Miagal do Nuludan Koposion Kolibambang
Wednesday 20 January 2016
Monday 21 October 2013
ATAGAK NOPO BOROS ATAGAK NO TINARU
An
Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Janet Holmes)
Chapter One: What do sociolinguists study?
Sociolinguistics: a term that refers
to the study of the relationship between language and society, and how language
is used in multilingual speech communities.
Q what aspects of language are Sociolinguists interested in?
Sociolinguists are interested
in explaining why people speak differently in different social contexts. And
the effect of social factors such as (social distance, social status, age,
gender, class) on language varieties (dialects, registers, genres, etc), and they
are concerned with identifying the social functions of language and the way they
are used to convey social meanings.
Q what do sociolinguists mean by the term variety?
A variety is a set of
linguistic forms used under specific social circumstances, with a distinctive
social distribution.
* Formality increases
between participants (speaker and hearer) when the social distance is
greater. Informality (Solidarity) increases when the social distance is
little between participants (speaker and hearer).
* Social status depends
on a number of factors such as social rank, wealth, age, gender and so on;
therefore the person with the higher social status has the choice of using
formality or informality (solidarity) when addressing other persons of lower
social status. But the person with the lower social status uses only formality
when addressing a person of higher social status.
Chapter Two: Multilingual speech communities
Domains : domains of language use, a
term popularised by an American sociolinguist, Joshua Fishman. A domain of
language involves typical interactions between typical participants in typical
settings about a typical topic. Examples of these domains are family,
friendship, religion, education and employment.
Setting: the physical situation or the typical place where speech interactions occur (code choice), settings such as home, church, mosque, school, office, etc.
Diglossia: communities rather in which two languages or language varieties are used with one being a high variety for formal situations and prestige, and a low variety for informal situations (everyday conversation). Diglossia has three crucial features; two distinct varieties of the same language are used in the community, with one regarded as high (H) variety and the other as low (L) variety. Each variety is used for quite distinct functions; H & L complement each other. No one uses the H variety in everyday conversation.
Example: the standard
classical Arabic language is the high variety in Arab countries, and it is used
for writing and for formal functions, but vernacular (colloquial) Arabic is the
low variety used for informal speech situations.
Polyglossia:basically polyglossia situations involve two contrasting varieties (high and low) but in general it refers to communities that regularly use more than two languages.
Polyglossia:basically polyglossia situations involve two contrasting varieties (high and low) but in general it refers to communities that regularly use more than two languages.
Code-switching: it is to move from one code (language, dialect, or style) to another during speech for a number of reasons such, to signal solidarity, to reflect one's ethnic identity, to show off, to hide some information from a third party, to achieve better explanation of a certain concept, to converge or reduce social distance with the hearer, to diverge or increase social distance or to impress and persuade the audience (metaphorical code-switching)
Lexical borrowing: it results from the lack of vocabulary and it involves borrowing single words – mainly nouns. When speaking a second language, people will often use a term from their first language because they don't know the appropriate word in their second language. They also my borrow words from another language to express a concept or describe an object for which there is no obvious word available in the language they are using.
* Code switching involves a choice between the words of two languages
or varieties, but Lexical borrowing is resulted from the lack of
vocabulary.
Chapter Three: Language maintenance and shift
Language shift : it happens when the language of the wider society (majority) displaces the minority mother tongue language over time in migrant communities or in communities under military occupation. Therefore when language shift occurs, it shifts most of the time towards the language of the dominant group, and the result could be the eradication of the local language
Q What factors lead to language shift?
Economic, social and political
factor
1-The dominant language is associated
with social status and prestige
2-Obtaining work is the obvious
economic reason for learning another language
3-The pressure of institutional
domains such as schools and the media
Demographic factors
1-Language shift is faster in
urban areas than rural
2-The size of the group is
some times a critical factor
3-Intermarriage between groups
can accelerate language shift
Attitudes and values
1-Language shift is slower
among communities where the minority language is highly valued, therefore when
the language is seen as an important symbol of ethnic identity its generally
maintained longer, and visa versa.
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Language death and Language loss:
When all the people who speak
a language die, the language dies with them.
With the spread of a majority
group language into more and more domains, the number of contexts in which
individuals use the ethnic language diminishes. The language usually retreats
till it is used only in the home, and finally it is restricted to such personal
activities as counting, praying and dreaming.
Q How can a minority language be maintained?
1- A language can be maintained
and preserved, when it's highly valued as an important symbol of ethnic identity
for the minority group.
2- If families from a minority
group live near each other and see each other frequently, their interactions
will help to maintain the language.
3- For emigrate individuals
from a minority group, the degree and frequency of contact with the homeland
can contribute to language maintenance.
4- Intermarriage within the
same minority group is helpful to maintain the native language.
5- Ensuring that the minority
group language is used at formal settings such as schools or worship places
will increases language maintenance.
6- An extended normal family in
which parents, children and grandchildren live together and use the same
minority language can help to maintain it.
7- Institutional support from
domains such as education, law, administration, religion and the media can make
a difference between the success and failure of maintaining a minority group
language.
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Language revival: some times a
community becomes aware that its language is in danger of disappearing and
takes steps to revitalises it.
Example:
In 1840, two thirds of the
Welsh people spoke Welsh, but by 1980, only 20% of the population spoke Welsh,
therefore the Welsh people began a revival process of Welsh language by
using a Welsh-language TV channel and bilingual education programs that
used Welsh as medium of instruction at schools.
Chapter Four: Linguistic varieties and
multilingual nations
Vernacular language: It generally
refers to a language which has not been standardised or codified and which does
not have official status (uncodified or standardised variety). It generally
refers to the most colloquial variety in a person's linguistic repertoire.
Standard Language: a standard variety
is generally one which is written, and which has undergone some degree of
regulation or codification (in a grammar and a dictionary).
* The development of Standard
English illustrates the three essential criteria which characterise a standard:
It emerged in the 15th as a delicate of the London area and it was influential or prestigious
variety (it was used by the merchants of London ,
it was codified and stabilised (the introduction of the first
printing press by Caxton accelerated its codification), and it served H
functions in that it was used for communication at Court, for literature
and for administration.
World Englishes: world English
languages are classified into, inner circle Englishes as in the UK , USA
(English as a native or first language); Outer circle Englishes as in India , Malaysia ,
Tanzania (English as a
second language with an official status), and Expanding circle Englishes as
China , Japan , Russia (English as a foreign
language).
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Lingua franca: a language used for
communication between different language users, for people whose first
languages differ, such as pidgin between European colonizers and African slaves
(Swahili).
Pidgin: it is a language
which has no native speakers. Pidgins develop as a means of communication
between people who don't have a common language.
Creole: when a pidgin
becomes the language of newly-born generations as a mother-tongue or first
language, and acquires additional vocabulary and grammatical structures to
serve their various necessary communicative needs (referential and social
functions) it becomes a Creole.
Chapter Five: National languages and language
planning
National
language: it is the main language of political, social and
cultural practices, where people use it as a symbol of their national unity /
Official language is the language used by governments for formal functions /
In a monolingual community, a national language is usually also the official
language, but in bilingual or multilingual communities, it may or may not be
the official language. For example: English and French are both official
languages in Canada .
Planning for a national official language:
1-
Selection: selecting the variety or code to by developed.
2-
Codification: standardising its structural or linguistic features.
3-
Elaboration: extending its functions for use in new domains.
4- Securing
its acceptance: acceptance by people in terms of attitude & prestige.
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* Linguists
have played an important role at the micro level of language planning activates.
Many of them work as members of communities with a lot of influence on language
planning, and especially on the standardization or codification of a particular
variety. Example: Samuel Johnson's 40,000-word dictionary was a landmark
in the codification of English.
Acquisition
planning: sociolinguists can make a contribution to organized
efforts to spread a language by increasing the number of its users, by using it
in the education system (language-in- Education planning) or in the
media domains such as news papers, radio, etc.
Chapter Six: Regional and social dialects
Accent:
accents are distinguished from each other by pronunciation.
Dialects:
linguistic varieties which are distinguishable by their vocabulary, grammar and
pronunciation.
* Examples
of different regional dialects:
Example one: in British
English: pavement, boot, bonnet, petrol, baggage. But in American
English: sidewalk, trunk, hood, gas, luggage.
Example two: the
word tog in English refers to clothes one wears in formal dinner, but in New Zealand , it
refers to clothes one wears to swim in.
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Social dialects: a variety of language that reflects social variation in language use, according to certain factors related to the social group of the speaker such as education, occupation, income level (upper-class English, middle-class English and lower-class English. For example: Standard English can be classified as a type of social English spoken by the well-educated English speakers throughout the world.
Social dialects: a variety of language that reflects social variation in language use, according to certain factors related to the social group of the speaker such as education, occupation, income level (upper-class English, middle-class English and lower-class English. For example: Standard English can be classified as a type of social English spoken by the well-educated English speakers throughout the world.
*
Received Pronunciation (the Queens English) or BBC English (the accent of the
beast educated and most prestigious members of English society) is classified
as a social accent.
Q Is there a relationship between one's
language and one's social identity?
The language one
uses often reflects one's social identity and education, for example: dropping
the initial h in words like house can indicate a lower
socioeconomic background. On the other hand, pronouncing the letter r in
the city of New York is considered as a
prestigious feature, but the opposite is true in London .
Isogloss: a term
that refers to the boundary lines that mark the areas in which certain dialect
words are used.
Sharp
Stratification: it refers to the pattern that certain pronunciation
features such as h-dropping and grammatical features such as mutable negation
divide speaking communities sharply between the middle class and the lower
classes.
Chapter Seven: Gender and age
* It is claimed that
women are linguistically more polite than men
Q How are the language forms used by men and women different in western
societies, give examples? (just read)
In western societies, women
and men whose social roles are similar do not use forms that are completely
different, but they use different quantities or frequencies of the same form. For
example: women use more standard forms than men, and men use more
vernacular forms than women / women use more ing-forms than men and fewer
ing-forms in words like coming or running. But in western
communities, such differences are also found in the speech of different social
classes, therefore the language of women in the lower and higher classes is
more similar to that of men in the same group.
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Q Explain women's linguistic behavior (using forms that are more
standard):
1- Social status: women
generally have a lower social status in society; therefore they try to acquire
social status by using Standard English.
2- Women's role as guardian
of society's values: women use more standard forms than men, because
society tends to expect 'better' behavior from women than from men (women serve
as modals for their children's speech).
3- Subordinate groups must be
polite: women use more standard forms than men, because children and women
are subordinate groups and they must avoid offending men, therefore they must
speak carefully and politely.
4- Vernacular forms express
machismo: men prefer vernacular forms because they carry macho connotations
of masculinity and toughness. Therefore women might not want to use such form,
and use standard forms that associated with female values or femininity
5- women's categories: Not
all women marry men from the same social class, however it is perfectly
possible for a women to be more educated then the man she marry, or even to
have a more prestigious job than him.
6- The influence of the
interviewer and the context: women tend to become more cooperative
conversationalists than men.
Chapter Eight: Ethnicity and social networks
* It is often possible for individuals
to signal their ethnicity by the language they choose to use. Even when a
complete conversation in an ethnic language is not possible, people may use
short phrases, verbal filers or linguistic tags, which signal ethnicity. For
Example: In New Zealand
many Maori people routinely use Maori greetings such as kia and ora,
while speaking in English, to signal their ethnicity.
African American Vernacular
English: a distinct variety or dialect that was developed by African Americans as
a symbolic way of differentiating themselves from the majority group.
Some of AAVE linguistic
features (pp186-187)
- Complete absence of the
copula verb be in some social & linguistic contexts
- The use of invariant be
to signal recurring or repeated actions
- Mutable negation
- Constant cluster
simplifications
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British Black English
1-Patois: a Jamaican Creole in origin, which is used by Jamaican immigrants in London and by young
British Blacks in group talks as a sign of ethnic identity.
Some of Patois linguistic features
(p190)
- Lexical items such as lick
meaning 'hit' and kenge meaning 'week, puny'
- Different pronunciation like
then and thin are pronounced 'den' and 'tin'.
- Plural forms don't have s
on the end.
- Tenses aren't marked by
suffixes on verbs, so forms like walk and jump are used rather
than walked, walks, jumped, and jumps.
- The form mi is used
for I, me and my (mi niem / my name).
- The form dem is used
for they, them and their (dem car / their
car).
2- Midland Black English: a variety of Standard English with a west
midland accent which is an informal variety with some Patois features.
3- Multi-cultural London
English: a variety used by adolescents (teenagers) from a range of ethnic
backgrounds, including Jamaican & Asian backgrounds. Its features include
using monophthongs instead of diphthongs and a distinctive
vocabulary, for example: blood / mate
and nang / good and yard / house.
- Social networks: who we talk and
listen to regularly is an important influence on the way we speak (regular
patterns of informal social relationships among people.
- Density: it refers to
whether members of a person's network are in touch with each other.
- Plexity: is a measure of
the range of different types of transaction people are involved in with
different individuals.
- Uniplex relationship: is one where the
link with the other person is in only one area.
- Multiplex relationship: it involves
interactions with others along several dimensions.
- Community practice: the activities that
group members share, and their shared objectives and attitudes (one belongs to
many communities of practice such as family, workgroup, sports team, etc).
Chapter Nine: Language change
* Variation and Change: the cause behind
language change is the variation of use in the areas of pronunciation and
vocabulary.
Post-vocal |r| its spread and its
status: In many parts of England
and Wales ,
Standard English has lost the pronunciation post-vocal r. The loss of r
began in the 17th century in the south-east of England and is
still spreading to other areas. Accents with post-vocal |r| are called rhotict,
and these accents are regarded as rural and uneducated. On the other hand in
cities like New York ,
pronouncing the letter r is regarded as prestigious.
The spread of vernacular forms: some
times a vernacular feature in some communities as a reflection of ethnic
or social identity such as what happened in Martha's Vineyard Island .
Labov's 1960 study showed: when the island was invaded by summer tourists, the
island community of fishermen changed their pronunciation of some word vowels
to older forms from the past as a reaction to the language of tourists.
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Q How do language changes spread?
1- from group to group: changes spread
like waves in different directions, and social factors such as age, gender,
status and social group affect the rates and directions of change.
2- from style to style: from more formal
to more casual, from one individual to another, from one social group to
another, and from one word to another.
- Lexical diffusion: the change from
one word's vowel to another, the sound change begins in one word and later on
in another, etc.
Q How do we study language change?
A- Apparent-time studies of
language change: it is the study of comparing the speech of people from different age
groups, to find out any differences that could indicate change (whether
increase or decrease).
B- Studying language change in
real time: in this study, the researcher studies the language in a community and
then comes back to it after a number of years to study it again, and find out
any changes.
Reasons for language change:
1- Social status and language
change: members of the group with most social status, for example, tend to
introduce changes into a speech community from neighboring communities which
have greater status and prestige in their eyes.
2- Gender and change: differences in
women's and men's speech are a source of variation which can result in
linguistic change.
3- Interaction and language
change: interaction and contact between people is crucial in providing the
channels for linguistic change (social networks).
4- The influence of the media: some researcher
belief that media has a great influence on people's speech patterns and new
forms.
Chapter Ten: Style, context and register
* Language varies according to
use and users and according to where it is used and to whom, as well as
according to who is using it. The addresses and the context affect our choice
of code or variety, whether language, dialect or style.
1- Addressee's influence on
style: many factors influence the addressee's style such as social distance /
solidarity / age / gender / social background.
2-Formal contexts and social
roles: the formal setting where the social roles of participants override
their personal relationship in determining the appropriate linguistic form (style).
3- Topic or function: style is sometimes
determined by the function which language is used for.
- Audience design: the influence of
the audience (listeners) on a speaker's style, for example: the same
news is read differently by newsreaders on different radio stations during the
same day, therefore producing different styles for each audience.
Accommodation Theory
Speech converges: each person's
speech converges towards the speech of the person they are talking to. It tends
to happen when the speakers like one another, or where one speaker has a vested
interest in pleasing the other or putting them at ease.
Speech diverges: deliberately
choosing a different language style not used by one's addressee, it tends to
happen when a person wants to show his cultural distinctiveness, social status,
ethnic identity, etc.
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Hypercorrection: it is the
exaggeration of some lower class speakers in imitating middle class standard
speech. For example: the use of 'I' rather than 'me' in
constructions such as 'between you and I'.
Register: occupational
style using specialized or technical jargon, it describes the language of
groups of people with common interests or jobs, or the language used in
situations associated with such groups, such as the language of doctors,
engineers, journals, legalese, etc.
Q in sports announcer talk; what is the difference between ply-by-play
commentary and color commentary?
- Play-by-play commentary: it
focuses on actions by using telegraphic grammar.
- Colour commentary: it
focuses on people, with heavy and long modifications or descriptions of nouns.
Chapter Eleven: Speech functions, politeness &
cross-cultural communication
Functions of Speech
1- Referential function: to convey information
and this is done through different forms of speech, such as declarative or interrogative
statements.
- Declarative statements (After
this semester, I'm going to visit London )
- Interrogative statements
using Wh-questions (what is your name?)
- Interrogative statements using
yes/no questions (do like London ?)
- Alternative questions with
answer choices (do like tea or coffee?)
2- Directive function: giving orders or
making requests by using imperative statements. An imperative statements may
express a strict demand such as saying (open the door) or it can seem
less demanding by using the politeness strategy such as saying (open the
door, please) or through using question tags in the case of informality
between mother and son (Max the TV is still on!)
3- Expressive function: to express
personal feelings, thoughts, ideas and opinions, with different choice words,
intonation, etc. These expressions are submissive to social factors and to the
nature of the expression as negative (I'm very gloomy tonight) or
positive (I'm feeling very good today).
4- Phatic or Social function: it is one of the
most common speech acts in everyday interactions; it consists of greetings, complements,
gossip, etc. for greeting a friend, a speaker can say (hi/hello).
As for greeting a stranger, the speaker can use (hello), but the more
formal greetings between strangers are (good morning/afternoon/evening).
5- Metalinguistic Function: it is used to
describe parts of language such as grammar, or words that describe language
itself (I is a personal pronoun)
6- Poetic Function: using poetic
features such as rhyming words, alliteration or paronomasia and antithesis (An
apple a day keeps the doctor a way).
7- Heuristic Function: Halliday
identified this function of language which concerned with learning, the main
concentration of researching this function of speech is to identify the spoken
language of learning children.
8- Commissives: it involves using
threats and promises (I will clean my room, I promise).
Politeness: it is the consideration of
social factors (social distance in terms of solidarity or formality), social
status, type of situation or context, intonation, etc when communicating with
others.
* One may ask somebody to sit
down by using different utterances:
Sit down / please sit down
/ I want you to sit down / won't you sit down / you sit down
/ why don't you make yourself more comfortable?
- Positive politeness: a type of
politeness based on solidarity between speakers and hearers who share values
and attitudes, and in which formal expressions in addressing are avoided.
- Negative politeness: a type of
politeness based on formality between speakers and hearers in which formal
expressions in addressing are used in order to protect hearers' face and avoid
intruding on them.
Chapter Twelve: Gender, politeness and
stereotypes
Women's language and confidence
Lakoff's linguistic features
of women's speech:
1- Lexical hedges or fillers (you
know, sort of, well, you see)
2- Tag questions (she's very
nice, isn’t she?)
3- Rising intonation on
declaratives (it's really good)
4- 'Empty' adjectives (divine,
charming, cute)
5- Precise colour terms (magenta,
aquamarine)
6- Intensifiers such as just
and so (I like him so much)
7- 'Hypercorrect' grammar (consistent
use of standard verb forms)
8- 'Super-polite' forms (indirect
requests, euphemism)
9- Avoidance of strong swear
words (fudge, my goodness)
10- Emphatic stress (it was a
BRILLIANT performance)
Q What are tag questions for Lakoff and what are their functions?
According to Lakoff, Tag
questions are syntactic devices that are used more by men to express uncertainty
(she's very nice, isn't she) and they are used more by women to express
positive politeness (you will study for the exam, won't you?).
Interaction
Q Who interrupts more, men or women? Why?
Studies showed that men, and
even boys interrupt more, due to women's gender rather than to their role or
occupation.
Q who gives more feedback during conversation, men or women?
Studies show that women are
more cooperative and give more feedback.
Q What is gossip? What functions does gossip have for women? What is
men's equivalent activity to women's gossip?
Gossip is a social not a
referential function to affirm solidarity, and relieve feelings. The equivalent
activity for gossip to men is mock-insults and abuse, with the function of
expressing solidarity & maintaining social relationships.
Chapter Thirteen: Language, cognition and
culture
Language and perception
Q What is verbal hygiene?
It is a thought–provoking
term, used by Deborah Cameron describe how People respond to the 'urge
to meddle in matters of language'. It covers a wide range of activities, from
writing letters to Editors complaining about the 'deterioration' and 'abuse' of
language, through prescriptions and proscriptions about what constitutes
'proper', 'correct' and 'acceptable' usage in a range of contexts, to using
language as a political weapon.
Euphemism: substituting
unacceptable terms with nicer words or terms, such as disabled instead
of crippled, cosmetically different instead of ugly.
Dysphemism: using derogatory terms
of language to reflect society's perceptions of particular groups, such as
referring to a coloured person as a nigger or a homosexual
male as gay or queer.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
In his analysis of Native
American languages, Whorf noticed that the particular words selected to
describe or label objects often influenced people's perceptions and behavior.
Q What is linguistic determinism?
The medium is the message, Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis (linguistic determinism) is that people from different cultures
think differently because of differences in their languages.
* Testing Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis: if Whorf is right then it is difficult to identify colours which your
language does not have a name for. But although people form the Dani
tribe in New Guinea, use only two colour terms (corresponding to black and
white or dark and light), it was found that they could recognize and
distinguish between subtle shades of colours that their language had no names
for (pale blue vs. turquoise).
* Different discourse patterns can
reflect different patterns of thinking or socio-cultural relationships, for
example: a similar news report can be represented differently from one
newspaper to another, in form and content.
Chapter Fourteen: Analysing discourse
Q What is discourse?
For sociolinguists, the term
discourse is generally used to refer to stretches of spoken or written language
which extend beyond an utterance or a sentence.
For philosophers, discourse is
a broader term; it is regarded as a means of structuring knowledge and social
practice, and language is just one symbolic form of discourse.
Q How is discourse viewed by pragmatics?
Pragmatics are concerned with the
analysis of meaning in interaction, context is crucial in interpreting what is
meant, and pragmatics extends the analysis of meaning beyond grammar and word
meaning to the relationship between the participants and the background knowledge
they bring to a situation, which is analysed in terms of conversation maxims
and politeness.
Q What are conversation maxims?
Paul Grice formulated four
maxims of cooperative talk:
1- Quantity: say as much as
but no more than necessary
2- Quality: do not say what
you believe to be false, or that for which you lack evidence
3- Relation: be relevant
4- Manner: be clear,
unambiguous, brief and orderly
Q What are the politeness rules that Lakoff introduced?
1- Don't impose: use modals and
hedges: I wonder if I might just open the window a little.
2- Give options: use interrogatives
including tag questions: do you mind if I open the window? It would be nice
to have the window open a little wouldn't it?
3- Be friendly: use informal
expressions endearments: Be a honey and open the window darling.
Ethnography of speaking: or ethnography of
communication, it is an approach developed by the sociolinguist Dell Hymes,
for analysing language, which has been designed to heighten awareness of
culture-bound assumptions.
* The frame work that Hymes
developed for the analysis of communicative events involved the following
components:
- Genre type of event: phone call,
conversation, business meeting, etc.
- Topic of what people are
talking about: holidays, sports, politics, etc.
- Purpose of function: the reason (s) for
the talk.
- Setting: where the talk
takes place.
- Key of emotional tongue: serious, jocular,
sarcastic, etc.
- Participants: characteristics of
those present and their relationship.
- Message form: code and/or
channel (telephone, letter, email, etc).
- Message content: specific details of
what the communication is about.
- Act sequence: ordering of speech
acts.
- Rules for interaction: prescribed orders
of speaking.
- Norms for interpretation: what is going on?
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Interactional sociolinguistics: Interactional sociolinguists
typically make use of the detailed tools of conversation analysis, by paying
careful attention to turn-taking behavior, hesitations, pauses, and paralinguistic
behavior (sights, laughter, in-breaths, etc) to interpret what the speaker
intended.
Q What is Contextualisation cause?
In an interactional
sociolinguistics perspective, features 'by which the speakers signal and
listeners interpret what the activity is, how the semantic content is to be
understood and how each sentence relates to what precedes or follows'.
Conversational analysis: CA researchers
approach communication as a jointly organized activity like dancing, or cooperative
musical. Discourse is conversation (talk) which has its own structure
(openings, closings, overlaps, turn-taking, interruptions, etc.)
Critical Discourse Analysis: it is concerned
with investigating how language is used to construct and maintain power
relationships in society; the aim is to show up connections between language
and power, and between language and ideology.
Chapter Fifteen: Attitudes and applications
Attitudes to language
* Language attitudes (positive
or negative) towards a language or a variety have much impact on language and
education
Q Explain overt prestige & covert prestige from a sociolinguistic
perspective?
The meaning of overt
prestige is reasonably self-evident; it is associated with the standard
variety in a community 'the best way of speaking in a community'. In
contrast the term covert prestige refers to positive attitudes towards
vernacular or non-standard speech varieties.
Q What are the methods of collecting attitude data?
1- Direct observation
2- Direct questions
3- Indirect measures
Q Why do working-class children fail in schools more than middle-class
children from a sociolinguistic perspective?
1- The criteria for success are
middle-class criteria, including middle-class language and ways of interaction
2- Many of the children,
recognizing that schools are essentially middle-class institutions,
deliberately and understandably rebel against all that they represent.
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