ENTRY #11 The Study of Language

Summary of chapters 18. 19 & 20 of The Study of Language.

                                                 

BOOK: Yule, G (2016). The Study of Language. U.K.: CUP. Chapter 18: Language and regional variation  The standard language is the version of language that has no specific region of use. It is found in printed English in newspapers and books, in the mass media and is taught in most schools.
 Accent and dialect: The term “accent” is constrained to the description of aspects of pronunciation that identify where a speaker is from, regionally or socially. The term "dialect" is used to describe features of grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of pronunciation.
 Dialectology:  The linguistic study that distinguishes between two different dialects of the same language, by establishing the fact that each different dialect  is equally worthy of analysis.
 Isoglosses and dialect boundaries: The term “isogloss” refers to a line that represents a boundary between areas, with regard to one particular linguistic item. As soon as a number of isoglosses come together, a “dialect boundary” can be drawn.
 The dialect continuum:  The tendency at most dialect boundary areas is that one dialect or language variety merges into another. Considering this point of view, we can claim that regional variation as existing along a dialect continuum from one region to another.
 Bilingualism and diglossia: Bilingualism refers to the ability to speak two languages as a native speaker.  Diglossia is a special situation involving two distinct varieties of a language, where two main variaties are distinguished:  a “low” variety, acquired locally and used for everyday affairs, and a “high” or special variety, learned in school and used for important matters.
 Pidgins and creoles:  The origin of the term “pidgin” is believed to be a Chinese version of the English term “business”. It is a variety of a language that was developed for some everyday purpose among people who had to interact, but who did not know each other´s languages. Creole term refers to a pidgin that becomes the first language of a social community.
 Chapter 19: Language and social variation  Sociolinguistics: It refers to the relationship between language and society. The interaction of linguistics with other academic disciplines, like anthropology, sociology and social psychology, contribute to analyse language from a social perspective.

Social dialects: The study of social dialects involves speakers in towns and cities. In the social study of dialect, groups of speakers that have something in common are used  to define social classes, which are identified as "middle class",( those who have more years of education and perform non-manual work), and "working class", (those who have fewer years of education and perform manual work of some kind).
 Education and occupation:  in everyday life, we are influenced by a tendency of sounding like others with whom we share similar educational backgrounds and/or occupations.  As adults, the outcome of our time in the educational system is usually reflected in our occupation and socio-economic status. The manner in which business executives, as opposed to office-cleaners, talk to each other, frequently provides linguistic confirmation for the significance of these social variables.
 Speech style and style-shifting: Speech style refers to both “careful style” and “casual style”, which are related to the distinction between formal and informal uses of language. Style-shifting denotes the changing from one style to another. Register and jargon: A register is a conventional style of using language that is suitable in a specific context. One of the defining features of a register is the use of jargon, which is a distinctive technical vocabulary connected to a specific area of work or interest.
 Slang refers to singular words use by young speakers to communicate among them.
 African American English (AAE) also known as Black English or Ebonics is a variety used by many African Americans in many different regions of the USA. It has a number of characteristic features that, taken together, establish a distinct set of social markers. Vernacular language: The form of AAE that has been most studied is the African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The term “vernacular” is a general expression for a kind of social dialect, typically spoken by a lower-status group, which is treated as “non-standard” because of noticeable differences from the “standard” language.
 
Chapter 20: Language and Culture Culture: We define the term culture to refer to all the ideas and assumptions about the nature of things and people that we learn when we become members of social groups. It can be defined as “socially acquired knowledge”. This is the kind of knowledge that we originally acquire without consciousness. We develop awareness of our knowledge, and therefore of our culture, only after having developed language.
 Categories: A category is a group with certain features in common. We can exemplify this concept considering the vocabulary we learn and use as an inherited set of category labels. Some languages may have lots of different words for types of “rain” or kinds of “coconut”, and other languages may have only one or two items for that notion. We can say that there are conceptual distinctions that are lexicalized in one language and not in another. Kinship terms: These words are used to mention people who are members of the same family. All languages have kinship terms (e.g. brother, mother, grandmother), but they differ on placing the family members into diverse categories.
 Time concepts:  Some words such as week or weekend, enclose a conceptual system that operates with amounts of time as common categories. Having words for units of time such as “two days” or “seven days” indicate that we can think of time (i.e. something abstract) in amounts, using noun phrases, in the same way as “two people” or “seven books” (i.e. something physical). In another world view, time may not be treated in this way.
 Linguistic relativity: The structure of our language has an influence on how we perceive the world. The mother tongue has a definite role in shaping “collective thought” The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf produced arguments that the languages of Native Americans, such as the Hopi, headed them to understand the world differently from those who spoke European languages. According to Whorf, the Hopi perceive the world differently from other tribes because their language leads them to do so.
  Cognitive Categories: As a way of analysing cognition, or how people think, we can look at language structure for clues, not for causes. The fact that Hopi speakers inherit a language system in which clouds have “animate” as a feature may tell us something about a traditional belief system, or way of thinking, that is part of their culture and not ours. Their cultural interpretation of the feature “animate” may be closer to the concept “having special importance for life”, rather than “having life”.
 Social  Categories: some words such as father or mother provide examples of social categories, because they are connected or related to others. In this way we are marking individuals as members of a group defined by social connections.
 Address Terms: The word or phrase for the person being talked or written to. In many languages, there is a choice between pronouns used for addressees who are socially close versus distant. As a consequence, we should consider a fundamental difference in social categorization, the one based on “gender”.
 Gender: Social gender refers to the distinction made when we use words like “man” and “woman” to classify individuals in terms of their social roles.