Sociolinguistics lane 422

Language and society

Language has a social function: it helps
us to
establish and maintain relationships.
Convey information about the speaker.

 Language vs. dialect regional vs.

social
Dialect vs. accent
no clear-cut boundaries: dialect
continuum
Language continuum, eg. German and
dutch spoken along the NetherlandsGermany frontier

Criteria to Language
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)

 Discreteness and continuity

Dialect: grammar, vocabulary and
pronuciation

 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

 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
Labovs study of Marths 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.

 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.

Key sociolinguistic concepts

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:
speakers 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

 boundaries between speech communities are

social rather than linguistic. speech
community language community: e.g Papua
New Guinea mutual intelligibility
Gaelic\English communities in Scotland (rely
on their communicative: the shared norms of
interactions in the community.

 Can we claim the existence of a

homogenous speech community with
the attested heterogeneity in cities
and countries?

Variation and Language

The variable : an abstract representation
of the source of variation, realised by two
or more variants, e.g think // : [], [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

Fischers 1958 study of the use of (ng) in

New England.
(ng)
singing vs. singin

Variation Studies
Fischers 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.

Labov (1966) study of (r) in New . 2

:York
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

Labov (1966) study of (r) in

New

:Method
:York
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

: stores catering for distinct social groups 3

Saks (upper), Macys (middle), S. Klein (lower)

Informants were shop workers at different grades,

giving a further possible stratification

Results

Use of [r] corresponded to higher class of store

Results

use of [r] increases in careful speech

Pronunciation and style

Adoption of prestige
form increases with
formality of style, in
each case with a
higher usage by
higher classes
EXCEPT in one case

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

Multilingulaism

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, dont 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.

 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)

Code switching\mixing
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.

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)

Sociolinguistic research

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
ones 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

Sociolinguistic research
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.

Sociolinguistic research
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

Sociolinguistic research
Interpretation of data, Look for pattern,
correlation between linguistic variable and
social variable.

Sociolinguistic research

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

Sociolinguistics project
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.

Sociolinguistics project
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.

QUANTITATIVE STUDY

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.

 (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).

Style, context and register

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 speakers
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 distance\solidarity between
people

Factors affecting speakers style

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%), Trudgills 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
Observers paradox can be overcome by manipulating the topic
of interview

Register
Occupational style: a jargon which a
group of specialists develop to talk
about their specialty, eg. Journalese,
legalese, sport commentators.
Example 23

Speech accommodation theory

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.

 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.

Language contact and dialect levelling

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

Outcomes of Language contact

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).

Contact-induced change: pidgins and

creoles
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 speakers model of each
others languages.
Lack of motivation to acquire native-speaker
like skills in the other language.
How they are learnt.

 Pidgin: a contact language that is not nobodys

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.

Functional definition of pidgins and

creoles

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

Characteristics of Pidgins
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

Tok Pisin (talk pidgin)

Orait
yu yet
bilong me
Alright 2s
focus
poss 1st

killim bikinini
kill

child

all right youre the one who killed

my child

Gulf Pidgin Arabic (Nss, Unn Gyda (2008)

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.

 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

Language shift
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

 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.

Language death (attrition)

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.

 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.

 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.

The effects of language death on language structure

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

Language and gender

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.

Gender exclusive and gender preferential

features
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.

Gender preferential features

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.

Principles of Gender and Variation

(Labov 1990,2001)
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], [I]
(dh) variable : fricative or stop [d] this
(th) variable: fricative or stop [t] thin
Negative concord: didnt do nothing
anything

Mens and womens use of the alveolar variant [In] in three

speech styles and two socio-economic classes in Norwich,
England. (source Trudgill 1972)

Explanations for gender differences

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, makeup, to establish their position in their
social groups.
Women are aware of what is
proscribed (prohibited) and therefore
avoid it more than men.

 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.

 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 dont like me missing letters out,
like if I say wer
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.

Principle II:

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 nonstandard 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 [] 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.

 Figure 10.6
Figure 10.8
In the Arabic speaking world, men
use more standard Arabic than
women.

Language and social class

Sociolect (or social dialect): a socially
distinct variety.
Speaker A speaker B
I done it yesterday
I did it
yesterday
He aint got it
He hasnt got it
Grammatical, phonetic, phonological
differences give us clues about their
social background.
Social class accents

 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.

Social stratification
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.

 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.

 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

 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 extralinguistic factors in a predictable way.

Social and regional dialect variation

Social variation
highest class: standard dialect

lowest class: most localized non

standard

regional variation

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

Social and regional accent variation

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
hum
um
Most locaized

aum

 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.

 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 dont 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.

 Norwich (%)
MMC
0
LMC
2
10
UWC
70
57
MWC
87
LWC
97
71

Detroit (%)
UMC
1
LMC
UWC
LWC

 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.

Language and ethnicity

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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

AAVE

Language and social

networks

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 Milroys 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.

 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.

 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 individualss 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.

Dense and Loose social

networks
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 others
behaviour (consciously or
unconsciously) because of the intensity
of their contact

 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.

Multiplex and uniplex ties

within networks
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)

 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.

Language & power/ language &

politeness

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

 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.

Address terms
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

Politeness markers
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
ones actions. Freedom of actions and freedom form
impositions.