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Study questions
1. How would you definea “speech community”?
Key: A speech community is a groupof people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use oflanguage.
2. Whatis the difference between an idiolect and a sociolect?
Key: An idiolect is a languagespoken by one person with their own private meanings, hence the termidiosyncrasy. It may seem odd to others.
A sociolect on the other hand is a dialect spoken within a group ofpeople that others may not fully understand. Think of the different dialects ofsay, German. Most understand the core words but only a small group understandsthe dialect.
3. Why did Labov try toelicit answers with the expression fourth floor?
Key: The expression fourth floorcontains two opportunities for the pronunciation (or not) of postvocalic /r/,which Labov was investigating as a linguistic variable.
4. In what way can thepronunciation of -ing be a social marker?
Key: The pronunciation of -ing with[n] rather than [ŋ]at the end of a word such as sitting is a social marker associated withworking-class speech.
5. What is meant by a“register”?
Key: A register is a conventionalway of using language that is appropriate in a specific situation, occupationor in discussing a particular topic. An example is the legal register, with itsspecial jargon, used among lawyers.
6. In AAVE, what iscommunicated by the use of be in He don’t be smokin now?
Key: The use of be communicates‘habitual action’, so He don’t be smokin now means that smoking is not ahabitual action for him now, or that he has stopped smoking.
Tasks
A. Howdoes “micro-sociolinguistics” differ from “macro-sociolinguistics”?
Key: (1) Micro-sociolinguisticsexplores the ways in which society influences a speaker's idiolect — meaning thespecific language of a person — and how people communicate with one another inline with different social variables/factors.
(2) On the other hand, macro-sociolinguistics focuses more onsociety as a whole, in relation to language.
(3)So with micro-sociolinguistics the emphasis is on language; withmacro-sociolinguistics the emphasis is on society.
B. Inthe study of social dialects, whatis “the observer’s paradox” and how can it be overcome?
Key: The expression "theobserver's paradox" was used by Labov(1972:209) to describe an inherentproblem in using face-to-face interviews to collect representative speechsamples from informants. This is how he expressed the paradox:
The aim of linguistic research in the community must be to find outhow people talk when they are not being systematically observed; yet we canonly obtain these data by systematic observation.
The sociolinguist usually wants to record normal casual spokenlanguage as used by individuals in everyday situations, but the presence of theinterviewer and the recorder has an effect on most speakers, making them paymore attention to how they are speaking and more concerned not to use what theymight think are "incorrect" forms, for example. So, the observer, orinterviewer, has an effect on the data elicited, making it potentially verydifficult to get genuinely representative speech samples.
One way that Labov suggested as a partial solution was to askinformants questions that distracted them from thinking about how they werespeaking because they became more involved emotionally in what they weretalking about. One example was the question: "Have you ever been in asituation where you thought you were going to be killed?" Another solutionis to have another individual "chat" with the informant (while beingrecorded) before or after the actual interview in order to allow the informantto use a more relaxed or casual speech style.
C. Whatis the difference between style-shifting and code-switching?
Key: The term"style-shifting" describes a change from a formal (and careful) wayof speaking to one that is informal (and casual), or vice versa, as discussedin this chapter. The term "code-switching" describes the use of twoor more languages in the same utterance or interaction.
Code-switching way may occur "inside" a sentence, as inthe following example from Poplack (1980:596), quoted in Winford (2003), wherea Spanish prepositional phrase (="with the/my fists") is used as aconstituent in an English sentence.
D. Whatis the origin of the term “Ebonics” and how has its meaning changed?
Key: Ebonics (a blend of the wordsebony and phonics) is a term that was originally intended to refer to thelanguage of all people descended from enslaved Black Africans, particularly inWest Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. Since the 1996 controversy overits use by the Oakland School Board, the term Ebonics has primarily been usedto refer to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect distinctivelydifferent from Standard American English.