Download Sociolinguistics

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 psycholinguistics—what?]
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Should I make some tea?
Would you like some tea?
Can I make you a cup of tea?
Let’s 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.
There’s 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 needs—affects form—affects other
psychological pressures

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I . Inter-relationships between linguistic form
and social function (3)
 Mandarin examples:
 您， 你，敝人
 府上，舍下
 令郎，小犬
 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 data—
think up some sentences and then study them—”native
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?
what’s the language x?
people who
Speak language x
language spoken
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; they’re 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%
Number= % of informants who claimed
to understand their neighbors’ lang.
fairly easily on 1st encounter
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 can’t be used to define a language.
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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 man’s wife must speak a different
language
Marriage is patrilocal, and a wife must speak the husband’s
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
people
social class
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 “subYun-Pi
roles,”
too.
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Identification of Self
groups you belong to
education
occupation
geographic
role at any one time
Self
 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
T1
Answer
Question
T2
Answer
(raise topic)
T3
A structure of
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 doesn’t know to whom he’s
speaking and he’s 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 caller’s summoning act solves the
problem.  adjacency pair

Phone ring = summons of caller  answer of answerer
 Now, let’s 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
ring
Hello?
Tom?
*summons *answer+ voice *ID of other+
Q
clue
voice clue to self
(ID yourself)
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T3
Yeah, Bill
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V. Telephone conversation (6)
 recognition
happening at the same
time, just as adjacency
pairs of the tel. opening:
identification
 Tel. opening:
summons -- answer
question -- answer
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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. Compliments—giving compliments (I)
Giving compliments: two studies in New
Zealand & U.S—by 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
Women to men
Men to women
Men to men
most frequent
(descending frequency)
least frequent
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VI. Compliments—giving 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 “That’s 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. Compliments—giving compliments (III)
 Topics

70%
Appearance


Ability (skill)/performance


a well-done job, a skillfully played game, a good
meal
Personality/friendship


clothes, hairdo (results of deliberate effort)
“That was kind.”
Possessions

“I like your new bike.”
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VI. Compliments—responding (I)
 Responding to compliments
 What compliments do?

Two types of action simultaneously


Supportive action: an offer, congratulations, a gift
 “That’s a good idea.”
Assessment: saying something which is supposed to
be taken as TURE; like a remark, assertion, statement.


“That’s 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. Compliments—responding (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. Compliments—responding (III)
 Some conventional, formulaic responses

In Eng.: “Thank you”; in Chinese: “ 哪裡，哪裡”

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 haven’t seen the kid’s 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 hearer’s new bride)
e.g.1: A: She’s a real fox.
B: Yeah, she’s a pretty woman.
e.g. 2: A: You brought—like 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: That’s a nice sweater.
B: Do you like it? My mother bought it for me.
Return to the Speaker:
A: That’s a nice sweater.
B: Yours is new, too, isn’t 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 hearer’s 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 Tannen’s two books:

That’s Not What I Meant (1986);
conversational styles—more in general

You Just Don’t 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 crosspurposes (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 Don’t 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 don’t
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
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