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0:00
Hey guys! Welcome to a introduction to Sociolinguistics!
0:05
We can start off our video by quickly defining what Sociolinguistics is, just so you have a working definition as we go through some of the main concepts. Sociolinguistics is the study of how society affects the language we use. If you look closely at the word you can see how the word “socio” comes from the word “sociology”, and what is the field of “sociology”? Well “sociology”, in short, is the study of human society, so in “sociolinguistics”
0:33
we’re delving into to sociology, by specifically looking at how society influences language, and language influences society. I think the best way to understand many of the concepts we’re about to explore is by first checking our language attitudes because in order to understand the relationship between society and language, you need to first understand that society has some pretty strong opinions about language. The word attitude is defined as “a
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settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something [or someone’s language], typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior.” I’ve obviously added the “someone’s language” portion to this definition. So when we talk about language attitudes, we’re talking about the way we think or feel about someone’s language. These attitude can be negative, but they can also be positive. They could be about someone else’s language, they can even be about your own.
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So even though in my videos I’m primarily going to be talking about American English, when it comes to Sociolinguistics, we’re going to talk about lots of different languages in this world because we’re going to be discussing lots of different societies and cultures. So, here I have a list of some different languages, and I want you to think about adjectives that you would use to describe each of these languages. Adjectives are words that describe nouns,
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so think of words that describe the languages of Italian, British English, Spanish spoken in Spain, and German. And while you’re thinking of these adjectives, go ahead and pause the video if you need to and and write them down, because next we’re going to see how your initial “attitudes” align with feedback I’ve received from other people.
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So first let’s talk about Italian! I’ve had students tell me that they think this language sounds romantic, but I’ve also had students tell me that this language sounds fast, loud, hard, angry, aggressive, and direct. Also that when they think of Italian, they think of speakers who use lots of hand gestures. So, for the most part, a lot of potentially negative sounding adjectives were used to describe the Italian language.
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On the other hand, we have British English, which is in fact the language of English that you and I are using, but just a different dialect of English than American English, and we’ll talk about dialects a little later in this video, but when it comes to British English, most of my students describe this dialect of English as posh, sophisticated, fancy, intelligent, sexy, proper, and as “correct” English. One person
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also termed this language as snobby. So whether we’re calling this language “posh” or “snobby”, all of these adjectives point to an attitude that people (or specifically American students) typically think of British English as the more sophisticated version of English.
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Well what about Spanish, but specifically Spanish that is spoken in Spain rather than the dialects of Spanish we find spoken in Central and South America. For those of you who speak Spanish, you probably have a lot more opinions about Spain Spanish than those who don’t speak Spanish. In fact, if you don’t speak Spanish, you might not realize that like the English language, there are different Spanishes in the world too. I love this meme which says,
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“When you take Spanish as a Spanish speaker for an easy A and they start teaching you the Spain Spanish and not that normal Spanish.” This meme is funny in that the Spanish often taught formally in the United States is typically the Spain dialect and not the dialect of Spanish that most people in our country actually use. I’ve had students describe Spain Spanish as formal and suave, with the added note of people who speak this dialect of Spanish think they are elite. So we’re
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seeing some similar opinions with Spain Spanish that we saw with British English. My question to you is this, if this is not the Spanish that mirrors the dialect of Spanish that is actually around us in America, why would this be the version of Spanish that is typically taught in the schools here? We’ll come back to that question later on. Finally, let’s turn our attention to German. I once had a single student describe this language to me as beautiful
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and passionate, but other than that one student, everyone else has reported this language as harsh, ugly, angry, scary, and threatening. So more so than any other language we’ve covered, and even compared to Italian, this one gets described in a pretty negative light.
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And the people who are describing languages like German as “ugly” are not actually people who can speak German! It is people like you and me who are only observing other people using the language. What we find is that typically the attitudes we have about language are usually in regards to languages that other people are speaking, and not the language we actually speak.
5:48
So on that note, let’s talk about our language, American English. On the other slides, you used both positive and negative adjectives to describe the languages of others, but typically when I ask my American classes to then describe American English, they don’t have a lot to say. So, how do you think people describe our language, what are their attitudes about the American English language? Well people from other languages have said that
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Americans talk really loud and too fast, and that our version of English is lazy. And those who have had to learn English as a second language say that American is English is hard to learn.
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Research has also found that people perceive American English as really urban, while British English is professional, this came from a study that found that English learners in Spain elevate British English as being the higher status English, associated with professionals and successful people, and American English was the lower-status of the two, though they felt the American accent was more socially attractive. So keep in mind that language attitudes are
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held by people all over the world and it is not just something unique to our society.
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In these last few slides, we’ve looked at attitudes from languages around the globe, so attitudes we have about completely different languages than our own (except the British English) but we also need to talk about the attitudes that exist within American English and within the people that speak American English.
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You’re probably aware that even though a majority of the people in America speak English, someone from California sounds like they’re speaking possibly a “different” English than someone from Texas. If I were to ask you rank these dialects of American Englishes from best - meaning the most proper sounding, to worse - meaning the most lazy, or ungrammatical sounding, how would you rank them? What features about each of these dialects and the people who speak them
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plays a part in how you decide which one sounds “better” than the last? I want to stress that “hillbilly” is not actually a name we use for the language spoken by that group of people, linguists actually refer to this as Appalachian English.
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If you’re struggling to rank some of these, then let’s look at an example. If I were to ask you rank these examples of English from best - meaning the most proper sounding, to worse - meaning the most lazy, or ungrammatical sounding, how would you rank them? So, “my dad was hella mad and I hella didn’t know what to do” and “my dad was very mad and I really didn’t know what to do”. The use of “hella” in this way
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is an example of a linguistics feature of a Northern California dialect, and the later is, we’ll say, may be Standard English. It’s clear that both sentences have meaning and mean the same thing, but perhaps one sentence is more “acceptable” in some contexts than the other. So, we’ve moved beyond just recognizing that we have attitudes or opinions about different languages, and that we also have attitudes about “varieties” of Englishes in our own society as well.
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The point is that everyone has attitudes about language. Remember sometimes these attitudes are positive, and sometimes they are negative. As linguistics though, we’re not here to argue which attitudes are right and which are wrong, or which languages or varieties are better than others, in fact, we know that no one language or varieties is more superior than another. We also believe that a person's opinion about a dialect or a language actually reflects that person’s attitude
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about the group of speakers of that dialect. So in other words, an attitude about a language is actually an attitude about the people of that language. So, since you are entering the field as a linguist, we want to check our attitudes, and we want to be aware that these attitudes exist, because they ultimately influence the type of language you and the rest of society uses or chooses not to use each day. So, we’ve thrown around the word “dialect” a little, but we
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haven’t talked about what it is. Most of you will recognize some of what “dialect” means by the word “accent”. So when you think about how British English sounds different than American English, for example the difference between [wɔtə] and [wɔtər], this is known as “accent”. But “accent” is just one feature of dialect. A dialect is the whole language system, so it also includes the “lexicon” or vocabulary of a language variety,
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so for example, in the U.S. some dialects say “coke”, while others say “pop” or “soda”. This is an example of a lexical difference. Dialect also includes the syntax of a language, or what you might think of as grammar, for example, the double use of modal verbs in “we
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might could harvest the corn”. So the concept of “dialect” encompasses each of these features. Whether we’re talking about different languages spoken in different parts of the world, or we’re talking about different dialects of one language, spoken in one region, we're talking about “regional dialects”. “Regional” means geographically constrained, so when I talk about Southern English, your mind quickly goes to a geographical region of the United States.
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Or, when I talk about dialects of English around the world, we are talking about geographical regions around the world that speak their own dialect of English, and some of those geographical regions are highlighted on this world map in blue. So this map is illustrating regional dialects of English across the globe.
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Now, we’ve been talking primarily about English, but know that the concept of regional dialects exists in all other languages well. So here we have a map showing different Spanish regional dialects. To wrap up regional dialects, just know that the region we live in and grew up in influences which dialect of a language we use. But region doesn’t explain all of our linguistic choices. In fact, one feature of Southern English is the use of the perfective “done”, so saying “he
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done run” instead of saying “he’s just run”. But I live and teach in Texas, and I don’t hear this used that frequently, and certainly not by everyone who lives in Texas, so there must be something else that influences our dialect other than just the region in which we live.
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And that something, is our sociolects - which is a variety of a language spoken by members of the same social groups, regardless of location. So this means that in addition to our regional dialect influences, our linguistic style is also influenced by our gender, age, occupation, education, race and ethnicity, social class, and hobbies. Your social background plays a large role in your language choices! So let’s explore an example of a sociolect.
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One of the most widely studied sociolect is that of AAVE, which stands for African American Vernacular English, which is the linguistic name for what most people call Black English or Ebonics. So this is a sociolect and not a regional dialect because it isn’t a dialect that is isolated to one city, one state, one country. It is a dialect that’s mostly used by middle-class African Americans. And it is often a dialect that
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people tend to have a lot of opinions or language attitudes regarding, and research has found that non-AAVE speakers sometimes view the language as “obscene” and uncensored”. Non-speakers of this variety have also said it is full of “grammatical mistakes”. Well, if they want to talk about “grammatical mistakes”, let’s take a look at one and see if we agree. So one syntactical feature of AAVE is the use of “don’t” in place of the word “doesn’t”. So, a
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speaker of this dialect might say “she don’t know him” instead of “she doesn’t know him”. And this is what people who don’t speak AAVE are calling a grammatical error because the verb “don’t” doesn’t agree with the subject “she”. So, “correct” English would be using the word “doesn’t” with the subjects “she, he, and it”. Before we go and say, “yes, ‘she don’t know him’” doesn’t sound right and it’s a product of an “uncensored language”, let’s look closer at the grammar rule. So,
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the rule would be that we should use “don’t” when saying, “I don’t know him, you don’t know him, we don’t know him, and they don’t know him” BUT we should use “doesn’t” with the pronouns “she, he, it” or with a noun like “Shelby doesn’t know him”. So that’s the “correct” rule, and this is the rule we’re saying that AAVE should be following… but let's look at the AAVE rule. So, in AAVE,
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the grammar rule is that you should actually use “don’t” in all instances, no matter the subject of the sentence. Well, considering this rule, which “rule” do you think actually makes more sense?
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And which rule, if you were going to have to teach English to someone, might be the easier rule to teach? So while some non-speakers of AAVE seem to feel pretty strongly that AAVE is ungrammatical, the grammar of this dialect is actually pretty clear, and pretty straight forward.
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Linguist know that all languages and dialects are rule-governed and are not better or worse than other language varieties. So when someone says that another person’s dialect is “ungrammatical”, they’re misinformed. What they’re saying is that they don’t understand the rules of that dialect, they’re clearly not speakers of that dialect. So, let’s admit that despite the region of the country you’ve grown up in, and despite your age, gender, race - all of those sociolect influences,
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no two speakers of a language actually speak the same. Linguist study patterns of language use, so we can look at Southern English and say that Southern English speakers tend to say “y’all” instead of “you all” but that doesn’t mean that everyone from the South uses “y’all” when they speak. Not everyone conforms to the tendencies of a group, whether that be a regional dialect or a sociolect. No two speakers are the same, and we call your individual language style your idiolect.
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So, we’ve been looking at several examples of language in this video that isn’t standard, meaning this may be the way certain subsets of people use English but it’s not by and large what people might consider normal or grammatical English. So the question becomes, should we all be following a set of rules and guidelines so that we don’t have these variations within the language? And your individual answer to this question likely
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reflects whether you are a prescriptivist or a descriptivist. Prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar are two different approaches to language change and language variation.
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Prescriptivists tell us what structures and usages are acceptable or unacceptable. So think like a doctor, a doctor says, “you are sick, and to feel better, I am going to prescribe you these pills”. A prescriptivist says, “your language is broken, and to make it better, I am going to prescribe you rules to follow.” Alternatively we have descriptivists, who discover the ways in which people use language naturally and try to describe the patterns that govern
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language use for a particular group of people. So descriptivists are saying, “hey, every dialect has rules and is already following rules, and I’ve been watching that dialect over there and here are what their rules are, and their rules work just fine for them.” Alternatively for prescriptivists, it’s about getting everyone in a language to follow the same set of speaking and writing rules.
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So based on those definitions, can you figure out which of these items are prescriptive and descriptive? Go ahead and pause the video if you want to think about it because I’m about to tell you. Most people actually think that dictionaries are prescriptive, meaning they are there to tell us the rules of the language, what is right and wrong, but surprisingly enough, for the most part, dictionaries are descriptive, meaning they’re
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not a guide for how you are supposed to use the language, they are guide for how people are already using the language. Linguists are also descriptive. We’re not here to tell people what rules are better than other rules, or what dialects are better than other dialects, we’re here describing to you the ways in which different dialects or languages work.
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Now let’s turn our attention to English classes. These could be the classes you took in American High School, I’m guessing many of you remember being taught rules on how to write properly. So these classes you took, they would be prescriptive, because they were teaching
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what structures of writing were acceptable and not acceptable.
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One potential problem with a strict prescriptivist approach is that utterances like these would be considered incorrect language. But we know as linguist that these utterances are actually following social and regional dialect rules and norms. So, a strict prescriptivist approach has the agenda to basically keep everyone on the same language page and take away working features of other dialects.
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Not all prescriptivists intentions are bad. When it comes to teaching, we certainly do want to correct students’ errors and help them learn a standardized form of a language. When it comes to spelling, I think it helps a lot to have a standardized way to spell words, otherwise the spelling system would be a complete mess. It also helps that textbooks and newspapers follow standard styles because it helps (to some extent) ensure that everyone can read
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the information. For example, it might hard to read a textbook if the entire book were written in a Northern California dialect, though I think a book called “A hella legit introduction to the hella dope world of linguistics” might be cool.
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Language planning can also be a positive prescriptivist movement. Language planning is when a government or another public body decides which languages will be taught in schools, what languages public employees need to know, etc. And this can be helpful to a society in that people can more easily communicate with each other because we know what the dominant language is. Another example of language planning would be campaigns against sexist or discriminatory
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languages, so when a public body decides that it is no longer okay to call your female employees “honey” or “sweetie”, these are examples of a prescriptivist approach to language management in a society - prescriptivists tell us what is acceptable and what is not acceptable language.
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In this video, we’ve used the term “standard” a few times. So we need to quickly address this term and what is means when someone calls a language a “standard language”. A “standard” language is a variety of a language that people believe to be the model language, in other words, it is seen as the best, most grammatically correct, most educated sounding variety of a language. Do you recall when we were discussing Spain Spanish, I asked you why would we teach Spain Spanish in our
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American education system when it isn’t even the dialect of Spanish that we most typically find in our society? Well it is because Spain Spanish is seen as a type of Standard Spanish, the model language that the most “educated” Spanish speakers use. Every language has a standardized form, so in American English we have Standard American English, also known as SAE. So when teaching materials talk about teaching Standard English or Standard American English, they’re talking
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about teaching this prescribed version of English. But who decides what the “standard” variety of a language is? It’s not linguist! In fact, standard language is determined by people in power, so that could be a political entity, the educated, or an elite upper class social group. As I said before, Linguists know that all dialects are rule-governed and that no dialect is better or worse than another dialect, but society at large doesn’t feel the same way. In fact,
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SAE is essentially a game of trying not to sound like speakers from stigmatized speech communities, so this would be avoiding any of the regional dialects or sociolects for which there are negative attitudes towards. We don’t want people to think of us in negative ways, so we try to
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avoid highly stigmatized dialects, dialects that society has negative attitudes towards, by speaking a standard form. It’s all about prestige. People want to speak in a way that gains them respect, admiration, and status. So we make linguistic choices that help us accomplish this. However, this doesn’t mean that we’re all trying to speak Standard American English, even if the standard form is seen by and large as the prestigious variety of a language. There
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are actually two types of prestigious choices we make: overt prestige and covert prestige. Overt prestige is the process of getting respect, admiration, or status by using an openly known dialect that is understood by mainstream America. First, I need to clarify here that while I am using the word “America” in our definition, these two concepts are true of any language and culture. I’m just using America to help you relate to the topic. So based on this definition,
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what dialect do we have in America that is “openly known”, that everyone has access to? Well the answer is Standard American English. And when might you practice “overt prestige”, when might you use standard American English in order to get respect or status --- how about a job interview? Or how about in the university classroom with your professor? In society, there is a time and place where using the openly known dialect is the best way to get respect, admiration, or status.
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Conversely, we have covert prestige. This is the opposite of overt prestige in that here, we’re intentionally using a NOT openly known dialect. And in doing so, we’re still seeking respect, admiration, and status. This means that when you’re with your friends, you’re using linguistic features that your friends use which is, I’m guessing, not Standard American English. So this means you’re tapping into your regional dialect or a sociolect, you're
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tapping into a stigmatized language, so that you can essentially fit in or get respect. I like this
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post which says “saying I’m from Texas is a lowkey flex”. Some people really love the sound of a Southern dialect, so if you are in New York and are speaking a Southern dialect, you might find that there is a certain charm people have towards that dialect, in which case you might lay your dialect on extra thick because why? Because people like it, therefore they have more interest in you, more admiration for you. Prestige works both ways in our society. Sometimes societal rules
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expect you to use a standard variety of English, whereas other societal contexts expect you to use or value your use of “lesser” accepted varieties. As we’ve already seen, English is one of those languages where some varieties are seen as more prestigious than others, but while we’re on the topic of language attitudes and prestige, I wanted to highlight some global attitudes about English.
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There are 50 countries in the world where English is either the official or primary language, and there are known to be about 160 dialects of English in the world. But when it comes to teaching English, the world doesn’t view all of these countries and dialects as equal. Here on the screen are actual screen shots of English teaching job descriptions from around the world in countries that speak languages other than English. First I want to point out that several of
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the jobs require that teachers be native speakers or English. So the goal with a requirement like this is to rule out English speakers who learned English as a second language. These jobs only want people who speak English as their first language. The second thing I want to point out is that one of these jobs is seeking someone with a “neutral accent”. What is a “neutral accent”? The fact is that there isn’t a neutral English accent, all dialects have their own unique accents,
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so what this job is really asking for is someone that comes from a prestigious dialect, most likely someone from a British variety of English or an American Midwest variety of English. The last thing I want to point out is that some of these jobs have citizen requirements, and one of the reasons they may have citizen requirements from a very few select countries is that they can then control the type of English variety they are hiring. So again, there are over 50 countries with
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English as the official or primary language, but these jobs are looking for speakers from only a handful of those 50. What’s reflected here is that attitudes about English are global. Another way we get approval in communication is explained by Accommodation theory. This theory suggests that people adapt and adjust their communication to match their conversation partner for the reason of getting approval and setting a positive image in front of the person they are talking to.
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Of course, this theory assumes that people are trying to get along, but in general, we can make that assumption, because if you’re not aiming to get along with someone or be liked by someone, then you are not likely to try and accommodate or match their speech. Assuming people are getting along, people usually take on the speech pattern of the person with the higher status, so if you’re talking to your professor or a dean at the University, you’re more likely trying to
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match their communication patterns. But this theory extends beyond just changes in dialect. Under accommodation theory, you are also changing the speed at which you talk, your body language, the pitch as which you speak (so whether you’re going to talk louder or talk quieter) - you are making conscious and unconscious choices to match or accommodate the person you are speaking to.
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A “register” is the way a speaker uses language in different speech settings, and this language style is determined by the subject matter. So here the style is not determined by the desire to be accepted or to fit in, nor is it determined by a goal to match the person you’re speaking with. An appropriate register is determined by the subject matter. I have here a few examples of different
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subject matters, so an academic register is a language style explicit to academics, and as you are reading your textbooks, or writing research papers, you’re interacting with academic language.
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Legalese on the other hand is language that is explicit to legal documents. It is different than an academic register and full of its own technical language that is often hard to understand. You can see this style of writing on “Terms and Conditions” contracts that you sign when buying a house, renting a car, downloading an app, or taking out student loans. It’s style is formal in the way that an academic register is formal, but they are completely different styles,
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different registers. Motherese is a good example of an informal register. This is a specific way that adults talk to children, you may know it as baby talk. But like academic and legal registers, it has its own style. The way a speaker uses language in different speech settings can be identified as falling into two basic categories: formal and informal.
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We shift or language styles between registers, so an example would be that there is a difference between commanding some to “shut the door” and requesting someone by saying “can you shut the door?” Technical vocabulary is another formal and informal variation, so a legal document is likely to reflect a lot of technical vocabulary, whereas motherse is not likely to include anything technical. Informal and formal registers change the way express ourselves so depending on the
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language context, it may be more appropriate to say “oh shoot” instead of “oh shit”. Informal and formal registers also influence our phrases and lexical choices, so in a formal context, you are more likely to greet someone by saying, “Hello, how are you?” whereas in an informal setting, you’re probably okay saying, “what’s up?” As potential language educators, there is value in sociolinguistics knowledge. You need to know the regional and social background
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of your students. You need to know that your students are influenced by those background. We should also be aware that our students come into the classroom with attitudes about language, and we absolutely need to have a sensitivity towards our students’ language backgrounds. We can also use dialect knowledge to teach formal and informal language registers when helping
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teach academic language. We can use what know about language and society, about sociolinguistics to help teach sociolinguistic competence. When it comes to second language learning, sociolinguistic knowledge is part of learning a new language. Native speakers are skilled in social knowledge, but language learners sometimes need to trained. In order for a person to speak in a manner that is socially acceptable, they must absorb the culture’s rules. So, they must not only have
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knowledge of a language (knowledge as to how to pronounce words, and how to write in full sentences) but they also must know how to use the language effectively, meaning being able to speak appropriately to the situation. The whole package, intuitive functional knowledge and control of the principles of language usage, so in other words, the ability to use a language effectively is known as communicative competence, and it is thought to be the goal of language teaching.
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Communicative competence includes having linguistic competence, so the grammatical rules, how to pronounce words, how to spell words, how to form questions, how to form sentences. Communicative competence includes having discourse competence, so the ability to tell coherent stories from start to finish, the ability to write an a cohesive essay where every paragraph makes sense and feeds into the overall message of the paper. Communicative competence means
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having strategic competence, so the ability to restore conversations that break down, handle miscommunication, avoid interrupting people, taking turns in a conversation. And finally, communicative competence means having sociolinguistics competence, knowledge of different dialects, socio-cultural ties to language, standard languages, registers, informal versus formal language, and thus knowing how to speak appropriately to the situation.
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So this has been a relatively quick crash course on some major principles of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics is actually a very large field, and while this video only does a quick glance at some of the primary topics, you could actually spend a lifetime studying all the theories and research in this specific branch of linguistics. In fact, I encourage you to take the time to learn more about this topic as you continue your linguistic studies,
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and as many of you continue into language teaching. I’ll see you guys later!
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