English Language Variation Theories

- When people speaking two different languages have to communicate, two things happen

1) A basic language (pidgin) develops, with simple grammar and limited vocabulary

2) A generation later, this simplified language gains the normal complexity of every human language and then becomes creole language

- As more and more contact with the dominant European country becomes inevitable, these pidgin languages developed and became drawn towards the European language, though never becoming identical with it due to the influence of original African languages and dialects

- The process of development is known as creolisation, and the languages that develop into the mother tongues of a community are known as creoles

- The creole language spoken by Afro-Caribbeans is sometimes called patois

- Proposed four conversational maxims that arise from the pragmatics of natural language

1) Quantity - where one tries to be as informative as possible, gives as much info as is needed, and no more

2) Quality - where one tries to be truthful, and doesn't give information that is false or not supported by evidence

3) Reation/Relevance - where one tries to be relevant

4) Manner - where one tries to be as clear, brief, and orderly as one can, and avoids bscurity and ambiguity 

- People flout these maxims

- Przedlacka studied the sociophonics of Estuary English, studying 14 variables, looking at differences among men and women, and two social classes, in several south eastern counties

- She compared Estuary English and recordings of RP and Cockney speakers and noticed:

 - Vowel fronting = The word 'blue' spoken in Buckinghamshire has front realisation of the vowel, while other front realisations can be heard in 'boots', pronounced by a Kent female and roof (Essex female). The vowel in 'butter' has a back realisation in the speech of an Essex speaker, but can be realised a front vowel, as in 'dust', both uttered by girls from Buckinghamshire

Glottalling = glottalling of syllable non-initial isn't the main variant in Estuary. The word 'feet' spoken in Kent, exemplifies it. Intervocalic t glottalling is virtually absent from the Estuary data

L-Vocalisation = The Dark L, which is the usual RP realisation, is also present in Estuary, alongside clear tokens 

- Study showed there's no homogeneity in the accents spoken in the area, there was little differences betwen classes, females use syllable non-inital t glottalling, th fronting in teenage speech in the Home Counties - shows Estuary is an umbrella term covering many accents

- Investigated 10 speech sounds that had different pronunciations in MK

(ou) as in 'coat', 'moan' - the second part of the diphthong can sound like RP 'kite' or 'mine'

(u:) as in 'move', 'shoe' - can be fronted to a vowel close to French tu or German grun

- Children given spot the difference pictures (spontaneous speech)

- Children front their vowels more than adults - a characteristic of the MK dialect

- Vowel (u:) also fronted by young speakers

- Older children's speech represent the characteristics of the 'new speech community' developing in MK

- This group does most of the sociolinguistic work in new dialect formation

- Found the young men that sought to identify themselves as Vineyarders used a pronunciation associated with conservative and characteristically Vineyard speakers - the Chilmark fishermen

- A small group of fishermen began to exaggerate a tendency already existing in their speech subconsciously to distinguish themselves as an independent social group with superior status to the tourists 

- Looked at the 'g' sound in words like 'running' and 'walking' 

- In standard English, the sound -ng is a velar nasal, whereas in Norwich, it's pronouned 'walkin' or 'talkin'

- The more careful the speech, the more likely people would say walking 

- Walkin occured more in men's speech 

- Women thought they used walking more than they actually did 

- Men thought they used walkin more than they actually did 

- Men and women count the giving and receiving of love differently

- Men do less frequent, but big acts of love, whereas women give small but frequent love 

- Women tend to keep a points sytem that men aren't aware of 

- Women would rather have small but regular love

- When it comes to stress, men withdraw until they find a solution to the problem, whereas women tend to have a natural reaction to talk about issues 

- This leads to men retreating as the woman tries to grow closer

- The 'wave' is the natural cycle for women that is centred on their ability to give to people 

- When they feel full of love and energy, their wave is stable, but when they don't get the same amount of love and attention in return, their wave begins to grow until it crashes

- Accommodation involves selecting linguistic alternatives to establish solidarity or distance from the interlocutor

- We need to accept and explore factors including class, the topic of conversation, and the participants in the conversation, rather than just looking to gender as the cause of all variation

- Comparing Jocks and the working class by looking at the phonological variant sounds 'ae', 'uh' and 'ay' - working class are closer to the vernacular language, whilst Jocks use more standard forms 

- Male and female findings suggest that language variable use has more to do with social groupings

- Has led may researchers to treat gender as secondary

- We adjust our speech to accommodate the person we're addressing

- Convergence and fivergence occurs when people's speech styles move further apart which acts to emphasise the difference between people

- Believes the standards of English are falling 

- Language is evolving and there's more slang, so young people speak in a different way to the older generation

- Believes standard English grammar should be taught in schools

- Contradicts himself by rejecting the idea that standardisation in history was an attempy to force this way of speaking among all English speakers

- Aims to understland why Glaswegian appears to have English features like th fronting, r-vocalisation and L-vocalisation

- Argues that it's based on the influence of the media, like Eastenders

- Challenges existing sociolinguistic theories on how a sound change spreads - shows the influence and effects of the media on language

- Listened to speech patterns in New York

- Went to Saks, Macy's, and Kleins, and listened to how 'r' was pronounced in "fourth floor"

- Saks = higher end, Kleins = lower end

- The preconsonantal r was seen as more pretigous, so expected to be used more in Saks 

- Saks used it most, but Macy's used it when they were asked to repeat what they said 

- Investigated poor working class disricts with high unemployment in Ireland 

- She took part in the life of each community as 'a friend of a friend'

- Gave each community a Network Strength Score to see whether closer knit communities spoke differently to less close ones 

- The score was correlated with the use of nernacular or non-standard forms 

- People whose speech revealed high usage of vernacular forms or non-standard forms were found to belong to tight-knit social networks 

- Women use less vernacular/non-standard forms as they belong to less dense social networks

- Low unemployment showed less tight knit communities as people were forced to work outside of the community 

- Women went to work all together, so lived and worked together - belonging to a dense and multiplex network 

- Used to gain data about the relationship between use of grammatical variales and adherence to peer group culture in Reading 

- Girls who didn't have a positive attitude = carrying weapons, fighting, crime, certain jobs, dress, and hairstyles, and use of swearing (Group A)

- People who approved of these features and activities (Group B)

- Those who conformed to the social conventions of the group also used the linguistic standards of the group

- The distinction between the restricted code and the elaborated code. Differences include:

1) Syntax is more formally correct in the elaborate code, but looser in the restricted code e.g. there are more subordinate clauses in the elaborated code and fewer unfinished sentences 

2) There are more logical connective like 'if' and 'unless' in the elaborated code, whereas the restricted code uses more words of simple coordination like 'and' and 'but'

3) There is more originality in the elaborated code; there aremore cliches in the restricted code

4) Reference is more explicit in the elaborated code, more implicit in the restricted code e.g. restricted code uses more pronouns

5) The elaborated code is used to convey facts and abstract ideas, the restricted code attitude and feeling

- Young people growing up in London surrounded by a mixture of second-language English will speak in a new variety - Multicultural London English

- Groups of students from Anglo-Saxon background, along with Arabs, South Americans, Ghanaian and Portuguese descent all spoke with the same dialect 

- The dialect is heavy with Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean inflections, clipped words (unlike Cockney which stretches vowels), words like "creps", "blud" and "sket" are Jamaican in origin

- "People say [my cousin from central London] sounds like a black boy, but he just speaks like a London boy" - suggests people are beginning to sound the same regardless of their ethnicity 

- MLE has spread through immigration, population mobility, and a wave of London garage and grime stars

- The rise of MLE is happening when there's a trend towards dialect levelling in the UK - where people in different parts of the country sounds more like each other and their accents die down