Lecture 4

Lecture 4 -- Summary Outline

Language and Society: What Your Speech Says about You

By Valerie Fridland

Four Levels of Language Variation

Previously, we examined how communities of speakers build social

meaning using some parts-but not others-of their linguistic

endowment. Different groups vary in terms of which aspects of

linguistic competence they use, with social facts playing a large role in

determining what facets of their cognitive grammar are relevant in their

speech. Individuals’ speech also varies according to the norms of their more

local communities. But before we delve too deeply into this relationship

between variation and social identity, we first need to understand the different

linguistic features that can be put to work by speakers. In this lecture, we will

cover some of the linguistic levels affected by dialect variation, specifically,

phonetics, phonology, syntax, and morphology.

I. Phonetics and Phonology

A. The areas of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language

are phonetics and phonology. Though these two fields are related,

phonetics centers on how sounds are actually produced.

1. An example of a phonetic difference might be the Southern

pronunciation of the vowel in the words tie and hide as “taz”

and “ha:d.”

2. The Southern pronunciation of the fay/ vowel is what is

referred to by linguists as a linguistic shibboleth-a speech

form that is recognizable as being associated with a particular

type of speaker or as signaling a particular social identity.

Though not all Southerners monophthongize the fay/ vowel, no

non-Southerners do; thus, it is a strongly identifying feature of

Southern speech.

B. Phonology is the area of linguistics that is concerned with how

human speech sounds are organized into unique systems in

language.

1. An example of phonological organization would be the number

of vowels used in different languages. For example, there are 5

vowel sounds in the vowel inventory of Japanese. Essentially,

all words use one of those 5 vowels and no other vowel sounds.

English, in contrast, has a large vowel inventory, essentially

using ll stressed vowels.

2. One consequence of this difference is that a Japanese speaker

must use one of the 5 Japanese vowel sounds to approximate

English vowels when learning English words. This results in

the substitution of the closest vowel from the Japanese system

for the vowel the speaker lacks in the English system.

3. The vowel sounds in boot and book are different for an English

speaker, but this contrast does not exist in Japanese. Thus,

when speaking English, a Japanese speaker will use the vowels

in Japanese that are the closest-sounding approximates to the

vowel sounds of English. Because tl'|is won’t be equivalent

to an English speaker, this difference will mark the Japanese

speaker as a normative speaker of English.

4. This is an example of how phonology can mark a difference

between two languages. This difference may, in turn, be

taken to suggest certain things socially about the speaker,

such as level of cultural awareness and, in some cases, even

competence. In reality, however, an adult learner of English is

simply constrained by a first-language system that makes exact

replication of the second language impossible.

II. Spoken versus Written Language

A. It’s important to remember that linguistics is primarily concerned

with spoken, not written, language and that this perspective results

in different ways of understanding language variation.

1. For example, most variation that we will discuss in the next

few lectures will not have any correlate in the written form

of the word. When speakers who pronounce “pin” and “pen”

in the same way write these words down, they typically write

them as the rest of us do. As we will see, written language is

tied into the norms associated with standard formal English,

not the version we use in our day-to-day, face-to-face

interactions.

2. Throughout these lectures, we need to remind ourselves to

think as we speak, not as we write, when discussing language

variation.

B. An important concept when talking about any level of linguistics is

that of rules. We tend to think of writing as informing us of the rules

of how to speak But we had language skills long before we went to

school and started writing. The type of rule system that drives our

oral versus written knowledge of language is vastly different. For

example, in phonology, the way we put sounds together is a strictly

governed process regardless of which language or dialect we speak.

1. Possible human speech sounds appear to be limited. On the one

hand, we find similar sounds being used in most ofthe world’s

languages, such as /i/, /u/, /m/, and /k/. On the other hand, we

produce many sounds, such as blowing or teeth-chattering,

that have no linguistic meaning anywhere in the world This

suggests that sound selection in language is driven by cognitive

and articulatoly rules or preferences; it is not arbitrary.

2. Further, we don’t connect just any sounds together into

syllables; there are many sound combinations that are never

evidenced in human language. Even preliterate children know

these types of rules and don’t break them.

C. These linguistic rules are different than social rules. Such rules as

“Don’t split infinitives” are social niles of grammar, not linguistic

rules. And when you violate grammar rules, you do not violate the

linguistic rules that stand behind the language we speak. Instead,

you violate the conventional grammar rules that our educational

and institutional systems have established as the social norm.

1. Linguists refer to this difference as the difference between

prescriptive and descriptive rules. Prescriptive rules are those

established by grammarians to control the output of speakers

by assigning prestige or penalties based on the use or nonuse

of prescribed language norms. Descriptive rules describe how

language works and is used by speakers-what you already

know unconsciously as a speaker of a human language.

2. Linguistics is a descriptive field; its goal is to explain the

linguistic output of speakers in terms of what is possible and

what is not possible in language based on empirical evidence.

Although we will often discuss prescriptive rules and their

interaction with language in society in these lectures, the

linguistic rules we will discuss are those that are responsible

for all languages and dialects we find in the world.

D. It’s important to note that every language and every dialect is

systematic and rule governed, but rules driving dialects differ.

There can be a great deal of difference in rules between linguistic

systems, say, between such languages as English and Arabic. Or

there can be fewer and subtler differences between systems, such

as those between British and American English or Southern and

Northern English.

III. Syntax

A. Syntax is the study of sentence formation. In addition to knowing

possible speech sounds, we also have knowledge of the structure of

phrases, such as across the floor and the giant rodent, and sentences,

such as The giant rodent scurried across the floor. Syntax is the

toolkit that tells us what goes where and how.

B. An important feature of syntax is grammaticality judgment. This is

essentially native speaker intuition about what constitutes a “good”

sentence in the language.

1. Obviously, not every sequence of words strung together is a

possible sentence. For example, consider: The runs a weeofy

already town the from. Clearly, no one would say such a

sentence, and no one would judge it to be a grammatical

sentence of English.

2. Again, it is because of rules-both universal rules and

language-specific rules-that we can make judgments about

whether a sentence we hear or see is grammatical or not.

C. Of course, different languages and even dialects have different

rules that can apply to make sentences that would not be acceptable

structures for another speaker. However, the “wrongness” of such

a sentence as He don t do nothing is a different kind of wrong than

the sentence above, which a listener cannot even process.

D. The possible variation in syntactic structures is constrained by the

possibilities allowed by our universal grammar. Although multiple

negation is a socially dispreferred structure in standard English, it is

a perfectly fine structure in terms of following linguistic rules.

IV. Morphology

A. Morphology is the study of how words are formed and created. ln

this field, linguists look at slang or novel words, such as Google,

bling, or blog, which actually follow specific word formation

rules. Some words seem to be formed through “regular” processes,

while others seem to be exceptions or “irregular” (for example,

dog/dogs versus tooth/teeth, jogged versus ran). Most of these

irregular forms are remnants from older forms of English, when the

language had a much more complicated verb and noun class system.

B. New words, when they enter the language through borrowing or

through invention, are also subject to linguistic rules. When a new

word, such as Google, enters the language, it belongs to a particular

category, in this case, a verb. Thus, by default, English speakers

understand that to form the past tense, we add -ed, and to form

the progressive, we add -ing. We are also able to make the word

into a noun by adding a “noun-type” ending; for example, one who

Googles may be called a Googler.

C. We can be quite creative with new words but only insofar as is

allowed by our linguistic constraints on word formation. For

example, no English speaker would form the past tense of Google

as Goggle per the sing/sang or ring/rang model. These are not

productive rules of English morphology and, unless someone is

being purposefully atypical, would simply not morphologically

occur anymore.

D. As with phonology and syntax, morphology is also an area where

languages and dialects can differ substantially. Many languages use

more affixes than English does to express meaning, and sometimes,

these take the form of infixes (breaking up the base) or circumfixes

(encircling a base). This is not something we find in English unless

we count slang expressions, such as “I guaran-damn-tee it!”

E. Languages and dialects can also differ in simply what is selected

to be encoded as a morpheme (meaning unit) and what is not. In

Chinese, the past tense is not grammaticized as a separate word

but instead is interpretable from other linguistic and pragmatic

contextual cues. In other words, unlike in English, it is not

mandatory to add something like -ed or -ing on the end of a word

to communicate past tense.

F. Our language can and does vary substantially on a number of

different levels simultaneously. When morphology is combined

with phonetics, phonology, and syntax, we have a powerful set

of tools for performing both linguistic and social work with

our speech.