Signaling and Simulations in Sociolinguistics
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Variations in Language Use Across Gender: Biological Versus Sociological Theories
UC Merced Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society Title Variations in Language Use across Gender: Biological versus Sociological Theories Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1q30w4z0 Journal Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 28(28) ISSN 1069-7977 Authors Bell, Courtney M. McCarthy, Philip M. McNamara, Danielle S. Publication Date 2006 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Variations in Language Use across Gender: Biological versus Sociological Theories Courtney M. Bell (cbell@ mail.psyc.memphis.edu Philip M. McCarthy ([email protected]) Danielle S. McNamara ([email protected]) Institute for Intelligent Systems University of Memphis Memphis, TN38152 Abstract West, 1975; West & Zimmerman, 1983) and overlap We examine gender differences in language use in light of women’s speech (Rosenblum, 1986) during conversations the biological and social construction theories of gender. than the reverse. On the other hand, other research The biological theory defines gender in terms of biological indicates no gender differences in interruptions (Aries, sex resulting in polarized and static language differences 1996; James & Clarke, 1993) or insignificant differences based on sex. The social constructionist theory of gender (Anderson & Leaper, 1998). However, potentially more assumes gender differences in language use depend on the context in which the interaction occurs. Gender is important than citing the differences, is positing possible contextually defined and fluid, predicting that males and explanations for why they might exist. We approach that females use a variety of linguistic strategies. We use a problem here by testing the biological and social qualitative linguistic approach to investigate gender constructionist theories (Bergvall, 1999; Coates & differences in language within a context of marital conflict. -
Language and Identity in Linguistic Ethnography
Paper Language and identity in linguistic ethnography by © Miguel Pérez-Milans (The University of Hong Kong) [email protected] April 2015 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ This is the early draft of a contribution to S. Preece (ed) The Routledge Handbook of Language & Identity. (New York & London: Routledge) Language and identity in linguistic ethnography Miguel Pérez-Milans The University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong SAR) Abstract The study of language and identity from the perspective of linguistic ethnography (LE) has received increasing attention during the last decade. Resting upon the social and discursive turns in the social sciences, LE has ontological and epistemological consequences for the way researchers approach language, culture and community, and it has been especially relevant to instability and unpredictability in late modernity. LE originated in the UK, but scholars elsewhere are now drawing it into a fuller account of political economy, a move outlined in the latter part of this paper. 1. Introduction Linguistic ethnography (LE) is a relatively new term that originated in the United Kingdom (UK) and broadly speaking, designates “a particular configuration of interests within the broader field of socio- and applied linguistics [which constitute] a theoretical and methodological development orientating towards particular, established traditions but defining itself in the new intellectual -
Contesting Regimes of Variation: Critical Groundwork for Pedagogies of Mobile Experience and Restorative Justice
Robert W. Train Sonoma State University, California CONTESTING REGIMES OF VARIATION: CRITICAL GROUNDWORK FOR PEDAGOGIES OF MOBILE EXPERIENCE AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE Abstract: This paper examines from a critical transdisciplinary perspective the concept of variation and its fraught binary association with standard language as part of the conceptual toolbox and vocabulary for language educators and researchers. “Variation” is shown to be imbricated a historically-contingent metadiscursive regime in language study as scientific description and education supporting problematic speaker identities (e.g., “non/native”, “heritage”, “foreign”) around an ideology of reduction through which complex sociolinguistic and sociocultural spaces of diversity and variability have been reduced to the “problem” of governing people and spaces legitimated and embodied in idealized teachers and learners of languages invented as the “zero degree of observation” (Castro-Gómez 2005; Mignolo 2011) in ongoing contexts of Western modernity and coloniality. This paper explores how regimes of variation have been constructed in a “sociolinguistics of distribution” (Blommaert 2010) constituted around the delimitation of borders—linguistic, temporal, social and territorial—rather than a “sociolinguistics of mobility” focused on interrogating and problematizing the validity and relevance of those borders in a world characterized by diverse transcultural and translingual experiences of human flow and migration. This paper reframes “variation” as mobile modes-of-experiencing- the-world in order to expand the critical, historical, and ethical vocabularies and knowledge base of language educators and lay the groundwork for pedagogies of experience that impact human lives in the service of restorative social justice. Keywords: metadiscursive regimes w sociolinguistic variation w standard language w sociolinguistics of mobility w pedagogies of experience Train, Robert W. -
Language Ideologies:Bridging the Gap Between Social Structures and Local Practices Introduction to the Colloquium
Language Ideologies:Bridging the Gap between Social Structures and Local Practices Introduction to the Colloquium Brigitta Busch ¨ Jürgen Spitzmüller University of Vienna ¨ Department of Linguistics Sociolinguistics Symposium öw Murcia, wÏ/.Ï/ö.wÏ Bridging what? Introduction to the Colloquium Busch/Spitzmüller Bridging what? Stance and Metapragmatics Indexical Anchors ‚ Local indexicality – stance and social positions Programme ‚ Social indexicality – language ideologies ö¨öö Bridging what? Introduction to the Colloquium Busch/Spitzmüller Bridging what? Stance and Metapragmatics Indexical Anchors ‚ Local indexicality – stance and social positions Programme ‚ Social indexicality – language ideologies ö¨öö Social Positioning and Stance (as Local Practices) Introduction to the Colloquium Busch/Spitzmüller ‚ Davies,Bronwyn/Harré, Rom (wRR.). Positioning. The Discourse Production of Selves. In: Journal for the Theory Bridging what? of Social Behaviour ö./w, pp. ÿé–Ïé. Stance and Metapragmatics ‚ Wortham, Stanton (ö...). Interactional Positioning and Indexical Anchors Narrative Self-Construction. In: Narrative Inquiry Programme wR/wóÅ-wÏÿ . ‚ Englebretson, Robert (ed.) (ö..Å). Stancetaking in Discourse. Subjectivity,Evaluation, Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins (Pragmatics & Beyond, N. S. wÏÿ). ‚ Deppermann,Arnulf (ö.wó). Positioning. In:Anna de Fina/Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.): The Handbook of Narrative Analysis.Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, pp. éÏR–éÏÅ. ‚ amongst many more é¨öö Social Positioning and Stance (as Local Practices – within Discursive Frames) Introduction to the Colloquium Busch/Spitzmüller Bridging what? ‚ Bamberg, Michael (wRRÅ). Positioning Between Structure Stance and and Performance. In: Journal of Narrative and Life History Metapragmatics Å/w-ÿ, pp. ééó–éÿö. Indexical Anchors ‚ Bamberg, Michael/Georgakopoulou,Alexandra (ö..Ï). Programme Small Stories as a New Perspective in Narrative and Identity Analysis. In: Text and Talk öÏ/é, pp. -
Introduction: Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages
Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 13 (July 2017) Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages ed. by Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany, and Wilson Silva, pp. 1-5 http://nlfrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/ 1 http://handle.net/24746 Introduction: Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany, and Wilson Silva Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, California State University, San Bernadino, University of Rochester The papers in this special publication are the result of presentations and fol- low-up dialogue on emergent and alternative methods to documenting variation in endangered, minority, or otherwise under-represented languages. Recent decades have seen a burgeoning interest in many aspects of language documentation and field linguistics (Chelliah & de Reuse 2010, Crowley & Thieberger 2007, Gippert et al 2006, Grenoble 2010, Newman & Ratliff 2001, Sakel & Everett 2012, Woodbury 2011).1 There is also a great deal of material dealing with language variation in major languages (Bassiouney 2009, Eckert 2000, Eckert & Rickford 2001, Hinskens 2005, Labov 1972a, 1972b, 1994, 2001, 2006, 2012, Murray & Simon 2006, Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 2005). In contrast, intersections of language variation in endangered and minority languages are still few in number. Yet examples of those few cases published on the intersection of language documentation and language variation reveal exciting poten- tials for linguistics as a discipline, challenging and supporting classical models, creating new models and predictions. For instance, Stanford’s study of Sui (China) (2009) demonstrates that while socio-economic class in indigenous communities is un-illuminating, clan is a useful predictor of lexical variation. Likewise, phonological variation (Clarke 2009) may be more productively observed across different territorial groups in Innu (Canada), highlighting the role of “covert hierarchy” as a social factor. -
Language Change and Social Networks
COMMUNICATIONS IN COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS Commun. Comput. Phys. Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 935-949 April 2008 Language Change and Social Networks Jinyun Ke1,∗, Tao Gong2 and William S-Y Wang2 1 English Language Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2028, USA. 2 Language Engineering Laboratory, Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Received 5 August 2007; Accepted (in revised version) 27 August 2007 Communicated by Dietrich Stauffer Available online 11 December 2007 Abstract. Social networks play an important role in determining the dynamics and outcome of language change. Early empirical studies only examine small-scale lo- cal social networks, and focus on the relationship between the individual speakers’ linguistic behaviors and their characteristics in the network. In contrast, computer models can provide an efficient tool to consider large-scale networks with different structures and discuss the long-term effect of individuals’ learning and interaction on language change. This paper presents an agent-based computer model which simu- lates language change as a process of innovation diffusion, to address the threshold problem of language change. In the model, the population is implemented as a net- work of agents with age differences and different learning abilities, and the population is changing, with new agents born periodically to replace old ones. Four typical types of networks and their effect on the diffusion dynamics are examined. When the func- tional bias is sufficiently high, innovations always diffuse to the whole population in a linear manner in regular and small-world networks, but diffuse quickly in a sharp S-curve in random and scale-free networks. -
JOURNAL of LANGUAGE and LINGUISTIC STUDIES ISSN: 1305-578X Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 13(1), 379-398; 2017
Available online at www.jlls.org JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES ISSN: 1305-578X Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 13(1), 379-398; 2017 The impact of non-native English teachers’ linguistic insecurity on learners’ productive skills Giti Ehtesham Daftaria*, Zekiye Müge Tavilb a Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey b Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey APA Citation: Daftari, G.E &Tavil, Z. M. (2017). The Impact of Non-native English Teachers’ Linguistic Insecurity on Learners’ Productive Skills. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 13(1), 379-398. Submission Date: 28/11/2016 Acceptance Date:04/13/2017 Abstract The discrimination between native and non-native English speaking teachers is reported in favor of native speakers in literature. The present study examines the linguistic insecurity of non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) and investigates its influence on learners' productive skills by using SPSS software. The eighteen teachers participating in this research study are from different countries, mostly Asian, and they all work in a language institute in Ankara, Turkey. The learners who participated in this work are 300 intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced English learners. The data related to teachers' linguistic insecurity were collected by questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and proficiency tests. Pearson Correlation and ANOVA Tests were used and the results revealed that NNESTs' linguistic insecurity, neither female nor male teachers, is not significantly correlated with the learners' writing and speaking scores. © 2017 JLLS and the Authors - Published by JLLS. Keywords: linguistic insecurity, non-native English teachers, productive skills, questionnaire, interview, proficiency test 1. Introduction There is no doubt today that English is the unrivaled lingua franca of the world with the largest number of non-native speakers. -
Macro-Sociolinguistics Page 1 MACRO SOCIOLINGUISTICS
MACRO SOCIOLINGUISTICS: INSIGHT LANGUAGE Rohib Adrianto Sangia Abstract: Language can be studied internally and externally. As externally, Sociolinguistics as the branch of linguistics looked or put position in relation to language speakers in the community, because in human society is no longer as individuals, will remain as a social community. Sociolinguistics concerns with two aspects of civilization, language and society, there are appropriate terms which are micro and macro in sociolinguistics. The main differences of them are micro-sociolinguistics or sociolinguistics –in narrow sense- is the study of language in relation to society, while macro-sociolinguistics or the sociology of language is the study of society in relation to language. Macro-sociolinguistics focuses such as social factors, exactly the interaction between language and dialect, the study of the decline and stabilization of minority languages, bilingualism developmental stability in a particular group. Keywords: Language, Sociolinguistics, Macro Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism. INTRODUCTION Language is a communication tool that people use to interact with each other. By mastering the language of humans can know the content of the world through science and new knowledge and had never imagined before. As a means of communication and interaction that is only possessed by humans, language can be studied internally and externally (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988: 22). Internally means the study made against internal elements such as language course, the structure of phonological, morphological, and syntactical alone. While externally meaningful study was conducted to things or factors outside the language, but in the use of language itself, speech community or the environment. Language may refer to the specific capacity in humans to obtain and use a complex system of communication, or to a specific agency of a complex communication system. -
Demographic Dialectal Variation in Social Media: a Case Study of African-American English
Demographic Dialectal Variation in Social Media: A Case Study of African-American English Su Lin Blodgett† Lisa Green∗ Brendan O’Connor† †College of Information and Computer Sciences ∗Department of Linguistics University of Massachusetts Amherst Abstract As many of these dialects have traditionally ex- isted primarily in oral contexts, they have histor- Though dialectal language is increasingly ically been underrepresented in written sources. abundant on social media, few resources exist Consequently, NLP tools have been developed from for developing NLP tools to handle such lan- text which aligns with mainstream languages. With guage. We conduct a case study of dialectal the rise of social media, however, dialectal language language in online conversational text by in- is playing an increasingly prominent role in online vestigating African-American English (AAE) on Twitter. We propose a distantly supervised conversational text, for which traditional NLP tools model to identify AAE-like language from de- may be insufficient. This impacts many applica- mographics associated with geo-located mes- tions: for example, dialect speakers’ opinions may sages, and we verify that this language fol- be mischaracterized under social media sentiment lows well-known AAE linguistic phenomena. analysis or omitted altogether (Hovy and Spruit, In addition, we analyze the quality of existing 2016). Since this data is now available, we seek to language identification and dependency pars- analyze current NLP challenges and extract dialectal ing tools on AAE-like text, demonstrating that they perform poorly on such text compared to language from online data. text associated with white speakers. We also Specifically, we investigate dialectal language in provide an ensemble classifier for language publicly available Twitter data, focusing on African- identification which eliminates this disparity American English (AAE), a dialect of Standard and release a new corpus of tweets containing AAE-like language. -
4 Variation in Language and Gender
98 Suzanne Romaine 4 Variation in Language and Gender SUZANNE ROMAINE 1 Introduction This chapter addresses some of the main research methods, trends, and findings concerning variation in language and gender. Most of the studies examined here have employed what can be referred to as quantitative variationist meth- odology (sometimes also called the quantitative paradigm or variation theory) to reveal and analyze sociolinguistic patterns, that is, correlations between variable features of the kind usually examined in sociolinguistic studies of urban speech communities (e.g. postvocalic /r/ in New York City, glottalization in Glasgow, initial /h/ in Norwich, etc.), and external social factors such as social class, age, sex, network, and style (see Labov 1972a). When such large-scale systematic research into sociolinguistic variation began in the 1960s, its main focus was to illuminate the relationship between language and social structure more generally, rather than the relationship between language and gender specifically. However, the category of sex (un- derstood simply as a binary division between males and females) was often included as a major social variable and instances of gender variation (or sex differentiation, as it was generally called) were noted in relation to other socio- linguistic patterns, particularly, social class and stylistic differentiation. Because the way in which research questions are formed has a bearing on the findings, some of the basic methodological assumptions and the historical context in which the variationist approach emerged are discussed briefly in section 2. The general findings are the focus of section 3, with special reference to connections between sex differentiation, social class stratification, and style shifting. -
AN INTRODUCTION to SOCIOLINGUISTICS Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics The books included in this series provide comprehensive accounts of some of the most central and most rapidly developing areas of research in linguistics. Intended primarily for introductory and post-introductory students, they include exercises, discussion points and suggestions for further reading. 1. Liliane Haegeman, Introduction to Government and Binding Theory (Second Edition) 2. Andrew Spencer, Morphological Theory 3. Helen Goodluck, Language Acquisition 4. Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M. Fuller, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Seventh Edition) 5. Martin Atkinson, Children’s Syntax 6. Diane Blakemore, Understanding Utterances 7. Michael Kenstowicz, Phonology in Generative Grammar 8. Deborah Schiffrin, Approaches to Discourse 9. John Clark, Colin Yallop, and Janet Fletcher, An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (Third Edition) 10. Natsuko Tsujimura, An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics (Third Edition) 11. Robert D. Borsley, Modern Phrase Structure Grammar 12. Nigel Fabb, Linguistics and Literature 13. Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer, Semantics in Generative Grammar 14. Liliane Haegeman and Jacqueline Guéron, English Grammar: A Generative Perspective 15. Stephen Crain and Diane Lillo-Martin, An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition 16. Joan Bresnan, Lexical-Functional Syntax 17. Barbara A. Fennell, A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach 18. Henry Rogers, Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach 19. Benjamin W. Fortson IV, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduc- tion (Second Edition) 20. Liliane Haegeman, Thinking Syntactically: A Guide to Argumentation and Analysis 21. Mark Hale, Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method 22. Henning Reetz and Allard Jongman, Phonetics: Transcription, Production, Acoustics and Perception 23. Bruce Hayes, Introductory Phonology 24. -
Introduction: Sociolinguistics and Computer-Mediated Communication
Journal of Sociolinguistics 10/4, 2006: 419–438 Introduction: Sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication Jannis Androutsopoulos University of Hannover, Germany This theme issue of Journal of Sociolinguistics comprises a number of empirical studies focusing on a range of ways in which people use language in computer-mediated communication (CMC). This introduction contextualizes the contributions to this issue by providing an outline of linguistically focused CMC studies. A critique of the research on the ‘language of CMC’ is given, and aspects of CMC research from a sociolinguistic viewpoint are presented: the move from the ‘language of CMC’ to socially situated computer- mediated discourse; its grounding in the notion of online community; and the application of sociolinguistic methodologies to its study. It is argued that CMC provides a new empirical arena for various research traditions in sociolinguistics; conversely, sociolinguistics can contribute to the interdisciplinary theorizing of CMC by demonstrating the role of language useandlinguisticvariabilityintheconstructionofinterpersonalrelationships and social identities on the Internet. KEYWORDS: Computer-mediated communication, sociolinguistics ‘WEBSLANG’ AND ‘NETSPEAK’: CHALLENGING NEW LANGUAGE MYTHS In early 2005 the Bild, Germany’s most popular tabloid newspaper, launched on its website a series of quizzes dedicated to language use on the Internet. Bearing headings such as ‘Do you understand Internet slang?’ and ‘Do you speak Chattish?’ these quizzes consist of a mixture