Language and social variation

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO

FACULTAD DE ESTUDIOS SUPERIORES ACATLÁN

Syntax and Stylstics

LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL VARIATION

María Eugenia Romero García

Naucalpan, Edo. De México, a 10 de noviembre de 2016

The study of language Language and social variation MarĂ­a Eugenia Romero

The differences of speech occur not only due to the places where the English is used, but they also take place from one speech community to other. A speech community is formed by a group of people who have the same rules, beliefs and attitude towards language. These communities and the way they speak are matter of study of sociolinguistics (study of the relationship between society and language).

Just as there are regional dialects, we also find social dialects (sociolects), mostly spoken in towns and cities and the social classes define these common language.

The most numerous groups are the middle class and the working class groups.

The main characteristics considered within the study of a sociolect are: pronunciation, expressions used differently by the middle class groups and the working class groups. We refer to class as the social variable and the different words or ways to pronounce as linguistic variable.

A personal dialect or idiolect is the result of some factors, like place, occupation and education; for instance, written language has influence in the speaking of people who has been more time within an educational system hence, people who have different kind of occupation. Pronunciation differences work as social markers, for they identify people as members of different social communities.

There are other kinds of variables that occur individually depending on the situation, such as the speech style: if it is formal, we speak paying more attention, and when it is informal, we feel more at ease, so we do not pay so much attention to the way we speak (careful style or casual style). The changeover from one to the other is called style-shifting. Middle class speakers may overdo the formal use of speech when they try to sound more like a higher social status group that is considered “better�, by overusing a prestige form (overt prestige). There is also the opposite phenomenon, the covert prestige, when people prefer not to speak very carefully or to show style shifting because they want to sound like the other

members of their own community. Therefore, the variations in speech obey not only to social position or attention to speech, but also to the perception of the listener (speech accommodation), that is, the faculty of modifying our speech style closer to the sensed style of the person we are talking to (in order to diminish the social distance, known as convergence) or farther from the perceived style of the person or people we are talking to (in order to make clear the social difference, known as divergence).

We can appreciate other varieties of speech depending on the context, some manners of expressing accordingly to social conventions that are called the register, which will be tied to different situations, occupations or topics. One main components of a specific register is the use of jargon, or distinctive vocabulary applied within these contexts, and that creates a bond among those who use it.

Just as jargon is some characteristic vocabulary adopted by the members of a group in a defined frame of reference, slang or colloquial speech are words of phrases used in an informal and every day manner by people who share common interests.

All concepts previously mentioned, are essential parts of a language and very valuable knowledge to a learner of said language; in order to be able to distinguish the situations and the appropriate speech style in each context. That is why we, as language teachers, must know these concepts to make them familiar to our students, for this will help them to exercise a correct oral or written expression that will correspond to the circumstances.

I want to cite a phrase, which I find brilliant and that expresses the conventionality of the classifications and explains the contradictions that linguists have, to define the different uses of a language: “’A language is a dialect with an army and a navy’. This saying, long part of oral tradition among sociolinguists, was quoted in a review by Alan Kayne in LiS 26 484 (1996). In his manuscript, Kayne had attributed the quote to Max Weinreich. The editor of this journal changed the attribution to Uriel Weinreich […]. However, it has also been attributed to Joshua Fishman”. 1

1 Ali A. Mazrui, Alamin M. Mazrui 1997

Bibliography

Yule, G. (2010). The study of language (Fourth ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mazrui, A. A., & Mazrui, A. M. (1997, September). Language in Society. Cambridge University Press, 26 (3), 469-470. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-insociety/article/notes/5937BFC4B6FF4FE49B9443486426431A#