Language In Society And Pragmatics, Midterm, Van Herk

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Speech Community

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A group of people who are in habitual contact with one another, who share a language variety and social conventions, or sociolinguistic norms, about language use.

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Social category

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A way of grouping people by traits that are relatively fixed, such as class, gender, or ethnicity, or open to active performance and construction, like identity.

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Social relationships

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How each of us, as social beings, adapt our language to suit the situation and the audience. Often contrasted with social characteristics, the socially relevant traits that we are seen to possess.

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Free variation

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A term used when the speaker’s choice between forms (or variants) is completely arbitrary and unpredictable. Opposite of structured variation

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Structured variation

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A term used when the speaker’s choice between forms (or variants) is linked to other factors. Opposite of free variation

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Categorical

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The opposite of probabilistic, categorical rules are absolute, that is, they apply every time that they can apply.

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Variationist

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A researcher who focuses on linguistics.

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Sociology of language

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The branch of sociology concerned with language. Unlike sociolinguistics, this approach studies the social contexts of language without recourse to analysis of linguistic structure.

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Mentalist

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The philosophy or approach that describes how language is represented in the mind.

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Competence

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A distinction drawn by Chosmky (vs. performance) that refers primarily to what speakers know about language.

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Performance

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What speakers actually produce when speaking (which might be full of false starts, errors, hesitations, and other such “noise”, as well as switches between dialects)

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Empiricist

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The philosophy or approach that knowledge comes through sensory experience.

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Standard

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The codified variety of a language, that is, the language taught in school, used in formal writing, and often heard from newscasters and other media figures who are trying to project authority or ability.

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Non-standard

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Varieties of a language other than the standard

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Descriptive

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A non-evaluative approach to language that is focused on how language is actually used, without deciding what is “right” or “wrong”.

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Prescriptive

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An approach to language that is focused on rules of correctness, that is, how language “should” be used.

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Mutual intelligibility

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If people speaking different varieties (of languages or dialects) can understand each other, their varieties are mutually intelligible

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Dialect

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A term that tends to refer to subvarieties of a single language. Non-linguists sometimes use the term as synonym for accent, though dialects can differ in terms of not only pronunciation but also structure, and meaning.

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Interlocutor

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The person with whom you are speaking.

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Social distance

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Degree of intimacy or familiarity between interlocutors.

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Ethnography

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A branch of anthropology that deals with scientific description of individual cultures.

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Speech community

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A group of people who are in habitual contact with one another, who share a language variety and social conventions, or sociolinguistic norms, about language use.

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Social network

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The different groups of people that each of us has interacted with over the years

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Community of Practic (COfP)

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Unit of analysis that looks at a smaller analytical domain than social networks. A community of practice is characterized by mutual engagement, a jointly negotiated enterprise, and a shared repertoire.

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Sociolinguistic norms

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A combination of expressed attitudes and variable linguistic behavior shared by all members of a speech community.

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Dense

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A term used to describe the number of connections within a social network. In a low-density network, people know a central member but not each other. In a high-density network, members know and interact with each other.

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Multiplex

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A term used to describe social networks in which members have multiple connections with one another. The opposite of uniplex network.

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Speaker agency

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The ability of speakers to control what they do and to make conscious choices.

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Heuristic

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Guidelines for how to approach a research problem

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Brokers

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People who participate in multiple communities of practice and bring ideas from one into the other, that is, people who introduce innovations to their social networks.

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Corpus Linguistics

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A linguistic research method based on the quantitative analysis of collections of naturally occurring language data, usually very large.

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Qualitative

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Usually smaller-scale intensive research, using methods like interviewing and ethnography that aims to study meanings and motivation, rather than large-scale quantitative frequencies or correlations

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Conversation analysis

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Among other things, this method looks at the sequential organization of conversations and how participants manage the conversation using strategies like turn-taking.

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Dialect leveling

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The process by which the regional features of the speech of a group of people converges toward a common norm over time.

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Rhotic

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A term used to describe English dialects in which the /r/ following a vowel is pronounced. Also known as r-ful.

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Lexical set

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A way of identifying vowels using a set of words in which they occur as apposed to a linguistic symbol.

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Monophthongs

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A pure vowel sound, spoken in a single place of articulation, with no change in quality, for example bat as opposed to bite.

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Canadian Rising

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A phonological process found in Canadian English (and some other varieties) in which the MOUTH and PRICE vowels are pronounced differently when preceding a voiceless consonant in the same syllable, in words like hike and stout.

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Physical isolation

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A dialect or language can be physically or geographically isolated from others, for example, by being on an island

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Linguistic isolation

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When speakers of a dialect or language are cut off from other varieties and have retained older features, so that their variety has developed differently from their sister ones.

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Social isolation

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A dialect or language can be socially isolated by conventions or attitudes, for example, by class or race prejudice.

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Shibboleth

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When the pronunciation of a single word becomes a stereotype of a speech community, such as Jamaicans supposedly saying mon for man.

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After perfect

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A grammatical means of describing a (usually recent) completed event in Irish (and consequently Newfoundland) English.

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Reified

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Made into a concrete thing (p39)

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Enregisterment

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A process through which a linguistic feature or repertoire becomes a socially recognized register.

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Covert prestige

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A norm or target that speakers unconsciously orient to, with a sort of hidden positive evaluation that speakers give to other (presumably non-standard) forms. The linguistic equivalent of street credibility.

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Supralocal

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A term used to refer to the level “above the local” in which speakers adopt the language features of the nearest large city.

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Crossing

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When speakers use language features of linguistic styles associated with another ethnic group.

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Dialectology

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The study of regional differences in language

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NORMs

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An acronym for “non-mobile older rural males”. These speakers are believed to have retained the most traditional speech and are consequently the focus of many dialectology studies.

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Isogloss

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An imaginary boundary or line drawn on a map that separates particular linguistic features, for example, the line across England separating Northerners who pronounce the STRUT and FOOT vowels roughly the same from southerners who don’t.

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Isogloss bundle

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Many isoglosses occurring in the same area, likely representing a major dialect boundary.

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Categorical

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Categorical rules apply every time that they can apply

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Probabilistic rules

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The opposite of categorical, probabilistic constraints are not absolute but rather tendencies in one direction.

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Linguistic constraint

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A linguistic factor that governs the use of a particular variant

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Social constraint

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A social factor like sex or age that governs the use of a particular variant.

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Status

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Social positions that society assigns to its members, or the differences between social groups, in terms of the prestige associated with them by others.

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Variable

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The abstract representation of a source of variation, realized by at least two variants, for example gonna and will are variants of the variable future temporal reference.

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Variant

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The different expressions, or actual realizations, of a variable, for example, pronouncing the suffix –ing as “ing” or “in”,

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Prestige

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Variants associated with higher-status groups are considered prestige forms

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Stigma

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A negative associating, something viewed pejoratively.

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Borrowed prestige

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Speakers’ setting and the role they’re playing can lead them to use language features associated with a particular class.

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Aspiration

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People often try to talk like who they want to be

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Crossover effect

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In formal situations, speakers using prestige variants even more often than the group above them.

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Social hypercorrection

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When speakers overdo what they see at the linguistic requirements of a situation (usually in the direction of formality of the use of standard variations)

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Linguistic insecurity

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The force hypothesized to drive people to use a variant that is thought to be prestigious or correct and that is not part of their own casual speech.

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Linguistic market

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The importance of standard language in the social and economic life of the speaker

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Salient/salience

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Usually refers to the noticeable variant – one that stands out due to physiological, social and/or psychological factors

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Stereotype

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A variable that is socially marked, that is, very noticeable and often discussed.

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Marker

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A variable that speakers are less aware of than a stereotype, but whose use they can control in style shifting.

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Indicator

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A variable that can show differences by age or social group and is often associated with particular characteristics, but is not subject to style shifting.

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Social mobility

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The ability to move between social classes, often determined by how defined class roles are in a particular culture

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Caste

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In societies where mobility is more difficult and linguistic boundaries are more rigid, social groups, or castes, tend to be fixed, for example traditional Indian social structure.

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Sociolect

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A subset of language used by a particular social group or class. Sometimes called a dialect

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Unmarked

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The opposite of marked, that is, a feature that does not get noticed.

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Overt prestige

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Positive or negative assessments of variants that are in line with the dominant norms associated with sounding ‘proper’ and that people are aware of, often coinciding with the norms of the media, educational institutions, or higher socio-economic classes.

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Covert prestige

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A norm or target that speakers unconsciously orient to, with a sort of hidden positive evaluation that speaker give to other (presumably non-standard) forms. The linguistic equivalent of street credibility.

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Basilect

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A term used in creole studies to refer to the most creole-like variety.