Linguistics 110 Linguistic Analysis: Sentences & Dialects
Lecture Number Eighteen
Sociolinguistics
The Problems
"Standard" dialects
The Up-side: sense of belonging (security, nationality, family, neighborhood)
The Down-side: sense of social ranking (insecurity, marginality, job, advancement)
Language planning, language, diversity, language conflict
English as the official language?
Switzerland, Bosnia, Ukraine, India, China
Malta, 17th-century Russia, ?
Gender and Ethnicity Issues
Gender: 'man', 'chairman', 'The typical student. . . he'; gender exclusive vs. gender variable differentiation
Race: what are the implications of 'black' and 'white'; She is a jew vs. She is jewish
Methods of study
Social network analysis (Labov)
Principle components analysis
The Subject Matter
Varieties of dialects
regional dialects
Bean soup
came from afar
Sociolects
professional dialects (jargons)
ethnic dialects
gender variations
age variations
social registers
Casual (friends)
Formal (job interview)
Technical (someone in same business)
Motherese
'Tough-guy talk'
Father comes home and finds his kid
standing in the corner.
Radio-TV
Stand-up comedy
codes: word substitution
slang (youth code)
jargon
criminal argot
idiolects
Characteristics
Dialect continuum (isoglosses)
Dialectal impurity: speech community is a mixture
Communicative isolation (Tangiers Island, Gullah)
Sociolinguistic Variables
Phonology:
[Ø] ¡ [aw], [ð] ¡ [¬]; [r] ¡ [oj], [aj] ¡ [Øj]
Morphology:
she come and she go
Syntax:
I want you should help your brother out.
Lexicon
antigobblin : cattywampus : catty-cornered
pail : bucket
milkshake : cabinet : malted : frappe
mango : pepper
berm : shoulder
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