Varieties of Variation in a Very Small Place: Social Homogeneity, Prestige Norms, and Linguistic Variation | Language

Abstract
References

Abstract

It has been widely assumed that linguistic heterogeneity reflects social heterogeneity, with differences in the use of linguistic variants corresponding to social groupings and sensitive to social self-presentation in terms of one or more prestige norms. This assumption is challenged by patterns of variation within the former fishing communities of East Sutherland, Scotland. In these Gaelic-speaking communities exceptionally homogeneous single-village populations show well established patterns of intravillage and intraspeaker variation that do not correlate with such familiar social factors as socioeconomic status, sex, social network, or style, and only in a limited number of cases with age. Absence of any locally workable prestige norm (the result of geographical isolation, low literacy, dialect aberrance, and minority-language enclavement) is considered as a factor in the absence of social weighting of village-internal variants. High-proficiency, Gaelic-dominant speakers participate fully in the variation, making the obsolescence of the dialect unlikely as an explanation. Reasons for inattention to individually patterned variation within small and homogeneous speech communities are considered.

Information

Type

Research Article

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Arensberg, Conrad. 1968 [1937]. The Irish countryman. Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press.Google Scholar

Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic groups and boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar

Bloomfield, Leonard. 1964 [1924]. Literate and illiterate speech. Language in culture and society, ed. by Hymes, Dell, 391–96. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar

Christian, Donna, Wolfram, Walt; and Dube, Nanjo. 1988. Variation and change in geographically isolated communities: Appalachian English and Ozark English. (Publication of the American Dialect Society 74.) Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar

Dixon, R. M. W. 1988. The grammar of Boumaa Fijian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Dorian, Nancy C. 1973. Grammatical change in a dying dialect. Lg. 49.413–38.Google Scholar

Dorian, Nancy C. 1978. East Sutherland Gaelic: The dialect of the fisherfolk of Brora, Golspie, and Embo. Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.Google Scholar

Dorian, Nancy C. 1982. Defining the speech community to include its working margins. Sociolinguistic variation in speech communities, ed. by Romaine, Suzanne, 25–33. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar

Dorian, Nancy C. 1985. The tyranny of tide: An oral history of the East Sutherland fisherfolk. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar

Dorian, Nancy C. 1986. Gathering language data in terminal speech communities. The Fergusonian impact, vol. 2: Sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, ed. by Fishman, J.A., Tabouret-Keller, A., Clyne, M., Krishnamurti, Bh., and Abdulaziz, M., 555–75. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar

Dorian, Nancy C. 1994. Stylistic variation in a language restricted to private-sphere use. Sociolinguistic perspectives on register, ed. by Biber, Douglas and Finegan, Edward, 217–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Dorian, Nancy C. 1995. Personal-pattern variation in East Sutherland Gaelic. Scottish Gaelic Studies. to appear.Google Scholar

Duran, James J. 1992. Doing dialect research in the Aran Islands: Some reflections of a field worker. Paper given at the 14th Annual University of California Celtic Studies Conference, Los Angeles, 1992.Google Scholar

Fasold, Ralph, Bins, Carolyn, Skopek, Lucienne, Tully, Barbara; and Louis, Conan. 1975. Influences on social lect level: Where you are and where your head is. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar

Giles, Howard, and Powesland, Peter F. 1975. Speech style and social evaluation. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar

Gudschinsky, Sarah C. 1967. How to learn an unwritten language. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar

Hale, Ken. 1992. On the human value of local languages. Plenary session texts, XVth International Congress of Linguists, 23-37.Google Scholar

Hill, Jane H., and Hill, Kenneth. 1986. Variable developments of -āškā ‘possession’ in Modern Mexicano (Nahuatl). International Journal of American Linguistics 52.404–10.CrossRef Google Scholar

Holmquist, Jonathan Carl. 1988. Language loyalty and linguistic variation: A study in Spanish Cantabria. (Topics in sociolinguistics, 3.) Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRef Google Scholar

Hymes, Dell. 1979. Sapir, competence, voices. Individual differences in language ability and language behavior, ed. by Fillmore, Charles J., Kempler, Daniel, and Wang, William S-Y., 33–45. New York: Academic Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1966. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1990. The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2.205–54.CrossRef Google Scholar

Mayfield, Eleanor. 1991. Victor Hawthorne: The people's doctor. Michigan Today, vol. 23(2).8Google Scholar

Milroy, James, and Milroy, Lesley. 1978. Belfast: Change and variation in an urban vernacular. Sociolinguistic patterns in British English, ed. by Trudgill, Peter, 19–36. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar

Milroy, Lesley. 1987. Language and social networks. 2nd edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar

ÓDochartaigh, Cathair. 1983. Review of Dorian 1978. Scottish Gaelic Studies 14.120–28.Google Scholar

Oftedal, Magne. 1956. The Gaelic of Leurbost, Isle of Lewis. (A linguistic survey of the Gaelic dialects of Scotland, 3: Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, supplementary vol. 4.) Oslo: Aschehoug.Google Scholar

O’Grady, William, Dobrovolsky, Michael; and Aronoff, Mark. 1989. Contemporary linguistics: An introduction. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar

Peters, Ann. 1977. Language learning strategies: Does the whole equal the sum of the parts? Lg. 53.560–73.Google Scholar

Romaine, Suzanne. 1982. Socio-historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Sankoff, David, and Laberge, Suzanne. 1978. The linguistic market and the statistical explanation of variability. Linguistic variation: Models and methods, ed. by Sankoff, David, 239–50. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar

Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1992. Language decay and contact-induced change: Similarities and differences. Language death: Factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa, ed. by Brenzinger, Matthias, 59–80. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRef Google Scholar

Trudgill, Peter. 1974. The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar

Urban, Greg. 1991. A discourse-centered approach to culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar