Language Variation and Stylistics

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Q1. How would you explain the differences between local dialects and social
dialects? Discuss in detail with suitable examples.
In sociolinguistics, a variety of speech associated with a particular social class or occupational
group within a society. Also known associolect. Douglas Biber distinguishes two main kinds
of dialects in linguistics:"geographic dialects are varieties associated with speakers living in a
particular location, while social dialects are varieties associated with speakers belonging to a
given demographic group (e.g., women versus men, or different social classes)" (Dimensions of
Register Variation, 1995).
The term dialect (from the ancient Greek word dilektos, "discourse", from di,
"through" and leg, "I speak") is used in two distinct ways. One usagethe more common
among linguistsrefers to a varietyof a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of
the language's speakers.[1] The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a
dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. [2] A dialect that is associated
with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect, a dialect that is associated with a
particular ethnic group can be termed as ethnolect, and a regional dialect may be termed a
regiolect.[citation needed]According to this definition, any variety of a language constitutes "a dialect",
including any standard varieties.
The other usage refers to a language that is socially subordinated to a regional or national
standard language, often historically cognate to the standard, but not derived from it.[3] In this
sense, the standard language is not itself considered a dialect.
A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology,
including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation (including
prosody, or just prosody itself), the term accentmay be preferred over dialect. Other types of
speech
varieties
include jargons,
which
are
characterized
by
differences
in lexicon (vocabulary); slang; patois; pidgins; and argots.
The particular speech patterns used by an individual are termed an idiolect.
A standard dialect (also known as a standardized dialect or "standard language") is a dialect
that is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include government recognition
or designation; presentation as being the "correct" form of a language in schools; published
grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a correct spoken and written form; and an
extensive formal literature that employs that dialect (prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.). There may
be multiple standard dialects associated with a single language. For example, Standard American
English, Standard British English, Standard Canadian English, Standard Indian English,
Standard Australian English, and Standard Philippine English may all be said to be standard
dialects of the English language.

A nonstandard dialect, like a standard dialect, has a complete vocabulary, grammar, and syntax,
but is usually not the beneficiary of institutional support. Examples of a nonstandard English
dialect are Southern American English, Western Australian English, Scouse and Tyke.
The Dialect Test was designed by Joseph Wright to compare different English dialects with each
other.

Examples and Observations:

"Even though we use the term 'social dialect' or 'sociolect' as a label for the alignment of
a set of language structures with the social position of a group in a status hierarchy, the social
demarcation of language does not exist in a vacuum. Speakers are simultaneously affiliated with
a number of different groups that include region, age, gender, and ethnicity, and some of these
other factors may weigh heavily in the determination of the social stratification of language
variation. For example, among older European-American speakers in Charleston, South
Carolina, the absence of r in words such as bear and court is associated with aristocratic, highstatus groups (McDavid 1948) whereas in New York City the same pattern of r-lessness is
associated with working-class, low-status groups (Labov 1966). Such opposite social
interpretations of the same linguistic trait over time and space point to the arbitrariness of the
linguistic symbols that carry social meaning. In other words, it is not really the meaning of what
you say that counts socially, but who you are when you say it."
(Walt Wolfram, "Social Varieties of American English." Language in the USA, ed. by E. Finegan.
Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Language and Gender

"Across all social groups in Western societies, women generally use
more standard grammatical forms than men and so, correspondingly, men use
more vernacular forms than women. . . .
"It is worth noting that although gender generally interacts with other social factors, such as
status, class, the role of the speaker in an interaction, and the (in)formality of the context, there
are cases where the gender of the speaker seems to be the most influential factor accounting
for speech patterns. In some communities, a woman's social status and her gender interact to
reinforce differential speech patterns between women and men. In others, different factors
modify one another to produce more complex patterns. But in a number of communities, for
some linguistic forms, gender identity seems to be a primary factor accounting for speech
variation. The gender of the speaker can override social class differences, for instance, in
accounting for speech patterns. In these communities, expressing masculine or feminine identity
seems to be very important."
(Janet Holmes, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 4th ed. Routledge, 2013)
Standard
British
English
as
a
Sociolect
"The standard variety of a given language, e.g. British English, tends to be the upper
class sociolect of a given central area or regiolect. Thus Standard British English used to be the

English of the upper classes (also called the Queen's English or Public School English) of the
Southern,
more
particularly,
London
area."
(Ren Dirven and Marjolyn Verspoor, Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics. John
Benjamins, 2004)

LOL-SPEAK

"When two friends created the site I Can Has Cheezburger?, in 2007, to share cat photos with
funny,misspelled captions, it was a way of cheering themselves up. They probably werent
thinking about long-term sociolinguistic implications. But seven years later, the 'cheezpeep'
community is still active online, chattering away in LOLspeak, its own distinctive variety of
English. LOLspeak was meant to sound like the twisted language inside a cats brain, and has
ended up resembling a down-South baby talk with some very strange characteristics, including
deliberate misspellings (teh, ennyfing), unique verb forms (gotted, can haz), and word
reduplication (fastfastfast). It can be difficult to master. One user writes that it used to take at
least 10 minutes to read adn unnerstand a paragraph. (Nao, itz almost like a sekund
lanjuaje.)
"To a linguist, all of this sounds a lot like a sociolect: a language variety thats spoken within a
social group, like Valley Girlinfluenced ValTalk or African American Vernacular English. (The
word dialect, by contrast, commonly refers to a variety spoken by a geographic groupthink
Appalachian or Lumbee.) Over the past 20 years, online sociolects have been springing up
around the world, from Jejenese in the Philippines to Ali G Language, a British lingo inspired by
the Sacha Baron Cohen character."
(Britt Peterson, "The Linguistics of LOL." The Atlantic, October 2014)

Slang
as
a
Social
Dialect
"If your kids are unable to differentiate among a nerd ('social outcast'), a dork ('clumsy oaf') and
a geek ('a real slimeball'), you might want to establish your expertise by trying these more recent
(and in the process of being replaced) examples of kiduage: thicko (nice play on sicko), knob,
spasmo (playground
life
is
cruel),burgerbrain and dappo.
"Professor Danesi, who is author of Cool: The Signs and Meanings of Adolescence, treats kids'
slang as asocial dialect that he calls 'pubilect.' He reports that one 13-year-old informed him
about 'a particular kind of geek known specifically as a leem in her school who was to be viewed
as
particularly
odious.
He
was
someone
"who
just
wastes
oxygen."'"
(William Safire, "On Language: Kiduage." The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 8, 1995)

Q2. Define the term register within the theory of language variation and make
up your own examples of register use in English. Discuss their chief lexical
and grammatical meanings.
In linguistics, one of many styles or varieties of language determined by such factors as social
occasion, purpose, and audience. Also called stylistic variation. More generally, register is used

to indicate degrees of formality in language use. The different registers or language styles that
we use are sometimes called codes.

Examples:

"It fascinates me how differently we all speak in different circumstances. We have levels
of formality, as in our clothing. There are very formal occasions, often requiring written English:
the job application or the letterto the editor--the dark-suit, serious-tie language, with everything
pressed and the lint brushed off. There is our less formal out-in-the-world language--a more
comfortable suit, but still respectable. There is language for close friends in the evenings, on
weekends--blue-jeans-and-sweat-shirt language, when its good to get the tie off. There is family
language, even more relaxed, full of grammatical short cuts, family slang, echoes of old jokes
that have become intimate shorthand--the language of pajamas and uncombed hair. Finally, there
is the language with no clothes on; the talk of couples--murmurs, sighs, grunts--language at its
least
self-conscious,
open,
vulnerable,
and
primitive."
(Robert MacNeil, Wordstruck: A Memoir. Viking, 1989)
Language
Styles
"Every native speaker is normally in command of several different language styles, sometimes
calledregisters, which are varied according to the topic under discussion, the formality of the
occasion,
and
the
medium
used
(speech, writing,
or sign).
"Adapting language to suit the topic is a fairly straightforward matter. Many activities have a
specializedvocabulary. If you are playing a ball game, you need to know that 'zero' is a duck in
cricket, love in tennis, and nil in soccer. If you have a drink with friends in a pub, you need to
know
greetings
such
as: Cheers!
Here's
to
your
good
health!

"Other types of variation are less clearcut. The same person might utter any of the following
three sentences, depending on the circumstances:
I
should
be
grateful
if
you
would
make
less
noise.
Please
be
quiet.
Shut up!
Here the utterances range from a high or formal style, down to a low or informal one--and the choice
of
a
high
or
low
style
is
partly
a
matter
of
politeness."
(Jean Aitchison, Teach Yourself Linguistics. Hodder, 2003)

Participants
in
an
Exchange
"Like variation in our manner of dress, stylistic variations in language cannot be judged as
appropriate or not without reference to the participants in the interchange (i.e., speaker and
listener or reader and writer). For example, you would not speak to a 5-year-old child, an
intimate friend, and a professor using the same style of speech. Using the
term eleemosynary 'charitable' would probably be inappropriate for the child and the friend,
while using number one 'urinate' would probably be inappropriate for the friend and the

professor."
(Frank Parker and Kathryn Riley, Linguistics for Non-Linguists, 3rd ed. Allyn & Bacon, 1999)
Register Features
"Register features are core lexical and grammatical characteristics found to some extent in
almost all texts and registers. . . .
"Any linguistic feature having a functional or conventional association can be distributed in a
way that distinguishes among registers. Such features come from many linguistic classes,
including: phonological features (pauses, intonation patterns), tense and aspect markers,
pronouns and pro-verbs, questions, nominal forms (nouns, nominalizations, gerunds), passive
constructions, dependent clauses (complement clauses, relative clauses, adverbial subordination),
prepositional phrases, adjectives, adverbs, measures of lexical specificity (once-occurring words,
type-token ratio), lexical classes (hedges, emphatics, discourse particles, stance markers),
modals, specialized verb classes (speech act verbs, mental process verbs), reduced forms
(contractions, that-deletions), co-ordination, negation, and grammatical devices for structuring
information (clefts, extraposition).
"A comprehensive linguistic analysis of a register requires consideration of a representative
selection of linguistic features. Analyses of these register features are necessarily quantitative,
because the associated register distinctions are based on differences in the relative distribution of
linguistic features."
(Douglas Biber, Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison. Cambridge
University Press, 1995)