chapter 6: regional and social dialects

Chapter 6Regional and social dialects

By:Dharshini Radhakrishnan

Yvonne Glory ThomasShirley Mong

Rowena Amanda FrancisKalaiarasiy Karunaneithy

Cross-continental variation: dialect chains

• A particular language will be used by people living in nearby towns, villages

• There is a chain or continuum of language from one village or town to the next one

• Although it won’t be completely the same language, there would be some similarity that is understandable

• Eg: French spoken in the border towns and villages of Italy, Spain and Switzerland.

• The linguistic features overlaps and usage in one area merges into the next.

• Intelligibility of the language is not a help either.

• Languages serve social functions

• Look at language from a social and political functions, and it’s linguistic features

• Language= dialects with linguistically similar

• Eg: Chinese= Mandarin, Hokkein, Cantonese

Regional Variation

• Regional variation takes time to develop. There are three categories of regional variation:A.) International Varieties B.) Intra-national or intra-continental variation

C.) Cross-continental variation: dialect chains

International varieties• shows how different parts of the

world use the same language differently in terms in the sense of the pronunciation, vocabulary (word choice) and grammatical structures.

i) Pronunciation– The different pronunciation under the

international varieties context shows how different countries pronounce, the same word differently (or might sound differently in the ears of others from different country).

– For example: When New Zealanders pronounces words like ‘bad’ and ‘dad’, the British might hear it as ‘bed’ and ‘dead’ respectively.

ii) Vocabulary (Word choice)- The different choice of words that are used in different parts of the world can be one of the indicators for a listener to guess where you are from.

  - For example: The word ‘single parents’ is used by the British to represent a man or woman who are raising a family or children on their own without the existence of the other partner. However, Australians call them ‘sole parents’ and ‘solo parents’ by the New Zealanders

iii) Grammar- The different grammatical structure used by speakers from different parts of the world also acts as a label to indicate where they are from.

 For example:

*These differences does not only happen in English Language. It happens in all other languages which are used in different parts of the world too.

American British

Do you have a match? Have you got a cigarette?

She has gotten used to the noise.

She’s got used to the noise.

He dove in, head first. He dived in head first.

Did you eat yet? Have you eaten yet?

• Sometime the differences between dialects are a matter of frequencies with which particular features occur, rather than completely different ways of saying things.

• Example: How do you pronounce the word ‘bottle’ or ‘water’? Do you pronounce the ‘t’ in those words or you omit them (glottal stop)? And do you pronounce them the same way every time you say that word in daily conversations?

Intra-national or intra-continental variation

• ‘Intra’ here indicates within a country or continent. Therefore, we are talking about not just different accents but with dialect differences within a country.

• Dialectologists can distinguish regional varieties for almost every English country such as Yorkshire, Lancashire, Northumbria, Somerset, Lincolnshire and so on.

• Some dialects, such as Scouse, Cockney and Geordie even have distinct names showing how significant they are in distinguishing groups from one another.

• For example: In London area, the Cockney dialect is quite distinctive with its glottal stop [?] instead of [t] in words like bitter and butter. And its rhyming slang, trouble and strife for ‘wife’

• Example: Just like the Terengganu-ans in Malaysia omits the [r] in almost every word that has ‘r’ and tends to replace it with [w] Example, rumah -> umah / wumah, orang -> o-ang / owang

• Words for dragonfly in the Eastern states include darning needle, mosquito hawk, spindle, snake feeder, snake doctor and snake waiter. But in New York only darning needle is used. From that, New York developed two new variants dining needle and diamond needle.

• Example: The Kelantanese will say ‘ma-ke’, and the Terengganuans will say ‘makang’ for makan (Standard BM)

• Or, ‘Ceke-dish’ for tidbits by Kelantanese and ‘jajan’ by Johorians while it is makanan ringan in the standard BM

Cross-continental variation: dialect chains

• Dialect chains are very common across the whole Europe. One chain links all the dialects of German, Dutch and Flemish from Switzerland through Austria and Germany and it continues.

• Languages are not purely linguistic entities. They serve as social functions.

• It is important to look to a language’s social and political functions as well as linguistic features to define a language.

• A language can be thought of as a collection of dialects that are usually linguistically similar, used by different social groups who choose to say that they are speakers of one language which functions to unite and represent them to other groups.

• For example, Chinese language acts to unite the other dialects such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Teo Chew and others although Chinese who speak one dialect necessary understands other speakers of other dialects although they might share similar linguistic features. 

Social Variation

RP: A social accent• Those days, a person’s

identity can be known by their regional form of English

• People who spoke a regional accent in English, unlikely belong to the upper class

• RP@ Received Pronunciation-accent of the best educated and most prestigious members of English society

• Received means ‘received’ at the royal court

• Social and regional accent variation (Reproduced from Trudgill 1983a: 42)

Social variation

Regional variation

Highest class: RP (used by less than 5% of the British population)

Lowest class: most localized accent (those from the lowest socio-economic level)

Has least variation in language

Has more variation in language

• But now, there are more than one accent associated with the highest social group

• Eg: most well-educated Scots, Irish and Welsh speakers do not use RP

Social Dialects

• Dialects: linguistic varieties which are distinguishable by their vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation

• It is also the speech of people from different social accent

• Eg: RP = social accent, English=social dialect, dialect used by well-educated English speakers

Standard English• Allows some variation within

its boundaries

Social variation

Regional variation

Highest class: standard dialectBroader range of variants which qualify as a part of standard dialect of English in country

Lowest class: most localized non-standard

• Standard English is spoken with many different dialects

• Linguistic forms which are not a part of standard English is non-standard@vernacular

• Vernacular = variety of meanings which has something in common

• Vernacular language are not standard language

• Vernacular dialect features are not standard language features

• Vernacular forms = are acquired at home, used in casual contexts

• Vernacular language and dialects = lack of public or overt prestige, valued by its users, used as mean to express solidarity and affective meaning

Social Status

Castes• People grouped by similar social and

economic factors.• Language reflects grouping coz

different social dialects are used.

• Example: social divisions are obvious in India and Indonesia

• Caste systems determined by birth• Strict social rules for every group.

Rules cover:-• Types of job• Marriage• Attire• Food• Behavior in social situation

• Social distinction reflected in speech difference.

• Example:Indian language (Brahmin & Non-

Brahmin)Tamil

Brahmin - tuunguNon- Brahmin - orangu

• Javanese social status

• reflected in linguistic forms & particular combinations of forms

• Example: varieties / stylistic level make up the groups distinctive dialect

• 6 distinguishable stylistic dialects

“you” “now” Stylistic level

Padjenengan Samenika 3a

Sampéjan Samenika 3

Sampéjan Saniki 2

Sampéjan Saiki 1a

Pandjenengan Saiki 1a

Kowé

Saiki 1

Table 1: two Javanese words at different stylistic levels

Source : based on Geertz, 1960

The Dialect

• Lowest status group, the peasants, uneducated townspeople – level 1, 1a & 2

• Urbanized people, with some education – level 1, 1a, 2, 3, & 3a.

• Highly educated, highest status – 1, 1a, 1b, 3 & 3a.

• In Javanese, social dialect – particular combination of styles / levels

• Distinctive patterns of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation.

Social Class: Vocabulary• Social class – differentiate people with

different social prestige, wealth & education.

• Class – convenient label for groups of people – similarities in economic & social status.

• Relationship between social class & language patterns.

• Different social class speak differently.

OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE• Vocabulary of the upper class English people

and the rest.

U speakers = upper class English peopleNon-u speakers = the rest

U Speakers Non-U SpeakersSitting room Lounge

Lavatory ToiletBag HandbagSofa Settee

Relations Relatives Writing paper Notepaper

• These vocabulary difference are like those that distinguish Brahmin & Non- Brahmin castes.

• However, the barriers between groups are not insurmountable like caste based society.

• People can move up / down the social ladder

Pronunciation [h] – dropping

• Only uneducated people drop their [h]

• Highest social groups drops the least amount of [h]

• Lowest social groups omits the most [h]

• Similarly, the pronunciation –ing vs –in • ([i ] vs [in]) ᶇ at the end of words

• For example:sleeping and swimming

• distinguishes social groups in every English sleeping community.

• People from lower social groups use more of the vernacular [in] variant than those from higher groups.

[r]- PRONUNCIATION

•There are two possible variants of [r] :• Present and pronounced • It is absent

•Standard dialect speakers do not pronounce [r] after vowels. Eg. car and card.

•The higher a person’s social group, the more [r] they pronounce.

• Labov conducted an interesting experiment demonstrating in a neat and economical way that pronunciation of post-vocalic [r] varied in the city according to the social group.

• The results showed clear social

stratification of [r] pronunciation.

• In New York City, pronouncing [r] is

considered prestigious. • In one city the higher your social class the

more you pronounce post vocalic[r].

• In the other, the higher your social class

the fewer you pronounce.

Vowels• Labov measured people’s pronunciation of

five vowels as well as a number of consonants.

• He developed a method which involved giving a score to different pronunciations according to how close they were to the prestige pronunciation or standard in the community.

• In New Zealand, a survey of 141 people living in the South Island distinguished three different social groups on the basis of the way speakers pronounced the diphthongs in words such as boat, bite and bout.

• Many New Zealanders consider RP an inappropriate standard accent for New Zealand, but in practice it is still an influential prestige norm.

• The systematically patterned scores for diphthong pronunciation in different social groups clearly revealed the social basis of New Zealand patterns of pronunciation.

• The higher a person’s social class, the closer their pronunciation was to RP.

Other LanguagesPercentage [I]-deletion in two social classes

in Montreal FrenchProfessional Working Class

il (impersonal)e.g. il pleut ‘it is raining’

89.8 99.6

il (personal)e.g. il part ‘he is leaving’

71.6 100.0

elie 29.8 82.0

Grammatical PatternsForm Example

Past tense verb forms 1. I finished that book yesterday.2. I finish that book yesterday.

Present tense verb forms 1. Rose walks to school every day.2. Rose walk to school every day.

Negative forms 1. Nobody wants any chips.2. Nobody don’t want no chips.

Ain’t 1. Jim isn’t stupid.2. Jim ain’t stupid.

•It ain’t no cat can’t get in no cop.

•There isn’t any cat that can get into any (pigeon) coop.

The end. Thank you