FLED 312.01-SOCIOLINGUISTICS

1. FLED 312.01-SOCIOLINGUISTICS CELAL TOSUN SEHER KOÇ ASLIHAN EMİRMUSTAFAOĞLU ÇAĞLA NİKBAY SİNEM AYDOĞAN

2. Language, Dialects and Varieties Wardhaugh: “All languages exhibit a great deal of internal variation.” Hudson (1980) defines variety ‘a set of linguistic items with similar distribution’. All the languages are varieties from this point of view.

3. How does interrelationship between linguistic items and the social evaluations apply? a. butter, budder, bu’er b. Fishing, fishin’ c. Farm, fahm d. width pronounced like wit or with e. ate pronounced like eight

4. Language and Dialects • Which one do you speak? Language or dialect? • Language and dialect are ambiguous terms. • Ordinary people vs. Scholars

5. German vs. Dutch borders. • In Scandinavia • Cantonese and Mandarin (cultural connection) • Dialect and language are also used in historical sense. • How will we differenciate between language and dialect? Seher will tell you.

6. Most of us want to calllanguagesrather than dialects.

7. WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA TO DISCUSS ABOUT DIFFERENT KINDS OF LANGUAGES?

8. Bell has listed seven criteria to discuss about different kinds of languages: • Standardization • Vitality • Historicity • Autonomy • Reduction • Mixture • De facto norms

9. Standardization

10. It is the process by which a language has been codified in some way.

11. *Development of grammars, spelling books, dictionaries, literature *A measure of agreement on what is in the language and what is not *Possible to teach a language in a certain way

12. Haugen talks about certain steps in standardization. • Formal matters of codification: the development of grammar, dictionaries • Formal matters of elaboration: use of language in litarature, education

13. Without community agreement on a norm(standard), both formal matters of codification and elaboration may not proceed very far.

14. WHAT IS A NORM? • Unity of individuals and groups in a larger community • Symbol of regional, social, ethnic identity • Prestige to speakers • A kind of goal of linguistic behavior

15. Government establishes official bodies to regulate language matters or to encourage changes that are desirable. (eg Türk Dil Kurumu)

17. Assertation of independence (eg Finnish from Swedes and Russians) • Some result in more than one standart variety(eg Norwegian: Nynorsk and Bokmal) • Some result in resistance by the community because they fear that regional languages will diminish. Eg Hindi as underused L2in India)

18. Elimination of variety and diversity • Strain on those taking the task of standardization. (Translation and innovation)

19. VITALITY • It refers to the existence of a living community of speakers. • It is useful to distinguish between dead and alive languages. • Dead languages: eg Manx, Cornish, Latin

20. I am the last speaker of Manx. Manx die when I die. WORLD WAR II

21. A dead language may have great force even after it is no longer spoken as anyone’s first language like Classical Greek and Latin.

22. HISTORICITY People find a sense of social, political, religious, or ethnic identity through using a language

23. AUTONOMY • A language should be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages. • This criterion is subjective

24. I speak Black English. It is a seperate language not a variety of English.

25. REDUCTION • A particular variety may be regarded as sub-variety rather than as an independent entity. • The variety may lack a writing system.

26. I am a speaker of Turkish not Trabzonish. I am not a representative speaker of Turkish. You know there are lots of varieties, mine is one of them.

27. MIXTURE: Bell’s 6. criteria “Purity” of the language Important for Frenchor German speakersratherthanEnglishspeakers. Pidgins & creoles: “mixed”, marginalordegeneratevarieties.

28. De FactoNorms • “Good speakers” vs “poor speakers” • Good speakers: represent the norms of proper usage. Examples: Parisian French or Florentine varity of Italian !! So, peoples’ feelings about norms are important for variation in language !!

29. ??? What is a dialect ??? • A subordinate variety of a language. • Some languages have more than one dialect. • Some only have one dialect: • dialect = language

30. Standard variety of a language = the preferred dialect. • E.g : Parisian French, Florentine Italian • So, what is the preffered dialect of Turkish?? “ İstanbul Dialect ”

31. Why is it so?? • Why not Ankara or İzmir dialects?? • A standard dialect is chosen for political, social, religious and economical reasons to be the norm for the others. • Remember!! • A standard dialect isn’t often a dialect; it is the language itself!! • [İstanbul dialect = İstanbul Turkish]

33. Vernacular is: • a speech of a particular country or region. • transmitted from parent to child as a primary • medium of communication. • A koine is: • a speech form shared by many people of different • vernaculars. • common language, but not necessarily a standard one. • e.g,Hindi for many people in India.

34. SOCIAL DIALECT

35. Social Dialects • Social dialects are referred to differences in speech associated with various social groups and classes. • There are several factors which determine the social position and affect the sppech of the people. • What are these factors?

36. Factors: • Place of residence • Racial/ ethnic origin • Cultural background • Education • Occupation • Religion • Income etc.

37. !!!The principle factors that affect the social dialects are: • social class system of caste in India • religion Christian, Jews and Muslim inhabitants in Baghdad. • ethinity Black English, Jewish / Italian speech

38. Social Dialectology Social Dialectology is a term used to refer to the lingusitic study based on social dialects. This kind of study is more difficult in the cities than in rural areas. Because the cities have much more variety in terms of family structure, employment and the effect of migration… etc.

39. STYLES AND REGISTERS Style and register are two factors that further complicate the study of dialects. Style:Variation in the speech of every individual governed by circumstances Example: What do you intend to do, your majesty? (Formal) Waddya intend doin’, Rex? (Informal)

40. Factors influencing style: • The kind of occasion (wedding, conference, lecture, etc.) • Social, age, and other differences that exist between the participants • The task involved (writing, speaking) • Emotional involvement of participants Do you think that stylistic choices are predictable?

41. Yes, we can predict the stylistic features that a native speaker will tend to employ on certain occasions. These are stylistic features: • Tone of voice • Formality vs. Informality • Choice of grammatical forms • Body language

42. Register: Sets of vocabulary items associated with discrete occupational or social groups Example: Vocabulary used by surgeons, airline pilots, bank managers, sales clerks, jazz fans, etc. Just like style, a variety of registers may be controlled by a person. You can be a teacher, a painter and a mother, OR an engineer, mountain climber and a father.

43. Dialect, style and register differences are largely independent. You can talk about casually (style) about painting (register) in a local variety of language (dialect) .

44. Sometimes we use judgments such as ‘better’ and ‘worse’ or ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’. Bloomfield says (1927, pp. 423-3): “The popular explanation of ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ speech reduces the matter one of knowledge versus ignorance. There is such a thing as correct English. AN ignorant person does not know the correct forms; therefore he cannot help using incorrect ones. In the process of education one learns the correct forms and, by practice and an effort of will(‘careful speaking’), acquires the habit of using them. If one associates with ignorant speakers, or relaxes the effort of will (‘careless speaking’), one will lapse into the correct forms… there is one error in the popular view which is of special interest. The incorrect forms cannot be the result of ignorance or carelessness, for they are by no means haphazard, but, on the contrary, very stable. For instance, if a person is so ignorant as not to know how to say I see it in the past time in past time, we might expect him to use all kinds of chance forms, and, especially, to resort ot easily formed locutions, such as I did see it, or to the addition of past-time suffix: I seed it. But instead, these ignorant people quite consistently say I seen it. Now it is evident that one fixed and consistent form will be no more difficult than another: a person who has learned I seen it as the past of I see has learned just as much as one who says I saw. He has simply learned something different. Although most of the people who say I seen are ignorant, their ignorance does not account for this form of speech.” (Page 50 in the book)

45. Although many varieties of language exist, languages do not vary in every possible way. It is still quite possible to listen to an individual speaker and infer very specific things about that speaker after hearing relatively little of his or her speech. How can we account for this ability? There are several possible answers: • We rely on relatively few cues • We are sensitive to the consistency or inconsistency in the use of these cues • Our receptive linguistic ability is much greater than our productive linguistic ability

46. LANGUAGE VARIATION FOCUS ON USERS

47. Regional and social dialects • Monolingual communities • status, gender, age, ethnicity membership of a group

48. Regional and social dialects Telephone rings Pat: Hello. Caller: Hello, is Mark there? Pat: Yes. Just hold on a minute. Pat (to Mark): There is a rather well-educated young lady from Scotland on the phone for you.

49. Regional and social dialects • Speech to differentiate groups • Like languages, speech characteristics unify and seperate. • Your style reflects your group and identity. i.e. Aegean vs. BlackSea regions

50. Regional variationInternational varieties Young boy: Gidday, what can I do for you? Old man: I’ve called to see me old mate Don Stone. Young boy: Oh he’s dead now mate. (Old man is about to express condolences when he is thumped on the back by Don Stone himself.) (The young man said, ‘Here’s dad now mate.’ as his father came in the gate.)