Lingua e Traduzione Anglo-Americana 1 M
March 5, 2015
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Elements of sociolinguistics
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Elements of African American English
Language
1) Communicating information
2) Establishing and maintaining relationships
2) in establishing relationships one...
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creates contact
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conveys information about the speaker
> close interrelationship between language
and society
Dialect ?
= no clear-cut concept
> linguistic continuum
Language?
= definition based on social and political rather
than linguistic factors
(Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are the same
language; Mandarin and Cantonese are
considered Chinese dialects but they are
mutually unintelligible)
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“Linguistic intelligibility”: if two speakers cannot
understand one another, then they are speaking
different languages
Political and cultural factors:
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Autonomy (independence)
Heteronomy (dependence)
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Dutch and German : autonomous (though on
the Netherlands-Germany frontier they
understand each other)
Dialects of Germany, Austria, German-speaking
Switzerland : heteronomous to German
(speakers of those languages look to German
as their standard language)
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Discreteness: some varieties are perceived as
well-defined and self-evident
Continuity: Canadian English and American
English are perceived as two clearly separate
entities but...
Dialect =
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It refers to differences between kinds of
language which are differences of vocabulary
and grammar as well as pronunciation
also Standard English is a dialect! Dialect can
be used to apply to all varieties, not just to
nonstandard varieties
Standard English:
–
is also colloquial
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no universally acknowledged standard accent
One accent occurs only together with Standard
English: RP (received pronunciation)
RP (BBC English, Oxford English): non localized
accent; developed in English fee-paying 'Public
Schools', favored by the aristocracy and the uppermiddle-classes
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Standard English: status + prestige
all varieties are structured, complex, rulegoverned systems > value judgments are social
/r/
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rat, rich
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carry, sorry
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cart, car
= in British English /r/ is lost unless it occurs before
a vowel
= American English: /r/ is present, also in nonprevocalic position
More status...
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England: without /r/
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USA: with /r/
> in both cases the opposite is stigmatized as
'wrong' and 'ugly'
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Arbitrariness: value judgments about language
are completely arbitrary – there is nothing
inherent in non-vocalic /r/ that is good or bad,
right or wrong
Appropriateness (not 'correctness'): society
evaluates different linguistic varieties in different
ways
Language can be a very important factor in
group identification, group solidarity and the
signaling of difference
Language can be a very important factor in
group identification, group solidarity and the
signaling of difference
> Language can condition society =
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
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We perceive the world through language
Language constraints the way in which we
categorize and conceptualize different
phenomena
> one’s language shapes one’s view of reality
- language with tenses / language without tenses
> Society can condition language
- physical environment
- social environment
- values of a society
- physical environment :
= reindeer (several in Sami languages – one in
English)
- social environment :
(English:) Father, uncle, male cousin of a parent =
(Njamal:) mama
- values of a society :
Taboo words :
forbidden – powerful – desirable
Language is a social phenomenon
> in sociolinguistics no subject has been more
prominent than African American English
(or Black English or African American Verncula
English or Ebonics)
An experiment...
A group of people acting as judges were asked to listen to
2 different sets of speakers (without seeing them)
1) they all judged the first set as Blacks
2) they all judged the second set as White
...but...
they were completely wrong!
Yet, the speakers they have listened to were quite
exceptional; they were:
1) white people who lived amongst African Americans
2) black speakers who grew up in white areas with no
contact with other Blacks
The experiment shows that
1) Differences bt “white speech” and “black
speech” are easily perceived
2) The diagnostic differences are entirely the
result of learned behaviour (they do not
depend on the race of the speaker)
No racial physiological basis for linguistic
difference, but...
> ideas about 'natural' languages & race still
widespread
No racial physiological basis for linguistic
difference, but...
> ideas about 'natural' languages & race still
widespread
Language can be an important or even
essential concomitant of ethnic-group
membership
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Language = identifying characteristic
Ethnic-group differentiation is a type of social
differentiation and will often have linguistic
differentiation associated to it
= not diff.language but different VARIETY of the
SAME language
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Differences may originate and be perpetuated
as in social-class dialects: to keep a BARRIER
> lang: social constructs
> ethnic groups: fluid entities
(ex.: Serbo-Croatian)
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In other cases phonological and grammatical
differences develop naturally
(ex: Italians in NY: hypercorrection
Native speakers of Italian tend to use an [a]-type
vowel that is more open than the English. Their
children, in wishing to avoid this pronunciation, have
selected the highest variants available, i.e. the ones
most unlike the typically Italian vowel: the vowels in
bad or bag sound like the vowel in beard)
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Most striking example of linguistic ethnic-group
differentiation : speech of black and white
Americans
- Differences between white and black speech
were considered a sign of 'white superiority' for
a long time
- Sociolinguistic tells us that differences
between social dialects do no imply any
linguistic superiority
Origins of AAE : three hypotheses
1) most features derive from dialects of the
British isles (indentured servants?)
2) African origins
3) Creolist hypothesis
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Pidgin > Creole: developed in the Caribbean, hub of
the slave trade
Grammatical features
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No -s at the third singular:
he go
it come
she like
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Or reduplicated -s:
you is
> also in Caribbean creoles and British English
dialects of East Anglia
Grammatical features
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Absence of the copula in the present tense:
She real nice
They out there
He not American
(when the copula is exposed, it is always
present: I know what it is)
> English creoles of the Carribean
Grammatical features
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Invariant be to indicate habitual aspect :
he usually be around
sometime she be fighting
'You don't get tired o' Momma beatin' you?' Jerry
asked him one day.
'She don't really be mad,' Enoch explained lovingly.
'Dat's jes what she suppose to do. Sometime she be
laughin' as she be beatin' me.'
(Daniel Black, The Sacred Place. St. Martin's Press, 2007)
AAE:
1) He busy right now
2) He be busy
Standard English:
1) He's busy right now
2) Sometimes he's busy
Ungrammatical:
* She be busy right now
* He be my father
In Caribbean creoles the distribution of an event
through time (repeated, continuous, completed,
etc.) is of greater importance than tense
Also in the dialect of Dorset, UK:
he beat her [once]
he did beat her [he had the habit]
Grammar features
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Perfective done to indicate a completed
activity:
I done talked
He done read all the Little Bill books
Grammar features
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Remotive BIN (or stressed been):
You been paid your dues a long time ago
I been known him a long time
Grammar features
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Existential it:
it's a boy in my class named Joy
It ain't no heaven for you to go to
Grammar features
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Double negative:
Can't nobody do nothing about it
Grammar features
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Question inversion in indirect questions:
I asked May where did she go
I want to know did he come last night
again on origins
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1980s: Africanist position
Later: revision > there are retentions of British
isles dialects, for ex.:
Dat's a thing dat's got to be handled just so, do
[=otherwise] it'll kill you
(Z.N.Hurston)
do: otherwise > East Anglia
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First Blacks in America spoke an English Creole
origins
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Today: theory of a mix of the 3 possibilities:
African matrix + creole background + British
dialect influence