Language in the City

1. Language in the City Pro- und Hauptseminar, SS 2007, Campus Essen Overview of Sociolinguistics - 1

2. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in society. It is primarily concerned with the type of accents people use and - most importantly - the reason why they choose to use one rather than the other. Grammatical structures and types of vocabulary are also of interest here. By and large linguists assume that speakers use language as a means of conveying social attitudes just like dress or leisure time activities, i.e. people use the accent of the social group they identify with or aspire to. Sociolinguistics a relatively recent discipline which investigates the possible reasons for languagevariation are and hence to understand more about the process of languagechange. Here we can distinguish two main types of change: (i) internal change which takes place for structural reasons in a language, e.g. regularisation in grammar as with plural forms in English or German and (ii) external change which is triggered ultimately by social motivation, i.e. speakers change their language to convey a social message as when they are showing their identity with a sector of the society they live in.

3. There are various kinds of speech community depending on how a society is organised linguistically. Diglossia involves a division of languages according to function: one language/variety is used at home and another in public as in Switzerland. A bilingual community has two languages without such a functional distribution, e.g. in Canada with French and English. The social development of a language can lead to split where what was formerly one language becomes two or more, compare the historical development of Latin into the modern Romance languages. The split may involve major varieties of the same language as with the divergence between British and American English.

4. The varieties of language examined by sociolinguists are usually urban and in particular take account of the factors class, age and gender. The central element in a sociolinguist study is the linguisticvariable - some item of language (phonological, morphological, syntactic or semantic) - which is suspected of varying systematically in correlation with the factors such mentioned. Sociolinguists collect data directly from speakers and do not use descriptions in books as their primary source. Various methods have been developed in sociolinguistics for ensuring that one's data is random and objective. Speakers can be recorded (on tape, for instance) in which case they are aware of this or by memory (where the linguist later on writes down what was said). The latter type of investigation is used when speakers are not supposed to realise they are being observed.

5. Languages may be introduced into a society through various processes: language contact by invasion or emigration. Immigrant languages may be maintained in a host society or may be abandoned depending on the attitudes of the speakers of following generations. Language contact usually leads to a linguistic influence of one language on another, e.g. that of French on English in the Middle Ages or of English on German today. Contact may be direct when speakers interact or indirect when there is an influence of the written language, e.g. that of English on so many other languages today, often through various media like television, science, technology, music.

6. Methods in sociolinguistics • In a way it is true to say that sociolinguistics arose out of dialectology. Those linguists involved in this area in the last century and the beginning of the present century were interested in registering language use and as such were half on the way to being sociolinguists. However, many aspects of dialectological research are unacceptable to modern sociolinguists. The chief deficiency of the dialectological approach is that older, male, rural speakers were given preference as informants. This went against the basic principle of all sociolinguists, namely that the choice of informants be random and thus unbiased by the field worker. Characteristic of sociolinguistic methods are the following features: • 1) The prior definition of one's area of investigation • 2) The impartial choice of informants • The choice of optimal methods of investigation (e.g. tape recording rather than questionnaire)

7. Methods in sociolinguistics The procedure of interviewing informants has the disadvantage that the field worker very often has a negative (or standardising) effect on the informants. This is called the observer'sparadox, namely that the nature of the object of investigation changes under observation (more on this below). A dialogue situation in which the informant is not made aware of his/her status as informant is much more favourable and less likely to distort the results.

8. Types of language variation Just as the methods of the dialectologists were unacceptable to sociolinguists so was the terminology they used. For one thing the sociolinguists wanted to get away from the use of the term dialect. It carried with it the implication of a rural type of speech which is particularly conservative. The more neutral term variety was chosen which had the additional advantage that it did not imply implicit contrast with a standard variety of language. The term variety simply refers to a variant of a language. It may be the standard of this language or not, it may be a rural or an urban variant, a social or peer group variant, etc. One of the aspects of contact between speakers of different varieties of a language is accommodation. By this is meant that one of the speakers attempts, in face to face interaction, to approximate his/her speech to that of his/her partner in conversation for a variety of reasons, to make him feel at ease, in order to be accepted, etc. This accommodation can be long-term or short-term and is most readily accomplished by children.

9. Sociolinguistics since the mid-20th century The development of sociolinguistics since the War is inextricably bound up with the activity of American linguists since the early sixties. First and foremost of these is William Labov who in a pioneering investigation of the English of New York city, published in 1966, arrived at many new conclusions concerning language variety and language change. Labov stressed that 1) structural systems of the present and changes in languages of the past should be investigated in relation to each other, 2) that language change can be observed in progress in present-day language varieties and 3) the fact that so-called free variation was not in fact free at all but determined by deliberate, if not conscious, choice on the part of the speaker. Labov further stressed the need to collect data reliably. The linguist must be aware that an informant will show the following features in his/her speech: 1) style shifting (during an interview), 2) varying degree of attention, i.e. some speakers pay great attention to their own speech (so-called 'audiomonitoring'); in excited speech and casual speech the attention paid by the speaker is correspondingly diminished, 3) degree of formality, determined by the nature of the interview; it can vary depending on the way the informant reacts to the interviewer and the situation he/she is placed in.

10. Methods in sociolinguistics This term refers to the fact that the collection of data from informants involves their being observed which in turn influences the nature of the data the informants offer. Labov's answer to this problem was to develop the RapidandAnonymousInterview in which informants were not aware they were being interviewed by a linguist (cf. Labov's experiments in New York department stores). With regard to language change Labov proposed three phases which can be summarised as follows: 1) origin, a period in which many variants exist for one and the same phenomenon, 2) propagation, the period in which one of the variants established itself and 3) the conclusion in which the remaining variants are done away with. Various external factors can accelerate the process of language change, above all social pressure from above or below. Additional factors are the degree of literacy in a community, the restraining influence of a standard of a language, etc. All language change show a particular rate of change which proceeds like an S-curve (slow start, quick middle section with a tapering off at the top). Schematically these three phases correspond to the beginning, middle and end of an S-curve which is frequently used as a visualisation of language change.

12. Methods in sociolinguistics Labov proved his theories on language variation and language change by investigating (in an anonymous manner) the English of various employees in New York department stores. Here he chose stores with differing social status. The linguistic variables he was particularly interested in are: 1) the presence or absence of syllable-final /r/, 2) the pronunciation of the ambi-dental fricatives (the sounds in thin and this respectively) and 3) the quality of various vowels. After Labov introduced his methods in America various European linguists followed suit. Notable among these is Peter Trudgill who started his career as a sociolinguist with an investigation of the English of Norwich city. His aim was, like Labov, to show that there is a correlation between language use and social class. Trudgill was particularly interested in seeing how stylistic variation causes language change. His investigations of varieties of present-day English are noted for their methodological rigour. He insisted on absolute randomness and used statistical devices, such as indexing, to insure that his population is as heterogeneous as possible. Trudgill is furthermore interested in degrees of formality and had his informants read a text (reading style), a list of words at normal speed (word list style) and a series of homophones. In addition he looked at various forms of casual speech.

13. Insights of sociolinguistics 1) Language change can be observed. The reasons for it are ultimately social, deriving from such factors as forms used by prestigious groups. Any item of change starts as a series of minute variations which spread through the lexicon of the language (lexicaldiffusion). The difference between varying forms increases with time, due to a process known as phonologisation whereby small differences are exaggerated to make them distinct from other phonemic items in a language. Only a subset of any existing variations in a language at any point in time lead to actual later change. Just what variations result in change depends on their status for the speakers of a language. This status may be conscious in the case of identification markers or subconscious, the latter not being any less important than the former for language change. 2) Lower middle class speakers figure prominently in language change as they aspire upwards on the social scale.

14. Insights of sociolinguistics • 3) Women tend to use a more standard type of language than their male counterparts (due to their uncertain position in western-style societies?). But on the other hand they also tend to be at the forefront of linguistic innovations. • Language change can in some cases be reversed, i.e. more conservative (older) forms can be re-established if enough speakers use them for purposes of conscious or unconscious identification. • There is no method of predicting what features in any language will be subject to change, i.e. which will be picked out as prestige forms by the social elite. However, language typology does give an indication as to what forms are likely candidates for change and what are not. For instance, if a language has front rounded vowels /y, ø/ then it is likely that if it experiences extensive change then these elements are probable candidates for loss or substitution by something else.

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