Social and Ethnic Dialects

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Social and Ethnic Dialects

• Wolfram Schilling-Estes
• Chapter 6

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Emergence of Social Dialectology

• Attitudes toward regional differences
• Attitudes toward linguistic variation associated
  with social status (sociolects) and ethnic
  identity (ethnolects)

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6.1 Defining Class (social status)

• Social class distinctions based upon status and
  power Guy (1988)
• status amount of respect or deference accorded
  to a person
• power the social and material resources a
  person can command
• Linguistic Atlas Approach Types I, II and III
  (based on level of education and breadth of
  social contacts)
• Socioeconomic Status (SES)
• Traditional approach
• Set of objectified socioeconomic characteristics
• Typically occupation, level of education,
  income, type of residential dwelling
• Critiques
• Oriented to particular groups of speakers
• Whose judgment? (insider versus outsider)
• Agreement with regard to norms? (consensus model
  versus conflict model)
• American attitudes toward class

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6.2 Beyond Social Class

• How to combine both objective and subjective
  measures appropriately?
• Complicating factors region, age, gender.
• The notion of the linguistic marketplace (a
  persons economic activity, broadly defined, is
  associated with language variation) and a
  persons linguistic market index (e.g. teacher,
  sales rep)
• Local considerations versus macro-level social
  categorizations
• Social network, Community of Practice
• Matters of identity and personal presentation

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6.3 The Patterning of Social Differences in
Language

• Group exclusive/Group preferential
• Inherent variability (?n/??
• Social constraints on variability Different
  linguistic variables may align with given social
  status groupings in a variety of ways (e.g.,
  African-American community in Detroit, MI)
  (text, pp. 175-177)
• Sharp stratification
• for third person sing. s/-es absence (typical
  for grammatical variables)
• Gradient or fine stratification
• for postvocalic R absence

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6.4 Linguistic Constraints on Variability

• Sometimes referred to as independent (but see
  chart on p. 181 that shows social influence)
• Example consonant cluster reduction
• The characteristics of the following word
• west coast vs. west end
• cold cuts vs. cold egg
• The characteristics of the cluster
• single morpheme guest
• suffix guessed

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Constraints on Variability

• Both social and linguistic
• Both qualitative and quantitative
• Interpretation of Table 6.2, p.181, concerning
  relative influence
• SE and AWC show greater difference in of
  reduction in relation to following consonant
• SEAWC and SAAWC show greater difference in of
  reduction in relation to cluster type

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6.5 The Social Evaluation of Linguistic Features

• Linguistic description versus social valuation
• Socially prestigious variants associated with
  high-status groups
• rare
• Socially stigmatized variants associated with
  low-status groups
• abundant

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The importance of the axis of stigmatization

• Standard English is more adequately
  characterized by the absence of negatively-
  valued, stigmatized items than by the presence of
  positively valued, prestige items. refer back
  to categories of dialect, p. 16
• It is important to understand that stigmatized
  and prestigious variants to not exist on a single
  axis in which the alternative to a socially
  stigmatized variant is a socially prestigious
  one, or vice versa. The absence of multiple
  negation, for example, is not particularly
  prestigious it is simply not stigmatized. (p.
  183)
• The popular notion that speakers who use
  stigmatized variants always use these variants
  and those who use prestige variants always use
  these forms is simply not true.

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Types of Prestige

• Overt (related to language standardization)
• Covert (related to solidarity)
• Why do vernaculars persist?
• Differing judgments about social significance of
  language forms (r-lessness, pronunciations of
  aunt)
• Changes over time

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The role of grammar versus phonology

• Grammatical variables major symbolic role in
  differentiating standard from vernacular dialects
• Phonological variables more apt to show
  regionally restricted social significance

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Roles of socially diagnostic features

• As social stereotypes (overt comments on use)
• As social markers (show social stratification
  but not same level of conscious awareness shifts
  across styles NCS)
• As social indicators (correlate with social
  stratification but not used in stylistic
  variationexamples for American English??)

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6.6 Social Class and Language Change

• Myth upper classes originate change and others
  imitate
• Reality lower-middle typically originate change
• Reality social classes between the extremes
  bear responsibility for change most connected to
  local community, but also sensitive to influences
  from outside

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Change in relation to consciousness

• changes from below (the level of consciousness)
• changes from above (the level of
  consciousness) example of consciously imitating
  an external prestige norm---
• r-lessness from British prestige norm

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Resistance to Change

• the social differentiation of language in
  American society is typified by the resistance to
  proposed changes initiated by the lower classes
  by a steadfast upper class rather than the
  initiation of change by the upper classes and
  subsequent emulation of these changes by the
  lower classes (p. 190)
• Example regularization of the grammar

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6.7 Ethnicity

• Origins that precede or are external to the state
  (Native American, immigrant groups)
• Group membership that is involuntary
• Ancestral tradition rooted in a shared sense of
  peoplehood
• Distinctive value orientations and behavioral
  patterns
• Influence of the group on the lives of its
  members
• Group membership influenced by how members define
  themselves and how they are defined by
  othersimportance of the subjective dimension

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Ethnicity as expressed through language in
relation to other social factors

• African American Vernacular English can be part
  of the expression of African American ethnicity
• But it is also related to social status
• And is also associated with Southern regional
  English
• And can be used by non-African Americans in
  certain situations (e.g. Hip Hop contexts)

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Sometimes ethnicity is conveyed mainly by a
distinctive variety of English

• Wolframs work in North Carolina has shown that a
  Native American group that has lost its ancestral
  language distinguishes itself from surrounding
  groups through a distinctive variety of English
• The situation in Wales

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Relationships between ethnicity and language
variation

• Transfer of grammatical patterns, phonological
  patterns, lexicon from an ancestral language
• The effects of more generalized strategies
  related to the learning of English as a second
  language
• Maintenance of patterns of language use that are
  distinctive

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6.8 Latino English

• Latino English or Hispanic English (see link
  for terms earlier on syllabus)
• Historical
• Current
• New Mexico as officially bilingual

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6.8.1 Chicano English

• Southwestern border states
• Myths (p. 197)
• Linguistic features
• Phonological
• Rhythm and intonation (prosody)
• Grammatical
• Lexical

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6.8.2 The Range of Latino English

• Different geographical locations
• Influences from contacts with other dialects of
  English
• Urban and rural contexts

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6.9 Cajun English

• From Acadians in contact with other French
  speakers in Louisiana, Native Americans, slaves
  from Africa and the Caribbean, Spanish-speaking
  Islenos from the Canary Islands, and other
  European immigrant groups a French Creole
• English as symbol of Cajun identity (as heritage
  language as receded)
• Cajun Renaissance

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6.10 Lumbee English

• The distinctive mix of dialect features in
  Lumbee Vernacular English shows how a cultural
  group can maintain a distinct ethnic identity by
  configuring past and present dialect features in
  a way which symbolically indicates---and helps
  constitute---their cultural uniqueness even
  though the ancestral language has been lost.