Lesson 2: Language and Dialect Flashcards
What is the popular understanding of dialects?
a type of pseudo-language spoken by uneducated or country people
True or False:
Dialects do not have any grammatical rules.
False
All dialects have a grammar
True or False:
Children acquire the speech of their communities.
True
dialect
any variety of a language that is shared by a group of speakers
standard variety
a language is a collection of dialects and one has been adopted as “the language”
True or False:
Everyone speaks a dialect.
True
What are the characteristics of a standard language?
- selected due to being the dialect of the most influential class
- acquires a written form
- has a standardized grammar
- authoritative dictionary
- spelling/writing is fixed
- a correct pronunciation
prestige dialect
perceived positively as the dialect of the educated, sophisticated, and upper-class
substandard dialect
perceived negatively as the dialect of the ignorant, lower-class, and uneducated
What factors can lead to language variation?
- geography
- social class
- political ideology
- age
- gender
- sexual orientation
- situation
- time
True or False:
[h] deletion in Norwich, England is highest among the lower working class.
True
Where do our notions of correctness come from when it comes to language?
- educational system
- government
- social class
discourse particles
particles of language with no direct semantic meaning, but serves a pragmatic function by changing the tone of the sentence
ex: Singlish “lah”
intraspeaker variation
variation within one person’s own speech
interspeaker
variation from one person to another
