Regional Dialect

7/30/2019 Regional Dialect

1/8

Regional dialect

Luncau Elena Diana,

Practici de comunicare,

II,2


2/8

Meeting people is always fun and interesting, but when meeting people whoare not from your home-town, even geographical area, is even more interesting. Ok,

we meet someone speaking the same language and lives in the same country as we do,

but we realize that they do not speak it in the same way as we do. They just sound

different. How is it possible? The answer has to do with dialect and accent. Well,

accent only deals with how people pronounce the words, but dialect is another story.

According to David Crystal1 , a dialect is a way of talking that belongs to a

particular part of a country. It uses local words and phrases, and often these are well

known in other parts too. According to J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill 2 in their

Second Edition ofDialectology, a dialect is also a term which is often applied to

forms of language, particularly those spoken in more isolated parts of the world,

which have no written form and refers to varieties to which are grammatically (and

perhaps lexically) as well as phonologically different from other varieties.

In other words, strictly speaking, a dialect is a variety of a language that differs

from others, abiding three main variables: vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation

(accent), therefore, a dialect is apersons identity within a social group.3

According to linguistics, dialects are of two types: geographical and social; in

short, geographic dialects are associated with speakers living in a particular

location4, for example Gypsies in Valea Seaca in Bacau County speak a different

dialect than Gypsies in other town The Kalderash Gypsies known as Caldarari.

They might not understand each other at all.

1 Crystal, David (2010):A Little Book of Language, UNSW Press, Sydney, p.712 Chambers, J. K; Trudgill, Peter (2004):Dialectology, Second Edition, Cambridge, New York, pp. 3-73 Morarasu, Nadia (2011):Registers and Styles of English Language a coursebook for Masters degree

students, Vasile Alecsandri University, Bacau, p. 594 Idem 3


3/8

But, there will be divisions and differences between speakers in the same

geographical area depending on social class, gender, cultural origins1, therefore,

social dialect refer to speakers belonging to different social groups.

All dialects are both regional and social. All speakers have a social

background as well as a regional location, and in their speech, they often identify

themselves not only as natives or inhabitants of a particular place, but also as

members of a particular social class. Any child, teenager, grown man or woman

belonging to different social statuses: middle class, working class, high class, whether

a lawyer, a gangster, we all talk differently.

According to Donna Jo Napoli and Lee Schoenfeld2s ideas, I will try and

analyze two people talking: a man and a woman and highlight the principles of social

dialect. The two authors sustain that women and men in the United States talk

differently in several ways. Lets consider six common and representative:

1. Men interrupt women more than vice versa.

2. Men ignore the topics that women initiate in conversation.

3. Men do not give verbal recognition of the contributions women make to

conversation.

4. Men use more curse words and coarse language than women, whereas

women use more apologies and try to mitigate the conversation.

5. Men use more nonstandard forms (such as aint) than women

6. Men are more innovative, accepting language change more readily

than women.

The following dialogue is a piece of real conversation between two teenagers

(a boy and a girl) who had just come out from a movie:

B: Well that was funny.

G: Oh, but it was so cute!

1 Coultas, Amanda (2003):Language Social Contexts, Routledge Tyler and French Gr, New York, p. 722 Jo Napoli, Donna; Scoenfeld, Lee (2010):A Guide to Everyday Questions about Language, Second

Edition, Oxford Univ Press, NY, pp. 142-147


4/8

B: It was funny how the frickin cat switched bowls, you see dat? He, um, fell

into the bowl and breathed in the milk into his ear. It was funny aright!

G: Yes, I liked it. It was so cute, as well, the cat, it

B: Yeah, right!

G: And what about the girl

B: Um Im hungry. Lets eat, baby! Where did you said that Pizza House

was?

G: Is on 35th Av. At Northern not far from here.

B: RightIm starvin!

Taking into account those six claims, it is obvious who the boy is and who is

the girl. The first interlocutor always interrupts the other one and ignores what his

baby is saying, and only shows interest when he seeks an answer: Where did you said

that Pizza House was? Because the two interlocutors are two teenagers, maybe in

high school, the boy doesnt pay attention to his grammar, and indeed curses at some

point (frickin cat) and uses nonstandard language:you see dat, aright,yeah, frickin,

starvin. When the girl tries to continue the commentaries on the movies, he interrupts

her without mercy and starts his line with um. He keeps his sentences very short, like:

that was funny, yeah, right!, Im starvin, Lets eat, baby!

She did offer support in conversation and acts more as an active listener,

whereas he seek to dominate the conversation, to make a point how the cat put milk

into its ear.

One more claim that I could add at the list is that women talk more about

feelings, whereas men talk more about things, for example she begins to talk about

the girl in the movie, but he interrupts her to talk about a cat who switched bowl. The

baby inLets eat, baby! Has a pejorative use here in some way: he is just thinking that

he is hungry and calls her baby to please her and to make her shut up add change the

topic because the Pizza House is more important than that girl in the movie.


5/8

As mentioned before, dialects are of two types. If the social dialect has to do

more wit different in discourse how words are used differences in discourse, how

words are used by different social people with different social statuses, the

geographical dialect has to do more with grammar and pronunciation and people from

different areas may even not understand very well his/her interlocutor. If we travel

from village to village, we notice some differences in language. The further we get

from our starting point, the larger the differences will become. That is why all over

America the more the regions, the more the dialects: Eastern New England, Western

New England, New York City, The Mid-Atlantic area, The mountains of the inland

Atlantic Coast, the Deeper South, Boston English, Philadelphia area, Pittsburg,

Buffalo, North Central, Midland America, Canadian, etc.

The following text is an excerpt from Sarah Orne Jewett book Andrews

Fortune, an American novelist born and raised in New England:

We was dreadful concerned to hear o cousin Stephens death,

said the poor man. He went very sudden, didnt he? Gret loss he is.

Yes, said Betsey, he was very much looked up to; and it was

some time before the heir plucked up courage to speak again.

Wife and me was lotting on getting over to the funeral; but

its a gret ways for her to ride, and it was a perishin day that day.

Shes ben troubled more than common with her phthisic since

cold weather come. I was all crippled up with the rheumatism; we

want neither of us fit to be out (plaintively). T was all I could

do to get out to the barn to feed the stock while Jonas and Tim was

gone. My boys was over, I spose ye know? I don knows they come

to speak with ye; theyre backward with strangers, but theyre good

stiddy fellows.

Them was the louts that was hanging round the barn, I guess,

said Betsey to herself. Theyre the main-stay now; theyre ahead of

poor me aready. Jonas, hes got risin a hundred dollars laid up, and


6/8

I believe Tims got something too,hes younger, ye know?1

Anyone who has lived in New England knows immediately that the sounds

and idioms used here are specific to the down eastspeech of Maine. Spellings such as

gret, ben, want, spose, stiddy, aready are part of the eye dialect.Literature gets

round the problem Literature gets round the problem of representing regional

speech, especially accent, by using eye dialect. This means that words are written

using the standard alphabet but not standard spelling. The spelling is altered to

indicate how the word would sound when spoken. Basically, the words are written to

reflect their pronunciation as closely as possible without excluding the reader who

has no specialist knowledge.2

The word stiddy is specific of Maine speech, according to Lerer and the

Standard English word for it would be sturdy. What concerns grammar and

morphology, the author makes a confusion between cases for pronouns: wife and me,

them was and the use ofwas in stead of first and third person plural we was, boys was.

Something else that is particular to this geographical area is the ly ending

which doesnt appear at all: dreadful concerned, very sudden and some syntactic

patterns and idioms have a distinctively regional touch: very looked up to, all crippled

out, fit to be out.

The vocabulary is distinctively too. For example, the word lotting (meaning

counting on, or looking forward to), comes from the practice of drawing lots, and was

recognized as a New Englandism in early 1820s.

But what is it about in this fragment that makes it New England? This is a

dialogue about the dead people, old age, illness and bad behavior. If I have to classify

the interlocutors, I would say they are not from an urban area, because of the sounds

of the words: the naming of the dead mans status: Cousin Stephen, the name Betsie,

in a city she would be Elisabeth, or the talk about illnesses: phthisic or rheumatism,

all these are markers of language used in a rural area.

1 Lerer, Seth (2007):Inventing English a portable history of the language, Columbia Univ Press, NY, 1972 Coultas, Amanda (2003):Language Social Contexts, Routledge Tyler and French Gr, New York, p. 74


7/8

The word phthisic is again a very good marker of New England. The Oxford

English Dictionary appears to describe it as an archaic word; no longer in scientific

use, used more in the Northern parts of America, and means tuberculosis of the lungs.

The Dictionary of American Regional English offers a veritable essay on identity,

beginning with the words emergence in Webster and then running through all kinds

of learned texts, folk stories, and answers to questionnaires, popular stories of

American speech and says that it was a good Maine word.1 If compared with other

texts in literature from different areas, we will see that each region has its slang, its

idioms and grammatical patterns. For example Huckleberry Finns language denotes a

regional dialect from Missouri a Middle Western Dialect, and so on. Each region

has its own particularities which define the people living there.

Dictionaries definitions note that a dialect is one of the subordinate forms of

varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities, and that some varieties

simply sound better than the other or are more aesthetically pleasing.2 But no

matter how you sound, one should always know that even the simplest word define

his/her being either if you are from East or West, North or South, and should

remember that you always are a man of your words.

1 Wolfram, Walt; Ward, Ben (2006):American Voices how dialects differ from coast to coast, Blackwell

Publishing Ltd, US, pp 57-622 Edwards, John (2009):Language and Identity p key topics in sociolinguistics, Cambridge, NY, p. 65


8/8

Bibliography:

Crystal, David (2010):A Little Book of Language, UNSW Press, Sydney

Chambers, J. K; Trudgill, Peter (2004): Dialectology, Second Edition,

Cambridge, New York

Morarasu, Nadia (2011): Registers and Styles of English Language a

coursebook for Masters degree students, Vasile Alecsandri University,

Bacau

Coultas, Amanda (2003): Language Social Contexts, Routledge Tyler and

French Gr, New York

Jo Napoli, Donna; Scoenfeld, Lee (2010): A Guide to Everyday Questions

about Language, Second Edition, Oxford Univ Press, NY

Lerer, Seth (2007):Inventing English a portable history of the language,

Columbia Univ Press, NY

Wolfram, Walt; Ward, Ben (2006):American Voices how dialects differ

from coast to coast, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, US

Edwards, John (2009): Language and Identity p key topics in

sociolinguistics, Cambridge,NY

Regional Dialect

Documents

Transcript of Regional Dialect