Social Groups

Question 1

Jenny Cheshire - 1982
Study?
Conclusion?

Answer 1

Reading study - the relationship between the use of non standard variables and adherence to peer group norms
Children who approved of peer group criminal activities were more likely to use non standard forms (boys more so).
Variation is a conscious choice, influenced by social attitude
Males are more susceptible to covert prestige

Question 2

Milroy
Study?
Conclusion?

Answer 2

Belfast study
Members of speech community are connected ti each other in social networks which may be relatively ‘closed or open’
Closed : person who’s contacts all know each other
Open : individual who’s contacts tend not to know each other
Men who belong to closed social networks tend to have a high usage of vernacular non - standard forms

Question 3

Peter Trudgill
Study?
Conclusion?

Answer 3

Social Stratification - hierarchal ordering in groups within a society
Social barriers: diffusion of a linguistic feature may be halted by barriers kf social, class, age, race, religion or other factors
Social distance: same sort of effect as geographical distance, linguistic innovation that begins at the highest social group and transcends to the lowest

Question 4

Lower class
Macaulay - 1991
Yule - 2006
Eckert - 2000

Answer 4

Dislocated syntax- speak in incomplete sentences and not correct ‘I love babies me’
Use more pronouns p, restricted code, speak in dialect, change ‘ing to ‘in (thinkin), drop of the ‘h’ sound (ave)
Use more taboo language (swearing, expletives)

Question 5

Middle class
Macaulay - 1991
Bernstein - 1971
Trudgill - 1974
Labov - 1966

Answer 5

Adverbs (degree) more (very, quite, rather), relative pronouns (who), more hedges (modal verbs - somewhat)
Passive tense ( the dishes are washed by John)
Pronounce fewer ‘r’ sounds (dahling, mahvellous)
Change style of speaking quicker, adopt a more careful style quicker, overt/covert prestige, convergence/divergence

Question 6

Age:
Penelope Eckert - 1989
Study?
Participants?
Findings?

Answer 6

Jocks and Burnouts
Goffman 1961 - school as an institution encompasses lives
Gramsci 1971 - Hegemony, domination by making complicit in opposition
Mary Bulcholtz 1999- immigrant teenagers adaptation and white kids in urban area also ‘geek’ girls
Yuri Kawahara 1988 - documented language development and features of AAVE
William Labov 1972 - friendship network of pre-adolescent New York boys language development relations
Norma Mendoza-Denton 1996 - draws explicit connections of style in Latinas at Californian Schools
Susan Gal and Judith Irvine 1995 - term ‘iconisation’ as a projection of social strategies

AAVE - immigrant teenagers in urban areas and with street culture often adopted features (Latter Boys) and fewer occur fed in feature zero capula and non-standard English
Negation - burnouts (42% and rejected) use more regularly than jocks (13% with institutional status), however no burnouts made exclusive use
Gender - jock girls are more standard, boys use negation 1/5 time and both burnout genders use 50% of the time
Latinas - Nortenos emphasise Chicano identities and Surenos emphasise Mexicano

Question 7

Age:
Gary Ives
Study?
Conclusion?

Answer 7

West Yorkshire Study
The fact that language becomes more standard with age
Shared language of teenagers was informal,containing taboo and slang specific to the age group
Their use of slang was only being specifically understood by their generation only
Text talk language feature uses extensively

Question 8

Age:
Penelope Eckert - 1998
Conclusion?

Answer 8

Peoples language is affected by their important life events
Age isn’t defined by chronological age, also by biological and social
All people of a certain age rename speak the same

Question 9

Age:
Penelope Eckert - 2003
Conclusion?

Answer 9

Slang is used to connect an individual to youth culture (covert prestige) and to set themselves off from other generations
Features such as ‘okay’, ‘like’, rising inflection and multiple negation

Question 10

Age:
Anna-Brita Stenstrom
Conclusion?

Answer 10

Teen language features: irregular turn taking, overlaps, indistinct articulation, word shortenings, teasing/name calling, verbal duelling, slang, taboo, langauge missing (MLE)

Question 11

Age:
Stronsom, Anderson and Hasun - 2002
Conclusion?

Answer 11

Found common non-standard features
Ain’t, ellipsis of auxiliary verbs, non-standard pronouns

Question 12

Age:
Unni Berland - 1997
Conclusion?

Answer 12

Class is a factor in language variation within an age group
Working class teens tend to use ‘innit’ more
Middle class teens use ‘yeah’ more

Question 13

Age:
Christopher Odato - 2013
Conclusion?

Answer 13

Younger children copy the language of those older than them
Children as young a 4 use ‘like’
Stage 1: children use ‘like’ infrequently - mostly at the beginning of clauses
Stage 2: greater use age of ‘like’ - girls at age 5, boys at age 7
Stage 3: children use ‘like’ more frequently and in more complex positions, girls more to this stage earlier than boys

Question 14

Age:
Vivian de Klerk - 2005
Conclusion?

Answer 14

Young people seek to create identities and have the freedom to ‘challenge linguistic norms’
They want to look ‘modern and cool’ as eek as different
Need to belong to a distinctive group
Not all teenagers a like - not all a homogeneous group

Question 15

Age:
Jenny Cheshire - 1987
Conclusion?

Answer 15

Adult and child language can change due to important life events
E.g. Marriage, childbirth and change in social relations

Question 16

Age:
Ignacio Palacios - 2011
Conclusion?

Answer 16

Teenagers use more negatives than adults
More direct and mit afraid of FTA
E.g, nah, nope and dunno as well as multiple negation and use of never

Question 17

Age:
Zimmerman and West - 2009
Conclusion?

Answer 17

Argued Graffiti, music, media and communication are influenced on teen-speak

Question 18

Age:
Ignacio Martinez - 2011
Verbal system
Negatives
Quotatives
Prominal system
Vocatives
Vague language
Non-canonical tags

Answer 18

Finish off in word
Copy up reasons

Question 19

Age:
Douglas S. Bigham - 2012
Conclusion?

Answer 19

‘Emerging adult stage’ before adulthood (ages 18-25) not necessarily a closed network)
Identity exploration - means accents seem to be unrelated to their geographical origins
Feeling in between - rise of online network, contributed to the sense of not belonging to a place or group
Social boundaries blurred, as are their gender and sexual boundaries
Self focus on their personal identities rather than forming social ones
Speech of olde people = speech of an older time period

Question 20

Age:
Beth Kemp
Study?
Conclusion?

Answer 20

Age related Variation
Lexis varies between groups, older people have ‘outmoded’ words, younger people have their own slang, middle age people have generation specific slang
Grammatical differences - e,g ‘must be’ older, ‘has to be’ younger, dummy do used in younger speech
Phonological differences - more glottalisation in younger speech, ‘Uptalk’ amongst youth, younger people more likely to use Estuary, MLE

Question 21

Age:
Mary Kohn
Conclusion?

Answer 21

Teenagers role in language change is overstated
No consistent path that a person took from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, more individualistic and varies for each person
Langauge is constantly developing and changing and becoming what it needs to be for the generation
Out stereotypes about how teenagers speak are often based on subgroups of teenagers that stand out to us as most distinct
‘As long as there are people who are living and breathing and speaking, we’re going to invent new words, we’re going to invent new ways of speaking’