Studying Language Variation: An Informal Epistemology

English Linguistics 5: Language in Society

Summary on Assigned Articles

Studying Language Variation: An Informal Epistemology

• Sociolinguistics as a Discipline

Languages cannot exist without societies. Labov’s sociolinguistic framework introduced

three innovations into the prevailing linguistic culture:

-Correlating linguistic variants with class, age, sex, and other social attributes -Incorporating style as an independent variable -Apprehending the progress of linguistic changes in apparent time Dialectology and sociolinguistics are in the broadest sense dialectologies (studies of language variations). Traditional dialectology embraced the strictures of structural linguistics, concentrating on regional speech patterns of mainly rural, old-fashioned speakers elicited one item at a time. Sociolinguistics can be viewed as refocusing of traditional dialectology in response to cataclysmic technological and social changes that required freer data-gathering methods using larger and more representative population samples. A branch of sociolinguistic dialectology in which region is one independent variable among the other social and stylistic variables. It is more beholden to sociolinguistics than dialectology.Traditional dialect studies with genuine sociolinguistic bearings are rare. Louis Gauchat became aware of social stratification in the local dialect. This variability ran counter to the prevailing wisdom, which held that the dialect of an isolated village with a virtually immobile population should be homogeneous. Gauchat is the patriarch of variationist linguistics. He correlated linguistic variants with sex, age, and social class, recognised style as an independent variable, and apprehended changes in progress with apparent-time comparisons.

• Language as a Social Phenomenon

The classic Greeks (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) didn’t notice linguistic variation of any kind, and their overwhelming influence on Western thought undoubtedly contributed to the antisocial bias of Western linguistic tradition. The only classical scholar who seems to have been aware of the social side of language is the Roman Varro, who not only recognised linguistic variation (anomalia) but also linked it to vernacular language use (consuetudo). Varro observed the arbitrary nature of linguistic judgements: ‘’The usage of speech is always shifting its position.’’ The speech community is the most important kind of social group. You learn your languages in stages as conditions of gradual incorporation into your social organisation. 1 / 4

• Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

Saussure made a distinction between langue (language) and parole (a single utterance).Saussure dismissed a possible science of parole. Humboldt made a similar distinction between a formless ergon and a well-formed energeia. Ergon (parole) was divided up into an infinity as the sole language in one and the same nation. Energeia (langue) was language in the abstract sense, with ‘’these many variants united into one language having a definite character.’’ Chomsky made a similar distinction between competence, ‘’the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language,’’ and performance, ‘’the actual use of language in concrete situations.’’ Humboldt, Saussure and Chomsky were right in pointing out that speech, parole, is heterogeneous, but they have been proven wrong in dismissing heterogeneity as a viable object of study.

• Communicative Competence and the Language Faculty

Studying language as langue (or energeia or competence), as distinct from parole (or ergon or performance), requires abstracting linguistic data from the real-world variability in which it naturally occurs. The axiom of categoricity: hypothetical filter on natural language data to make it invariant, discrete, and qualitative. Sociolinguistics attempt to grasp language as it is used in social situations, which is to say as variant, continuous, and quantitative. The distinction between langue and parole are used to define the different objects of inquiry of theoretical linguistics and sociolinguistics.Theoretical linguists who adopt the axiom of categoricity are interested in discovering the properties of one of those systems of the language faculty, called grammar: also known as I- language, ‘I’ for internal and individual. The internal grammar is a person’s language organ, the system. The system is made up of computational rules and representations. The grammatical processor is structure-dependent rather than strictly linear and language-specific, not reducible to other, independently motivated, non-language-processing cognitive components. The grammar is the module in the language faculty that accounts for the uniquely human attributes of creativity in language production and comprehension, and for the rapidity of language acquisition in infancy.Linguistic production and comprehension require real-world orientation to express meanings, and the acquisition device requires the stimulus of social interaction to activate learning.Chomsky isolates the two as follows: A fuller account of knowledge of language will consider the interactions of grammar and other systems, specifically the system of conceptual structures and pragmatic competence. The social stimulus has its source in the pragmatic

competence (communicative competence). Conceptual system: system of the object-

reference and also such relations as ‘agent’, ‘goal’, ‘instrument’ (thematic relations), also involves real-world orientation and reveals human properties most easily discerned in acquisition. Object-reference includes vocabulary items, the massive inventory of form-to- meaning mappings which are the most obvious intermediaries between grammar and the world, e.g. a child knows the difference between the verbs follow and chase.

Pragmatic competence: knowledge of conditions and manner of appropriate use, in

conformity with various purposes. Places language in the institutional setting of its use, 2 / 4

relating intentions and purposes to the linguistic means at hand. Hymes describes it as sociolinguistic competence (communicative competence): The social matrix in which a child acquires a system of grammar and, correspondingly, a system of its use, regarding persons, places, purposes, other modes of communication, etc. – components of communicative events, together with attitudes and beliefs regarding them. This competence is acquired independently of the grammatical one.

• Interdependence of Language and Communication

Communication is the externalisation by the sensory-motor system and it appears to be a secondary property of language. In Chomsky’s view, language use seems to be no more important in communication than are gestures, facial expressions and eye-gaze cues and none of these affects the unalterable language faculty. However, evolution of grammatical competence devoid of communicative competence is inconceivable. Primate-like sensory- motor systems pre-dated language, but their human adaptation to accommodate speech must have occurred simultaneously with the development of the language faculty. Languages are created and filtered by brains that are biologically endowed with communicative intelligence.Communicative intelligence: type of intelligence to encode and decode the communicative intentions behind any type of potentially communicative behaviour, linguistic, nonverbal or otherwise. It is rooted in socialisation and is the common cognitive inheritance of all human beings. Together with the vocal/auditory apparatus, this cognitive adaptation (communicative intelligence) for communication makes possible the cultural evolution of spoken languages. Without such specialised structures, the speed and flexibility with which language is used, learned and changed, even within one generation, would not be possible.The Sociolinguistic Enterprise No linguistic principle can explain the social evaluation attached to any of the variants we choose. There is also no linguistic principle behind their distribution in the speech of different social groups in the community, or the relative frequency of their use from one generation to the next. These aspects make up the mystery of language change, which is irrepressible and inexorable, even though it is both dysfunctional (it impedes communication in the long run) and otiose (the changes neither improve nor degrade the language as a communicative medium). The root causes seem to be nothing more profound than social convention. 3 / 4

Sociolinguistics as Language Variation and Change Sociolinguistics The idea that variation is an inherent part of language is the foundational maxim of the LVC (Language Variation and Change) approach. The harder part is to find the order, or the system, in the variation chaos. LVC undertakes this by a ‘linguistic variable’. A linguistic variable is the alternation of forms, or ‘layering’ of forms, in language. It is two or more ways of saying the same thing. Linguistic variables should be structural and integrated into a larger system of functioning units.The Linguistic Variable Synonyms are different lexemes with the same referential meaning. A restrictive definition of synonymy would require that two synonyms are completely interchangeable in every possible context. Linguistic variables must also be alternatives (options) within the same grammatical system which have the same referential value (meaning) in discourse. The choice of one variant or the other must vary in a systematic way – this is structured heterogeneity.

Linguistic variable:

-Two different ways of saying the same thing; -An abstraction; -Made up of variants;

-Comprising a linguistically defined set of some type:

oA phoneme oA lexical item oA structural category oA natural class of units oA syntactic relationship oThe permutation or placement of items -The variants of the variable must have a structurally defined relationship in the grammar; -They must also co-vary, correlating with patterns of social and/or linguistic phenomena.Tip: Look for the words that occur most frequently in data in order to find a linguistic variable. Are there other ways of saying the same thing?Linguistic variables involve variants that have social meaning. Sociolinguistic variables: correlated with some non-linguistic variable of the social context: speaker, addressee, audience, setting, etc. The patterns of a linguistic variable in the speech community tell the story of how the speech community evaluates the variants of the variable and reveals how society is organised and structured.The empirical task of Variationist Sociolinguistics is to correlate linguistic variation as the dependent variant with independent variables. The dependent variables are the features of the

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