Language in society / Society in language
Language v. dialect
DialectSubordinate variety of a language
English language has many dialects
These dialects may be of different kinds
Regional dialec
Social dialectWhere we come from
Who we are
Geographical features(rivers and mountains)
Social native(social class group) The study of
dialects or dialectology has
to do with boundaries
Language and dialect in Papua New Guinea
Most of the
languages in
Papua New
Guinea are
spoken by small
groups
40% have
fewer than
500
speakers
The greatest
concentration of
diversity is found in
Melanesia
Where up to 1500
languages are spoken
People are multilingual and speak four or five
languages
New Britain
Ten examples illustrate how people in different villages
would request someone to given them
“betelnut to chew”Results
-Varieties 6 and 7 -> identical-Varieties 8 and 9 -> similar to 6 and 7-Varieties 3, 4 and 5 -> show close relationship . Differ in terms of vowel in the roof and in the prefix of the verv chew.- Variety 10 -> not very different
Two major language families
in Papua New Guinea
comprising 700 to 800 languages
Language and dialect in Europe
TheWest Romance dialects
Germanic dialect
continua
Stretches through rural communities from the Athlantic
coast of France through Italy, Spain,
and PortugalMutual
intelligibility exists
between adjacent villages
Find one another mutually
unintelligible to varying degrees
Connects a series of
historically realted
varieties that differ from one another with respect
to one or more
features
In Scandinavia, if a traveller knows
Danish, Swedish or Norwegian
It is possible to
communicate across
language boundaries
Linguistically the languages are
very close to be considered
dialects of one language
Danish NorwegianSwedish
Have a great deal of
vocabulary in common, but
differ in pronunciatio
n.
Differ more in
vocabulary, but have a
more similar
pronunciation.
¼ Swedes -> claim to read anything in the other two languages41% of Danes and 52% Norwegians ->listen Swedish radio9% Swedes -> listen Norwwegian or Danish radio
English: Language and dialect-George Bernard Shaw characterized England and America as two nations divided by a common language.
- Noah Webster authored his dictionary of American English and employed spelling for certain words which were different from British English norms
American English is
a dialect of English or a separate language?
Accent v. dialectConsists of a way of pronuncing a variety
Accent
Varies from other dialects of the same language simultaneously on at least 3 levels of organization
Dialect
pronunciation
Grammar or syntax vocabular
y
Register and Style
Register
Gives you a clue about what we are doing
Is typically concerned with variation in
language conditioned by uses rather than
users.
Style
Can range from formal to informal depending
on social context, relationship of the
participants, social class, sex, age, physical
enviroment and topic.
Speech communities and communicative competence
Speech comunity
Comunicative competence
The conventions
the share about their
speech variety can be calledGroup of people
who do not know necessarily share
the same language, but share a lot of
norms and rules for the use of
languages
This term is used by sociolinguists
to refer to a speaker’s
underlying knowledge of the rules of grammar and rules for their
use in socially appropiate
circumstances.
Language, society, and reality: different words, different
worlds?
Help us to make sence of the world