Toward a theory of social dialect variation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2007
When asked by an interviewer what he thought of sociolinguistics, Noam Chomsky responded that whereas such work might have value for dispelling misconceptions and prejudice about non-standard language varieties, the study of the relation between social class and linguistic variables has no more scientific interest than butterfly collecting. "If you like butterflies, that's fine, but such work must not be confounded with research, which is concerned to discover explanatory principles of some depth" (Language and Responsibility, Noam Chomsky, with Mitsou Ronat, Pantheon Books, 1979:57). The two books under review would appear to afford a vantage point for assessing the relation between sociolinguistics and formal grammatical theory three decades later. The collection Dialect Change, according to its editors, is offered as evidence that there is more science to sociolinguistic lepidoptery than meets the eye: "The overall aim is to proceed from the idiographic level, i.e. the level of the description of unique, particular, situation-specific findings regarding single dialect features, to the nomothetic level, the level of general, preferably universal, principles" (p. 48). David Lightfoot, for his part, intends his How New Languages Emerge to show butterfly-collectors how science is really done. Dialect Change comprises 13 chapters by 17 researchers, many of them participants in an international research network on "The Convergence and Divergence of Dialects in a Changing Europe." The four papers in the first section of the volume examine dialect convergence or divergence from the standpoint of linguistic structure. It is here that the interest of dialect studies for formal theories of language is made explicit, although for the most part the studies carried out by the authors only serve to point out the limitations of these frameworks in accounting for the outcomes of dialect-contact and dialect-change phenomena. According to Jeffrey Kallen's discussion of mutations undergone by /t/ in dialects of English (pp. 51-80), Optimality Theory-which represents phonological processes in terms of hierarchies of output constraints-can account for the range of attested pronunciations, but in each speech community the actual trajectory of change depends on the "social embedding of norms" (pp. 54-55, 79-80). Gaetano Berruto's study of the interaction between local dialects and regional and national standard varieties of Italian (pp. 81-95), reveals that the influence is not always unidirectional. Alongside the "Italianisation of dialect," Berruto notes that the "dialectisation of Italian" can also occur, giving rise to regional varieties of the national language (italiano popolare, p. 83). He also critiques linguistic models of code-switching and code-mixing phenomena, since his data call into question the concept of a "matrix language" which governs the morphosyntactic frame into which elements from the second code are inserted (pp. 87-93). Leonie Cornips and Karen Corrigan's chapter (pp. 96-134) aims to reconcile the "Internalist" linguistic theories of formalists with the "Externalist" models used by variationist sociolinguists. The authors' data on "middle" constructions (the equivalents of This shirt washes easily and similar sentence types) in Dutch dialects reveals evidence for an Aspect parameter of the type postulated by Lightfoot for the internal grammar ("I-language") of the individual speaker, which provides an elegant account for the distribution of superficially dissimilar syntactic constructions in the dialects under investigation (p. 127). The claim has been made that the formalists base their representation of language principally upon the evidence of syntactic phenomena, whereas sociolinguists construct their models of the correlation between linguistic behavior and socioeconomic factors almost entirely on phonetic data-rather like the blind men and the elephant. Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, and Ann Williams ask the question whether "generalisations concerning the spread of sound change apply equally well to other types of language change," such as syntax (pp. 135-167). Their study of speech recorded in British urban centers uncovers some intriguing instances of syntactic variation, such as the use of pronominal tags (e.g., I don't like it me, p. 159), but these give rise to more questions than answers for the analysts. The five chapters in the second section are concerned with "macrosociolinguistic motivations" such as language standardization (Inge Lise Pedersen, pp. 171-195), migration, and urbanism.
Language & Communication, 1986
Trudgill's book is of wide interdisciplinary interest, since Trudgill is one of the most articulate scholars in the field today: his prose is clear, and his arguments are generally self-contained and eloquent. Although one might want a more thorough discussion of his methodological infrastructure, almost every chapter reveals a new methodological technique to extend the horizons of a field already charted by Labov's ingenious ploys. For this book Trudgill has 'revised, updated and edited' carefully chosen articles to present them as 'a coherent text.' While some such texts focus on 'secular' linguistic topics, and others focus on specific communicative aspects of linguistics, Trudgill has chosen a broad cross-section of papers which run the entire gamut of foci. The first papers are of primary concern to the linguist who realizes that the inclusion of sociological parameters can extend a purely linguistic analysis, and as the book progresses, the articles increasingly emphasize the social variables. Given that the intention was for the book to be read as a coherent text, in a couple of instances more work should have been done to integrate and update the papers. However, on the whole, the volume flows well. While Trudgill has clearly read all the American literature, he uses a primarily British or European data base, and draws conclusions which appear to imply that influences on speech in the U.K. are universal. Since the organization of British society is quite different from that in many other parts of the world, not surprisingly, the hypotheses which Trudgill presents as sociolinguistic 'universals' frequently are contradicted by sociolinguistic data gathered elsewhere. Consequently, students must be especially skeptical of Trudgill's theoretical positions when they appear to contradict the data. Thus, articles cannot be accepted at face value, but can motivate students to compare Trudgill's data with other published data. If students are careful, studying work like this can lead to new breakthroughs. Since an introduction places a book's chapters in a specific perspective, this reviewer felt the introduction called for a special comment, in light of the fact that it appears to propose a frame which Trudgill himself would clearly reject. The 'Introduction' (pp. l-7) outlines the range of interests which have been considered sociolinguistic, and moves from this to focus attention on dialect from a sociolinguistic perspective. Trudgill demonstrates language teaching us about language and about society. Trudgill has presented a framework for such a 'cross-disciplinary' understanding before (1978, pp. 1-18); however, Trudgill's condensation of that discussion here maintains that work which is transparently concerned with 'improving linguistic theory and. .. developing our understanding of the nature of
Sociolects and Registers – a Contrastive Analysis of Two Kinds of Linguistic Variation
Investigationes Linguisticae, vol. XX, pp. 60-79, 2010
The paper, which is a theoretical contribution to investigations of social varieties of language, deals with two major dimensions of sociolinguistic variation: sociolectal and registerial. Drawing upon the views of Polish and Anglo-Saxon linguists, the author explores the concepts of sociolect (social dialect) and register, focusing mainly on their definitions, controlling variables, methodological frameworks, and typologies. In the final section, he attempts to shed some new light on the two kinds of variation and suggests new methodological solutions that could be applied in studies of sociolinguistic variation.
Dialectologia Revista Electronica, 2012
The sociolinguistic status of Japanese dialects will be discussed on the basis of linguistic landscape in this paper. A steady increase in dialect shop names over the past fourteen years was concretely ascertained in a southern island on the basis of tour guide books. This increase in dialect shop names is observed also in other areas of Japan. The fieldworks are examples of "insect's eye view" research. The geographical distribution of dialect shop names can be shown also on distribution maps of Google maps. These maps give us a "bird's eye view". It has been ascertained that Japanese dialect forms are utilized both domestically and abroad. Many more examples are observable using Google street view as "fly's eye view", and Google insights as "witch's eye view". The background of dialect landscape can be explained partly by the progress of language standardization, or decline of dialects. Dialects are now economically utilized because of their scarcity value. Three sociolinguistic types can be distinguished historically: ERADICATION, DESCRIPTION and UTILIZATION. Now Japanese dialects are in the state of UTILIZATION. Dialect landscape is a reflection of language standardization, and is regarded as a sensor of standardization. On the basis of the Linguistic Atlas of Japan, three historical stages of standardization can be distinguished: first, language standardization from the former capital Kyoto, and secondly from the new capital Tokyo, and thirdly nationwide standardization among junior high school students. In the meantime, new dialect forms, which are changes in the opposite direction from standardization, are still emerging in various areas in Japan. These historical movements of standardization and new dialect formation can be concisely shown by the "umbrella model". From ©Universitat de Barcelona Fumio Inoue 86 pragmatic surveys of dialect landscape, it has been found that principles of economics work on dialect use. Thus, the econolinguistics of dialect will be a fruitful study field in the future.
Dialect Variation and Dialect Change. A social-dialectological view
This paper addresses the theme of the workshop by providing a social-dialectological slant on variation in language. First a brief overview of the central theoretical and methodological tenets of this approach to variation and change in language is presented. Drawing on data collected in an ongoing dialectological survey of Marathi at the Deccan College, the paper provides a description of synchronic variation in linguistic features including case marking and agreement in the transitive-perfective clause in regional varieties of Marathi. It is suggested that the variation is the result of both language-internal and language-external factors. The contemporary dialectal data are compared with data from historical sources (Grierson 1905). An expansion in the pool of linguistic feature variants and a broad tendency towards dialect levelling through standardisation are noted for the regional varieties. However, the rates of standardisation across linguistic features and across social groups and regions are shown to vary. The paper concludes by suggesting meeting ground for functionalist approaches to language variation such as social dialectology and more formal approaches.
2014
This volume collects seven papers in contemporary sociophonetic research. It addresses hot themes in sociophonetics and proposes a fresh look at old problems still open to debate. A variety of approaches is proposed without neglecting the need for a coherent discussion of the nature of variation in speech and how speakers develop a cognitive representation of it. These characteristics distinguish the present volume from the panorama of comparable sociophonetic literature, which mainly consists of textbooks, readers, and journal special issues (as well as individual journal articles, conference proceedings, and informal reports). , contemporary sociophonetics and sociophonology differ from early variationist sociolinguistics for their focus on the cognitive representation of phonetic variation in the mind of the individual. Stated differently, the fundamental purpose of sociophonetic studies should be that of analyzing how the concrete communicative experiences are categorized by the speakers and, most importantly, of establishing the function of such complex nucleus of information in the structuring of linguistic systems. The fusion of sociolinguistics and phonetics occurs therefore within a cognitivist perspective in which the probabilistic nature of the language and the interest for the processes of language use and comprehension play a special role.