Psycholinguistic & Sociolinguistics

LECTURE#32SUMMARY

Definitions

• Linguistics:– It is the branch of science that studies the origin,

structure, and use of language.• Sociolinguistics:

- The study of relationships between language and social behavior is called sociolinguistics.

• Psycholinguistics: – The psychological study of language is called

psycholinguistics. As the name implies psycholinguistics is principally an integration of the fields of psychology and linguistics.

Introduction to Sociolinguistics1

• Sociolinguistics– It is the study of language in relation to society.

Language is always meant for society. The social interaction and communication of ideas or messages can be possible only through language.

• The history and the function of language have been the subject of studies since the prehistoric period, but sociolinguistics has been introduced only recently perhaps in the late sixties. Considerable growth has taken place since then.

Factors Influencing Sociolinguistics1

• Sociolinguistics is a quickly developing branch of linguistics which investigates the individual and social variation of language.

• Just as regional variation of language can give a lot of information about the place the speaker is from, social variation tells about the role fulfilled by a given speaker within one community, or country.

• Sociolinguistics is practical scientific discipline researching the language that is actually used either by native speakers or foreigners, in order to formulate theories about language change.

Introduction toPsycholinguistics1

• Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological processes involved in the language.

• Psycholinguists study understanding, producing and remembering language and hence are concerned with listening, reading , speaking, writing and memory of language.

• They are also interested in how we acquire language and the way in which it interacts with other psychological systems.

• Many people think that psycholinguistics has a rather dated field emphasizing the role of linguistics too much. Although the area might once have been about the psychology of linguistic theory, it is now much more. Still there is currently no better term so it will have to do.

Psycholinguistics2

• Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire ,use ,comprehend and produce language.

• Modern research makes use of biology , neuro science , cognitive science, linguistics, and information theory to study how the brain processes language.

• Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structure, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, texts, etc.

• Developmental psycholinguistics studies children ability to learn language.

Psycholinguistics2

• Particularly, semantics is totally dependant on psychology.• Psychology also assists in forming the syntax of a

language.• On some occasions, to know the reason for phonological

changes, we have to take the help of psychology.• The origin and growth of a language is also the direct or

indirect areas of psychology.• It also studies child psychology of mentally retarded

people. The psychological treatment of the mentally diseased also depends on the specific type of speech.

PsycholinguisticsLinguistics-related areas 3

• Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech sounds. Within psycholinguistics , research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds.

• Morphology is the study of word structure, especially the relationship between related words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).

Psycholinguistics 3

• Syntax is the study of patterns which dictate how words are combined to form sentences.

• Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences.

• Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.

• Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.

Psycholinguistics4

• What is Psycholinguistics?• Psycholinguistics is the study of how individuals use

(comprehend – produce) and acquire language.• Psycholinguistics is part of the field of cognitive sciences.• Cognitive sciences reflect the insights of psychology and

linguistics, but also of other fields as artificial intelligence, neuroscience (neuropsychology), and philosophy.

• Psycholinguistics stresses the knowledge of language and the cognitive processes (or psychological mechanisms) involved in ordinary language use.

Psycholinguistics4

• + The processes question: What cognitive processes are involved in the ordinary use of language?

• By ordinary use of language, I mean such things as understanding a lecture, reading a book, writing a letter, holding a conversation, etc.

• By cognitive processes, I mean processes such as perception, memory, thinking or reasoning [kinds of information processing].

• The interplay of linguistic knowledge and language processes is a continuing theme of Psycholinguistics.

• Let us briefly examine three examples of this interplay, to illustrate both the concept of “linguistic knowledge” and the concept of “cognitive processing” in a way that highlights the types of questions a psycholinguist is likely to ask.

Psycholinguistics4

• + The knowledge question: What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language?

• Four broad areas of language knowledge may be distinguished.

• Phonology: deals with the system of sounds used in a particular language.

• Syntax: deals with the grammatical arrangement of words within sentences.

• Semantics: deals with the meanings of sentences and words.• Pragmatics: deals with the social rules involved in language

use.

Psycholinguistics4

• Example 2:• Sentence parsing strategies.• What happens when we understand a sentence like

(1):`• [1] The teacher bores the students• Definition of parsing :• A first step in the process of understanding a

sentence is to assign the elements of this sentence to linguistic categories (a procedure known as “parsing”).

Psycholinguistics5• Late closure strategy.• The Findings show that we prefer this latter strategy.• Further evidence for the late closure strategy comes from eyes

fixations of subjects reading structurally ambiguous sentences such as “Since John always jogs a mile seems very like a very short distance to him”.

• The subjects’ eye fixations times on the last few words were much longer than on the earlier ones, implying that readers had misinterpreted the phrase “ a mile” and had to make some later adjustments.

• In such “garden path sentences” we interpret a sentence in a particular way, before finding out near the end that we were wrong.

Psycholinguistics5• Minimal attachment strategy.

• This strategy states that we prefer attach new items into the phrase marker being constructed using the fewest syntactic nodes consistent with the rules of the language.

• For example, a sentence fragment such as “Ernie kissed Marcie and her sister …” could be interpreted as either a noun phrase conjunction (Marcie and her sister were recipients of a kiss), or the beginning of a new noun phrase (and her sister gave her a present).

• According to the minimal attachment, we prefer the former interpretation.

Psycholinguistics5

• Impaired language• The primary focus of Psycholinguistics clearly is on

language processes in normal individuals. • However, we can learn a great deal about language

by studying individuals (children or adults) with impaired language functioning.

• An Aphasia for instance is a language disorder due to brain damage. One type of aphasia, called Wernicke’s aphasia, involves a breakdown in semantics.

Psycholinguistics5

• Language in children• Studying language acquisition, both in normal

an troubled children, can also improve our knowledge about cognitive processes involved in ordinary use of language.

• This will be addressed in much detail in several lectures specifically devoted to early and later language acquisition.

Psycholinguistics5

• A. The information processing system• a general model of information processing that consists of

three mental structures and a set of processes that move information from one structure to another.

• According to this model of mental functioning, environmental information entering into the cognitive system is successively encoded, stored and retrieved by a set of distinct mental structures.

• The emphasis is on the flow of information through the system. Let’s first briefly give an overview of this model, before examining its relevance regarding language processing.

Psycholinguistics6

• Working memory• The second type of memory has been

traditionally referred to as short-term memory (STM), and more recently as working memory (WM). Although the meaning of the words are similar, there is a subtle difference between them.

Psycholinguistics6

• + The storage function is similar to the storage credited to short term memory: we hold on a limited amount of information for a limited amount of time.

• + The processing function is related to the concept of processing capacity. Processing capacity refers to the total amount of cognitive resources we may devote to a task (and this amount is assumed to be limited).

Psycholinguistics6Issues and Areas of Research

• Psycholinguistics is concerned with the nature of the computations and processes that the brain undergoes to comprehend and produce language.

• For example the cohort model seeks to describe how words are retrieved from the mental lexicon when an individual hears or sees linguistic input.

Psycholinguistics6

1. Articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds by the articulatory and vocal tract by the speaker

2. Acoustic phonetics: the study of physical transmission of speech sounds from the speaker to the listener

3. Auditory phonetics: the study of the reception and perception of speech sounds by the listener

Psycholinguistics:6The Difference Between Phonetics and Phonology

• Phonology concerns itself with system of phonemes, abstract cognitive units of speech sound or sign which distinguish the words of a language

• Phonetics, on the other hand, concerns itself with the productions, transmission, and perception of the physical phenomena which are abstracted in the mind to constitute these speech sounds or signs

Psycholinguistics6

• Permanent memory.• Permanent memory, which is also known as long-term

memory (LTM), is a repository of our knowledge of the world.

• This includes general knowledge (including the rules of grammar or of arithmetic, along with personal experiences such as memories of our childhood and adolescence).

• Tulving has distinguished between two types of permanent memory:

• semantic memory and episodic memory.

Psycholinguistics7

• + Semantic memory:• Refers to our organized knowledge of words, concepts,

symbols and objects; it includes our general knowledge (grammar, arithmetic), spatial knowledge (the typical layout of a house), social knowledge (how and when to be polite), etc.

• Semantic memory holds the information that is not tagged for a particular time or place (e.g., it holds the information that horses have four legs and a tail but not the memory of the last time you went horseback riding)

Psycholinguistics7

• + Episodic memory:• Holds traces of events that are specific to a particular

time and space.• This is the memory we use to keep a record of our

personal experiences;• It includes such items as what you had for breakfast this

morning, what you were doing when you learned a man walked on the moon, or where you got your first job. (As these examples illustrate, episodic memory varies from person to person, and is constantly updated)

Psycholinguistics7

• + Procedural memory:• Is sometimes distinguished from the other two

memory structures. • It specifically includes information about

motor skills (typing, swimming, bicycling, etc.)

Psycholinguistics7• Relevance of these mental structures• for language processing• How do these concepts (sensory stores, short-term and working

memory, long-term memory) apply to the problem of how we comprehend spoken language?

• In comprehension, we may assume that as we hear a sentence, the sounds are first stored very briefly in the auditory sensory store;

• The sounds are held in this store for about 2 to 4 seconds, which gives us time to recognize an auditory pattern, i.e. :

• Recognize speech sounds (= identifying acoustic cues that are present in the speech signal)

• Organize the sounds into syllables and words (but it is not clear when and how that happens, see below Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down processes)

Psycholinguistics7

• Working memory has tow functions: storing and processing. • As regards its storing function, WM is only able to hold about

seven units of information. • Since many sentences are longer than seven words, we need

some way to deal immediately with more than seven words. • One way we do this is to chunk the words into grammatical

constituents such as Noun phrase • [e.g., My sister, My sister’s boy, My sister’s little boy, etc.] or

Verb phrase [e.g., Bought a book, Bought a book of deserts, Bought a book of chocolate deserts, etc.],

• Thereby reducing the storage burden to perhaps two or three constituents.

Psycholinguistics7

• Serial and parallel processing• Serial processing refers to processes that take place one at

a time.• Parallel processing refers to processes two or more of

which take place simultaneously.• Suppose we wish to develop a model of language

production. • The starting point is the idea that the speaker wants to

convey;• the ending point is the actual articulation of the idea. But

what happens in between?

Psycholinguistics7Top-Down and Bottom-Up processing

• Bottom-up processing is a processing which proceeds from the lowest level to the highest level of processing in such a way that all of the lower levels of processing operate without influence from the higher levels.

• [This means that the identification of phonemes is not affected by the lexical, syntactic or discourse levels; it means that the retrieval of words is not affected by syntactic, and so on].

Psycholinguistics7Top-Down and Bottom-Up processing

• However, as we have already seen about the serial and parallel processing, there is some reason to doubt that a strict bottom-up model will provide a fully comprehensive account of how we understand language.

• A Top-down processing model, in contrast, states that some information at the higher levels may influence processing at the lower levels.

Psycholinguistics8

• Perceptual processing.• Although virtually no research has addressed the

development of the sensory stores per se, there is a substantial literature on perceptual processing defined more broadly.

• Prior to the early 1960s, it was generally believed that the infants perceive the world in a disorganized way.

• “The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion” (W. James, 1890, p. 488).

Psycholinguistics8

• Short-term STM and Working memory WM• A second aspect of the cognitive system that has been

examined developmentally is short-term memory.• A common test of STM in grade school children is the

simple memory span test:• the children are presented with a list of numbers and

asked to recall them (some times in forward order and sometimes in backward order).

• It is clear that there are significant differences between older and younger children on this task.

Psycholinguistics8• Conclusion• Globally speaking, observed differences between children and

adults on cognitive tasks have more to do with the use of information processing resources than with qualitative shifts in thinking (as it is somehow suggested by Piaget’s interpretation of cognitive development).

• The major change over time is an increase in efficiency, or a decrease in the amount of cognitive capacity required for a particular task.

• Increased efficiency enables a child to do simultaneously two or more tasks, or a complex task with two or more components.

• This is directly pertinent to language acquisition.

Psycholinguistics9

• These theories are known as empiricism and rationalism, respectively.

• The empiricists argue that the source of knowledge is experience.

• According to them, children begin their learning by imitating, copying and repetition.

• According to Taylor(1976), the empiricist says that no linguistic structure is innate, and has to be learned.

Psycholinguistics9

• On the other hand, rationalists or nativists , in chomsky’s(1968) terms, claim that the structure of language is specified biologically as part of the genetic endowment of humans.

• The rationalists contradict the empiricists’ view.• According to them, language learning by children is

not subject to a similar conditioning process because they have an inborn capacity which permits them to acquire it through a normal maturational process.

Psycholinguistics9 Subfields

• Phonetics as research discipline has three main branches:• ●articulatory phonetics is concerned with the articulation

speech : The position ,shape, and movement of articulators or speech organs ,such as the lips , tongue, and vocal folds.

• ●acoustic phonetics is concerned with acoustics of speech : The spectra-temporal properties of the sound waves produced by speech , such as their frequency , amplitude , and harmonic structure.

• ●auditory phonetics is concerned with speech perception : the perception , categorization , and recognition of speech sound and the role of auditory system and the brain in the same.

Psycholinguistics9 pistons

• Pistons are initiators. • The term initiators refers to the fact that they are used to initiate a

change in the volumes of air cavities, and, by Boyle's Law, the corresponding air pressure of the cavity.

• The term initiation refers to the change.• Since changes in air pressures between connected cavities lead to

airflow between the cavities , initiation is also referred to as an airstream mechanism.

• The three pistons present in the articulatory system are the larynx, the tongue body, and the physiological structures used to manipulate lung volume (in particular the floor and the walls of the chest).

• The lung pistons are used to initiate a pulmonic airstream (found in all human languages).

Psycholinguistics9 Air valves

• Valves regulate airflow between cavities.• Airflow occurs when an air valve is open and there

is a pressure difference between in the connecting cavities.

• When an air valve is closed, there is no airflow. • The air valves are the vocal folds (the glottis) which

regulate between the supraglottal and subglottal cavities, the velopharyngeal port, which regulates between the oral and nasal cavities, and ….

Psycholinguistics9 The two classes of sounds

• Sounds of all languages fall under two categories:

• Consonants and Vowels.• Consonants are produced with some form of

restriction or closing in the vocal tract that hinders the air flow from the lungs.

• Consonants are classified according to where in the vocal tract the airflow has been restricted.

• This is also known as places of articulation.

Psycholinguistics10

• Language and the brain • Language is a cognitive skill and one therefore whose

roots are situated in the evolution of the brain. We do not know exactly when our ancestors began to speak (estimates vary from 30,000 – 100,000 years ago), or even what triggered them to do so, but once they started,

• there was no stopping them. From such humble beginnings the 5,000 – 6,000 languages we assume to exist today have evolved.

Psycholinguistics10Research mainly on language aphasia has been able to show that there are two major areas of the brain specialized in language processing, production and comprehension: Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, situated in the left hemisphere and named after the two physicians who first discovered them in the 19th century.

Psycholinguistics10

• Prosody • Prosody belongs to the domain of suprasegmental phonology

in that it describes phenomena extending over more than one phoneme.

• The phenomena that belong here are stress, rhythm, and intonation.

• While stress can be word or sentence stress, rhythm and intonation occur in phrases and sentences. Intonation is described by reference to pitch (tones); different levels of pitch are used to express a wide range of meanings:

• for example, we use the difference between a falling and a rising pitch pattern in statements and questions.

Psycholinguistics10

• Connected Speech • The phonological changes that occur when language is

used in natural utterances are described as features of connected speech.

• The most important ones are: • assimilation, i.e. when neighbouring sounds become

more alike (as in im-possible, in contrast to in-decent) elision,

• i.e. the loss of sounds (as in Chris(t)mas or san(d)wich) intrusion and linking (as in law(r) and order).

Psycholinguistics10

• The most important feature of connected speech, however, is the occurrence of weak forms, which is the result of the occurrence of stress in connected speech.

• English has the property of being a stress-timed language, which means there is a tendency for stressed syllables to occur at fairly equal intervals.

• As a result, in unstressed syllables vowel quality tends to be weakened, mostly to the schwa [ə], but the total omission of vowels (as it frequently happens in contractions, such as isn’t, she’s) is also possible, particularly in the case of function words (auxiliaries, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions).

Psycholinguistics11• Although Chomsky and the early psycholinguists focused on the creative side

of language, language also has its rote side.

• For example, we store a great deal of information about the properties of words in our mental lexicon, and we retrieve this information when we understand or produce language.

• On some views, different kinds of mechanisms are responsible for the creative and the habitual aspects of language.

• For example, we may use morpheme-based rules to decompose a complex word like rewritable the first few times we encounter it, but after several exposures we may begin to store and access the word as a unit (Caramazza, Laudanna, & Romani, 1988; Schreuder & Baayen, 1995).

Psycholinguistics11

• Another tension in current-day psycholinguistics concerns the proper role of linguistics in the field.

• Work on syntactic processing, especially in the early days of psycholinguistics, was very much influenced by developments in linguistics. Links between linguistics and psycholinguistics have been less close in other areas, but they do exist.

• For instance, work on phonological processing has been influenced by linguistic accounts of prosody (the melody, rhythm, and stress pattern of spoken language) and of the internal structure of syllables, and some work on word recognition and language production has been influenced by linguistic analyses of morphology (the study of morphemes and their combination).

Psycholinguistics11

• The cohort model and the model of McClelland and Elman (1986) are examples of interactive models, those in which higher processing levels have a direct, “top-down” influence on lower levels.

• In particular, lexical knowledge can affect the perception of phonemes.

• A number of researchers have found evidence for interactivity in the form of lexical effects on the

• perception of sublexical units. • Wurm and Samuel (1997), for example, reported that listeners’

knowledge of words can lead to the inhibition of certain phonemes.

Psycholinguistics11

• The mental lexicon• So far, in discussing how listeners and readers

access information in the mental lexicon, we have not said much about the nature of the information that they access.

• It is to this topic that we now turn. • One question, which relates to the trade-off

between computation and storage in language processing, is whether the mental lexicon is organized by morphemes or by words.

Psycholinguistics12

Psycholinguistics12

Psycholinguistics13

• A child whose speech isn't progressing should be checked by a doctor. Speech delays occur in up to 10 percent of young children. Causes include:

• Being a twin • Slow development • Mental retardation • Autism • In addition, children living in bilingual homes may

experience some speech delays as they learn to interpret and use two languages. This is normal.

Psycholinguistics13• Random Articulation • stimulated by the pleasurable experiences of the child, the main stimulus: reflex; produces non-

distinctive sounds • Auditory organs • Internalization

– an infant takes in whatever it can • Production • internalizes the basic sound system of a language: phonology; produces distinctive sounds • Random Articulation • stimulated by the pleasurable experiences of the child, the main stimulus: reflex; produces non-

distinctive sounds • Auditory organs • Internalization

– an infant takes in whatever it can • Production • Internalizes the basic sound system of a language: phonology; produces • Getting familiar with the basic morphological sets of the language • etc

Psycholinguistics14

• The mental lexicon• So far, in discussing how listeners and readers

access information in the mental lexicon, we have not said much about the nature of the information that they access.

• It is to this topic that we now turn. • One question, which relates to the trade-off

between computation and storage in language processing, is whether the mental lexicon is organized by morphemes or by words.

Psycholinguistics15• AGRAMMATISM• Speech production in which many function words and inflectional

endings are omitted – one possible symptom of the syndrome known as Broca’s aphasia.

• Early studies of agrammatism associated it with damage to motor areas of the brain which prevented sufferers from assembling syntactic structures.

• However, it was discovered that many Broca’s aphasics had problems in understanding function words as well as in using them.

• A theory developed that there may be separate stores for closed class items (those with a grammatical function) and lexical items (those where meaning has to be accessed).

• Agrammatism may derive, in part at least, from difficulty in accessing the former.

Psycholinguistics15

• AGNOSIA• A condition, sometimes caused by brain damage,

where a patient receives a signal but cannot recognize or classify it.

• They might see a familiar object but be unable to say what it is.

• Visual agnosia in reading and auditory agnosia in listening result in an inability to perceive that two identical word forms represent the same word.

Psycholinguistics15

• ANAPHOR RESOLUTION• An anaphor is a piece of language which refers back

to a previously mentioned entity, action or idea.• Examples are: personal or demonstrative pronouns

(she, that), pro-verbs (did so), adverbs (there) and expressions like the latter.

• Anaphor resolution is the process that occurs when a listener or reader interprets an anaphor by linking it to its antecedent.

Psycholinguistics16• ANXIETY• General anxiety is one of several affective factors which can

influence attention and hence lead to a deterioration in language performance.

• But there are also specific types of anxiety related to language which reflect the complexity or perceived importance of a language task and the extent to which the task places a premium on accuracy.

• An additional factor might be the individual’s uncertainty about their ability to perform the task.

• This might result from introvert personality traits, from a lack of self-confidence or from awareness of limitations in a particular language skill area.

Psycholinguistics16

• Early accounts of Broca’s aphasia associated it with impaired motor activity which led to difficulty in assembling utterances; while

• Wernicke’s aphasia was said to reflect impaired access to stored lexical information.

• However, Broca’s aphasics show signs not just of being unable to use functors appropriately but also of being unable to understand them.

• The fact that the symptoms of aphasia vary considerably from patient to patient suggests that the language-sensitive areas of the brain may be differently located in different individuals.

Psycholinguistics17• AUTISM• A condition characterized by a withdrawal from linguistic interaction

with others.• The sufferer is often mute or uses language in a non-communicative

way.• The symptoms of autism appear between the ages of one and three,

and are sometimes misdiagnosed as deafness.• They include delayed cognitive and linguistic development and a

reduced ability to react to people, events and objects.• Autistic children tend to have exceptionally low IQs but they may

excel in one or two isolated skills such as painting or music. • The syndrome is much more common in males than in females and

appears to be caused by a physical dysfunction of the brain.

Psycholinguistics17

• An important symptom of autism is echolalia, where the child meaninglessly repeats what has been said to it.

• It was once believed that echolalia indicated a rejection of interaction.

• Now, it is sometimes interpreted as evidence that the autistic child does not succeed in grasping the true function of language.

• Delayed echolalia, where the child repeats an earlier string of words out of context, appears sometimes to have a communicative intent.

Psycholinguistics18• BOOTSTRAPPING• A prelinguistic infant has no lexicon against which to match the sound

sequences encountered in the speech signal. • Furthermore, connected speech provides few cues to where word

boundaries lie.• It is therefore difficult to explain how the language-acquiring infant comes

to identify word forms and to map them on to meanings relating to the real world.

• It has been suggested that the infant can only achieve this task by relying on some kind of technique which gives it a head start – just as straps can help one to pull on a pair of boots (the metaphor comes via computer science).

• This technique might be specific to the process of language acquisition or it might be the product of general cognition, reflecting, for example, a predisposition to impose patterns upon diverse information.

Psycholinguistics18

• Three main types of bootstrapping have been proposed: • In prosodic bootstrapping (Cutler and Mehler, 1993), the

infant exploits rhythmic regularities in the language it is acquiring.

• At the phoneme level, it can distinguish a difference between steady-state sequences representing full vowels and transitional sequences representing consonants.

• It is thus sensitive to syllable structure.• From this and from its innate sense of rhythm, the infant

acquiring English is able to recognize the difference between longer stressed syllables featuring full vowels and shorter unstressed syllables featuring weak quality vowels.

Psycholinguistics19• However, the ‘plasticity’ hypothesis has been challenged by

evidence that a degree of left-hemisphere lateralization exists from birth.

• Furthermore, recent studies have identified cases of infants who have not recovered some aspects of their linguistic competence after left-brain damage, and of adults who seem to have recovered their language by relocating it to their right hemisphere.

• In addition, we now have more evidence about right-hemisphere damage.

• While damage to the left hemisphere affects primary language functions such as syntax and lexis, damage to the right appears to affect the processing of discourse.

Psycholinguistics19

• CAPACITY THEORIES• Theories based on a view that the processing of linguistic

information is affected by the limitations of the human processor.

• The constraints on performance are usually said to derive from our limited working memory capacity, which determines the amount of information we can process at any given time and/or the number of processes that we can apply.

• If one task demands great resources of attention, it restricts the amount of working memory that is available for performing others.

Psycholinguistics20

• CHOMSKYAN THEORY• Noam Chomsky (b.1928) formulated what is currently the

leading model of language, generative grammar. • His goal was to create a set of rules to account for the

creativity of language: the way in which a potentially infinite number of sentences can be generated from a finite set of words.

• A Chomskyan grammar offers a symbolic representation of the system which native speaker-hearers internalize in acquiring the language, a system which enables them to formulate or to understand sentences that they may never have said or heard before.

Psycholinguistics20

• Chomskyan theory has recently taken a new direction, known as minimalism, which emphasises the importance of simplicity in formulating syntactic rules.

• One development is that much of what is traditionally represented as syntax can be explained by reference to the constraints which are imposed by lexis.

• Thus, if one decides to construct a sentence around the verb GIVE, the choice of verb determines the possible structure VP þ NP þ NP (Elizabeth gave Philip a book).

• This information is stored as part of the lexical entry for GIVE in the user’s lexicon.

Sociolinguistics21

• Any discussion of the relationship between language and society, or of the various functions of language in society, should begin with some attempt to define each of these terms.

• Let us say that a society is any group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes.

• By such a definition ‘society’ becomes a very comprehensive concept, but we will soon see how useful such a comprehensive view is because of the very different kinds of societies we must consider in the course of the various discussions that follow.

Sociolinguistics21Scientific Investigation

• The scientific study of language, its uses, and the linguistic norms that people observe poses a number of problems.

• Such a study must go a long way beyond merely devising schemes for classifying the various bits and pieces of linguistic data you might happen to observe.

• That would be a rather uninteresting activity, a kind of butterfly collecting.

• A more profound kind of theorizing is called for: some attempt to arrive at an understanding of the general principles of organization

• that surely must exist in both language and the uses of language.

Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language22

• Some investigators have found it appropriate to try to introduce a distinction between sociolinguistics or micro-sociolinguistics and the sociology of language or macro-sociolinguistics.

• In this distinction, sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal being a better understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communication;

• the equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how social structure can be better understood through the study of language, e.g., how certain linguistic features serve to characterize particular social arrangements.

Sociolinguistics22Methodological Concerns

• Sociolinguistics should encompass everything from considering ‘who speaks (or writes)

• what language (or what language variety) to whom and when and to what end’ (Fishman, 1972b),

• that is, the social distribution of linguistic items, to considering how a particular linguistic variable might relate to the formulation of a specific grammatical rule in a particular language or dialect,

• and even to the processes through which languages change.• Whatever sociolinguistics is, it must be oriented toward both

data and theory: that is, any conclusions we come to must be solidly based on evidence.

Sociolinguistics23

• We cannot be content with ‘butterfly collecting,’ no matter how beautiful the specimens are!

• We must collect data for a purpose and that purpose should be to find an answer, or answers, to an interesting question.

• Questions phrased in ways that do not allow for some kind of empirical testing have no more than a speculative interest.

• Those who seek to investigate the possible relationships between language and society must have a twofold concern: they must ask good questions, and they must find the right kinds of data that bear on those questions.

Sociolinguistics23Overview

• Sociolinguistics brings together linguists and sociologists to investigate matters of joint concern but they are not the only researchers involved in studies of language in society.

• Scholars from a variety of other disciplines have an interest too, e.g., anthropologists, psychologists, educators, and planners.

• We will see, for example, that a number of anthropologists have done work which we can describe as sociolinguistic in nature, for example in the exploration of kinship systems.

• The same may be said of certain psychologists, particularly those concerned with the possible effects of linguistic structure on social and psychological behavior.

Sociolinguistics23

• The Hindi–Urdu situation that Gumperz mentions is an interesting one.

• Hindi and Urdu are the same language, but one in which certain differences are becoming more and more magnified for political and religious reasons.

• Hindi is written left to right in the Devanagari script, whereas Urdu is written right to left in the Arabic–Persian script.

• Whereas Hindi draws on Sanskrit for its borrowings, Urdu draws on Arabic and Persian sources.

• Large religious and political differences make much of small linguistic differences.

Sociolinguistics232 Languages, Dialects, and Varieties

• I stated in the introductory chapter that all languages exhibit internal variation, that is, each language exists in a number of varieties and is in one sense the sum of those varieties.

• But what do we mean by variety? Hudson (1996) defines a variety of

language as ‘a set of linguistic items with similar distribution, a definition that allows us to say that all of the following are varieties:

• Canadian English, London English, the English of football commentaries, and so on.

• According to Hudson, this definition also allows us ‘to treat all the languages of some multilingual speaker, or community, as a single variety, since all the linguistic items concerned have a similar social distribution.’

Sociolinguistics24

• The various relationships among languages and dialects discussed above can be used to show how the concepts of ‘power’ and ‘solidarity’ help us understand what is happening.

• Power requires some kind of asymmetrical relationship between entities: one has more of something that is important, e.g. status, money, influence, etc., than the other or others.

• A language has more power than any of its dialects. • It is the powerful dialect but it has become so because of

non-linguistic factors.

Sociolinguistics24

• Introduction to sociolinguistics• Different dialects • Varieties of dialects• Grammatical accuracy• Different language community• Language vocabulary

Sociolinguistics24

A detailed explanation• The exotic character of language• The familiar language• Language communities• Language in relation to society

Sociolinguistics25• Diglossia• A diglossic situation exists in a society when it has two distinct codes which

show clear functional separation; that is, one code is employed in one set of circumstances and the other in an entirely different set.

• Ferguson (1959) has defined diglossia as follows:• diglossia is a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the

primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety,

• the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community,

• which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation.

Sociolinguistics25• Bilingualism and Multilingualism• Monolingualism, that is, the ability to use only one language, is such a

widely accepted norm in so many parts of the Western world that it is often assumed to be a world-wide phenomenon, to the extent that bilingual and multilingual individuals may appear to be ‘unusual.’

• Indeed, we often have mixed feelings when we discover that someone we meet is fluent in several languages: perhaps a mixture of admiration and envy but also, occasionally, a feeling of superiority in that many such people are not ‘native’ to the culture in which we function.

• Such people are likely to be immigrants, visitors, or children of ‘mixed’ marriages and in that respect ‘marked’ in some way, and such marking is not always regarded favorably.

Sociolinguistics25• The Tukano are a multilingual people because men must marry

outside their language group;• that is, no man may have a wife who speaks his language, for that

kind of marriage relationship is not permitted and would be viewed as a kind of incest.

• Men choose the women they marry from various neighboring tribes who speak other languages.

• Furthermore, on marriage, women move into the men’s households or longhouses.

• Consequently, in any village several languages are used: the language of the men; the various languages spoken by women who originate from different neighboring tribes; and a widespread regional ‘trade’ language

Sociolinguistics25• It is possible to refer to a language or a variety of a language as a

code. • The term is useful because it is neutral.• Terms like dialect, language, style, standard language, pidgin, and

creole are inclined to arouse emotions.• In contrast, the ‘neutral’ term code, taken from information theory,

can be used to refer to any kind of system that two or more people employ for communication.

• (It can actually be used for a system used by a single person, as when someone devises a private code to protect certain secrets.)

• All of the above, then, are codes by this, admittedly loose, definition. • What is interesting is the factors that govern the choice of a

particular code on a particular occasion.

Sociolinguistics26

• Bilingualism is actually sometimes regarded as a problem in that many bilingual individuals tend to occupy rather low positions in society and knowledge of another language becomes associated with ‘inferiority.’

• Bilingualism is sometimes seen as a personal and social problem, not something that has strong positive connotations.

• One unfortunate consequence is that some Western societies go to great lengths to downgrade, even eradicate, the languages that immigrants bring with them while at the same time trying to teach foreign languages in schools.

Sociolinguistics26

• Code-Switching• I have observed that the particular dialect or language

that a person chooses to use on any occasion is a code, a system used for communication between two or more parties.

• I have also indicated that it is unusual for a speaker to have command of, or use, only one such code or system.

• Command of only a single variety of language, whether it be a dialect, style, or register, would appear to be an extremely rare phenomenon, one likely to occasion comment.

Sociolinguistics26

• Situational code-switching occurs• when the languages used change according to the situations

in which the conversant find themselves: they speak one language in one situation and another in a different one.

• No topic change is involved. When a change of topic requires a change in the language used we have metaphorical code-switching.

• The interesting point here is that some topics may be discussed in either code, but the choice of code adds a distinct flavor to what is said about the topic.

• The choice encodes certain social values.

Sociolinguistics27

• A final comment seems called for with regard to the terms language and dialect.

• A dialect is a subordinate variety of a language, so that we can say that Texas English and Swiss German are, respectively, dialects of English and German. The language name (i.e., English or German) is the superordinate term. We can also say of some languages that they contain more than one dialect; e.g., English, French, and Italian are spoken in various dialects. If a language is spoken by so few people, or so uniformly, that it has only one variety, we might be tempted to say that language and dialect become synonymous in such a case.

Sociolinguistics27

• Standardization is also an ongoing matter, for only ‘dead’ languages like Latin and Classical Greek are standardized for all time.

• Living languages change and the standardization process is necessarily an ongoing one.

• It is also one that may be described as more advanced in languages like French or German and less advanced in languages like Bahasa Indonesia and Swahili.

Sociolinguistics28 Regional Dialects

• Regional variation in the way a language is spoken is likely to provide one of the easiest ways of observing variety in language.

• As you travel throughout a wide geographical area in which a language is spoken, and particularly if that language has been spoken in that area for many hundreds of years, you are almost certain to notice differences in pronunciation, in the choices and forms, Dialects, and Varieties of words, and in syntax.

Sociolinguistics28

• When a language is recognized as being spoken in different varieties, the issue becomes one of deciding how many varieties and how to classify each variety.

• Dialect geography is the term used to describe attempts made to map the distributions of various linguistic features so as to show their geographical provenance.

• For example, in seeking to determine features of the dialects of English and to show their distributions, dialect geographers try to find answers to questions such as the following.

Sociolinguistics28• As a final observation I must reiterate that it is impossible to speak English

without an accent. • There is no such thing as an ‘unaccented English.’ RP is an accent, a social

one rather than a regional one. • However, we must note that there are different evaluations of the different

accents, evaluations arising from social factors not linguistic ones. • Matsuda (1991, p. 1361) says it is really an issue of power: ‘When . . . parties

are in a relationship of domination and subordination we tend to say that the dominant is normal, and the subordinate is different from normal.

• And so it is with accent. . . . People in power are perceived as speaking normal, unaccented English.

• Any speech that is different from that constructed norm is called an accent.’ In the pages that follow we will return constantly to linguistic issues having to do with power.

Sociolinguistics28

• The term dialect can also be used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes.

• There are social dialects as well as regional ones.• An immediate problem is that of defining social group

or social class ,giving proper weight to the various factors that can be used to determine social position,

• e.g., occupation, place of residence, education, ‘new’ versus ‘old’ money, income, racial or ethnic origin, cultural background, caste, religion, and so on.

Sociolinguistics28Styles, Registers, and Beliefs

• The study of dialects is further complicated by the fact that speakers can adopt different styles of speaking.

• You can speak very formally or very informally, your choice being governed by circumstances.

• Ceremonial occasions almost invariably require very formal speech, public lectures somewhat less formal, casual conversation quite informal, and conversations between intimates on matters of little importance may be extremely informal and casual.

• We may try to relate the level of formality chosen to a variety of factors: the kind of occasion; the various social, age, and other differences that exist between the participants; the particular task that is involved, e.g., writing or speaking;

Sociolinguistics29

• 4. Hudson (1996) says ‘your dialect shows who (or what) you are, whilst your register shows what you are doing.’

• He acknowledges that ‘these concepts are much less distinct than the slogan implies’;

• however, you might use them to sort out what would be dialect and register for a professor of sociology from Mississippi;

• a hairdresser from Newcastle working in London; a British naval commander; a sheep farmer in New Zealand;

• And a ‘street-wise’ person from any location you might choose

Sociolinguistics29Pidgins and Creoles

• Among the many languages of the world are a few often assigned to a somewhat marginal position:

• the various lingua francas, pidgins, and creoles. • To the best of our knowledge all have existed since time

immemorial, but, in comparison with what we know about many ‘fully fledged’ languages, we know comparatively little about them.

• There is a paucity of historical records; the history of serious study of such languages goes back only a few decades;

• and, because of the circumstances of their use, they have often been regarded as being of little intrinsic value or interest.

Sociolinguistics29• Hymes (1971, p. 3) has pointed out that before the 1930s pidgins

and creoles were largely ignored by linguists, who regarded them as ‘marginal languages’ at best.

• (Some linguists were even advised to keep away from studying them lest they jeopardize their careers!)

• He points out that pidgins and creoles ‘are marginal, in the circumstances of their origin, and in the attitudes towards them on the part of those who speak one of the languages from which they derive.’

• They are also marginal ‘in terms of knowledge about them,’ even though ‘these languages are of central importance to our understanding of language, and central too in the lives of some millions of people.

Sociolinguistics29Lingua Francas

• People who speak different languages who are forced into contact with each other must find some way of communicating, a lingua franca.

• In a publication concerned with the use of vernacular languages in education published in Paris in 1953, UNESCO defined a lingua franca as ‘a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate communication between them.’

• A variety of other terms can be found which describe much the same phenomenon.

• Samarin lists four: a trade language (e.g., Hausa in West Africa or Swahili in East Africa); a contact language (e.g., Greek koiné in the Ancient World); an international language (e.g., English throughout much of our contemporary world); and an auxiliary language (e.g., Esperanto or Basic English).

Sociolinguistics29• In North America, Chinook Jargon was used extensively as a lingua

franca among native peoples of the northwest, from British Columbia into Alaska, during the second half of the nineteenth century.

• (‘Jargon’ is one of the original derogatory terms for a pidgin.) Speakers of English and French also learned it.

• Today Chinook Jargon is virtually extinct. Its vocabulary came from various sources: principally, Nootka, Chinook, Chehalis (all Amerindian languages), French, and English.

• The sound system tended to vary according to the native language of whoever spoke Chinook Jargon.

• The grammar, ostensibly Chinook, was extremely reduced so that it is really quite difficult to say with conviction that it is more Chinook than anything else.

Sociolinguistics29• A pidgin is a language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but

is a contact language. • That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish to

communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will enable them to do so.

• Very often too, that situation is one in which there is an imbalance of power among the languages as the speakers of one language dominate the speakers of the other languages economically and socially.

• A highly codified language often accompanies that dominant position. A pidgin is therefore sometimes regarded as a ‘reduced’ variety of a ‘normal’ language,

• i.e., one of the aforementioned dominant languages, with simplification of the grammar and vocabulary of that language, considerable phonological variation, and an admixture of local vocabulary to meet the special needs of the contact group. Holm defines a pidgin as:

Sociolinguistics29

• In contrast to a pidgin, a creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers.

• As Aitchison says, ‘creoles arise when pidgins become mother tongues.’ A creole, therefore, is a ‘normal’ language in almost every sense.

• Holmes (1992) says that ‘A creole is a pidgin which has expanded in structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions required of a first language.’

• In practice it is not always easy to say whether we have a pidgin rather than a creole.

Sociolinguistics30

• Code-switching is not a uniform phenomenon; i.e., the norms vary from group to group, even within what might be regarded as a single community.

• Gumperz (1982) has pointed out, for example, that:• In a relatively small Puerto Rican neighborhood in New

Jersey, some members freely used code-switching styles and extreme forms of borrowing both in everyday casual talk and in more formal gatherings.

• Other local residents were careful to speak only Spanish with a minimum of loans on formal occasions, reserving code-switching styles for informal talk.

Sociolinguistics30

• Code-switching occurs in conditions of change, where group boundaries are diffuse, norms and standards of evaluation vary, and where speakers’ ethnic identities and social backgrounds are not matters of common agreement.

• Yet, if it is true that code-switching styles serve as functioning communicative systems, if members can agree on interpretations of switching in context and on categorizing others on the basis of their switching,

• there must be some regularities and shared perceptions on which these judgments can be based.

Sociolinguistics30• When three or more languages are involved and one is dominant, the

speakers of the two or more that are inferior appear to play a critical role in the development of a pidgin.

• They must not only speak to those who are in the dominant position, but they must also speak to each other.

• To do this, they must simplify the dominant language in certain ways, and this process of simplification may or may not have certain universal characteristics.

• We may argue, therefore, that a pidgin arises from the simplification of a language when that language comes to dominate groups of speakers separated from each other by language differences.

• This hypothesis partially explains not only the origin of pidgins in slave societies, in which the slaves were deliberately drawn from a variety of language backgrounds, but also their origin on sea coasts, where a variety of languages might be spoken but the language of trade is a pidgin

Sociolinguistics30• Pidginization generally involves some kind of ‘simplification’ of a language, e.g.,

reduction in morphology (word structure) and syntax (grammatical structure), tolerance of considerable phonological variation (pronunciation),

• reduction in the number of functions for which the pidgin is used (e.g., you usually do not attempt to write novels in a pidgin), and extensive borrowing of words from local mother tongues.

• Winford points out that ‘pidginization is really a complex combination of different processes of change, including reduction and simplification of input materials, internal innovation, and regularization of structure, with L1 influence also playing a role.’

• On the other hand, creolization involves expansion of the morphology and syntax, regularization of the phonology, deliberate increase in the number of functions in which the language is used, and development of a rational and stable system for increasing vocabulary.

Sociolinguistics30

• Our search must be for criteria other than, or at least in addition to, linguistic criteria if we are to gain a useful understanding of ‘speech community.’

• For very specific sociolinguistic purposes we might want to try to draw quite narrow and extremely precise bounds around what we consider to be a speech community.

• We might require that only a single language be spoken (and employ a very restrictive definition of language in doing so),

• and that the speakers in the community share some kind of common feeling about linguistic behavior in the community, that is, observe certain linguistic norms

Sociolinguistics30

• Sociolinguistics is the study of language use within or among groups of speakers.

• What are groups? ‘Group’ is a difficult concept to define but one we must try to grasp.

• For our purposes, a group must have at least two members but there is really no upper limit to group membership.

• People can group together for one or more reasons: social, religious, political, cultural, familial, vocational, avocational, etc.

Sociolinguistics31• Hymes (1974, p. 47) disagrees with both Chomsky’s and Bloomfield’s

definitions of a speech community.• He claims that these simply reduce the notion of speech community to

that of a language and, in effect, throw out ‘speech community’ as a worthwhile concept.

• He points out that it is impossible to equate language and speech community when we lack a clear understanding of the nature of language.

• He insists that speech communities cannot be defined solely through the use of linguistic criteria.

• The way in which people view the language they speak is also important, that is, how they evaluate accents; how they establish the fact that they speak one language rather than another; and how they maintain language boundaries.

Sociolinguistics31• Language Variation• As we have seen in previous chapters, languages vary in many ways. • One way of characterizing certain variations is to say that speakers of a

particular language sometimes speak different dialects of that language. • Although I have already noted how difficult it is to define dialect, we may

still find it useful to use the term in our work in sociolinguistics, and even to extend its use from studies of regional variation to those of social variation.

• In this way it would be possible to talk about both regional dialects and social dialects of a language.

• Just as a regional dialect marks off the residents of one region from those of other regions, a social dialect would be a variety associated with a specific social class or group, marking that class or group off from other classes or groups.

Sociolinguistics31• We should observe that linguists are agreed that no variety of a

language is inherently better than any other.• They insist that all languages and all varieties of particular languages

are equal in that they quite adequately serve the needs of those who use them.

• The only exceptions they recognize are pidgins, which are by definition restricted varieties, or the varieties we associate with people who are impaired in some way, e.g., certain mentally or physically handicapped people.

• A standard variety of a language is ‘better’ only in a social sense: it has a preferred status; it gives those who use it certain social advantages; and it increases their life chances.

• Nonstandard varieties tend to produce the opposite effect.

Sociolinguistics31• Planning• As a final topic I want to turn attention to some of the numerous attempts

that have been made to change a particular variety of a language, or a particular language, or some aspect of how either of these functions in society.

• Such changes are usually described as instances of language planning. • According to Weinstein (1980, p. 56), ‘Language planning is a government

authorized, long term, sustained, and conscious effort to alter a language’s function in a society for the purpose of solving communication problems.’

• It may involve assessing resources, complex decision-making, the assignment of different functions to different languages or varieties of a language in a community, and the commitment of valuable resources.

• As we will see, language planning can take a variety of forms and produce many different kinds of results. It is also not without its controversies

Sociolinguistics31• Each language encapsulates the world-view of its speakers – how they think,

what they value, what they believe in, how they classify the world around them, how they order their lives.

• Once a language dies, a part of human culture is lost – for ever.• The most important task in linguistics today – indeed, the only really

important task – is to get out in the field and describe languages, while this can still be done.

• Nettle and Romaine (2000) voice a very similar view, say that as many as 60 percent of all languages are already endangered, and go so far as to claim that some of the endangered languages have much to tell us about the natural world,

• e.g., invaluable information about ecological matters, and even perhaps about the nature of reality (see the Whorfian hypothesis, pp. 221–8): ‘each language . . . [is] a way of coming to grips with the external world and developing a symbolism to represent it so that it can be talked and thought about’.

Sociolinguistics31• Perhaps the study of language in society is best served by resisting

premature urges to declare that it must proceed along certain lines and may not proceed along others.

• Repeatedly, we have seen the multi-dimensional nature of any issue we have looked at.

• Even when we took a uni-dimensional approach, we did so knowing full well what we were doing and in the knowledge that another approach or other approaches might cast a different light on the issue.

• Although people have long been interested in the relationships between language and society, it is only fairly recently that scientific approaches have been adopted.

• It seems wiser to encourage a variety of scientific approaches and the generation of a range of theories than to put our entire trust and hope into a single way of doing sociolinguistics.

Sociolinguistics31

• That is certainly the way I have gone about looking at how language and society are related.

• I have not avoided theoretical issues, and I have not avoided looking at data themselves, and not simply in the sense that ‘you cannot have data without a theory.’

• However, I have found it neither useful nor possible to adopt a single theoretical approach.

• This, I suggest, is also a correct characterization of current sociolinguistic inquiries; there are numerous theories, vast amounts of data, and important findings, but there is no central doctrine a sociolinguist must adhere to.