Ethnicity, Age, occupation + social class Flashcards
(18 cards)
Occupation - Swales discourse community
occupational settings and people within them form a discourse community which he defines as groups that have shared goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals. Members of a discourse community; share goals, use specialist lexis or discourse and possess required knowledge and skills
e.g. hospital, the medical staff share a common goal (to help the patient), use specialist lexis (medical terminology) and have studied medicine at university
Occupation -Koester ‘Phatic talk’
show show important phatic talk is in getting jobs done workers need to establish interpersonal relationships and have interactions that are not just about work-related procedures. Although some employers are represented as discouraging talk that isn’t strictly work related, Koester shows that being sociable and engaging in personal chat is an important aspect of effective working. As well as power then, solidarity - the ability to connect with one’s workmates - is an important dimension in workplace communication
Occupation - Janet Holmes
small talk serves a valuable bridging function, a means of transition to the main business of a workplace interaction. in interactions between workmates of unequal power it is generally the boss who either allows small talk or cuts it short. the superiors may not use or expect small talk, but it can be a way to reduce social distance.
occupation - paul drew and john heritage - institutional talk
focused on:
- specific goals + tasks
- special lexical + linguistic structures for work context
- difference in power means interactions often asymmetrical with restrictions on turn taking etc
it is important to consider how language is used differently by someone who has less power in an institution compared to a manager who has more power. As the manager has higher status in that context, it is appropriate for them to use imperatives.
Age - Jenny Cheshire ‘life thoery’
suggest that biological age is not the main influence on a person’s language but rather that it is an individual’s experience of different life events that shapes their language. occurs during ‘emerging adulthood’ - Bigham as this stage where people leave education + go down individual paths and careers - 20 year old single female uses language differently to 20 married female
18 teen talk use of informal language ‘innit’ slang ‘clapped’ there is no recognised talk for those in 30s, 20s
eckert - research on teen talk
carried research into teenspeak + discovered chronological age plays significant role in language use due to shared experiences + strong group identity. Features of teenspeak:
- word shortenings = wya where you at?
- slang = eval adjective ‘chopped’
- multiple negation - didn’t never do that
- cultural mixing = wagwan
- not every teen speaks the same ‘Jocks and Burnouts study
odato
shows teen speak feature ‘like’ id governed by complex rules which children must develop in order to use the code e.g. earlier stages apply like as a discourse marker ( like i was just going to the shop) children use ‘like’ more often and in a greater number of positions, girls tended to move to this stage age 5, whereas boys age 7 while later forms include using to introduce prepositional phrase ( Look at how yours landed like on the right)
children probably wait to hear enough evidence that like an be sued in a certain syntactic position before they start to use it that way themselves. therefore, there is an element of younger children copying the language of those older than them
ignacio palacios martinez - use of negatives
teenages use negatives more frequently than adults do. roughly 1/3 of these negatives occurred in orders, suggestions and refusals. martinez argues that teenagers tend to be much more direct when they speak, whereas adults are more conscious of what they say and how they say it, for fear of coming across as too direct. typical negative words and phrases were mostly informal: ‘no way’, ‘nope’, ‘nah’, ‘dunno’, non-standard use of ‘never’ and multiple negation
unni berland - use of tags ‘innit’, ‘yeah’, and ‘right’
‘innit’ was more common among the working class teenagers while ‘yeah’ was used more by the middle class group. there was also evidence that ‘okay’ was used more by girls than boys, although both genders used ‘innit’, ‘right’ and ‘yeah’ in equal measures
paul kerswill - multi ethnic varieties of english
inner london, accents are diversifying. kerswill et al recorded london sixth-formers, whose speech had afro-caribbean and indian subcontinent influences. a clear new vernacular is emerging in inner london, linking identities and forging shared identities - often around music like rap, bhangra and hip hop. this is because there is a high concentration of recent immigrants, and acquired language through role models - this is a new form of english, regardless of ethnic background. the sounds are similar whether your family comes from south america, caribbean, west africa or arabia.
Ethnicity - paul kerswill - dialect levelling
dialect levelling happens when strong local dialects are watered down as people become more mobile, and have more contact with people outside their locality. the other strand is upward mobility (wanting to gain social status through ‘improving’ their speech. the uk is a class-stratified society. local accents tend to be spoken by working class people, perhaps because they are not as geographically mobile. there is soldatory in tight knit working class communities, and thus sounding local has prestige value, and so strong accents and dialects are maintained.
sue fox - multi-ethnic youth dialect study
interviewed the youth population of london from different cultural backgrounds. she suggested a variety of MEYD, which she has termed as MLE. it has strong characteristics drawn from the influences of several other languages, creole and cultural sources. this can be found in with youths in Brum + Bristol
ethnicity - mark sebba - london jamaican study
interviewed + recorded the speech of young female, new generation speakers born with jamaican parentage (catford girls posse). found main choices of the speakers were effectively between caribbean and creole forms, cockney forms that he summed up as ‘london english’ and standard/RP forms.
found the speakers are able to incorporate SE, RP, Jamaican Creole and Cockney forms in their use of language + code - switch appropriately which they do with great sophistication
rob drummond - multicultural urban british english
aim of research to explore extent to which features of (MLE) can be found in Manchester the influence of settled immigrant speakers is significant - notably west indian, west african and bangladeshi, but the speakers the dialect are drawn from white, black and asian communities alike
Drummonds (MBE) features
dh stopping - ‘dem’
th stopping - ting
pragmatic markers - you get me, innit
thomason - substratum theory
focuses on how different languages influences impact English when contact is met through non - native speakers and regional dialects e.g. coffee comes from Arabic change brought about from war, immigration etc
contact between different englishes and dialects from across the world adds to the variety and richness available in british english, which can contribute to a speakers linguistic identity, enabling them to demonstrate membership of a particular social group and distance themselves from other social groups
Class - Bernstein
looks at restricted + elaborated code and found that they both have the same learning and there’s no better or worse code. However, Bernstein contradicts himself and made a correlation between social class and that wc can only use restricted code whereas mc alternate between both suggests wc don’t have access to social mobility
e.g. dexis = pointing words ‘over there’
Class - Labov
challenges Bersntein findings and argues that social context shapes language use but not in a way that makes one form more superior
- non - standard varieties of english are governed by rules + are structured
- in context of African American vernacular English, language variation is influenced by status, group identity rather than just social class
- AAVE speakers use language intelligently + strategically
research emphasises linguistic diversity and variation rather than placing judgements on language forms of different classes
e.g. multiple negatives
