language and social variation

IN THE NAME OF GOD
Language and social variation
Presented & Edited by:
Hojjat Namdaran
Instructor:
Dr. Dehnad
Based on: George Yule, The study of language

CONTENTS
•Introduction
•Sociolinguistics
•Social dialects
•Education and occupation
•Social markers
•Speech style and style-shifting

INTRODUCTION
• In the preceding chapter, we focused on variation in language
use found in different geographical areas. However, not
everyone in a single geographical area speaks in the same way
in every situation.
• We are aware of the fact that people who live in the same
region, but who differ in terms of education and economic
status, often speak in quite different ways. Indeed, these
differences may be used, implicitly or explicitly, as indications
of membership in different social groups or speech
communities .

• The study of the linguistic features that have social relevance
for participants in speech communities is called
sociolinguistics.
• The term is used generally for the study of the relationship
between language and society.
• It is tied to
1) Anthropology through the study of language and culture
2) Sociology through the investigations of the role language plays
in the organizations of social groups
3) Social psychology particularly with regard to how attitudes and percep
are expressed and how in-group and out-group behaviors are identified

Sociolinguistics is concerned with
investigating the relationships between
language and society
with the goal being a better understanding of
the structure of language
and of how languages function in
communication .
By Ronald Wardhaugh

SOCIAL DIALECTS(SOCIOLECT)
• A variety of a language with features that differ according to
the social status(e.g. middle class or working class) of the
speaker.
• Whereas regional dialects are geographically based, social
dialects originate among social groups and are related to a
variety of factors, the principal ones apparently being social
class, religion, and ethnicity( by Ronald Wardhaugh).
• In the social study of dialect, it is social class that is mainly
used to define groups of speakers as having something in
common.

CONT..,
• The two main groups are generally defined as:
• Middle class: those who have more years of education and
perform non-manual work.
• Working class: those who have fewer years of education and
perform manual work of some kind.
• The terms upper and lower are used to further subdivide the
groups, mainly on an economic basis, making upper-middle-
class speech as another type of sociolect.
1) Middle class
2) Working class

CONT..,
• Certain features that are relevant to the analysis of social
dialects
• For Example: In Edinburgh and Scotland, the word home is
pronounced as [heim], as if rhyming with name, among lower-
working-class speakers, and as [hom], as if rhyming with foam,
among middle-class speakers.
• A more familiar example might be the verb aint, as in I aint
finished yet, which is generally used more often in working-
Pronunciation Words Structures

CONT..,
• When we look for other Examples of language use that
might be characteristic of a social dialect, we treat
class as the social variable and the pronunciation or
word as the linguistic variable.

EDUCATION AND OCCUPATION
• Although the unique circumstances of every life result in each
of us having an individual way of speaking, a personal dialect
or idiolect, we generally tend to sound like others with whom
we share similar educational backgrounds and/or occupations.
For example:
• Boys throwed something or It wasn’t us what done it= speakers
who spent less time in education
• Threw is more likely than throwed and who occurs more often
than what= speakers who spent more time in educational
system

SOCIAL MARKERS
• A linguistic feature that marks the speaker as a member of a
particular social group .
• There are pronunciation features that function as social
markers:
• 1) One feature is the final pronunciation of –ing with [n] rather
than [angma] at the end of words such as sitting and drinking.
Pronunciations represented by sittin and drinkin are typically
associated with working-class speech.

CONT..,
• 2) Another social marker is called [h]-dropping, which makes
the words at and hat sound the same. It occurs at the
beginning of words and can result in utterances that sound like
I am so ungry I could eat an orse. In contemporary English, this
feature is associated with lower class and less education. This
feature seems to have had a similar association as a social
marker for Charles Dickens in the novel David Copperfield:

SPEECH STYLE AND STYLE-SHIFTING
• A way of speaking that is either formal/careful or
informal/casual .
• The most basic distinction in speech style is between formal
and informal uses.
ormal style is when we pay more careful attention
to how we are speaking= careful style
Informal style is when we pay less attention=casual style
A change from one style to another by an individual is called style-shifting

language and social variation

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