Sociolinguistics LECTURES 2022
Contents
Lecture 1 – Sociolinguistics.......................................................................................................................... 1
Lecture 2 – Language variation and style .................................................................................................... 3
Lecture 3 – Language attitudes ................................................................................................................... 7
Lecture 4 – Social grouping ....................................................................................................................... 10
Lecture 5 – Real and apparent time / change ........................................................................................... 16
Lecture 6 – Multilingualism and language contact.................................................................................... 20
Lecture 7 – Gender and language use ....................................................................................................... 24
Lecture 1 – Sociolinguistics
Covid themed introduction
Because of Covid a lot of sociolinguistic research became impossible. But there are nice alternatives. Like
someone who studied language used in Zoom meetings of a Russian school. This example is illustrative of
one of the many questions that Sociolinguists have:
- how do people use language to deal with their environment?
- How do social processes and linguistic constraints interact with one another?
Due to the pandemic loads of new words emerged. ‘Morona’. And what do you do as a speech community
when you don’t have a word for a new object like mouth mask. Do you borrow the word from another
language or do you make a new word using rules from your own language?
But it’s not just words, according to some, also everyday language is transformed because of the
pandemic. And so the need for sociolinguistics has become very clear. Sociolinguists know for example
how to prevent miscommunication.
But will this pandemic speech last? There is variation, but is there also change?
Variant vs variable
The relationship between variation and change is also of interest to sociolinguists. When you want to
know more about this, then two concepts are particularly important:
Variants are the different ways in which a variable can be realized.
Variants always show a relative difference in proportion of use.
You won’t find someone who always uses one variant 100% of the time (never absolute). That’s because it
depends on style of speaking, as well as linguistic context.
If you want to study variation you need to know all the alternating contexts in which the variants that
you’re interested in can appear. All the linguistics contexts that can impact the realization of a variant are
together called the envelope of variation.
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,For those who like statistics: the variables we are interested in here in this course, can be regarded as
dependent variables. Sociolinguists work under the assumption that the choice for one variant over
another, depends on the values of other variables, like for example style, age, gender, social class,
ethnicity and location.
All those factors will be discussed in the following classes.
But why is there variation in language use?
Our languages behaviour is driven by four important motivations (from the book):
- A desire to show how you fit in with some people and are different from others (fit in with some
people and differentiate from others, a balance)
- A desire to do things that have value in the community (do what has value, accentuate the
positive)
- A desire not to do things that are looked down on in the community (avoid what has costs,
eliminate the negative)
- A desire to work out how others are orienting themselves to the concerns above (try to work out
what others are up to, reduce uncertainty, it’s a jungle out there)
The complex relation between these motivations and language variation will be discussed in other classes,
but they are important “do learn them by heart” - Margot
Language variation – Diachronic
The examples we’ve discussed so far are synchronic: different variants can be found at the same point in
time. But if you take the passing of time into account, language can also be variable. Diachronic language
variation is often equated with language change, but this is not always the case. For example: different
words will be used in different time periods to narrate different experiences. Does that mean the
language has changed?
Historical linguists have shown that Dutch has lost its case system (naamvallen). So if you take a sentence
from the 11th century Dutch with case and compare it to its translation now without case, that’s a clear
example of language change (not variation).
But the source of language change is always synchronic language variation.
A A/B B
There can be a popularity contest between variants that ends up with one of them dying out, the process
of change is then completed. But it’s not always that simple. Sometimes the less popular variant doesn’t
die out, but lingers, or ends up meaning something else for example.
So it’s not always easy to distinguish between the outcomes of change (completed change) and the
process of change.
Social and regional variants might be precursors of language change. They might give you an idea of what
the language of the future will sound like.
Sociolinguistics is.. (let’s conclude with some remarks on sociolinguistics)
The term sociolinguistics appears to have been used first by poet and philosopher Currie in 1952. He
coined the term to promote taking more social aspects into account when doing linguistics.
The field of sociolinguistics has changed significantly over the past decades.
Sociolinguistics aim to correlate language variation with social structural categories (class, age, gender,
etc). These macro social categories are fundamental to the social order of society. This is why it is
interesting. But correlation only shows relation, no causation. So some sociolinguists kept looking for
correlation, others shifted their focus and looked more closely at language variability. While we speak we
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, make all sorts of statements about who we are.
Other interests are language awareness, to what extent are people aware of language variation? What
kinds of social information do we ascribe to language varieties (attitudes)?
Sociolinguistics is about everything.
Qualitative and quantitative sociolinguistics
So sociolinguists study diverse topics, but their methods also differ. Both qualitative and quantitative
methods can be seen as ways to deal with the observers paradox: the minute you start studying how
someone speaks, they might change how they speak considering that you are observing them. So what
you want to know is in some way unknowable.
A prototypical qualitative sociolinguists uses participant observations, taken from anthropology, they
spend a lot of time with the people they want to observe.
Quantitative sociolinguists handle the paradox differently. For example by sociolinguistic interviews.
Individuals are interviewed but and then grouped, the data is interpreted as group averages.
Waves of variation studies (first lecture)
Quantitative sociolinguistics comes in waves. Penny Eckerd (or something) distinguished 3 waves of
quantitative sociolinguistics:
First wave: initiated by Labov (1966) NYC study. Based on a combination of rapid survey and
quantitative methods the social spread of sound change was shown.
Second wave: studies that combine ethnographic methods (participant observations etc.) of data
collection on one hand with quantitative data analysis on the other. Variants are seen as identity
markers, related to the groups who most use them. (Margot’s favourite: Rickford (1985))
Third wave: instead of looking at variation in relation to macro social categories, it’s associated
with speaker categories at the micro social level as well as with identity categories. Like ‘nerd girl’
identity and speak (from Bucholtz 1999, Margot’s fav example of third wave)
First wave: the start of quantitative methods in sociolinguistics, with the help of methods such as
rapid & anonymous survey and the Sociolinguistic Interview. The goal is to show social variety.
Second wave: combining these quantitative methods with the qualitative methods such as participant
observations. Variants are now seen as identity markers of groups.
Third wave: Now we dive deeper into the identity thing. Not just social categories such as age,
gender, socioeconomic status, but also micro social categories and identities.
From the second lecture:
“Style shifting is then a means by which to express identity. (Act of identity). Thus Couplands work can be
seen as an example of third wave linguistics.”
“There are critical questions to ask about the Speaker Design theory. But at the same time we also need
to realize that speaker agency and speaker performativity were completely overlooked in the variationist
studies of the first and second wave of sociolinguistics.”
Lecture 2 – Language variation and style
BBC pidgin anecdote
… don’t think this matters.
What’s in a name ?
You’ve heard language, dialect, ethnolect, sociolect, pidgin etc.
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