor speakers’ who do not. Sometimes focus on one specific sub-variety as ‘best’ usage: Parisian French, Florentine variety of Italian

8. Vernacular language • Language which hasn’t been standardized and which doesn’t have official status. – Everyday speech, colloquial – used at home and with friends. – Usually the first language learned by people (transmitted from parent to child) and is used for relatively circumscribed functions. Koiné • A form of speech shared by people of different vernaculars e.g. Greek koiné of the Ancient World, a unified version of the Greek dialects – after Alexander’s conquests (circa 330 BC) became the lingua franca of the western world – until Latin took over.

9. Lingua franca Example In the 1960s, a Catholic nun, Sister Dominic, was sent to Rome for a meeting between nuns from different countries. She spoke no Italian but she had been managing pretty well with her French and English until she lost her purse one day. She simply couldn’t explain what had happened to the local police officer. A priest overheard her struggles and came to her rescue. They proceeded to explore their linguistic repertoires trying to find a language they shared. He came from Brazil and spoke Portuguese and Spanish, but he had been living in Rome for some time, and so he was by then familiar with the local variety of Italian. Finally they found a language in which they could communicate – Latin! At that time Latin was still the language of church services and both had learned Latin to university level. As Sister Dominic described it, the result was a funny encounter, with her explaining her predicament in formal Latin and the priest then translating into the local Italian dialect. (Holmes 2001, pp.78) >>> Lingua franca: a language serving as a regular means of communication between different linguistic groups in a multilingual speech community

10. Regional Dialects

11. Miriam learnt French and Italian as university and was a fluent speaker of both. As part of her course she was required to study for three months in Paris and three months in Rome. Her time in Paris went well and she decided to take a holiday on her way to Rome, travelling across France to Italy. She was keen to hear the varieties of French and Italian spoken in provincial towns. She stayed in cheap pensions (French ‘bed-and-breakfast’ places), and she made a special effort to talk to the local people rather than to tourists. Her Parisian accent was admired and she could understand the French of Dijon and Lyon. But as she moved further from Paris she found the French more difficult to follow. Near the border between France and Italy, in the town of Chambéry, she could not be sure what she was hearing. Was it Italian French or French Italian? Whatever it was, it was difficult for her to understand, though she had no trouble making herself understood. Most people thought she spoke beautifully – especially for a foreigner! In Italy she found that the Italian spoken in Turin and Milan was very different from the Italian she had learned. As she approached Rome, however, she gradually began to comprehend more of what she heard. And finally in Rome, she found some kind of match between the way she spoke and the way the Italians around her spoke. (Holmes 2001, pp.129) Dialect continuum: continuum of dialects sequentially arranged over space, A, B, C, D and so on. The dialects at each ends of the continuum may be mutually unintelligible (while those on the border between two countries may understand each other much better) French: un dialecte vs. un patois /pætwa:/ (less than a dialect, rural form of speech, the speech of the lower strata in society)

12. Pop (n.) 1. Chiefly Midwestern US soft drink 2. A sudden sharp, explosive sound. 3. A shot with a firearm.

13. Dialect geography- attempts made to map the distribution of various linguistic features so as to show their geographical provenance. • E.g. Dialect geographers, seeking to determine features of the dialects of English, ask questions like: - Is this an r-pronouncing area of English, as in words like car and cart or not? What past tense for drink do speakers prefer? Do speakers prefer to say: elevator or lift, petrol or gas etc.? • Sometimes maps are drawn to show actual boundaries around such features called isoglosses. When several such features coincide, the result is called a dialect boundary. Dialect vs. Accent • RP – Received pronunciation, England, 1920s. • The most generalized accent in North America is sometimes referred to as network English • Other languages often have no equivalents to RP • There is no such thing as an ‘unaccented English’

14. Social dialects The term dialect can be used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes. E.g. British ‘public school’ dialect, , Black dialect (NY, Detroit and Buffalo) Regional dialects are geographically based, but social dialects are related to a variety of factors: social class, religion and ethnicity. E.g. In Baghdad, Christians, Jews and Muslims speak different varieties of Arabic. Example of a social dialect based on a social class (vocabulary): Uncle Matthew: ‘I hope poor Fanny’s school is doing her all the good you think it is. Certainly she picks up some dreadful expressions there. Aunty Emily, very calmly but on the defensive: ‘Very likely she does. She also picks up a good deal of education.’ Uncle Mathew: ‘Education! I was always led to believe that no educated person ever spoke of notepaper, and yet I hear poor Fanny asking Sadie for notepaper. What is this education? Fanny talks about mirrors and mantlepieces, handbag and perfume, she takes sugar in her coffee, has a tassel on her umbrella, and I have no doubt that if she is ever fortunate enough to catch a husband, she will call his father and mother, Father and Mother. Will the wonderful education she is getting make up to the unhappy brute for all these endless pinpricks? Fancy hearing one’s wife talking about notepaper – the irritation!’ Aunty Emily: ‘A lot of men would find it more irritating to have a wife who had never heard of George III. (All the same, Fanny darling, it is called writing paper you know – don’t let’s hear any more about note, please.)’ (Holmes 2001, pp.136) *** mantlepiece- mantleshelf, mirror- looking glass, handbag- purse, perfume- toilet water, fragrance, tassel- fastening Can you produce a list of words for your speech community that divides people according to their social background?

15. Language and Ethnic group Ethnic group: Social group of people who identify with each other based on shared cultural heritage, ancestry, history, homeland, ideology, religion etc. Experiment in the USA – a number of people acting as judges were asked to listen to tape-recordings of two different sets of speakers. 1 set-black, 2 set-white. But was it the case? • There are differences between the English spoken by whites and blacks in America • People do not speak as they do because they are white or black- learned behaviour Sarajevo – 3 ethnic groups (Muslims, Serbs and Croats) Historically, the ethnic-group differentiation has to do with religion and geographical origin. Differences are mostly lexical e.g. MUSLIMCROATSSERBS hljebkruhhljeb vozvlakvoz panzer prozorprozor charshija grad varosh sevdahljubavljubav budzakkutcjoshak

16. Trudgill(1974, pp. 51) Basil Bernstein: 2 varieties of language available to speakers – • ‘elaborated code’ – tends to be used in formal debates or academic discussions – it stresses the speaker’s individuality on the utterance and it is context independent (high proportion of subordinate clauses, passive verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and the pronoun I) • ‘restricted code’ – employed in informal situations, within the family or amongst friends – it has the effect of stressing the speaker’s membership of a group – tied to context (personal pronouns, ‘you’ and ‘they’, tag questions) - middle-class children have access to both codes - some working-class children have access only to ‘restricted code’

17. Style and register Each individual has his/her own style of speaking (idiolect) and it can vary depending on the situation. Registers are sets of language items associated with discrete occupational or social groups. E.g surgeons, airline pilots, bank managers, sales clerks, jazz fans and pimps employ different registers (vocabulary, syntax, phonology) We rely on few cues i.e. the presence or absence of certain linguistic features when creating an image of the person we are talking to. Example Telephone rings. Pat: Hello. Caller: Hello, is Mark there? Pat: Yes, just hold on a minute. Pat (to Mark): There’s a rather well-educated young lady from Scotland on the phone for you. (Holmes 2001, pp.123)