2. • Language has a social function: it helps us to
establish and maintain relationships.
• Convey information about the speaker.
3. Language vs. dialect regional vs. social
Dialect vs. accent
no clear-cut boundaries: dialect continuum
Language continuum, eg. German and dutch
spoken along the Netherlands-Germany
frontier
4. • Linguistic criteria > Mutual intellegibility &
language, e.g Dutch and German
• Political and cultural criteria
1. autonomy and heteronomy (German and Dutch:
non-standard dialects in Germany, Austria and
Switzerland)
5. Discreteness and continuity
Dialect: grammar, vocabulary and pronuciation
6. Language is closely tied p with the social
structure and value systems of society;
therefore different dialects and accents are
evaluated in different ways.
e.g. non pre-vocalic /r/: car, cart England, not
prestigious
New York, prestigious
7. • Value judgments are arbitrary, and based on social
connotations
• Subjective attitudes towards language are important for the
study of language change, explain why dialects change and
how, e.g. /r/ in New York (Labov)
• The use of non pre-vocalic /r/ by upper middle class in
New York
• Labov’s study of Marth’s Vineyard, house , mouth
/∂u/ ,/au/
subjective attitudes towards the native linguistic form:
favorable or unvavorable
Linguistic change is not always in the direction of a prestigious
form.
8. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The effect of society on language: how physical
environment is reflected in language
the social environment, kinship terms.
The values of society affect language, e.g taboo
words, the word but not the concept.
Language is variable, is not used in the same
manner by all people in all situations.
9. Variety: a neutral term to refer to any form of language
(languages & dialects)
Speech community: controversial concept:
a community of people who share a linguistic variety as their
own and share social norms.
shared linguistic norms , shared communicative
competence and shared social norms. (can be a city,
neighborhood, region, nation)
Communicative (Sociolinguistic) competence:
speaker’s underlying knowledge of rules of grammar and
rules for their use in socially appropriate circumstances.
(learned through socialization), e.g. please, thank you.
Greeting formally, informally.
Social knowledge is essential for membership in speech
community.
10. boundaries between speech communities are social
rather than linguistic. speech community ≠
language community: e.g Papua New Guinea
mutual intelligibility
GaelicEnglish communities in Scotland (rely on
their communicative: the shared norms of
interactions in the community.
11. Can we claim the existence of a homogenous
speech community with the attested
heterogeneity in cities and countries?
12. The variable : an abstract representation of the
source of variation, realised by two or more
variants, e.g ‘think’ /θ/ : [θ], [f].
the variants are the actual realization of a
variable
Constraints on variation: linguistic & social
factors determine the use of variants.
Free variation
Variation is predicable but not with 100 %
certainty
13.
14. Fischer’s 1958 study of the use of (ng) in New
England.
12 boys, 12 girls aged 3-10.
Interview
Concusions:
Boys used more [in] than girls.
The use of [in] increases with the formality of
situations. The use of [in] increased when relaxed.
[in] is used more with verbs that describe everyday
activities ,e.g ‘hit’ ; [ing] is used with formal verbs,
e.g ‘criticize’.
15. To investigate the incidence of final and post-
vocalic /r/
While most American accents are rhotic, New York (and
Boston) have distinctive non-rhotic accent
Post-Depression, such urban accents lost prestige,
and rhotic midwest accent emerged as standard
Labov showed that rhotic use of /r/ reflected
social class and aspiration, and was more
widespread in younger speakers
16. Method:
He needed to quickly elicit possible /r/
pronunciations in both spontaneous and careful speech
Walked around 3 NYC department stores, asking the location
of departments he knew were on the fourth floor
By pretending not to hear, he got each informant to pronounce
the two words twice, once spontaneously, and once carefully
3 stores catering for distinct social groups:
Saks (upper), Macy’s (middle), S. Klein (lower)
Informants were shop workers at different grades,
giving a further possible stratification
18. first and second utterances
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Saks Macy's S Klein
store
%
fourth I
fourth 2
floor I
floor 2
• use of [r] increases in careful speech
19. [r] pronunciation by class and style
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
casual careful reading word list minimal
pairs
style
%
0
1
2,3
4,5
6,8
9
Adoption of prestige
form increases with
formality of style, in
each case with a
higher usage by
higher classes
EXCEPT in one case
20. [r] pronunciation by class and style
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
casual careful reading word list minimal
pairs
style
%
6,8
9
middle class
outperform upper
middle class on word
lists and minimal pairs
this cross-over due to
hypercorrection
(according to Labov)
not sure whether
results are statistically
significant
21. Multilingualism: the use of more than two languages, e.g.
Nigeria, India, and Philippines have hundreds of languages.
Canada, USA.
How multilingual nations develop? migration, imperialism,
federation
Diglossia: A situation in which two forms of the same
language co-exist in a complementary relationship in a
society. High variety, low variety. Both forms are
grammatically distinct, don’t overlap.
Classical Arabic
Each variety has its domains, e.g Arabic vernaculars
(dialects)
The term is extended to refer to any two languages, even
related ones, that has this kind of social and functional
distribution.
Triglossia ,Tunisia
Polyglossia: several H and L languages co-exist in a
complex multilingual society, e.g. Singapore L,H, M
varieties,e.g. Mandarin, Tamil and Malay are official
languages.
22. Which languages will be officially or nationally
recognized in a multilingual society?
Vitality: demographic, social and institutional
strength of a language and its speakers.
Language planning, language policies, in
multilingual communities.
Deliberate, Official government policies in
relation to language
Singapore (Hokkeien)
23. The alternation between two varieties across
sentences or clause boundaries.
It implies some degree of competence in the two
varieties even if bilingual fluency is not yet stable.
What determines code switching?
Domain-based or situational code switching.
Domain (social and physical setting), addressee
(interlocutor),
Constraints : switching takes place between
languages with similar structure?
Spanish/Englishbetween determiners and nouns,
Subjects and verbs, but not nouns and adjectives.
24. •Code mixing: alternations within a clause or
phrase, e.g. Spanglish, Franglais, ‘arabizi?
•Motivations functions for a switch between
codes?
•Attitudes towards code switching mixing.
Stigmitaized or favorable (ethnic identity)
25. An hypothesis is a specific statement of prediction. It describes in
concrete (rather than theoretical) terms what you expect will happen in
your study.
Your prediction is that variable A and variable B will be related
(you don't care whether it's a positive or negative relationship).
Then the only other possible outcome would be that variable A
and variable B are not related. Usually, we call the hypothesis that
you support (your prediction) the alternative hypothesis, and we
call the hypothesis that describes the remaining possible outcomes
the null hypothesis.
hypothesis formation: one might formulate a hypothesis before
beginning the research project, based on available literature, or
one’s observations in the course of collecting, processing, and/or
analyzing data might lead to an interesting, testable hypothesis.
Not all studies have hypotheses. Sometimes a study is designed to be
exploratory
26. Empirical research
Sampling: target population: define the sampling
universe, determine the sample size
Stratified sample by age, sex, region, etc.
random, judgment sampling (snowball sampling)
Methods of data collection
Questionnaire
Face-to-face interview, telephone interviews
population, tape recorded, agreement to participate.
27. The analysis of variation: The quantitative method
Define your linguistic variables and social variables
Transcription, coding, counting tokens, percentages
Excel or word for tables and graphs
28. Interpretation of data, Look for pattern, correlation
between linguistic variable and social variable.
29. Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism
Linguistic Constraints on Codeswitching and Codemixing
of Bilingual Moroccan Arabic-French Speakers in Canada
www.cascadilla.com/isb4.html
Code Switching Between English and Arabic : An Empirical study on Saudi
Female Students
30. DESCRIPTIVE STUDY. If you choose to do a descriptive
study, it will have the following components:
(1) A description of the speech community, giving enough
information to contextualize the sociolinguistic variables.
(2) A description of the sociolinguistic variables embodied
in this speech community, and an indication of how they
have been identified (e.g. personal observation, previous
studies, general community knowledge, jokes and
stereotypes, etc.).
(3) A review of relevant literature concerning this particular
speech community or sociolinguistic configuration. At least
5 sources must be cited.
31. An analysis of the chosen sociolinguistic situation
within a broader context. How does this fit in with the
general study of sociolinguistics? Do the data from
your study offer anything new to sociolinguistics?
Would a thorough and complete analysis of the chosen
community require resources or models not currently
contemplated in sociolinguistics?
(5) Suggestions for future research. This can be brief
and can be appended to the analysis in point (4). Every
linguistic study should suggest new directions,
unanswered questions, and future research. Mention
the most promising possibilities.
32. 1) A description of the speech community, giving enough
information to contextualize the sociolinguistic variables.
(2) A description of the sociolinguistic variables embodied
in this speech community, and an account of how the data
have been obtained (data collection, number of speakers,
coding of tokens).
(3) A review of relevant literature concerning this particular
speech community or sociolinguistic configuration. At least
5 sources must be cited.
(4) A working hypothesis about the sociolinguistic
importance of the chosen variables, that will be tested
against the data.
33. (5). A brief interpretation of the quantitative results with
respect to the working hypothesis. Do the quantitative
results support or disconfirm the hypothesis?
(6) Suggestions for future research. Be sure to add any
suggestions for improvement of the study (data collection,
quantitative analysis, interpretation of results).
34. Style, in the most general sense, refers to the
distinctive way of speaking or writing. People adopt
different styles in different contexts.
The influence of the addressee on the speaker’s
language: solidarity (social closeness) between
participants is an important influence on speech
style.
Casual, relaxed, vernacular forms with friends
Standard forms with strangers
Many factors affect social distancesolidarity
between people
35. Age of addressee: child, elderly vs. adult: simpler vocabulary
and less complex sentences, ‘we’ vs. ‘you’ example 4, p.225
Social background of the addressee, example 6 p. 228
Peter Trudgill interviewing people in Norwich, use of [t] in
better, bet. Glottal stop used up to 98% with lower class
interviewees (100%). With higher class (25%), Trudgill’s
use dropped to 30%. He was accommodating to his
interviewees.
Relative status and solidarity between speaker and addressee
Colloquial style: vernacular
social dialect survey in New York Labov elicited the
vernacular: the style in which minimum attention is given to
the monitoring of speech
Observer’s paradox can be overcome by manipulating the
topic of interview
36. Occupational style: a jargon which a group of
specialists develop to talk about their specialty,
eg. Journalese, legalese, sport commentators.
Example 23
37. The notion of accommodation developed from the work of
Howard Giles and his associates.
Speakers tend to change the way they are speaking
depending on who they are talking to.
Speakers may Converge (modify their speech to sound
similar)or diverge (maintain linguistic distinctiveness to
distinguish themselves from interlocutor e.g. some minority
ethnic groups).
Motivation: in the case of convergence to express solidarity
or reduce social distance, polite speech strategy, sarcastic
effect.
Upward convergence, downward convergence
Short-term accommodation vs. long term accommodation
which may lead to permanent linguistic changes.
Dialect contact zones.
38. Reactions to speech convergence and
divergence depend on the reasons people
attribute for the convergence or divergence.
Deliberate divergence will be heard as
antagonistic or uncooperative.
39. Reduction of differences distinguishing regional
dialects or accents.
The result of mobility, in the 20th
century social
changes affected the local dialect diversity which
characterised regions for hundred of years.
Immigration, urbanization, new towns.
The outcome of close daily contact: levelling out of
differences
40. All variation and change can be viewed as the
outcome of some form of contact between different
individuals or members of different groups:
bilingualism, bidialectlism, code switching, dialect
levelling (e.g. the use of London variants (ay)
PRICE, MOUTH (aw) by young children in Milton
Keynes; stops [t] and glottal [?] in Reading (close to
London) and Hull (far from London, no immigration
or contact with London or south east speakers. The
Fens).
41. pidgins and creoles are languages that emerge
out of the contact between speakers of more
than two different languages.
Social conditions associated with the contact
Limited social contact: speakers may only be in
contact in a reduced set of social interactions,
such as trading or work. Limited access to
native speaker’s model of each other’s
languages.
Lack of motivation to acquire native-speaker
like skills in the other language.
How they are learnt.
42. Pidgin: a contact language that is not nobody’s first
language, no native speakers. Arise in the conditions
of trade and labor related contexts.
Restricted social functions
A creole a contact language which has native
speakers, may be added the community repertoire
resulting in bilingualism.
A creole serves most of the or all of the functions
that any natural human language must serve;
everyday interaction, telling stories, jokes, games,
etc.
43. Any variety used for business or limited to work place may
be considered a pidgin.
Russenorsk used between Russian and Norwegian sailors in
The Bering Sea during fishing season of the northern
summer.
Francais tiraillou ‘torn French’ used in the military parts of
the French colonies in Africa.
Once a variety is used a as vehicle for all types of
communication, it has become a creole.
Once it acquires its native speakers, it becomes a creole
(nativization).
Creolisation: the process by which a pidgin becomes the first
language of group of speakers. Exansion of a pidgin into a
wider range of social functions.
Vernacularisation: the process by which a contact variety
becomes used with the full range of social functions of the
language of the home.
44. • Ps have structural norms & must be learned
• Pidgins distinct from Input languages by:
– Structural reduction, typically in morphology
– Lack many semantic and grammatical distinctions
– Few stylistic resources (=conventional variation]
– Lexical reduction, derivation from dominant groups
– 00
• 1. Simplification of superstrate (dominant language)
grammatical structure
2. Retention of substrate (less dominant) grammatical
structures
45. Orait yu yet killim bikinini bilong me
Alright 2s focus kill child poss 1st
‘all right you’re the one who killed my child’
46. Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) used as a
communication tool between local citizens and
the large Asian immigrant population in the
area for at least 30 years.
Example Asian immigrants in the Omani
border town of Buraimia developed separate
language variety rather than as a collection of
individual attempts of mastering Gulf Arabic.
47. three grammatical features of this variety,
possession, negation and the verbal system. to
document systematic reductions and greater
regularity in the grammar of GPA compared to
that of Gulf Arabic, as well as the development
of a light verb system unparalleled in Arabic,
but similar to several of the main substrate
languages of GPA such as Urdu.
GPA grammar and phonology also display
several of the characteristic features of other
well-documented Arabic-based pidgins and
creoles such as Juba Arabic, Nubi and Turku in
Arabic-speaking Afr
48. Language (dialect) shift: when a community who share
a native language abandon it, and collectively shift to
speaking another one instead.
Language shift is always preceded by
multilingualism
What effects does language shift have on the structures
of the languages involved?
Language shift can happen raidly or slowly.
Caribbean Creole languages developed within a
century, even less, from African and European
languages. Most African languages were lost in 1-2
generations under the catastrophic conditions of slavery
49. Language shift is not a new phenomenon. It has been going
on for all of recorded history. Whenever two
cultures/populations with different languages come in
intense contact, shift is a possibility.
Typically those who shift are the weaker group, but
sometimes it is the more powerful one who shifts.
Vikings who speak Old Norse invaded in the British isles in
787 kept their language for centuries, then shifted to the
evolving English language. Vikings went to Northern France
became bilingual then shifted to French.
Historical: Language shift to Arabic by Berber population in
North Africa (Morocco) following the Muslim conquest
Language shift to Arabic by Armenians in Jordan.
50. Language death is the complete disappearance of a
language. (Latin is not a dead language)
An old phenomenon as old as the recorded history of the
languages of the world.
Often death comes by in a situation of dialect contact and
shifting bilingualism.
Most commonly a gradual process spanning several
generations.
Sudden death: when the last speaker of a language spoken by
a very small and isolated group dies, the death of Ishi the last
wild Indian in North America.
51. Radical language death: Sometimes a result of
genocide, the sudden elimination of an entire
population.
Example of language death by genocide: Australian
Aboriginal languages
Over 350 languages were spoken when Capt. Cook
landed in 1770. 200 years later, only 90 survived as
viable languages.
Only 10% of Aboriginal people still speak
native languages.
52. Bottom-to-top death: sometimes death affects first
the lower registers of the language leaving for last
the most formal register (Latinate pattern).
Speakers typical of language death situations:
1.Semi-speakers: imperfect speakers with partial
command of the productive skills, but perfect
command of receptive skills.
2. remembers: speakers who may have been at an
early stage fluent speakers, but have lost most of
their earlier linguistic ability. Typical of advanced
stage of language death, found in conditions of
isolation.
53. Loss of registers and language forms associated
with them: the most widespread case is the loss
of higher registers
Lexical Loss
Loss in phonologt
Loss in morphology
Loss in syntax
54. ‘Gender’ has replaced ‘sex’ in sociolinguistics.
Sex: biologically or physiologically based
distinction between males and females.
Gender: a social and cultural notion. It
indicates the social identity that emerges or is
constructed through social action, and
adherence to certain cultural norms and
proscriptions.
55. Gender exclusive features:
Some linguistic features are used exclusively by (or
to) speakers of a particular sex. e.g. kinship terms
“My Auntie Kath”, grandson, niece, cousin,
Cultural differences. You in English vs. Arabic
Such (gender exclusive) linguistic features that
directly index sex, or exclusively used by one sex
rather than another are rare.
56. Some social dialect studies showed that some
linguistic forms are more used by men or the
opposite.
Generalizations made about preferential
gender differences in relation to the use of
standard variants.
57. Principle I. : In stable sociolinguistic variation,
women use the standard more than men
Stable variation vs. change in progress
Examples of sociolinguistic variation
(ing) variable: [in], [Iη]
(dh) variable : fricative or stop [d] ‘this’
(th) variable: fricative or stop [t] ‘thin’
Negative concord: ‘didn’t do nothing ∼ anything’
58.
59. Trudgill: in Western society, men are evaluated
more on what they do, and women on how
they appear.
Eckert: women rely on symbolic resources, eg.
Speech, dress, make-up, to establish their
position in their social groups.
Women are aware of what is proscribed
(prohibited) and therefore avoid it more than
men.
60. Principle I a. In change in progress above the level of
awareness, women use the standard more than men.
Women use innovative and positively evaluated
variants more then men.
Example: the use of (r) in final pre-consonantal
position in New York city. Used more by higher
class, within each class women used it more than
men. Some exceptions.
New Yorkers talked about [r] presence and absence and
preferred or valued r-full speech than r-less pronunciation.
61. Example: the use of glottal stop [?] in place of /t/ is
one of the phonological changes in progress in
British English. It is gaining ground in the cities.
Attitudes towards the glottal stop:
Teen agers show overt awareness of this feature: “my
parents don’t like me missing letters out, like if I say
w’er”
Teen agers are aware of the spread of the glottal stop
and that it is not a non-standard form.
Principle I and Ia are not always applicable. Figure
10.4. many factors interact in any variation.
62. Women use more of the incoming variant form in
changes in progress above the level of conscious
awareness.
Women lead in the use of incoming non-standard
variants if people are not aware of the variation
involved and therefore do not talk about them.
Example: changes in the vowel system in
English,e.g central vowel [Λ] in ‘bus’, is
pronounced as ‘boss’. Eckert (2000): this change is
restricted to the speech of a group known as
burnouts, and within the group the use was
advanced among the girls than it was among the
boys.
63. Figure 10.6
Figure 10.8
In the Arabic speaking world, men use more
standard Arabic than women.
64. Sociolect (or social dialect): a socially distinct
variety.
Speaker A speaker B
‘I done it yesterday’ ‘I did it yesterday’
‘He ain’t got it ‘ ‘He hasn’t got
it’
Grammatical, phonetic, phonological
differences give us clues about their social
background.
Social class accents
65. Why do we have these differences?
Physical barriers and distance
Regional dialect boundaries coincide with
geographical barriers, mountains, swamps, rivers,
e.g. ‘house’ [hu:s] north of the river Humber vs.
[haus] (diphthong) south of the river.
Social barriers and distance
The diffusion of a linguistic feature through a
society may be halted by social factors including
social class.
A linguistic innovation that begins in upper class
may reach the lower class last, if at all.
66. Any hierarchical (ranking) ordering of groups
within a society in terms of power, wealth and
status.
In the industrialized societies of the West, social
stratification takes the form of stratification into
social classes and gives rise linguistically to social-
class dialects.
Social class is a controversial concept, no general
agreement as to the exact nature or definition or
existence of social classes.
67. Social class stratification is not universal, e.g.
India caste system (hereditary). Rigid separation
into distinct groups, therefore, social distance is
more differentiating than the geographical distance
in India.
Unlike the situation in India, in the class societies of
the English speaking world, the linguistic situation
is more complex.
Social classes are not clearly defined,
aggregates of people with similar social and
economic characteristics.
Social mobility is possible, the movement up or
down the social hierarchy.
68. In the beginning linguistic complexity was ignored
by focusing on idiolect, or speakers in rural areas
(dialectologists, dialect surveys).
It is only after the Second World War, linguistic
realized that confining dialect studies to rural areas,
they missed important information about the
majority of people who live in towns.
Urban dialectologist faced the problem of describing
fully and accurately the speech of large towns and
cities with heterogeneous populations.
In 1966 the American linguist William Labov
published The Social Stratification of English in
New York city, a large scale survey, tape-recorded
interviews with 340, by random sample
69. Representative sample therefore accurate
description of all the varieties in the area.
Labov also developed techniques to elicit normal
speech from people in spite of the recorder.
Developed methods for quantitative measurements
of linguistic data.
Labov showed that variation is not free in the
speech of New Yorkers, e.g ‘guard’, ‘beard’, and
‘bad’.
Variation is not random, but determined by extra-
linguistic factors in a predictable way.
71. Standard English:
He’ a man who likes his dog
He’ a man who likes his dog
Regional non-standard variation is greater than
social variation.
He’ a man who likes his dog
He’ a man who likes his dog
He’ a man at likes his dog
He’ a man as likes his dog
He’ a man what likes his dog
He’ a man he likes his dog
He’ a man likes his dog
72. social variation higest class :RP
lowest class: most localized variant
Table 3
‘Home’ 27 variants, three accent forms, in 7 cities
London
RP houm
Inermediate hΛum
Λum
73. Sociolinguistic studies showed how RP, and
the intermediate and the most localized accents
are related to social class.
To measure linguistic and social phenomena.
Assign individuals a numerical index score on
the basis of income, education, other factors,
then group them with others who have similar
indexes.
74. In east Anglia and in AA Detroit the 3rd
p.suffix –s is
not present in the speech of some people:
She like him very much
He don’t know a lot, do he?
It go ever so fast
Since –s is standard, and since standard English is
associated with higher classe, we may suspect that
there is a correlation between the usage of –s and
social class
Tape record, listen, transcribe, count , Table 4.
76. Correlational sociolinguistics
Like regional dialects, social-class dialects are not
distinct entities, they merge into each other
Popular stereotypes of social dialects are
misleading. The Detroit African American dialect
has no third person marker. Detroit African
Americans of all classes use both forms, it is only
proportions that differ.
77. • Ethnic-group differentiation in a mixed
community is a particular type of social
differentiation and has linguistic differentiation
associated with it.
• Experiment carried out in the USA, tape
recordings of two different sets of speakers.
78. Two types:
Language as a defining characteristic of the
ethnic group membership, common world
wide,e.g. multilingual Africa, Canada. People
will identify themselves as belonging to a
particular ethnic group on the basis of their
language.
Separate identity of ethnic groups is signalled
by distinct varieties of the same
language,e.g.Jewish, Italians in New York.
79. Ethnic groups are fluid entities whose
boundaries change through history.
Example: Yugoslavia, in the centre of the
country the language was Sebo-croat. Different
ethnic groups who speak the same dialects.
With the breakup of Yugoslavia, the
government in Zagreb calls its national
language Croation, Latin alphabet, the
government in Belgrade calls its language
Serbian, Cyrillic alphabet. Moslims of Bosnia
calls their language Bosnian
They stress their separate nationhoods and
ethnicities by focusing on lexical differences.
80. Ethnic groups in New York. Jewish, Italian.
Ethnic groups tend to form separate
communities within the city.
Differences are due to the influence of
substratum varieties, languages spoken before
they become speakers of New York English.
Yiddish or Italia accent accent of the first
generation would lead to hypercorrection of
foreign features by the second generation. The
use of high vowels in ‘bad’, ‘bag’ by Italians
because their fathers used more open vowel
than the English sound.
82. Linguistic variation can be analyzed in terms of
social networks: the grouping of people based
on the frequency and quality of interaction.
James and Lesley Milroy’s 1985 study of
Belfast.
The relationships individuals contract with
others--- through social and geographical space
linking many individuals.
Social networks are defined by who your
friends are, who live near, who you work with.
83. Network analyses ask how often the members
of these groups are the same and how often
they are completely different.
The diffusion of Linguistic change happens fast
and efficiently along horizontal channles
( within one age and a social cohort). On the
other hand vertical channels (across generation,
social classes) are comparatively slow and
inefficient with regard to the transmission of a
linguistic innovation.
84. How can you identify a social network?
Observe who interacts with who in a community
Note how they are interacting with each other.
Patterns of interaction constitute individuals’s social
networks.
Let the people define their own social networks.
Ask ‘who are your best friends?’
‘Name all the people you had conversation with
yesterday”
A researcher can build a network from all the
answers.
85. A dense social network is one where all
members know each other. If you ask five
people, each one should mention the other
four.
Loose social network: not all members know
each other
Dense networks slow down or inhibit change.
Members police each other’s behaviour
(consciously or unconsciously) because of the
intensity of their contact
86. Because in dense networks contacts with
outside the network are comparatively
superficial, there is less chance of being
exposed to innovation from outside.
Loose networks make people more open to
change. The ties that individual members have
to other networks provide an opportunity for
them to be exposed to and pick innovations
from outside their network.
87. Net works can be distinguished in terms of the
quality of the ties between individuals.
Uniplex tie: if the network tie between two
individuals is based on one relationship, e.g.
the two people work together, or are family
members, or have children in the same club.
Multiplex tie: if two people know each other in
several different roles, e.g best friends, and thy
take the same courses at niversity, work
together on weekends. (A three-way tie)
88. A loose network based on uniplex ties is going
to be more open to the introduction and
transmission of innovations than dense
networks where members share multiplex ties.
89. The social relationship between the speaker and the
hearer is indicated by his/her linguistic choices.
(T/V) distinction: the choice between Tu (familiar
form) and vous (the polite form) forms in languages,
e.g. Latin, French, Italian German, Greek, (English
once had thou/you distinction.
According to Brown and Gilman (1960) it started as a
sing. And plural difference. By medieval times, the
upper classes began to use V with each other to show
mutual respect…
90. The asymmetrical T/V usage came to
symbolize power relationship.
Symmetrical V usage became polite usage,
spread downward but not to the lowest classes.
Symmetrical T usage to show intimiacy or
solidarity (strong common interest).
This mutual T came to replace the mutual V of
politeness because solidarity is more important
in personal relationships.
91. How do you name or address another? By title
(T), first name (FN) by last name (LN),
nickname, by combination of these or by
nothing at all.
What factors govern the choice you make?
Is the address process asymmetrical? Mr. Smith
leads to John, or symmetrical?
Family relationships
Use of kinship terms for use as address terms
92. Politeness is prescribed, rules, norms.
The concept of politeness is associated with Goffman
(1967) study on face.
Brown and Levinson (1987) define face as “the public
self image that every member wants to claim for himself”
They distinguished between Positive face vs. negative
face.
Positive face the desire to get the approval of others.
Negative face the desire to be unimpeded by others in
one’s actions. Freedom of actions and freedom form
impositions.
