Transcript
Page 1: Chapter 6  sociolinguistics

Chapter 6Language Variation

Presenter

Amire Jabbariniya

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Social Variation

The relationship between

linguistic variation and social variation.

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Gumper’s study of Khallapur village in India

Brahmans(priests)

Rajputs(warriors)

Vaishyas (merchants)

Workman and laborers

Chamars (landless laborers)

Jatia Chamars (leather workers and shoe makers)

Bhangis (sweepers)

Restricted to live in certain neighborhoods

Have less freedom to move in the village

Hindu caste membership of Khalapur

Each caste has distinct phonological features that are clear markers of social group membership.

Upper castes innovate away from the lower caste in their speech. On the other hand lower caste try to

reduce this distinction.

Hypercorrect = Overextend a particular usage

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Wolfram and Fasold’s non socio-economic rankings

were based on factors like:

With the current emphasis on lifestyle in classifying people, consumptions of good and

appearance are important in social classification.

For collecting data about the variants and social distribution of a linguistic variable we

must relate them to quantifiable factors such as:

age - gender – ethnicity – race - ………… - social class membership

Easier to the most complicated

Church membership

Community organizations

.

.

.

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All scales take into account factors like:

Educational achievement

Professional training

Blue/white collar work

Source of income

Residential area

ethnicity

income

Gender

Age

Race

Scales must vary from community to

community because any time/regional

factor has its own problems.

(Bainbdridge) disadvantages of social class designations are:

Treating class as an independent variable and variants of speech as a dependent

variable and never reconsidering their nature.

Factors are weighted.

Unitary scales are devised.

Individuals are fitted into slots as: Upper class, lower class, ….

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Chambers Class is not a clear concept and fuzziness is always present.

Disadvantage Lack of generalizability of results

Social space is multidimensional but systems of social classification are one-dimensional.

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Idiolect = Speech characteristics and linguistic behavior of individuals.Highly representative of the linguistic behavior of all the speakers of that lang.

Sociolect = Speech characteristics of members of social groups.The more the groups are real ( members feel that they do belong to the group) a sociolect has validity.

Milory network relationship: network of relationships that an individual belongs to.

unique – specific structures

most powerful and interesting influences on linguistic behavior

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Data Collection and Analysis

2 basic dimensions of examining hypothesis:

1) Devising a plan for collecting data

2) Collecting data from a representative sample of speakers

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Questionnaire ( the usual device)

1) Casual situation

2) Interview situation

3) The reading aloud of a story

4) The reading aloud of lists of words and pairs of words

Very casual

More formal

The most formal

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Sampling: Finding a representative group of speakers

Random sampling

Judgment sampling

Stratified sampling

A genuine studyThoroughly representative

Completely unbiased

Representing all sub-segments

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Investigations with time dimensions

1) Apparent-time studies

2) Real-time studies Panel study

Trend study

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Socially significant linguistic variation requires correlation (Labov).

Quantitative studies should have

Reliability

How objective and consistent the measurement of actual linguistic data are.

ValidityTo what extent the sociolinguist is measuring what he/she is claiming to be measuring.

Standard deviation

Level of significance

etc.

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THE END


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