Introduction
For the process of learning languages or a specific language, it is very important that the learners should concentrate more and more on language varieties such as; dialect, accent, idiolect, the way of pronunciation, using grammar and the other varieties parts of that language. Knowing of varieties help learners to go through the details of the other language in a very appropriate manner and way. When we want to see between the speakers of any language, there is variation in the way they use their language. This variation is demonstrated by linguistic differences in terms of sound (phonetics) and structure (grammar). There might be only slight variations between forms of a language – such as minor pronunciations of words or a slight changes of grammatical structure that do not inhibit intergroup communication. Sometimes there are differences between the speech of men and women, different social classes, and differences between age groups. People will identify some of these features as marking the "best" or most "beautiful" form of the language, other features will be considered nonstandard or undesirable. Some of these differences may impede intelligibility and intergroup communication. The study of language variation guides language development activities. For example, when developing a writing system it is desirable for it to be useful and acceptable to the largest number of speakers of the language. Therefore, it is important to identify the most unifying features of the language. Natural languages exhibit a tremendous amount of variation. This variation manifests itself in all aspects of the structure of languages, in the ways languages convey meaning, and in the ways they are used. Any adult confronted with an unfamiliar language will have great difficulty in acquiring that language, let alone understand its structure. Yet any infant anywhere in the world, irrespective of its genetic descent, will learn the language it is exposed to without even being aware of its structure. The human language faculty is tremendously flexible, and accepts a whole array of systems. However, this enormous variety, languages show a remarkable degree of similarity, which takes the form of a set of constraints on linguistic variation. Together this set of constraints defines the Language Blueprint: the basic layout of any system of human communication. The search for this blueprint is the major task of linguistics, which thus provides window on the human mind. Finding the blueprint is also a major prerequisite for practical applications such as improving language
1 teaching, knowledge base construction, language therapy, and speech recognition. These applications crucially hinge on knowledge of language systems.
The problem of accounting for the acquisition of language can be decomposed into two smaller problems: how to account for what is universal in language development and how to account for what is variable. We have seen a number of elegant and detailed accounts of universal processes in language learning. But these models have not yet taken seriously the existence of two significant aspects of variation in the learning process. However, Variation across natural languages and variation between individual learners within a particular language. In this paper tried to discuss a model of language learning that has attempted to deal with the first type of variation of language and how variation effects on language learning process. We then indicate how this model will have to be elaborated in order to deal with the second form of variation, i.e. variation between individual learners. The development of a detailed mechanistic account for variation if particularly important for those who are interested in biologically – based theory of language learning. By looking at variation, we are addressing a fundamental issue in the biological sciences, the plasticity of developing systems. How many different forms can a biological system take under normal and abnormal conditions?
Similarly, if we deeply consider within any language in the globe, we come up with varieties of any language, this variety help learners to be aware of social, cultural and environmental aspects of that language and learn language more fundamentally and commonly.
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Problem statement
While researching on any title, there are some problems that a researcher for sure encountered with, but in situation like Bamyan has its own problems. In this research I face with the below problems which hinted briefly:
Lack of enough essential resources,
Deficiency of experts in the realm of the researched title,
Lack of internet facility,
and time limitation due to mass of classes at university.
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Research objectives It is clear for any kind of research, there will be various aims which is following by researcher during implementation of his / her research and they always focusing on specific aims which is created as problems solving and the researcher is trying to collect the data, analyze and finding the data as problems which is created and selected through research planning.
Here, in the present research, the researcher tried to follow the below points as the main of the research:
To find the roles and positions of language variation in language learning; To understand the variations of language clearly; To show some profitable ways for better learning; To understand the structures of language variations; To know the terminology of social, economical, gender and ethnical factors on language variation.
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Main objectives The main objective of present research is to show the purpose of language variation on learners and inform them to consider and be aware of:
The language structures such as phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax To know the influences of gender variation while learning language To show the position of variation of language like dialect, accent, idiolect and others To understand the various elements of language To clarify the social behaviors while learning language
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Sub – objectives Sub – objective of the research focuses on the explanation of terminology of language variation, for instance:
The importance of phonetics segments such as, the role of vowels, consonant and diphthongs for language learners with clear explanation and examples
The position and main features of phonology namely what is phone, allophone and phoneme while learning language
To show the diversity of dialect, accent, idiolect, jargon, social factors from language and given many example with brief illustration on the influences of language learners
To show the role of genders – man and woman as social factors while learning language
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Research questions The researcher is trying to find out suitable answers for the following propounded questions:
How to know the role of language variations on language learning? What are the terms of language variations? Why variation factors are more useful for learning language? How to start learning language based on variations? Who are our language learners? When and how are they exposed to language variations?
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Main questions The research paper focuses is to reveal the variation of language for the learners and tried to figure out the suitable responses for the below questions:
What are the position of language variation for the language learners? What are the elements of variation of language? How to figure out the role of language variation for better learning? How to begin and from which levels the learners should start? How to learn the language variation and apply for the learners? What are the key points in language variation that language learners should be aware of that?
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Sub – questions Under sub – questions of the research, the present study is tried to find and point out the key questions which are relevant to the given topic. The below questions proposed:
What are the influences of dialect, accent, idiolect and others variations on language learners?
How the linguistics level (phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax) help learners to learn language suitably?
What are the term of variations and how the term is applicable for language learners? How to start language learning through variation of language? What are the social effects on learning language? Which points are the most flexible points in language variation for the learners?
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Literature review By the late twentieth century, studies undertaken into urban dialectology by linguists such as Labov and Trudgill were challenged by work undertaken by the Milroys (Milroy, L. 1987; Milroy, J. 1992). They took issue with the notion of the linguistic variable and variation theory in general. A study undertaken in Belfast led to the conclusion that the relationship between linguistic and social structures is not necessarily best examined by an exclusive exploration of social variables such as age and class. Instead, they based their research upon the notion of social networks. Rather than grouping speakers into predetermined categories such as social class, the social network situates an individual within the sum of his or her relationships, both formal and informal; with other people, such as family, friends, work colleagues; neighborhood and relations based upon ethnicity. They found that particular kinds of networks will either inhibit or advance linguistic variation in a community. Furthermore, men in the Ballymacarett district of Belfast who worked in local shipyard with dense social networks bound by strong ties were more likely to enforce the prevailing linguistic norms and less likely to tolerate or encourage change. This differed from the women who, by contrast, often travelled outside the area to work and had fewer local ties. This points to their conclusion that dense, multiplex networks act as brakes on linguistic innovation, whilst weak ties between individuals seem to make the spread of linguistic innovation, such as new pronunciation or new words from network to network, easier. The Milroys argue that peripheral members of a community who have ties with other communities ( through work, study or friends ) effectively conduct or carry innovation into a community. Their conclusions complement W. Labov’s arguments about change in progress, but provide far more information about the site and possible explanations of change. Virtually all of the work undertaken in social and urban dialectology until this point had concentrated upon variation in phonology. Milroy and Milroy (1993) sought to redress this balance. The aim of their book was to raise the status of English regional dialects and to draw attention to their syntactic and morphological characteristics. To give a morphological example, in standard English, the past tense forms of break and know have been codified as broke and know. Verb forms such as breaked and knowed, have been part of the English language for centuries and still exist in regional dialects, but since they were not chosen as the past tense forms for standard English, are no longer used in writing or ‘educated speech’. A syntactic example is that of multiple negation: she never said nothing. This pattern was outlawed by nineteenth century
10 prescriptive grammarians, but was common in the middle English of Chaucer’s time, used by Shakespeare and continues to be used by native speakers of English today as it remains a grammatical feature of some dialects.
Hudson ( 1980 ) cited that language varieties has an important role on learning process, he has given a set of linguistic items with similar distribution. Ferguson in ( 1971 ) believed that anybody of human speech patterns which sufficiently homogeneous to be analyzed by available techniques of synchronic description and which has a sufficiently large repertory of elements and their arrangements or process with broad enough semantic scope to function in all normal context of communication. According to Wardaugh ( 1986 ) language variation is a specific set of linguistic items or human speech patterns ( presumably, sounds, words, grammatical features ) which we can uniquely associate with some external factors ( presumably, a geographical area and a social group ). The variation of oral English are also likely to disadvantage students from vernacular backgrounds because talk conveys metamessages about social identity, along with other meanings (Tannen, 1984). A student's accurate, insightful contribution to classroom discourse may be devalued when she or he uses vernacular dialect features in speaking. Moreover, such evaluation may be formally backed by local or state standards that call for students to use standard English in academic discourse.
Discusses research undertaken into variation based upon two different methodological approaches: firstly, focus upon the linguistic variable; secondly, focus upon the social variable and social networks. Studies into linguistic variation of phonology, morphology and syntax are the focus of traditional dialectology such as the regionally based studies undertaken by The Survey of English Dialects (1962) and Kortmann and Schneider’s two-volume A Handbook of Varieties of English (2004). Studies into the social variable are the focus of sociolinguistic dialectology, which also focuses upon the linguistic variable, but also takes into account social issues such as race, class and gender in relation to linguistic variation, such as those of Labov (1966, 1972) and Trudgill (1974 ). More recently, Milroy (1987) and Milroy and Gordon (2003) have based their sociolinguistic studies upon the notion of social networks, arguing that in addition to linguistic and social variables, attention should also be paid to the communities and contexts within which speech occurs. At the level of everyday rural speech, the Pyrenees do not form a frontier; the varieties
11 spoken on the northern and southern flanks of the central Pyrenees have long been known to be similar and, to a substantial degree, to be mutually intelligible (Elcock 1938). As a society, we still harbor language prejudice to a far greater degree than we tolerate other ethnically related bias, at least publicly (Wolfram, 1991). Schools have not developed scientifically based language awareness programs to illuminate language variation and its social meanings. Programs to strengthen the standard English skills that schools require do not consistently point out predictable contrasts between standard and vernacular dialect features, nor do they adequately address the social functions that dialects serve.
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Methodology The present research data gathered from library including books, journals, articles and other resources qualitatively. The gained information about different linguists’ viewpoints such as phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax; hence, the researcher tried to collect brief information about characteristics of language and learners, based on second and first language learners. One of the ways in which we can “apply” linguistics is to use our insights into the structure and function of language as a coded system to observe the ways in which people understand themselves, to see what groups they identify with as seen by the ways in which they use language. Furthermore, language variation by user characteristics such as region, class, age, gender, ethnicity; by itself the word “dialect” is usually understood as regional dialect, social dialects (sociolects), gender dialects (genderlects), and ethnic dialects (ethnolects) - sociolect: variation typical of a social class ethnolect: variation typical of an ethnic group, e.g. African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). It is also evident, from even casual observation, that in any one place not all people speak alike, even if they were all born there. Differences of speech are correlated with one or more social factors which apply to the speaker concerned. These factors include age, sex, race, class background, education, occupation, and income. All aspects of language (sounds, phonemes, morphemes, syntactic structures, lexemes, meanings, etc.) are subject to variation according to these parameters. A linguistic feature which displays variation according to one or other parameter is called a variable and is indicated by a symbol between parentheses.
The exploration of learners’ language learning needs is often circumvented. Even it is acknowledged explicitly that individuals may have proper learning needs in mind, an analysis of what it takes to speak and understand the target language is what seems to be needed the most. Whether it be notions or functions, vocabulary or grammar, language learning needs are not conceived of as essentially functional or societally-based, but are primarily seen as linguistic. Tasks a person has to fulfil are first of all seen as referring to the kinds of classroom activities that will enable the language learner to acquire particular elements of the target language.
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Theme of research The present researched topic under the title of “The role of language variation on language learning” is a library researched paper to find the importance and position of language variation on language learners. This research will be the first researched paper which selected and implemented at Bamyan University and selected as the need of language learners. The main focuses of the research is to show and introduce the influences of language variation on language learning. Here, in this paper tried to find out suitable answers for the selected questions and concentrate on various parts of language variation to show the role of language diversity on language learning process. Although, the topic more focus is to figure out the structures and social elements of language and introduce to the learners to be aware of that while starting language learning. Furthermore, the research shows the students of language to put their attention more on social dimensions of language, its not only grammar or four skills of language which help students to boost their knowledge in language - but the social and cultural factors are the most crucial elements for the learners to learn along with other skills of language.
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Finding of research After collecting and analyzing the data for the selected research paper, the researched topic come up with the below finding points:
The variations of language help students and/or learners to put their attention more on it.
Without focusing on variation of language, the learners can’t achieve their selected goals in the realm of language learning process.
Language learners should start from a very simple to complex one while beginning language learning.
The structure of a given language never give a complete answer for the learners of a language, its cultural aspects of a language that put language more meaningfully – the things which is very necessary for language learners to be aware of that.
The learners should be familiar with terminology of language variations.
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Definition of language
From the very beginning of human civilization, human beings have felt the necessity of a medium to communicate with each other. Language has served this purpose. Without language, human civilization could not have come to as we know now it. Besides its being a means of communication, it is felt in all sectors of our life. However animals also communicate among themselves through their own language. But it is human language which marks a difference between human beings and animals. To answer ‘what is language?’ is not very easy because language is a very complex human phenomenon. It is regarded as an ‘organized noise’ used in actual social situation, and as ‘contextualized systematic sounds’. According to Microsoft Encarta 2007, language is ‘‘the principal means used by human beings to communicate with one another’’. In Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 13 language is defined as ‘‘a system of conventional, spoken or written symbols by means of which human being, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, communicate.’’ Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (1985) defines language as –“the system of human communication by means of a structured arrangement of sounds or their written presentation to form larger units, e.g.- ORPHEMES, WORDS, SENTENCES”. Now we can cite some statements from classic works by well-known linguists which ‘‘will serve to give some preliminary indication of the properties that linguists at least tend to think of as being essential to language”. 1) Sapir says : ‘‘Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols’’ (Language,1921:8) 2) According to Bloch & Trager: ‘‘A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group co- operates’’. (Outline of Linguistic Analysis,1942:5) 3) Hall tells us that language is: “the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols’’. (An Essay on Language, 1960:158)
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4) R.H. Robins says: ‘‘Languages are infinitely extendable and modifiable according to the changing needs and conditions of the speakers’’. (The Structure of Language, 1971:13) 5) Chomsky tells us strikingly a very different note of transformational grammar- ‘‘From now I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements’’. (Syntactic Structures,1957:13)
Therefore, from these five definitions we notice some properties of language-arbitrariness, flexibility and modifiability, freedom from stimulus control, and structure dependence.
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Characteristics of language
Language is, today, an inseparable part of human communication. Human civilization has been possible only through language. It is through language only that humanity has come out of the stone age and has developed science, art and technology in a big way. Language is a means of communication, it is arbitrary, and it is a system of systems. We know that Speech is primary while writing is secondary.
Language is human so it differs from animal communication in several ways. Language can have scores of characteristics but the following are the most important ones: language is arbitrary, productive, creative, systematic, vocalic, social, non-instinctive and conventional. These characteristics of language set human language apart from animal communication. Some of these features may be part of animal communication; yet they do not form part of it in total. Varshney in (1977) distributed characteristics of language as below:
1) Language is Arbitrary: Language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no inherent relation between the words of a language and their meanings or the ideas conveyed by them. There is no sreason why a female adult human being be called a woman in English, aurat in Urdu, Zen in Persian and Femine in French. The choice of a word selected to mean a particular thing or idea is purely arbitrary but once a word is selected for a particular referent, it comes to stay as such. It may be noted that had language not been arbitrary, there would have been only one language in the world.
2) Language is Social: Language is a set of conventional communicative signals used by humans for communication in a community. Language in this sense is a possession of a social group, comprising an indispensable set of rules which permits its members to relate to each other, to interact with each other, to co-operate with each other; it is a social institution. Language exists in society; it is a means of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations.
3) Language is Symbolic: Language consists of various sound symbols and their graphological counterparts that are employed to denote some objects, occurrences or meaning. These symbols are arbitrarily chosen and conventionally accepted and employed. Words in a
18 language are not mere signs or figures, but symbols of meaning. The intelligibility of a language depends on a correct interpretation of these symbols.
4) Language is Systematic: Although language is symbolic, yet its symbols are arranged in a particular system. All languages have their system of arrangements. Every language is a system of systems. All languages have phonological and grammatical systems, and within a system there are several sub-systems. For example, within the grammatical system we have morphological and syntactic systems, and within these two sub-systems we have systems such as those of plural, of mood, of aspect, of tense, etc.
5) Language is Vocal: Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds only produced by a physiological articulatory mechanism in the human body. In the beginning, it appeared as vocal sounds only. Writing came much later, as an intelligent attempt to represent vocal sounds. Writing is only the graphic representation of the sounds of the language. So the linguists say that speech is primary.
6) Language is Non-instinctive, Conventional: No language was created in a day out of a mutually agreed upon formula by a group of humans. Language is the outcome of evolution and convention. Each generation transmits this convention on to the next. Like all human institutions languages also change and die, grow and expand. Every language then is a convention in a community. It is non-instinctive because it is acquired by human beings. Nobody gets a language in heritage; he acquires it because he an innate ability.
7) Language is Productive and Creative: Language has creativity and productivity. The structural elements of human language can be combined to produce new utterances, which neither the speaker nor his hearers may ever have made or heard before any, listener, yet which both sides understand without difficulty. Language changes according to the needs of society.
Finally, language has other characteristics such as Duality referring to the two systems of sound and meaning, Displacement which means the ability to talk across time and space, Humanness which means that animals cannot acquire it, Universality which refers to the equilibrium across humanity on linguistic grounds, Competence and Performance which means that language is innate and produced is society and furthermore, language is culturally transmitted. It is learnt by an individual from his elders, and is transmitted from one generation to another.
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Main features of learners
We have seen lots of lists that identify the characteristics of good teachers. They’re great reminders of what we should aspire to be as teachers. I haven’t seen many corresponding lists that identify the characteristics of good learners. I decided to put one together and invite your input. This could be a list for our students or anybody who aspires to learn well. Bruner in ( 1960 ) commonly talked on learners features as following:
1. Good learners are curious – They wonder about all sorts of things, often about things way beyond their areas of expertise. They love the discovery part of learning. Finding out about something they didn’t know satisfies them for the moment, but their curiosity is addictive.
2. Good learners pursue understanding diligently – A few things may come easily to learners but most knowledge arrives after effort, and good learners are willing to put in the time. They search out information—sometimes aspiring to find out everything that is known about something. They read, analyze, and evaluate the information they’ve found. They talk with others, read more, study more, and carry around what they don’t understand; thinking about it before they go to sleep, at the gym, on the way to work, and sometimes when they should be listening to others. Good learners are persistent. They don’t give up easily.
3. Good learners recognize that a lot of learning isn’t fun – That doesn’t change how much they love learning. When understanding finally comes, when they get it, when all the pieces fit together, that is one special thrill. But the journey to understanding generally isn’t all that exciting. Some learning tasks require boring repetition; others a mind-numbing attention to detail; still others periods of intense mental focus. Backs hurt, bottoms get tired, the clutter on the desk expands, the coffee tastes stale—no, most learning isn’t fun.
4. Failure frightens good learners, but they know it’s beneficial – It’s a part of learning that offers special opportunities that aren’t there when success comes quickly and without failure. In the presence of repeated failure and seeming futility, good learners carry
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on, confident that they’ll figure it out. When faced with a motor that resists repair, my live- in mechanic announces he has yet to meet a motor that can’t be fixed. Sometimes it ends up looking like a grudge match, man against the machine, with the man undeterred by how many different fixes don’t work. He’s frustrated but determined to find the one that will, all the while learning from those that don’t.
5. Good learners make knowledge their own – This is about making the new knowledge fit with what the learner already knows, not making it mean whatever the learner wants. Good learners change their knowledge structures in order to accommodate what they are learning. They use the new knowledge to tear down what’s poorly constructed, to finish what’s only partially built, and to create new additions. In the process, they build a bigger and better knowledge structure. It’s not enough to just take in new knowledge. It has to make sense, to connect in meaningful ways with what the learner already knows.
6. Good learners never run out of questions – There’s always more to know. Good learners are never satisfied with how much they know about anything. They are pulled around by questions—the ones they still can’t answer, or can only answer part way, or the ones without very good answers. Those questions follow them around like day follows night with the answer bringing daylight but the next question revealing the darkness.
7. Good learners share what they’ve learned – Knowledge is inert. Unless it’s passed on, knowledge is lost. Good learners are teachers committed to sharing with others what they’ve learned. They write about it, and talk about it. Good learners can explain what they know in ways that make sense to others. They aren’t trapped by specialized language. They can translate, paraphrase, and find examples that make what they know meaningful to other learners. They are connected to the knowledge passed on to them and committed to leaving what they’ve learned with others.
Good teachers model this kind of learning for their students, which makes me believe that “good learner” belongs on those lists of good teacher characteristics.
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Language varieties
Between the speakers of any language there is variation in the way that they use their language. This variation is demonstrated by linguistic differences in terms of sound (phonetics) and structure (grammar). There might be only slight variations between forms of a language – such as minor pronunciations of words or a slight changes of grammatical structure that do not inhibit intergroup communication. Sometimes there are differences between the speech of men and women, different social classes, and differences between age groups. People will identify some of these features as marking the "best" or most "beautiful" form of the language, other features will be considered nonstandard or undesirable. Some of these differences may impede intelligibility and intergroup communication. The study of language variation guides language development activities. For example, when developing a writing system it is desirable for it to be useful and acceptable to the largest number of speakers of the language. Therefore, it is important to identify the most unifying features of the language ( Cheshire, 1987 ).
Summer Institute of Linguistics ( SIL ) assessment specialists use quantitative and qualitative research methods for studying language variation. Two important quantitative methods for studying language variation are lexicostatistics and intelligibility tests. The lexicostatistical method involves eliciting commonly used words from people in two or more different locations. The words are compared to identify phonetic similarities and a percentage of similarity is computed. Intelligibility (how well a speech variety is understood) is of two types: inherent and acquired. Inherent intelligibility is an understanding that is unlearned and that is attributed to the (inherent) linguistic similarities (such as sound systems and grammatical structures) that are shared by the two speech varieties. The greater the inherent similarities shared between two varieties, the more likely that the speakers of each will be able to understand the same literature. Acquired intelligibility, on the other hand, is a level of comprehension of a speech variety achieved through learning ( Coupland, 2007).
To measure intelligibility SIL assessment specialists use the Recorded Text Test (RTT). The RTT method involves recording a short autobiographical story. Comprehension questions are dubbed into the recording. The new recording is played for people in another community. The number of correct answers to the comprehension questions gives a measure of comprehension of
22 the speech of the other community. SIL assessment specialists highly value participatory methods of working with members of the language communities. Qualitative methods of data collection, in a participatory context, include observations, questionnaire, and interviews. Working collaboratively with the community gains quality information and builds capacity and awareness in the local community.
Individuals differ in the manner in which they speak their native tongue, although usually not markedly within a small area. The differences among groups of speakers in the same speech community can, however, be considerable. These variations of a language constitute its dialects. All languages are continuously changing, but if there is a common direction of change it has never been convincingly described. Various factors, especially the use of written language, have led to the development of a standard language in most of the major speech communities—a special official dialect of a language that is theoretically maintained unchanged. This official dialect is the school form of a language, and by a familiar fallacy has been considered the norm from which everyday language deviates. Rather, the standard language is actually a development of some local dialect that has been accorded prestige. The standard English of England is derived from London English and the standard Italian is that of Tuscany. Use of the standard language is often a mark of polite behavior. In the United States employing standard English, which largely entails the usage of approved grammar and pronunciation, marks a person as cultivated. Ordinary speech may be affected by the standard language. Thus, many forms of expression come to be considered ungrammatical and substandard and are regarded as badges of ignorance, such as you was in place of the standard you were. As in other fields of etiquette, there is variation. Gotten is acceptable in the United States but not in England. The literary standard may differ from the colloquial standard of educated people, and the jargon of a trade may be unintelligible to outsiders. Such linguistic variations in English are mainly a matter of vocabulary. An auxiliary language is a nonnative language adopted for specific use; such languages include lingua franca, pidgin, and international language (Fishman, 1972).
Early twentieth century research into dialects and accents tended to concentrate upon descriptions of linguistic variation, particularly lexis and phonology, compiling linguistic atlases to show the different distributions of different dialect forms. The aim of such research was to counter a mainstream view in historical linguistics held at the time that all sound change was
23 regular and had no exceptions. Dialectologists aimed to show that linguistic change, far from being regular, was in fact irregular and did not affect all sounds and/or words equally. Early dialectologists were particularly interested in lexical variation, and how different words were used to refer to the same thing in different places. They did this by going out and collecting examples of speech (known as data) from people in the regions in which they were interested, a process known as fieldwork. Within sociolinguistic research that focuses upon phonology, one sound is selected as a linguistic variable and used as the dependent variable: that is, a sound against which to measure other sounds. Other factors such as social class, age, gender, region and ethnic group are varied, and the dependable variable: that is, the variant, is compared for each of these variables. In this way, the speech of older informants can be compared with that of younger ones, and that of men to women, lower class to upper class, and so on. Sound recording has also made it possible to investigate patterns of stress and tone in addition to those of sound when studying speech, known as prosodic features. English accents vary tremendously in this respect. Wells (1999) points out that many Northern dialects of English tend not to reduce vowels in unstressed Latinate prefixes (eg con-, ex- ) as much as do RP and other Southern-based varieties. Although relatively little work has so far been done on dialect intonation, Wells (1999: 91) points out that certain British accents – including Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow – appear to have some tendency to use rising tones where most other accents have falling tones. Such tendencies are noted, for example, West Midland speech characteristically has a “peculiar” intonation involving terminal raising in statements, as well as negative verbs (such as
a) Language
Linguistics does not help us in defining the term ‘language’, then maybe another way of
24 defining language is in terms of sub-divisions or as a collection of mutually intelligible dialects. In this way, we can talk about the southwest dialect of France, the Black Country dialect of English, the Bavarian dialect of German and so on. So, for example, English as a language includes not only its standardized form known as standard English, but all other dialects which exist within the geographical boundaries of England and elsewhere. However, mutual intelligibility as a criterion is not very helpful, since different languages as well as dialects can be mutually intelligible. For example, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, though accepted as different languages, can each be understood by the speakers of the other languages. Other factors concerning intelligibility also have to be taken into account, such as the individual’s degree of exposure to a language, her/his educational background and a willingness to understand.
b) Dialects
Speakers of any given language sometimes get offended when their particular language style is called a dialect. To avoid any confusion, I would therefore like to explain what I mean by the term "dialect." According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, a dialect is: (( A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists.))
The problem with this definition is that it implies that there is some sort of "standard" language from which all of the various dialects of that language differ. In English, however, I do not think this is true. I think that the English language is far too widespread and varies too much for anyone to say that the English spoken in ____ is "standard" and everything else is a "dialect." Even if it were narrowed down to a single country, there is still a great deal of variation within that country, and who is to say which region/city/state/province speaks proper English?
My definition of a dialect is simply this: "A variation of a given language spoken in a particular place or by a particular group of people." Therefore, when I use the term dialect, I am not making any sort of judgment about the quality or "correctness" of that variety of English. I believe that American, British, Canadian, and Australian English are all dialects of the English language, and that none of them is any better or more proper than any other.
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In writing about English dialects on this site, my goal is to make English speakers – both native and non-native – aware of the differences in English as it is spoken around the world. I don’t think that the English I speak (see About My English, below) is "right" English, nor do I think that British and Australian are "wrong" English. I am fascinated by language in all its forms, and this site provides me with the opportunity to discover more about the language I speak and how it varies from the English spoken by others.
However, a variety of a language that signals where a person comes from. The notion is usually interpreted geographically (regional dialect), but it also has some application in relation to a person’s social background (class dialect) or occupation (occupational dialect). The word dialect comes from the Ancient Greek dialektos “discourse, language, dialect,” which is derived from dialegesthai “to discourse, talk.” A dialect is chiefly distinguished from other dialects of the same language by features of linguistic structure—i.e., grammar (specifically morphology and syntax) and vocabulary. In morphology (word formation), various dialects in the Atlantic states have clim, clum, clome, or cloome instead of climbed, and, in syntax (sentence structure), there are “sick to his stomach,” “sick at his stomach,” “sick in,” “sick on,” and “sick with.” On the level of vocabulary, examples of dialectal differences include American English subway, contrasting with British English underground; and corn, which means “maize” in the United States, Canada, and Australia, “wheat” in England, and “oats” in Scotland. Nevertheless, while dialects of the same language differ, they still possess a common core of features.
Although some linguists include phonological features (such as vowels, consonants, and intonation) among the dimensions of dialect, the standard practice is to treat such features as aspects of accent. In the sound system of American English, for example, some speakers pronounce greasy with an “s” sound, while others pronounce it with a “z” sound. Accent differences of this kind are extremely important as regional and class indicators in every language. Their role is well recognized in Great Britain, for example, where the prestige accent, called Received Pronunciation, is used as an educated standard and differences in regional accent, both rural and urban, are frequent. There is far less accent variation in Canada, Australia, and large parts of the United States.
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Frequently, the label dialect, or dialectal, is attached to substandard speech, language usage that deviates from the accepted norm—e.g., the speech of many of the heroes of Mark Twain’s novels. On the other hand, the standard language can also be regarded as one of the dialects of a given language, though one that has attracted special prestige. In a historical sense, the term dialect is sometimes applied to a language considered as one of a group deriving from a common ancestor. Thus, English, Swedish, and German are sometimes treated as Germanic dialects.
There is often considerable difficulty in deciding whether two linguistic varieties are dialects of the same language or two separate but closely related languages; this is especially true in parts of the world where speech communities have been little studied. In these cases especially, decisions regarding dialects versus languages must be to some extent arbitrary. Normally, dialects of the same language are considered to be mutually intelligible, while different languages are not. Intelligibility between dialects is, however, almost never absolutely complete. On the other hand, speakers of closely related languages can still communicate to a certain extent when each uses his own mother tongue. Thus, the criterion of intelligibility is quite relative. In more-developed societies the distinction between dialects and related languages is easier to make because of the existence of standard languages. Sometimes sociopolitical factors play a role in drawing the distinction between dialect and language. Linguistic varieties that are considered dialects in one set of historical circumstances may be considered languages in another. Before the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s, Serbo-Croatian was viewed by its speakers as a single language consisting of several dialects, spoken in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia; afterward, local communities began to talk of Croatian and Serbian as distinct languages. Among the synonyms for dialect, the word idiom refers to any kind of dialect, or even language, whereas patois, a term from French, denotes rural or provincial dialects, often with a deprecatory connotation. A similar term is vernacular, which refers to the common, everyday speech of the ordinary people of a region. An idiolect is the dialect of an individual person at one time. This term implies an awareness that no two persons speak in exactly the same way and that each person’s dialect is constantly undergoing change—e.g., by the introduction of newly acquired words. Most recent investigations emphasize the versatility of each person’s speech habits according to levels or styles of language usage.
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c) Slangs
Words that are not a part of standard vocabulary or language and are used informally are called slang. These words are mostly used in speech rather than in writing. Slang can be divided into four different types; country slang, urban slang, gay slang and common slang. Country slang is used by those who are in the rural parts of a country, while urban slang is spoken by those from the city or by African-Americans. Gay slang is used by gays, bisexual, homosexuals or transsexuals. Common slang is used by almost everybody.
Every culture and every region has its own slang. Some of these include American slang, Costa Rican slang, Spanish slang and African slang. English regions such as Wales, Ireland and Scotland also have their own slang. Some slang becomes respectable when it loses its edge; “spunk,” “fizzle,” “spent,” “hit the spot,” “jazz,” “funky,” and “p.o.’d,” once thought to be too indecent for feminine ears, are now family words. Other slang survives for centuries, like “bones” for dice (Chaucer), “beat it” for run away (Shakespeare), “duds” for clothes, and “booze” for liquor (Dekker). These words must have been uttered as slang long before appearing in print, and they have remained slang ever since. Normally, slang has both a high birth and death rate in the dominant culture, and excessive use tends to dull the lustre of even the most colourful and descriptive words and phrases. The rate of turnover in slang words is undoubtedly encouraged by the mass media, and a term must be increasingly effective to survive.
While many slang words introduce new concepts, some of the most effective slang provides new expressions—fresh, satirical, shocking—for established concepts, often very respectable ones. Sound is sometimes used as a basis for this type of slang, as, for example, in various phonetic distortions (e.g., pig Latin terms). It is also used in rhyming slang, which employs a fortunate combination of both sound and imagery. Thus, gloves are “turtledoves” (the gloved hands suggesting a pair of billing doves), a girl is a “twist and twirl” (the movement suggesting a girl walking), and an insulting imitation of flatus, produced by blowing air between the tip of the protruded tongue and the upper lip, is the “raspberry,” cut back from “raspberry tart.” Most slang, however, depends upon incongruity of imagery, conveyed by the lively connotations of a novel term applied to an established concept. Slang is not all of equal quality, a considerable body of it reflecting a simple need to find new terms for common ones, such as the hands, feet, head, and
28 other parts of the body. Food, drink, and sex also involve extensive slang vocabulary. Strained or synthetically invented slang lacks verve, as can be seen in the desperate efforts of some sportswriters to avoid mentioning the word baseball—e.g., a batter does not hit a baseball but rather “swats the horsehide,” “plasters the pill,” “hefts the old apple over the fence,” and so on. The most effective slang operates on a more sophisticated level and often tells something about the thing named, the person using the term, and the social matrix against which it is used. Pungency may increase when full understanding of the term depends on a little inside information or knowledge of a term already in use, often on the slang side itself. For example, the term Vatican roulette (for the rhythm system of birth control) would have little impact if the expression Russian roulette were not already in wide usage.
Slang invades the dominant culture as it seeps out of various subcultures. Some words fall dead or lie dormant in the dominant culture for long periods. Others vividly express an idea already latent in the dominant culture and these are immediately picked up and used. Before the advent of mass media, such terms invaded the dominant culture slowly and were transmitted largely by word of mouth. Thus a term like snafu, its shocking power softened with the explanation “situation normal, all fouled up,” worked its way gradually from the military in World War II by word of mouth (because the media largely shunned it) into respectable circles. Today, however, a sportscaster, news reporter, or comedian may introduce a lively new word already used by an in- group into millions of homes simultaneously, giving it almost instant currency. For example, the term uptight was first used largely by criminal narcotic addicts to indicate the onset of withdrawal distress when drugs are denied. Later, because of intense journalistic interest in the drug scene, it became widely used in the dominant culture to mean anxiety or tension unrelated to drug use. It kept its form but changed its meaning slightly. Other terms may change their form or both form and meaning, like “one for the book” (anything unusual or unbelievable). Sportswriters in the U.S. borrowed this term around 1920 from the occupational language of then legal bookmakers, who lined up at racetracks in the morning (“the morning line” is still figuratively used on every sports page) to take bets on the afternoon races. Newly arrived bookmakers went to the end of the line, and any bettor requesting unusually long odds was motioned down the line with the phrase, “That’s one for the end book.” The general public dropped the “end” as meaningless, but old-time gamblers still retain it. Slang spreads
29 through many other channels, such as popular songs, which, for the initiate, are often rich in double entendre.
When subcultures are structurally tight, little of their language leaks out. Thus the Mafia, in more than a half-century of powerful criminal activity in America, has contributed little slang. When subcultures weaken, contacts with the dominant culture multiply, diffusion occurs, and their language appears widely as slang. Criminal narcotic addicts, for example, had a tight subculture and a highly secret argot in the 1940s; now their terms are used freely by middle-class teenagers, even those with no real knowledge of drugs. Slang is used for many purposes, but generally it expresses a certain emotional attitude; the same term may express diametrically opposed attitudes when used by different people. Many slang terms are primarily derogatory, though they may also be ambivalent when used in intimacy or affection. Some crystallize or bolster the self-image or promote identification with a class or in-group. Others flatter objects, institutions, or persons but may be used by different people for the opposite effect. “Jesus freak,” originally used as ridicule, was adopted as a title by certain street evangelists. Slang sometimes insults or shocks when used directly; some terms euphemize a sensitive concept, though obvious or excessive euphemism may break the taboo more effectively than a less decorous term. Some slang words are essential because there are no words in the standard language expressing exactly the same meaning; e.g., “freak- out,” “barn-storm,” “rubberneck,” and the noun “creep.” At the other extreme, multitudes of words, vague in meaning, are used simply as fads. There are many other uses to which slang is put, according to the individual and his place in society. Since most slang is used on the spoken level, by persons who probably are unaware that it is slang, the choice of terms naturally follows a multiplicity of unconscious thought patterns. When used by writers, slang is much more consciously and carefully chosen to achieve a specific effect. Writers, however, seldom invent slang. It has been claimed that slang is created by ingenious individuals to freshen the language, to vitalize it, to make the language more pungent and picturesque, to increase the store of terse and striking words, or to provide a vocabulary for new shades of meaning. Most of the originators and purveyors of slang, however, are probably not conscious of these noble purposes and do not seem overly concerned about what happens to their language.
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With the rise of naturalistic writing demanding realism, slang began to creep into English literature even though the schools waged warfare against it, the pulpit thundered against it, and many women who aspired to gentility and refinement banished it from the home. It flourished underground, however, in such male sanctuaries as lodges, poolrooms, barbershops, and saloons. By 1925 a whole new generation of U.S. and European naturalistic writers was in revolt against the Victorian restraints that had caused even Mark Twain to complain, and today any writer may use slang freely, especially in fiction and drama. It has become an indispensable tool in the hands of master satirists, humorists, and journalists. Slang is now socially acceptable, not just because it is slang but because, when used with skill and discrimination, it adds a new and exciting dimension to language. At the same time, it is being seriously studied by linguists and other social scientists as a revealing index to the culture that produces and uses it.
Example 1
They all sat wondering how they were going to attack the enemy with the water balloon. One of the little boys finally suggested, “I can run up on him from behind that tree, jump right on him and Bob’s your uncle, mission achieved.”
The slang term used in this sentence is “Bob’s your uncle”, which means “there you have it”. This phrase is mostly used by British citizens.
Example 2
“Last night was flop. I was supposed to go to a party with my friends, but they flopped on me. They are all such floppers.”
Here the slang term being used is “flop” which means a planned event does not happen. A flopper is someone who cancels the plan at the last minute.
Example 3
“I’m so upset about my birthday party pictures. My brother is making faces behind me in every picture, what a photo bomb!”
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In the sentence above, “photo bomb” is the slang term. This is when a person or an object is accidentally or intentionally in a photo and as a result, ruins it.
“I got a job promotion even though I don’t go to work half the time. I’m so sick.”
Here the slang term used is “sick”, which literally means ill. However, in slang it refers to something being awesome or cool. This type of slang terminology is mostly used by teenagers.
Example 5
“I can’t believe she went and told my father about everything just to get me in trouble, what a hater.”
The slang term used here is “hater”, which refers to someone who is jealous or angry towards another person because of their success.
Example 6
“The students caught cheating on the test were given the third-degree by the principal.”
The slang used in the sentence above is “third-degree” which means “to be interrogated by”.
Example 7
“I can’t believe my life has passed so quickly, now that I am in the hospital I guess I will just kick the bucket here.”
Slang being used here is “kick the bucket”, which means to die. Some people believe that this term is derived from when people were hung they used to stand on a bucket with a rope tied around their neck and the bucket used to be kicked from under their feet and they were left there to die.
Example 8
“The kids were ready to bite my arm off just because I promised to take them to the candy store.”
The slang phrase being used here is “to bite my arm off” which means to get overexcited.
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Slang allows a person to become creative in the use of language. Some people use slang in order to communicate with each other informally. Similarly, people using slang are able to identify other members of their subculture easily.
There is a special Slang Dictionary which contains such words and their meanings. When a new word is created in the slang language and a majority of people start using it, then it is added into the language. If it does not gain enough popularity, it is forgotten. One of the reasons slang is around is that people believe that by using slang they will be able to set themselves apart from others and be unique. However, others believe that this is an improper way of speaking or writing and strongly criticize its use. Children who use slang while speaking end up using it while writing in school, which is discouraged in the academic world.
d) Jargons
Jargon is a literary term that is defined as a use of specific phrases and words by writers in a particular situation, profession or trade. These specialized terms are used to convey hidden meanings accepted and understood in that field. Jargon examples are found in literary and non- literary pieces of writing. The use of jargon becomes essential in prose or verse or some technical pieces of writing when the writer intends to convey something only to the readers who are aware of these terms. Therefore, jargon was taken in early times as a trade language or as a language of a specific profession, as it is somewhat unintelligible for other people who do not belong to that particular profession. In fact, specific terms were developed to meet the needs of the group of people working within the same field or occupation. Jargon sometimes is wrongly confused with slang and people often take it in the same sense but a difference is always there.
Slang is a type of informal category of a certain language developed within a certain community and consists of words or phrases whose literal meanings are different than the actual meanings. Hence, it is not understood by people outside of that community or circle. Slang is more common in spoken language than written.
Jargon, on the other hand, is broadly associated with a subject, occupation or business that makes use of standard words or phrases frequently comprising of abbreviations e.g. HTH, LOL. However,
33 unlike slang, its terms are developed and composed deliberately for the convenience of a specific section of society. We can see the difference in two sentences given below.
Did you hook up with him? (Slang) Getting on a soapbox (Jargon)
More examples of jargons in different ways:
Example 1
Legal jargon used by Shakespeare
Why, may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his qualities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this mad knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
(Hamlet to Horatio in Hamlet by Shakespeare)
You can see that the use of words specifically related to the field of law. Lawyer, tenure, battery, recognizances and statutes are legal words used at the time of Shakespeare.
Example 2
Medical Jargons
Certain medications can cause or worsen nasal symptoms (especially congestion). These include the following: birth control pills, some drugs for high blood pressure (e.g., alpha blockers and beta blockers), antidepressants, medications for erectile dysfunction, and some medications for
34 prostatic enlargement. If rhinitis symptoms are bothersome and one of these medications is used, ask the prescriber if the medication could be aggravating the condition.
(Robert H Fletcher and Phillip L Lieberman)
This passage is full of medical jargon such as nasal, congestions, alpha blockers and anti- depressants. Perhaps only those in the medical community would fully understand all of them..
Example 3
Modern legal jargon
In August 2008, 19 individuals brought a putative class action lawsuit in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Facebook and the companies that had participated in Beacon, alleging violations of various federal and state privacy laws. The putative class comprised only those individuals whose personal information had been obtained and disclosed by Beacon during the approximately one-month period in which the program’s default setting was opt out rather than opt in. The complaint sought damages and various forms of equitable relief, including an injunction barring the defendants from continuing the program.
Just check this statement given in a case by the Supreme Court. This is full of modern legal jargon starting with “putative, lawsuit, alleging, privacy laws, equitable, injunction” and so on that a layman could only understand with the help of his lawyer.
The use of jargon is significant in prose and verse. It seems unintelligible to the people who do not know the meanings. Examples of jargon used in literature are used to emphasize a situation or to refer to something exotic to the readers or audience. In fact, the use of jargon in literature shows the dexterity of the writer of having knowledge of other spheres. Writers use jargon to make a certain character a real one in fiction as well as in plays and poetry.
e) Idiolects
The term of idiolect in linguistics used to refer to the linguistic system of an individual speaker – once personal dialect. A dialect can be seen as an abstraction deriving from the analysis of a large
35 number of idiolects. Idiolectal features are particularly noticeable in literary writing, as stylistic markers of authorship. Some linguists give the term a more restricted definition, referring to the speech habits of a person as displayed in a particular variety at a given time ( Crystal, 2003 ). Of course, aspects of all these elements of social and regional dialect variation are combined, in one form of another, in the speech of each individual. The term of idiolect is used for the personal dialect of each individual speakers of a language. There are other factors, such as voice quality and physical state, which contribute to the identifying features in an individual’s speech, but many of the social factors we have described determine each person’s idiolect. From the perspective of the social study of language, you are, in many aspects, what you say ( Yule, Reprint 2007 ).
In the other hand, the term idiolect refers to the language of an individual. It is etymologically related to the Greek prefix idio- (meaning own, personal, private, peculiar, separate, and distinct) and a back-formation of dialect. Its specific meanings predominantly fall in two categories: 1) The sum total of language of one person, including all possible utterances. 2) The linguistic output of one person (i.e., only what that person says and not the internal knowledge in the mind). "Or some scholars, emphasis here is on the constellation of language variation patterns, which distinguish an individual from other speakers of the same dialect.
f) Style
All social factors including style so far are related to variation of the language users. One of the source of variation is style which represent among individual’s speech. The style refers to the situation of speakers and his/ her situation of use, for instance, there is a gradation of style of speech, from the very formal to the very informal. Going for a job interview, you may say to a secretory Excuse me. Is the manager in his office? I have an appointment. Alternatively, speaking to a friend about another friend, you may produce a much less formal version of the message: Hey, is that lazy dog still in bed? I gotta see him about something (Yule, Reprint 2007). This type of variation is more formally encoded in some languages than others. In Japanese, for example, there are different terms used for the person you are speaking to, depending on the amount of respect or difference required.
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Differences in style can also be found in written language, with business letters ( e.g. I am writing to inform you … ) versus letters to friends ( Just wanted to let you know … ) as good illustrations. The general pattern, however, is that a written form of a message will inevitably be more formal in style than its spoken equivalent. If you see someone on the local bus, eating, dringking and playing a radio, you can say that what he is doing is not allowed and that he should wait until he gets off the bus. Alternatively, you can draw his attention to the more formal language of the printed notice which reads: The city has recently passed an ordinance that expressly prohibits the following while aboard public conveyances. Eating or Drinking. The Playing of Electronic Devices. The formality of expressions such as expressly prohibit, the following, and electronic devices is more extreme than is likely to occur in the spoken language.
g) Register
Register often refers to the degree of formality of language, but in a more general sense it means the language used by a group of people who share similar work or interests, such as doctors or lawyers. Example for formal and informal register; 'Would you mind passing the salt?' is appropriate for a formal situation with strangers, whereas 'Pass me the salt' would be used for a situation where friends are talking, or possibly when being rude. Although, in the classroom register is a complex area, the most common aspect looked at in language learning is the degree of formality. Teachers often divide functional language into three working categories, formal, neutral and informal.
If we are talking to a judge we may be in court, perhaps as a lawyer, perhaps as a witness. If we are talking to a friend we may be playing golf or discussing a personal problem. Thus, related to the consideration of who we are talking to is the consideration of the social context in which we are talking. We interact with others in many different situations. I am an employee, a colleague and a teacher, a son, a husband and a father, a member of archery club, a neighbor and a dental patient. While differences reduce as society becomes less formal, my speech will vary somewhat between roles. A speech variety that is appropriate to a limited social context is known as a register. ( Poole, 1999 )
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In the dictionary of linguistics and phonetics Crystal ( 1991, p. 295 ) defines register as “ a variety of language defined according to its use in social situations, e.g. a register of scientific, religious, formal English.” Register is widely used in linguistics to refer to “varieties according to use”. In contrast to dialect defined as varieties according to user and they are also are a set of language items associated with discrete occupational or social group ( Wardhaugh 2002 ).
Factors effecting register use:
1. Whether spoken or written as formal or informal. 2. Literal variety or colloquial variety. 3. Kind of subject matter; physical setting and occasions of language activity.
Hence, language register is the level of formality with which you speak. Different situations and people call for different registers. This is a concept I was talking about recently with some of my graduate students who dislike the idea of writing with a formal tone. They were commenting that they preferred to write in a conversational tone. Since our class is about learning to write up their academic research, I countered by saying that a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal was less likely to receive a favourable response from the editors if the tone was too conversational.
Some of them were unfamiliar with the concept of language register, so I gave them a quick overview based on Joos’ (1967) definitions:
1) Static register
At this level, language is literally “frozen” in time and form. It does not change. This type of language is often learned and repeated by rote. Examples include biblical verse, prayers, the Pledge of Allegiance, and so forth.
2) Formal register
This style is impersonal and often follows a prescriptive format. The speaker uses complete sentences, avoids slang and may use technical or academic vocabulary. It is likely that the speaker
38 will use fewer contractions, but opt instead for complete words. (Example: “have not” instead of “haven’t”).
Writing expert Rita Mae Brown might argue that a writer or speaker is more likely to use vocabulary with Latin or Greek roots at this register. For example, the writer of a scientific article may be more likely to use the word “female” (Latin root) than “woman” (Anglo Saxon root). This is the register used for most academic and scientific publishing.
3) Consultative register
This is the register used when consulting an expert such as a doctor. The language used is more precise. The speaker is likely to address the expert by a title such as “Doctor”, “Mr.” or “Mrs.”.
Some sources say this register is the formal register used in conversation.
4) Casual register
This register is conversational in tone. It is the language used among and between friends. Words are general, rather than technical. This register may include more slang and colloquialisms. Rita Mae Brown might say that at this register, speakers are more likely to use vocabulary words with an Anglo Saxon or Germanic root. Her book “Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers’ Manual” has an impressive list of (pp. 63-65) English vocabulary words that have an Anglo-Saxon or Germanic root, and their Latin root counterparts.
5) Intimate register
The language used by lovers. It is also the language used in sexual harassment. This is the most intimate form of language. It is best avoided in public and professional situations. Unlike French, Spanish, German and other languages, English does not have different pronouns for addressing others in different registers. For example, Spanish has “usted” for formal and consultative register and “tú” for casual and intimate register. I never quite understood why one would address dieties with the informal “tú”, but that seems to be what is used at the frozen register, too. Nevertheless, modern English simply has “you”.
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That wasn’t always the way. We used to have both formal and informal forms of “you” in English. “You” was the formal way to address another, not the informal, as many people believe.
“Thou” was informal. For example, Juliet addresses her lover informally with the famous line, “O Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?” (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2).
Over time, we dropped our informal “thou” and opted instead to use the formal “you” in all situations and with all speakers. So, we ended up with one way to speak to everyone.
That leaves Native English speakers who have never learned an additional language at a disadvantage when it comes to learning and understanding register. There can be an assumption that all situations and all people are created equal. Needless to say, that assumption is false.
According to researchers such as Craig Storit (2001), Canadians tend to be culturally informal. They are more likely to address their boss by their first name and use a casual register more than any other. This does not mean, however, that Canadians (or anyone else, for that matter) are exempt from learning other registers and knowing when and why to change registers. A speaker may move from one register to another with ease. For example, it is not uncommon for Canadian teachers to address one another casually in the staff room, and then adopt a more consultative register when speaking with a parent or school board trustee.
If one register is expected and another is presented, the result can be either that offense is taken (or intended) or a comic response. For example, on the TV show “Big Bang Theory”, Sheldon’s character often uses the higher consultative register with his friends, as well as everyone else. He sometimes seems “stuck” in the world of high-level vocabulary, unable to speak in the lower casual register that his friends use among themselves. The result is comedic. The audience laughs at his social awkwardness and inability to understand that he can (and should) adapt his speech to different contexts.
In contrast to Sheldon’s academic speech, some researchers have found that those living in poverty are more likely to be “stuck” at the casual register. They are less likely to have developed the skills at the consultative or formal language registers. Or if they do know how to use the higher registers, it feels inauthentic to do so, like wearing a suit that does not fit properly. As a result,
40 those living in poverty may disregard the higher registers or simply refuse to use them in their speech and writing. This, in turn, may inhibit them from advancing in their work and ultimately, getting out of poverty. The same may also apply to professionals looking for advancement or aspiring scholars who wish to publish their work. For professional and academic writing, the formal or at the very least, the consultative register, is appropriate. Knowing what the various registers are, how to differentiate between them and when to use which one increases your chances of being accepted by groups and speakers in a variety of contexts.
6) Register in Language
Imagine that you're going to be introduced to a very important person who you have never met. Maybe it is the Queen of England. When you meet her, would you say: 'Hey, dude! What's up?' Probably not. You would say something more formal such as 'It is an honor to meet you, Your Highness.' On the other hand, you wouldn't call your best friend 'His Royal Highness.' Instead you would be fine using the informal address, 'dude.' In every situation you encounter, you use speech appropriate to the person to whom you are speaking and his or her context. The language you use when talking to your friends is not the same language you would use when meeting someone as important as the Queen. This difference in language formality is called register. There are formal and informal registers in spoken and written language. Formal registers can include everything from an academic essay to wedding vows. The academic essay is formal because it includes polished speech, complex sentences, and precise vocabulary. The wedding vows are an example of extremely formal language that must be said the same way each time as part of a ritual.
There are also varieties of informal registers. Informal language occurs between people who know each other well and who speak without trying to be 'proper'. Sometimes this includes speaking in slang and other times it's simply a more casual delivery. For example, you might say, 'Could you bring us more coffee, please?' to a waiter at a fancy restaurant, but at your favorite hangout you might say, 'Can I get a little more coffee here?' when you've reached the bottom of your cup.
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7) The Role of Register Analysis in an English for Special Purposes (ESP)
In recent years, there has been growing international interest in designing second and foreign language courses specific to work-related needs or academic objectives of well-defined groups of learners--usually adults who have studied general English in school but who need to demonstrate on the job proficiency in either a specific skill area such as reading or in a specialized content area such as technical English. Effective on-the-job communication skills have long been recognized as one of the criteria for hiring and promoting employees; a good technician with poor communicative ability may not be recommended for a supervisory or management position. The impetus for the specialization of English as a Second language course objectives and content is one consequence of the role that English has taken on as an international language in fields such as science, technology, business, or commerce. ESL teachers are faced with the challenge to relate language instruction to the uses learners will make of the language because now there are groups of learners motivated to learn English for purely instrumental purposes. In other words, these students perceive English as a means to an end, as a tool needed to acquire vocational training or professional expertise unavailable in their home country or unavailable in their native language. This instrumental motivation may be as valid a predictor of success in language learning for these students as integrative motivation was found to be in the Canadian context (see Gardner and Lambert 1972). Students, instrumentally motivated to learn English, need to perceive the relevance of second language pedagogy to their career goals. Thus not only the interpersonal function of language but also the informational function of language must be presented in the classroom using materials relevant to the uses students will make of the language. The criteria for successful language learning will be measured by how appropriately, efficiently, and effectively students can use language to perform specific goals.
One response to the change in student population at American universities and to the change in motivation for learning English has been to make the language instruction more student centered or, to borrow a term from the field of business, more "consumer oriented" by identifying specific language needs, designing course materials to optimally meet those needs, and evaluating the relevance and effectiveness of the instructional goals and materials as well as the performance of both teachers and students. Such an ongoing process of functional needs
42 assessment, curriculum design, materials development, teacher training and supervision, and program evaluation has become associated with the communicative movement in general and with the syllabus of Wilkins in particular (Wilkins 1976). However, when the content area is narrowly restricted and there is an emphasis on specific skill areas such as reading, and when the student population is homogeneous in language proficiency, professional needs, and perhaps even language background, the functional approach to language teaching becomes more narrowly focused on a given student population and the result is a more pragmatic orientation to language instruction that has become known as Special Purposes Language Teaching.
Special purposes language courses are not restricted to the English language: there has been general acceptance of the acronym LSP or Languages for Special Purposes. However, much of the research on LSP is written in English and English for Special Purposes (ESP) has received greater attention than the more general term from curriculum experts and materials designers. One of the most complete bibliographies of ESP, that of Robinson (1980), lists over 500 entries of theoretical and applied work done within only the last ten years. In effect, ESP has become an umbrella term covering a wide range of interests and approaches to student centered learning. Munby indicates his acceptance of this term as he defines ESP courses in which "the syllabi and materials are determined in all essentials by the prior analysis of the communicative needs of the learner, rather than by non-learner centered criteria such as the teacher's or institution's predetermined preference for General English or for teaching English as part of a general education" (1978:2). Specific content areas have their own acronyms: EST refers to the English of Science and Techno- EBE refers to English for Business and Economics EOP refers to English for Occupational Purposes; VESL refers to Vocational ESL; and EAP refers to English for Academic Purposes. These acronyms reveal the content areas to be included in the curriculum; it remains the language instructor's job to specify the content in the syllabus. In other words, these questions must be addressed: What is distinctive about the language of science? How is the language of science similar to or different from the language of technology? How are areas such as science, technology or business different from general English? These questions are more often asked than answered. One early and influential attempt to answer these questions was based on the argument that different uses of a Language will necessarily be accompanied by different surface structure features--stated simply this means that the language
43 of science will look and sound different from other varieties of English. Such a view makes intuitive sense. The proponents of this "function helps determine form" point of view were Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens in their book The Linguistic Sciences and Lang- Teaching (1964). They can be credited with introducing a term, which has become part of the jargon of applied linguistics--that of "register" or "a variety of language distinguished according to use" (1964:89). Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens then defined louse" in terms of three parameters: field, mode, and style or tenor. Field was used to refer globally to language activities such as Politics, linguistics, or music; tenor was used to refer to the interpersonal role relationships between people (e.g., teacher/student, parents/children, boss/ employees); mode was used to refer to the medium of communication selected (e.g., speech, writing). Thus, register in the Halliday, et al., framework encompassed a number Of socio-cultural features of communication. Problems arose, however, when the framework began to be applied to specific contexts. Correlations were found between linguistic features such as grammatical structures or lexical choices and specific registers. These correlations led people to believe it was possible to predict what a register would look or sound like from the occurrences of grammar and lexicon. The Misleading assumption was that because a text exhibited certain surface structure linguistic features, then it must belong to a specific register.
Later Halliday and Hasan in Cohesion in English (1976) would define cohesion or intersentential connectivity also in terms of grammar and lexis. Although Halliday, et al., never intended for grammar and lexis to be the sole determiners of register, many interpreted register in this narrow fashion because there did exist some very specialized registers of English that could be learned with dictionary and grammar in hand. For example, the topics and questions addressed to hotel employees are generally restricted to a narrow semantic field. Similarly, the language use of airline pilots and air traffic controllers is restricted to clearly identifiable lexical items and grammatical structures. Early studies in ESP, thus, concentrated on registers that were fairly homogeneous and that did not show a great deal of variety among Users. When the same methods were applied to more complex registers, it became clear that grammar and lexicon alone were insufficient predictors what people would actually say and write. These early studies were important because they showed the inadequacy of a register approach alone and the need to include more variables in the descriptive process. The methodology for register analysis (very
44 often computational linguistics) was necessarily bound to the words on a page and proceeded in linear, word-by-word, or sentence-by-sentence parsing. The methodology became similar to that of "explication de texte"--a structuralist methodology for making the formal features of a literary work explicit. Explication de texte attempts intensive analysis of written text assuming that the sum Of the parts is greater than the whole; register analysis too often loses sight of the global meaning of a text by an overemphasis on the parts.
One goal of register analysis dovetailed with that of contrastive analysis--where there were differences, one could predict difficulty. Language teachers could concentrate on lexical differences such as the higher frequency of noun compounds in scientific English as well as grammatical distinctions such as the higher incidence of passive voice constructions in scientific English with the intention that difficulties with the language would be removed once students had enough practice in manipulating the forms distinctive to a register. Such a solution to the register problem was necessary because few ESP teachers have the same domain specific knowledge that their students have, and thus without this top-down conceptual orientation to the subject matter, these teachers were attempting to teach what they knew best grammar and vocabulary. While register studies based on statistical descriptions helped create materials that were more authentic representations of what students would actually encounter in the real world, they still were not helping students make the semantic and pragmatic connection that comprehension entails. Thus, register analysis was a valuable tool for identifying classroom materials with high content validity; the mistake was to try to teach these materials by the same principles that they were selected. Selinker, Todd-Trimble, and Trimble underscored the problems students encounter when teaching overemphasizes discrete point features of language. They remarked that students "often seem unable to comprehend the total meaning of the EST discourse even when they understand all the words in each sentence and all the sentences that make up the discourse" (1976:82).
Register analysis is a necessary first step in an analysis of the linguistic needs of students in ESP Courses. Register analysis can guide teachers in the selection and preparation of materials that should by their content validity motivate students to learn. Register analysis thus helps ensure appropriateness of content. However, the assumption underlying Language Teaching for Special Purposes is that a focus on the actual use made of language will lead to an
45 improvement in student attitude, motivation, and ultimately performance. ESP, thus, falls well within the framework of communicative language teaching which is currently becoming an international phenomenon. To prevent the focus of ESP from becoming either too narrow or too wide, teachers need to continue evaluating program goals in light of student performance both inside and outside the classroom. Therefore, the content of an ESP syllabus should be based on an approach that combines register analysis with discourse analysis. Register analysis can be used to determine authenticity of language in relation to lexical and grammatical features. Discourse analysis can be used to help deter mine the authenticity Of the message as an act of communication involving a sender, receiver, and situational context in which a message is embedded. Thus, these procedures help better isolate what should be taught in the Classroom. Language teachers, however, must continue to struggle with the problem of how to make the language used in the classroom more like the language used outside- the classroom.
h) Diglossia
The 3,000 or so entries in Mauro Ferna´ ndez’s bibliography on diglossia (1993) might well lead one to the conclusion that everything that needed to be said on the subject had already been said. Yet, forty years after the publication of the late Charles Ferguson’s historic paper on diglossia (Ferguson 1959), a coherent and generally accepted theory of diglossia remains to be formulated. In his last major statement on the subject, Ferguson himself was moved to comment on how research over the course of the preceding three decades had failed to adopt a comparative or typological approach to the study of diglossia, having been preoccupied instead with individual case studies focused largely upon the issue of whether a particular language situation was or was not an instance of diglossia (1991: 219). This assessment of the situation may perhaps be seen as a particular example of Chambers’s criticism of sociolinguistic research more generally, to the effect that ‘‘the social science content of sociolinguistics has overshadowed its theoretical implications’’ (1995: 11).
It is abundantly clear that Ferguson’s original contribution was intended to reach beyond the purely descriptive and class factory levels of analysis to the theoretical the abstract notion of diglossia is derived from the specifics of four prototypical cases, and its synchronic, typological aspect is intimately related to its diachronic, evolutionary one. In Ferguson’s own words, ‘what I
46 tried to do was to characterize this situation in the hopes that here we would have discovered one possible element in a general typology of socio-linguistic situations’’ (1963a: 163). This typology was to have led to a ‘‘set of principles or frame of reference,’’ in terms of which patterns of language use and the evolution of verbal repertoires might be conceptualized (1991: 215). Again in Ferguson’s words, ‘‘My goals, in ascending order were: clear case, taxonomy, principles, theory’’ (1991: 215).
Consideration of a score or more of sociolinguistic situations that bear some significant resemblance to those discussed by Ferguson, and in particular to the Arabic, Greek, and Swiss German cases, suggests that these situations may form a coherent, bounded, and theoretically motivated subset of all possible sociolinguistic situations, the shared social and linguistic characteristics of which may be causally attributable to common underlying socio - historical circumstances. In terms of their synchronic characteristics as well as what may be common patterns in the natural histories of these situations, diglossic situations may usefully be compared to and contrasted with other instances of standards-with dialects or with instances of societal bilingualism in the most generally understood use of these terms. The resulting classification is not as categorical as we might like; there are examples of societal bilingualism that bear some resemblance to diglossic situations, just as there are, or have been, examples of diglossia that, in certain aspects of their social evolution, resemble societal bilingualism. Finally, and as Ferguson himself has noted (1991: 219), it becomes clear upon a close examination of a number of case studies of diglossia that this subset itself is not completely homogeneous, and that even the most unequivocal cases of diglossia, if such there be, present contrasts in detail that are at times considerable, yet always instructive for a theory of diglossia and for sociolinguistic theory more generally. These caveats aside, one of the purposes of this study, in furtherance of Ferguson’s interest in ‘‘the sources and outcomes of different language situations’’ (1991: 223), is to attempt to draw a workable distinction between the phenomenon of diglossia in the strict sense of the term and that of diglossia in some broader sense, and to motivate this distinction theoretically in terms of the sociogenesis of each, the course of development of each, and the long-term consequences of each for the verbal repertoires that they constitute, in whole or in part. I will argue, in the end, for restricting the scope of the term ‘‘diglossia’’ essentially to that first envisioned by Charles Ferguson in 1959, on the grounds that diglossia and societal bilingualism, two major types of
47 sociolinguistic arrangement often regarded as surface variants of the same underlying phenomenon, are, in fact, fundamentally different in their social origins, evolutionary courses of development, and resolutions over the long term, and, furthermore, that inclusion of these two phenomena under a single rubric obscures rather than clarifies sociolinguistic theory. There are, in fact, two principal reasons for attempting to forge the distinction between the type of sociolinguistic situation described by Ferguson and its counterpart in societal bilingualism. The first of these concerns the potential relationship between the nature of the complementary functional distribution of linguistic varieties, on the one hand, and either stability or direction of displacement of codes in the event of shift, on the other hand. The second concerns the relationship between linguistic form, or the formal structure of linguistic repertoires, on the one hand, and language function, as well as change in language function, on the other hand. Functional complementarity of codes, acquisition, and stability
The Arabic, Greek, and Swiss German situations are clearly distinct from typical cases of standard-with-dialects and from societal bilingualism in that the former are instances of unalloyed register variation, which is to say, linguistic variation that is stratified by context of use only and not by the social identity of the user (Halliday 1968). What may have been left implicit in Ferguson’s first formulation of diglossia is stated with absolute clarity in his retrospect on the subject: ‘‘If we assume that there are two basic dimensions of variation in language, dialect variation correlating with the place of the speaker in the community and register variation correlating with occasions of use, then the H and L varieties of diglossias are register variants, not dialect variants’’ (Ferguson 1991: 222). Such variation has also been characterized as diatypic, rather than dialectal, or as use-oriented, versus user-oriented (Britto 1986: 37–39). In other words, stratification of variation in diglossia should then show sensitivity to differences in situational context without much, or indeed any, sensitivity to differences in social class (see Bell 1984: 153, figure 3c; Walters 1996: 175, figure 2d). The fact that in Ferguson’s canonical cases no section of the community uses the H variety for ordinary conversation is arguably ‘‘the most important factor in a diglossic situation and one that makes for relative stability’’ (Keller 1982: 90).
whatsoever for others to imitate this practice in their everyday conversation. Parents never speak H to each other (Keller 1982: 91), children have no opportunity to acquire H as their native variety (Keller 1982: 91), and, as Ferguson himself has pointed out (1959: 331), no one is ever
48 comfortable in H to the extent that they are in L. As the younger generation reaches child-bearing age, the cycle repeats itself. L maintains itself in this case, due to the fact that the only native speakers of H are members of another speech community (or tourists or immigrants therefrom) that do not serve as social role models for the diglossic speech communities of German-speaking Switzerland. In the case of Arabic, too, most, if not all, speakers of H and L select between the elevated and vernacular speech styles based upon situational context rather than social status of the speaker (Kaye 1994: 58), and ‘‘even Classical Arabic literature and grammar professors _ go home and speak their colloquial dialects with their children, families, and friends’’ (Kaye 1994: 60). As Keller (1982) correctly notes, this is a critical factor in the definition of diglossia and in differentiating it, therefore, from other types of sociolinguistic situations such as the better-known cases of societal bilingualism. The general principle for sociolinguistic theory that emerges from contrasting the two types of situation seems to be that the social motivation that drives shift from a lower-status language or variety to a higher one derives from the prestige accorded those speakers who use the higher variety as a vernacular, and not from the prestige of the social contexts in which H is employed, provided the same norms of functional allocation obtain throughout the entire speech community. It should also be recorded that, just as the realization of H versus L does not vary as a function of the social identity of the speaker, H as opposed to L may not be exchanged asymmetrically between interlocutors in order to signal social distance or inequality of social standing in a given interactive event, as may, for instance, traditional Javanese address styles. In particular, the latter have been differentiated quite explicitly from diglossia by Errington, who notes that ‘‘Javanese address styles can be exchanged symmetrically like L and H varieties [in diglossia], but, unlike L and H varieties, they can also be exchanged asymmetrically’’ (1991: 200), and that this distinction reflects a ‘‘fundamental interactional difference’’ between honorific language use and the use of H and L in diglossia (1991: 203). Others would seem to take issue with this position, as, for instance does Schiffman (1997: 213), when he claims that ‘‘the use of L may be an expression of solidarity and may not be offered to speakers whose social position is superior or distant’’ or that ‘‘H may be the only variety appropriate in a given situation because the use of L would imply a solidarity that is reserved only for members of a particular in-group.’’
Ferguson himself, indeed, has envisaged the possibility that in certain ‘‘idealized’’ speech communities, where everyone knows both varieties, ‘‘choice of the H or L variety can be used in
49 the same way that the choice of pronouns of address is used in other communities _ [and that] there could be times when it would be appropriate for one person to use the H variety and for the adressee to use the L variety to mark power relationships’’ (Ferguson 1991: 228). Switzerland seems close to just such an idealized situation, yet nonreciprocal use of H would be considered nothing short of condescending, if not absurd. In this connection, it has been observed that ‘‘it is psychologically impossible for any two Swiss of any class or occupation ever to address each other privately in anything but the ‘Low’ variety’’ (Keller 1982: 91). Exceptions to the reciprocity principle may be the use by Sanskrit dramatists of H as the language of kings and priests, and L as the language of the common people, although in real life ‘‘everyone spoke in one or another L variety and used H only for religious, literary, and official documents and certain public occasions’’ (Ferguson 1991: 228; see also Lee 1986: 151). Similarly, ‘‘in the early twentieth century an Arab playwright (Mikhail Nu’aimeh) _ had the educated people speak H and the less educated people speak L, although in real life everyone spoke L in the situations presented in his dramas’’ (Ferguson 1991: 228). It seems clear enough, however, that in both of these examples, the nonreciprocal use of H by upper-class characters, and of L by lower-class characters, is a dramatic device that does not accord with contemporary social reality, and that it is, in fact, a type of metaphorical switching that transposes the horizontal, situational stratification of H and L into a vertical one intended to highlight class differentiation. Social-class stratification of the use of H and L (or its absence) must be distinguished from social stratification of the opportunity to acquire H, and from social stratification of access to those social contexts in which H is appropriate — a distinction not explicitly recognized by Ferguson in his original contribution (but see Ferguson 1991: 227). The typical case, indeed, seems to be that ‘‘la diglossie ne touche pas toujours les meˆ mes couches de la population au meˆ me moment’’ (Mackey 1989: 16), and that only ‘‘some speakers possess the requisite linguistic versatility to be able to use H under one set of conditions and L under another’’ (Ferguson 1959: 325). As Schiffman has noted, ‘‘in some linguistic cultures, all speakers exhibit diglossic behavior (i.e., use both H and L varieties in complementary distribution), while in others, only some members of the society do’’ (1997: 212), and ‘‘in many diglossic situations, only a minority or elite control the H domain successfully’’ (1997: 206). It goes without saying that whereas social access to the informal situations in which L is appropriate is universal, access to those more formal situations in which H is appropriate is asymmetrically distributed in favor of those educationally privileged, literate, or otherwise specialized classes in society most likely to
50 have had the opportunity to acquire H formally. It is only in this sense that Ferguson’s position can be reconciled with that of Henry and Rene´ e Kahane, who view diglossic systems as ‘‘the linguistic representation of a class system,’’ where ‘‘H, the prestige language, is used by, and therefore becomes the mark of, a sector of society which excels through power, education, manners, and/or heritage,’’ and where ‘‘L, the everyday idiom, is the language of the others, and is often used by H speakers in their non-H roles’’ (Kahane and Kahane 1979: 183). Britto has aptly formulated this distinction as follows: ‘‘Total superposition does not imply that every member of a diglossic community knows H and uses H, but merely that there is no portion of the community which actually knows H and uses H without also knowing L and using L’’ (1991: 61). In sum, diglossia, in its ideal form, may be conceived of as the quintessential example of linguistic variation where linguistic realization as opposed to language acquisition — here, grossly oversimplified, the use of H or L — is a function solely of social context, and not of social identity of the speaker. In diglossia, it is context, not class, or other group membership, that controls use. Sociolinguistic situations therefore may be compared to each other in terms of the degree to which the variation between two or more alternants in their respective code matrices is determined by social context, as opposed to the social identity of the speaker, and in situations such as those described for Switzerland, Greece, most Arabic-speaking countries, and numerous other cases, the bulk, if not all, of the variance in the use of H and L appears to be explained by situational context. Communicative systems may also be compared with regard to the degree of functional compartmentalization of their linguistic alternants, and it is clear that Ferguson’s view of diglossia is one where the elevated and vernacular codes are in relatively sharp complementary distribution (Ferguson 1959: 328). Others have proposed that Ferguson’s version of diglossia is simply the extreme end of a continuum ranging from ‘‘rigid diglossia,’’ where ‘‘there is minimal functional overlapping between the codes,’’ and ‘‘fluid diglossia,’’ where ‘‘several functions are less rigidly attached to a particular code’’ (Pauwels 1986: 15). It is a commonplace that in every speech community, some degree of differential functional allocation of linguistic varieties is to be expected, whether categorical, as in the prototypical diglossic case, or statistical, and viewed from a surface synchronic perspective alone, diglossia may not appear to differ, except in degree, from other instances of situational alternation either between two languages or between two varieties of the same language. What distinguishes diglossia from other instances of interlingual or intralingual situational alternation — even more than the sharp complementary distribution of linguistic
51 varieties per se — is that the functional distribution of codes in the diglossic case is one that specifically protects the role of the L variety as a natively learned variety. Like standard varieties generally, H ‘‘is not ‘native’ to anyone, being a higher cultural endowment with functions that cannot be mastered until after the period of normal first-language acquisition’’ (Joseph 1987: 17). Emphatically, then, diglossia is a special case of sharp functional differentiation of registers in which the H variety, or set of varieties, is nobody’s mother tongue. According to Ure, diglossia is a special case of separate sets of registers ‘‘in which the marked set _ is not the mother tongue of any members of the community’’ (1982: 16). Coulmas too has noted that diglossia generally ‘‘is characterized by a long-term coexistence of native spoken varieties of a language, on the one hand, and a written variety which is the mother tongue of nobody, on the other’’ (1987: 117). Stated differently, since adults ‘‘invariably use L in speaking to children and children use L in speaking to one another, _ L is invariably learned by children in what may be regarded as the ‘normal’ way of learning one’s mother tongue,’’ and the learning of H ‘‘is chiefly accomplished by the means of formal education’’ (Ferguson 1959: 331). Finally, as Schiffman observes, ‘‘In diglossia no one speaks the H variety as a mother tongue, only the L variety. In the standard with dialects situation, some speakers speak H as a mother tongue, while others speak L varieties as a mother tongue and acquire H as a second system’’ (1997: 207). Given the express, widely held view that only L is acquired as the natural mother tongue in a diglossic speech community, it is remarkable that time after time in the sociolinguistic literature this critical feature of diglossia is disregarded, as, for instance, in the case of Paraguay, where Spanish and Guaranı´ are in fact the mother tongues of two distinct segments of the community. It is scarcely imaginable, as Ferguson himself has noted, that any change toward full utilization of H could take place without the willingness on the part of adults to speak H for conversational purposes, especially with their children (Ferguson 1959: 331). True, in other instances of language or dialect contact, the vernacular role of the L variety is also relatively protected in the initial stages, but what further distinguishes diglossia from these latter is the absence of any prestige group that employs H as its vernacular and could, therefore, provide the social impulse for shift away from L as the vernacular. Language shift, like internal language change, requires social motivation, but, as noted above, this motivation derives from the adoption as role models of high prestige individuals who themselves already employ H as a native, vernacular variety, and not from its association with prestigious, high culture domains of interaction. In the absence of such a reference group, and given the functional protection afforded
52
L as a natively acquired variety, stability in that role is to be expected. Short of stability, then shift from H to L in formal domains of interaction, or shift from H to a new vernacular-based standard, is to be anticipated, as opposed to shift from L to H in informal domains. It was Ferguson himself who pointed out that the strictly complementary functional allocation of the elevated and vernacular varieties in the Arabic, Greek, Haitian, and Swiss German cases had existed for periods of no less than several centuries in each case. From this observation, it has been tempting to conclude that situations like these are inherently stable, and therefore that the attainment and maintenance of sharp functional compartmentalization of codes may be the key to minority language maintenance and even reversal of language shift within multilingual or multilectal speech communities (see Fishman 1991; Paulston 1994). To argue this is in essence to beg the question, however, since the means whereby such functional compartmentalization — entailing the eradication of the ‘‘H’’ variety from all domains of personal, informal interaction and therefore from all first-language-acquisition contexts — might be motivated, attained, and maintained are not suggested by the model. Moreover, stability is a relative matter, and the fact remains that Colloquial Arabic, Dhimotikı´, and Schwyzertu¨ u¨ tsch have all gained ground in the twentieth century, to one degree or another, at the expense of their coterritorial elevated counterparts. It is clear, then, that functional compartmentalization at a given point in time is in and of itself no warranty against eventual shift. Whether the long-term maintenance of a vernacular variety necessarily follows from functional compartmentalization of codes, or whether its displacement by a more prestigious rival follows from the absence of such functional compartmentalization, is far from obvious. Nonetheless, the fact that in the cases just mentioned, as in numerous others, it is precisely the elevated or culturally prestigious variety, and not the vernacular, that has been displaced to some extent is reason enough to distinguish these from other cases where it is typically the vernacular that has been displaced, often to the point of extinction, by a prestigious competitor. Although most often described, and problematically so, in terms of synchronic functional distribution of linguistic varieties, it is the diachronic aspect of diglossia — its sociogenesis, course of development across time, and ultimate resolution — that is of greatest significance where sociolinguistic theory is concerned. The variables discussed by Ferguson may in fact be viewed as contextual, linguistic, or temporal in nature. Function, prestige, acquisition, literary heritage, and standardization are all in one way or another contextual aspects of diglossia. Grammar, lexicon, and phonology are linguistic aspects. Stability, clearly, refers to the temporal axis along which the
53 various contextual and linguistic variables may vary. In the main, scholars to date have treated Ferguson’s nine characteristics of diglossia as a potentially open-ended checklist of features or parameters of a sociolinguistic typology or have tended to focus their attentions on one feature only, or a smaller number of such features, most notably the functional compartmentalization of codes and the structural distance between codes. The position advanced here, however, is (1) that Ferguson’s features are not an open-ended list, but rather a closed, tightly interdependent set of features, (2) that functional compartmentalization, acquisition, and stability of L as vernacular are causally related, and (3) that the abstract social factor underlying these latter three features is in turn related in a nonrandom way to the structural relationships between the diglossic codes.
1 ) Structural relationships between codes in diglossia
The four cases described by Ferguson are remarkable for the fact that the elevated and vernacular varieties in each bear a close structural resemblance to one another — not so close as to be readily mutually intelligible, but also not so distant as to be unhesitatingly regarded as separate languages. While acknowledging the difficulty, on the strength of linguistic criteria alone, of identifying different language varieties as varieties of the same or of different languages, and setting aside too the vexed question of the nature of the creole–standard relationship in the Haitian situation, it is hardly contestable that the linguistic affinities between Classical or Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial Arabic, between Standard German and Schwyzertu¨ u¨ tsch, or between Katharevousa and Dhimotikı´, are of an order quite apart from that of the affinities between, say, Spanish and Guaranı´ in Paraguay, Spanish and Nahuatl in Mexico, or even Spanish and English in the American Southwest. Other pairs, such as Dutch and Frisian in the Netherlands, French and Provence¸ al in France, and Catala´ n and Castillian in Spain, may, admittedly, be more problematic to place linguistically between the extremes of linguistic affinity, but the question that nonetheless presents itself is whether proximity of linguistic relationship between varieties, however measured, is causally associated with the potential for displacement of one by the other. Ferguson sets his initial discussion of diglossia solidly within the context of language situations where ‘‘two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions’’ (1959: 325 [emphasis added]) and further asserts that ‘‘no attempt is made _ to examine the analogous situation where two distinct (related or unrelated) languages are used side by side throughout a speech community, each with a clearly defined role’’ (1959: 325, note 2). He
54 later recognizes explicitly the difficulty of measuring linguistic distance and of identifying two varieties as members of the same or different languages (Ferguson 1991: 220). Elsewhere, too, he adverts to the possibility that some future sociolinguistic typology might extend the term diglossia to include certain situations where the codes in question might be structurally unrelated (Ferguson 1963b: 174), and, more particularly, to the possibility that the relationship between Spanish and Guaranı´ in Paraguay might also reasonably be described as diglossic (Ferguson 1973: 41–42). Nevertheless, his intention, by his own admission, had been ‘‘that the users would always view the two [varieties] as the same language’’ and that ‘‘diglossia’’ should not extend to cases ‘‘where superposed on an ordinary conversational language is a totally unrelated language used for formal purposes, as in the often-cited case of Spanish and Guaranı´ in Paraguay’’ (Ferguson 1991: 223). Over time, opinion with regard to the theoretical significance of the relatedness between codes in diglossia has varied in the extreme. Some scholars, following Ferguson, have maintained the distinction between related and unrelated language varieties. In proposing the term ‘‘diglossia’’ for situations where two relatively closely related varieties are in complementary functional distribution, and the term ‘‘biglossia’’ for circumstances where the varieties in question are varieties of different languages, Fellman has implied a fundamental distinction between the two (1975a: 39). More recently, Daltas too has proposed that ‘‘Fergusonian diglossia should be preserved as a useful notion to refer to a specific type of variation involving an H and an L variety of (what is societally seen as) the same language’’ (1993: 348). Others have taken a view of the relationship between codes in diglossia as being intermediate between that involved in multilingual situations, on the one hand, and stylistic shifting on the other (Daltas 1993: 341). An important issue here is whether structural intermediacy in this sense is directly or indirectly asserted to connote sociological intermediacy as well. Wexler, for instance, seems not to be concerned with the latter, but rather, notwithstanding the methodological dilemmas involved, with establishing the minimum distance between codes in diglossia, so that the latter may be distinguished from more common cases of standards-with-dialects by the existence of ‘‘a broad structural gap between the standardized written norm and the unstandardized (as a rule) spoken dialects’’ (1971: 336). Coulmas, likewise, assumes ‘‘that a large structural gap between the spoken norm and the written norm of a speech community is the most salient feature of diglossia,’’ although ‘‘it is far from obvious how the distance between spoken and written norm can be measured, and how the gap in one language can be compared with that in another’’ (1991: 126). For other scholars, too, the
55 difference between diglossia and societal bilingualism appears largely to reduce to the degree of linguistic difference between varieties in the code repertoire. Fasold, for instance, views the diglossia of the Arabic-speaking world, Greece, and German-speaking Switzerland as ‘‘a convenient midpoint in the possible range of relatedness to be found in broad diglossia’’ (1984: 54), thus distinguishing the former from so-called superposed bilingualism, where the prestige and vernacular varieties are more distantly related to each other, and from style-shifting, where the two varieties are more related structurally. Such a categorization, however, is at one time over inclusive and under inclusive. It is over inclusive in that it admits to the category of diglossia sociolinguistic situations such as Dutch–Frisian in the Netherlands and French– Provence¸ al in France, neither of which, in all probability, properly belongs. Likewise, it excludes situations such as Yiddish– Hebrew in Jewish communities in Europe prior to World War II and among certain groups of Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel today, all of which deserve serious consideration as candidates for the designation of ‘‘diglossia.’’ The difficulty with such approaches to the identification of diglossia is that they focus almost exclusively upon structural relationships between codes in the community verbal repertoire at the expense of social and functional distribution. Along much the same lines, Britto regards the intermediate distance presumed to exist between H and L in diglossia as ‘‘optimal,’’ so that these linguistic varieties may be distinguished ‘‘from ‘languages’ (which would be Super-Optimal varieties), and ‘‘styles,’’ ‘‘accents,’’ etc. (which would be Sub-Optimal varieties)’’ (1986: 10). Recognizing that ‘‘it is not always easy to judge when a pair of varieties are optimally distant’’ (Britto 1986: 19) and that ‘‘there are at present no adequate techniques to measure it [optimal distance] empirically’’ (1986: 22), Britto proposes nevertheless that ‘‘if such clear norms are established to identify the Optimal varieties from other varieties which are too closely or too distantly related, then it may be possible to apply these norms to a given situation and evaluate whether the situation is diglossic or not diglossic’’ (1986: 20).
This reasoning borders on tautology, in that if there are no empirical measures by which the structural relationship between two codes may be identified as ‘‘optimal’’ other than that the sociolinguistic situation in which two codes coexist is already known to be diglossic, then it is clear that optimal distance between codes cannot be used as a diagnostic in sociolinguistic situations, the status of which is not known by independent criteria. The best that can be said of this approach is that it identifies the linguistic distance between codes in the Arabic, Greek, Swiss
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German, and Tamil cases as prototypical for diglossia, assuming them to be commensurate in the first instance. In the end, establishing a certain distance between codes as criterial for diglossia proves no less of a conundrum, and perhaps no more theoretically relevant, than ascertaining whether two linguistic varieties should be identified as the ‘‘same’’ language. Perhaps all that can be said, then, along with Ferguson, is that ‘‘in diglossia there are always extensive differences between the grammatical structures of H and L’’ (Ferguson 1959: 333 [emphasis in original]). Other attempts to formulate the relevant linguistic questions expose a lingering preoccupation with structural distance as a defining characteristic of diglossia. Winford, for example, has asked, ‘‘What are the outer limits of the structural gap, beyond which a situation becomes bilingual rather than diglossic in Ferguson’s sense’’ and ‘‘what is the minimal structural gap between varieties that will qualify a situation for diglossic status?’’ (1985: 351). Ironically, even Ferguson himself regarded ‘‘the failure to make clear how far apart (or how close together) the high and low varieties have to be for a language situation to be characterized as diglossia’’ as a shortcoming of his original article (1991: 223). Paolillo, more recently, has proposed that examination of a variety of different sociolinguistic situations ‘‘would allow us to establish what degree of difference constitutes _ the structural difference between diasystems necessary and/or sufficient for a situation to be diglossic’’ (1997: 292). Upon reflection, these turn out to be curious, linguistically deterministic ways of framing the problem, implying either that diglossia is arbitrarily defined by what appears as theoretically unmotivated reference to surface grammatical characteristics of the diglossic codes, or, alternatively, that structural discrepancies of a given magnitude between the elevated and vernacular varieties in diglossia could be held to account theoretically for the remaining features of diglossia, particularly those concerning functional complementarity of codes, the protection of L as the sole variety acquired as a native variety, and the stability of diglossic situations or anticipated direction of shift upon their dissolution. This last proposition seems on the face of it implausible, casting linguistic structure as the principal determinant of diglossia. At the other extreme, Joshua Fishman has implicitly dismissed the degree of structural proximity between codes as irrelevant to the definition of diglossia, asserting that ‘‘diglossia exists not only in multilingual societies which officially recognize several ‘languages’ but, also, in societies which are multilingual in the sense that they employ separate dialects, registers or functionally differentiated language varieties of whatever kind’’ (1967: 30), and provided too that ‘‘without schooling the written/formal-spoken [variety] cannot be understood’’ by speakers of the vernacular
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(1980: 4). This view is also championed by Pauwels, who employs the term diglossia for functional differentiation of codes within speech repertoires generally but distinguishes between interlingual diglossia, where the codes are not varieties of the same language, and intralingual diglossia, where they are (1986: 15). This is as much as to suggest, for example, that the asymmetric functional allocation of Nahuatl and Spanish in Mexico is to be distinguished from that of Katharevousa and Dhimotikı´ in Greece primarily on the basis of the structural discrepancies between the codes in each case. Clearly the two situations are worlds apart, however, not only in their surface linguistic dimensions, but, more significantly, in their sociohistorical origins, evolutionary courses of development, and ultimate resolutions. Fishman was among the first to propose that the role of linguistic relatedness between codes in diglossia be minimized, on the grounds that it is social consensus rather than structural affinity that confers the status of distinct languages on two or more linguistic varieties (1967: 33, note 4). A similar theme has been sounded more recently by Berger, who adds that ‘‘individual languages which are clearly distinguishable from a structural point of view are not necessarily distinguishable for the speaker,’’ and, conversely, that ‘‘speakers may consider their idiom as a separate language although this is not tenable from a linguistic point of view’’ (1990: 290). Mackey is almost certainly correct in his suggestion that the theoretical difficulty inherent in establishing language identity has been responsible for the extension of the notion of diglossia to include any set of linguistic varieties, related or not, and that this extension in turn has resulted in the massive multiplication of the number of situations throughout the world that might be called diglossic (1986: 239). Fishman’s original extension of the scope of diglossia may also be considered in the light of an early thrust in sociolinguistic thought toward the theoretical integration of dialect variation, diglossia, and societal bilingualism as surface variants of the same underlying phenomenon.
John Gumperz had argued that the distinction between bilingualism and bidialectalism was not always a significant one in the social characterization of speech communities (1968 [1962]: 463), and that linguistic difference need not necessarily correspond to difference in social function (1968 [1962]: 464). Fishman himself felt that a ‘‘single theory _ enabling us to understand, predict and interrelate both of these phenomena [diglossia and bilingualism] is an instance of enviable parsimony in the behavioral sciences’’ (1967: 32–33), and, in the same volume, Dell Hymes took the position that ‘‘cases of bilingualism par excellence (as for example French and English in
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Canada, Welsh and English in Wales, Russian and French among pre-revolutionary Russian nobility) are salient, special cases of the general phenomenon of variety in code repertoire and switching among codes’’ (1967: 9). Later still, Sankoff states that the shifting or switching among various codes typical of individuals in multilingual societies ‘‘does not differ qualitatively from the behaviour of monolinguals (shifting of style or level)’’ (1972: 33). Upon reflection, however, it is not at all clear that the French– English situation in Que´ bec and the Welsh–English situation in Wales are of a piece with the Russian–French situation in prerevolutionary Russia, nor that the Nahuatl–Spanish situation in Mexico might not have a great deal more in common with the Occitan–French situation in southern France than either has with the Schwyzertu¨ u¨ tsch–German situation in Switzerland. The emphasis on asymmetric functional differentiation of codes as the common denominator of all these situations may, rather than disclosing them to be surface variants of the same social phenomenon, instead have resulted in the surface merger of fundamentally distinct sociolinguistic situations. What is actually called for in the further study of diglossia is the establishment of a balance, and an interaction, between two complementary approaches: one, a universalist approach such as that discussed above, which emphasizes the similarities between diglossia and other sociolinguistic situations, and another, particularistic approach, which focuses upon the differences. In fact, too much has been made of the degree of structural proximity between constituent codes in a verbal repertoire as a diagnostic of diglossia. Defining the codes in diglossia a priori as varieties of the same language or otherwise is an arbitrary gesture and in itself contributes nothing of value to sociolinguistic theory. As others have noted, the issue is an empirical one, amenable to investigation via comparison of a variety of linguistic situations (Paolillo, 1997: 294). The position taken here is that comparative analysis of a sufficiently broad spectrum of linguistic situations is likely to reveal that the communicative arrangement characterized by Ferguson for Greece, Switzerland, and the Arab world is a social arrangement more fundamentally than it is a linguistic one, and that there is, therefore, no absolute causal connection between linguistic relatedness of the codes and the direction of eventual or potential shift. This point of view situates diglossia within the more general framework of prestige languages, as this term has been employed by Henry and Rene´ e Kahane, and shares the view expressed by these scholars with regard to structural relatedness between codes: ‘‘Genetically _ H may be a variety of L, either similar to it (say, early Medieval Latin vs. early Romance in the Carolingian age); or it may be dissimilar (late Medieval Latin vs. French in the 15th c.); or it may
59 be a truly foreign language to speakers of L (Norman French vs. the English of the Conquest period)’’ (Kahane and Kahane 1979: 183). This much said, however, if the structural difference between codes in diglossia is viewed as an outcome of the social circumstances giving rise to diglossia in the first place, rather than as a defining feature of diglossia, there is ample reason to suppose that language varieties in diglossia will in fact show a strong statistical tendency to be varieties of the same language, or, given the difficulties inherent in this notion, to evince structural relationships on the order of those obtaining in the Arabic, Greek, and Swiss-German cases. While it is possible to recall instances where comparable social relationships exist between decidedly distinct languages, such as Yiddish and Hebrew in certain UltraOrthodox Jewish communities, this appears to be more the exception than the rule. Rather, it is in the very nature of a diglossic accommodation between codes that the linguistic varieties involved tend more often than not to bear a relatively close linguistic relationship to one another, although the precise nature of this relationship and the specifics of its history may vary from case to case, as will be demonstrated below. Should this be the case, definitions of diglossia that are predicated upon linguistic distance between the constituent codes will prove to be essentially beside the point. The formulation of the problem adopted here is, given a particular pattern of functional complementarity of codes, a particular pattern of first-language (or dialect) acquisition, and a particular diachronic pattern whereby H tends either to converge upon or to be displaced by L, what structural characteristics are to be expected in such a code matrix and what structural characteristics are actually found? The position taken here is that the linguistic arrangement characterized by Ferguson for Greece, Switzerland, and the Arab world is fundamentally a sociological rather than a grammatical one, and that there is, therefore, no direct causal connection between linguistic distance between the component codes in such a code matrix and direction of eventual or potential shift.
While degree of linguistic affinity between codes may not be criterial to the definition of diglossia, it is highly relevant, as Walters (1996: 158) has remarked with respect to Arabic, to inquire as to the nature of the variation found in the preponderance of cases where H and L are indeed relatively closely related varieties. Ervin-Tripp has suggested that code use in diglossia may be accompanied ‘‘by more co-occurrence restriction than is style shifting where the common features of the styles may outweigh their differences’’ (1971: 44–45). In cases similar to that of traditional Javanese linguistic etiquette, co-occurrence restrictions appear to be absolute: selection
60 of a given item from one particular lexical set absolutely controls selection of the appropriate item from a second, independent, lexical set (Errington 1991; Geertz 1968), and these patterns of selection, or ‘‘linked conjugates’’ or ‘‘stylemes,’’ as Geertz refers to them (1968: 287), clearly identify the social level of the language variety in question. Ferguson’s claim that the use of the H or the L member of a lexical doublet immediately stamps a text as H or L suggests that the lexical co-occurrence restrictions in diglossia are more akin in their stringency to those operative in the situation described by Geertz (although the social dynamics involved are very different) than they are, say, to the rather looser co-occurrence restrictions obtaining in English between illumination, purchase, and children, on the one hand, and light, buy, and kids, respectively, on the other (Ferguson 1959: 334). In the case of the English doublets, ‘‘both words may be written and both may be used in ordinary conversation: the gap is not so great as for the corresponding doublets in diglossia’’ (Ferguson 1959: 334). Further, ‘‘the formal–informal dimension in languages like English is a continuum in which the boundary between the two items in different pairs may not come at the same point’’ (Ferguson 1959: 334). Biber etal (1994) and others have developed a factor-analytic technique for the cross-linguistic study of co-occurrence restrictions in written and spoken language, which, applied to diglossic code matrices, might help to provide a more clinical assessment of the extent and stringency of the co-occurrence restrictions governing the use of H and L in various diglossic contexts. To date, the only study of a diglossic code matrix to approximate this approach, though without employing factor analysis as a statistical procedure, has been Paolillo’s (1997) study of continuity versus discreteness in Sinhala diglossia, to be discussed further below. Where the realization of one variable does not completely control the realization of another, other kinds of co-occurrence constrains are possible. The most obvious alternative to strict co-occurrence restrictions are the implicational scalings of the type proposed by DeCamp for Jamaican Creole English (DeCamp 1971) or by Bickerton for Guyanese Creole English (Bickerton 1971). It should be noted, however, that Paolillo’s attempt to scale H and L variables in Sinhala has met with only limited success, compared to those reported for various creole situations: out of sixteen Sinhala variables investigated, only in the case of five, all of these within the colloquial cluster of texts, ‘‘did anything like a scale emerge’’ (Paolillo 1997: 287 [no coefficient of scalability given]). On the strength of this, Paolillo concludes that there seems ‘‘to be a broader tendency toward covariation of H and L features, with a moderate degree of hybridization being tolerated’’ (Paolillo 1997: 288). Whether Paolillo’s findings in the case of
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Sinhala will be confirmed in other cases of diglossia remains to be empirically tested. In any case, it is clearly possible to examine the co-occurrence restrictions between linguistic variants in any given code matrix and to establish whether such restrictions are categorical, implicational, or correlational in nature, and further to explore whether the variation documented in cases of diglossia spans the full range of such possibilities or only a significantly restricted segment of it. To the extent that more formal and less formal varieties in a code matrix may be clearly distinguished, the general question has been raised whether the more elevated varieties are less tolerant of variation than are the vernacular varieties. In that the H variety or varieties in diglossia are standardized, according to Ferguson, ‘‘there is an established norm for pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary which allows variation only within certain limits’’ (1959: 332). By contrast, where the L variety or varieties are concerned, ‘‘there is no settled orthography and there is wide variation in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary’’ (1959: 332). Substitution or switching has long been described as typical in casual utterance generally (Voegelin 1960: 62), and, conversely, code consistency has been proposed as a universal characteristic of more formal communicative events (Irvine 1984: 215). It may be, therefore, that the H variety or range of varieties in diglossia presents nothing more than an instance of a general principle of relative invariance in formal codes. However, in postdiglossic speech communities, as the standard gradually accommodates to the influence of the vernacular in writing, and where the standard is no one’s native variety, it may be that the relatively ‘‘ill-defined’’ standard evinces a greater degree of variation than the relatively ‘‘well-defined’’ vernacular (Kaye 1970, 1972). Related to the question of co-occurrence restrictions in diglossia is the question of discreteness as opposed to continuity in linguistic variation. Stated simply, do the individual styles found in a diglossic code matrix, like those found in certain post creole continua, arrange themselves in a unidimensional series of minimally different varieties, reaching from an extreme basilectal vernacular variety at one pole to an extreme acrolectal standard at the other? Or is this sequence of minimally different lects punctuated at one or more points along its progression? One view, at least, is that diglossia is ‘‘the most striking example’’ of a divided register range, or of multiple sets of registers within the same language (Ure 1982: 16). Ferguson himself, while conceding that a continuum of variation can be documented in every one of his canonical cases, nonetheless believes that ‘‘in the diglossia case the analyst finds two poles in terms of which the intermediate varieties can be described; there is no third pole’’ (1991: 226). Paolillo’s Sinhala data in fact suggest ‘‘a broader tendency toward
62 covariation of H and L features’’ (1997: 288). Although there is no absolute separation of texts into those characterized exclusively by H features and those characterized exclusively by L features, some 52 text segments group themselves empirically into two broad clusters, such that the texts within each cluster are more closely related to each other than are any two texts from different clusters. These two clusters appear to represent texts in which Literary Sinhala features are relatively prominent, on the one hand, as opposed to those in which Colloquial Sinhala features are relatively prominent, on the other (Paolillo 1997: 288). Yet another question concerning the grammatical relationships between codes in diglossia is, to the extent that the codes are indeed varieties of the same language in some real or putative sense, does the nature of the grammatical relationships between H and L tend to be consistent across cases? For example, is the morphology of H consistently more complex than L in the operational sense employed by Ferguson, to wit, that morphemes in L have fewer alternant and morphemic alternation is more regular, fewer obligatory categories are morphologically realized, paradigms are more symmetrical, and/or there is stricter concord and reaction (1959: 333–334)? The Arabic, Greek, and, arguably, Swiss-German cases seem to be consistent with this hypothesis (Ferguson 1959: 334), but to the extent that this may be generally true of diglossia, how can these relationships be explained? Are they, for example, the normally expected consequence of discourse-pragmatic constraints upon the structure of formal registers (Givo´ n 1979), are they the consequence of universal principles governing the cultural, but pragmatically arbitrary, expression of formality in communicative events generally (Irvine 1984), or, last, are they due to differing rates of change in formal and informal linguistic structures, such that H invariably reflects an earlier form of L, and L, therefore, a later stage upon an expected, perhaps universal, path of grammatical development (Bybee, 1985). Literary Kannada, for example, is viewed by one scholar as ‘‘an archaism, a stage which the language reached some centuries ago, when it became ‘frozen’ by social convention’’ (Bright 1976: 66). The colloquial dialects, on the other hand, continued to change, with the result that ‘‘modern literary Kannada represents, to a large extent, an earlier historical stage of the modern colloquial dialects’’ (Bright 1976: 66).
2) Social origins of diglossia
Beyond the synchronic description of the social and linguistic dimensions of diglossia, of greater significance to sociolinguistic theory is an understanding of the evolutionary relationship
63 between linguistic form and social function. In diglossia research, if not in sociolinguistic research more generally, it is remarkable how little attention has been paid to the role of macrosocietal and broader cultural processes in the differentiation of various types of verbal repertoires. The position of diglossia within an evolutionary taxonomy of speech repertoires may, perhaps, be gauged with reference to Gumperz’s typology of linguistic communities (Gumperz 1968 [1962]). While even small bands of hunters and gatherers reveal differences between ‘‘casual every-day speech and non-casual styles used in singing, recitation, myth-telling and similar ritually defined situations’’ (Gumperz 1968 [1962]: 466), the opposition, central to diglossia, between a vernacular variety learned in the home and a superposed variety learned after childhood becomes salient in intermediate societies constituted of peasant, herder, or even tribal populations integrated to varying degrees into the dominant society and exhibiting a high degree of social stratification and occupational specialization (Gumperz 1968 [1962]: 467–468). Such societies are likely to develop special sacred and administrative codes, in addition to other special parlances, which are ‘‘characterized by extreme codification,’’ and which require, therefore, ‘‘a large investment of time in the study of grammar and rhetoric,’’ as well as schools, with their complements of scholars, for the pursuit of such study (Gumperz 1968 [1962]: 469). These codes ‘‘serve as the language of special administrative and priestly classes’’ and function, at least in part, ‘‘to maintain group exclusiveness’’ (Gumperz 1968 [1962]: 469). When government ‘‘remains in the hands of a small ruling group,’’ it is possible, even in the face of increasing mobilization of the population, to maintain considerable language distance between the administrative and sacred H-codes, on the one hand, and the rest of the code matrix on the other (Gumperz 1968 [1962]: 469). It may be reasonably hypothesized, therefore, that intermediate societies as described by Gumperz have offered singularly fertile ground for the emergence of classical diglossia.
Gumperz’s intermediate societies resemble quite closely Sjoberg’s ‘‘preindustrialized civilized societies,’’ in which the bulk of the written tradition consists mainly of the society’s sacred writings, and where writing is restricted to, and is perpetuated by, a small, educated, priestly group (Sjoberg 1964: 892). It is this educated elite that, ‘‘in formal situations of various kinds, speaks in the traditionally high-status manner,’’ while ‘‘in other situations, especially to communicate effectively with less educated or uneducated persons, they must use a more informal speech style, one that is more akin to the colloquials of the area’’ (Sjoberg 1964: 893). As a result,
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‘‘the upper status, educated group typically employs at least two speech styles, in some cases more,’’ all of which ‘‘differ from the speech of the common man — in the lexicon and often the phonology and grammar’’ (Sjoberg 1964: 893). Furthermore, the formal speech style ‘‘tends to be perpetuated over centuries with relatively little change, a phenomenon that results from the high prestige accorded it and its close tie with the written language’’ (Sjoberg 1964: 893). While neither Gumperz nor Sjoberg explicitly mentions diglossia as such, their social descriptions of ‘‘intermediate’’ and ‘‘preindustrialized civilized’’ societies, and their corresponding verbal repertoires, bear more than a passing resemblance to many cases of diglossia up to recent times. A distinction of potential significance for evolutionary studies of speech repertoires is that drawn by Besnier between determinants of linguistic form that have their basis in the ‘‘physical and psychological characteristics surrounding the situation of use,’’ on the one hand, and those that have their basis in ‘‘the norms of communication at play in each context,’’ or ‘‘the cultural ‘value’ of a communicative context’’ (1988: 731), on the other hand. It has been asserted that ‘‘functional’’ variation, where the variation is intrinsically related to the means or the purpose of communication, as opposed to the cultural value of a communicative context, is more characteristic of modern societies, while ‘‘nonfunctional’’ variation, in which the choice of variable lexical and syntactic features is not determined by strictly pragmatic demands, is more characteristic of premodern societies (Neustupny 1974: 39–40). In the process of modernization, the nonfunctional opposition between classical and colloquial varieties in premodern diglossic speech communities is replaced by the functional variation involved in an ever more differentiated repertoire of scientific and technical varieties (Neustupny 1974: 40). With particular reference to diglossia, ‘‘most of the variation between a Classical and a Modern standard in the case of a premodern diglossia is non- functional in the described sense,’’ and it is, therefore, ‘‘not a matter of chance that the diglossia, a typical case of non-functional variation, is most often removed at an early stage of modernization’’ (Neustupny 1974: 40). Ferguson himself assumes a polygenetic stance when it comes to the emergence and development of diglossia: ‘‘Diglossia is not assumed to be a stage which occurs always and only at a certain point in some kind of evolution, _ [but] may develop from various origins and eventuate in different language situations’’ (Ferguson 1959: 326–327). If, as is argued elsewhere in this paper, the critical distinction between the canonical cases of diglossia and the more typical cases of societal bilingualism indeed resides in the presence or absence of a prestige group of native H-speakers, then it makes sense to look for the social origins
65 of diglossia in circumstanceswherecultural–linguistictraditionsdeveloporacquirenewregisters without also acquiring native speakers of these new varieties who might become prestige role models in their host speech communities and thereby provide the social motivation for language or dialect shift. At least three sets of circumstances suggest themselves as having this potential. In the first, the H-variety in question historically has never been used as a vernacular by any native speakers. In the second, the H-variety may have been used as a native vernacular at one time, but the population of speakers so using it has become extinct, whether through the process of intergenerational language shift or internal language change. Third, the H-variety still enjoys a vernacular speaker base in a separate speech community, the members of which do not regard themselves, and are not regarded as members of the community that employs H for nonvernacular purposes only. Examples of these three sets of circumstances are not as difficult to come by as might be supposed. Thus, although there is some controversy surrounding the matter, some have contended that Classical Chinese was an artificial language that was never spoken by anybody (Li and Thompson 1982: 84; Rosemont 1974). Likewise, in Japan, kanbun was nobody’s mother tongue, regardless of whether one’s native language was Chinese or Japanese (Coulmas 1991: 130). Modern Standard Arabic has also been characterized as a ‘‘somewhat artificial medium’’ (Kaye 1994: 49), which never had any native speakers (Kaye 1994: 51, 59). The same might also be said of Old Church Slavic, which was never a native vernacular but rather the written version of a Bulgaro-Macedonian dialect of Slavic developed in the ninth century by the Christian missionaries Constantine and Methodius (Comrie 1991: 160). Finally, Katharevousa, the official standard of Greece prior to 1976, ‘‘was never a spoken language of any historical period,’’ but was instead ‘‘an artificial compromise between archaism and colloquialism, created in the early nineteenth century and imposed as the official language of the Greek State in the first Greek constitution of 1834’’ (Alexiou 1982: 158). While every standard language is of necessity to some extent artificial, the more typical case, unlike diglossia, is that the written and spoken standards are more firmly anchored in actual spoken varieties, often the careful spoken varieties of the educated urban classes. The second scenario alluded to above, the extinction of the population of speakers upon whose vernacular the contemporary written standard is historically based, in its most familiar guise, is the process whereby change in written language proceeds at a significantly slower pace than change in spoken language. The process in its most general form has been described as follows: ‘‘The two varieties of language involved become increasingly dissimilar, the
66 variety of the original body of texts remaining largely unchanged (although likely codified) while the spoken variety, which does not undergo processes of linguistic standardization, continues to change in ‘natural’ ways’’ (Walters 1996: 161). With particular reference to Egyptian, Pulgram observes that ‘‘while the spoken language of the masses goes along its undisturbed linear development, each classical language, from its inception, is held to a level standard, without major changes, as long as the society which employs it remains stable’’ (1950: 461). Historically, the widening discrepancy between Sanskrit and the Prakrit dialects has been attributed to the fact that, ‘‘while Prakrits went on changing, Sanskrit remained unchanging’’ (Deshpande 1991: 38). Literary Kannada, too, has been described as a frozen, archaic stage of the language reached some centuries ago, while ‘‘the colloquial dialects, which are spoken as everyone’s first language, continued to change’ (Bright 1976: 66). In Persia, by the end of the Sassanid Empire in the seventh century, literary Middle Persian ‘‘had become markedly distinct from contemporary spoken Persian (dari) in Western Iran’’ (Jeremia´ s 1984: 273). In the case of Modern Standard Arabic, ‘‘classicisms of all shapes have worked to combine with the forces of linguistic evolution to _ slow down the rate of the linguistic change of this somewhat artificial medium’’ (Kaye 1994: 49). A general model of the acceleration of the vernacular away from the standard, punctuated at socially significant intervals by the correction of the latter back toward the former, has been proposed for the historical relationship between spoken and classical Egyptian (Sethe 1925: 316), for written and spoken Latin (Pulgram 1950: 462, and figure 2), and for spoken and various varieties of literary Hebrew (Rendsburg 1990: 31, 174–175). Finally, whereas in the cases just discussed the vernacular might be said to have been changed over time via replacement by its own linguistic descendant, the case of Ge’ez and Amharic in Ethiopia suggests that a vernacular may also be replaced by other than its own descendant and still result in a case of diglossia. Although Ge’ez was replaced as a vernacular by Amharic and other languages between the ninth and the twelfth centuries (Cooper 1978: 460), it survived as a literary language into the nineteenth century, and, vestigially, as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Copts up to the present time (Cooper 1978: 461). While Ge’ez and Amharic are related languages within the Ethio-Semitic group, Ge’ez is not a direct linguistic ancestor of Amharic. A third scenario for the emergence of diglossia is the acquisition of an H-variety from an external speech community, unaccompanied by any significant in-migration of native speakers of H. One of the most interesting of these cases is the adoption of the Chinese language as the means of writing in the earliest documents in Japan, dating from the
67 early seventh century (Coulmas 1991: 129). Although this written variety was subsequently nativized and was ultimately to evolve into the literary Japanese of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Coulmas 1991: 128), it does not seem amiss to regard the differential functional allocation of Chinese to the written sphere and of Japanese to the spoken in the earliest stages of this development as an instance of diglossia involving two unrelated languages. In many of their particulars, the individual cases of diglossia referred to in the course of this paper differ strikingly from one another. On the surface of things, it might justifiably be asked whether, for example, the opposition between Classical and vernacular Japanese up until the beginning of the twentieth century should be considered of a piece with the Swiss-German diglossia of today, or whether the traditional opposition between literary and liturgical Ge’ez, on the one hand, and vernacular Amharic, on the other, should be considered sociolinguistically akin to that between Katharevousa and Dhimotikı´ in Greece prior to 1976, or to the centuries-old opposition between Hebrew and Yiddish among Ashkenazic Jews. As Ferguson himself noted, ‘‘The four cases I described are not identical; each one is quite different in some respects from the other three, though they have many features in common’’ (Ferguson 1991: 219). The realization, however, that the essential characteristic of diglossia is the coexistence between an elevated code, which has no native speakers within the speech community in question, and an everyday vernacular introduces a higher order of homogeneity into what on the surface may appear as heterogeneity. This point of view liberates the notion of diglossia from the demand that the two codes in question be varieties of the same language, although for reasons discussed elsewhere, this is to be expected as the usual state of affairs. It further removes the requirement that diglossia be limited to literate speech communities, although, as discussed in the following paragraphs, the development of writing, when combined with long-term restricted literacy, is particularly conducive to the emergence of diglossia. The development of writing produces an unprecedented alteration in the communicative ecology of any speech community, and although it clearly does not in every instance lead to the emergence of diglossia, it creates a particularly hospitable environment for it, when combined with other supporting factors. As I have noted elsewhere (Hudson 1994: 308), four principal mechanisms account for the manner in which the development of writing may contribute to the linguistic diversity of a speech community, and therefore to the potential emergence of diglossia. In the first instance, the sociocultural norms operative in contexts where writing is appropriate commonly dictate that the grammatical structure of written text be less casual and in some sense
68 more elevated than the grammatical structure of spoken utterances. Second, the different pragmatic constraints imposed upon the realizations of written and spoken text by the real-time limitations on production and processing and by the physical, psychological, and social immediacy of the audience determine to some degree the relative frequencies of occurrence of certain grammatical forms and structures in the two modalities. Third, to the extent that the opportunity for the acquisition and use of literacy skills is asymmetrically allocated across the various segments of a speech community for any significant period of time, the grammatical features of written or literate text may come to signal membership in those, typically more privileged, social groups within the community that have access to the occasions on which written or literate text is appropriate. Finally, writing as a medium acts as a fixative agent for linguistic structure. Except for memorized oral text transmitted intact from generation to generation, the structure of oral language is in general much more subject to diachronic change, due to phonetic erosion, than is the structure of written language. To the extent, therefore, that written language in general, or a particular genre of written language, is not directly influenced by developments in the structure of oral language, the potential arises for major disparity between the two and, therefore, for the emergence of diglossia. Coulmas has pointed to the need for ‘‘a sociolinguistic theory of writing and written language which accounts for the nexus between literacy, writing system, and diglossia’’ (1987: 122). While allowing that writing may be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the emergence of diglossia, he maintains, along with Ferguson, that ‘‘writing introduces the possibility of a permanent rift between characteristically different varieties into every speech community’’ (Coulmas 1987: 122), thereby leading to ‘‘potential diglossia in every speech community that becomes literate’’ (Coulmas 1987: 114). As Ferguson, too, has noted, graphization, or the reduction of a language to writing, ‘‘adds another variety of language to the community’s repertory’’ (1968: 29), and ‘‘communities, as they begin the regular use of writing, generally do not feel that ordinary, everyday speech is appropriate for written use’’ (1968: 29–30). In nineteenth-century Japan, for example, this view was succinctly expressed as follows by one of the leading intellectuals of the time: ‘‘In our letters at present it is inappropriate to write as we speak as well as inappropriate to speak as we write, because the grammars of speech and writing in our tongue are different’’ (Nishi 1874, quoted in Coulmas 1991: 128). So pervasive was this view that Japanese scholars and government bureaucrats travelling to the Netherlands at the time were surprised to find that the language of writing there was very much closer to the language of
69 everyday conversation than was the case with Japanese, ‘‘because the idea of committing anything of serious import to writing in a colloquial variety was alien to them’’ (Coulmas 1991: 134). According to Ferguson, diglossia is likely to emerge as a consequence of the long-term monopoly of a small elite on literacy and, therefore, on direct access to the literary heritage of a speech community (1959: 338). In particular, diglossia is likely to come into existence where (1) ‘‘there is a sizable body of literature in a language closely related to (or even identical with) the natural language of the community, and this literature embodies _ some of the fundamental values of the community,’’ (2) ‘‘literacy in the community is limited to a small elite,’’ and (3) ‘‘a suitable period of time, on the order of several centuries, passes from the establishment of (1) and (2)’’ (Ferguson 1959: 338). In Coulmas’s version of this theory, alluded to above, the degree of difference between the written and spoken norms, and therefore the prospect for the emergence of diglossia, is a function of (1) the degree of association between the literary tradition and other great cultural achievements of a religious or artistic nature, (2) the period of time over which the literary tradition flourishes, (3) the extent to which the written language is cultivated by a small caste of scribes and is prevented from adjusting to changes in the spoken language, (4) the literacy rate of the speech community, (5) the acceptance of the written language by the illiterate mass of the population as the only valid manifestation of their language, and (6) the relative fit of writing system and orthography for the language in question (1987: 121–122, 1989: 13). Others, too, have made the connection between the extent of popular literacy and the likely distance between the written and the spoken codes: Parker supposes that ‘‘the varying and uncertain distance between spoken language and written language in any time and place _ may be inversely associated with the level and extent of literacy’’ (1983: 334–335). As explained by Walters, ‘‘the existence of diglossia hinges on a tradition of restricted literacy involving the written variety of a language that becomes increasingly distant (and therefore distinct) from the native variety of language spoken in a speech community that is overwhelmingly illiterate’’ (Walters 1996: 161–162). While Walters’s account may give the impression that this process is the only one that gives rise to diglossia, Ferguson, as noted elsewhere, claims that ‘‘diglossia may develop from various origins’’ (1959: 327). Of these various origins, however, it is likely that the processes described by Coulmas and Walters are indeed those that most typically give rise to diglossia. The association between diglossia and literacy, in the sense of both the incidence of individual literacy skills and the existence of a literary tradition, is not an accidental one, since social stratification of literacy may give rise to the
70 independent development of two or more increasingly divergent language varieties. As the linguistic varieties become more divergent, more extensive training is required for the mastery of the literary variety, a development that in turn confers additional prestige upon it: ‘‘With the development of writing and a complex and introspective literature, the language variety so employed will often be accorded such high value because of the recorded nature of the medium and the need to be trained to read and write it’’ (Abrahams 1972: 15). The creation of literary varieties may in turn serve to reinforce the exclusiveness of a class structure based on literacy or, more precisely, on the control of knowledge via literacy. In preindustrial civilized societies, traditional writings ‘‘have provided the basis for standardizing thought and action for the literati — who are the leaders in the society — over time and space’’ (Sjoberg 1964: 893). Thus, ‘‘a substantial body of writing furnishes a language with a depersonalized standard that can be fixed and, to some extent, manipulated, that is, cultivated in a conscious way’’ (Coulmas 1987: 121). A handful of cases serves to illustrate the intimate relationship between literacy, literary tradition, restricted literacy, and diglossia. Arabic diglossia in large measure has derived its stability from the fact that the H-variety is associated with pre-Islamic poetry, the sacred texts of Islam, later commentary on both of these, and the works of medieval Arabic philologists, among them Sibawaihi of Basra, who based their linguistic analyses on these earlier texts (Rabin 1955: 20; Walters 1996: 161). In the case of Chinese, the linguistic differences between the literati and the general population were probably due to the lengthy accumulation of literary tradition among the former, to the early fixation of the form of writing by the printing press in China (printing from wood blocks since at least the beginning of the eighth century and from movable type since the eleventh [Morton 1982: 86]), and extremely low literacy (DeFrancis 1972: 8). Vernacular Hebrew is generally not attested in the Biblical literature, particularly of the First Temple period, ‘‘most likely due to the influence of the prophetic schools _ which acted as a check or brake on the written language’’ (Fellman 1977: 108). The maintenance of Latin as a prestige language vis-a` -vis the emergent Romance vernaculars has been attributed to a ‘‘virtual monopoly of knowledge’’ on the part of the Church, acquired as a result of the emphasis on clerical literacy, monastic control of manuscript production and reproduction, and the decline in literacy among the laity between the fourth and the tenth centuries (Parker 1983: 336–337). In the case of Sanskrit, it was the traditional grammarians’ concern with correct ritual speech that led to the development of grammars such as that written by Panini (Hock and Pandharipande 1996: 21–22), and, in general, over the course of
71 the linguistic history of India, Sanskrit has retained its high status ‘‘primarily because literacy was highly restricted to the Brahmanical classes’’ (Deshpande 1991: 38). Finally, the separation of court and literary Turkish from the vernacular, which began during the sixteenth century, was accelerated by the social cleavage between the vast ruling order composed of bureaucrats, poets, the religious establishment, merchants, and other community leaders on the one hand, and the masses on the other, as well as by the lack of an educational system, which ‘‘prevented the dissemination of high class Turkish among the masses’’ (Karpat 1984: 189). While it is clear that the development of writing is not in itself a sufficient condition for the emergence of diglossia, the question arises as to whether it is a necessary one. Ferguson himself has suggested the possibility that it is not: ‘‘All clearly documented instances [of diglossia] known to me are in literate communities, but it seems at least possible that a somewhat similar situation could exist in a non- literate community where a body of oral literature could play the same role as the body of written literature in the examples cited’’ (Ferguson 1959: 337, note 18). The distinction between written and spoken language in literate traditions has been recognized as resembling the distinction between the high and the low varieties in diglossia, and the point has frequently been made also that ritual or artful genres of expression in oral traditions differ in linguistic form and social function from everyday talk in much the same way that written and other noncasual types of discourse differ from colloquial speech in literate cultures. Also, no less than written codes, ‘‘any speaking code used ceremoniously will accumulate the sense of power inherent in the occasions of its use’’ (Abrahams 1972: 15), and, in terms of functional allocation, opportunity for acquisition, and potential for linguistic divergence from the vernacular, will also offer the prospect of the emergence of diglossia. More than the development of writing as such, then, it seems that an important precursor to diglossia is the existence of a body of literature in the sense of ‘‘that body of discourses or texts which, within any society, is considered worthy of dissemination, transmission, and preservation in essentially constant form’’ (Bright 1982: 272; see also Martin Joos, cited in Voegelin 1960: 60, note 4). Such a body of literature, though typically associated with the written medium, ‘‘may also be composed orally, and regularly performed in that same medium’’ (Bright 1982: 171). The oral literature of ancient India offers a remarkable case in point. The need to preserve the religious effectiveness of the orally composed Vedic hymns by transmission in their exact original form, and the desire to preserve the special status and distinctness of the language of the educated classes, culminated in the Sanskrit grammar of Panini
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(c. 500 BC), itself in all likelihood an oral composition also (Bright 1982: 273; Hock and Pandharipande 1978: 21–22).
Variation at different levels of linguistic structure
The term “language variety” may be used to indicate a distinct language such as Spanish or Japanese, a particular variety of a language spoken by a particular group such as speakers of Cajon English, or even the distinctive speech of an individual--such as that of William F. Buckley, Truman Capote, or Andy Warhol. The term “language variety” is used by linguists to refer to the many different types of language variation in common use. The term may be used to denote a distinct language such as Spanish or Japanese, a particular variety of a language spoken by a specific group such as speakers of Cajun English, or even the distinctive speech of an individual--such as that spoken by William F. Buckley, Truman Capote, or Andy Warhol. While we are probably most aware of differences in vocabulary choice and pronunciation when we are engaging in everyday conversation, the study of linguistics recognizes several levels of linguistic structure involving (but not limited to) the production of sound, vowel pronunciation, allowable consonant order, and possessive designation. The five levels of linguistic structure provided here underlie our means of common verbal communication.
While we are probably most consciously aware of differences in vocabulary choice or pronunciation, internal variation exists at all the levels of linguistic structure we have discussed in this book: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. If we compare any two language varieties ( by different languages, different dialect, different styles, etc. ) we may find differences at any of this levels. Here, we take each of these levels in turn and look at a few examples of how they may differ between varieties.
a) Phonetic variation
The term phonetics is the study of how sounds are physically produced via speech mechanism, the acoustics of sound waves, and the perception of sounds by the brain. Hence, differences at the phonetic level tend to be those where a sound that functions the same in the linguistic systems of two varieties has some difference in its physical characteristics. For example, all varieties of
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American English use the phonemes / t, d, n, s, z / ; that is, we can find minimal pairs that make use of these sounds in American English. But the phonetics of these sounds as dental, where the tip of the tongue touches the upper teeth, while most other American English dialects produce them as alveolar, with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge.
Similarly, most dialects of English have a phoneme that functions as an / r / , in words like really or right. But, not all / r / s are the same: some English and Scottish dialects have a trilled [ r ] , while most American dialects have a retroflex or bunched [ r ] . Another source of phonetic variation is simply the fact that every utterance produced is somewhat different. Even if the same person says the same sentence twice in a row, trying to make them as similar as possible, there will be slight phonetic differences in the pronunciations of words, the duration of segments, the tone of voice, and so on.
In this talk, it will be fine to examine how the phonetic qualities of language become mobilized in processes of second-order indexicality in a yoga studio in Huangshan, China. Shepu, a portmanteau of Shexianhua (She county dialect) and Mandarin, is the local term for the dialect of Mandarin spoken in She county, a nonstandard dialect which incorporates many phonetic, prosodic, and tonal qualities from Shexianhua. Second-order indexicality is the process through which indexical relationship between ways of speaking and certain types of speakers becomes naturalized, such that ways of speaking become seen as iconic of, rather than indexing, certain types of speakers, and thus linking linguistic traits to other socially meaningful non-linguistic traits. While much literature has been devoted to showing how listener judgments allow the listener to classify speakers as belonging to certain social categories, in this talk I will show how the process also works in reverse. If listeners have already classified individuals as a certain social type, they are more likely to be attentive to and pick out the qualities of speech which conform to their preconceived perceptions than they are with other speakers, regardless of actual speaker variation.
Phonetic research over the past two decades has shown that individual speakers vary their phonetic realizations of words, phonemes, and subphonemic features. What we have found is that speakers show remarkable stability over time, while a small minority exhibit time-dependent variation—what we term change. Prior research has shown that individual-level phonetic change can occur at scales ranging from minutes (as induced in laboratory experiments (Nielsen 2007,
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Babel 2008, Yu et al. 2013) to years (as observed in speech corpora, e.g., Sankoff 1972, Harrington 2006). Significantly, this research suggests that individual change in both the short and long term may ultimately be a crucial component of sound change in a population.
An ongoing sound change in American English is /s/-retraction, the process by which /s/ is articulated approaching /ʃ/ in the context of /r/. Speakers vary significantly in the degree of retraction observed, with all individuals exhibiting coarticulatory effects of /r/ in /sCr/ clusters and some individuals displaying an apparent sound change, with /s/ reanalyzed as /ʃ/ in /str/ clusters (Baker et al., 1998). The present study uses experimental methods seeks to better understand the actuation of this sound change through a phonological and prosodic lens. College-aged students from across the United States read a series of sentences manipulating the phonological and prosodic environments of these sibilant. The results of this study demonstrate a retracted /s/ in the context of /r/ and phrase-intitially. While there was not a significant group-level effect for the interaction of prosodic position and phonological environment, the inclusion of by-subject random slopes for that interaction, which significantly improves model likelihood, suggests that individuals vary with respect to the effects of prosodic conditioning of /s/-retraction in different phonological contexts. These findings suggest a possible role of prosodic position in the actuation of sound change, both in production and possible effects in perception.
b) Phonological variation
Phonology, unlike phonetics, deals with the organization of sound into patterns in a given language. And the way that those sounds are distributed in different parts of a specific word or words or phonology is the study of the basic sounds and speech patterns of a language. So, to see whether two language varieties have differences in their phonologies, we can look for words that actually make use of different phonemes in words that are semantically and historically the “same” words. For instance, most American dialects make a distinction between the “au” and “aw” sounds as in caught or hawk, while other dialects use the same sound--with Don and dawn, for example, sounding exactly the same. In addition, many American dialects have the vowel [ ᵓ ] in the words caught, dawn and hawk, which is different from the vowel [ ᵅ ] found in the words cot,
75 don and hock. For these speakers, these words are minimal pairs that show the difference between the phonemes [ ᵓ ] and [ ᵅ ] . But in some dialects, all six of these words have that same vowel (usually a vowel closer to [ ᵅ ] than to [ ᵓ ] , so that, the words caught and cot are homophonous. Thus, the distribution of the phonemes in the two dialects is different: they have different phonological system.
Similarly in the dialect of southern England, words like “flood,” “but,” “cup” are pronounced with an “a” sound, and words like “full,” “good,” and “put” with a “u” sound. Many dialects of the north, however, pronounce both sets of word types with a “u” sound. Standard British English does not allow the sequence V-r-C or V-r-?. This is also reflected in Bostonian English where the phrase "Park the car" is pronounced “pak d/te ka.” Some African-American English dialects do not allow the sequence C-r or C-l, so the word professor would be pronounced as if “ pa-fe-sa.” The English language is full of words and sounds borrowed from other languages, giving it a mixture of sound patterns.
Examples:
English word Origin
pizza Italian
skunk Native American
academy Greek
tobacco Spanish
robot Czech
kidnap Danish
lottery Dutch
mammoth Russian
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data Latin
Vowel sounds There are only five vowels in the American English language.
Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu
Depending on the word and blend, these five vowels can make up about 21 unique sounds.
Blended Vowel Long sound Short sound Additional sound sounds
baby apple father wheat A trade dad water lead day sad ball train
teeth next cried E need bed bread green red
wide pick said I like trip laid side lip tried
open olive road book O bone October toad loose nose on crowd
under use blue U up Purple unicorn true umbrella
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loud thought
Consonant sounds There are 21 consonants in the American English language. Consonants are all letters in the alphabet except for the vowels. Bb Cc Dd Ff Gg Hh Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Vv W w Xx Yy Zz
Consonant Sounds
ball B boy
color C city
dog D daughter
fight F father
girl G giant
happy H hard
jump J January
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kid K king
long L love
mom M may
November N nice
purple P pink
quick Q queen
row R river
September S wise
teacher T time
visit V vampire
word W wife
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x-ray X extra
yellow Y lady
zipper Z zap
Note: the letters c and g can have a hard sound or a soft sound.
When the letter c is pronounced as in cat or corner, we call it hard.
When the letter c is pronounced as in city or center, we call it soft.
When the letter g is pronounced as in go or get, we call it hard.
When the letter g is pronounced as in giant or gentle, we call it soft.
The same sounds
The consonants only make 18 unique sounds individually. Some of the letters can make the same sound.
Examples:
city and snake cake and kids zip and rose
Blended consonants
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Blended consonants make many more sounds. Let us look at a few examples of blended consonant sounds.
Examples:
Word Explanation
cracker The blended ck makes a hard K sound.
white The blended wh makes an airy sound.
with th blended together can make a few sounds
the
thin
rough gh blended in this word makes an F sound
ghost gh blended in this word makes a G sound
through gh blended in this word makes an /oo/ sound
daughter gh blended in this word is silent
quick q and u work together to make a /kw/ wound
Christmas ch blended in this word makes a hard K sound
English sh makes a blended sound like shut
Another way in which language varieties may differ in their phonologies is in terms of what sequences of sounds they allow. For example, Spanish does not allow the sequences / sp /, / st / , or /sk / to occur at the beginning of a word, while English does ( this is why native Spanish speakers often pronounce English words like student with an initial vowel [ ᵋstud ᵋnt
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]. Standard British English like Bostonian English does not permit sequences of vowel / r / - consonant or vowel - / r / - word boundary; most other American English dialects do permit such sequences.
Similarly, in phonology there is some more features which influence on learning of a language, here are citing some of them:
1. Syllables variation
When you think of individual sounds, you may think of them in terms of syllables. These are units of phonological organization and smaller than words. Alternatively, think of them as units of rhythm. Although they may contain several sounds, they combine them in ways that create the effect of unity. Thus splash is a single syllable but it combines three consonants, a vowel, and a final consonant /spl+æ+ʃ /. Some words have a single syllable - so they are monosyllables or monosyllabic. Others have more than one syllable and are polysyllables or polysyllabic.
Sometimes you may see a word divided into its syllables, but this may be an artificial exercise, since in real speech the sounds are continuous. In some cases it will be impossible to tell whether a given consonant was ending one syllable of beginning another. It is possible, for example, to pronounce lamppost so that there are two /p/ sounds in succession with some interval between them. But many native English speakers will render this as /læm-pəʊst/ or /læm-pəʊsd/. Students of language may find it helpful to be able to identify individual syllables in explaining pronunciation and language change - one of the things you may need to do is explain which the syllables that are stressed are in a particular word or phrase.
2. Suprasegmentals
In written English we use punctuation to signal some things like emphasis, and the speed with which we want our readers to move at certain points. In spoken English we use sounds in ways that do not apply to individual segments but to stretches of spoken discourse from words to phrases, clauses and sentences. Such effects are described as non-segmental or suprasegmental - or, using the adjective in a plural nominal (noun) form, simply suprasegmentals. Among these effects are such things as stress, intonation, tempo and rhythm - which collectively are known as prosodic
82 features. Other effects arise from altering the quality of the voice, making it breathy or husky and changing what is sometimes called the timbre - and these are paralinguistic features. Both of these kinds of effect may signal meaning. But they do not do so consistently from one language to another, and this can cause confusion to students learning a second language.
2.1 Prosodic features
Stress or loudness - increasing volume is a simple way of giving emphasis, and this is a crude measure of stress. But it is usually combined with other things like changes in tone and tempo. We use stress to convey some kinds of meaning (semantic and pragmatic) such as urgency or anger or for such things as imperatives. Intonation - you may be familiar in a loose sense with the notion of tone of voice. We use varying levels of pitch in sequences (contours or tunes) to convey particular meanings. Falling and rising intonation in English may signal a difference between statement and question. Younger speakers of English may use rising (question) intonation without intending to make the utterance a question. Tempo - we speak more or less quickly for many different reasons and purposes. Occasionally it may be that we are adapting our speech to the time we have in which to utter it (as, for example, in a horse-racing commentary). But mostly tempo reflects some kinds of meaning or attitude - so we give a truthful answer to a question, but do so rapidly to convey our distraction or irritation. Rhythm - patterns of stress, tempo and pitch together create a rhythm. Some kinds of formal and repetitive rhythm are familiar from music, rap, poetry and even chants of soccer fans. But all speech has rhythm - it is just that in spontaneous utterances we are less likely to hear regular or repeating patterns.
2. 2 Paralinguistic features
How many voices do we have? We are used to “putting on” silly voices for comic effects or in play. We may adapt our voices for speaking to babies, or to suggest emotion, excitement or desire. These effects are familiar in drama, where the use of a stage whisper may suggest something
83 clandestine and conspiratorial. Nasal speech may suggest disdain, though it is easily exaggerated for comic effect (as by the late Kenneth Williams in many Carry On films).
Such effects are sometimes described as changing timbre or voice quality. We all may use them sometimes but they are particularly common among entertainers such as actors or comedians. This is not surprising, as they practice using their voices in unusual ways, to represent different characters. The performers in the BBC's Teletubbies TV programme use paralinguistic features to suggest the different characters of Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po.
3. Accent
Everyone's use of the sound system is unique and personal. And few of us use sounds consistently in all contexts - we adapt to different situations. (We rarely adapt our sounds alone - more likely we mind our language in the popular sense, by attending to our lexical choices, grammar and phonology.) Most human beings adjust their speech to resemble that of those around them. This is very easy to demonstrate, as when some vogue words from broadcasting surf a wave of popularity before settling down in the language more modestly or passing out of use again.
This is particularly true of sounds, in the sense that some identifiable groups of people share (with some individual variation) a collection of sounds that are not found elsewhere, and these are accents. We think of accents as marking out people by geographical region and, to a less degree, by social class or education. So we might speak of a Scouse (Liverpool), Geordie (Newcastle) or Brummie (Birmingham) accent. These are quite general descriptions - within each of these cities we would differentiate further. And we should also not confuse real accent features in a given region with stereotyped and simplified versions of these which figure in (or disfigure) TV drama - Emmerdale, Brookside, Coronation Street and Albert Square are not reliable sources for anything we might want to know about their real-world originals. And the student who hoped to study the speech of people in Peckham by watching episodes of John Sullivan's situation comedy Only Fools and Horses was deeply misguided.
Thinking of social class, we might speak of a public school accent (stiff upper lip and cut glass vowels). But we do not observe occupational accents and we are unlikely to speak of a baker's, soldier's or accountant's accent (whereas we might study their special uses of lexis and
84 grammar). This is not the place to study in detail the causes of such accents or, for example, how they are changing. Language researchers may wish to record regional variant forms and their frequency. In Britain today (perhaps because of the influence of broadcasting) we can observe sound features moving from one region to another (like the glottal stop which is now common in the north of England), while also recording how other features of accent are not subject to this kind of change. Studying phonology alone will not answer such questions. But it gives you the means to identify specific phonetic features of accent and record them objectively.
4. Received Pronunciation ( RP )
Received Pronunciation ( RP) is a special accent - a regionally neutral accent that is used as a standard for broadcasting and some other kinds of public speaking. It is not fixed - you can hear earlier forms of RP in historical broadcasts, such as newsreel films from the Second World War. Queen Elizabeth II has an accent close to the RP of her own childhood, but not very close to the RP of the 21st century. RP excites powerful feelings of admiration and repulsion. Some see it as a standard or the correct form of spoken English, while others see its use (in broadcasting, say) as an affront to the dignity of their own region. Its merit lies in its being more widely understood by a national and international audience than any regional accent. Non-native speakers often want to learn RP, rather than a regional accent of English. RP exists but no-one is compelled to use it. But if we see it as a reference point, we can decide how far we want to use the sounds of our region where these differ from the RP standard. And its critics may make a mistake in supposing all English speakers even have a regional identity - many people are geographically mobile, and do not stay for long periods in any one place.
RP is also a very loose and flexible standard. It is not written in a book (though the BBC does give its broadcasters guides to pronunciation) and does not prescribe such things as whether to stress the first or second syllable in research. You will hear it on all the BBC's national radio channels, to a greater or less degree. On Radio 3 you will perhaps hear the most conservative RP, while Radio 5 will give you a more contemporary version with more regional and class variety - but these are very broad generalizations, and refer mainly to the presenters, newsreaders, continuity announcers and so on. RP is used as a standard in some popular language reference
85 works. For example, the Oxford Guide to the English Language (Weiner, E [1984], Pronunciation, p. 45, Book Club Associates/OUP, London) has this useful description of RP:
“The aim of recommending one type of pronunciation rather than another, or of giving a word a recommended spoken form, naturally implies the existence of a standard. There are of course many varieties of English, even within the limits of the British Isles, but it is not the business of this section to describe them. The treatment here is based upon Received Pronunciation (RP), namely 'the pronunciation of that variety of British English widely considered to be least regional, being originally that used by educated speakers in southern England.' This is not to suggest that other varieties are inferior; rather, RP is here taken as a neutral national standard, just as it is in its use in broadcasting or in the teaching of English as a foreign language.”
5. Accent and social class
Accent is certainly related to social class. This is a truism - because accent is one of the things that we use as an indicator of social class. For a given class, we can express this positively or negatively. As regards the highest social class, positively we can identify features of articulation - for certain sounds, upper class speakers do not open or move the lips as much as other speakers of English. Negatively, we can identify such sounds as the glottal stop as rare among, and untypical of, speakers from this social class.
Alternatively we can look at vowel choices or preferences. For example, the upper classes for long used the vowel /ʌ/ in some cases where /ɒ/ is standard - thus Coventry would be /kʌvəntri:/. C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce depicts a character who pronounces “God” as “Gud” -“ 'Would to God' he continued, but he was now pronouncing it Gud...” . We may think of dropping or omitting consonants as a mark of the lower social classes and uneducated people. But dropping of terminal g - or rather substituting /n/ for /ŋ/ was until recently a mark of the upper class “toff”, who would enjoy, for example, huntin', fishin' and shootin'. The British actor Ian Carmichael did this in playing the part of Dorothy L. Sayers' detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. In writing the dialogue for her novels Miss Sayers indicates Lord Peter's dropping of the terminal g by the use of an apostrophe: “It's surprisin' how few people ever mean anything definite from one year's end to another...”
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Among real life speakers in whom I have observed this tendency I would identify the late Sir Alf Ramsey. (I do not know whether Alf Ramsey was brought up to speak in this way or acquired the habit later.) Investigating the connection can be challenging, however, since social class is an artificial construct. Assuming that you have found a way to identify your subjects as belonging to some definable social group, then you can study vowel choices or frequencies. Even the most cursory attention tells us that the Queen has distinct speech sounds. But can we explain them in detail? Does she share them with other members of her family? Do other speakers share them?
6. Pronunciation and prescription
The English Language List is an Internet discussion forum for English language teachers. Recently (2001) a student, not a native speaker but clearly a very competent writer of English, asked where he could get help to learn to speak in a standard British accent. Many of the responses came from people who were not answering his question but trying to persuade him to stick with his current accent (which he felt would disadvantage him in his business career). Yet we are not disparaging regional accents when we try to learn the neutral and prestigious standard form. (What the discussion never really revealed was how many of the list members would identify themselves as RP speakers.)
The prescriptive tradition in English grammar was unscientific and perhaps harmful. But setting down authoritative standard forms is not always so unwise. In spelling they are useful, and the same may be true of pronunciation. Dictionaries do not compel the reader to learn and use the pronunciations they show - but they do give a representation of the pronunciation according to RP. Some show variant pronunciations as well as the principal RP form. If you are a student (or even a teacher) you may find RP an unfamiliar accent - maybe you can see that the phonetic transcription indicates a pronunciation different from the one you normally use. No one is forcing you to change your own speech sounds, in which your sense of identity may be profoundly located. But you can become aware that the local norm is not the universal standard. Now that English is an international language, its development is certainly not controlled by what happens in the UK. So British RP may cease to be a useful standard for learners of English. Increasingly, language learners favour a mid-Atlantic accent, which shares features of British RP and the speech of the eastern USA.
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c) Morphological variation
The term morpheme are the smallest unit of sound – meaning pairs in a language. While we classify different pronunciations of the same morpheme as phonetic variation, we can talk about morphological variation by looking at the distribution of morphemes in two varieties or the use of completely different morphemes for the same function in two varieties. As an example of the distribution of morphemes, consider the use of the possessive morpheme in English. In standard American English, this morpheme is used whenever one person possesses something else, for example, my life, his dog, and Taher’s car and the old lady’s purse. But in British dialect the possessive morpheme is used only with pronouns and not with nouns, for example, my wife, his dog, but Taher car and the lady purse.
Morphology, in linguistics, is the study of the forms of words, and the ways in which words are related to other words of the same language. Formal differences among words serve a variety of purposes, from the creation of new lexical items to the indication of grammatical structure. If you ask most non-linguists what the primary thing is that has to be learned if one is to ‘know’ a language, the answer is likely to be “the words of the language”. Learning vocabulary is a major focus of language instruction, and while everyone knows that there is a certain amount of ‘grammar’ that characterizes a language as well, even this is often treated as a kind of annotation to the set of words—the ‘uses of the Accusative’, etc. But what is it that is involved in knowing the words of a language?
Obviously, a good deal of this is a matter of learning that cat, pronounced [khæt], is a word of English, a noun that refers to a “feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and being unable to roar”. The notion that the word is a combination of sound and meaning—indeed, the unit in which the two are united—was the basis of the theory of the linguistic sign developed by Ferdinand de Saussure at the beginning of the 20th century. But if words like cat were all there were in language, the only thing that would matter about the form of a word would be the fact that it differs from the forms of other words (i.e., cat is pronounced differently from mat, cap, dog, etc.). Clearly there is no more specific connection between the parts of the sound of cat and the parts of its meaning: the initial [kh], for example, does not refer to the fur. The connection between sound and meaning is irreducible here.
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But of course cat and words like it are not the end of the story. Another word of English is cats, a single word in pronunciation but one that can be seen to be made up of a part cat and another part –s, with the meaning of the whole made up of the meaning of cat and the meaning of –s (‘plural’). Cattish behavior is that which is similar to that of a cat; and while a catbird is not itself a kind of cat, its name comes from the fact that it sometimes sounds like one. All of these words are clearly connected with cat, but on the other hand they are also all words in their own right. We might, of course, simply have memorized cats, cattish and catbird along with cat, even though the words seem to have some sort of relation to one another. But suppose we learn about a new animal, a wug, say ‘a large, hairy bovine mammal known for being aggressive and braying’. We do not need to learn independently that two of these are wugs, or that wuggish behaviour is likely to involve attacking one’s fellows, or that a wugbird (if there were such a thing) might be a bird with a braying call. All of these things follow from the knowledge we have not just of the specific words of our language, but of their relations to one another, in form and meaning. The latter is our knowledge of the morphology of our language.
1. Inflection
Traditionally, morphology is divided into several types, depending on the role played in grammar by a given formation. The most basic division is between inflection and word formation: the latter is easy enough to characterize as ‘morphology that creates new words’ ( wuggish, wug-like, wugbird), but inflection (e.g., wugs) is rather harder to define. Often, inflection is defined by example: categories like number (e.g., ‘plural’), gender (e.g., masculine, feminine and neuter in Latin), tense (‘past’), aspect (e.g., the difference between the imparfait and the passé simple in French), case (‘accusative’), person (1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd), and perhaps a few others are inflectional while everything else is word formation. But this approach is inadequate, because the same category may be inflectional in some languages, and not in others. In Fula (a West Atlantic language), for example, the category `diminutive’ is fully integrated into the grammar of agreement in the language, just as much so as person, number, and gender. Verbs whose subjects are diminutive indicate this with an agreement marker, as do adjectives modifying diminutive nouns, etc. In English, in contrast, diminutives appear in forms like piglet, but these are clearly cases of word formation. On the other hand, while number is clearly involved in important parts of English grammar (verbs agree with their subjects in number), other languages, like Kwakw’ala
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(or ‘Kwakiutl’) treat the category of plural as something that can optionally be added to nouns, or to verbs, as an elaboration of meaning that has no further grammatical consequence.
Despite the intuitively clear nature of the category of inflection, other efforts to define it explicitly do no better. Inflection is generally more productive than other sorts of morphology, for instance: virtually every German noun has an accusative, a plural, etc., while only a few English nouns have a diminutive formation like piglet. But in some languages, categories that we would certainly like to call inflectional are quite limited: in Basque, for example, only a few dozen verbs (the number varying from one dialect to another) have forms that show agreement. In English, on the other hand, the process of forming nouns in –ing from verbs (as in Fred’s lonely musings about love) can take virtually any verb as its basis, despite being intuitively a means of crating new words, not of inflecting old ones. A variety of other attempts that can be found in the literature also fail, either because of ready counter-examples, or because they are insufficiently general: inflectional material is generally found at the word’s periphery, while word formational markers are closer to the stem (cf. piglets but not *pigslet), but this property is only useful in words that contain material of both types, and even then, it does not help us to find the boundary in a word like French im-mort-al-is-er-ait ‘would immortalize’.
In fact, the intuition underlying the notion of ‘inflection’ seems to be the following: inflectional categories are those that provide information about grammatical structure (such as the fact that a noun in the accusative is likely to be a direct object), or which are referred to by a grammatical rule operating across words (such as the agreement of verbs with their subjects). The validity of other correlates with inflectional status, then, follows not from the nature of the categories themselves, but rather from the existence of grammatical rules in particular languages that refer to them, and to the freedom with which items of particular word classes can appear in positions where they can serve as the targets of such rules.
For any given word, we can organize a complete set of its inflectional variants into a paradigm of the word. Thus, a German noun has a particular gender, and a paradigm consisting of forms for two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative). German adjectives have paradigms that distinguish not only case and number, but also gender (since they can agree with nouns of any of the three genders), plus another category that distinguishes between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ declensions (depending on the presence of certain
90 demonstrative words within the same phrase). All of the word forms that make up a single inflectional paradigm have the same basic meaning. In general, they are all constructed on the basis of a basic shape, or stem, though in many languages with complex inflection, the paradigm of a given word may be built from more than one stem. In French, for example, the verb pouvoir ‘to be able to’ shows different stems in (je) peux ‘I can’ and (je) pourrais ‘I would be able to’.
Certain terminology has become more or less accepted in describing facts of these sorts. We refer to a particular sound shape (e.g. [fawnd]) as a specific word form; all of the inflectional forms in a single paradigm are said to make up a single lexeme (e.g., find). A specific morphosyntactic form of a particular lexeme (e.g., the past tense of find) is realized by a corresponding word form [fawnd]). These terms are all distinct, in their way: thus, the same morphosyntactic form of a given lexeme may correspond to more than one word form (e.g., the past tense of dive can be either [daivd] or [dowv]), while the same word form can realize more than one morphosyntactic form (e.g., [hIt] can be either the past tense of hit, the non-third-person present tense of hit, or the singular of the noun hit).
2. Word Formation
Inflection, then, is the morphology that distinguishes the various forms within the paradigm of a single lexeme. Some languages, like ancient Greek or Georgian, have a great deal of inflectional morphology, while others (like English) have much less, and some (like Vietnamese) have hardly any at all. Regardless of this, however, essentially all languages have ways of constructing new lexemes from existing ones, or patterns of word formation. These fall into two broad classes: compounding is the process of combining two or more independently existing lexemes (perhaps with some additional material as ‘glue’) into a single new lexeme (as in catbird). Derivation, in contrast, is the formation of a new lexeme from an existing one by means of material that does not appear by itself as a word. It is common to refer to such non-independent content as bound in contrast with independently occurring or free elements.
3. Derivation A typical derivational relation among lexemes is the formation of adjectives like inflatable from verbs (inflate). In this case, the meaning of the adjective is quite systematically related to that of the verb: VERB-able means ‘capable of being VERB-ed’. It is therefore tempting to say that English
91 contains an element –able with that meaning, which can simply be added to verbs to yield adjectives. The facts are a bit more complex that that, though. For one thing, the related adjective may not always be just what we would get by putting the two pieces together. For instance, navigate yields navigable, formulate yields formulable, etc. These are instances of truncation, where a part of the base is removed as an aspect of the word formation process. Then there are cases such as applicable from apply, where we see the same variation (or allomorphy) in the shape of the stem as in application. These patterns show us that the derivational whole may be more than the simple sum of its parts.
When we consider the class of adjectives in –able (or its spelling variant –ible), we find a number of forms like credible, eligible, potable, probable,… which seem to have the right meaning for the class (they all mean roughly ‘capable of being [SOMETHING]-ed’), but the language does not happen to contain any verb with right form and meaning to serve as their base. This suggests that derivational patterns have a sort of independent existence: they can serve as (at least partial) motivation for the shape and sense of a given lexeme, even in the absence of the possibility of deriving that lexeme from some other existing lexeme. In some instance, the force of this analysis is so strong that it leads to what is called back-formation: thus, the word editor was originally derived from Latin e:dere ‘to bring forth’ plus –itor, but it fit so well into the pattern of English agent nouns in –er (e.g., baker, driver) that a hypothetical underlying verb edit actually became part of the language.
We may also notice that some –able forms do not mean precisely what we might predict. Thus, comparable means `roughly equal’, not just ‘able to be compared’. In the world of wine, drinkable comes to mean ‘rather good’, not just ‘able to be drunk’, etc. This shows us that even though these words may originally arise through the invocation of derivational patterns, the results are in fact full-fledged words of the language; and as such, they can undergo semantic change independent of the words form which they were derived. This is the same phenomenon we see when the word transmission, originally referring to the act or process of transmitting (e.g., energy from the engine to the wheels of a car) comes to refer to a somewhat mysterious apparatus which makes strange noises and costs quite a bit to replace.
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Finally, we can note that in some cases it is not at all evident how to establish a ‘direction’ of derivation. In Maasai, for example, there are two main noun classes (‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’), and a derivational pattern consists in taking a noun which is ‘basically’ of one class, and treating it as a member of the other. Thus, en-kéráí is a feminine noun that refers to any child, of either gender; while ol-kéráí is a corresponding masculine noun meaning ‘large male child’. Here it looks plausible to take the feminine form as the basis for the derivational relationship; but when we consider ol-abáánì (masculine) ‘doctor’ vs. enk-abáánì ‘small or female doctor, quack’ it looks as if the direction of derivation goes the other way. In fact, it looks as if what we have here is a case of a relation between two distinct patterns, where membership in the feminine class may (but need not) imply femaleness and/or relatively small size, as opposed to the masculine class which may imply maleness and/or relatively large size. When a word in either class is used in the other, the result is to bring out the additional meaning associated with the class, but there is no inherent directionality to this relationship. The possibility of back formation discussed above suggests that this interpretation of derivational relationships as fundamentally symmetrical may be applicable even to cases where the formal direction of derivation seems obvious.
4. Compounding The other variety of word formation, compounding, seems fairly straightforward, even if the actual facts can be quite complex at times. Compounds are built of two (or more) independent words, and have (at least in their original form) a meaning that involves those of their components. Thus, a catfish is a kind of fish sharing some property with a cat (in this case, the whiskers). Like derived forms, compounds are independent lexemes in their own right, and as such quickly take on specialized meanings that are not transparently derived from those of their parts. We need to tell a story to explain why a hotdog is called that, why a blackboard can be white or green, etc.
Where it is possible to relate the meaning of a compound to those of its parts, it is often possible to establish a privileged relationship between the semantic ‘type’ of the whole compound and that of one of its pieces. Thus, a dog house is a kind of house (and certainly not a kind of dog), out-doing is a kind of doing, etc. When such a relation can be discerned, we refer to the ‘privileged’ member of the compound as its head, and speak of the compound itself as endo- centric.
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By no means all compounds would appear to be endocentric, however: a pickpocket is neither a kind of pocket nor a kind of picking, and a sabre-tooth is a kind of tiger, not a kind of tooth. Traditional grammar provides a variety of names for different types of such exo-centric compounds, some deriving from the Sanskrit grammatical tradition in which these were of particular interest. A bahuvrihi compound is one whose elements describe a characteristic property or attribute possessed by the referent (e.g., sabre-tooth, flatfoot), a dvandva compound is built of two (or more) parts, each of which contributes equally to the sense (e.g., an Arab-Israeli peace treaty).
In some languages, the decision as to which compounds are endocentric and which are not depends on the importance we give to different possible criteria. For instance, in German, Blauhemd ‘(soldier wearing a) blue shirt’ is on the face of it a bahuvrihi compound, exocentric because it does not denote a kind of shirt. On the other hand, the gender of the compound (neuter, in this case) is determined by that of its rightmost element (here, hemd `shirt’). Semantically, blauhemd is exocentric; while grammatically, it could be regarded as endocentric with its head on the right. Languages can vary quite a bit in the kinds of compound patterns they employ. Thus, English compounds of a verb and its object (like scarecrow) are rather rare and unproductive, while this constitutes a basic and quite general pattern in French and other Romance languages. English and German tend to have the head, when there is one, on the right (dollhouse), while Italian and other romance languages more often have the head on the left (e.g., caffelatte ‘coffee with milk’). Most English compounds consist of two elements (though one of these may itself be a compound, as in [[high school] teacher], leading to structures of great complexity such as German [Leben]s-versicherung]s-gesellschaft]s-angestellter] ‘life insurance company employee’), but many dvandva compounds in Chinese consist of three or four components, as in ting-tai-lou-ge ‘(pavilions-terraces-upper stories-raised alcoves) elaborate architecture’.
Finally, we should note that although we have defined compounds as built from free elements or independent lexemes, this leaves us with no good way of describing structures such as the names of many chemical compounds and drugs (dichlorobenzene, erythromycin) and words such as Italo-American. On the one hand, we surely do not want to say that there is a process that affects a base such as American by prefixing Italo-. On the other hand, Italo-, erythro-, chloro-,etc. do not occur on their own, but only in this class of compounds. Even more striking examples
94 occur in other languages. For examples, the Mandarin root yi ‘ant’ freely forms compounds such as yiwang ‘queen ant’ (literally ant-king), gongyi ‘worker ant’, baiyi ‘white ant, termite’ But yi is clearly not a word: the free word for ‘ant’ in Mandarin is mayi. While English erythro etc are always prefixes, in the Mandarin cases, the roots in question occur in both head and non-head position, and are therefore like normal compound components in every respect except that they are not free forms. It appears that the very definition of compounding need more thought than was initially evident.
To this point, we have talked of morphological relationships as existing between whole lexemes (in the case of word formation), or between word forms (in the case of inflection). Much of the tradition of thought about morphology, however, regards these matters in a somewhat different light. We saw at the beginning of this article that the model of the Saussurean sign as the minimal unit where sound and meaning are connected could not serve as a description of the word, since it is often the case that (proper) parts of words display their own connection between sound and meaning. It was this observation, in fact, that led us to explore the varieties of morphology displayed in natural language. But many have felt that the proper place for the sign relation is not the word, but rather a constituent part of words: the morpheme. On that picture, morphology is the study of these units, the morphemes: how they may vary in shape (the allomorphy they exhibit) and how they can be combined (morphotactics).
5. Morphemes and Words The notion that words can be regarded as (exhaustively) composed of smaller sign-like units, or morphemes, is extremely appealing It leads to a simple an uniform theory of morphology, one based on elementary units that can be regarded as making up a sort of lexicon at a finer level of granularity than that of words. Nonetheless, it seems that this picture of word structure as based on a uniform relation of morpheme concatenation is literally too good to be true. If morphemes are to serve the purpose for which they were intended, they ought to have some rather specific properties. It ought to be possible, for any given word, to divide its meaning into some small number of sub-parts, to divide its form into a corresponding number of continuous sub-strings of phonetic material, and then to establish a correspondence between the parts of meaning and the parts of form. Of course, it is possible to do exactly that in a great many cases (e.g., inflatable):
95 hence the intuitive appeal of this notion. But in many other instances, such a division of the form is much more laboured or even impossible.
One fairly minor problem is posed by parts of the form that are not continuous. When we analyze words containing circumfixes (e.g., ke—an in Indonesian kebisaan ‘capability’, from bias `be able’) or infixes (e.g. –al- in Sundanese ngadalahar ‘to eat several’, from ngadahar ‘to eat’) one or the other of the component morphemes is not a continuous string of material. Other cases are more serious. For instance, we may find no component of meaning to correspond to a given piece of form (an ‘empty morph’ such as the th in English lengthen `make long(er)’) or no component of form that relates to some clear aspect of a word’s meaning (e.g., English hit ‘past tense of hit’). Sometimes two or more components of meaning are indissolubly linked in a single element of form, as in French au ([o]) `to the (masc.)’ or the ending –o: of Latin amo: which represents all of ‘first person singular present indicative’, a collection of categories that are indicated separately in other forms. When we look beyond the simple cases, it appears that the relation between form and meaning in the general case is not one-to-one at the level of the morpheme, but rather many-to-many.
In fact, it seems that even though both the forms and the meanings of words can be divided into components, the relation is still best regarded as holding at the level of the entire word, rather than localized exclusively in the morpheme. We have also seen support for this notion in the fact that entire words, presumably composed of multiple morphemes, develop idiosyncratic aspects of meaning that cannot be attributed to any of their component morphemes individually (e.g., appreciable and considerable come to mean not ‘capable of being appreciated/considered’, but ‘substantial, relatively large’). On this basis, many linguists have come to believe that morphological relations are based on the word rather than the morpheme. Actually, we need to take into account the fact that in highly inflected languages like Latin or Sanskrit, no existing surface word form may supply just the level of detail we need, since all such words have specific inflectional material added. For such a case, we need to say that it is stems (full words minus any inflectional affixation) that serve as the basis of morphological generalizations, in the sense of representing the phonological component of a lexeme.
A further difficulty for the notion that morphemes are the basis of all morphology comes from the fact that in many cases, some of the information carried by the form of a word is
96 represented in a way that does not lend itself to segmentation. One large group of examples of this sort is supplied by instances in which it is the replacement of one part of the form by another, rather than the addition of a new piece, that carries meaning. Such relations of apophony include umlaut (goose/geese, mouse/mice), ablaut (sing/sang/sung), and such miscellaneous relations as those found in food/feed, sell/sale, sing/song, breath/breathe, and many others. Terms for these relations often refer to their historical origins and do not reflect any particularly natural category in the modern language (e.g., umlaut as opposed to ablaut in modern English).
Sometimes some information is carried in a word’s form not by the addition of some material (a morpheme), but rather by the deletion of something that we might expect. In the Uto- Aztecan language Tohono O’odham (‘Papago’) for example, the perfective form of a verb can in most instances be found by dropping the last consonant of the imperfective form (whatever that may be): thus, gatwid ‘shooting’ yields perfective gatwi ‘shot’; hikck ‘cutting’ yields hikc ‘cut’, etc. Examples like these (and several other sorts which considerations of space prevent us from going into here) suggest that the relations between words that constitute a language’s morphology are best construed as a collection of processes relating one class of words to another, rather than as a collection of constituent morphemic items that can be concatenated with one another to yield complex words. Of course, the simplest and most straightforward instance of such a process is one that adds material to the form (a prefix at the beginning, a suffix at the end, or an infix within the basic stem), but this is only one of the formal relations we find in the morphologies of natural languages. Others include changes, permutations, deletions, and the like. Linguists set on treating all morphological relations as involving the addition of morphemes have proposed analyses of many of these apparent processes in such terms, but it is possible to ask whether the extensions required in the notion of what constitutes an `affix’ do not in the end empty it of its original theoretical significance.
We have seen above that the forms of words can carry complex and highly structured information. Words do not serve simply as minimal signs, arbitrary chunks of sound that bear meaning simply by virtue of being distinct from one another. Some aspects of a word’s form may indicate the relation of its underlying lexeme to others (markers of derivational morphology or of compound structure), while others indicate properties of the grammatical structure within which it is found (markers of inflectional properties). All of these relations seem to be best construed as
97 knowledge about the relations between words however: relations between whole lexemes, even when these can be regarded as containing markers of their relations to still other lexemes; and relations between word forms that realize paradigmatic alternatives built on a single lexeme’s basic stem(s) in the case of inflection. These relations connect substantively defined classes in a way that is only partially directional in its essential nature, and the formal connections among these classes are signalled in ways that are best represented as processes relating one shape to another.
d) Syntactic variation
Syntax has to do both with the types of categories certain word belongs to and with how words are put together to form sentences. We can see variation in both of these properties across language varieties.
For example, in many southern American English dialects, done can function as an auxiliary verb, as in she done already told you, where Standard American English uses has: she has already told you. Similarly, in many Appalachian English dialects, right can function adverbially, as in a right good meal, where Standard American English would use very: a very good meal. Of course, Standard American English also has the morphemes done and right, but they function predominantly as a main verb and as an adjective, respectively: for example, he has done it or the right answer.
In terms of how words are combined, we can again compare many southern American English dialects to Standard American English. In many southern dialects, combinations of auxiliaries, such as might could, might would, may can and used to are permitted and form a single constituent; such combinations are impossible in Standard English, where the same ideas are expressed ( more or less, though the exact meanings are somewhat nuanced ) with combinations like might be able to, might perhaps, may be able to, and used to be able to.
Linguists who analyse spoken language have often commented on the challenge that it poses for conventional analyses of syntactic structure. An early comment of this kind was from Crystal ( 1976 ), whose analysis of clause structure in spontaneous conversational English led him to claim that the linguistic organization of this variety of English had been “fundamentally
98 misconceived”. Crystal attributed our lack of understanding partly to the absence of data and partly to the uncritical application of traditional paradigms of enquiry. We can no longer claim an absence of data, now that electronic corpora of transcribed speech are readily available; but it is still not always recognised that we cannot easily understand the nature of spontaneous spoken language in terms of the standard linguistic descriptors (Milroy 2001:270). In this paper I discuss two fundamental characteristics of spoken language that do not fit well with traditional paradigms and that in my opinion are relevant to a potential alliance between the fields of variationist linguistics and generative linguistics.
The first characteristic is the high proportion of prefabricated expressions that occur in spontaneous unplanned speech. This is relevant to generative approaches to syntactic variation because what may appear to be syntactic structures to be explained within the framework of the internal grammar may be better seen as prefabricated expressions with little flexibility. They would be better accounted for, therefore, within another component of the grammar, or perhaps at an interface level. Their relevance for or variationist linguistics is that what we may wish to analyse as a syntactic variant may be more appropriately seen as a lexical item. The second characteristic of spoken language to be considered here isthe pervasiveness of affective meanings. These can be difficult to accommodate within conventional generative and variationist frameworks alike, but they need to be taken into account since the expression of affective meanings may influence the extent to which variation arises in syntax.
I will argue that a discourse-oriented analysis is a necessary complement to the analysis of syntactic variation, firstly because it can help toidentify structures that are prefabricated and secondly because it can show how speakers use syntactic structures in spoken interaction. This in turn may give some insights into when, and why, variation occurs. I begin however by noting the lack of attention to the structure of spoken language within both the generative and the variationist traditions.
Here, the generativist approach and spoken language Generative theory aims to characterise our innate knowledge of language structure. It is assumed that this knowledge is identical for the individual speakers of a language (indeed, at a more general level, for speakers of all languages), and that appropriate data can come from a single speaker’s intuitive judgements about the grammaticality of constructions. The theory has not been concerned with performed,
99 externalised language, so it has not been necessary to consider either the syntactic organisation of spoken language or the potential differences between spoken and written varieties of language. However, now that generativists have begun to work with data arising from variationist research it is impossible not to consider these questions, for the data used in the study of variation and change come from what in this tradition is considered externalised language. Variationists prioritise spoken rather than written language (Schneider 2002: 67), and there has been a tradition of analyzing wherever possible the most spontaneous unplanned ‘vernacular’ speech, where speakers pay the minimum attention to its production and the Observer’s Paradox is least in evidence (Labov 1970). This for ‘internal’ and ’external’ approaches to be mutually supportive rather than conflicting, as Chomsky has recently argued that they should be (Chomsky 1999: 34), it is necessary to consider the extent to which the generative model of syntax is appropriate for the analysis of spoken language as well as for the analysis of data obtained from elicited intuitions.
There are arguments in favour of seeing the generative model as appropriate for externalised language as well as for data obtained from intuitions. For example, the intuitions of speakers of languages with a strong written tradition, such as English, are likely to be heavily influenced by the written language (for example, Brown and Yule 1983). Furthermore, some corpus linguists have argued that there is a shared common core between the syntax of spoken and written language (see, for example, Leech 2000). This would suggest that data obtained from intuitions may fit well with the structure of externalised language, both written and spoken. It can also be claimed that generative theory has developed in part from the intuitions of speakers of languages that do not have a written form. If we can accept that speakers have an intuitive knowledge of the structures they produce when speaking, this is a further reason for claiming that the model is applicable to spoken language is strengthened.
However, several researchers who have analysed corpora of spoken language claim that the structures of spoken language differ both from data obtained from intuitions and from the syntax of planned written language. For example, spoken English – but not planned written English – contains utterances such as (1) and (2) below, uttered within a single intonation contour (see Cheshire 1999). Here two clauses appeared to be fused: in (1) these are that’s really what Professor Galbraith was talking about and what Professor Galbraith was talking about is that there’s a huge knock-on effect:
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(1) that’s really what Professor Galbraith was talking about is that there’s a huge knock-on
effect.
(2) It’s just a bunch of baloney is what it is.
Crystal (1976) gives more complex examples, including some involving intercalation, as in (3). The clauses are set out on separate lines as in Crystal (1976 ) for ease of description.
(3) a. I’m very suspicious of the press generally
b. and I can tell you
c. because not only I mean that’s one case
d. that you’ve given
e. but also on their reporting of erm affairs foreign affairs
f. because living in Cyprus
g. I’ve seen quite a number of historical events you know
Here the clauses in (3c–e)are subordinate to the clause in (3a), and those in (3fg) are subordinate to the clause in (3b). Crystal points out that from a semantic viewpoint (3e) relates to both (3a) and (3f): it is half of the reason for the proposition expressed in (3a), along with (3c)and (3d), but it also constitutes a new theme linking (3c) with (3f)and (3g). The syntactic status of (3e) is unclear: there is no main verb and it could, Crystal argues (op. cit.: 158), be analysed as a complex adverbial linked via the because of (3f) to (3g). There are several accounts now of syntactic forms that are specific to spoken language. These include, for English, Biber et al. (1994), Miller (in press); for English and Russian, Miller and Weinert (1998); and for French, Blanche-Benveniste (1997). It is not clear how structures such as these could be considered as generated by the grammar, yet many researchers working outside the generative paradigm have argued that they should be included within a model of grammar. Schegloff (1989: 143), for example, argues that a biological perspective on language should examine language in the natural environment in which it occurs (in other words, in unplanned conversation), and should entertain the idea that the syntactic structures of spoken language are adaptations to this environment. A growing body of work shows that spoken language has its form partly as a result of interactional factors, such as the
101 turn taking mechanism (see, for example, Ochs et al. 1996, Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 2001, and Ford 1993), and that these factors help determine variation.
For example, Ford (op. cit. 147-148) finds that variation in the clause position of conditional and temporal adverbial clauses in American English is related to their discourse functions and the conversational context. They are more frequently in clause-initial position in extended spans of talk, where speakers have negotiated a special right to the floor and where there are more opportunities for the discourse-structuring functions of the clauses to be realised. Mondorf (2000) adds a sociolinguistic perspective: in the London Lund corpus of spoken British English male speakers tend to position adverbial clauses initially, whereas female speakers place them more frequently in clause-final position. Mondorf explains these preferences in terms of the different orientations of male and female speakers to information management and epistemic grounding. Levinson (1983: 97) has argued more generally that social principles for co-operative interaction, such as those shown in politeness strategies, have a pervasive effect on language structure. It has been claimed, then, from several different quarters, that interactional and social factors can constrain both the form of spoken syntax and aspects of syntactic variation. It is not yet clear to what extent the structure of spoken syntax can be explained as the result of performance mechanisms that do not need to be accounted for within the internal grammar (as it is conceived by generativists), but it becomes difficult to avoid the question when data from spoken language are used to develop generative theory.
Since researchers working in the variationist tradition have always worked with the data of ‘externalised’ language, they might be expected to have paid attention to the characteristics of spoken syntax. However here too the nature of spoken language has been largely neglected, albeit for different reasons. One reason is that the linguistic variable was originally conceived for the analysis of phonological variation. Variants should be semantically equivalent: in other words, they should be alternative ways of 'saying the same thing' (Chambers and Trudgill 1998: 50). Semantic equivalence can be easily established for phonological variables, where the form- meaning relationship is at its most arbitrary, but there has been much controversy about whether it can also be established for syntactic variation. The issues were much discussed during the 1970s and 1980s (see, for example, Lavandera 1978, Cheshire 1987, Levinson 1988, Romaine 1980, Weiner and Labov 1983), and debate has continued since then (see, with reference to French,
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Blanche-Benveniste 1997, Coveney 1997, Gadet 1997; and for general discussions Cheshire, Kerswill and Williams in press, Cornips and Corrigan in press, Coveney 2002, Milroy and Gordon 2003). A tacit consensus seems to be that the condition of strict semantic equivalence can be relaxed for syntactic variables, so that a variable can be set up on the basis of an equivalence in discourse function (Dines 1980, Coupland 1983). For example, the five forms in (1) to (5) below (from Romaine 1984: 426) can all be considered ways of ‘saying the same thing’ in that they all have the same communicative intent or discourse function (the speaker would like the addressee to close the window):
(1) it’s cold in here
(2) I’m cold
(3) are you cold?
(4) would you close the window?
(5) close the window
The problem however is that we are now dealing with variation that is constrained by pragmatic factors rather than by the grammar. It is not clear to what extent forms that we might wish to consider as examples of syntactic variation are always motivated by pragmatic factors, and there is no consensus in the field on whether this invalidates their analysis as linguistic variables (see Winford 1996:188 for further discussion). The issues are no longer much discussed within the variationist literature, but the legacy of the debate accounts in part for the neglect of syntactic variation relative to phonological variation. A second reason for the neglect of spoken syntax in variationist research is that the methodology does not require a detailed analysis of syntax. Researchers focus on one linguistic variable at a time, extracting tokens from the conversational contexts in which they occur. For example, an analysis of was/were variation in an English dialect involves extracting and coding all the tokens of was and were produced by the speakers participating in the study, and then performing a quantitative analysis to determine the linguistic and social constraints on the occurrence of was rather than were, and vice-versa. Once the variable to be analysed has been selected, there is no need to consider the syntax other than to identify which potential internal constraints are to be included in the statistical analysis. Different researchers have chosen for themselves what to include as a potential constraint, and decisions are
103 not always based on systematic syntactic grounds (see Henry 2002). Analysts working on was/were variation, for example, usually take account of agreement between the subject and the was/were form, and the polarity of the construction in which the forms occur (in some dialects negation favours weren’t rather than wasn’t), but the focus of the analysis remains the was/were variable and the procedure does not necessarily require a fuller analysis of the syntactic construction in which was/were occurs, nor of the overall discourse structure. Syntactic constructions specific to spoken language, therefore, such as (1) to (3) above, have tended to be overlooked, as have the possible effect of interactional factors.
A related reason for the neglect of spoken syntax in this field is that variationists tend to analyse the same grammatical variables over and over again. This is partly because the favourite variables tend to occur with the high frequencies that are necessary for quantitative analyses. However another, less obvious, reason seems to be that analysts have been influenced by the ideology of the standard. We was, for instance, is non-standard relative to standard English we were, and this has made the form salient not only to prescriptivists and laypeople but also to linguists. In addition, the sociocultural processes involved in standardisation means that the use of non-standard forms correlates with a speaker’s social status. Variables of this type are eminently suitable for analysis within the variationist framework since they meet the classic definition of a sociolinguistic variable (a structural unit with two or more variants involved in co-variation with social variables). Variationists have worked almost exclusively on languages that have been heavily standardised, so the potential influence of the standard ideology on the selection of variables for analysis has been high (see Cheshire and Stein 1997 and Milroy 1999 for further discussion). Thus for English the most frequently analysed variables are morphosyntactic forms where one variant is prescriptively non-standard: they involve subject-verb agreement, negative concord and non-standard negative forms such as ain’t, as well as various standard and non- standard verb forms. Syntactic variation involving less salient forms have been largely ignored. Both generativists and variationists, then, have largely neglected the structure of spoken language. Despite the different methodologies that they traditionally adopt – with generativists relying on intuitions and variationists on audio recordings of spoken interaction – each approach has analysed forms abstracted from the interactional context in which they occur. A further similarity is that each approach focuses on abstract linguistic systems, with generativists aiming to characterise the structures of the internal grammar and variationists seeking to understand the properties of variable
104 systems (Milroy and Gordon 2003: 8). An essential difference, of course, is that generativists assume that the grammar is identical for all speakers of a language. Their concern, therefore, is to identify which aspects of the observed variation are categorical, and how this variation can be accommodated within the grammar. Variationists on the other hand are also concerned with understanding the social embedding of variation, especially insofar as this can explain the processes by which orderly linguistic change occurs. Variation for them is integral to the nature of language and must be incorporated within the model. In principle, therefore, variationists are equally interested in social (external) and internal constraints on variation, though different studies may tend to give more weight to one than the other.
In any event, for both variationists and generativists the analysis of syntactic variation rests on an appropriate identification of the forms that are considered to alternate. I hope to show in what follows that a discourse-oriented approach can help to identify these forms, and that this is a necessary complement to generative and variationist analyses.
e) Lexical variation
Semantic has to do with meaning from the meaning of particular words to the way sentences are meaningful because they are build up compositionally from their parts. While semantic variation in both of these areas does exist, the letter is decidedly more complicated and is closely interconnected with syntactic and pragmatic variation. Therefore, we will focus here on lexical variation, that is, differences in the words people use to mean the same thing or to refer to the same subject, or differences in what the same word means or refers to.
For example, words for sweet carbonated beverages differ from place to place; soda is common in the northeastern and western parts of the United States, while pop is common in the Midwest and northwest, and coke is common in south. And, for course, there are other terms like soft drink, soda pop, fizzy drinks, or even juice that are used elsewhere. Here, another example comes from different varieties of French: in European French, the word for the verb “ to mail” is poster while the “ Quebeco” is a French word is “maller”. Similarly in Taiwan sign language, speakers from Taipei sign the word SHOE, while speakers from Taiwan sign the same word by touching the fronts of the writs together, with the hands crossed and in fists. On the other hand, the same word
105 can also be used to mean different things in different language varieties. For example, knock up means “rouse from sleep by knocking” in British English but “make pregnant” in American English. Similarly, to be passed is “to be drunk” in British English but “ to be mad” in American and Canadian English.
American English is now different from its British mother and we could say it is more than another dialect due to its importance nowadays. At the beginning of its history, after the American emancipation, there were two opposite attitudes towards the language: those who wanted to eradicate any legacy from the colonization and did not want a British model for their language and those who felt language loyalty towards mother- English. But finally, as in many British colonies, linguistic emancipation was a consequence of politics. The growing importance of American English is also due to politics: after World War II, when the United States assumed a more global role and had greater influence in fields such as economic, technological and political, America became a linguistic model. As well as this American English has a dominant influence in the world because in US there is 70% of the native English speakers’ population, for its big publishing industry and mass media technology and for the magnitude of higher education.
The main differences between British English and American English are pronunciation, spelling and lexicon. However, syntax is not a big difference. Now we are going to have a glimpse at each, illustrating them with some examples. Referring to pronunciation we can settle some basic parameters to see the difference between dialects. First we have the merger of [I] and [å] before nasal consonants, makes pin and pen homophones in the American dialect. Many words that used to be stressed on their second syllable are now stressed in their first syllable (like reconcile) but in America nowadays this process is even more rapid. Words like cigar, hotel and Detroit are now front-stressed. Then there is the deletion or reduction of weakly stressed syllables, a process that has been really important in English phonetics.
Today, English has become the universal language. It is spoken all over the world. British and American English are the two national varieties of English. American English is not a separate language as an American language. Yet it is a distinct kind of English. British and America are “two great countries separated by the same language”. It should be remembered English are two different national verities of English. American English is now not only a variety of English but
106 an independent language. Difference between British English and American English in the way that the same language is spoken in different places are called varieties or dialects. These varieties may be regional or national. The differences between American English and British English in the field of syntax, pronunciation, spellings, and vocabulary.
A lexicon is not made up of different words but different “units of meaning” (lexical units or lexical items e.g. “fly ball” in baseball), including idioms and figures of speech this makes it easier to compare the dialects. Though the influence of cross-culture media has done much to familiarize BrE and AmE speakers with each other’s regional words and terms, many words are still recognized as part of a single form of English. Though the use of a British word would be acceptable in AmE (and vice versa), most listeners would recognize the word as coming from the other form of English and treat it much the same as a word borrowed from any other language. For instance a British speaker using the word chap or mate to refer to a friend would be heard in much the same way as an American using the Spanish word amigo.
Most speakers of AmE are aware of some BrE terms, although they may not generally use them or may be confused as to whether someone intends the American or British meaning (such as for biscuit). It is generally very easy to guess what some words, such as “driving licence”, mean. However, use of many other British words such as naff (slang but commonly used to mean “not very good”) are unheard of in American English.
Speakers of BrE are likely to understand most common AmE terms, examples such as “sidewalk”, “gas (gasoline/petrol)”, “counterclockwise” or “elevator (lift)”, without any problem, thanks in part to considerable exposure to American popular culture and literature. Certain terms that are heard less frequently, especially those likely to be absent or rare in American popular culture, e.g. “copacetic (satisfactory)”, are unlikely to be understood by most BrE speakers. An early factor in the evolution of American English was the need to name unfamiliar features of the landscape, flora, and fauna of the New World. One source for such words was the rich, but often difficult (for English speakers) vocabulary of the Native Americans. Captain John Smith, in trying to transcribe the Algonquian word meaning “he scratches with his hands”–arakun— wrote rahougcum (1608). This is the source of our now-familiar word, raccoon. Other words derived from Native American languages include: caucus (possibly from Algonkin cau’-cau-as’u,
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used by Captain John Smith, who spelled it “Caw-cawaassough”), hickory (< pohickery), hominy, moccasin, moose, muskrat (< muskwessu), opossum, papoose, pecan, persimmon, pone, powwow, skunk, squash (< asquutasquash), squaw, succotash (from Narragansett msiquatash), terrapin, toboggan, tomahawk, totem, wigwam, and woodchuck (< otchek).
Earlier Spanish and Portuguese explorers, encountering Native Americans in the West Indies, Mexico, and Central and South American, had provided forms that became the English words barbecue ( Some time, the spelling variation is also the main cause for language learners to be careful, because of distinguishing between American and British English. There are many spelling differences between the two varieties in the field of spelling is notable. These differences are made by Noah Webster as below: 1) There are words without the “u” in British English. Such words are: American English British English Honor Honour Color Colour Favor Favour Cheqe Chequr Nabor Neighbor Harbor Harbour Humor Humour Labor Labour 108 Rumor Rumour Behavior Behaviour In American English are words with “er” instead of “re” of British English. British English American English Centre Center Litre Liter Theatre Theater Spectur Specter 2) Certain words are spelled with an “s” replaced by “c”. British English American English Defence Defense Pretence Pretense Recompence Recompense Practice Practice Licence License 3) There are certain modern technical words in American English and British English. American English British English Draft Draught 109 Curb Kerb Archeology Archaeology Ax Axe Chili Chilli Paralyze Paralyse Plow Plough 4) In British English are some words use single “L” and the American English some words use double “LL”. American English British English Canceled Cancelled Counselor Counsellor Cruelest Cruelest Modeling Modeling Quarreled Quarreled Signaling Signaling Traveler Traveler But here, in lexical variation, there are some words which have the same pronunciation and different spelling, below is cited some of them: British English American English Difference Savours Savors Elimination of “u” Tyre Tire “y” becomes “i” Grey Gray “e” becomes “a” 110 Similarly, in this way, American English has its own peculiarities or features which differentiate it from British English that is syntactic, pronunciation, spellings and vocabulary. But there are remarkable differences between the two. They are national verities of English. Many old usages of English of 17 century have been survived in standard American English. New words also are added. In addition of these varieties between American and British English, the lexical variation is also very common in different styles: the choice of words you use often depends on the register you are speaking. So, for example, you might say “I fell on my butt” to a friend but “I fell on my backside” to your grandmother. We also have different words for things like man depending on the context: gentlemen is more formal; guy is less formal. Likewise in French, the standard word for ‘man’ is homme; the more formal word is monsieur or gentilhomme ; and the more casual word is mec or type. Factors Influencing Variation: Regional and geographical variation One of the most apparent reasons for the existence of different language varieties is that languages are spoken in different geographical locations that are separate from each other. This type of variation based on geographical boundaries, known as regional variation, is responsible; for example, for the differences of American English and British English, or the Portuguese spoken in Portugal versus that spoken in Brazil. It is also type of variation that we associate with, say, New York English versus Texan English, or the English spoken in New York city versus that spoken in Kabul. Here, why does geography play such a role in determining a dialect? First, language varieties tend to be most influenced by the people you are in face – to – face communication with, so people who live close to each other will have considerably more influence of each other’s dialects that people who live farther apart; that is, living in close proximity to a group of Scots- Irish will have more of an impact on your speech than living 100 miles from a group of Germans. So, it is often really the patterns of settlement that people fall into, rather than the geography of the region itself, that matters. This means; for example, that there is nothing inherent about southeastern Pennsylvania that makes people who live there more likely to use words like [ jᵋ ] and [ neI ] instead of [ jᵋ ] and [ nou ]; instead, this is because of the large population of German speakers who settled in the area. 111 This is not to say that physical geography cannot play any role in regional dialects, because dialects are often influenced by isolation. That is, being isolated from other speakers tends to allow a dialect to develop in its own way through its own innovations that are different from those of other dialects. Regional dialect boundaries therefore often coincide with natural barriers such as rivers, mountains, or swamps. Tangier Island off the coast of Virginia has preserve a very distinctive variety of English owing in parts to its geographic isolation, as have speakers of Gullag along the Sea Islands of South Carolina. And the distinctive dialect known as Appalachian English can be attributed at least in part to the isolation imposed by the Appalachian mountain range. People who study regional dialects known as dialectologists often rely on fieldwork to determine dialect regions. For example, they may come up with a list of particular characteristics that they know typically vary in the part of a country they are interested in; then they go out and directly ask the people in those areas how they say things. Social influences on language variation In bilingual or multilingual countries, there is usually more diversity in the language varieties than in monolingual countries. However, sometimes the same language can have multiple varieties in a predominantly monolingual situation. As a result, people of the same country may use different varieties of the same language. Hudson (1996) has defined the language variety as “a set of linguistics items with similar social distribution.” More specific definition has been drawn by Herk (2012) who identified varieties as “different ways of saying the same thing”. However, Varieties and variations are two different concepts in Sociolinguistics field which sometimes use as synonymic of each other. Variation is recognized as different “ways of speaking” of the same language where Variety is known as a particular “way of speaking”. (Rochmawati 2009). Thus variations can be found within the same speech community because of having uttering differences among the individuals. And variety can be identified as a particular code or dialect, variation can refer as different styles and accents of expressing that code or dialect. In our country Afghanistan, Dari and Pashto languages have got several varieties with particular speech communities which are usually known as dialects. However, Standard Colloquial Dari and/ or Pashto can also be considered as a variety. But people’s way of speaking that same variety differs from class to class and thus the term variation arise. Gender, social class, regional differences are a few determining 112 factors of a person’s language variation. An adult woman never speaks like a school-going child. A school teacher will speak in more polite and humble manner than a rickshaw puller. Speech utterance style of the people from northern part can easily be differentiated from the southern part dialects. Thus situations have produced linguistic inequalities among the country and socio-economic class another major notional factor regarding the matter. Though, many researchers do not consider these effects straightforward but social class indeed plays a very important role in creating language variations (Milroy and Gordon 2003). By observing their use of language, people can easily be categorized into their respective social classes or regions that they belong to. After independence war of 1998, Afghanistan was born as a free country with Dari and Pashto languages, as its only national and official languages. Though, Afghanistan government has not accepted English as its second language, in some highly formal situations English language is recommended. The sub-divisions of Dari and Pashto have evolved several varieties and thus the country turns into beyond monolingual situation. From each region to region the varieties of Dari and Pashto can be identified with different vernaculars, semantic and syntactic structure. People with a fluency of such varieties need to learn or be expert on the original or appropriate Dari and Pashto for the demand of formal communication. In this matter, the diglossic situation in Afghanistan where people use High variety of Dari in formal communications and prefer Low variety for their casual talks. The power of making High variety and Low variety lie upon a particular speech community who are holding prestigious position in the society. They are popularly known as educated elite society and they mainly decide that which language will possess the status of high variety or low variety and will play dominant role or weaker role in the society. For example, a group of people who is the native speakers of a certain language holds important positions and is politically very powerful in the society, with the major portion of the total population belongs to this group. So their language might get the status of High-Variety and the other sub-divisions or the language of minor speakers will get the status of Low-Variety. Thus, High variety of Dari is chosen over Low variety since it is the mother tongue of native elites. However, different varieties of the main Dari according to their status and acceptance 113 in the society have different grammar system, morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, vocabulary etc. a) Standard language: In every languages of the world there is a standard form which is considered the original variety for that particular speech community. This variety is more popularly known as the language of educated, noble or elite class’s language. With the preferable decision of socio-economically powerful portion of the society, a variety is considered as the standard and highly prestigious one but to be labeled as standard, it has to be written and go through some degree of regularization such as “Selection”, “Codification”, “Elaboration of function” , and “Acceptance.” (Hudson 1996, Holmes 2008). To establish any language in the society as standard one, a well organized planning is recommended. Linguist Kalpan and Baldauf (1997) think that status planning (undertaken by politicians), corpus planning (undertaken by great linguists of society) and acquisition planning (undertaken by government) are three major systems of planning a standard language in society. b) Non-Standard language: Many people accept standard variety of the society as “good, pure, clear and rule-governed, a real language” where the other varieties of the same society remain as “broken, chaotic, limited or impermanent” (Herk 2012). Non-standard languages are those varieties of language which is less prestigious, mostly spoken in informal situations and usually not accepted by educated native speakers of the language. The nonstandard form of language differs from pronunciation or vocabularies from the standard variety of the language. Standard Dari is not much familiar or spoken by the people of different regions. So the same language get affected by the local people and got several subdivisions. All the slangs and taboo words are also considered as non-standard. This variety syntactically and morphologically differs from standard colloquial Dari. So naturally it is affected by these different regions and got different varieties. However, every language in the world got many or few dialects which are differ in terms of vocabulary, accent or pronunciation from the original language. They are less prestigious, shorter than the main language. Sometimes people from one area totally lack in understanding the dialects of other areas. Linguists believe that regional dialects have very little differences from their immediate next region and have greater differences from far away areas (Spolsky 1998). As a result, understanding 114 difficulties are seen among many peoples. For example, according to Einar Haugen (1966) the dialects of England were borrowed by the Renaissance from the Greek culture which has created much puzzlement as a result of vagueness (as cited in Hudson 1996), but throughout the world, many countries exit whose regional dialects have fixed written form. Dialects, which do not have any written form, are called Patois (Hudson 1996). c) Code switching: Any particular language of a country or state is known as code. Wardaugh (2006) found out that any language and its other varieties will also be considered as code as well. So in this condition, all the sub languages of Dari and Pashto such as regional dialects, standard colloquial, non standard variety or registers are the codes of Afghanistan. However, Due to cultural and globalization effect, English became a dominant foreign code of this country. Though the government of many countries including Afghanistan have not announced English as second language of the country yet, educated and elite society are seen to use this language more frequently than any other foreign languages. However, code switching means using alternate codes or shifting to other code in same discourse. A person, who has command on more than one variety, is habitually or sometimes intentionally does code switching (Meyerhoff 2006). For example in Afghanistan society, code switching varies from class to class. People who migrated from rural to urban areas are sometimes seen to switch on their local dialects while talking in their newly adapted standard variety. Moreover, the influence of English on Dari language has become so intense that they are creating new trendy lexicons. Especially the “chicyoung generation” has created new “Dari” language at this regard where Dari is “peppered” with a range of accented English. Socioeconomic variation The role of socio-economic factors in second/ foreign language learning is being researched around the globe. Munoz (2008) defended the strong association between socio- economic status (SES) and achievement by exploring the fact that students from different social backgrounds have access to different types of schools leading to good/bad performance. In addition, SES, affects final language learning outcomes but also has an influence on motivation to learn. (Fan, 2012). The relevance of socio-cultural factors in language learning was dealt with by Gardner (1985; Gardner and Lambert, 1972), who presented a detail analysis on the significant 115 effect of parental encouragement and praise on students’ motivated behavior. The factor of parental encouragement has also been studied in a number of studies (Atay and Kurt, 2010; Csize´r and Kormos, 2009; Ryan, 2009; Taguchi et al., 2009), however parental involvement may be indirectly connected to the SES factors. Carr and Pauwells (2006) in Australia and Gayton (2010) in Scotland found that students from lower social classes having no opportunities to travel abroad displayed less favourable foreign language learning attitudes. A study by Lamb (2012) revealed that students in rural areas in Indonesia had a significantly lower level of broader exposure than learners of English in modern cities. The effect of social context on self-related beliefs in English language learning (L2) motivation has been recently investigated in Lamb (2012) in which he found that students in rural areas of Indonesia held significantly less-favourable views of their Ideal L2 selves than the students from urban areas had less explanatory power in motivated behaviour for rural learners. Another important construct in the field of language-learning motivation is motivated behaviour, which is usually seen to consist of effort and persistence (e.g. Csize´r and Do¨rnyei, 2005; Do¨rnyei, 2001, 2005; Gardner, 1985, 2006). Living in poverty meant that families were less likely to provide enriching cultural or educational experiences for their children. Many students’ chances of academic success were reduced due to poverty (Altschul, 2012, p.13). Parents’ socio-economic status (SES) had a strong and positive effect on children’s achievement. Students from higher socioeconomic status, experienced greater parent involvement in their education (Vellymalay, 2012), which enabled these students to receive the necessary skills, knowledge, behavior and values that were needed by their children for academic success. Children whose parents were better educated, made more money, had higher-status jobs, and lived in two parent families tended to attain higher levels of education than other minorities. It can now be concluded that the review of literature shows the connection between SES and learners’ achievement in English, however the case can not be over generalized. Grouping people together according to their status and economic condition is a general notion of social class and produces a stratified society. The sociologists and modern thinkers are trying to identify what makes a particular social class but usually inequalities in Power, Wealth 116 and Status of the individuals determine different groups in social hierarchy. From Karl Marx’s view on social stratification, each class has been distinguished to the other classes from the mode of production; where one class controls and directs the process of production while another class is, or other classes are, the direct producers and providers of services to the dominant class in the society. A person’s class has always been influenced by the class where they were born into but there is a chance of shifting up or down of the classes. After having better education, well-paid job or through some other factors, a person’s economic condition can be changed in a better position and he might shift his class to “middle income” or “upper middle income” from the “lower-middle income”. Such situation is known as social mobility. In modern era, the theory of social classes often assume in three general categories which include the upper class, the middle class and the lower class. From Karl Marx’s perspective, people of upper class are those who control the mode of production. Khandaker (2004) found all the elite class societies such as political elites, senior civil and military bureaucrats, Big-business class and industrialists, Retired civil servants and military officers in this category of social class. He also thinks that mostly this class people are not only conscious and respective in society but also the dominant class of Bangladesh in present (p.28).Their language is also distinguishable from the other two classes of the society. Among the three divisions of social hierarchy, people from the middle class are lying in the second position. Comparatively people from this class are more conscious than the other classes. Thus the social mobility occurs in this section most. However Khandaker (2004) has categorized teachers, semi employed, government workers, small time businessmen in this class. Lastly, people with lowest social rank, who are standing due to low income with, lack of skills or education, are considered as the people of lower class in social hierarchy. In urban areas, workers of industries or garments, rickshapullers and in rural areas peasents, landless agricultural farmers, fishermen are considered as this category people(Khondoker 2004). The unequal opportunities to access state resources have stratified the same society (Rahman 2007). A person’s speech variation along with some other non-linguistic features such as dress codes, body language, power etc also get effected by different social dimensions and social mobility. Social network theory is also one of the important language variation that often used to investigate why people who might share the same social characteristics (such as class or region) 117 nevertheless behave differently linguistically, especially with respect to participation in language change. What the Milroys found was that new language features are much slower to take root in dense and multiplex social networks those where a few people interact with each other often (the dense part) and in multiple ways” (Herk 2012 p.18). People of a different groups who has interacted with each other over the years, are their social networks. The frequency of contacts with the surrounding interlocutors reinforces particular sociolinguistic norms. If someone’s neighbor and co-workers are also their friends, than their speech codes will influence each other more frequently than their other relatives who may live in distant places. Social distance between the interlocutors is one major effective factor to determine the intelligibility of their discourse. Speech appropiacy is one very influential factor between the interlocutors. If a person is in office and having chit-chat with one of his/her colleagues, who also belongs to same region, than it is more likely to happen that he is going to carry out the conversation with that colleague in regional dialect by breaking the rule of idle conversation. It is obvious that having a chit-chat in one’s regional dialect with a partner who belongs to the same region of the speaker creates a deeper feeling of integrity. On the other hand, education is considered as a system which interacts with many other systems. Among others socio-economic and ecological factors can’t be ignored for many reasons while considering to evolve a general framework of curriculum. Teaching English as a second or foreign language catches attention of most of the planners, policy makers and curriculum designers because it is simply impossible to ignore one’s socio-economic status. It has always been debated that those who come from a fairly good background they are generally found better in at least speaking than their counterparts. Thus, Victorian model of education is quite important from pedagogic perspective. Socio-cultural and economic dimensions are integrated aspect of education because each child who joins educational system belongs to a society and culture, and he has an economic status. The components of the social factors are: the environment, movement in the society, interaction with different communities etc. On the other hand, economic factors include: earning, nature of the job and even status in the society. The socio-cultural perspectives may be related to the individual’s role and individual’s interactions in the form of different social and community related activities that ultimately lead to an all-round development especially the psychological dimension. Vygotsky (1978, p. 90). The 118 child’s environment is emphasized by both Bruner (1960.pp32-34) and Vygotsky. Both emphasized the social nature of learning, development of skill through the process of scaffolding. The concept of scaffolding is very similar to Vygotsky's notion of the zone of proximal development, and it not uncommon for the terms to be used interchangeably. Scaffolding involves helpful, structured interaction between an adult and a child with the aim of helping the child achieve a specific goal. Most modern child development theorists including Bruner accept that both a child’s biology and his environment play a role in ongoing growth and development Bronfenbrenner’s (1990) ecological systems theory focuses on the quality and context of the child’s environment. He states that as a child develops, the interaction within these environments becomes more complex. This can arise as the child’s physical and cognitive ability become stronger. So, the idea that the surrounding of the child may affect positively or negatively is the main focus of Bronfenbrenner’s theory (1990). The concept of ‘nurture’ was supported by Jerome Bruner as well. A child is born with certain inborn potential which may not develop to full extent unless the child avails himself of the facility of healthy environment in which he can enjoy social exposure. But, in order to move freely and confidently in a given surrounding needs good economic status. Therefore, children belonging to socio-economic disadvantage may face educational disadvantage before they can’t practice what they learn theoretically in the classes. A need was felt to improve the early parenting services to meet the needs of vulnerable children and families throughout the state of Victoria. Critical service drivers/agents to bring desirable changes include: • A significant increase in the healthy birth rate in Victoria, • A new understanding of the benefits of early parenting services which may exert an impact on waiting times and leading to increasing demand for current services. It was noted that in Victoria, migration was noticed that there was considerable increase in families coming from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and similar countries. These community groups are not 119 properly represented in early parenting services. Therefore, an urgent need was felt to review the relevance, cultural aspect, availability and feasibility of these services for such communities. As we know that there are many such families which are unable to avail the benefit of comprehensive and different integrated services. The most effective way of improving outcomes for children requires a collaborative and coordinated service response such as early parenting services, child and family services and other health and community services in addition to educational provisions. Social Class on Language variation 1. Attitudes: While giving the explanation of psychological and socio cultural factors of language contact, Weinreich (1968) brought out “attitude toward each language” as an important “extra linguistic” matter upon with a few other issues. Each speaker has their own “idiosyncratic” interest on any particular language. His attitude might get “stereotype” effect as well. Attitudes toward particular culture or community also influence certain language as well (p. 2-3). In some country like Bangladesh, there is a particular group of people who are ashamed of having regional accents on their spoken variety. Than the other group think that using their native accent is very important for preserving their regional identity. These attitudes of the speakers are exhibited through one’s behavior (Language Attitudes, 2014). In old town area of the capital city, people are seen to less determine to abolish their “Dhakaiyan” tone even while they come across to any formal situations. Again, Slangs are kind of a few words which are marked as inappropriate in formal discourse. But young generation considers this as code to assert “solidarity” in their communication (Spolsky 1998). So their attitude regarding the use of such words differs from the other group of the society. 2. Education: In some country like Bangladesh and India, education is one very important issue which is creating language variations among different classes. This class issue also played a signification role during the second half of the nineteenth century when educational development occurred by these two countries renaissance. The education through English medium spread fast over the Bengal and Hindi in compare to other parts of India. But because of high expense, Bengali elite society or Babus were benefitted by the system and rural people with lower 120 income were totally deprived of this opportunity (Shukla & Kaul 1998 p.26-29). This inappropriate balance in education system among the classes is still remained in the society. This education variation is creating language variations as well. Most people from upper society sends their children to private schools where they can acquire education and can differentiate standard accents. There they get good opportunity to practice standard language which later on sustain in their nature. If someone who is not that much rich but have a well-paid job, can afford to send their children to any public schools where they may not receive standard accent but they will be knowledgeable and have an educated breadth of vocabulary. On the other hand, poor children who belong to working class sector need to support their family by providing their income. So they prefer to involve themselves in working sector more than getting formal education. Parents with low income are mostly less worried about their children’s education. They have no knowledge about educational scholarships as well and hesitate to send their children in any formal educational institutions for lack of money (Lott 2012 p.652). So parents social class decides where their children should admit off and children’s educational environment decide what language user they will be. 3. Consciousness: “Labov’s (1972) terminology- “careful” versus “casual” styles- reflected the underlying theory that stylistic variation was a consequence of differential degrees of attention of speech. That is, he argued that his speakers became more aware of their own ways of speaking as the interview activities moved along a national scale towards greater formality. They are less attentive to their speech in “casual” style, more attentive in “careful” style (Coupland 2007 p.36). Language awareness among the social classes is seen to differ in many circumstances. Many linguistics norms had been specified for certain social situations. For example, people from upper class take non-standard languages or dialects in a formal situation as an insult. So on those situations, their language consciousness reluctance them and create awareness to their language appropriacy. In this matter Spolsky (1998) found out three domain factors in a communication and these are place, relationship and topic. A person’s designated registers and chosen variety in a certain discourse reflect his relationship with the addressee as well. The more formal the situation is, the people become more conscious in using the prestigious or standard variety (p.34). It is noticeable that middle class people are usually talk in standard language more because they have 121 tendency to be like those people from upper class society. So they prefer standard language more during conversation. However, the language preferences among the social classes can also be characterized by focusing Fishman’s (1972) intra-group and inter-group multilingualism theory. A person’s speech shifting occurs less time and most of the time his variety remain unchanged, when he talks with his own community people. That is known as intra-group communication. On the other hand, while talking with the people from other group apart from their own community, they are seen to shift from their regular variety and even use particular registers to make their conversation flow smoother. That is known as inter-group communication (p.244). People especially from upper or middle class society are associated with these consciousnesses more. But people from working or lower class that are lack of sensing such social norms are usually seen less concerned and unconscious about the matter. However, Language consciousness also develops the sense of appropriate languages in right situation. For example, Bangla has few specific taboo words. Language consciousness provokes the idea among the people of using such words in a certain situation. 4. Profession: If one speaks like an educated person there is a high chance for him to get a prestigious or well paid job. So the power of holding a good job again becomes dominated by socially classified languages. Since the city areas provide better jobs, people from different regions including the remote areas have tendency to migrate and settled down in city areas. So the varieties of speeches are very common scenario in city areas which gives us a well prove of social statuses (Spolsky 1998). Here standard language speakers are rewarded with prestigious and well paid jobs. So people are seen to avoid their regional languages and use standard varieties more. Sometimes this frequent use of standard variety makes them standard variety users permanently. As a result, their next generation also gets their languages and contributes in a same way. On the other hand, working class people do not find any extra privilege to switch or develop their languages. Sometimes for better livelihood, people from remote areas also come into city areas and because of lack in formal education they get involved in working sectors where formal languages are less important matter. People have a tendency to talk like those people with whom they regularly deal with (Spolsky 1998). Because of different social class statuses, some involved 122 in standard job and get the opportunity to remove their dialect accents and the other remain as same language speaker even after shifting their place. 5. Convergence and divergence: Convergence and divergence are two very important processes under language accommodation theory. People belong from two different regions or have different social backgrounds, use different varieties of languages. But during their conversation we can see that “their percentage of use of some features often converge” (Spolsky 1998). On the other hand, divergence occurs when anyone decides to “move his/her speech away from the other party” (Spolsky 1998). Because of convergence theory, we can’t see the existence of any particular dialects in city areas of Bangladesh since standard language users most in there. Different regional peoples come across in city areas for sake of their education or profession. But few people also can be seen holding their regional accents in spite of living in city areas for so long. This happened because of their divergent attitudes. Soon people frequently become accustomed his speech tendency to those of his interlocutors (Labov 2010). Co-existance of several dialects in a particular area is also the result of people’s divergence attitude. 6. Linguistic Insecurity and Crossover Effects: As Hudson said, “Linguistic insecurity, a term introduced by Labov (1972: 133). At least in United States and Britain some people who are socially sub-ordinate think that they speak badly (p.210). Linguistic Insecurity, however, is one very common fact for which people are seen producing prestigious variant of language in order to present them in desired way. In Bangladesh, it is a very common scenario in middle class educated people. Lower middle class or upper working class people have tendency to “jumps over” the next higher class while speaking for which sometimes this is specified as “lower middle class crossover effect” (Meyerhoff 2006). They often want themselves hearing not like who they are but as who they want to be. As a result sometimes they are seen to produce even better vocabularies than their next higher class. People from a particular class may speak differently from others within the same class, because they are aspiring to be in the higher class. This is referred to as “class aspiration”. “ Reguler and uniform shift towards a prestige norm in “careful speech” can be taken as evidence of a linguistic change in progress” (Coupland 2007). Sometimes crossover effect also occurs because of social mobility. People from urban areas are 123 seen to change their social hierarchy with a better position. Since urban accents are less prestigious in Bangladesh, so they try to fix their language by balancing it with their position. Age variation Another was in which language varieties differ has to do with age: younger speakers may not speak the same way as older speakers. Many times, older speakers will comment on the “degradation” of language, or the “desecration” of language, by the younger generation. From a linguistic point of view, however, the differences between older and younger speech are not “good” or “bad”; they are simply changes that occur naturally, just like any other differences between language varieties. Some relatively recent changes in English include the use of the word hopefully as a sentential adverb ( to modify the entire sentence as opposed to just modifying a particular action), as in “hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow”; the use of high – rising intonation at the ends of even declarative sentences; the use of like as an interjection ( I , Like, did not know what to do) or as a quotative ( he was like “ I don’t know either”); the introduction of new words such as download; and the loss of older words such as dungarees to refer to jeans. While it is certainly the case that some innovations are adopted by older speakers as well as younger speakers ( almost everyone these days use hopefully in the way described above), it is also true that younger speakers often sound distinctly different from the older speakers in their communities. Adults are superior to children in rate of acquisition older children learn more rapidly than younger children with regards to morphology and syntax, the adolescents do best, followed by the adults and then the children grammar differences diminish over time, and children begin to catch up, but adults outperform children in the short term, where pronunciation is concerned, adults do not always progress more rapidly than children do. Thus, adults learn faster than children, and this is more applicable to grammar than pronunciation, although in the case of formal learning situations adults seem to do better even in the pronunciation area. It is not clear when children start to catch up. Some people say that under the right conditions adults can achieve native-like proficiency in pronunciation. Other people believe that even very advanced learners lack some of the linguistic abilities of native speakers. Thus: it is possible that under ideal circumstances learners who start after puberty can learn to produce speech and writing that cannot easily be 124 distinguished from that of native speakers. In fact starting early is no guarantee that native-speaker abilities will be achieved, even in the most favorable learning situations. Age has very little (if any) effect on the process of acquisition. The effect may be a minimal one in the case of grammar – remember inter - language developmental stages-, but perhaps a little bit more significant in the case of pronunciation. In naturalistic settings, learners who start as children achieve more native-like accent than those who start as teenagers or adults. In formal contexts this does not happen, perhaps because the amount of exposure needed for the age advantage of young learners to emerge is not enough. Even if younger is better in the long run, it does not apply to the acquisition of English literacy skills: older is better, as they benefit from prior literacy experience (learners who already know how to read and write in their first language). Adults have an initial advantage where rate of learning is concerned, particularly in grammar. They will eventually be overtaken by children who receive enough exposure to the L2. Though this is less likely to happen in formal/instructional contexts. Only child learners are capable of acquiring native accent in informal contexts, even though some children who receive enough exposure still do not achieve a native-like accent. The critical period for grammar is around 15 years. Under this period learners may acquire native grammatical competence. Children are more likely to reach higher levels of attainment in both pronunciation and grammar than adults. The process of acquiring a L2 grammar is not substantially affected by age, but pronunciation may be. Gender variation In addition to region, socioeconomic class, and age another factor that influences language variation is gender, research in language and gender often tries to explain the role of language in defining, constructing, and reproducing gendered identities, as well as the role of gender in the perception and production language. While there certainly are differences in language varieties that are based on biological sexual differences between males and females ( e.g. women’s voice on average are of a higher pitch than men’s because of differences in the average shape and length of the larynx and vocal folds), these are not the types of differences we mean when we talk about language and gender. Gender is not a dichotomous category, divided in to males versus females, but rather a practice of a culture pattern. Gender can thought of as a set of ongoing behaviors, so that we are in a sense always “doing gender”. Many factors, both internal and external, influence 125 the acquisition of a language. These variables can be physical, social, cultural, or a combination of all three. One particularly interesting variable is gender. It is interesting to both sociolinguistics and second language acquisition specialists because this variable affects both first and second language development and use. A number of studies have been completed to analyze the influence of gender on language acquisition, but much work remains to be done. The findings are particularly interesting for ESL teachers because they help teachers to better understand the variation found between their students, therefore making language learning more effective. When examining the role of gender on the acquisition of language one must consider that there are numerous ways in which it can affect language use and development. Gender is a variable that can affect language use and acquisition as a result of biological differences between the two sexes, psychological effects, or socio-cultural influences. Currently there is a lack of research on the role of gender on language, particularly about the influence gender has on language development from a biological standpoint. In order to fully understand the role the gender plays in the acquisition of a second language one must first understand the role of gender in the use and development of the first language. It has been proven that men and women speak very differently from each other. This is true in virtually all cultures and languages. However, the way in which their speech differs varies considerably in degree and manner in each culture. There are two main categories, sex exclusive and sex preferential, that can be used to categorize the ways in which men and women differ linguistically. In a sex exclusive language men and women often have separate distinct vocabularies and even grammar. Many words and forms are restricted to a certain gender (Finch, 2003). The differences between the linguistic features are normally small distinctions in pronunciation or morphology (Holmes, 2001). This occurs mostly in traditional conservative cultures where there is little opportunity for changes or crossovers between male and female roles. This type of differentiation is rare in European cultures and languages. A language changes from sex exclusive to sex preferential when social roles become less rigid and more mobile in the society. In a sex preferential language there are preferred models and forms of gender related speech. The language of men and women differ in terms of how frequently they use certain forms. This is very common and occurs in all western languages. It implies an unequal distribution of 126 social power between men and women. This is most likely a result of the long history of patriarchy and male dominance in many western societies (Finch, 2003). There are many features of speech that are more associated with one sex than the other. In Western Societies especially it is generalized that women tend to use more of the standard or overtly prestigious form, while men are more likely to use more of the vernacular, or nonstandard form. Women tend to choose language that is more linguistically polite, while men more often choose language that is not admired or accepted as proper by society. This pattern is evident starting at a very young age with boys and girls as young as six showing the beginnings of gender influenced speech (Holmes, 1995). It was also found that men interrupt others more than women do and that women give more encouraging feedback to their conversational partners than men do. It has been suggested that women are socialized from a very young age to expect and accept being interrupted. As a result, many women think little of giving up the floor to the man or woman who interrupted them. Connected to this is the fact that women tend to be better cooperative conversationalists than men are. Women give almost four times as much feedback as men do in everyday conversation. Men on the other hand tend to be much more competitive conversationalists, challenging others and offering less support (Holmes, 2001). Men, more often than not, dominate in both public settings and in mixed sex conversations (Doughty, 2003). There are many socio-cultural reasons why women use more standard language. Women may be more likely to use more prestigious language because she serves as a speech model for her children. Society seems to expect girls to behave better and more properly than boys. Another explanation is that women often belong to subordinate groups in society and subordinate groups must be polite (Holmes, 2001). Women are often less socially secured and want to signal their status through prestigious speech. This is especially true in many societies because women are often judged on their appearance and how they talk and act not by their occupation or values (Finch, 2003). Also, nonstandard speech is often seen as vulgar and masculine. Men tend to use it more because it conveys masculinity and toughness. If a female were to use the same speech she would be seen by society as promiscuous and unladylike (Holmes, 2001). Adding to the differences between the speech of males and females are the many characteristics that are associated much more with women than with men. There are a number of linguistic features that are associated with female speech. It was found that women’s speech was 127 characterized by lexical hedges or fillers, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives, “empty” adjectives, precise color terms, intensifiers such as just and so, hypercorrect grammar, super polite forms, avoidance of strong swear words, and emphatic stress (Holmes, 2001). While these characteristics are most likely not caused by any biological difference in females, they are most likely the result of psychological and socio-cultural influences. These influences would be present in women in any language environment, whether it is a woman’s first or second language. This is why it is important for linguists and well as second language acquisition specialists to analyze the role that gender plays in language use and development. There are many reasons why women use different linguistic features more commonly than men. Women tend to use language that expresses their own uncertainty and a lack of confidence. The language women use also tends to express an excess of politeness and submissiveness. For example, women tend to use a lot of tag questions. Tag questions are questions that are added on at the end of an utterance, which weakens the force of the statement. These questions are often used test listeners approval or confirmation (Finch, 2003). This trait and many of the others can be attributed to a lack of confidence in women. This results in a reinforcement of an insubordinate status. This is in issue that all teachers should take into consideration when considering the question of how to best help their students. A teacher wants all of their students, male and female both, to have the best opportunities for learning. Being conscious of the complexity of women’s language will help teachers to give their female students the most beneficial assistance. While helpful for all teachers, this information is extremely relevant for ESL teachers. Many of the students in ESL classrooms will be coming from cultures very different then that of the United States. Because of this, they may be less comfortable participating and conversing in class. The status of women may be drastically different in these cultures. It is important to make all students feel comfortable, confident, and to make sure they realize that their opinions are valued. In both mainstream and ESL classrooms in the United States males receive more class time and talk and participate more than their female classmates. This occurs in all grade levels from kindergarten to college. Research has shown that as a result of this gender-bias girl’s achievement and self-esteem is lowered. Conversation and interaction is essential to all learning, especially in ESL instruction where input is necessary for acquisition (Doughty, 2003). Teachers must be aware of this tendency 128 and monitor their classrooms appropriately. Many of the features that make up the style of women are due to a lack of confidence. Teachers must due their best to improve the confidence of all of their students and to make sure that everyone has their opportunity to speak uninterrupted. Recently the topic of the role of gender in second language acquisition has been researched greatly by ESL and language specialists. However, this topic was not explored to a great extent in the past, and as a result there is still an overall lack of research on how gender influences acquisition. There do appear to be some differences in the processing and acquisition of language between the two sexes, however there is not enough research to be certain (Saville-Troike, 2006). There has not been much significant research produced by studying gender as a biological factor influencing second language acquisition. However, studying gender as a social and cultural variable has produced a lot of helpful information on the subject (Doughty, 2003). In his journal article “Gender differences and equal opportunities in the ESL classroom,” Ali Shenadeh discusses his findings regarding the role of gender on the acquisition of a second language. He found that many of the effects that gender has on the use of a first language are similar to the many of the effects that gender has on learning a second language. In his study he wanted to test the 1986 findings of Gass and Varonis. Shenadeh (1999) describes their basic findings to be that, “Men took greater advantage of the opportunities to use conversation in a way that allowed them to produce a greater amount of comprehensible output, whereas women utilized the conversation to obtain a greater amount of comprehensible input” (p. 258). The men participated more in the conversation and had more control over where the conversation was going. In order to test these findings, Shehadeh conducted a study to compare the interaction between ESL students in same-gender and mixed-gender groups. Twenty-seven adult ESL subjects from a variety of backgrounds and countries were asked to work in pairs or groups to perform a variety of communication tasks. His findings supported the findings of Gass and Varonis, as they showed that the males appeared “to use the conversation in a way that allowed them to retain the turn, enjoy a greater amount of talk, and thus produce a greater amount of comprehensible output than women” (p. 258). Men dominate the conversation and often have more control than the females involved in ESL classrooms. This gives male students the advantage over females in mixed-gender tasks. This is similar to what occurs regularly in communication conducted in the first language. However, women did receive greater opportunities to participate and produce 129 comprehensible output when working in pairs or groups of other females. As a result of working with other females, their opportunity for learning greatly increased. They had much better contexts to self correct themselves and participate more freely in the conversation. Shehadeh (1999) concludes that these gender differences in second language acquisition very well may be the result of socio-cultural influences. He relates this to the fact that “it is more acceptable in some cultures and subcultures than in others for men and women to communicate freely and casually with each other at work and in social situation” (p. 259). Because of these variations, men and women play very different roles in conversation. Males take more of an opportunity to talk therefore producing a lot of comprehensible output. On the other hand, females utilize the conversation to develop their skills and knowledge through obtaining comprehensible input. This is important because conversation is very important in the acquisition and development of a second language. Both the input and output of the target language are important. Input allows the development of the learners listening and reading skills, while output assists their speaking and writing skills. Since both output and input are necessary for the acquisition of a second language, teachers must make sure that their students have the opportunity to participate in both same-gender and mixed-gender interaction and group work. Equal opportunity for learning must be given to both the male and female students. Another interesting difference between men and women in the process of second language acquisition is their choice of use and preference for different learning strategies. In their study, “A Closer Look at Learning Strategies, L2 Proficiency, and Gender,” Green and Oxford (1995) analyzed the role of gender on learning strategy use and choice. The results were significant, showing extensive differences between the learning strategies frequently used by male and female students learning a second language. Since good language learners often refer to a variety of learning strategies to help them improve their language skills, this study provides much insight to linguists and teachers who are studying the role gender has on language use and acquisition. Big variation in learning strategy choice between males and females is one way that gender affects second language learning. Past studies have shown that gender is a strong determinate of learning strategy choice. Females consistently use more learning strategies than males, especially cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, and social strategies. These findings are very important as they suggest that there 130 are consistent differences in the way females learn compared to males. Significant differences between the two groups have been found in studies occurring all over the world in many different cultures. This suggests, “that biological and/or socialization-related causes for these differences might exist and that these causes might have a real, if subtle, effect in the language classroom” (Green & Oxford, 1995, p. 266). The current study by Green and Oxford (1995) was intended to build on previous studies by examining the use of individual strategies as well as strategy categories and overall strategy use in second language learners. It also attempts to analyze patterns of variation by gender while at the same time looking for patterns of variation by proficiency level. The researchers used the SILL test scores of 374 students from all levels studying English at the University of Puerto Rico. The students were asked to take the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), a self-scoring survey that asks about their learning process and the learning strategies they frequently use in second language learning. The test classifies learning strategies into six groups: affective, social, metacognitive, memory-related, cognitive, and compensatory strategies. The study showed greater use of learning strategies by females than by males. The students’ use of fifty individual learning strategies was evaluated on the test. Men and women used almost a third of the total fifteen strategies differently. Females used fourteen strategies more often than males and males used only one strategy more often than females. Females used significantly more memory, metacognitive, affective, and social learning strategies than their male classmates. Males and females used cognitive and compensation learning skills about equally in this study. The one strategy that males used more significantly than females was the use of English movies and TV programs to help develop language skills. This difference can be explained by the fact that in Puerto Rico where the study took place, Spanish programming is dominated by soap operas that appeal more strongly to females while English language television often includes sporting events, movies, and music videos. Females on the other hand, showed a much higher use of global strategies, incorporating the big picture into learning, as women are more often than males classified as global learners. Females also used more introspective and affective strategies, aspects where females are known to pay more attention to in learning. Several other strategies can also be linked to the way that women converse and use language such as sociability, a tendency to elicit comment, and a wish to build a relationship with those involved in the conversation. Women 131 also tended to review material more often than men, which may be contributed to their desire to follow rules and be compliant as well as women’s desire to be in control of their learning in a metacognitive sense. However, just because men and women use different learning strategies does not mean that one gender is better at learning a language than the other. Variation in gender and variation by proficiency seem to be working in very different ways. In the study, the strategies more often used by women had little overlap with the strategies used by the more proficient students. Similarly, although women used more strategies than men in this study, the researchers did not find a higher number of women at more advanced course levels. Regardless, men and women are using different approaches to language learning. This is true within and across many different cultures and can be related to many variables including learning styles, motivations, and attitudes (Green &Oxford, 1995). These differences in learning strategies have many implications on the teaching of ESL. It is very important for the teacher to recognize the large variability of learning styles used in their class. Some learning styles are better suited to some learners than to others. Strategy use might be very different between males and females in the class. The better teachers understand the factors that influence a students learning style, the easier it is for the teacher to effectively reach all of her classroom despite individual differences among the students. This information gives teachers the power to “plan lessons so that students with many different characteristics, including varied strategies, can receive what they need” (Green & Oxford, 1995, p. 292). Understanding how gender affects learning strategy choice will make teachers more effective in their classrooms. Another interesting area where significant differences occur between males and females is in the knowledge of academic words and vocabulary. In their study, “Academic Words and Gender: ESL Student Performance on a Test of Academic Lexicon,” Scarcella and Zimmerman (1998) attempt to discover if there is a relationship between gender and second language vocabulary knowledge, specifically academic vocabulary. Understanding academic words is especially difficult for English as a second language (ESL) students. Knowledge of that vocabulary does however appear critical to academic success. Many of the academic vocabulary items have several meaning that a student would not be able to understand by the context that the word is used in. ESL students found their lack of vocabulary knowledge to be their greatest weakness when 132 reading English. Academic vocabulary knowledge is necessary for both reading and writing fluently and efficiently. This study’s main question was to answer whether ESL student’s academic vocabulary knowledge varied as a function of gender and if so what effect does gender have. The subjects of the study were 192 University of California at Irving freshmen ESL students. They were from a variety of backgrounds and ranged in level from high intermediate to advanced. The students were given the Test of Academic Lexicon (TAL) to test their productive knowledge of commonly used academic words. The test consisted of fifty vocabulary terms, forty of those were real words and ten were made up words. The made up words were included in the study as a control to prevent the students from guessing and to keep them from assuming they knew all of the words. The students were asked to rank their knowledge of the academic words. If they claimed to have a good understanding of the word and how to use it they were asked to write a sentence using the word. The study produced interesting results. It is often assumed that females are better ESL learners than males. However, in this study males significantly outscored their female classmates. Males had an average score of seventy-three percent while the females averaged a score of sixty- eight percent. After examining the response to the made-up words, it can be concluded that guessing did not affect the results as females and males guessed about the same amount of times. The results showed that verbal SAT scores, length of residency, and age of arrival do not affect the relationship between gender and the results of the TAL test. While the authors of this study do not feel as though gender itself, biologically, caused the differences in the scores, they do offer some possible reasons for the differences. There could be differences in the amount of exposure males and females have to academic reading or in their participation in leisure-time reading. A student’s reading patterns could definitely affect their vocabulary knowledge. Differences in the previous schooling of males and females could also play a key role in their understanding of academic vocabulary. As we know, males and females use very different learning strategies. These learning strategies are used to help them acquire academic language. It is possible that males have better strategies to learn academic language. Culture is also another variable that could affect knowledge of academic vocabulary in a second language. Some of the women in this study may have come from cultures where they were not expected or encouraged to participate in academic discussions unlike their male counterparts. Similarly, 133 women often have less power in conversations with males and this might diminish their opportunities to discuss academic issues. Further research is needed to identify what difficulties women face in learning academic vocabulary. It could be the result of any of the problems listed above or a combination of them. Until these studies are completed it is hard to understand the complex relationship between gender and the knowledge of academic vocabulary (Scarcella & Zimmerman, 1998). The role of gender in the acquisition of a second language is something that all teachers need to be aware of. In the study conducted by Kay M. Losey (1995), “Gender and Ethnicity as Factors in the Development of Verbal Skills in Bilingual Mexican Women,” it is easy to see the struggles that female students face everyday in the ESL classroom. The study was set up to analyze the differences in “student output across ethnicity and gender in a mixed monolingual English and bilingual Spanish/English class in order to understand how L2 oral language skills are developed in a mixed classroom” (p. 635). Interaction between native speakers and second language or bilingual learners is important for the acquisition of a second language. Students need opportunities to take in input and produce output while conversing with native speakers. This study’s goal was to study the interaction in multicultural classrooms to analyze the affect that gender and ethnicity has on classroom interaction. The study involved thirty basic adult writing students, half were bilingual Mexican Americans and half were monolingual Americans. The students were observed during their normal class time for two years. Informal interviews were conducted with the students and further data was provided through audiotaped classroom and tutorial interaction. The data was analyzed by examining classroom interaction and the amount of participation and number of speech acts each student was involved in. The researcher was looking for patterns in student output. The results of this study are very interesting. It was expected that the Mexican American students would speak less in the classroom then the native speakers of English, however major differences between male and female in that group was not. The Mexican American females participated half as much as expected while Mexican American males participated four times as much as expected. The females who were native speakers of English also spoke less than their male native speaker of English classmates, but the difference was much less significant than the difference between male and female Mexican Americans. These findings suggest “that the 134 structure and content of classroom interaction during traditional whole class interactions differently limited that output of bilingual Mexican American women” . English as Second Language ( ESL ) Classrooms need to be structured in a way where all students are comfortable and have the opportunity to receive comprehensible input and produce comprehensible output. If students do not receive this opportunity then their language acquisition will suffer. In her paper “Gender and the ESL Classroom,” Effie Papatzikou Cochran (1996) agrees with the previous study, saying that female ESL students are doubly marginalized because of their cultural and linguistic situation. She warns, “it is time for ESL and EFL teachers to direct their own and others’ attention to the predicament of the gifted but forgotten women in their classrooms” (p. 159). So how do ESL teachers make sure that all of his/her students, both male and female, are given equal opportunities to grow and learn? Advice is offered on ways in which teachers can make their classroom equally productive for both males and females. Papatzikou Cochran (1995) that teachers provide clear opportunities for students to discuss their feelings and vocalize problems of discrimination. This can be done through carefully planned exercises that give students control of the assignment such as open-ended dialogue. Second, it is suggested that teachers need to be on the look out for their students’ non-verbal communication. A teacher can often learn more about what a student is thinking from their nonverbal communication than their verbal communication. Teachers should do their best to avoid the use of sexist and racist language, especially ethnic and sexual generalizations, the use of generics, and stereotypical expression that are sex or culture specific. Finally, teachers should familiarize themselves with literature dealing with sexism and language. ESL teachers need to become gender attentive in their classrooms to ensure that every student has an equal opportunity to succeed. Males and Females use and learn language in very different ways. Many of the ways in which gender affects the use of an L1 carry over to the use and acquisition of an L2. There is no concrete evidence to show whether these differences are the result of biological, socio-cultural, or psychological differences between males and females. More research needs to be done to determine the cause of these variations. Regardless of the reason why, it is important to understand how language use and acquisition differ between the two sexes. This is especially important for ESL teachers to understand because the better a teacher understands the differences among their students the better they can provide a successful learning experience for all students involved. 135 Ethnic variation The last factor that we are going to talk about here is ethnicity, a factor that influences variation in multi-ethic communities. Part of the reason for this is that ethic groups are often associated with particular languages that represent the group’s heritage and culture; pronunciations, words, and constructions from such a language may influence how the group speaks the standard language variety of the country or region they live in. Compound with this is again the factor language and identity, which will be discussed more extensively in advance classes: and ethnic group may want to particularly associate themselves with an ethnicity or with the group, or distance themselves from other ethnicities and groups through their use of language. As with any language varieties, however, it is important to remember that no variety can be linguistically superior or inferior to any other. It is also important to realize that just as there is nothing inherent about southeastern Pennsylvania that makes speakers in region use German – influenced language. There is nothing inherent about any ethic group that causes members of the group to speak one way as opposed to another. There are plenty of people who belong to a particular ethnic group who do not speak a dialect associated with that ethnicity, and there are plenty of people who are not associated with a particular ethnicity who nonetheless speak a dialect associated with it. In addition, the other factors discussed in this file, as well as regional factors, can lead to further differentiation within ethnic varieties, such that, for example, a younger working - class speaker of the same ethnic group. Furthermore, no individual speaker of an ethnic variety speaks the same way all the time. Rather, we all very our speech depending on style and context. 136 Discussion While learning second language, the variations such as; dialect, accent, language structure, the culture of that society, pronunciation and many other variation factors of language are the most important which the learners should be aware of that. Furthermore, so many people all over the world go through the trouble of enrolling in second language courses, buying dictionaries and grammars, spending hours and hours practising grammar rules, experimenting with new sounds and new words, acquiring new orthographic systems and taking nerve-racking exams. In many language educational approaches, and if it is, the answer tends to be restricted to something as vague as ‘to become a proficient user’ or ‘to acquire knowledge of the target language’. Such statements raise the impression that for the majority of people, language learning is a reward in its own right. In most cases, however, it probably is not (Paulston, 1994). The majority of people learn second, third and fourth languages because these languages can be of particular service to them and because, if they fail to use it, they may not reach certain goals they have in mind. Saddled with the dual goals of descriptive and explanatory adequacy, the theory of grammar is primed to offer solutions to the problem of language variation and acquisition in a single package. This vision is clearly illustrated by the notion of syntactic parameters (Chomsky, 1981). Parameters unify regularities from (distant) aspects of the grammar both within and across languages, thereby acting as a data compression device that reduces the space of grammatical hypotheses during learning. The conception of parameters as triggers, and parameter setting as flipping switches offers a most direct solution to language acquisition. There was a time when parameters featured in child language as prominently as in comparative studies. Nina Hyams’ (1986) ground breaking work was the first major effort to directly apply the parameter theory of variation to the problem of acquisition. Together, these experimental and computational results imply that biases for regularity in individual learners may not be enough to engender predictability in natural languages: while transmission can amplify weak biases, in some circumstances it can produce the opposite effect, masking learner biases. This means that attempting to infer learner biases from linguistic universals or predict linguistic universals from learner biases is doubly fraught: not only can strong effects in languages be due to weak biases in learners (the point we emphasized, but even very 137 strong biases in learners can be completely invisible at the level of languages. Furthermore, the extent to which these two possibilities are true can depend on apparently unrelated features of the way learners learn, in our case, when they attend to speaker identity, or even non-linguistic factors may directly influences more on learners – learning. 138 Conclusion Under the present research “The role of language variation on language learning” tried to assess the variation of language such as, language, dialect, idiolect, accent, and many others variation of language briefly. This study focuses on the importance of variation of language for language learners and show how we can start and continue the best way to improve our knowledge in language. Furthermore, the research illustrated each one of the variation and its significance separately through introducing the role of it for language learners. It is clear, without understanding of variation of language, the language learners are not able to enhance his/her knowledge in language. Moreover, the structure of language like phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax are also explained one by one and evaluated the role of the structures on language learners. Weak biases can have strong effects on language structure as they accumulate over repeated transmission. At least in some cases, the opposite can also be true: strong biases can have weak or no effects. Furthermore, learning biases are not the only pressure acting on languages: language use can produce effects that can (but need not) resemble the effects produced by learning biases, but which might have subtly or radically different causes. Combining data and insights from studies of learning, transmission and use is therefore essential if we are to understand how biases in statistical learning interact with language transmission and language use to shape the structural properties of language. We have used the learning of unpredictable variation as a test case here, but the same arguments should apply to other linguistic features: statistical learning papers frequently make inferences about the relationship between biases in statistical learning and features of language design based on studies of learning in individuals, but in the absence of a detailed understanding of how biases in learning interact with use and transmission, these inferences should be treated with caution. In our opinion, the literature on unpredictable variation provides a useful exemplar for how we should combine data from statistical learning, transmission and use in attempting to explain the universal properties of human languages. 139 Suggestions of research After completion of present research paper, I as researcher kindly suggest to honorable writers and dear readers to put their attention on the following points: In case of getting more informations on language variation – please don’t hesitate to refer yourself with relevant references as mentioned at the end of the research paper or out of this booklet If you want to gain suitable information from language at least you have to know about social and cultural background of that given language Try to consider the language variation while learning language It is very important to be aware of levels of linguistics in addition of grammar only In case of any grammatical and contextual mistakes – kindly asking you to forgive me and don’t delay to ask I definitely cannot claim that the present research is a complete research on language variation on language learning – you dear readers and researchers can improve the title and do more and a suitable research on the selected topic Without understanding of language variations – no body is able to learn language meaningfully 140 References Abrahams, R. 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