Language and Society II

1
Language and Society II
2
8.2.1.6 Ethnic dialect An ethnic dialect is a
social dialect of a language that is mainly
spoken by a less privileged population. Black
English is an ethnic dialect of English.
3
Black English is often regarded as bad, poor
or uneducated English. Such an evaluation is
only social. The opinion shows the social
prejudice against the Black people.
4
This biased opinion has no linguistic basis.
Linguistically, there is nothing inherent in
Black English that makes Black English inferior
to any other varieties.
5
Black English has its distinctive features in its
phonological, morphological and syntactic systems
One of the most prominent phonological
characteristics of Black English is the frequent
simplification of consonant clusters at the end
of words when one of the two consonants is an
alveolar /t/, /d/, /s/, or /z/.
6
Words Black English Standard English Passed
/pas/ /past/ Past /pas/
/past/ Desk /des/ /desk/
7
Syntactically, Black English tends to delete
various forms of the copula "be"
8
Black English Standard English Mary
interesting. Mary is interesting.
Socks mine. The socks are mine.
9
Besides, the use of double negation constructions
is the characteristic of Black English, for
example He don't know nothing.
10
In Black English, it means He doesn't know
anything. The double negation rule in Black
English is systematic.Whenever the verb is
negated, the indefinite pronouns "something",
"somebody", and "some" become the negative
indefinites "nothing", "nobody", and "none".
11
8.2.3 Register Some linguists use the term
register in a restricted sense, referring two
the variety of language related to ones
occupation.
12
Halliday believes that language varies as its
function varies it differs in different
situations. The type of language which is
selected as appropriate to the type of situation
is a register.
13
Halliday distinguishes three social variables
that determine the register field of
discourse(??), tenor of discourse(??) and mode of
discourse(??).
14
Field of discourse(??) refers to what is going
on to the area of operation of the language
activity. It is concerned with the purpose and
subject-matter of communication. It answers the
questions of about what communication takes
place.
15
Field of discourse may be non-technical or
technical shopping, game playing and a personal
letter are non-technical while specialized fields
are technical. The field of discourse determines
to a great extent the vocabulary to be used in
communication.
16
Tenor of discourse(??) refers to the role of
relationship in the situation who the
participants in the communication groups are and
in what relationship they stand to each other.
17
Mode of discourse (??)mainly refers to the means
of communication. It is concerned with how
communication is carried out.
18
Any instance of communication can be analyzed in
terms of these three dimensions For example, a
lecture on biology in a technical college could
be identified as Field scientific
(biological) Tenor teacher-students ( formal,
polite) Mode oral (academic
lecturing)
19
The three variables are the features of the
context of situation which determine the features
of language appropriate to the situation, i.e.
register.
20
8.5 Diglossia and bilingualism Diglossia
Diglossia, advanced by Ferguson in 1959, usually
describes a situation in which two very different
varieties of language co-exist in a speech
community, each with a distinct range of purely
social function and appropriate for certain
situations.
21
Usually, one is a more standard variety called
the high variety or H-variety , which is used for
more formal situations or as a written form of
communication such as in government offices, mass
media, educational field and churches.
22
The other is a non-prestige variety called the
low variety or L-variety, which is used in
colloquial and other informal situations such as
among family members, friends, or the
instructions by the superiors to inferiors.
23
Diglossia used to occur in China when Classical
Chinese Wen Yan Wen and its spoken form Bai
Hua Wen co-existed and their social functions
are clearly distinguished, with the former as the
H-variety and the latter as the L-variety.
24
Diglossia also includes the situations in which
two varieties involved are not genetically
related. For example, in Paraguay, Spanish is a
H-variety while Guarani is a L-variety.
25
Bilingualism Bilingualism refers to a linguistic
situation in which two standard languages are
used either by an individual or by a group of
speakers. A community cannot be described as
bilingual unless a sufficient number of its
members regularly use two languages.
26
Canada, in which both French and English are
official languages, is a typical example of
official bilingualism.
27
Perfect bilingualism, however, is rare. Most
bilingual speakers only approximate to perfect
bilingualism by being equally competent in both
languages over a fairly wide range of situations.

28
Most bilingual communities have one thing in
common a fairly clear functional division of the
two languages. A variety may be used to talk
informally with other members of the family at
home about domestic matters while the other
variety may be reserved for communication in
educational domain.
29
A bilingual speaker often uses two languages
alternatively, a speech situation known as
code-switching.
30
Code switch may occur in three situations1) a
change in topic 2) one speaker uses one language
and the other speaker answers in a different
language3) the change of a language to another
one in the middle even of a sentence.