Video: Linguistic Profiling

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Video Linguistic Profiling
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Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

• There will be some bad words in todays lecture.
  You may feel that some of them are very bad
  indeed. I encourage you, if you feel offended by
  any of them, to think carefully about how you can
  be offended by a string of phonemes devoid of
  context, and to remember that theyre in the
  lecture to illustrate a point, and not to offend
  you per se.

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Variation in Speech Style

• No speaker speaks the same way all the time we
  make use of different speech styles (or
  registers) depending on the situation.
• Speech styles may be thought of as variations in
  speech based on factors such as topic, setting,
  and addressee, and are normally described in
  terms of degrees of formality.
• The changes we make are usually performed
  effortlessly and automatically this is known as
  style shifting or code switching.

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Speech Style Pronunciation

• Casual or fast speech phonology has been
  well-studied. The most well-known example is
  probably dropping gs in words like fishing
  (although whats actually happening is a change
  from N to n, with no g in either
  pronunciation).
• Contractions are another example while it is
  inappropriate to use them in formal writing, it
  is extremely formal, even stilted, to use them in
  speech.
• Consider Herbert could do that, couldnt he?

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Speech Style Syntax

• In casual speech we may use syntactic
  constructions that we would avoid in writing or
  in polite speech.
• Theres sandwiches in the fridge is normal in
  speech for many people who would write There are
  sandwiches in the refrigerator.
• There are a number of constructions (the
  subjunctive and the passive in particular) that
  are usually reserved for careful speech or
  writing, or (in the case of the subjunctive)
  hardly used at all.
• Subjunctive Constructions like If I were rich
  are still used, but others like Where be you?
  have essentially disappeared from the language
  entirely.

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Speech Style Vocabulary

• The most obvious style shifts involve changes in
  vocabulary.
• Two types of style shifts involving distinctive
  changes in vocabulary are what we might refer to
  as bad language and best language.
• Ill talk about bad language in a minute, but
  best language is a set of words we keep for
  formal or impressive occasions ten-cent words
  like myriad or multiplicity.

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Speech Style and Vocabulary Slang

• One mark of an informal, colloquial style is the
  frequent occurrence of slang. There are two
  types
• common slang, which is neutral everyday language
  thats a bit too informal for interviews, like
  fridge for refrigerator or TV for television.
• group slang, the more specialized, slangier
  slang of a particular group at a particular time
  this can be very short-lived, like Twenty-three
  skidoo!, or hang around long enough graduate to
  normal use craze and fan, for example, were
  originally slangy.

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More slang

• Similarly to dialect (and slang can be seen as
  lexical variation in a dialect), slang is used to
  mark group membership it distinguishes in-group
  members from out-group outsiders.
• This is why people not belonging to a group who
  try to use its slang often get roundly mocked
  they are trying to claim membership to a group to
  which they do not belong.

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Speech Style and Vocabulary Jargon

• Every job, field of study, hobby and sport has
  some technical terms of its own these terms are
  known as jargon or argot.
• Within its own area, technical jargon is clear,
  expressive and economical for outsiders, it is
  often incomprehensible.
• Occasionally a jargonistic term may enter general
  use examples are the bottom line, hardware and
  software, strike out and so on.

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Exercises

• Listen as your partner says 15, 70, 21, then
  counts from 69 to 80. Try to describe the
  different pronunciations of 70 you hear.
• Suppose that you were planning to get married.
  How would you introduce your fiancé(e) to
• your grandmother, at a family dinner
• your best friend from high school, at a picnic
• the crusty old dean, at a reception
• Make a list of jargon terms and expressions
  associated with your major or hobby (like, say,
  monophthongization). Compare with a partner. Does
  the in-group / out-group designation applied to
  slang hold here?

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Sex and the Bathroom Taboo and Euphemism

• Many languages have words which are considered
  dangerous, holy, magic or shocking, and which are
  only used in certain situations or by certain
  people.
• For instance, in some African tribes the names of
  dead chiefs must not be said in many cultures,
  words associated with religious beliefs are used
  only on religious occasions or by priests.
• Words of this kind can be called taboo words, and
  English has three primary groups.

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Taboo in English God, Sex and Shit

• A number of words connected with the Christian
  religion are considered holy by some people.
• Many words relating to sex are regarded as
  shocking.
• Some words referring to the elimination of body
  wastes are also regarded as dirty or shocking.

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Taboo Words

• Because taboo words are shocking, they are often
  used in situations when people want to express
  powerful emotions by using strong language. This
  is swearing.
• When people swear, taboo words usually change
  their meanings completely. The strength of the
  taboo word remains, but the original meaning
  disappears.
• For example, although fuck literally means to
  have sexual intercourse, fuck off means go
  away.

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Taboo and Syntax

• Because of this disassociation of meaning and
  form, swear words are often grammatically very
  flexible they are the only words in the language
  that can be used in exactly this way. For
  example
• This is a complete fuck-up. (noun)
• This is completely fucked up. (adjective)
• You sure fucked that up! (verb)
• Thats fucking wonderful. (adverb)

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Taboo and Etymology

• During a long formative period of modern English,
  French was a prestige language in Britain, while
  English was lower-class and stigmatized. Thanks
  to this, taboo words in English are usually of
  Anglo-Saxon origin, which acceptable words are
  usually Latinate. Compare

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Avoiding Taboo Subjects Euphemism

• These same topics of sex, religion and
  elimination of bodily wastes, along with other
  powerful subjects like death, are avoided in
  polite conversation.
• Euphemisms are the words we use to replace these
  words and subjects.

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More Sex Language, Sex and Gender

• Exercise Write as many derogatory terms for men
  and for women as you can think of. How do they
  compare?

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Language and Sexism

• In English, like many languages, language
  reflects sexism in society. Compare masculine and
  feminine forms of the words below

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Language, Sexism and Change

• In recent years, there has been a great deal of
  success with introducing gender-neutral terms
  into English in many areas chairman has become
  chairperson or simply chair, people is replacing
  mankind, to operate is replacing to man.
• But attempts to introduce gender-neutral pronouns
  (sie, hir, ey and so on) have so far met with
  abject failure.
• Remembering what we have learned about word
  classes, why do you think this is so?

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Language and Gender Mens Speech and Womens
Speech

• A test What are these things?

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In English, womens speech tends to

• Phonologically
• Use softer consonants
• Use longer vowels
• Use more rising intonation
• Syntactically
• Stick closer to proper SAE forms
• Pragmatically
• Use more questions and other softeners

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This is, as a matter of fact, true in many other
languages as well. Why?

• There are two major theories
• These softer, more tentative, more proper
  features are used in womens speech as a
  compensating mechanism.
• These same features are instead merely reflective
  of womens status in society.
• In either case, its fairly clear that (like any
  kind of dialect) differences in mens and womens
  speech are primarily social.

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No More Cursing Language Contact

• When two languages come into contact for an
  extended period, they usually have an influence
  on one another. This usually takes the form of
  borrowing.
• Borrowing can be lexical or structural.

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Lexical Borrowing

• Lexical borrowing is the adaptation of individual
  words from one language to another these are
  commonly referred to as loan words.
• American English is full of examples, as we saw
  yesterday.
• Phrases and idiomatic expressions can also be
  borrowed these are called loan translations or
  calques.
• Examples in American English are it goes without
  saying from the French il va sans dire, How
  come? from the Dutch hoekom, and so on.

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Phonological Borrowing

• Phonological borrowing occurs when one language
  adopts new sounds or phonological rules from
  another.
• For example, New York English has borrowed the
  voiceless fricative x from Yiddish in words
  like yecch, and phonological rules converting a
  word-final k to s in words like electric /
  electricity are borrowed from French.

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Morphological Borrowing

• Examples of morphological borrowing in English
  include the adoption of the derivational suffixes
  -able/-ible from French, and the person who Xs
  suffix -er from Latin.

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Contact Pidgin Languages

• When two widely-differing languages come in
  contact (when the differences are too wide for
  borrowing to make the languages mutually
  intelligible), a pidgin language is often
  created.
• Pidgins are usually made up of mixtures of
  elements from all the languages in contact quite
  often the vocabulary is derived from the socially
  and/or economically dominant language in the
  contact situation (the superstrate language),
  since speakers of the substrate language have
  higher motivation to learn the superstrate
  language than vice versa.

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For example

• Most of the words of Tok Pisin (a pidgin language
  spoken in Papua New Guinea) are clearly derived
  from English

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Creole Languages

• When a pidgin language is adopted by a community
  and learned by its children as a first language,
  that language becomes creolized.
• Interestingly, creoles become fully developed
  languages, having more lexical items and a
  broader array of grammatical distinctions than
  pidgins. These new rules are often quite distinct
  from any of the original languages the pidgin
  was derived from.
• Why? Some say its evidence for universal
  features of human language.

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Tuesdays Test

• Semantics
• Felicity Conditions
• The Brain and Psycholinguistics
• Types of Aphasia
• Short Opinion Essay Brain Damage
• Language Acquisition
• Short Essay the Innateness Hypothesis
• Sociolinguistics
• Levels of Variation
• Short Opinion Essay Education and Dialect