戴伟栋 新编简明英语语言学教程笔记

weight and persistence, through movies, newspapers, magazines, radio and television. 3. The influence of science and technology

With the development of science and technology, new words and expressions are coined in three different domains:

A) Space travel: space suit, heat-shield, splash-down, space station, linkup, readout, lunar module etc.

B) Computer and internet language: program, input, output, email, hacker, information highway etc.

C) Ecology: Ecology refers to the study of the relationship between plants, animals, people, and their environment, and the balances between these relationships.

e.g. ecoactivist, ecocide, ecocatastrope, visual pollution, noise pollution, graffiti pollution,

eco-friendly, planet-friendly, environment-friendly Part Six: Causes of language change

The linguists have little idea what causes a language to change.

A) the rapid development of science and technology has led to the creation of many new words: bullet train, fax.

B) Social and political changes and political needs have supplied the English vocabulary with great quality of new words and expressions: shuttle diplomacy, mini-summit, jungle war, Euro, hot line.

C) Woman movement and feminist movement make women aware of their social positions: e.g. chairman----chairperson, foreman---supervisor, policeman----police officer fireman----fire fighter jury foreman----jury foreperson

D) The way children acquire language provides a basic cause of change: rules are simplified and over-generalized.

E) Economy of memory results in grammar simplification: internal borrowing (foe—foes, dog---dogs), regularization (medium---media, curriculum---curricula), the loss of the morphological rule creating causative verbs from adjectives (black---blacken), theory of least effort (cheap for cheaply).

Simplification of grammar occurs, so does elaboration or complication. To avoid confusions, strict word-order-constraints are thus placed on the grammar. While one sees a tendency toward greater simplification, one also finds a counter-tendency, the desire to be intelligible.

Chapter 8: Language and Society

Part one: The scope of sociolinguistics

1. The relatedness between language and society

sociolinguistics: Sociolinguistics is the sub-field of linguistic that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live.

Inter-relationship between language and society:

A) language is used not only to communicate meaning, but also establish and maintain social relationships.

21

B) Users of the same language in a sense all speak differently, due to their social backgrounds. C) Language, especially the structure of its lexicon, reflects both the physical and the social environments of a society. E.g. there is only one word in English for snow, and there are several in Eskimo.

D) Language is related to the structure if the society in which it is used, therefore, judgments concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic. E.g. the use of postvocalic [r] in England and in New York city. 2. Speech community and speech variety The definition of speech community:

For general linguistics: It is defined as a group of people who form a community and share the same language or a particular variety of a language.

For sociolinguistics: It is defined as a group of people who do in fact have the opportunity to interact with each other and who share not just a single language with its related varieties but also attitudes toward linguistic norms

Speech variety, or language variety, refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or a group of speakers.

Variety is considered a more neutral term than terms such as standard or non-standard language and dialects.

3. Two approaches to sociolinguistic studies

A) a bird‘s-eye view: look at society as a whole and consider how language functions in it and how it reflects the social differentiations.

------Macro-sociolinguistics/ the sociology of language

B) a worm‘s-eye view: look at society from the point of view of an individual member within it. ------ Micro-sociolinguistics/ sociolinguistics. Part Two: Varieties of language

1 speakers of the same language speak the language in different manner.

2 the language used by the same individual varies as the circumstances of communication varies. Conclusion: the notion of a language is not monolithic and there exist types or varieties of the same language.

Varieties are both related to A) the language user----dialects B) The use---------------registers. 1. Dialectal varieties

(1) Regional dialect----a linguistic variety used by people living in the same geographical region. Causes: 1geographical barriers, such as mountains, rivers, swamps-----lack of communication. 2 loyalty to one‘s native speech,

3 physical and psychological resistance to change.

(2) Sociolect----the linguistic variety characteristic of a particular social class, and caused by the separation brought about by different social conditions.

People‘s social backgrounds influence their choice of linguistic forms, and the linguistic features of the language they use reveal their identities. Accent is an important marker of sociolect. A case in point is the so-called ?Received Pronunciation? (RP).-----sociolect. (3) Language and gender Differences:

A) Women are usually more status-conscious than men in the English-speaking world, thus their

22

speech closely approaches the standard variety than the speech of men.

B) Male and female speeches are also different in the use of intonations----a wider range in females‘ intonation/ use the low-rise intonation with statements much more frequently for females. C) Gender differentiation is also reflected in the use of certain lexical items: nice, lovely, cute. D) Female speech is less assertive and thus sounds to be more polite than male speech: question tag/ I‘m afraid…/ I‘m not sure but… (4) Language and Age

the language used by the old generation differs from that used by the young generation in certain ways. The most striking difference is found at the lexical level: icebox---fridge, wirless---boombox.

The root cause: society is changing, and this causes difference in social attitudes, value judgements, etc. between the two generations: old----too conservative, less ready to incorporate new terms into their vocabulary.

(5) Idiolect----Idiolect is a personal dialect of an individual speaker that combines elements regarding regional, social, gender, and age variations. In a narrow sense, what makes up a person‘s idiolect also includes such factors as voice quality, pitch and speech tempo and rhythm.

(6)Ethnic Dialect----An ethnic dialect is a social dialect of a language that cuts across regional differences, it is mainly spoken by a less privileged population that has experienced some form of social isolation such as racial discrimination or segregation.

Black English----A) phonologically, the simplification of consonant clusters at the end of a word. e.g. passed/ past------[pa:s]

B) syntactically, the deletion of the link verb ?be‘------You crazy./ They mine./

The use of double negation construction----He don‘t know nothing. 2. Register

linguistic repertoire: The totality of linguistic varieties possessed by an individual constitutes his linguistic repertoire.

Register Theory----British linguist Halliday.

Register: the type of language which is selected as appropriate to the type of situation is a register. Three social variables:

A) Field of discourse---- topic: the purpose and subject matter of the communicative behavior. ---- why/ what---vocabulary, phonological, grammatical features

B) Tenor of discourse---- role: participants and in what relationship they stand to each other. ---- formality/ technicality of the language we use.

C) Mode of discourse ---- means of communication.-----how ( speaking or writing). Example: Field:

Scientific (biological) Tenor:

Teacher-students (formal, polite) Mode:

Oral (academic lecturing) 3. Degree of Formality

Language used on different occasions differs in the degree of formality, which is determined by the social variables, eg. Who we are talking with and what we are talking about.

23

Formality------American linguist Martin Joos

Five stages of formality: 1intimate 2casual 3consultative 4formal 5frozen

Different styles of the same language can be characterized through differences at three levels, namely, syntactic, lexical and phonological.

A) syntactically: passive and impersonal constructions----higher degree of formality. B) lexically: load words, address forms-----more formal. Part Three: Standard dialect

standard dialect: A superimposed variety of language of a community or nation, usually based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of the language.

Features: A) the standard dialect is based on a selected variety of the language, usually it is the local speech of an area which is considered the nation‘s political and commercial center.

B) the standard dialect is not a dialect a child acquires naturally like his regional dialect. It is a superimposed variety. It is a variety imposed from above over the range of regional dialects. It has a widely accepted codified grammar and vocabulary.

C) the standard dialect has some special functions.------for official purposes, on formal occasions.

Part Four: Pidgin and Creole

Pidgin: it is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it is used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. Characteristics: A) a blending of several languages.

B) usually a European language serves as the basis of the pidgin. C) limited vocabulary

D) reduced grammatical structure characterized by the loss of inflection, gender and case.

Creole : A pidgin language which has become the native language of a group of speakers used in this daily life.

Characteristics: A) structure is expanded.

B) vocabulary is vastly enriched.

C) new syntactic-semantic concepts developed. Part Five: Bilingualism and Diglossia

bilingualism : The use of two different languages side by side with each having a different role to play, and language switching occurs when the situation changes.

As the result of increasing immigration in the world, bilingualism is spreading.

diaglossia : the term, first used by Ferguson in 1959. refers to a sociolinguistic situation in which two different varieties of language co-exist in a speech community, each having a definite role to play.

The language has two varieties: the high variety (H) and the low variety (L). The two varieties have overt recognition in the community and have commonly known and used labels.

One of the most important features of dialossia is the specialization of function of the two varieties. Each variety is the appropriate language for certain situations with very slight overlapping.

Chapter 9: Language and Culture

24