socio asgmt

8/17/2019 Socio Asgmt

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Language may be defined as a human system of communication that uses arbitrary signals, such

as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols. The system of communication may have varieties

and these varieties are called dialects.

(a) Explain your understanding about what a dialect is and why there are dialects in a

language.

(b) Bell (!"#) has expounded seven criteria that differentiate language and dialect. $iscuss

the seven criteria.

(c) %n your opinion, why one has to spea& with the appropriate social dialect' ive examples.

The introduction is inviting, states the main topic and

previews the structure of the paper.

#

There is one clear, wellfocused topic. *ain idea

stands out and is supported by detailed information.+ll outside sources are properly cited referenced.

-

The conclusion is strong and leaves the reader with afeeling that they understand what the writer is getting

at.

#

$etails are placed in a logical order and the way they

are presented effectively &eeps the interest of thereader.

/

0riter ma&es no errors in grammar or spelling thatdistracts the reader from the content.

/


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.1 0hat is a dialect ' and why there are dialects in a language.

+ dialect is typically a form or variation of a specific language. %n other words, a language could

be influenced socially or regionally and therefore its discourse (grammar, pronunciation andor

vocabulary) may differ. 2or instance, 3orth +mericans, 4cots and %ndians may not use the same

version of the English language. The languages used in poems by ancient poets, such as 0illiam

4ha&espeare, 5ohn 6eats, etc., are dialects of the modern English language. + dialect is different

from an accent. +ccents are more into a language7s pronunciation style8 dialects are more than

this mere utterance 9 the words and vocabulary would differ. Basically, an accent is an element

of a dialect. The language variation need not always be courtesy a region or place8 it could also

be associated with social groups or demographics 9 female or male, old or young, etc.

:rady et al. define dialect as, + regional or social variety of a language characteri;ed by its

own phonological, syntactic, and lexical properties. The term dialect is often associated with

regional varieties of speech. %n addition, though, there are dialect varieties associated with

particular ethnic groups (sometimes called ethnolects), socioeconomic classes (sometimes called

sociolects), or other social or cultural groups.

The language used by the people of a specific area, class, district or any other group of people.

The term dialect involves the spelling, sounds, grammar and pronunciation used by a particular

group of people and it distinguishes them from other people around them. $ialect is a very

powerful and common way of characteri;ation, which elaborates the geographic and social

bac&ground of any character .

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There are plenty of dialect examples in literature that show the best usage of dialect as a literary

device. :ne of them is *ar& Twain7s

5im= ?0e7s safe,


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0ill no one say hush@ to thee,

poor lass, poor bit of a wench'

0ill never a man say= Aome, my pigeon,

come an7 be still wi7 me, my own bit of a wench@

(Joor Bit of a 0ench by $.

%, the man with the red scarf,

0ill give thee what % have, this last wee&7s earnings.

Ta&e them and buy thee a silver ring

+nd wed me, to ease my yearnings.

2or the rest when thou art wedded

%7ll wet my brow for thee

0ith sweat, %7ll enter a house for thy sa&e,

Thou shalt shut doors on me.

(ipsy by $.


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place, at times, you can mar& three dialectal regions in a single shire. *odern +merican English

consists of dialects such as Eastern 3ew England, *idsouthern, %nland 3orthern, 4outhern,

eneral +merican 3orth, *idland, 3ew Mor&, and Blac& English Oernacular .

2unction of $ialect

The narrative voice in literature usually aspires to spea& in concert with the reality it illustrates.

+frican +merican authors often critici;e this condition while discussing the significance of

spea&ing in socalled ?standardC +merican English in comparison with +frican +merican

English. Toni Aade Bambara has made a remar&able contribution in this aspect by choosing the

language of her culture and community. 4he used her language as a very productive critical tool

and her dialect illustration in ?The LessonC functioned as an examination of how the people who

listen to it ultimately hear the disparaged tal&ing. By reviving the language that was long

marginali;ed she contributes towards the effort to salvage the cultural identity of +frican

+mericans. This integration of nonstandard linguistic features into the literature in ?the lessonC

wor&s as an insightful response to marginali;ation. %t also proves the strength and power of

language in portraying the diverse realities of people from different places.

+ dialect is a variety of language shared by a group of people (usually defined in terms of region

andor ethnicity) that has some grammatical patterns and words that differ from the ?standard,C

as well as nonstandard pronunciations. Mou may believe that dialects are ?wrongC 9 as linguist

Dalph 2asold so aptly puts it, dialects such as +frican+merican English are ?bad English, in the

same sense that 2rench is bad EnglishC 9 but they are certainly powerful mar&ers of social

solidarity, and that means more to most people than being ?correct.C %f you are a spea&er of a

dialect that is considered ?standardC or ?goodC (which is a social distinction, not a linguistic

one), you may never have faced social preudice due to the way you spea&, so you may thin& this

discussion doesn7t concern you. %t does, though@ 5ust li&e gender (masculine and feminine

communication styles), people can turn their dialect up or down to send social messages.

$ialects are social, not biologicalAlic& to hide

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+lthough linguists have traditionally studied dialects in terms of ?obectiveC identity

characteristics (where you7re from, your ethnicity), they &now that this is an oversimplification.

0hat matters is who you interact with over and over again, and how you see those relationships.

%f you have a strong and close social networ& with others of ?your group,C you will display more

dialect mar&ers of that group, especially when spea&ing ?innetwor&.C %f you have only wea& ties

with members of a dialect community, it doesn7t matter whether you share the same heritage or

grew up together. 4o, for instance, some +frican+mericans may use +frican+merican English

(++E) all the time (because they wish to express pride in their heritage, no matter what the

situation), some may use more dialect features with other +frican+mericans than with anyone

else (so they create more solidarity with whoever they7re spea&ing to), some may continue to use

++E sound patterns while adopting more standard vocabulary and grammar, and some +frican

+mericans may spea& in a ?standardC dialect all the time (either because they didn7t grow up in

an +frican+merican dialect community to begin with, or because they have sought to avoid the

stigma that the rest of the +merican society has traditionally attached to ethnic dialects). Mour

biology has nothing to do with it, and your history has only a little to do with it= this is a social

phenomenon. *embers of the same family may end up sounding Nuite different, depending on

their social choices and goals.

Jower P 4ocial Alass

$ialect spea&ers are consistently rated lower than standard spea&ers on all powerrelated

variables= status, wealth, education, intelligence, ambition, etc.) (+nd yes, this is true even when

the udges belong to the same dialect community as the spea&ers.) There is actually some

sociological logic behind these udgments.

0or&ingclass people tend to have tight social networ&s that remain fairly stable over the course

of their lives= they go to school with the &ids from the neighborhood, they end up wor&ing

together, sociali;ing together, intermarrying, their &ids become friends, etc. There is no

expectation that they will move away, go to college, or interact regularly with people outside of

their primary social networ& 9 so there7s no real pressure on them to use more ?standardC

varieties of English. Qsing their dialect ma&es much more sense, since it obviously effects their


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solidarity with the people who are most important= their friends, family, cowor&ers, etc. This is

why stigmati;ed dialects continue to thrive, despite considerable pressure from the rest of

society.

:n the other hand, the uppermiddle and upper class tend to be more mobile (they go away to

college, then move on to graduate and professional schools, then perhaps move elsewhere again

to establish a career). They get more education (which reinforces a ?standardC variety of English)

and are also reNuired to spea& more across group boundary lines, so it is not surprising that we

see fewer dialectspecific features in their speech.

%ntercultural Aommunication

Degions and ethnicities don7t ust have different dialects, they may have other cultures

differences that influence how members of these groups communicate.

Desponding to the use of dialects in conversation

4omeone who chooses to use a regional or ethnic dialect when spea&ing with you is either beinginformal to signal friendliness or is angry or emotional enough not to care how you udge them.


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4omeone who spea&s to you with an annoyed or angry tone, using dialect features that you don7t

share, is warning you to bac& off. %n this case, the use of the dialect clearly signals a lac& of

solidarity, a sign that you don7t belong. The spea&er signals their contempt for you by showing

that they don7t care what you thin& of them@


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The Deality of $ialects

$ialects are an unavoidable reality, and our udgments about them are never neutral. 0e ma&e

udgments about social class, ethnicity, regional bac&ground, education and a host of other social

characteristics based simply on the &ind of language people are using. %n fact, many people

believe that language differences are the single most reliable indicator

of social position in our society. 0hen we live a certain way or belong to a certain group, we are

expected to match that lifestyle with our tal&, and when we do not, people notice.

Language differences seem to be unavoidable in a society composed of a variety of social

groups, but such differences are not uniNue to +merica. +ny civili;ation (past or present) with

social and geographical dispersion can be expected to possess language diversity or dialectdifferences.

$efining $ialects

+lmost everyone has some notion of what the term dialect refers to.


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5udgments (often negative) about a dialect typically characteri;e these popular viewpoints.

Typically, they exist on a continuum=

. $ialect refers to people whose speech is noticeably different from our own. This is typically

an individual perception.

-. $ialect refers to varieties of English whose features have become widely recogni;ed

throughout +merican society.

I. %n the most extreme case, dialect refers to a &ind of deficient or ?corruptedC English. %n these

instances, dialect is perceived as an imperfect attempt to spea& ?correctC or standard English.

These popular, and often negative, misconceptions about dialects have often been described in

terms of the $ifference$eficit Aontroversy or the Linguistic %nferiority Jrinciple. Language

scholars have attempted to educate people about why these perceptions are wrong.

DE*E*BED@ $ialects are 3:T deviant or corrupt forms of a language but different language

systems that operate according to their own rules and patterns. 4ee the Exercise on +Jrefixing

as an example of this.

$ialect *yths and Dealities

*yth= + dialect is something that someone else spea&s.

Deality= Everyone who spea&s a language spea&s some dialect of the language8 it is not possible

to spea& a language without spea&ing a dialect of the language.

*yth= $ialects always have highly noticeable features that set them apart.

Deality= 4ome dialects get much more attention than others8 the status of spea&ing a dialect,

however, is unrelated to public commentary about its special characteristics.

*yth= :nly varieties of a language spo&en by socially disfavored groups are dialects.

Deality= The notion of dialect exists apart from the social status of the language variety8 there are

socially favored as well as socially disfavored dialects.


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*yth= $ialects result from unsuccessful attempts to spea& the correct form of a language.

Deality= $ialect spea&ers learn their language by imitating members of their speech community

who spea& the same variety, not by failing to mimic spea&ers of the standard variety.

*yth= $ialects inherently carry negative social connotations.

Deality= $ialects are not necessarily positively or negatively valued8 their social values are

derived strictly from the social position of their speech community.

Jroblems with Terminology

*any linguists now believe that because of the pervasive, popular misconceptions about dialects,

the term dialect itself is problematic because it carries negative connotations. *any linguists

use one or more of these neutral terms in place of the term dialect= ) language difference8 -)

language variety8 I) language variation8 K) speech differences. 0e will use all of these terms

interchangeably in this course (including

the term dialect in its neutral sense).

4tandard English and Oernaculars

+lthough every variety constitutes a dialect of that language, one particular variety or dialectusually is regarded as the standard. %n our language, we call this variety 4tandard English.

Language +cademies %n some countries (most notably, 2rance and 4pain) language academies

have been established that are responsible for determining what forms (spo&en and written) are

considered acceptable for the normative standard. They determine, for example, what new

words are allowed to be included in official dictionaries, and what grammatical forms and

pronunciations are standard. %n the Qnited 4tates, we do not have such an institution, and

attempts to establish one have failed.


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0hen we consider 4tandard English, we need to distinguish between two different aspects or

levels of operation=

. 2ormal 4tandard English or Jrescriptive 4tandard English

+lthough we do not have a language academy, the norms of our language are prescribed by

recogni;ed sources of authority such as grammar and usage boo&s, dictionaries, teachers, and

educational institutions. Typically, 2ormal 4tandard English (24E) is based on the written, rather

than the spo&en, language and is codified by the sources of authority listed above. +s a variety of

English, it tends to be very conservative, so that it is the last language style or variety to be

affected by any changes going on in the language. 24E is li&ely to be found in formal &inds of

written language and in formal &inds of spo&en language, such as speeches and ceremonies. %n

everyday conversational speech, there are very few people who consistently spea& 24E.

-. %nformal 4tandard English (%4E)

This spo&en variety represents the attempts by spea&ers to conform their speech to 24E and is

determined by the actual usage patterns of spea&ers. 0hile 24E relies on outside, prescriptive

authorities, %4E is based on the actual &inds of assessments that different members of +merican

society ma&e as they udge the speech of others. %n other words, listener udgment is essential in

determining socially acceptable norms for %4E (ie, udgments about %4E can be fairly subective).

AonseNuently, %4E always exists on a linguistic continuum between standard and nonstandard

poles. $ifferent udgments will be made based on multiple norms of acceptability, including

regional and social considerations.


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+t the other end of the continuum of standardness are varieties that are often referred to as

nonstandard English dialects or vernacular dialects. This includes any variety of the language

that is outside of %4E. Li&e %4E there are a number of different social and regional factors that

contribute to the ma&ing of a vernacular dialect.


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$efinition=

%n sociolinguistics, a variety of speech associated with a particular social class or occupational

group within a society. +lso &nown as sociolect.

$ouglas Biber distinguishes two main &inds of dialects in linguistics= geographic dialects are

varieties associated with spea&ers living in a particular location, while social dialects are

varieties associated with spea&ers belonging to a given demographic group (e.g., women versus

men, or different social classes) ($imensions of Degister Oariation, !!).

Even though we use the term Rsocial dialectR or RsociolectR as a label for the alignment of a set of

language structures with the social position of a group in a status hierarchy, the social

demarcation of language does not exist in a vacuum. 4pea&ers are simultaneously affiliated with

a number of different groups that include region, age, gender, and ethnicity, and some of these

other factors may weigh heavily in the determination of the social stratification of language

variation. 2or example, among older European+merican spea&ers in Aharleston, 4outh

Aarolina, the absence of r in words such as bear and court is associated with aristocratic, high

status groups (*c$avid !K/) whereas in 3ew Mor& Aity the same pattern of rlessness is

associated with wor&ingclass, lowstatus groups (Labov !##). 4uch opposite social

interpretations of the same linguistic trait over time and space point to the arbitrariness of the

linguistic symbols that carry social meaning. %n other words, it is not really the meaning of what

you say that counts socially, but who you are when you say it.

(0alt 0olfram, 4ocial Oarieties of +merican English. Language in the Q4+, ed. by E. 2inegan.

Aambridge Qniversity Jress, -11K)

Language and ender

+cross all social groups in 0estern societies, women generally use more standard grammatical

forms than men and so, correspondingly, men use more vernacular forms than women. . . .

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G%Ht is worth noting that although gender generally interacts with other social factors, such as

status, class, the role of the spea&er in an interaction, and the (in)formality of the context, there

are cases where the gender of the spea&er seems to be the most influential factor accounting for

speech patterns. %n some communities, a womanRs social status and her gender interact to

reinforce differential speech patterns between women and men. %n others, different factors

modify one another to produce more complex patterns. But in a number of communities, for

some linguistic forms, gender identity seems to be a primary factor accounting for speech

variation. The gender of the spea&er can override social class differences, for instance, in

accounting for speech patterns. %n these communities, expressing masculine or feminine identity

seems to be very important.

(5anet


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To a linguist, all of this sounds a lot li&e a sociolect= a language variety that7s spo&en within a

social group, li&e Oalley irl9influenced OalTal& or +frican +merican Oernacular English. (The

word dialect, by contrast, commonly refers to a variety spo&en by a geographic groupthin&

+ppalachian or Lumbee.) :ver the past -1 years, online sociolects have been springing up

around the world, from 5eenese in the Jhilippines to +li Language, a British lingo inspired by

the 4acha Baron Aohen character.

(Britt Jeterson, The Linguistics of L:L. The +tlantic, :ctober -1K)

4lang as a 4ocial $ialect

%f your &ids are unable to differentiate among a nerd (Rsocial outcastR), a dor& (Rclumsy oafR) and

a gee& (Ra real slimeballR), you might want to establish your expertise by trying these more recent

(and in the process of being replaced) examples of &iduage= thic&o (nice play on sic&o), &nob,

spasmo (playground life is cruel), burgerbrain and dappo.

Jrofessor $anesi, who is author of Aool= The 4igns and *eanings of +dolescence, treats &idsR

slang as a social dialect that he calls Rpubilect.R


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%n chapter -- of The Life and +dventures of *artin Ahu;;lewit (/KIKK), Aharles $ic&ens

amusingly illustrates one of the misconceptions attached to the concept of dialect .

:ne common myth about language is that a dialect is always somebody elseRs peculiar way of

spea&ing, never our own.

But the truth is, everybody spea&s a dialect (or a lect, as some linguists would have it). %t may be

standard or nonstandard, urban or rural, but itRs a distinctive form of the language all the samea

variety of the mother tongue that most of us learned in early childhood. To a linguist, no dialect

is inherently better or worse than any other.

The same goes for accentsthough accents and dialects arenRt Nuite the same. Mour accent is

simply the way you pronounce words.

+ dialect involves vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation. +nd dialects come in

various overlapping shapes and si;es.

There are national dialects, such as +merican English, %rish English, and Jhilippine English.

There are also regional dialects, spo&en in specific areas of a country8 social dialects (or

sociolects), associated with certain classes or occupational groups8 and ethnic dialects,

commonly used by members of a particular ethnic group.

2inally, thereRs the language variety uniNue to each individual spea&er. ThatRs called an idiolect.

4o in that sense, itRs true that we all spea& different dialects of the same language. 0hatRs

remar&able is that we understand one another as well as we do (a convenient phenomenon

called mutual intelligibility).

:f course, sometimesas with the legendary Englishman, 4cotsman, and %rishman at the barit

may ta&e a few libations to facilitate communication.

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0hat % understand about dialects

0hat is a dialect'

$ialect is one of those words that almost everybody thin&s they understand, but which is in fact a

bit more problematic than at first seems to be the case. + simple, straightforward definition is

that a dialect is any variety of English that is mar&ed off from others by distinctive linguistic

features. 4uch a variety could be associated with a particular place or region or, rather more

surprisingly, it might also be associated with a certain social groupmale or female, young or

old, and so on.

But whether the focus is regional or social, there are two important matters that need to be

considered when defining Fdialect7. 0e have to decide what the building bloc&s of a dialect

might be. +nd even before this, we could usefully confront the most common mista&es that

people ma&e when referring to Fdialect7.

+ common mista&e is to confuse a Fdialect7 with an accent, muddling up the difference between

words people use and the sounds they ma&e, their pronunciation. %f vocabulary and grammar are

being considered alongside pronunciation, then Fdialect7 is a reasonable term to use. But often,

when claiming to discuss a dialect, someone will concentrate ust on pronunciations. %f what is

being spo&en about are sounds alonethat is, accentthen the area of language study is rather

pronunciation, or phonology.

%t will be obvious from this that accent, or pronunciation, is a special element of a dialect that

needs separate attention to be properly understood. +rguably the best&nown phonological

distinction in England is the socalled FB+T< vowel7, the Nuality of the a sound differing

between north and south. +nother, still more significant on the world stage, concerns the issue of

rhoticity, relating to whether or not written r is sounded when it follows a vowel. 0hilst most people in England and 0ales do not pronounce the r (and are therefore nonrhotic), those in the

English 0est Aountry and parts of Lancashire do. %n this they are oined by most 4cots and %rish

spea&ers of English, and by the maority of 3orth +mericans. +lthough the English tend to

regard rhoticity as an exotic aberration, it is in fact numerically and geographically the dominant

form in world terms.

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0here do dialects begin and end'

+nother fundamental mista&e is to thin& of the Fstandard7 variety of a language as the language,

with dialects relegated to substandard status. By subscribing to the definition of Fdialect7 as a

distinct variety, we are agreeing that the standard variety itself is a dialect. :f course, that variety

is special in that, for a space of time at least, it is regarded as a model for purposes that include

language teaching and the general transmission of daytoday information. But structurally there

is nothing inherently superior in the ma&eup of a Fstandard dialect7= nonstandard dialects have

vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation which are eNually detailed in structure, and indeed are

often imbued with pedigrees far older than those of the standard variety of the day.

+ good case of pedigree is that of while, which in 0est Mor&shire usage today (and well into the

twentieth century in usage much further south) can mean Funtil7 in such expressions as Fwait

while five o7cloc&7. %t would be easy to dismiss this as Nuaint or even wrong, but its documented

history goes bac& at least to the fourteenth century, and it was doubtless in spo&en use well

before then. +t the level of social dialect, young men are often vilified, not least by their female

friends, for calling young women birds. That this is too easy a udgment becomes apparent when

one notes that burd has a long history, and is defined as a poetic word for Fwoman, lady7.

Jlace and upbringing

Qndoubtedly the most accessible part of a language that we can study is its vocabulary, or lexis.

+s we move from one part of a country to another we hear words that are entirely strange to us.

:r the words might be ones we understand but do not use, i.e. words that are in our passive

rather than active vocabulary. $epending on where a person comes from in England, they might

use the word gully or entry, tenfoot or ginnel, snic&et or twitten, or some other word, to refer to

a narrow path between buildings. %n parts of the *idlands and north of England people use

pi&elet to describe what most people, and all the supermar&et retailers, call a crumpet. Jeople

might be critici;ed for Fgetting it wrong7 with this usage, but it is not in fact a mista&e. Dather,

it7s a good example of distinctively regional vocabulary, and most of us who have roots in one

particular area have special words, or use well&nown words in a special way, that we only

discover are Fstrange7 to others when we travel away from home.

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But distinctive vocabulary does not only mar& us out as local to particular places. 3o matter

where one comes from, one might eat pudding or dessert or sweet or afters, depending on a

whole range of social factors, such as family, education and career, that influence the way a

person tal&s. This brings us to another aspect of dialect that is sometimes forgotten. Jeople with

different upbringings or social bac&grounds or aspirations often spea& differently from one

another, even though they live in the same community. 4o do people of different ages, with

young people perhaps using words or phrases or pronunciations which older people do not, and

which older people may disapprove of= minger used to describe a person udged to be

unattractive is an excellent example. :n occasions men may also spea& differently from women,

though this has less to do with their sex than with the roles that they play in society and the

expectations placed on them. $ifferences li&e these are most definitely what we can call dialect,

but it is social rather than regional dialect.

$ialects and grammar

+nother area of language difference, besides phonology and lexis, has to do with the way in

which words can be changed to slightly alter their meaning, ma&ing them plural for example, and

the way in which they are lin&ed together in longer units to create messages. This is all the area

of grammar.

To ta&e the first of these elements of grammarthe alteration of wordsdo you refer to two or

more swimming creatures as fish, or fishes' $o you say F% came to town yesterday7, or F% come

to town yesterday'78 F% was or % were'78 Themselves7 or theirselves' %n each example, the

differences are caused by our selecting respectively from various ways of ma&ing individual

words= the plural of nouns, the past tense of verbs, and reflexive pronouns. *any categories of

words undergo change li&e this, involving word endings or other alterations (or nonalterations)

of form. This feature of grammar, Fwordgrammar7, is morphology. The second aspect of

grammar, when words come together in various combinations so that they have collective

meaning, is syntax. 0hen as&ing for something to be given to them, most English spea&ers say

Fgive me it7. But several million spea&ers of British English, largely but not only in the English

0est *idlands, are more li&ely to say Fgive it me7, which does not sound at all strange to them

although it does sound strange, and even confusing, to many others. (There is, of course, the

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possibility of saying Fgive it to me7, using an alternative grammatical construction which neatly

avoids this particular problem altogether.) Ahoices li&e this are not at all random, but depend a

lot on where someone lives, or at least on where they lived when they learnt the language.

rammatical differences of syntax li&e this, and those of morphology, are all dialectal.

4tudying dialects= early approaches

Because it is so immediately accessible and, more importantly, because it opens a window on the

past, it is not surprising that vocabulary played a most important part in the early study of dialect.

Qndoubtedly the most famous wor& on dialect lexis is 5oseph 0rightFs sixvolume English

$ialect $ictionary (/!/!1) which remains an essential text for all students of the subect.

This pioneering wor& drew on the collections of the English $ialect 4ociety, set up to gather its

data and disbanded in /!# when it saw its tas& to having been completed. But the torch was

carried forward by innumerable independent enthusiasts and, most significantly amongst

scholars, by 2rederic& Aassidy and the $ictionary of +merican English ($+DE) team in the

Qnited 4tates, and in England by


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4E$, and more recently the 4urvey of +nglo0elsh $ialects and the Linguistic 4urvey of

4cotland.

Bac& to top

4ocial dialectology

The dominance of largescale geographical dialect surveys was bro&en in the !#1s with the

advent of Fsocial dialectology7. +lthough the focus remained on language change, linguists

interested in variation, led in large measure by the +merican 0illiam Labov, began to loo& at

differences of the moment (that is, synchronic variations) within communities, as displayed by

spea&ers with different social profiles. 3ow the aim was to go beyond the facts of difference over

time to reach some understanding of the causes of change. %n addition to social sampling, themain tool of such linguists is the Fvariable7. This is a linguistic feature that is expressed in two or

more ways (Fvariants7) and which, collected in bul&, allows their relative prominence to be

statistically analysed. %n this &ind of study phonology comes to the fore as pronunciation features

constantly recur in any collection of data. 5ust as importantly, distinctions in the pronunciation of

any variable (the B+T


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gender of spea&er. There is thus every reason to suppose that dialect studies can continue to

progress with both strandsthe historicallyoriented study of essentially regional variation, and

the sociallyfocused detailing of differences in speech within particular communitieswith each

contributing to a better understanding of speech differences, and what these tell us about how a

language changes over time.


24/28

http=studentsrepo.um.edu.myI!"-2ullUchapters.pdf


25/28

+udio Alips of $ialects

$ictionary of +merican Degional English. http=dare.wisc.edu.

The Language 4amples Jroect. (-11). $ialects of the 3ortheast Q4. Qniversity of

+ri;ona. http=www.ic.ari;ona.eduVlsp3ortheast3ewMor&Englishnyphon.html.

%$E+ (%nternational $ialects of English +rchive) http=www.dialectsarchive.comunitedstates

ofamerica

eorge *ason Qniversity7s http=accent.gmu.edubrowseUlanguage.php

functionWfindPlanguageWenglish

JB47 ?$o Mou 4pea& +merican'C http=www.pbs.orgspea&seatoseaamericanvarieties


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Deferences

+lim, "

?They spea& really bad English down south and in 3ew Mor& AityC by $ennis D. Jreston (also

available at http=www.pbs.orgspea&speechpreudiceattitudes ), *yth >-1 ?Everyone has an

accent except meC by 5ohn I ?Blac& children are verbally deprivedC by

0alt 0olfram.

Baugh, 5ohn. (-111). Beyond Ebonics= Linguistic Jride and Dacial Jreudice. :xford Qniversity

Jress.

Bender, *argaret (Ed.) (-11K). Linguistic $iversity in the 4outh= Ahanging Aodes, Jractices,

and %deology. Qniversity of eorgia Jress.

2asold, Dalph 0. (!!!) Ebonic 3eed 3ot Be English. Aenter for +pplied Linguistics.

http=www.cal.orgresourcesdigestebonicissue.html

2ought, Aarmen. (-11-). Ahicano English in Aontext. Jalgrave *acmillan.

reen, Lisa 5. (-11-). +frican +merican English= + Linguistic %ntroduction.

Aambridge Qniversity Jress.

Lippireen, Dosina. (-1). English with an +ccent= Language, %deology, and $iscrimination in

the Qnited 4tates. -nd Ed. Doutledge.

*urray, Thomas Edward P Beth Lee 4imon. (-11#). Language Oariation and Ahange in

the +merican *idland= + 3ew Loo& at ?


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0olfram, 0alt P 3atalie 4chillingEstes. (-11#). +merican English= $ialects and Oariation. -nd

Ed. Blac&well.

+dger, Aarolyn Temple, 0alt 0olfram P $onna Ahristian. (-11"). $ialects in 4chools

and Aommunities. -nd Ed. Doutledge.

Bucholt;, *ary. (-11). The whiteness of nerds= 4uperstandard English and racial mar&edness.

5ournal of Linguistic +nthropology ()= /K11.

Bucholt;, *ary. (-11K). 4tyles and 4tereotypes= The Linguistic 3egotiation of %dentity +mong

Laotian +merican Mouth. Jragmatics K (-I)= -"K".

Bucholt;, *ary. (-1). 0hite 6ids= Language, Dace, and 4tyles of Mouth %dentity. Aambridge

Qniversity Jress.

Aassidy, 2rederic ., 5oan


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Lo, +drienne. (!!!). Aodeswitching, speech community membership, and the construction

of ethnic identity. 5ournal of 4ociolinguistics I= K#"!.

*artin, 5udith 3. P *itchell D.

socio asgmt

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