Today

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Today

• Sociolinguistics, Day 3
• Correction
• Finish Inter-group Variation some patterns of
  variation associated with social class
• Intra-Speaker Variation shifting style

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coke pop soft drink soda tonic cocola
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Lexical differences

• Words for sweetened carbonated beverage
• Coke CA, New Eng.
• Soda South, East
• Pop Midland North, West
• Tonic Boston
• Cocola Georgia, Tennessee

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Overt vs. Covert prestige

• Overt prestige
• Value attached to a particular dialect by the
  community at large that defines how people should
  speak to gain status in that community.
• Covert prestige
• Value attached to a particular dialect or
  minority group language by a subset of the
  community (local group, ethnic group).

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Social class and dialect

• William Labov
• New York City r-lessness
• Studied variation in r pronunciation as it
  relates to socioeconomic class

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Dept Store study - Method

• Interviewed salespeople at Saks 5th Ave.,
  (upper), Macys (middle), S. Klein (lower class)
• Excuse me, where are the womens shoes?
• Fourth floor. (casual speech)
• Excuse me?
• Fourth floor. (careful speech with emphasis)

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Dept Store study - Results
Klein Macys Saks
Casual 8 44 63
Careful 18 61 64
Lower Middle Upper
Percentageof rs produced
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Dept Store study - Conclusions

• Pronunciation of r increased
• w/ level of socio-economic class
• w/ attention level paid to speech (careful or
  casual)
• w/ listener (perceived middle-class)
• Variation most prominent among lower class
  speakers
• Why?
• Overt prestige

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Phonological markers of style

• Casual, informal style marked by increased speech
  rate
• unstressed vowels deleted, replaced with schwa,
  e.g.,
• casual ptHeIR vs. careful pHtHeIRoU
• deletion of word final consonants, unstressed
  syllables (jus, don)
• use of contractions (wanna, gonna, coulda)

potato
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Phonological markers of style

• pronunciation of (-ing) vs. (-in) in 3 different
  speech situations
• casual style vs. interview vs. reading
• idIn idIN
• pronounciation of -ing increased as formality/
  attention paid to speech increased

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Lexical markers of style

• Slang words and expressions used in very
  informal settings (common slang), often to
  indicate membership in a particular social group
  (in-group slang)
• usually has short lifespan
• swell, neat-o, groovy
• daddy-o
• It stinks!
• can become standardized
• phone, fridge, fan, blimp, hot dog

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Syntactic markers of style

• Casual speech characterized by
• increased use of non-standard constructions
  (e.g., double negatives, double modals)
• shorter, more concise sentences

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• but

Social Class Ethnicity Formality of
setting Topic Age Can cause speakers to shift in
other ways, too
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Code-switching as style-shifting

• Code-switching alternation between two or more
  languages (or dialects) in a single sentence or
  conversation.
• Occurs for the same reasons monolinguals shift
  styles change in formality of the situation,
  listener, topic

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Examples

• EnglishSpanish
• Sometimes I begin my sentences in English, y
  termino en español.
• Swahili (Kenya)English
• employee?employee (same ethnicity) Swahili
• employee ?employee (differing ethnicity) mixed
  SwahiliEnglish
• employee ?supervisor mixed SwahiliEnglish

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Examples

• Fanakalo (South Africa)English

Foreman Hau, Wena Foreman Ini ndaba you late
lafa lo job, hey? Employee My abject apologies,
Sir, I encountered extreme difficulty In
obtaining transport.
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Hypercorrection

• The act of producing nonstandard forms by way of
  false analogy, often to imitate the standard
  dialect
• Phonological r-insertion
• Cuba(r), idea(r)
• Grammatical
• Lets keep this between you and I.
• I dont know whom he is.

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Marthas Vineyard study

• William Labov
• Marthas Vineyard, MA
• diphthong centralization I, U in why, wow
• (compare w/ standard a I, aU)

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Marthas Vineyard study - Results

• Native islanders centralized, tourists didnt
• regional effect
• Students planning to go to college and return to
  island centralized more than students not
  planning to return
• Portuguese immigrant community showed high degree
  of centralization

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Marthas Vineyard study - Conclusions

• How closely speakers identified w/ island was
  positively correlated w/ degree of centralization
• ? seeking covert prestige
• Dialect is an important factor in group identity

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Summary

• Standard vs. non-standard dialects
• Overt vs. covert prestige
• Dept. store study influence of standard
  dialect, overt prestige
• Marthas Vineyard study influence of
  non-standard dialect, covert prestige