Sociolinguistics

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Sociolinguistics

• I . Inter-relationships between linguistic form
  and social function
• II. Why should linguistics study?
• III. The difficulty of defining what language is
• IV. Social functions of speech
• V. Telephone conversation
• VI. Compliments

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I . Inter-relationships between linguistic form
and social function (1)

• Lang. cannot be studied separately from its
  social/speech context.
• 9 Sentences
• Should I make some tea?
• Would you like some tea?
• Can I make you a cup of tea?
• Lets have a cup of tea.
• How about a nice cup of tea?
• I could make you a cup of tea.
• Do you drink tea?
• Have some tea.
• Theres tea in the pot.
• What are these sentences doing?
• When, and with whom, would each one be
  appropriate?
• From these examples, would you say that
  linguistic form and social function are
  unrelated? Should we study them separately?
• Interaction between Pycholinguistics and
  Sociolinguistics

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I . Inter-relationships between linguistic form
and social function (2)

• Mandarin examples
• ?, ?,??
• ??,??
• ??,??
• Geographical origin
• Phonological variant
• Northern Taiwanese vs. southern Taiwanese
• Examples of Taiwanese spoken in I-lan

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II. What should linguistics study?

• Grammar only (the structure/form of language)
• to discover the rules of language x and thus
  universal rules
• Problems
• Speech is social behavior and has many social
  functions
• What is language X?
• whats the language x?
• people who
  language spoken
• Speak language x
  by people x
• who are people x?
• What is a native speaker?
• Social functions/factors
• Speech is a form of social behavior language
  must be related to and interact with society.

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III. The difficulty of defining what one
language is (1)

• Mutual intelligibility ? the same language.
• Scandinavia 76
• Norwegian
  Swedish
• 
  87
  Number of informants who
• 
  18
  claimed to understand their
• 72
  42
  neighbors language fairly
• 
  
  23 easily on 1st encounter
• 
  Danish
• Dutch and German
• Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French,
  Italian, etc.)
• Potato joke
• Spanish vs. Italian
• 4. Hindi and Urdu

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III. The difficulty of defining what one
language is (2)

• Same language ? mutual intelligibility
• (ex1)one language (ex2)
  one original language
• dialect dialect dialect
  different languages
• ex1 one language (mutual intelligibility?
  same nation? same language?)
• Chinese (Taiwanese, Cantonese, Shanghai,
  Shandung, Mandarin, etc.)
• ex2
• the Romance situation (sharing a common writing
  system, culture, history next to each other
  geographically)
• Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
• Germanic languages Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian,
  etc.

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III. The difficulty of defining what one
language is (3)

• How to define native speakers?
• Northwest Amazon
• 20 different tribes, each with a different
  languages
• All are exogamous, so a mans wife must speak a
  different language
• Marriage is patrilocal, and a wife must speak the
  husbands language to their children
• Most people here are multilingual
• Conclusion to define a language, we have many
  factors (social, cultural, political, linguistic,
  etc.)

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IV. Social functions of speech

• Communication Communicative pressures can
  influence the forms/rules of language.
• Quick easy? contractions
• Rhetorically expressive? more complex forms
• Identification
• of other people
• of ourselves

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Identification of Other People

• geographic/natural/ethnic
• social class
• people education
• professional group
  occupation
• role (at any time)
• Role -teacher
  Role (students)
• (myself) professor
  -student
• -wife
  -big sister
• -daughter
  -younger person
• -little sister to older sister
  -responsible adult
• -elder sister
  -girlfriend
• -sister-in-law
  -tutor
• -friend
• Each of these roles may have sub roles, too.

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Identification of Self

• groups you belong
  to
• education
• Self occupation
• geographic
• role at any one time

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V. Telephone conversation (1)

• Telephone openings
• basic structure of conversation ab, ab, ab
• Problem 1 how can we get the conversation
  going? How do we get into the structure?
  (Schegloffs study)
• Basic structure of telephone openings
• summons- answer sequences
• Summons Answer
• Question Answer
• (raise
  topic) A structure of
• 
  obligations and rights
• 
  between two people

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V. Telephone conversation (2)

• Adjacency Pair (coordinated pair)
• Definition Many acts require replies of specific
  kinds and put the hearer under a conversational
  obligation to provide them.
• Examples summons-answer Q-A greeting-greeting
  offer-acceptance/refusal thanks-acknowledgement
  apology-acceptance (refusal)
• Why does the answerer always speak first instead
  of the caller (since he doesnt know to whom hes
  speaking and hes not the one who wants to
  initiate a conversation)?

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V. Telephone conversation (3)

• Viewing the ring as a nonlinguistic realization
  of a callers summoning act solves the problem.
• Phone ring summons of caller ? answer of
  answerer
• A case of an utterance realizing more than one
  act.
• Another general rule those who initiate
  conversations have the right to raise the topic,
  and answerer has the obligation to listen.
• A conversational social relationship

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V. Telephone conversation (4)

• Identification on telephone
• Problem 2 how to achieve mutual recognition?
• Preferred method of identification involves the
  minimum use of recognitional resources.
• oversuppose and undertell
• Two identification problems (on telephone)
• Caller identifies Answerer
• Answerer identifies Caller
• TA T1 T2
  T3
• ring Hello? Tom?
  Yeah, Bill
• summons answer voice ID of other
• (question)
  voice clue to self

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V. Telephone conversation (5)

• e.g.1 Ring summons
• answerer T1 Hello? answer/question (ID
  resource oblige caller to ID)
• caller T2 Hi greeting
  (claim of ID an answer to the Q)
• answer T3 Hi greeting (claim
  of ID complete greeting)
• e.g.2 Ring
  summons
• answerer 1Hello?
  answer/question (provide ID resource
• caller 2 Hello, Jenny.
  greeting/claim of ID/oblige--resource
• (pause)
  failure by A to recognize C
• This is Paul.
  provide more resource
• answerer 3 Oh, hello, Paul.
  greeting/claim of ID

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V. Telephone conversation (6)

• e.g.3 Answerer T1 Hello?
• Caller T2 Connie?
• Answerer T3 Yeah, John.
• e.g.4 Variation
• A T1 Hello?
• C T2 Connie?
• A T3 Oh, hi. How are you?

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Language vs. Society

• There is a social structure to language.
• What is said and how it is said is determined
  socially.
• An utterance is a complex of actions.

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VI. Complimentsgiving compliments (I)

• Giving compliments
• Status and age
• Sex (gender)
• Women to women most frequent
• Women to men
  (descending frequency)
• Men to women least frequent
• Men to men

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VI. Complimentsgiving compliments (II)

• Syntactic patterns
• Three major patterns
• NP be/look (intensifier) ADJ You look really
  nice.
• ADJ includes nice, good, beautiful, pretty,
  great, wonderful, lovely
• I (intensifier) like/ love NP I really like that
  skirt.
• VERB includes like, love. enjoy, admire, be
  impressed by
• PRO be (intensifier) (a) ADJ NP Thats really a
  nice coat.
• Formulaic Language a very limited subset of
  English sentence structure and vocabulary is used
  to give compliments.

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VI. Complimentsgiving compliments (III)

• Topics
• Appearance
• clothes, hair
• Ability (skill)/performance
• a well-done job, a skillfully played game, a good
  meal
• Personality/friendship
• That was kind.
• Possessions
• I live your new bike.

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VI. Complimentsresponding (I)

• Responding to compliments
• What compliments do?
• Two types of action
• Supportive action an offer, congratulations, a
  gift
• Thats a good idea.
• to be taken as TURE.
• Assessment saying something which is supposed
• Thats really a nice coat.
• Three social norms (rules)
• Accept supportive action
• Accept truth of assessment
• Avoid self-praise

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VI. Complimentsresponding (II)

• Some conventional, formulaic responses
• Thank you, ??,??
• Other types of solutions
• accept by agreeing A Your dress is very nice.
• B
  Yeah, this is my favorite dress.
• reject by disagreeing (indirect/implicit
  rejection)
• A You did a great job cleaning the house.
• B Well, I guess you havent seen the kids
  room.
• other in-between responses
• Scale down (agree with reservations)
• Transfer
• Return to the speaker

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Examples of Other in-between Responses

• Scale Down
• A Shes a real fox.
• B Yeah, shes a pretty woman.
• A You broughtlike a ton of things.
• B Just a few little things.
• A This is a really good paper.
• B Yeah, there are still a few parts that need
  work, though.
• Transfer
• A Thats a nice sweater.
• B Do you like it? My mother brought it for me.
• Return to the Speaker
• A Thats a nice sweater.
• B Yours is new, too, isnt it? That color really
  suits you.

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Reasons for giving compliments

• If compliments are so hard to respond to why give
  them?
• Solidarity (another norm Speaker should
  express solidarity with hearer, and raise the
  hearers status when possible.)
• Encouragement
• Expression of gratitude
• Compliment preceding and thus softening a
  criticism

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Language and Gender

• Different norms for the conversational styles of
  women and men
• Women focus on connection (solidarity), so
• intimacy is the key
• Men focus on status ( so independence, the
  key)
• Conclusion
• Women Rapport talk (trouble talk)recount
  their trouble, and expect sympathy, understanding
  affirmation, but not a solution.
• Men Report talk (solution talk)exhibiting
  knowledge and skill, holding center stage thus
  storytelling, joking, or imparting information.
• Cause asymmetrical situation, result in some
  arguments.
• (You Just Dont Understand by D. Tannen,
  1986.)