Linguistic features that distinguish regional and social varieties of English - Essay Example

Linguistic features that distinguish regional and social varieties of English Introduction Language isthe wonderful medium of communication which only the human beings have been gifted among all living beings. "Man is a social animal" is a famous saying which depicts the hierarchy in which man resides on the top most categories. Sociology evolved with evolution of language and languages always change. But if there is a similar direction to it's change, then it can be described much more effectively and efficiently. People differ in the manner in which they speak their native tongue, which does not necessarily mean that they pertain to a small area. Even people belonging to same region would tend to speak in different accents. These variations constitute the dialects of the people. Many factors have influenced to develop a standard form of language in all major speech communities. These in turn have been used as the official dialects of the communities. (The Columbia electronic encyclopedia,2006) The official dialect usually differs from the day to day language, it has some "officiality" in it which would contain certain standards of grammar, pronunciations etc. The standard English of England is derived from London English. A person is marked as cultivated in the United states which entails usage of standard grammar and pronunciation. Also the degree of politeness of a person is judged by the efficiency with which he or she speaks the standard language. Sometimes ordinary speech can be affected by the standard language. Hence some usages would tend to be incorrect such as "you was" in place of "you were" etc. Similarly "gotten" is accepted in United States but not in England. Similarly "Gotten" is accepted by the United States but not in England. Also the standard of linguistic variations are mainly because of vocabulary. Language changes have traditionally been treated as processes constrained by internal linguistic factors. According to this view, language contacts have been perceived as disturbing factors. Therefore, explaining language change requires new analytical ways of modelling contact, in which both internal and external factors are closely investigated. Studying language-internal processes requires a fundamental knowledge of sociolinguistic, textual and regional factors, since all variation-based analytical and explanatory models of language change rely on the idea of a combined effect of all factors. Another important insight is to be able to connect the latest language changes with historical ones. Hence, the concept of grammaticalization offers a productive starting point for analyses of language changes that span several hundred years. Linguistics Linguistics is the study of language on a scientific basis. Linguistics can be theoretical and applied. Linguistics compares languages (comparative linguistics) and explores their histories, in order to find universal properties of language and to account for its development and origins (historical linguistics). Slightly separate from general linguistics are the sub-fields of phonology, which studies the role of sounds in particular languages, and phonetics, the study of how sounds are produced and perceived. Linguistics are widely used to understand the variations of languages. Regional variation in English Everyone speaks some form of regional dialect a variety of a language that differs in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary from those spoken in other regions. In this sense, a region implies a construct of social and historical facts as well as a geographic area. The shared linguistic features that make up a regional dialect include historical facts of migration and community experience, social facts of ethnic identity, and geographic facts of climate and terrain. Each regional dialect also includes a number of social dialects that reflect the age, education, social class, and ethnic identity of its speakers. In England various dialects are spoken region wise like Scottish gaelic , Irish Gaelic etc. Regional varieties of English have historical causes that may go as far back as the Old English period. They may embody or reflect much of the history of the places where they are used. Language is not a uniform and unchanging system of communication. It varies with place and changes over time. For example, human beings are capable (physically) of a wider range of speech sounds than any one speaker ever uses. Each language in its spoken standard forms has its own range of speech sounds, while regional varieties may leave out some of these and add others. Welsh has a distinctive sound represented in spelling by ll (voiceless unilateral l, common in place names). Some English speakers use post-vocalic r (rhoticization), though this is not common outside the north, Scotland and the south-west. The social history of any region often explains the language variety that has arisen there. York was the heart of the Danelaw, the Viking kingdom in Britain. To this day, the lexicon of dialect speakers in the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire retains many words that derive from Old Norse. Scandinavian influence on the language does not stop with the end of the Danelaw, however in the 19th and 20th centuries maritime trade and commerce in the North Sea and the Baltic brought many Danes, Norwegians and Swedes to ports like Hull and Newcastle.Over many centuries, regional varieties retained distinctive lexis, grammar and speech sounds, because most speakers stayed in the place where they grew up, or near to it. In the late 20th century greater social and geographical mobility, combined with the influence of film and broadcast media, has altered the way varieties develop. Geographical location still exerts an influence, but it is not the only one. So, for example, British people of Asian descent, living in Bradford may speak a variety of English, which has West Yorkshire and Asian speech sounds, as well as those of Received Pronunciation, and a lexicon based on standard English with neologisms from the languages of the Indian sub-continent, and perhaps a few traditional Yorkshire dialect words. Also another cause for regional variation was Isolation reinforced the differences developing in each region, and meant that the regional Englishes increasingly differed both from each other and from British English. Certain vocabulary items tended to remain in use in a colony after they vanished from British English because of the isolation of the colony from the mother country. For example, the older word diaper (nappy in British English) survived in North American English, as did the use of guess, meaning 'think, imagine', as in 'I guess so'. Bioscope (a word for the cinema dating from the early 1900s in Britain) and geyser, meaning a water-heater, lived on as common terms in South African English. In Bangladesh, India, and Malta, the word Stepney is still used for a spare wheel. In America regional variation of English can be traced to different patterns of the settlement history of the United States. There were differences already in the language of the settlers: some of them came from different parts of England, some came from non-English-speaking countries. However, it can be said that non-English languages have in general influenced the language quite little. Also there is a lot of difference in pronunciation also. For example, in the Northern dialect area there is generally the distinction between (o( and (oa( in words like hoarse and horse, but in the Midland dialect area the speakers don't make there any difference in many contexts. In the Northern area (s( regularly occurs in grease (verb) and greasy. In the Midland rounding is characteristic of the vowels of hog, frog, wasp and wash. There is a tendency to "lose" the "r" except before vowels in the South and eastern New England, but not in the Northern area generally. And, for example, the vowels in the words men, time and cow are pronounced differently in different parts of the country. Diachronic investigation seeks to describe and systematize observed linguistic changes. On the one hand, we can investigate the development of diverse features of individual languages during a given period of time, either in the light of historical documents or through interlinguistic comparison, based on genetic or areal linguistics. Yet, on the other hand, one can search for parallels in contemporary languages and make inferences about the genetic relations between languages or their contacts during different periods. Areal linguistics study the effect of modern languages upon each other, Sprachbnde and tendencies shared by adjacent dialects of different languages. Contact linguistics, in turn, is closely connected to the study of bilingualism and, thereby, to sociolinguistic questions. Social Variations Sociolinguistic research has provided fruitful results on linguistic changes, and we have plenty of information on the correlations of linguistic change and social variation of education, gender, and age, for example. Historical sociolinguistic research aims at applying sociolinguistic models and methods to language history. Real time data are also needed in modeling diachronic change. Systematic attempts to model past stages of sociolinguistic reality in historical linguistics have, so far, been preliminary. Scholars of modern languages have access to social information regarding modern societies; for language historians, however, such data are provided by historians, particularly social and historians. Case studies provide the basis for creating models for more general diachronic research. Such models pay special attention to empirical problems and theoretical questions. A special challenge is to apply two different, and often contradictory, models to sociolinguistic research, viz. the traditional class-based model, whose roots lie in the socioeconomic position of the individuals, and then the social network approach. Theoretical goals within historical sociolinguistics include an examination of the relationship between societal changes and linguistic changes. Therefore, language historians provide feedback for modern sociolinguistic research and contribute to the critical debate regarding its success. Let's take some examples related to this. For example in New Zealand, a researcher named Donn Bayard (1987) collected data from 144 informants, mainly from the Otago and Southland area. Using his data he demonstrated a correlation between a speaker's social background and the "broadness" of their accent. He also did a lot of research and gathered facts on linguistic variables both sounds and vocabulary. He also examined peoples lexical preferences. He also studied the extent of merging of the diphthongs in the words EAR and AIR, and the distinctive NZ pronunciation of the short front vowels in PIT, PET and PAT. All subsequent surveys have included analyses of some or all of these features of NZE. By using all his findings he could trace out various variations among the dialects. Bibliography Variation in language (Dec 2006), The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia English Language, (Dec 2006), Wikipedia- The free encyclopedia, www.wikipedia.org Linguistics, (Dec 2006), Wikipedia- The free encyclopedia, www.wikipedia.org Read More