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Varieties of English
Week 1
Dr. Dimitra Vladimirou
Goldsmiths, University of London
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Who I am
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Dr Dimitra Vladimirou
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Lecturer in Linguistics
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Research Interests
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Impoliteness aggression and conflict in new media
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Critical approaches to academic discourse
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Narratives in translocal contexts
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How the module will run
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Lectures
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Seminars
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VLE
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https://learn.gold.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=708
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Principal Textbook
Mooney, Annabelle, Peccei,
Stillwell, Jean, LaBelle, Suzanne,
Henrkisen, Berit, Irwin, Anthea,
Pichler, Pia, Preece, Siân and
Soden, Satori (2011) Language,
Society & Power. An Introduction.
3nd Edition. London: Routledge.
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Overview of the Lecture
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The study of language/ why study language?
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Levels of linguistic description
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What does the study of sociolinguistics involve?
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When did it develop as an independent area of study?
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What is the relationship of sociolinguistics and discourse
analysis to other branches of linguistics?
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Main topics/ focus of this module
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Prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language
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refugees
illegal
immigrants
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expatriates
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Why study language? (1)
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Refugee
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Asylum seeker
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Illegal immigrant
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Immigrant
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Migrant
Language Matters
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Why study language? (2)
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Ferdinand de Saussure ‘in the lives of individuals and
societies, speech is more important than anything else. That
linguistics should be the prerogative of a few specialists
would be unthinkable – everyone is concerned with it one
way or another’ (1966: 7)
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Why study language? (3)
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Normal Fairclough: Emeritus Professor, Lancaster University
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Father of critical discourse analysis (CDA) (the Lancaster
School)
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Marxist approach in linguistics
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The role of power and control in linguistic representations
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‘to understand power, persuasion and how people live
together a conscious engagement with language is
necessary’
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Studying language
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How children acquire their first language (first language
acquisition)
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How languages are learned and what are the best teaching
strategies (second language acquisition/ applied linguistics)
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How language is processed in the brain (neurolinguistics)
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What does the study of large electronic bodies of texts tell us
about grammars (corpus linguistics)
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Studying language (2)
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Whether someone is guilty of a criminal offense (forensic
linguistics)
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How language varies according to different contexts/ how
meaning is created even if we say something different than
what we mean (e.g. It’s quite chilly in here!)
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The interplay between social factors (gender, age, social
class, ethnicity) and language use (sociolinguistics)
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Language as a system: Levels of
linguistic description
LANGUAGE IS A RULE-GOVERNED SYSTEM
Native speakers know how to use these rules but they are not
conscious of them
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Language as a system: Levels of
linguistic description
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phonetics: physical and physiological properties of sounds,
e.g. explaining the difference between the sound
represented by the letter l in the word leap and in the word
milk. These two different l-sounds are called ‘allophones’
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phonology: the systems of sounds which languages make use
of, e.g. the fact that the two sounds represented by l in leap
and milk count as instances of the same sound within the
system (in most dialects) of English.’.Ngst- in word initial
position. A unit in the phonology of a language is known as a
‘phoneme
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Language as a system: Levels of
linguistic description
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How do sounds function to distinguish meaning? site, side
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Is the following combination possible in English? ‘htr’
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Can we begin an English word with the sound: ŋ?
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Can we begin a Vietnamese word with the sound: ŋ?
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Language as a system: Levels of
linguistic description
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morphology: the minimal meaningful units in a language,
e.g. the word (= ‘lexical item’) milk has one morpheme, the
word milkman has two morphemes.
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mert- merts (noun)
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mert- merted, merting (verb)
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Language as a system: Levels of
linguistic description
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syntax: how morphemes are grouped into larger structures,
e.g. the structure of sentences such as he read it, the student I
was telling you about read the book I recommended for him;
should also account for syntactic ambiguity of strings such as
John saw the woman in the car with the blue bonnet
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Science knows is linguistics everybody (word order)
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Hierarchical organisation/ syntactic ambiguity
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Language as a system: Levels of
linguistic description
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semantics: investigates the meaning of a word/sentence;
ambiguities of meaning e.g. John went to the bank; different
components of word meaning, e.g. the ‘denotiational’ (basic)
and the ‘connotational’ (associative) meaning of words, e.g.
‘spinster’ vs. ‘bachelor’. It also investigates how new
meanings are created: e.g. ‘ladism’; ‘wicked’
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pragmatics: how particular meanings are worked out based
on the interaction between linguistic meanings and context,
e.g. how a hearer would infer the meaning of utterances like
‘that‘s the most fun I’ve ever had’ or ‘it’s hot in here’.
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Grammar
Component
Explanation
phonetics
The articulation and perception of
speech sounds
phonology
Patterning of speech sounds
morphology
Word formation
syntax
Sentence formation
semantics
meaning
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Competence vs. Performance
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Chomsky’s competence vs. performance
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Competence
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What speakers know when they know a language
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Finite set of rules- infinite utterances
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Structures that can be generated in a language
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Performance
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How speakers use their linguistic competence
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Competence vs. Performance
n  Linguistic
theory is concerned primarily with an ideal
speaker listener, in a completely homogeneous
speech community, who knows its language perfectly
and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant
conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts
of attention and interest and errors (random or
characteristic) (Chomsky 1965)
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Competence vs. Performance
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-Does an ideal speaker-hearer exist?
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-Is there a homogeneous speech community?
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-Does language serve any function other than
communication?
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-Should language exist if it has no function at all?
-Is there any linguistic structure that is not associated with
language use?
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Introducing communicative
competence
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Gumperz and Hymes 1964
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The Ethnography of Communication
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Sociolinguists are interested in what has been coined by Dell
Hymes (1974) as communicative competence.
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Communicative Competence
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Knowledge of the conventions by which people engage with
each other in social activity
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Appropriateness of language use (e.g. rules of turn taking,
influence of the social context)
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Communicative Competence
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Children acquire knowledge of a system of grammar, but also
knowledge of a system of its use. [they] ‘develop patterns of
the sequential use of language in conversation, address,
standard routines, and the like. In such acquisition resides the
child’s sociolinguistic competence (or more broadly
communicative competence), its ability to participate in its
society as not only a speaking, but also a communicative
member’ (Hymes 1974: 75).
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What is sociolinguistics?
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The study of:
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How individual speakers use language
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How groups of people use language differently across
different regions
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How groups of people use language differently depending
on their social class (social variation)
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How groups of people use language differently depending
on where they live (regional variation)
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How governments decide which codes will be recognised as
official
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What is sociolinguistics?
The study of language in its social context
The relations between language and society
‘Sociolinguistics is an attempt to find correlations between
social structure and linguistic structure and to observe any
changes that occur’ (Gumperz 1971)
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Questions sociolinguists ask
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Who uses a particular variety/ code?
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Who do they use it with? Are they aware of their choices?
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What is the role of social class, region, and gender in
language choices?
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Why are some codes/ forms of language considered ‘better’
than others?
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What is the relationship between networks of speakers and
the code they use?
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(adapted from Meyerhoff 2011:3)
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Topics in sociolinguistics
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Variation (social, regional)
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Diglossia/ bilingualism
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Social networks
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Identities
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Gender
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Linguistic politeness
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Language attitudes
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Multilingualism and language choice
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Language contact
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Sociolinguistics/ Discourse
analysis and related sub-fields
Critical discourse analysis
n  Pragmatics (not necessarily all branches of pragmatics)
n  Language and gender
n  Literacy studies
n  Language and the media
n  Language and identities
n  Sociophonetics
n  Anthropological linguistics
n  Any branch that studies language within its context/
language in use, language variation
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Types of grammar: Prescriptive vs.
descriptive
Prescriptive
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One form is more logical than
another
Appeal to classical forms
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Preference for older forms of
language
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Injunction against the use of
foreign words
Descriptive
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Studies and characterises the
language of specific groups of
people in a range of
situations, without bringing
any preconceived notions of
correctedness to the task or
favouring
(Mesthrie et al. 2009)
(see Mesthrie et al. 2009 for more details)
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Prescriptive Grammar: Issues to
consider
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Can language be viewed only in strict mathematical terms?
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Examples
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I’m not unhappy about this
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I can’t get no satisfaction
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Prescriptive Grammar: Issues to
consider
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Should one language match another older one?
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Example
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Consider split infinitives in English
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I am planning to finally finish my homework tomorrow
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Prescriptive Grammar: Issues to
consider
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Do languages remain the same throughout time?
Should languages adopt loans from other languages or not?
Can anti-prescriptive discourse in fact promote a form of
prescriptivism?
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Critical responses to prescriptive
and descriptive
approaches to language
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There is nothing wrong in wanting standards of excellence in
the use of language. Rather what is wrong is the narrow
definition of excellence as mere superficial
‘correctedness’ (Cameron 1995: 115)
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Terminological distinctions
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Accent: variation at the level of pronunciation (phonetics and
phonology, indexing geographical origin, also related to
social factors or age
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Dialect: variation at the level of pronunciation,
morphosyntactic structure, vocabulary
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Terminological distinctions
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Vernacular: ‘the language a person grows up with and uses in
everyday life in ordinary, commonplace, social
interactions’ (Wardhaugh 2010: 24) (often has negative
connotations)
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Usually used to refer neutrally to the linguistic variety used
by a speaker or a community as the medium for everyday and
home interaction. In some linguistic work the term may be
associated with the notion of non-standard norms.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBzuFzYVlcI
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References
Cameron, Deborah (2005) Verbal Hygiene. New York:
Routledge.
n  Hymes, Dell (1974) Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An
Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia. University of
Pennsylvania Press.
n  Mesthrie, Rajend, Joan Swann, Andrea Deumert and William
L. Leap (2005) Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
n  Meyerhoff, Miriam (2011) Introducing Sociolinguistics. New
York: Routledge.
n  Wardhaugh, Ronald (2010) An Introduction to
Sociolinguistics. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. ; Malden, MA :
Wiley-Blackwell.
n  Yule, George (1996) The Study of Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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