Lecture 1 SOCIAL AND TERRITORIAL VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Lecture 1 SOCIAL AND TERRITORIAL VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

In the title of the lecture we have several terms which should be explained:

OUE COURSE IS CLOUSLY CONNECTED WITH Sociolinguistics?

What is Sociolinguistics?

· Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society.

1.2 Sociolinguistics studies:

• the social importance of language to groups of people, from small sociocultural groups to entire nations and commonwealths

• language as part of the character of a nation, a culture, a sub-culture

•

• the development of national standard languages and their relation to regional and local dialects

• attitudes toward variants and choice of which to use where

• how individual ways of speaking reveal membership in social groups: working class versus middle class, urban versus rural, old versus young, female versus male

• how certain varieties and forms enjoy prestige, while others are stigmatized

• ongoing change in the forms and varieties of language, interrelationships between varieties

• language structures in relation to interaction

• how speakers construct identities through discourse in interaction with one another

• how speakers and listeners use language to define their relationship and establish the character and direction of their talk

• how talk conveys attitudes about the context, the participants and their relationship in terms of membership, power and solidarity

How the science developed?

The social aspects of language were in the modern sense first studied by Indian and Japanese linguists in the 1930s, and also by Gauchat in Switzerland in the early 1900s, but none received much attention in the West until much later.

The first attested use of the term sociolinguistics was by Thomas Callan Hodson in the title of a 1939 paper.Sociolinguistics in the West first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by linguists such as William Labov in the US and Basil Bernstein in the UK

2 THE CENTRAL ELEMENT IN A SOCIOLINGUIST STUDY IS THE LINGUISTIC VARIABLE -

The American sociolinguist, William Labov devised the notion of the linguistic variable to help capture this idea of difference between dialects.

A linguistic variable is a set of related dialect forms all of which mean the same thing and which correlate with some social grouping in the speech community. Variety, in a language, can be defined as a set of linguistic items, called VARIABLES, with a similar distribution. A VARIABLE is a linguistic item that has identifiable variants. That is, when certain ways of saying things or certain VARIABLES become a set way of expressing something, phonetically, grammatically, or with expressions, etc.

· The distinct differences between how the same thing is said are VARIANTS.

· The actual difference is a VARIABLE.

No let’s distinguish some terms

In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself.

" Variety" avoids the terms language, which many people associate only with the standard language, and dialect, which is associated with non-standard varieties thought of as less prestigious or " correct" than the standard.

Linguists speak of both standard and non-standard varieties. " Lect" avoids the problem in ambiguous cases of deciding whether or not two varieties are distinct languages or dialects of a single language.

Types of varieties (lects )

dialect (regional variety)

sociolect (social variety)

genderlect (gender-based variety)

idiolect (individual speaker variety)

Dialects (regional varieties

REGIONAL DIALECTS

A Regional dialect is a linguistic variation based upon membership in a long-standing regionally isolated group. The most common way sociolinguists look at regional dialects is to create dialect maps of various dialects of a single language within the boundaries of that language.

Sometimes maps are drawn to show actual boundaries around such features so as to distinguish an area in which a certain feature is found from areas in which it is not found, these boundaries are called isoglosses.

ISOGLOSSES

An isogloss—is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature.

SOCIAL DIALECT

Dialect differences of course are not only regional. They can also be within a society. Whereas regional dialects are geographically based, social dialects originate among social groups and are related to a variety of factors, but in particular: social class, religion and ethnicity

A social dialect is a linguistic variation based upon membership in a long-standing socially isolated group. That is people may be more similar in language to people from the same social group in a different area than to people from a different social group in the same area.

Sociolects involve both passive acquisition of particular communicative practices through association with a local community, as well as active learning and choice among speech or writing forms to demonstrate identification with particular groups.

Examples of social dialects might include:

· Black Vernacular English: uses a number of different phrases, word order changes and sound differences, some “rap” has these characteristics changes. We will talk more about BEV later it is a complex social dialect.

An Argot ( /ˈ ɑ rɡ oʊ /; French, Spanish, and Catalan for " slang" ) is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations.

The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job, sport, etc.

Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event.

In earlier times, the term jargon would refer to trade languages used by people who spoke different native tongues to communicate, such as the Chinook Jargon.

In other words, the term covers the language used by people who work in a particular area or who have a common interest.

IDIOLECT

In linguistics, an idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of vocabulary or idiom selection (the individual's lexicon), grammar, or pronunciations that are unique to the individual. Every individual's language production is in some sense unique. Linguists disagree about exactly what is shared, in terms of the underlying knowledge of the language, among speakers of the same language or dialect.

ACCENT

In linguistics, an accent is a pronunciation characteristic of a particular group of people relative to another group.

Accent should not be confused with dialect (q.v.), which is a variety of language differing in vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation.

When a standard language and pronunciation are defined by a group, an accent may be any pronunciation that deviates from that standard. However, accent is a relative concept, and it is meaningful only with respect to a specified pronunciation reference. For example, people from New York City may speak with an accent in the perception of people from Los Angeles, but people from Los Angeles may also speak with an accent in the perception of New Yorkers. Americans hear British people speaking with an accent and vice versa. Thus the concept of a person having " no accent" is meaningless. The language or dialect may be the same they just sound differently.

PROBLEMS WITH ACCENT

In some societies, a “standard” accent is defined as that carries particular prestige in that society; it may or may not be an accent that is widely spoken within the society, and sometimes its prestige comes solely from its association with a specific real or theoretical group within the society.

Prestige

Certain accents are perceived to carry more prestige in a society than other accents. This is often due to their association with the elite part of society.

For example in the United Kingdom, Received Pronunciation of the English language is associated with the traditional upper class.

GENDERLECTS (variety based on gender) differences, especially in terms of pragmatics, between male and female speakers( more hedging, politeness on the part of females more aggression, non-cooperative behavior on the part of males

males also tend to " keep the floor" and switch topics more abruptly than females, who appear to be more sensitive to turn signaling)

REGISTER

The study of language variation is further complicated by the fact that speakers can adopt different registers of speaking.

History and use

The term regist er was first used by the linguist Thomas Bertram Reid in 1956, and brought into general currency in the 1960s by a group of linguists who wanted to distinguish between variations in language according to the user (defined by variables such as social background, geography, sex and age), and variations according to use, " in the sense that each speaker has a range of varieties and choices between them at different times"

Register as formality scale

In one prominent model, Martin Joos (1961) describes five styles in spoken English:

Frozen: Printed unchanging language such as Biblical quotations; often contains archaisms. Examples are the Pledge of Allegiance, wedding vows, and other " static" vocalizations that are recited in a ritualistic monotone. The wording is exactly the same every time it is spoken.

Formal: One-way participation, no interruption. Technical vocabulary or exact definitions are important. Includes presentations or introductions between strangers.

Consultative: Two-way participation. Background information is provided — prior knowledge is not assumed. " Back-channel behavior" such as " uh huh", " I see", etc. is common. Interruptions are allowed. Examples include teacher/student, doctor/patient, expert/apprentice, etc.

Casual: In-group friends and acquaintances. No background information provided. Ellipsis and slang common. Interruptions common. This is common among friends in a social setting.

Intimate: Non-public. Intonation more important than wording or grammar. Private vocabulary. Also includes non-verbal messages. This is most common among family members and close friends.

DIGLOSSIA

Diglossia can be described as two varieties within a language that are so distinct they can almost be called two different languages. These two varieties are often a standard form of the language which people use for television news broadcasts, in writing, and in any other formal setting, and sometimes also called the HIGH form. The other variety, is the form of the language people speak at home, and is also sometimes called the LOW form. It is possible that these two forms started, originally, as registers, but became so different that the split created the more dramatically different varieties. Arabic is a great example of this.

DRAW ON BOARD: ____Standard Arabic (Fusah)_____

Moroccan/Syrian/Egyptian/Saudi Arabian

First there is a Standard Arabic that is taught in schools and used in newspapers and on television.Then there are the local dialects of vernacular Arabic, such as Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan, that people speak at home and which can be so different from Standard Arabic and each other that the dialects are not mutually understandable. But, because all the people who speak different dialects of Arabic study Standard Arabic, they can use that form of the language to communicate. That is why all Arabic newspapers and television are in Standard Arabic, so everyone within the Arabic speaking world can read the same papers and watch the same TV programs. NO ONE, however, SPEAKS STANDARD ARABIC on the street, unless of course they are from two different dialects and need to use standard Arabic to communicate.

3 SPEECH COMMUNITY

Now, to continue, you use your dialect with all the other people who you see everyday and who also use your language and dialect. This is called your speech community.

Speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language.

Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon, distinct social groups like high school students or hip hop fans (see also African American Vernacular English), or even tight-knit groups like families and friends. In addition, online and other mediated communities, such as many internet forums, often constitute speech communities. Members of speech communities will often develop slang or jargon to serve the group's special purposes and priorities.

3 CODE/ CODE SWITCHING

In linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals - people who speak more than one language - sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching is distinct from other language contact phenomena, such as borrowing, pidgins and creoles, loan translation (calques), and language transfer (language interference).

· A loanword (or loan word ) is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.

· A calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself..

· A pidgin ( /ˈ pɪ dʒ ɪ n/), or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the groups). Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language.A pidgin may be built from words, sounds, or body language from multiple other languages and cultures. Pidgins usually have low prestige with respect to other languages.

· A Creole is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins (which are believed by scholars to be necessary precedents of creoles) in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins.

The vocabulary of a creole language consists of cognates from the parent languages, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features but may differ substantially from those of the parent languages. Most often, the vocabulary comes from the dominant group and the grammar from the subordinate group, where such stratification exists.

· Language transfer (language interference) Language transfer (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, and crossmeaning) refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second language. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language.

Mechanics of code-switching

Code-switching mostly occurs where the syntaxes of the languages align in a sentence; thus, it is uncommon to switch from English to French after an adjective and before a noun, because, in French, adjectives usually follow nouns. Even unrelated languages often align syntactically at a relative clause boundary or at the boundary of other sentence sub-structures.

Types of switching

Scholars use different names for various types of code-switching.

· Intersentential switching occurs outside the sentence or the clause level (i.e. at sentence or clause boundaries).[27] It is sometimes called " extrasentential" switching.

· Intra-sentential switching occurs within a sentence or a clause.

· Tag-switching is the switching of either a tag phrase or a word, or both, from language-B to language-A, (common intra-sentential switches)

· Intra-word switching occurs within a word, itself, such as at a morpheme boundary.

Examples of code-switching

Spanish and English — Researcher Ana Celia Zentella offers this example from her work with Puerto Rican Spanish-English bilingual speakers in New York City. In this example, Marta and her younger sister, Lolita, speak Spanish and English with Zentella outside of their apartment building.

Lolita: Oh, I could stay with Ana?

Marta: — but you could ask papi and mami to see if you could come down.

Lolita: OK.

Marta: Ana, if I leave her here would you send her upstairs when you leave?

Zentella: I’ll tell you exactly when I have to leave, at ten o’clock. Y son las nueve y cuarto. (" And it’s nine fifteen." )

Marta: Lolita, te voy a dejar con Ana. (" I’m going to leave you with Ana." ) Thank you, Ana.

Zentella explains that the children of the predominantly Puerto Rican neighbourhood speak both English and Spanish: " Within the children’s network, English predominated, but code-switching from English to Spanish occurred once every three minutes, on average."

4 LANGUAGE AND GENDER

Language and gender is an area of study within sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and related fields that investigates varieties of speech associated with a particular gender, or social norms for such gendered language use.

A variety of speech (or sociolect) associated with a particular gender is sometimes called a genderlect.

Speech practices associated with gender Minimal responses One of the ways in which the communicative behavior of men and women differ is in their use of minimal responses, i.e., paralinguistic features such as ‘mhm’ and ‘yeah’, which is behaviour associated with collaborative language use. Men, on the other hand, generally use them less frequently and where they do, it is usually to show agreement

Questions Men and women differ in their use of questions in conversations. For men, a question is usually a genuine request for information whereas with women it can often be a rhetorical means of engaging the other’s conversational contribution or of acquiring attention from others conversationally involved, techniques associated with a collaborative approach to language use. Therefore women use questions more frequently. In writing, however, both genders use rhetorical questions as literary devices.

Changing the topic of conversation According to Bruce Dorval in his study of same-sex friend interaction, males tend to change subject more frequently than female. Goodwin (1990) observes that girls and women link their utterances to previous speakers and develop each other topics, rather than introducing new topics.

However, a study of young American couples and their interactions reveal that while women raise twice as many topics as men but it is the men's topics that are usually taken up and subsequently elaborated in the conversation.

Self-disclosure Female tendencies toward self-disclosure, i.e., sharing their problems and experiences with others, often to offer sympathy, contrasts with male tendencies to non-self disclosure and professing advice or offering a solution when confronted with another’s problems.

Men and women also tend to have a different type of humor, "

Verbal aggression Men tend to be more verbally aggressive in conversing, frequently using threats, profanities, yelling and name-calling. Women, on the whole, deem this to disrupt the flow of conversation and not as a means of upholding one’s hierarchical status in the conversation. Where women swear, it is usually to demonstrate to others what is normal behaviour for them.

However, the correlation between males and verbal aggression may not apply across different societies and cultures.

Listening and attentiveness It appears that women attach more weight than men to the importance of listening in conversation, with its connotations of power to the listener as confidant of the speaker. This attachment of import by women to listening is inferred by women’s normally lower rate of interruption — i.e., disrupting the flow of conversation with a topic unrelated to the previous one — and by their largely increased use of minimal responses in relation to men. Men, however, interrupt far more frequently with non-related topics, especially in the mixed sex setting and, far from rendering a female speaker's responses minimal, are apt to greet her conversational spotlights with silence,

Politeness Lakoff (1975) identified three forms of politeness: formal, deference, and camaraderie. Women's language is characterized by formal and deference politeness, whereas men’s language is exemplified by camaraderie.Politeness in speech is described in terms of positive and negative face. Positive face refers to one's desire to be liked and admired, while negative face refers to one's wish to remain autonomous and not to suffer imposition. Both forms, are used more frequently by women whether in mixed or single-sex pairs, suggesting for Brown a greater sensitivity in women than have men to face the needs of others. In short, women are to all intents and purposes largely more polite than men. However, negative face politeness can be potentially viewed as weak language because of its associated hedges and tag questions

Gender-neutral languageGender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality is linguistic prescriptivism that aims to eliminate (or neutralize) reference to gender in terms that describe people. For example, the words chairman, fireman, lesbian, and stewardess are gender-specific; the corresponding gender-neutral terms are chairperson (or chair), firefighter, homosexual, and flight attendant. The pronoun he may be replaced with he or she or s/he when the gender of the person referred to is unknown. Other gender-specific terms, such as actor and actress may be replaced by the originally male term (actor used for either gender). " Gender-neutral language" should not be confused with genderless language, which refers to languages without grammatical gender.

Advocates of gender-neutral language believe it promotes inclusion of all sexes or genders (gender-inclusive language), and that traditional terms are sexist. Opponents may consider the traditional terms to be non-sexist (e.g., " steward" and " stewardess" as distinct but equal terms) or may accept the pronoun " he" as a generic for both genders.Белоснежка

Жила-была одна молоденькая принцесса, которая была вовсе не неприятна на вид, и характер у нее был такой, что многие признавали его лучшим, чем у других. Ее называли Белоснежкой, что указывает на укоренившееся дискриминационное предубеждение— ассоциировать приятные или привлекательные свойства со светом, а неприятные или непривлекательные качества — с темнотой. Таким образом, с раннего возраста Белоснежка была невольной, хоть и удачливой мишенью для подобного мышления — дискриминации по цвету кожи.

Золушка

Жила-была молодая женщина по имени Золушка, чья природная мать умерла, когда Золушка была еще ребенком. Несколько лет спустя ее отец женился на вдове с двумя более взрослыми дочерьми. Мачеха Золушки обращалась с ней очень жестоко, а сводные сестры заставляли ее трудиться до седьмого пота, как будто она была их личным неоплачиваемым работником.

Однажды в дом прислали приглашение. Принц решил в честь эксплуатации неимущего и маргинального крестьянства устроить бал-карнавал. Сводных сестер Золушки очень взволновало это приглашение во дворец. Они стали обдумывать дорогие наряды, для того чтобы изменить свой природный образ в подражание реально не существующему стандарту женской красоты. (Это было особенно нереально в их случае, так как они были столь нестандартной внешности, что от их вида могли остановиться часы.) Ее мачеха тоже собиралась поехать на бал, так что Золушке пришлось вертеться как белке в колесе (подходящая метафора, но, к сожалению, некорректная по отношению к виду животных)..

Приведенные тексты не нуждаются в комментариях. Обратим внимание лишь на несколько «политически корректных» исправлений привычных слов.

Слова Snow White и Белоснежка политически некорректны в обоих языках (и в английском, и в русском), потому что имеют white и бело- и таким образом внушают расистскую идею, что «белый» — это хорошо, положительно, а «черный»— плохо, отрицательно. Вместо привычного very poor [очень бедный] в описании Джека и его матери читаем very excluded from the normal circles of economic activity [исключены из сфер обычной экономической активности]. В другой сказке вместо very poor приводится обычный политически корректный вариант— very economically disadvantaged [экономически ущемленный].

В сказке о трех козлятах самый маленький (the smallest) описывается так: this goat was the least chronologically accomplished of the siblings and thus had achieved the least superiority in size [этот козленок хронологически был наименее развитым из всех братьев и поэтому не добился преимущества в размере]».

Некрасивые сестры Золушки были differently visaged [нестандартной внешности], а красивая Белоснежка описана по законам «недооценки» — understatement: not at all unpleasant to look at [вовсе не неприятная на вид]. И в корзине у Красной Шапочки, разумеется, не было политически некорректных пирожков и масла. Это была a basket of fresh fruit and mineral water [корзиночка с фруктами и минеральной водой] по вполне очевидным причинам, которые Красная Шапочка не преминула объяснить бабушке: Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said: «Grandma, I have brought you some fat-free, sodium-free snacks» [Красная Шапочка вошла в дом и сказала: «Бабушка, я принесла тебе обезжиренные гостинцы, не содержащие нитратов»]

CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE

A planned or constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary have been consciously devised for human or human-like communication, instead of having developed naturally. It is also referred to as an artificial or invented language.

There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language, such as:

· to ease human communication (see international auxiliary language and code),

· to give fiction or an associated constructed world an added layer of realism, for experimentation in the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and machine learning,

· for artistic creation,

· and for language games.

The expression planned language is sometimes used to mean international auxiliary languages and other languages designed for actual use in human communication. Some prefer it to the term " artificial", as that term may have pejorative connotations in some languages.

Planned, constructed, artificialThe terms " planned", " constructed", and " artificial" are used differently in some traditions. An artificial language can also refer to languages which emerge naturally out of experimental studies within the framework of artificial language evolution.

In terms of purpose, most constructed languages can broadly be divided into:

Engineered languages (engelangs /ˈ ɛ nd͡ ʒ læ ŋ z/), further subdivided into

logical languages (loglangs),

philosophical languages and

experimental languages; devised for the purpose of experimentation in logic, philosophy, or linguistics;

Auxiliary languages (auxlangs) devised for international communication (also IALs, for International Auxiliary Language);

Artistic languages (artlangs) devised to create aesthetic pleasure or humorous effect, just for fun; usually secret languages and mystical languages are classified as artlangs

The boundaries between these categories are by no means clear. A constructed language can have native speakers if young children learn it from parents who speak it fluently.

A priori and a posteriori languages

An a priori language is a language whose vocabulary is not based on an existing language. An a posteriori language is the opposite. An example of an a priori language could be lojban. An example of an a posteriori language could be Esperanto or Interlingua.

Language policy

Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to protect and promote regional and ethnic languages whose viability is threatened.

Language Policy is what a government does either officially through legislation, court decisions or policy to determine how languages are used, cultivate language skills needed to meet national priorities or to establish the rights of individuals or groups to use and maintain language.

Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots organizations and even individuals. The goals of language planning differ depending on the nation or organization, but generally include making planning decisions and possibly changes for the benefit of communication. Planning or improving effective communication can also lead to other social changes such as language shift or assimilation, thereby providing another motivation to plan the structure, function and acquisition of languages.

Language engineering involves the creation of natural language processing systems whose cost and outputs are measurable and predictable as well as establishment of language regulators, such as formal or informal agencies, committees, societies or academies as language regulators to design or develop new structures to meet contemporary needs. It is a distinct field contrasted to natural language processing and computational linguistics.[4] A recent trend of language engineering is the use of Semantic Web technologies for the creation, archival, processing, and retrieval of machine processable language data.

Four overarching language ideologies motivate decision making in language planning:

1 The first, linguistic assimilation, is the belief that every member of a society, irrespective of his native language, should learn and use the dominant language of the society in which he lives. A quintessential example is the English-only movement in the United States. Linguistic assimilation stands in direct contrast to

2 the second ideology, linguistic pluralism - the recognition and support of multiple languages within one society. Examples include the coexistence of French, German, Italian, and Romansh in Switzerland and the shared status of English, Malay, Tamil, and Chinese in Singapore. The coexistence of many languages may not necessarily arise from a conscious language ideology, but rather from the efficiency in communication of a common language. 3 The third ideology, vernacularization, denotes the restoration and development of an indigenous language along with its adoption by the state as an official language. Examples include Hebrew in the state of Israel and Quechua in Peru.

4 The final ideology, internationalization, is the adoption of a non-indigenous language of wider communication as an official language or in a particular domain, such as the use of English in Singapore, India, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea.

Language planning goals

Eleven Language Planning Goals have been recognized

1. Language Purification – prescription of usage in order to preserve the “linguistic purity” of language, protect language from foreign influences, and guard against language deviation from within

2. Language Revival – the attempt to turn a language with few or no surviving native speakers back into a normal means of communication

3. Language Reform – deliberate change in specific aspects of language, like orthography, spelling, or grammar, in order to facilitate use

4. Language Standardization – the attempt to garner prestige for a regional language or dialect, transforming it into one that is accepted as the major language, or standard language, of a region

5. Language Spread – the attempt to increase the number of speakers of one language at the expense of another

6. Lexical Modernization – word creation or adaptation

7. Terminology Unification – development of unified terminologies, primarily in technical domains

8. Stylistic Simplification – simplification of language usage in lexicon, grammar, and style

9. Interlingual Communication – facilitation of linguistic communication between members of distinct speech communities

10. Language Maintenance – preservation of the use of a group’s native language as a first or second language where pressures threaten or cause a decline in the status of the language

11. Auxiliary-Code Standardization – standardization of marginal, auxiliary aspects of language such as signs for the deaf, place names, or rules of transliteration and transcription

Types of language planning

Language planning has been divided into three types:

Status planning

Status planning is the allocation or reallocation of a language or variety to functional domains within a society, thus affecting the status, or standing, of a language.

· Language status

Language status is a concept distinct from, though intertwined with, language prestige and language function. Strictly speaking, language status is the position or standing of a language vis-à -vis other language. Language origin – w hether a given language is indigenous or imported to the speech community

Degree of standardization – the extent of development of a formal set of norms that define ‘correct’ usage

Corpus planning

Corpus planning refers to the prescriptive intervention in the forms of a language, whereby planning decisions are made to engineer changes in the structure of the languageUnlike status planning, which is primarily undertaken by administrators and politicians, corpus planning generally involves planners with greater linguistic expertise. There are three traditionally recognized types of corpus planning: graphization, standardization, and modernization.

Graphization

Graphization refers to development, selection and modification of scripts and orthographic conventions for a language.

Standardization

Standardization is the process by which one variety of a language takes precedence over other social and regional dialects of a language. This variety comes to be understood as supra-dialectal and the ‘best’ form of the language.

Modernization

Modernization is a form of language planning that occurs when a language needs to expand its resources to meet functions. Modernization often occurs when a language undergoes a shift in status, such as when a country gains independence from a colonial power or when there is a change in the language education policy.

Acquisition planning

Acquisition planning is a type of language planning in which a national, state or local government system aims to influence aspects of language, such as language status, distribution and literacy through education. Acquisition planning can also be used by non-governmental organizations, but it is more commonly associated with government planning.

7 What is a Global Language? There is no official definition of " global" or " world" language\

— large number of speakers;

— a substantial fraction of non-native speakers (function as lingua franca);

— official status in several countries;

— association with linguistic prestige;

— use in international trade relations;

— use in international organizations;

— use in the academic community;

— significant body of literature;

— association with world religions.

The influence of any language is a combination of three main things:

· the number of countries using it as their first language or mother-tongue,

· the number of countries adopting it as their official language,

· and the number of countries teaching it as their foreign language of choice in schools.

WHY study ENGLISH?

} Historical reasons

} Internal political reasons

} External political reasons

} Practical reasons

} Intellectual reasons

} Entertainment reasons

} The Internet

What About The Future?

Although English currently appears to be in an unassailable position in the modern world, its future as a global language is not necessarily assured.

There are two competing drives to take into account: the pressure for international intelligibility, and the pressure to preserve national identity. It is possible that a natural balance may be achieved between the two, but it should also be recognized that the historical loyalties of British ex-colonies have been largely replaced by pragmatic utilitarian reasoning.

Even today, there is a certain amount of resentment in some countries towards the cultural dominance of English, and particularly of the USA.

As has been discussed, there is a close link between language and power. The USA, with its huge dominance in economic, technical and cultural terms, is the driving force behind English in the world today.

perhaps the only possible candidate for such a replacement would be China, but it is not that difficult to imagine circumstances in which it could happen.

A change in population (and population growth) trends may prove to be an influential factor. The increasing Hispanic population of the USA has, in the opinion of some commentators, already begun a dilution of the “Englishness” of the country, which may in turn have repercussions for the status of the English language abroad. Hispanic and Latino Americans have accounted for almost half of America’s population growth in recent years, and their share of the population is expected to increase from about 16% today to around 30% by 2050

Language death

In linguistics, language death (also language extinction, linguistic extinction orlinguicide, and rarely also glottophagy) is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages.

Language death should not be confused with language attrition (also called language loss) which describes the loss of proficiency in a language at the individual level.

Types of language death

Language death may manifest itself in one of the following ways:

· gradual language death

· bottom-to-top language death: when language change begins in a low-level environment such as the home.

· top-to-bottom language death: when language change begins in a high-level environment such as the government.

· radical language death

· linguicide (Also known as sudden death, language by genocide, physical language death, biological language death)

The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population

Languages with a small, geographically isolated population of speakers can also die when their speakers are wiped out by genocide, disease, or natural disaster.

A language is often declared to be dead even before the last native speaker of the language has died. If there are only a few elderly speakers of a language remaining, and they no longer use that language for communication, then the language is effectively dead.

A language that has reached such a reduced stage of use is generally considered moribund. Once a language is no longer anative language - that is, if no children are being socialised into it as their primary language - the process of transmission is ended and the language itself will not survive past the current generation.

Language death can be fast, when the children are taught to avoid their parents' language for reasons such as work opportunities and social status. At other times, minority languages survive much better, for example when the speakers try to isolate themselves against a majority population. Often, especially historically, governments have tried to promote language death, not wishing to have minority languages.

Вопросы к зачету:

1What does sociolinguistics study?

2What is the ligiustic variable?

3 Regional dialects and isoglosses

4Social dialects

5Accent

6 The register/Ideolect

7 Diaglossia

8 Speech community

9 Code switching

10 Types of code switching

11 Female genderlect

12Male genderlect

13Gender neutral language

14 Constructed languages

15Language planning

16 Language ideology

17 Language death

18 Global language

19 The history of the English l- ge

20 World Englishes

Темы рефератов к зачету

1. The history of the English l- ge

2. Standard English

3. Received pronunciation

4. British slang

5. Irish English

6. Welsh Ehglish

7. Scottish Engish

8. Cockney Dialect

9. Amirican English

10. American dialects

11. American slang

12. Canadian English

13. English in New Zealand

14. English in Australia

15. Indian English

16. Ebonics

17. African English

18. Pakistan English

19. Esperanto

20. Sign languages

Lecture 1 SOCIAL AND TERRITORIAL VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

In the title of the lecture we have several terms which should be explained:

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