Weeks 9 and 10

1
Weeks 9 and 10

• Politeness
• Mock Language
• Social Stratification
• Language Ideologies
• Frames

2
Politeness
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Politeness across cultures

• Polite behavior varies across cultures
• Can be embedded in language use (e.g. use of
  proper pronouns or names)
• Politeness is usually about showing respect in
  different ways

4
Positive vs. Negative Politeness

• Positive politeness oriented towards a persons
  desire to be well regarded
• Negative politeness oriented towards a persons
  desire not be imposed upon.

5
Positive Politeness examples

• You look nice today!
• Its always such a pleasure to see you.
• What an honor to finally meet you.
• More examples?

6
Negative Politeness examples

• I know youre really busy, but could you take a
  look at this?
• Could you do me a big favor?
• Someone needs to organize this project and
  produce the pamphlet. (indirectness)
• More examples?

7
Politeness and collusion

• In order to make many situations go forward, you
  must be polite.
• BUT being polite often involves placing yourself
  in a certain role in the hierarchy.
• In order to be polite and grease the wheels of
  social interaction, you may have to take on the
  role of someone in a lower position

8
Positive Politeness and collusion

• By accepting positive politeness, you are
  colluding in the idea of what constitutes a
  compliment (in other words, what it means in your
  culture to be well regarded.)
• Example A Korean woman told an American
  acquaintance I havent seen you in so long! You
  look fat! and was slapped in the face.
  collusion broke down

9
Negative Politeness and Collusion

• Many examples of negative politeness include
  being indirect, but also accepting that there is
  some exaggeration going on, and also recognizing
  whether you are in a position to turn down a
  request.
• Can I ask you for a big favor?
• Yes, of course.
• I know youre really busy, but can I ask you for
  a favor?
• Sorry, I really am too busy.
• Oh, uh. Well, I really need you to do it, since
  Jan is swamped with another account.
• Oh, okay.

10
Language Ideology
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Language ideology

• Language ideology includes ideas about and
  attitudes towards language, including evaluations
  of language use and ideas about what language
  represents or does for people.

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Examples of lang. ideologies

• There is a right way and a wrong way to speak a
  language (ideology about language use/intent)
• Speakers of non-standard dialects are lazy and
  dont try to speak right (ideology about
  users)
• Some languages are more appropriate for some
  things (like running the government, or prayer)
  than for others (ideologies about language use)
• A written promise is more binding than a spoken
  promise (ideologies about written and spoken
  language)
• If someone says bad things about you, it can make
  you sick (ideology about the power of language to
  act in the world)

13
There isnt ONE ideology

• Language ideology is a concept that describes how
  a speech communitys ideas about language
  influence how members of that community use
  language and interpret language use
• Although everyone might have their own ideas
  about language, certain language ideologies, such
  as the idea in the US that only one language can
  represent a country, are more widespread and
  influential than others

14
Where is ideology?

• Everywhere!
• In self-help magazines, on TV, in everyday jokes
  and discussions with friends
• Language ideology is in how a professor corrects
  your text, how your parents correct your speech,
  and in your opinions about whether hate speech
  should be illegal

15
Social difference and ideology

• Language ideologies help link particular
  linguistic characteristics to other stereotypical
  characteristics of speakers
• For example, if your dialect is lazy, are you
  lazy?
• If your dialect is uneducated are you
  uneducated?

16
Mock Language

• A mock language is a representation of one
  language inside another.
• Mock languages are mini-registers that are used
  to represent a foreign language (in the online
  reserve article, Jane Hill uses the term Junk
  language)
• The mini-register might include intonations,
  morphology, or vocabulary words that represent
  the whole language, often reflecting language
  attitudes.

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Jane Hill asks

• Where is the line between not having a sense of
  humor and being aware of how humor perpetuates
  and reinforces language stereotypes?

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Hills argument

• Using material from the Southwest like greeting
  cards and souvenirs, Hill notes how Spanish
  speakers are identified as dirty, lazy,
  uneducated in popular media
• How does mock Spanish work?
• Mock Spanish uses humor to mask that we are
  colluding in negative, racist stereotypes of
  Spanish speakers. Example Fleas navidad.

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Features of Mock Spanish

• Spanish is funny
• Spanish is used to designate cheap things
• Spanish is used to designate bad (low) things
  (e.g. nada el cheapo)
• Grammatical and pronunciation errors in
  translating e.g. no problemo Muchas grassyass
  Fleas navidad

20
Socializing mock languages

• Excerpts from the Muppets
• The Swedish Chef
• Spanish dance
• Conversation between Kermit and Miss Piggy

21
Mock Language meanings/features

• Swedish?
• Spanish?
• French?
• Linguistic stereotypes are a form of collusion
  they are a shorthand for stereotypes about
  speakers of a language that allow us to get the
  joke.

22
Judging Mock Language

• At the level of what are we doing in language
  mini-registers based on other languages are
  pretty cool!
• At the level of politics Can being aware of the
  meaning and effects of linguistic stereotypes
  help change them?

23
Joking and Social Cohesion

• Performance, test, and mutual revelation
• A joke is a performance, it tests the teller and
  the audience for comprehension and skill, and
  they must reveal to each other whether or not
  they understood the joke and found it funny.

24
Joking structures

• Structured knock-knock lightbulb
• Set-up and punchline
• Funny story
• riffs or wordplay in conversation

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http//www.laughlab.co.uk/summary.html

• Men seem to like jokes that involve sexuality or
  put-downs, esp. of women
• Women prefer jokes that use wordplay such as puns

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Nevins article on Apache

• Focuses on the White Mountain Apache (E. Arizona)
  language revitalization
• Explores cultural conflict between two different
  ideologies of teaching
• How is this conflict affecting language
  revitalization programs?

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Description of Community

• High rate of adult bilingualism in English/Apache
• Apache widely used in different settings, ranging
  from ceremonial, to everyday (work, offices,
  social conversations)
• Apache is one of the two official tribal
  languages required for tribal council members

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Two ideologies of language

• Apache pedagogical ideology - emphasizes Apache
  cultural values of speaking, based on a model of
  intergenerational, family-based learning
• Endangered language ideology based on ideas of
  Apache as a national language, with
  learning/revitalization programs based in
  institutional settings (schools, govt)

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Two types of authority

• Traditional authority Apache elders
  traditionally hold places of authority in the
  home and are seen as linguistic and cultural
  authorities
• Institutional authority trained linguists and
  educators have institutional authority in schools
  and government-sponsored revitalization programs
  that produce educational materials and
  dictionaries, grammars and so forth.

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Ideologies in conflict

• What does it mean to know Apache?
• When language is taught, should it be taught in a
  correct institutional form or in the way it is
  actually used by fluent speakers?
• Does using materials like computers and books
  undermine the linguistic authority of elders and
  traditional learning methods?

31
Broadening revitalization

• Nivens does not recommend eliminating
  school-based educational programs
• Instead, she argues that paying attention to how
  communities understand language loss and language
  teaching can help develop programs that promote
  culturally-based learning on many levels.

32
Native Languages in the US

• http//www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?nameUS
  A
• http//www.census.gov/population/socdemo/race/indi
  an/ailang3.txt

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Social Stratification
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Social Stratification

• Social stratification is the hierarchical
  structuring of groups within a society,
  reflecting inequalities among sectors of a
  population.
• In general, social differences are mirrored in
  linguistic differences (such as dialect
  differences between classes or castes)

35
Social Dialect

• Social dialect (sociolect) A variety of a
  language spoken by a group of people who are
  identified by some social characteristics,
  usually social class.

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Why do language and social stratum match up? (2
theories)

• We talk like the people we talk to the most.
• We tend to talk like family members, the people
  we went to school with, friends and co-workers of
  the same rank.
• We talk like the people we identify with.
• People who move out of their community into
  another one may adopt the dialect of the new
  community to reflect their new identity

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Class and Caste

• Attributes combined in socioeconomic class
  include income, occupation, and education
• Caste refers to a ranked social group into which
  you are born. Castes often are linked to
  particular professions, and usually have
  different vocabulary or speech patterns
  associated with them.

38
Language and class

• Language use both reflects and reinforces class
  differences
• Example from Ottenheimer pg. 212-214
• r sounds in English sometimes r-deletion or
  r-lessness is a sign of middle or upper-class
  speech, sometimes a sign of lower-class speech.
  r-insertion is also associated with the speech
  of different classes. Also, these associations
  can and do change over time.

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Excerpt from Do you speak American

• R-less dialects in major northern US cities
• Influenced by British English
• Example of FDR from NYC
• In FDRs speech, r is pronounced only before
  vowels
• Changed after WWII American standard now
  pronounces r and many r-less dialects are
  considered lower class

40
Language and Caste

• In caste-based societies, different castes often
  have different accents
• The higher castes speak a more prestigious form,
  the lower castes speak a less prestigious form
  that is often considered uneducated

41
Class vs. Social network

• Class approach is based on differences across the
  layers of society. Theory People talk
  differently because of difference
• Network analysis approach focuses on how people
  in one layer are similar to each other. Theory
  People talk similarly because of similarity

42
Labovs work in NYC

• Key study in sociolinguistics
• Focus on the r-less dialects of NYC
• Lower East side, had people of different classes
  (all white) speak in different situations from
  least to most formal
• casual, careful speech, reading , word lists,
  minimal pairs (dock/dark)

43
Crossover pattern

• When members of the least secure Lower Middle
  Class got to the reading lists part, they put
  in even more rs than the people in the class
  above them due to being self-conscious of their
  speech.
• This created a crossover pattern in the graph
  of how many rs are pronounced

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(No Transcript)
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Interesting note

• Labov found that crossover occurred ONLY for
  sounds that were in fluctuation
• For items that were not changing, there was no
  crossover
• Conclusion the Lower Middle Class are trying to
  catch up to the more prestigious speech of the
  Upper Middle Class.

46
Spooky language

• Ideology and Halloween!

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Magical Language

• Bronislaw Malinowski
• The coefficient of weirdness
• Magical and supernatural language must be
  strange in order to have power

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Ways to be Weird

• Unnatural pitch/vocal qualities
• Screaming/lack of vocal control
• Loss of coherence
• Nonsense words
• Special codes
• Use of profanity

49
Collusion and weirdness

• When people act outside the bounds of normal
  language, it can threaten our sense of stability
  and order
• At the same time, weird language
  characteristics can function as pragmatic cues
  that allow us to recognize particular genres of
  spooky language use

50
Supernatural

• What does a supernatural voice sound like in
  America?
• What languages are considered supernatural? Why?
• What elements of linguistic weirdness are
  incorporated into our ideas of the supernatural?

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Quotation and possession

• How do we make it clear when we are saying
  someone elses words?
• When we act out another persons words, we are
  on the edge of weird language

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Glossolalia

• Speaking in tongues
• Experiments have shown that speaking in tongues
  can be a learned behavior 70 of people who
  received coaching were able to speak in tongues
• Speaking in tongues is a sacred register that is
  part of the communicative repertoire of certain
  religious groups learning to speak in tongues
  is part of being socialized into that religion

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Socializing Glossolalia

• Excerpt from Jesus Camp
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vzqNLMuijRyU

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Exorcism

• Evidence for possession comes in part from speech
  irregularities (cursing weird vocal qualities
  lack of coherence strange code use)
• Exorcism is in part a linguistic ritual at the
  end, the person returns to linguistic and
  physical normalcy

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Strange Frames

• How are language, dress, music, body movements
  and other aspects of ritual combined to create a
  FRAME around a strange cultural space?

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Library Assignment
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Library Assignment Due 11/15

• Choose a topic related to linguistic anthro
• Find and type out citations (see sheet) for 3
  scholarly journal articles on that topic
• Locate the full text of one article in the
  library or via an online database
• Write a short essay comparing that article to one
  article from our course (online reading or a
  chapter from a textbook)

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Library presentation Laurie Kutner

• Librarians in the reference area will have copies
  of the assignment and can help you find materials
  and answer your questions
• There is a library resource page for this course
  assignment. The address is on the assignment and
  there is a link to it from our assignment webpage
  at
• http//www.uvm.edu/jadickin/28assignments.html

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More on social stratification
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Another example

• In Glasgow, the glottal stop (buer not butter)
• is a stigmatized linguistic variable
• BUT it appears in speech of people of all
  classes. The connection between this variable
  and class is that higher up the socioeconomic
  ladder you go, the less it is used.

61
Vernacular Loyalty

• Study by Jenny Cheshire in Reading, England
• Use of vernacular markers like we has, a knob
  what you turn I come down here
• Vernacular loyalty is a measure of how much
  your identity is bound up with a subculture and
  the dialect associated with that subculture
• The vernacular loyalty of the speaker to
  subculture corresponded (e.g. as measured in
  terms of to how much the speaker used these
  markers across situations

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Results

• Good girls used the fewest vernacular markers
• Some vernacular markers seemed to fluctuate
  depending on where the speakers were (school or
  playground)
• These fluctuating markers were most closely
  linked to how loyal a person was to the
  subculture

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Social stratification and language ideology
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Standard Language

• A standard language is a WRITTEN variety of a
  language whose features have been formalized.
  This form of the language is used in print.
• A standard language ideology says that the
  written standard is also the standard to which
  speech should be compared to determine if it is
  correct or not.

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Standard language ideology

• The belief that there is one and only one correct
  spoken form of the language, modeled on a single
  correct written form.

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Social Stratification and Power

• What determines which dialect is the most
  prestigious?
• The people who have the most power also have the
  most correct language.
• There is no linguistic way to determine which
  dialect is best, this is purely a social
  determination based on who speaks which language,
  and what language ideologies are applied when
  judging languages or varieties.

67
Frames
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Frames (Agar 130-9)

• Frames are shared understandings of a given
  situation. Knowing the frame of an interaction
  allows us to act and react appropriately
• For example Things said in a joking frame
  should not be taken too seriously, or you will
  break the frame

69
Frames and Culture

• Agar says that culture provides frames of
  reference that make sense out of cultural
  knowledge and behaviors.
• Frames place limits on how far culture can be
  bent before you are not acting within the bounds
  of that culture.

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How do frames work?

• a frame is a culturally understood speech
  situation that is defined by certain features.
• Example A lecture frame is defined by the
  physical orientation of the participants to each
  other, and by the turn-taking and turn-allocation
  patterns

71
What do you need to know about language to get
this joke?

• Why do women live longer than men?
• Men get tired of the complaining and give
  up.

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Opening and Closing Frames

• opening Okay everyone, lets get started
• closing Okay, thats it for today.
• opening The weirdest thing happened to me
  today
• closing I mean, isnt that crazy?

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Example Rap battles

• MC says Kick that shit
• Super MC in the house!
• Yo, yo
• Rap
• Closing gives up mike
• Note that the social rules that apply within a
  frame are different than might apply in a regular
  conversational frame.

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Breaking a frame

• Frames can be broken if you step out of what
  you are doing
• For example, youre reading Hamlets soliloquy
  and you stop and say Wait, how do you pronounce
  that?

75
What do frames do for us?

• Frames help us click into the right set of
  responses for the type of interaction were
  having.
• We might know more about what register to use,
  rules about eye contact and touching, etc.

76
A final point

• As Agar points out, registers shift along with
  frames, and when we are in different frames, we
  are mobilizing different aspects of our identity.
• The chapter on Variations on a Frame focuses on
  language variation, and how different social
  groups use different frames of reference to make
  sense of the world.

77
Strange Frames

• How are language, dress, music, body movements
  and other aspects of ritual combined to create a
  FRAME around a strange cultural space?

78
Next week

• Language and race in the US
• African American English