Sociolisguistic patterns

Introduction

• Some different in lexical and phonological have relation with social class (upper class and lower class). So in this chapter we are going to see how some social factors and cultural background influence the language.

1 Language and social class

Social dimensions: social class, age, sex, style, and network.

Varieties of english can be divided into two groups:. R-pronouncing(rhotic) and no r-pronouncing(non-rhotic)

• Linking R or intrusive R: this happen when we have a vowel + vowel like in the case of spa (r) owner.

• Linking r appear in non-rhotic accents before words beggining with a vowel.

Postvocalic r

A study in new york city show us that lower class tend to omit postvocalic r. it was consider factors such as education, occupation and income.

Another study show us that people of lower class tend to use a higher percentage of alveolar rather than velar nasal endings.

In england the consonant H when is at the begining of a word is omited. This tend to occur mayority in people of lower class.

Most speaker of english glottalize final T in words such as pat. Glottal stops are more common in younger working class speakers in London, Glasgow and so on.

Glottal stops are tend to occur more in:

Word final +consonantBefore syllabic nasalWord final + vowelBefore syllabic l

We have to take into account that all speakers are affected by these internal contraints, but the level of frecuency it is going to depend by some external factor such as social class.

Grammatical variable (Detroit - Norwich)

Verbs without S

This happent only with working class speakers, but it happens more frecuently in Norwich.

Lower working class 71 97Middle working class 0 87

Detroit Norwish

Language and style

Style can range from formal to informal depending on social context, relationship of the participants, social class, sex, age, physical environment and topic.

The lower middle class exceeding the highest status group in their use of postvocalic R. this has been called the crossover pattern and is taken to be manifestation of hypercorrection.

Hypercorrection occur when a feature is undergoing change in response to social preasure.

Gender

Women tend to use higher status variants more frequently than men.

Women of middle class and lower working class tend to hypercorrect more than men.

Women use more prestige forms and are more concerned with politeness than men

Victorian era

-speaking properly became associated with being female, and with being a lady .-A lady dropping of a H was a fatal blot-The purest ladies spoke with the purest accents.-The couple should be H compatible.

Language and age

Gender, style and social class differentiation can be found among scottish school children as young as 6. they also were aware of the social significance of variants.

Language and social network

Contact between groups in urban sociaty may also accelerate the use of nonstandard features.

Puerto Ricans speakers who were in contact with black speakers deleted final T/D. This means that with the people we interact it is a powerful source of influence in our speech.

Social network influences our speech because have relation with the enviorenment that we normally tend to be. A person that stay at home versus another that participate in different activities are going to have different in their speeches.

Standardization

The process of standardization converts one variety into a standard by fixing and regulating its spelling, grammar, and so on.

The aim is to remove variation and stablish only one sytem to serve as a uniform one for a group.

Stardard language is created by conscious and deliberate planning.

The existence of a codified written standard, and stadardization depends on the existence of a written form of language

Stardardization and its effects in papua new guinea

Colonizers in Papua New Guinea established hierarchical relations among languages. They caused that indigenous languages were devaluated. They established that in the classroom to speak English was considered good and to speak their native languages was bad.

When the missionaries arrived the first step was to codify one variant of a language as a mission standard. The people who did not speak the language consider as the standard were regarded as pagan or uncivilized.