Philippine Normal University

The Indigenous Peoples Education Hub

Northern Luzon Campus
Alicia, Isabela

Course: Psycholinguistic and Sociological Foundations of Language

Student: Charissa E. Calinggangan
Instructor: Boyet Batang, Ph. D.

Final exam in Sociolinguistics

1. Define the following by way of examples:

 Linguistic repertoire - It is the spoken or written styles, which are available to a
community, and the members of this community select the proper style to fulfill
various communicative needs from the repertoire. An expert defined repertoire
(repertory) as “a term used in sociolinguistics to refer to range of languages or
varieties of a language available for use by the speaker, each which enables
him to perform a particular social role.” For example, the size and range of their
vocabulary, all the different structures they can use, and the different kinds of
text they can understand or construct. Another example, the linguistic repertoire
of a speech community includes all linguistic varieties (registers, dialects, styles,
and accents) which exist in a certain community. In monolingual speech
communities this repertoire is made up of varieties of one single language. In
multilingual speech communities (e.g. Switzerland or India) it may be comprised
of several languages and may include linguistic varieties of all these languages.
This comes from a study titled THE LINGUISTIC REPERTOIRE OF A YOUNG ADULT, AND A
MIDDLE ADULT OF A NGAJU DAYAKNESE FAMILY IN CENTRAL KALIMANTAN:
“In my observation, the teenagers tend to use Banjarese language in daily
conversation. They are more casual than the young adult people. At school, they
usually use the Banjarese language when they talk with their friends even though
their friends are also Ngaju Dayaknese people. This not only happens at school, but
sometimes also happens at home. They also use Banjarese language when they talk
to their family members. Like the teenagers, the young adults often have interaction
with the Banjarese at the market places, too. However, based on my observation,
the young adults more often use the Ngaju Dayaknese language and Indonesian
language than Banjarese language in daily conversation. For example, at the office
and in formal situation they use Indonesian language and they use Dayaknese
language when they talk at home and in informal situations such as when they meet
their colleague at the mall. They use Banjarese language when they buy vegetables
at the traditional markets. The young adults tend to use vernacular language when
they are in informal situations.”
 Code switching – It is the practice of moving back and forth between
two languages or between two dialects or registers of the same language.
Example:
"In a relatively small Puerto Rican neighborhood in New Jersey, some
members freely used code-switching styles and extreme forms of borrowing both
in everyday casual talk and in more formal gatherings. Other local residents
were careful to speak only Spanish with a minimum of loans on formal occasions,
reserving code-switching styles for informal talk. Others again spoke mainly
English, using Spanish or code-switching styles only with small children or with
neighbors." (John J. Gumperz and Jenny Cook-Gumperz, "Introduction:
Language and the Communication of Social Identity.” Language and Social
Identity. Cambridge University. Press, 1982)
In the Philippines, a common code switching is Taglish, which involves
switching between Tagalog and English. Taglish is used frequently in the popular
media and by many government officials. Code-switching also occurs with
regional languages of the Philippines as well as Taglocano, wherein switching
happens between Tagalog and Ilocano.

 Polyglossia - It refers to the coexistence of multiple languages in the same area.

An example of this is Jones, a municipality in Isabela which actually has different
languages including Ilocano, Itawis, Bisaya, and even Ibanag. Another is in Italy,
wherein Italian, English, Spanish, French, Romanian, and German were the
languages used by the people who stay there.

 Vernacular – It is the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a

particular country or region; or simply, it is the everyday speech of the people.
The vernacular of the people of Jones is Ilocano being the dialect spoken by
majority of the Jonesians.

 Regional dialect - a form of a language that is spoken in a particular areas and

that uses some of its own words, grammar, and pronunciations; a regional variety
of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and
pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a
single language. In Region 2, Ilocano can be considered as the regional dialect
because it is the most commonly used dialect all throughout the region.
Furthermore, the Philippines has 8 major dialects which include Bikol, Cebuano,
Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, and
Waray. The language being taught all over the Philippines is Tagalog and
English. The Cebuano dialect originated in Cebu, which is in the Visayas.
However, it spread to neighboring islands and in the northern and eastern parts
of Mindanao. This was probably facilitated by the American and Spanish policies
 to christianize Mindanao. Meanwhile, the Tagalog and Bikol dialect (Bikolandia)
boundaries seem to remain predominantly they were centuries ago. This map
only shows the dialect majority in each region. Actually, southeastern Mindanao
is populated with Ilocano, Tagalog, and other dialects, but Cebuano has
become the dominant dialect in that area. The Ilocano dialect has spread out
from its origin in the western coast (Ilocandia), which was also probably
facilitated by Spanish and American policies.

 Gender-preferential features – they refer to certain features which have already

been suspected to bear a significant relation to gender. In a research, women
and men do not speak in exactly the same way as each other in any
community.
- An extreme example  Amazonian Indians; men must marry outside their
own tribe so the men and women in the community speak different
languages
- A less extreme example  Gros Ventre North American Indian tribe; ‘bread’ is
[kja'tsa] for women and [dʒa'tsa] for men
- Traditional / conservative styles of Japanese  women have to prefix nouns
with o- , a marker of polite or formal style
- Modern Japanese  such distinctions more related to formality than to
gender; ‘men’s’ forms casual and coarse.
- Some languages signal the gender of the speaker in the pronoun system.
Again, in Japanese: ore (‘I’) used only by men, boku used mainly by men;
women traditionally expected to use more formal atashi, watashi and
watakushi
- Western urban communities  social roles overlap, speech forms also
overlap. Different quantities or frequencies of the same forms. Collected data
(for English) shows that women use more –ing [iŋ] and fewer -in’ [in]
pronunciations
- In Canada, the pronunciation of [l] in chunks such as il y a and il fait differs
between women and men
- In Australia, some men and women pronounce the initial sound in thing as [f],
but men do it more than women.

 Apparent – time hypothesis is a sociolinguistic construct, which assumes that

most features of language are acquired during childhood and remain relatively
unchanged throughout an individual's lifetime once that individual is past a
certain age. Therefore, a speaker’s speech is a reflection of speech patterns
acquired during language learning as a child. The apparent-time hypothesis can
be considered to be a form of synchronic analysis, where language is analyzed
for a particular moment in time, in contrast to diachronic analysis, also known
 as historical linguistics. A study reveals that, “while some age-correlated lexical
variables show stability over speakers' lifetimes, suggesting ongoing change,
others show a change in progress over speakers' lifetimes. However, the nature of
individual change is generally found to be not the rejection of new variants by
older speakers associated with the age-grading model, but late adoption of
new variants by adults who learned older variants as children.” Canadian
linguist J.K. Chambers, conducted a study applying the apparent-time
hypothesis. The study, carried out in central Canada, examined the
sociolinguistic variable (wh), where the unvoiced labiovelar glide /hw/ loses
phonemic status and merges with the corresponding voiced glide /w/. In this
study, the oldest subjects seem to indicate a stable period for this variable, both
the 70- to 79-year-olds and those over 80 used the voiced variant where the
unvoiced was "expected" 38.3 and 37.7% of the time, respectively. Each
subsequent younger age cohort (10 years) shows a greater percentage of /w/
usage, with those 20–29 using /w/ 87.6% of the time and the teenagers using it
90.6% of the time. Notice that the deltas between the oldest two groups and
between the youngest two groups are relatively small, 0.6% and 3.0%. Between
these two extremes the rate of change between the groups is quite high,
approximately 10% per age cohort. This pattern can be described as an initial
stable period, followed by a period of rapid change, and a tailing off as the
change nears completion. This S-curve pattern has been identified as
characteristic for many types of linguistic changes.

2. Language change is influenced by social status, gender, and interaction. Discuss

and illustrate two of these factors.

-One factor of language change is interaction. In certain areas of the world, English has
been used as a lexifier, that is, a language which is a source of words, for varieties of
language called pidgins. A pidgin, or a contact language, is a mixture of two other
languages, created usually because of trading purposes between peoples who do not
share a common means of communication. English-based pidgins are used in India,
Cameron, and Nigeria, for example. Such varieties of language often have limited
vocabulary, poorly developed grammar and are used only when other types of
communication are impossible. When a pidgin begins to be used by a larger of people,
its vocabulary and grammar expand, and it starts to be used in a wider context. As it is
developed as a contact language, pidgin dos not have any native speakers, yet if it is
used on a wider scale, children of people using it might acquire it as their mother
tongue. When such a language starts to be used by a second generation of speakers, it
is called a creole.
-Another factor is gender. Many researches point out how gender influences language
change. In Living Language (p. 222), George Keith and John Shuttleworth record
suggestions that:
  women - talk more than men, talk too much, are more polite, are
indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag, ask more questions, support each other,
are more co-operative, whereas
 men - swear more, don't talk about emotions, talk about sport more, talk about
women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, are
competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority,
give more commands, interrupt more.

Furthermore, Robin Lakoff, in 1975, published an influential account of women's

language. This was the book Language and Woman's Place. In a related
article, Woman's language, she published a set of basic assumptions about what
marks out the language of women. Among these are claims that women:

 Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”,and so on.
 Use (super)polite forms: “Would you mind...”,“I'd appreciate it if...”, “...if you don't
mind”.
 Use tag questions: “You're going to dinner, aren't you?”
 Speak in italics: intonational emphasis equal to underlining words - so, very, quite.
 Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, and so on
 Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and
clear enunciation.
 Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more often.
 Have a special lexicon: women use more words for things like colours, men for
sports.
 Use question intonation in declarative statements: women make declarative
statements into questions by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a
statement, expressing uncertainty. For example, “What school do you attend?
Eton College?”
 Use “wh-” imperatives: (such as, “Why don't you open the door?”)
 Speak less frequently
 Overuse qualifiers: (for example, “I Think that...”)
 Apologise more: (for instance, “I'm sorry, but I think that...”)
 Use modal constructions: (such as can, would, should, ought - “Should we turn
up the heat?”)
 Avoid coarse language or expletives
 Use indirect commands and requests: (for example, “My, isn't it cold in here?” -
really a request to turn the heat on or close a window)
 Use more intensifiers: especially so and very (for instance, “I am so glad you
came!”)
 Lack a sense of humour: women do not tell jokes well and often don't
understand the punch line of jokes.

Below are more evidences how gender difference really affect language change:
Status versus support
Men grow up in a world in which conversation is competitive - they seek to achieve the
upper hand or to prevent others from dominating them. For women, however, talking is
often a way to gain confirmation and support for their ideas. Men see the world as a
place where people try to gain status and keep it. Women see the world as “a network
of connections seeking support and consensus”.

Independence versus intimacy

Women often think in terms of closeness and support, and struggle to preserve intimacy.
Men, concerned with status, tend to focus more on independence. These traits can
lead women and men to starkly different views of the same situation. Professor Tannen
gives the example of a woman who would check with her husband before inviting a
guest to stay - because she likes telling friends that she has to check with him. The man,
meanwhile, invites a friend without asking his wife first, because to tell the friend he must
check amounts to a loss of status. (Often, of course, the relationship is such that an
annoyed wife will rebuke him later).

Advice versus understanding

Deborah Tannen claims that, to many men a complaint is a challenge to find a
solution:
“When my mother tells my father she doesn't feel well, he invariably offers to take her to
the doctor. Invariably, she is disappointed with his reaction. Like many men, he is
focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.”

Information versus feelings

A young man makes a brief phone call. His mother overhears it as a series of grunts.
Later she asks him about it - it emerges that he has arranged to go to a specific place,
where he will play football with various people and he has to take the ball. A young
woman makes a phone call - it lasts half an hour or more. The mother asks about it - it
emerges that she has been talking “you know” “about stuff”. The conversation has
been mostly grooming-talk and comment on feelings.

Historically, men's concerns were seen as more important than those of women, but
today this situation may be reversed so that the giving of information and brevity of
speech are considered of less value than sharing of emotions and elaboration. From
the viewpoint of the language student neither is better (or worse) in any absolute sense.

Orders versus proposals

Women often suggest that people do things in indirect ways - “let's”, “why don't we?”
or “wouldn't it be good, if we...?” Men may use, and prefer to hear, a direct imperative.

Conflict versus compromise

“In trying to prevent fights,” writes Professor Tannen “some women refuse to oppose the
will of others openly. But sometimes it's far more effective for a woman to assert herself,
even at the risk of conflict. ”

This situation is easily observed in work-situations where a management decision seems

unattractive - men will often resist it vocally, while women may appear to accede, but
complain subsequently. Of course, this is a broad generalization - and for every one of
Deborah Tannen's oppositions, we will know of men and women who are exceptions to
the norm.

-Sociolinguistics shows that speakers change the forms of language they use in quite
precisely describable social circumstances. Speakers might switch from a ‘high’ form of
their language to a ‘low’ form as and when the environment suggests that they should
do so: they speak, for instance, a standard educated form of their language in formal
situations, and use a dialect form

3. How does the new sociolinguistic approach make “sense of what had appeared
chaotic and unsystematic linguistic variability” in urban communities? Please make
sure you give enough examples and supporting evidence.

In the previous decades, what we only have are colloquials but, through the creativity
of the present generations, another linguistic variety, form, or style came to existence:
the “gay lingo”. This new linguistic variety spreads so widely and easily even in the
academic and business world. The existence of it is seen to be chaotic and
unsystematic but little by little, people used it for their advantage. For an instance,
recognizing the fact that an audience will always compose of people who are already
using the language, the speaker somehow uses such gay-lingo terms to make his talk
be more interactive and alive.

Psycholinguistics

1. Describe three kinds of evidence regarding the unit of incremental planning in

sentence production (whether it is the word, phrase, clause or sentence). What
evidence is there that the increment size might vary as a function of processing
level?

Sentence planning is the link between the idea the speaker wishes to convey and the
linguistic representation that expresses that idea. It must include words organized into
an appropriate syntactic structure, as sentence meaning depends upon lexical items
and their structural organization. From speech errors we have evidence for the
psycholinguistic representation of words and their phonological forms, the
representation of morphemes, and levels of sentence planning. The increment size that
might vary as a function of a processing level is brought by the evidence that clauses
are planning units, and that multiple factors influence the resources recruited in
sentence production.