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Language Variation and Stylistics

Lecture 2
Dialectal Varieties
• Individual Dialect----------Idiolect
• Temporal Dialect
• Regional Dialect
• Social Dialect
• Socioeconomic status varieties
• Ethnic Varieties
• Gender Varieties
• Age Varieties
• The social meaning of language varieties
• Variation due to formality
• Variation due to medium
• Variation due to context
• Registers
• Individual Dialect
Each Speaker or writer will have his or her own
particular voice quality , pitch, stress patterns,
favourite lexical items and even grammatical
structures.
• These traits of speech or writing often point to
a person’s individuality which leads to
person’s style. Terms like Hemingway’s style or
Conrad’s this type of variety.
Temporal Dialect
• A variety which correlates with the various
periods of development of language is called
Temporal Dialect.
• Language changes over time and so the
description of language at a given point of
time is likely to give rise to a historical variety.
• In the English language , for instance, there
are Old English, Middle English , Elizabethan
English and Modern English.
• Regional Dialect
• Language varies from region to region.
• So far as English speaking world is concerned,
there are British English, American English ,
Australian English, New Zealand English, South
African English, Canadian English etc.
• There are also regional varieties within Great
Britain and the United States, such as Cockney
in Britain, North Midland dialect in USA etc.
• A variety like this we call regional dialect. The
lay term for it is Accent, as a dialect is often
associated with a particular accent.
BrE…………………………… AmE
• Tin Can
• Telly TV
• Chemist’s Drugstore
• Biscuits Cookies
• Autumn Fall
• Lift elevator
• Ground floor first floor
• Lorry Truck
• Pavement Sidewalk
• Petrol gas(oline)
• Underground ( Tube) Subway
Social Dialect
• A variety associated with certain social group is
referred to as Social Dialect.
• Just as oceans and mountains separate people and can
lead eventually to distinct language habits, so social
and political boundaries separate people and can be
instrumental in promoting different speech habits.
• Different groups tend to have their distinctive ways
speaking. Hence, socioeconomic status varieties,
gender varieties, and age varieties occur.
• Restricted Code
• Elaborated Code
Gender Varieties
• In most languages, men and women do not speak
identically. Hence, gender varieties occur.
• In English, for example, female speakers tend to
use ‘ Feminine-sounding’ words like lovely, etc.
• Women tend to show extra politeness in their
speech by leaving a decision open rather than
imposing their claims on others. They use
frequent expressions like I’m afraid, I’m not sure
or use of question tags.
Ethnic Varieties
Ethnic groups tend to develop and maintain
distinctive speech ways of their own.
This is especially true of urban Black Americans
in the US who have actually developed a most
widespread and familiar ethnic variety of
American English i.e. Black English, with its
characteristic phonological, morphological, and
syntactical features as well as some vocabulary
of its own.
Diatypic Variations
• Variation due to Formality
• Formal speech
• Consultative speech
• Colloquial speech
Difference in medium entails differences in ways
and patterns of expression and hence variations
within the same language.
Stylistic Differences
Difference in Terms of Grammar ( Speech)
Grammaticality in spontaneous texts , sentences
tend to be short characterized by a large
number of loosely connected clauses.
Clause structure is simple usually of the S P (O)
(A) type.
Nouns are not frequently used as subject rather
personal pronouns are used frequently.
Verbal groups are also simple in structure.
Difference in Terms of Grammar ( Writing)
In written language , sentences are usually
complete and tend to be longer than the
average spoken sentences.
The relative clauses within the groups usually
retains the relative pronouns
The preposition in the clause is often put at the
beginning as
The worker to whom the president talked.
Difference in Terms of Grammar
Speech tend to use simple words and phrases. A
large number of phrasal verbs such as come
across( encounter) get together ( accumulate)
Let down( disappoint) look into (Investigate)
etc…
A great deal of lexical hyperbole such as
absolutely, awfully, great , formidable etc.
Slang terms as bread ( money) buck ( dollar)
Butter up ( Flatter) Dome ( head) tea-leaf (thief)
Crooked (very drunk) up the creek ( in trouble).
Difference in Terms of Graphology
Writing makes use of the multitude of graph
logical devices such as punctuation,
paragraphing, capitalizing, italics etc…
The use of different sizes and shapes of type and
format can add prominence to the information
conveyed.
Strange looking spelling See e.e cummings
poetry
Register
A variety of language used for particular
purpose or in a particular social setting.
Halliday and Hassan interprets register as the
linguistic features which are typically associated
with a configuration of situational features.

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