Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics and Stylistics

Introduction

Sociolinguistics studies those types of language variation which result from

the correlation between language and social factors, such as social
stratification (status), role, age, sex, ethnicity. Depending on the degree and
pattern of their actualization, participants select from a variety of available
codes (languages, dialects, varieties), they may switch between them,
accommodate or mix them. It should be noted that besides this ’quantitative’
paradigm, there has emerged a ’qualitative’ approach within Sociolinguistics;
also known as interpretive or interactional Sociolinguistics; the latter
represents a variety of streams rooted in anthropology and
ethnomethodology.

Status and Role

The social status indicates an individual’s social position in a society which is

based on power differences, prestige and social class, along with the
associated rights and duties, ine DroaJest social class categories are upper,
middle and lower classes which correlate with accents (e.g., posh, refined.,
RPvs. low, uneducated, regional, local dialed) and speech varieties (standard
English vs. non-standard varieties). Basic power categories include higher,
equal and lower position which correlate with levels of formality (or ’speech
styles’: more formal, neutral, more colloquial), with address forms, etc.

The social role includes expected behaviour associated with a particular

status. It is mcr«, flexible than status and varies also according to the speech
situation (e.g., in dialogical interaction, the roles of speaker and listener shift
constantly back and forth). Incompatibility of requirements imposed by roles
upon individuals may result in a role strain and role conflict (e.g., a po’iLician,
being also a citizen, may have inhibitions as to adopting important decisions;
conv^sely, in his election campain speech s/he may try to diminish distance
and establish closeness/familiarity with the fellow citizens). The patterning of
statuses and roles in particular speech events yields expected patterns of
language behaviour (style), such as the level of formality, T/V usage (a means
of attitudinal deixis signaling aspects of respect, a pattern of pronominal
usage parallel to the tu/vous distinction in French) and terms of address (title,
first name, last name, nickname, their combination or adopting ’no-naming’
strategy). The last two phenomena, along with honorifics (politeness
formulae, such as mayl..., would you ...) form the means of social deutis. It is
important to note the existence of a general shift towards informal pole of
interaction which is energized esp. by the trends in popular culture,
massmedia, and esp. advertising (for example, advertisements often
simulate casualness and intimacy with which they are trying to sneak into the
consumers’ consciousness). The ways of signalling social distance
(expressions of deference, i.e., respect for people of a higher status) and role
relationships are studied within the field of research into politeness. The
category of appropriateness (suitability) concerns the adjustment of one’s
language usage (i.e., grammar, pronunciation and ’style’) to suit the situation
in which a communicative event takes place. The ability to recognize different
types of speech events and corresponding social roles, to apply the
knowledge of code (grammar and vocabulary), to use the rules of speaking,
to recognize and respond to different types of speech acts, to identify typical
types of text (genres,

127
128

A HANDBOOK OF STYLE AND STYLISTICS

functional styles) by means of textual cues, and to use language

appropriately (register) is referred to as communicative competence.

Register

The interface between the use of specific code and a particular configuration
of situational variables is represented by the notion of register (M.A.K.
Halliday). The three subareas of register are:

1. field, a) field as an activity: un utterance is a part of an activity whereby it

helps sustain and shape that activity (i.e., extrinsic field, a talk oy c chemistry
professor while demonstrating an experiment), b) field as a subject matter
(i.e., intrinsic field, e.g., political talk, financial services); it is particularly the
lexis which is most directly affected by the field.

2. tenor refers to the type of social (esp. status and power) relationship
enacted in or constructed by a text, which is manifested esp. in the level of
formality (i.e., coding relationships on the dine between distance to
familiarity, which is one of the uses of the word style), strategies of positive
and/or negative politeness, terms of address offers a fine-grained scale of
’functional styles’- frozen, ceremonial, cultivated, formal, official, neutral,
conversational, colloquial, familiar, ultimate; cf. also Joos’ five degrees of
formality; the Classical rhetoric used the triadic hierarchy of styles (low,
middle, high) based on diction and genres,

3. mode concerns the adopted channel, esp. spoken for immediate contact
and written for deferred contact. Needless to say, these variables operate
alongside and only when working together can they ensure the desired
congruity (appropriateness) of text and sitution; the opposite case is
incongruity, or ’register clash’, e.g., a business letter which is too chatty, or
Got a cigarette, mate?used by a lower rank soldier in approaching an army
general, etc. Also, a shift in one variable may cause a corresponding shift in
another - once we decide to use a phone or write a letter, we tend to be more
aware of the type of choices we make (more formal, neutral, explicit, etc.)
since the telephone as well as the mail are specific types of public institutions
(hence a possibility of eavesdropping).

Code Variation and Code-switching

As to the choice of the type of code, there are more possibilities to select
from since a particular national language (e.g., the English language) is not a
monolithic structure but a ’sum’ of all its dialects (’Englishes’) of which one
functions as the standard variety (Standard British or American English).
Standard variety is associated with the highest status in the community
because it is based on the speech of and is spoken by the highest social
classes and by educated people, it is used in the media and literature, taught
in schools and to foreign learners.

The two principal types of variation of national language manifested in

pronunciation (accent), grammar and vocabulary are the regional variation
(regional dialects) and the social variation (social dialects, sociolects, also
’genderlect’, jargon, slang, argot, though these are not full-fledged codes).
Idiolect represents a speech pattern by which an individual is recognized; it
includes one’s interaction habits (e.g., a tendency to produce lengthy
conversational turns, or to make pauses before the completion of turn
constructional units), favourite turns of phrase (catchphrases) as well as
recognizable features of voice (pitch, tembre) and penmanship. There is a
certain degree of predictability as to the code selection since the choice of
code is motivated by the purpose, situation, characteristics of interlocutors
(age, education, ethnic background), etc.

At particular periods of time, societies typically use several varieties with

specialized functions (diglossia - ’high’ vs. ’low’ variety), and their members
may master more than one variety (bilingvalism). It is not uncommon for
bilingual speakers in conversations to perform a codeswitching, esp. for the
purpose of quotation, addressee specification, issuing interjections, message
SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND STYLISTICS

129

qualification, reiteration, etc.. In order to demonstrate alignment and

closeness, speakers reciprocally try to match their codes (e.g., user-friendly
manuals supplied with modern electronic devices); or, conversely, when
signalling independence or distance, a deliberate divergence of codes may
take place. Some common examples of code adjustments are baby talk
(motherese), foreigner talk occurring in cross-cultural communication,
teacher talk, clinician talk, etc. The sociological concept of face led to the
elaboration of the influential theory of politeness by R. Brown and S.
Levinson.

Psycholinguistics and Stylistic Impulses

Psycholinguistics studies the meatal processes and representations involved

in language production and interpretation, esp. the types of knowledge, e.g.,
factual (encyclopedic), linguistic (linguistic competence), pragmatic (incl. the
’rules of speaking’) and intertextual. It appears that there is also a kind of
’stylistic’ knowledge (or competence which forms a part of the
communicative competence), i.e., recognition of a text as an instance of its
type and awareness of the (in)acceptability of the particular configurations of
chosen elements. Of relevance for stylistics are the ways this knowledge is
organized in the form of mental structures called scripts (in various theories
also termed frames, macrostructures, schemata, scenarios, story-grammars,
memai uiudeis, etc.) as well as the ways these scripts are activated in
communication. Scripts as types of mental templates help create certain
expectations about the nature of stereotypic events for the ways readers
activate various scripts while interpreting a text referring to the procedure of
doing laundry in a coin-operated laundromat) and ’force’ interpreters to
understand events in a conventional way.

For example, the ’shopping in the supermarket’ script will consist of a goal
(obtain food), actors (customer0 checkout clerks, etc./ their roles and
participation (verbal and non-verbal: Can T help you? Or May I have...?),
props (carts, goods on display, scales, etc.) and actions (go, select, weigh,
pay, etc.). Scripts are not fixed once and for all - once acquired they are
tested, refined, amended or discarded. Also, they offer considerable flexibility
for the development of person ul ’styles’ which are determined by the
personality type, the state of the development of uiental processes
(abstraction, generalisation, categorisation, and inference), personal
preferences, the amount and variety of acquired experience stepping into
interpretation as background knowledge, etc. Due to their stereotypical
nature, many scripts involve formulaic language with relatively little
possibility of variation, e.g., openings of service encounters (Can I help you?
How can I help you? What seems to be the troubles). Signalling the opening
of a narrative is conventionally enhanced via Did I ever tell you about? which,
upon listener’s expected (and preferred) go-ahead No. What was that about?
grants a narrator the right to hold the floor as long as s/he deems necessary
to complete a story (for the individual stages of story forming the ’story
script’. Descriptive passages tend to have templates as their blueprints (e.g.,
describing an apartment, one tends to begin at the entrance door rather than
on the balcony). In telling funny stories or joking, humourous effect is often
achieved by flouting the expected template; parodies are based on imitating
the stereotypic situations and associated language (as is also the theatre of
the absurd).

In fact, speech events and speech acts are based on various scripts, and any
departures from these can result in these acts being carried out infelicitously
(improperly). For example, if a marriage ceremony is to be felicitous, besides
required actors and props, the prescribed formula (including the performative
verb pronounce) must be uttered: I now pronounce you man and wife. It
appears that psychological processes associated with text production and
processing have important stylistic implications.

University Questions

1. Discuss stylistics in the context of Sociolinguistics.

2. Write a detailed note on Field, Register, Mode, Code-Switching and Tenor.

3. Discuss now psycholinguistics relates to stylistics.

4. What does psychological nature of Linguistics have to do with the physical

text in Stylistics?
18