the Sociolinguistics: way language interacts in society. Words with restricted use (cussing). Dialects. Slang. How language changes over time: we now need words like blog and Wi-Fi. Sociolinguistics: variation in language Socially realistic linguistics: Starts with linguistic data and tries to describe society by this data. Phonetics is the most common or used or whatever cause is the easiest to pick out because you can hear the differences in the ways people speak and relate that to wear they are from and wear the grew up. Syntax: sentences are different in different places. Women and men sometimes speak differently. Ya'll is a morphological distinction. Socially constituted linguistics: goes in other direction; aware of society, see the differences but do they show up linguistically. Speech of women and speech of men, and speech of 4 th generation Mexicans here and newer ones. Sociology of language/social psychology of language Social and linguistic: looks at things as they interact in society but on a more conscious level. Language can vary in many aspencts: Regional Social
-poor/rich -jock/nonjock Racial/ethnic "Standard English": myth; does not actually exist, no one speaks it naturally. Newscasters used to speak it the best, but in the last 10-15 years it's become regional to accommodate their region.
Dialects of English: (regionally dialectology) o People speak English differently in different places o Theses differences "originally" reflected different settlement histories. o Look for differences, plot them on a map (isogloss-boundary between the differences) o Many coterminous lines of differences make up a dialect "boundary" or "border" (bundle of isoglosses) Problems o Word lists o Brand names, specialized knowledge, shared media o NORMs (non-mobile, Older, Rural, Males) o No women, children, or "city folk" o Decline of "rural life" William Labov (next to Chomsky, very important): o "Dialectology" now called "sociolinguistics"(for a long time resisted calling it sociolinguistics because it means you could have linguistics that is not social) o Focuses on pronunciation and grammar o Less "conscious" and susceptible to active manipulation
Focus on "natural speech" (have to catch people when they are unaware they are being recorded) o Social variation = language variation o Language variation language change `Labovian' Sociolinguistics o Still historical: " variation and change" o Assumes non-intentionality o Language variation MUST entail social variation o Eckert: Jocks and Burnouts (cliques in school) o Variation indexes Social Categories (indexicality) o Peers and networks (not parents) Labovian Problems o Attention paid to speech (You can't find anything when people pay attention to their speech) o Social definitions o Class? Mainstream? Gender/sex? o Focus on cities and suburbia o Change radiates out in "influence zones" o Influence of the media? o Information technology? (internet, myspace) Sociolinguistics Regional variation (dialectology) Labov-language is and must be social; you can see language change in action Social competence (Dell Hymes) Regular chart Northern City Shifts (vowel chart) i u I u I I e o e o ae ae a a
o
Southern Shift the third system I u i u i I o e o ae e a ae and a are the same all the dip and monoing and all the monos are diping, in SS. Women tend to lead language change, they are also more conservative regarding change. Language and gender: Robin Lakoff, 1975 wrote book, Language and Woman's Place. Men Women Report (purposefull speaking) rapport (gossip)
Direct indirect (using hedges-maybe, kinda; tags; and indirect requests) Blunt Polite Use of Full language (purple shoes) empty language (so happy, super cute shoes) All above are STRONG all below are WEAK Eckert: on Jocks and Burnouts says that language variation INDEXES social categories Language and style Discourse: Discourse of gender (when your talking ABOUT things) Gendered discourse (something else, gendered is underlying) Discourse: Discourse of X (talk about X) X (`ed) Discourse (using X to talk about Y) Pragmatics: language in context. Speech acts: Assertion Question Request Order Promise Threat Performative speech acts: don't describe something such as they do something. By saying them you make them true. Disembodied, action verbs Felicity conditions: making sure all contextual requirements are met. "I order you to leave the country." Person has to have ability to leave. Person has to be able to leave the country. They have to be in the country in the first place. The person can't be dead. Grice's maxims of conversation: (are important but could be questionable) Maxim of Quality: be truthful, only say that for which you have adequate evidence Maxim of Relevance: be relevant, be on topic. Assume people are going to be on topic Maxim of Quantity: saying more or less than you need to Maxim of Manner: avoid obscurity, avoid ambiguity; be brief, and be orderly Violated maxims: Flouting the maxims: when a maxim is broken on purpose, intentional (lying, don't want to hurt someone's feelings, sarcasm- has to be directed at someone else) Direct/indirect-part of why you would flout a maxim. Implicatures: things are being implied. Grice's maxims get filtered through the discourse thing to give you STYLE. Style: How you do something in order to position yourself in a group or community. Or the way you do something to position yourself in a group or community.
Act of accommodation: accommodating your language or style to subconsciously in. fit Two ways: position accommodation or dialect convergence; and negative accommodation or dialect divergence. Markedness: something could be marked or unmarked. Its described relative to something else. The word y'all in the south is unmarked but if a northerner said it then it would be marked. For southerners, the [a ] dipthong vowel i Right [rat] Rye [ra ] Ride [ra d] Language change and historical linguistics: Language family tree: Modern American English Modern British English daughter languages \ / Colonial English col. Dutch col. Germ. Col.eng.mother language \ | / Proto germanic
Both daughter languages are also sisters to each other. Swadesh list: list of words that are relatively stable. Like hunting words and fishing words and cooking words. Technology words change all the time. Proto Indo-European: William James, 1786, English, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, there is no doubt that all of these languages share the same mother language; Proto Indo European. There is a majority vote principle. Vowels tend to balance out. He says that in words with 5 vowels there is triangular formation; two at beginning, two next to that, and one in the middle. Don't really understand how this balances out though. Validity of saying that there is such a thing as the proto indo European language even if its never been written down or there is no documentation on it is based on uniformitarianism: the ways things change now are the same as they've always changed. Kurgan peoples probably spoke proto indo European, and lived on the black sea in southern Russia about 6 thousand years ago. Swadesh List: core vocab or a language. There are 200 word list ~ 500 word list ~ and 1000 word list. Things people talked about early in life that never really change and were used as core icons like hands, feet, hair. Why aren't brother/sister on the list? Don't really know. Perhaps word for sibling or maybe kid was only child. Glotto-chronology: the change in these words is predictable over time. 20% of the words are changed over time. Think about what is says about swadesh's view of cultures and something about including or not including words
History: English /\ Germanic /\ Proto indo European /\ ????????(NOSTRATIC)
Grimm's Law f x (h) /\ p t k p t k /\ b d g
foot-english pie-spanish pie-spanish b-?? something
night nacht- x noktem
Comparative reconstruction: Compare the existing forms of something to decide what the original form was. Grimm's law: Conditioned vs. unconditioned change: something to do with their environment Voiced stops becoming voiceless. And voiceless fricatives becoming, voiced stops. Majority rule: natural for stops to becomes fricatives Naturalness or phonological symmetry: lang. like to maintain symmetrical in their sounds. If you have unvoiced sounds, tends to want to have its voiced counterpart as well. If you have a front vowel you want a back vowel to go with it. Not getting front rounded without having back rounded. The history of the English language: Modern |~2000: speak present-day English (American, British, Australian, Indian) English |~1500-1800: Colonial English (all above came from Britain) (Shakespeare) -Great vowel shifti>>>> <<<<u ~1150-1450: Chaucer (Canterbury tales, best example) ~1476: Wm. Caxtan: brought printing press to England e ? ~1154: last entry for Anglo Saxon Chronicle ~1066: Battle of Hastings, Normandy invades England, ae ? Wm. The conqueror ~500-1100: Old English Period, also called Anglo Saxon ~479: first time we can really say that the English language starts to form. The Celts were being attacks be they like Romans or something. The combination of Anglos, Saxon, Jutes, and Frisians did this. The history of writing: movable type first by Guttenberg and he printed the Bible. Printing press only documents the language. It doesn't change it though, or speed it up or slow it down. Writing shows up about 6000 years ago with the Sumerians. It was cuneiform. They actually invented it, sort of. Writing comes in many "flavors": Alphabetic: try and make it where symbols represent sounds. Syllabic: represent syllables with syllable. Idiographic writing: use pictures for writing. Writing: Alphabetic:
Syllabic: (like Japanese) symbols for all syllables Idiographic: picture language (like hieroglyphics and Chinese) There were things used to "tag" things. Like this is my dog cause it has this thing on it. Not really a writing system. 6 thousand years ago the Sumerians was when the first writing system may have been and it was cuneiform. Effect the internet has on writing: writing style is more casual. And short hand/abbreviations. Leet speak, writing with numbers substituted as letters in your words. Brain is pretty good because people are able to separate internet language from their spoken and written languages. This means the internet is not screwing up the minds of the kids. Words change, broaden meaning with dog and become more specific with their meaning like deer. Discourse: come into the possession of a 3-6 year old child that has never had or heard of about Christmas. So we tell them things about it. What is Santa Claus, etc., what is Christ, Christmas trees, carols, stockings, presents. These are some of the discourses of Christmas. Even Christmas is a discourse. Santa Claus has a discourse of this naughty or nice thing. There is a religious discourse. Selfless discourse: singing carols and giving gifts to benefit others. Language = communication. We should have picked up on the fact that language isn't just for communication. Language isn't communication, its expression of identity.