Sociolinguistics

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Sociolinguistics

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

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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 note still related to
  psycholinguisticswhat?
• 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.

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

• 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 psycholinguistics and
  sociolinguistics
• Rhetorical expressiveness
• For social needsaffects formaffects other
  psychological pressures

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I . Inter-relationships between linguistic form
and social function (3)

• Mandarin examples
• ?, ?,??
• ??,??
• ??,??
• Sex
• Chairman, chair(person)
• 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? (1)

• Grammar only (the structure/form of language)
• to discover the rules of language x and thus
  universal rules
• Studies following this view often use idealized
  datathink up some sentences and then study
  themnative speaker intuition
• Problems
• Speech is social behavior and has many social
  functions. Do these two factors have no
  influence on linguistic rules?
• What is language x? How do we define what one
  language is?
• whats the language x?
• people who
  language spoken
• Speak language x
  by people x
• who are people x?

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II. What should linguistics study? (2)

• What is a native speaker?
• Social functions/factors, too
• Questions like these (see above) led to
  development of a major counter view to the view
  of grammar only
• Speech is a form of social behavior language
  must be related to and interact with society.
• Definition of sociolinguistics
• The study of language in relation to society
• Sociolinguistics is a branch of linguistics which
  studies all aspects of the relationship between
  language and society
• Sociolinguistics deals with the
  inter-relationships between language and society
• The study of the properties of language which
  require social factors in their explanation.

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II. What should linguistics study? (3)

• Functions of language
• Communication
• Social identity
• Definition of a language really depends on how
  speakers of the language look at it theyre
  often making social, cultural, and political
  distinguish. Therefore, a language is usually
  defined politically, socially/culturally, not by
  its linguistic form.
• Example of Chinese

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

• Mutual intelligibility ? the same language.
• Are people speaking the same language if they
  understand each other?
• Scandinavia
• 
  87
• Norwegian 76
  Swedish
• 42
  
  
• 
  
• 72
  18
  23
• Danish
• Related to linguistic distance structural
  similarity and also to informants attitudes
  towards the other groups and with the degree of
  perceived beauty of the lang. in question.
• So, mutual intelligibility cant be used to
  define a language.

Number of informants who claimed to understand
their neighbors lang. fairly easily on 1st
encounter
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III. The difficulty of defining what one
language is (2)

• Dutch and German
• Go village to village from coast of Holland to
  Vienna, Austria ? always find mutual
  intelligibility between adjacent communities, but
  not between the start and end points
• Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French,
  Italian)
• Same language? ? no body would say yes, BUT they
  share common writing system, some common history,
  culture, and are next to each other
  geographically
• Potato joke
• Spanish vs. Italian

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

• Hindi vs. Urdu
• Linguistically similar
• Religiously, Hindi is identified with Hindu
  Urdu with Moslem.
• Same language or not really depends on the people
  of the language ? what they think, which in
  return depends on something social/cultural and
  political

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III. The difficulty of defining what one
language is (4)

• Same language ? mutual intelligibility
• (ex1) one language (ex2)
  one original language
• dialect dialect dialect
  different languages
• e.g., 1 one language (mutual intelligibility?
  same nation? same language?)
• Chinese (Taiwanese, Cantonese, Shanghai,
  Shandung, Mandarin, etc.)
• e.g., 2 one original language
• the Romance situation (sharing a common writing
  system, culture, history next to each other
  geographically)
• Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc..

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III. The difficulty of defining what one
language is (5)

• How to define native speakers?
• Northwest Amazon (basin between Brazil
  Venezuela)
• 20 different tribes, each with a different
  language
• 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
• Who can the linguist get to be her native
  speaker informant?
• 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 rules
  (form) of language.
• Quick easy? contractions
• Rhetorically expressive? more complex forms (in
  order to carry out different intentions by being
  able to express one meaning in many ways e.g.,
  Tok Pisin)
• Identification
• of other people
• of self

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Identification of Other People

• geographic/national/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 elder 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
• Sometimes, social pressure override psychological
  pressures
• Children talk as their models
• parents ( other siblings)
• peers
• adults

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V. Telephone conversation (1)

• Telephone openings (Emanuel Schegloff 1968)
• basic structure of conversation ab, ab, ab
• How what is said is determined socially.? a
  social structure to lang.
• Problem 1 how can we get the conversation
  going? How do we get into the structure? How
  do we begin a conversation guarantee ourselves
  a further turn later on in the conversation?
• Basic structure of telephone openings
• summons- answer sequences
• Summons Answer
• T1 Question Answer
• T2 (raise
  topic) A structure of
• 
  T3 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.
  ? adjacency pair
• Phone ring summons of caller ? answer of
  answerer
• Now, lets take a closer look at telephone
  openings (see handout, Figure 1)

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V. Telephone conversation (4)

• Turn 2 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. ?Turn
  3 or after Turn 3 (caller)
• A conversational social relationship in which
  participants have strong obligations to each
  other by virtue of the conventions governing
  conversation itself. These conventions make
  smooth coordinated openings possible.

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V. Telephone conversation (5)

• Identification on telephone
• Problem 2 how to achieve mutual recognition?
• Preferred method of identification involves the
  minimum use of recognitional resources.
• oversuppose and undertell
• Identification becomes problematic on telephone.
  Why? (see handout, Figure 2)
• 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
• Q clue
  voice clue to self
• (ID yourself)

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V. Telephone conversation (6)

• recognition
• identification
• Tel. opening
• summons -- answer
• question -- answer

happening at the same time, just as adjacency
pairs of the tel. opening
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V. Telephone conversation (7)

• 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 T1 Hello?
  answer/question (provide ID resource
• caller T2 Hello, Jenny.
  greeting/claim of ID/oblige--resource
• (pause)
  failure by A to recognize C
• This is Paul.
  provide more resource
• answerer T3 Oh, hello, Paul.
  greeting/claim of ID

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V. Telephone conversation (8)

• 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 Society

• There is a social structure to language.
• Basic structure of conversation ab, ab, ab.
• What is said and how it is said is determined
  socially.
• in the tel. openings discussed earlier
• An utterance is a complex of actions.
• (tel. openings) Hello?

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VI. Complimentsgiving compliments (I)

• Giving compliments two studies in New Zealand
  U.Sby women examined status age, sex,
  syntactic patterns, topics
• Status and age
• Most commonly the receiver is the same status
  age as the speaker.
• Sex (gender)
• Women to women most frequent
• Women to men
  (descending frequency)
• Men to women
• Men to men least frequent

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VI. Complimentsgiving compliments (II)

• Syntactic patterns
• Three major patterns (about 80 of all
  compliments collected)
• NP be/look (intensifier) ADJ You look really
  nice.
• ADJ includes nice, good, beautiful, pretty,
  great, wonderful, lovely (This set 2/3 of all
  ADJ used in data).
• 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 (or conventional) Language a very
  limited subset of English sentence structure and
  vocabulary (and topics) is used to give
  compliments.

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VI. Complimentsgiving compliments (III)

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

70
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VI. Complimentsresponding (I)

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

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VI. Complimentsresponding (II)

• Why is it difficult to respond to compliments?
• Must consider the three social norms
• If your response follows norms 1 2, it
  conflicts with norm 3 (at least potentially).
• If you agree, it amounts to self-praise.
• If you disagree, it threatens both you the
  complimenters.
• It means you reject their supportive act and say
  that what they said is NOT TRUE.
• It also means you have to say or imply bad things
  about yourself.

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VI. Complimentsresponding (III)

• Some conventional, formulaic responses
• In Eng. Thank you in Chinese ??,??
• 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 (compliment of hearers new bride)
• e.g.1 A Shes a real fox.
  
• B Yeah, shes a pretty woman.
• e.g. 2 A You broughtlike a ton of things.
• B Just a few little things.
• e.g. 3 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 bought 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 (1)

• Lang. Sex
• Sex differences in language
• Sexism in language
• Deborah Tannens two books
• Thats Not What I Meant (1986) conversational
  stylesmore in general
• You Just Dont Understand Women and Men in
  Conversation (1990)new approach conversational
  style differences 1 national bestseller

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Language and Gender (2)

• Different norms for the conversational styles of
  women and men
• Women focus on connection (solidarity), so
• intimacy is the key (so value the
  telling of details.)
• Men focus on status ( so independence, the
  key)
• Although different norms, neither is wrong or
  worse, or etc.
• But, it means women and men often talk at
  cross-purposes (without realizing it).

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Language and Gender (3)

• 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, resulting in some
  arguments.
• (You Just Dont Understand by D. Tannen,
  1990.)

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Language and Gender (4)

• Examples (Tannen 1990)
• p. 24 wife and husband in different cities
• p. 30 asking boss about chances for promotion
• p. 51 women frustrated because men dont respond
  to their trouble by offering matching troubles
• p. 113 the power of details (men details of
  politics, news, sports women details of
  personal lives), the joy of involvement
• Remember these are generalizations.

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Language and Gender (5)

• Language differences due to social expectation
  (Nash 29)
• Pronunciation and words used
• Language forms
• Sexism in language prejudice against women
• Male terms precede female terms
• Male terms used to refer to people in general
• Feminine words formed from masculine words
• Negative meaning in feminine words