Study Guide For Sociolinguistics At Troy

1

Conversational Analysis 1. Personal/ Impersonal Topics –

Impersonal Topics:

The interlocutor gives as little information as possible. It seems as the interlocutor does want to tell me anything. When people don’t know someone very well, they feel uncomfortable with themselves. –

Personal Topics:

In general situation, the interlocutor can take an active role in the conversation, such as volunteering information and evaluation, and asking questions. When the topic proceeded, the interlocutors can achieve a high degree of cooperation. They can build a pattern of cooperative sentence. A sense of harmony and agreement can take place such as yeah, right, there we go! –

The crucial factor to elicit personal topic is the expectation that is appropriate topics of talk between new acquaintances.

2. High-Involvement/ High Considerateness High-Involvement (stylistic strategies) talk a lot, use much overlap, latch quick expressive responses, fast, clipped questions, free offer of opinions and thoughts, personal topics and quick abrupt questions High Considerateness: 3. Enthusiasm Constraint –

The Interlocutor can show excitement and exuberance that urges me to talk loud and fast with the interlocutor.

The interlocutor expects you to become equally excited and shout the other down. The interlocutor overlaps and stops the other talking.

2

When the interlocutor is a bulldozer, enthusiastic in the topic, the other can have been pushed hard like a basketball player or can match the volume with the enthusiastic interlocutor and shout right over him or her. Overlap effect is a balanced interchange. One stops and the other continues. Overlap can be the enthusiasm strategy. (Greek speakers shout loudly at each other, and it is common for one of two to raise his hand to attack the other physically.) 4.

Machine-Gun Question (Yeah, yeah, yeah, asking many questions)

–

The interlocutor asks questions with high pitch, rapid rate, fast pacing, with respect to preceding comments, and reduce syntactic, all signal familiarity and casualness, hence, rapport.

They can interrupt and repeat each other to answer in tandem. The intricate patterns of synchronization can occur. 5. Overlap –

Stepping on (Please don’t step on me. Let me finish talking.)

6. Pace –

Rate of speech, rate of interaction

–

Faster rate of speech/ faster turn taking/ avoiding interturn pauses (silence shows lack of rapport)/ cooperative overlap. Participatory listenership

7.

Mutual Revelation

–

Part of high-involvement style/ I want you to tell me.

–

This is a device by a personal statement is intended as a show of rapport. We are intimate: we both tell about ourselves; we are both interested in hearing about the other’s experience.

8. Story Rounds –

Stories in conversation are often told in Cluster or Sequences. This is story round.

3

–

A particular kind of story cluster that speakers can exchange stories of personal experiences that illustrate similar points.

9. Expressiveness –

Emotional response

–

Wow/ Oh God! (loud and marked exclamations in response)

–

The utterance is from exclamations against the background of silence, coming as overlaps, or rapidly paced in the interchange.

10. Persistence –

Waiting to get there but they can’t/ waiting to get the idea/ the time to say it.

–

A show of rapport

–

The reason: to maintain a show of rapport by offering comments.

–

After a speaker tells a story, he or she expects to hear the comments from the others

11. Intonation –

It is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words.

–

The ways that a speaker rises and falls as he or she speaks.

12. Irony and Joking –

Irony: elicit a smile or chuckle(to be intended to amuse)

–

a) nasalization of all or part of an utterance

–

b) slower rate in all or part

–

c) exaggerated stress on one or more parts

–

Most characteristic form of humor is a mocking style by which he exaggerates either his own or someone else’s speech patterns.

–

Joke: the main purpose is to entertain

13. Tolerance for Noise/Silence –

A concomitant of the persistence device, one’s thoughts are of interest is related to the tolerance for overlap.

4

–

Some speakers pursue different topics at the same time. A speaker tends to stick to one topic at a time.

–

What speakers of the high-involvement style cannot tolerate is the alternative to this strategy: silence. If a speaker cannot toss out what comes into his or her head and if the topics are dropped after one or two tries, there will necessarily be periods of silence in conversation between topics. Many of high-involvement system found in the conversation grow out intolerance for silence.

14. Nonverbal Devices - Gesture, facial expression, trying to catch the eye contact, personal space, clearing throat, close kinesic proximity, frequent touching during talk 15. Rhythm?

–

Rhythm is as basic to conversation as it is to music and poetry.

–

The dominant duple rhythm may result from the human heartbeat.

–

Conversational interaction and the feeling of being moved to subjective knowing.

–

Conversational interaction contributes to participant involvement much like singing along or tapping one’s foot in rhythm with music.

16. Surface Linguistic Features –

It focuses on sound beyond the rhythm. /rhyme?

–

The pattern of sound/ sound and structural patterns like rhythm, serves to sweep the audience along toward subjective knowing.

–

Example: See you later alligator after a while crocodile! (No meaning just rhythm)

–

Because, cause, cuz (Phonological variant of a lexical item)

17. Contextualization –

It is the process of assigning meaning, either linguistic or as a means of interpreting the environment within which an expression or action is executed.

5

–

In written literature, crucial information is omitted that must be supplied by the reader to make sense of a text. The reader creates a world according to the writer’s instructions and this filling in by the reader of necessary context. It is called contextualization.

–

Example: the most dramatic example being poetry. The goal is to evoke the most elaborate sets of associations in the reader by use of the sparest verbal representations.

18. Ellipsis –

A way of saying nothing and meaning something.

–

Example: in the classic linguistics as implicature, or indirectness (It’s cold in here – without mentioning a window, the statement results in someone closing a window)

19. Figures of Speech –

Irony,

Enigma(riddles),

Parimia(speaking

in

proverbs),

Allogory,

Parable,

Metaphor(meaning transferred by analogy), Metonym(meaning transferred to an associated notion, e.g., “sword” for “war”), Synecdoche( the part for the whole or vice versa, e.g., “greybeard” for “old man,” or “the law” for “policeman”) 20. Imagery or –

Details(concrete image & specific details)

Subjective knowing (in response to their immediacy and vividness, readers conjure up associations based on their own prior experience)

–

In spoken and written narratives (stories told spontaneously in ordinary conversation are characterized by use of specific details and “imageability.” Study Guide for Final Exam

1.

Study the hand out from Tannen’s conversational Style.

2.

Study Ch.13 in Longman’s Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English.

–

Hedges: defines as not precise words that the speaker avoids making the explicit nouns or specific quantity and quality (like, stuff like that, odd)

6

–

Hesitators: (pause fillers) signal that the speaker is hesitating, and has not yet finished what he or she wants to say. (uh, um, uh/what kind of uh bulldog is this? And uh, she’s uh sends her regards)

–

Dysfluencies: the way in which unplanned speech departs from smooth flowing, grammatically well-formed utterances

–

Attention getters: have the main function of claiming a hearer’s attention. (Hey, yo, hey, hey)

–

Lexicon Bundles: a sequence of words which is used repeatedly in texts It’s going to be……/ I don’t know what……/ I tell you what…… Have a look at… let’ have a look…know what I mean… Do you know what… What are you doing…

3.

The handout on Grice’s “Conversational Maxims” and their importance in creating a bond in a good conversation.

4.

The High-Involvement Style and its strengths and its weaknesses in conversation.

–

*strength

–

No awkward silence.

–

It’s fun and quick moving.

–

*weaknesses

–

They can’t get in the conversation.

–

A person might feel excluded.

5.

The ways to elicit responses.

–

a) Sequences of question-answer (Whose bowl is that./Mine.)

–

b) Non-clausal fragments (Really?/ What for?)

–

c) The form of tag questions. (You’ve got the cards, haven’t you?/ She didn’t’ ride back, did she?)

–

Greeting and farewell (Hi, Margaret. Hi/ Oh. Goodbye Robin./See you later.)

–

Backchannel (Mm/Yeah)

7

–

Response elicitors (Just leave out the smutty stuff, okay?/ It’s like a magnet obviously see?)

–

Imperatives (Get on the phone and phone them up!) Sociolinguistics

6.

The theory of politeness, especially in the South.

–

Politeness is the expression of the speakers’ intention to mitigate face threats carried by certain face threatening acts toward another.

–

A battery of social skills whose goal is to ensure everyone feels affirmed in a social interaction". Being polite therefore consists of attempting to save face for another.

–

*Three factors

–

a) One tends to be more polite to people who are socially superior to oneself, or socially important: one’s boss, the vicar, the doctor, the president.

–

b) One tends to be more polite to people one doesn’t know, people who are socially distant: strangers, persons, from very different walks of life.

–

c) The more face threatening, the more polite one is likely to be.

–

In the South: Yes, mamm, No, Sir, Hello sweetie, Bye, sweetheart.

7.

List the elements affecting bilingualism.

–

The time spent using the language, the age of learning, skill(reading, writing, speaking, understanding speech)

–

The receptive skills of reading and understanding speech are often stronger in a learned language than are the productive skills of speaking and writing.

–

* Describing individual’s bilingualism

–

a) to identify each of the languages (Cantonese& Putonghoa, Egyptian& Moroccan Arabic, High German& Swiss German)

–

b) the way each language was acquired (age, time spent, skill)

8

–

c) the performance of certain internal functions (counting, arithmetic, dreaming, cursing, or praying silently)

–

d) the performance of certain external functions (read a daily newspaper, carry informal conversation, give a lecture)

8.

Study domains and role-relationships and topics.

–

Domain: Typical social situation with three defining characteristics: place, rolerelationship, and topic. (Domain consists of a location, a set of role-relationships, and a set of topics)

–

Examples: Home school or the home-work switch is the most common with one language learned at home from parents and the second learned at school and used at work. For Maori people, when the marae, ceremony took place, Maori language is used. In Swiss adults, High German (Hoch Deutsch) is used in the work domain and Swiss German in the home and neighborhood. For immigrants, the original language is used in the home and religious domains while new language in work, education, and public domains.

– Location Home Neighborhood

Role-relationships Mother, father, son, daughter Neighbor, shopkeeper,

Topics Domestic, personal Weather, shopping,

School Church

street-cleaner Teacher, student, principal Priest, parishioner

social greetings Social greetings, educational Sermons, prayers, confession, social

– 9.

Code Switching and Metaphorical Switching and a Mixed Code.

–

Code Switching: Changing from language to language in the midst of an utterance. Immigrants often use many words from their new language in their old language because many of the people they speak to know both languages.

9

–

Metaphorical Switching: A powerful mechanism for signaling social attitudes or claiming group membership or solidarity. In the midst of speaking about work matters in Language A, a sentence or two in Language B will be able to show that the two speakers are not just fellow-employees but also fellow members of an ethnic group. The use of tags and expressions from Language B while speaking Language A enables a speaker to make this kind of identity claim easily. This kind of shift is called Metaphorical Switching.

–

Mixed Code: A variety with extensive code switching used by bilinguals to talk to each other. (beef/cow, pork/pig) (Danish, Norman words are added by bilinguals/ Jamaican English or New Zealand English can be seen as mixed code)

–

Ballet, Café, Buffet (French – Anglo-Saxon in Normandy)

10. Ch.6, –

Societal Multilingualism

Multilingual is the term that an individual speaker who uses two or more languages, a community of speakers where two or more languages are used or speakers of different languages.

–

Societal Multilingualism: Two or more languages are spoken by people in one society.

–

1) Involuntary migration: a)

The British policy brought Indian workers to the Fijian sugar plantations which were led to be the distinctiveness between the indigenous Fiji’s dialects and Hindi-speaking from the original plantation workers.

b)

The African slave trade were brought to large numbers of native speakers of different languages into the East and West Indies, and led to the formation of the pidgins and creoles.

–

2) Voluntary migration: According to the melting pot policy, a large number of immigrants have been migrating to the United States.

10

–

a) In the 19th and early 20th century, large communities of speakers of German, Norwegian, Greek, Italian, Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, Japanese, Various Chinese languages and Spanish.

–

b) After 1923, an influx of South East Asian speakers of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and other languages.

–

c) In recent wave of immigrants are from the former Soviet Union. Most of the groups have given up using their traditional language and have acquired English.

–

d) Over the time, legally and illegally, especially, the number of Spanish speaking immigrants is growing

–

3) Migration from country side or small towns to large metropolitan cities that cause another major cause of multilingual communities. This movement to cities is creating huge megalopolises, producing major problems for social, economic, and political development.

–

4) Conquest historically it has been created. The incorporation of Brittany, Alsace, and Provence into France submerged the languages of these regions. The spread of English power over the British Isles produced multilingualism and lead to the loss of some Celtic languages. The conquest of Central and South America by the Spaniards and Portuguese produced countries with large indigenous minorities, some still speaking many Indian languages. Colonial policies led to multilingual states.

11. Explain –

how pidgins and creoles develop. What are these? Give examples.

Pidgins: A variety of language that is not a native language of anyone, but is learned in contact situations.

–

: A pidgin language is one that evolves in circumstances where there are limited relations between the speakers of different languages, such as a market, or where there is a special situation of power relations, being typical of the kind of masterslave relation on a plantation.

11

–

Example of Pidgin: Hawaiian Pidgin: It sounds like that

–

Eh, howzit? (Hey, how’s it going?)

–

Wassamattah you? (What’s the matter?)

–

Cannah talk da kine? (Can’t you speak Pidgin?)

–

Some Common Pidgin Words and Phrases

– Brah / bruddah: brother or pal. Most men refer to each other this way. –

Broke da mout: delicious

–

Bumbucha: very big

–

Chicken skin: goose bumps

–

Fo’ what: why

–

Fo’ real: really

–

Garans: guaranteed

–

Grind: to eat

–

Hana hou: one more time

–

Hele on: let's go, get moving

–

Howzit: How are you?

–

Huhu: mad, angry

–

Keiki: child

–

Kokua: care, help

–

Like beef?: want to fight?

–

Lolo: dumb, crazy

–

Lua: bathroom

–

Moke: big, tough local

–

Nevah: never

–

Opake: ghost

–

Opu: belly

–

Okole: buttocks

–

Ono: delicious

–

Pau: finished, done Pupus: appetizers

–

Spahk: check it out

–

Stink Eye: a very dirty look

–

Talk stink: badmouth someone

–

Tita: a very tough girl

–

Tutu: grandmother

–

Tutu kane: grandfather

–

Whaddsdascoops: What's going on?

12

–

How developed: A pidgin is a social rather than an individual solution. Individual speakers acquire only a limited control of a language where they need to do business. The term ‘pidgin’ is better kept for social varieties with established norms. A pidgin involves the mixture of two or more languages. The grammatical system is based more or less on one language and the vocabulary is largely taken from another. The grammar is simplified. Pidgins have become stable over the time. In multilingual areas where each of the existing language groups maintains their destructiveness and do not intermarry, the pidgin continues.

–

Creoles: A pidgin once it has native speakers.

–

Creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin.

–

Creolization: Changes in a pidgin as a result of adding vitality or mother tongue speakers.

–

Example of Creole: Haitian Creole

–

Sample

–

How developed: New features emerge the growing complexity of the social circumstances where the language is used. It is not a contact language within limited social functions. The process is called creolization. The language expands and develops, displaying greater phonological and grammatical complexity.

–

(Hawaiian Creole, Haitian Creole)

–

The creoles have much of the same grammatical complexity as other natural languages. They also show the characteristics of their original pidgin status, such as the blended phonology, and the existence of two or more grammatical and lexical bases. One of the features showed as Black English which derives from an original Creole like the Gullah still spoken in some communities. Some argued that it’s as a separate language, and called for its recognition and maintenance. The controversy

13

over what is called Black English, Afro-American Vernacular English, or Ebonics has raged in American Educational situations for at least thirty years. Creole

IPA

Origin

English

bagay

/bagaj/

(?)Fr. bagage, "baggage"

"thing"

bannann

/bãnãn/

Fr. banane, "banana"

"plantain"

bekàn

/bekan/

Fr. bécane /bekan/

"bicycle"

Bondye

/bõdje/

Fr. Bon Dieu /bõdjø/

"God! Good Lord!"

dèyè

/dɛjɛ/

Fr. derrière /dɛʁjɛʁ/

"behind"

diri

/diri/

Fr. du riz /dy ʁi/

"rice"

fig

/fig/

Fr. figue /fig/

"banana"

lakay

/lakaj/

(?)Fr. cahutte /kayt/

"house"

kiyèz, tchòk, poban

/kijɛz, tʃɔk, pobã/

kle

/kle/

Fr. clé /kle/, "key"

"wrench" or "key"

kle kola

/kle kola/

Fr. clé /kle/, "key" + Eng. "cola"

"bottle opener"

konnflek

/kõnflek/

En. "corn flakes"

"breakfast cereal"

kawoutchou

/kawutʃu/

Fr. caoutchouc, "rubber"

"tire"

lin

/lin/

Fr. lune /lyn/

"moon"

makak

/makak/

Fr. macaque /makak/

"monkey"

matant

/matãt/

Fr. ma tante, "my aunt"

"aunt"

moun

/mun/

Fr. monde

"people/person"

mwen

/mw ɛ/̃

Fr. moi /mwa/ or /mwɛ/, "mwen meme"

"me","I","myself"

nimewo

/nimewo/

Fr. numéro /nymeʁo/

"number"

etazini

/etazini/

Fr. États-Unis /etazyni/

"United States"

piman

/pimã/

Fr. piment /pimã/

a very hot pepper

pann

/pãn/

Fr. pendre /pãdʁ/

"to hang"

"hog banana" [nb 1]

14

pwa

/pwa/

Fr. pois /pwa/, "pea"

chenèt

/ʃenɛt/

Fr. (Antilles) la quénette

tonton

/tõtõ/

fr. tonton

"uncle"

vwazen

/vwaz ɛ/̃

Fr. voisin /vwaz ɛ/̃

"neighbor"

zwazo

/zwazo/

Fr. oiseau /wazo/

"bird"

ye

/je/

Fr. yeux /jø/

"eye"

–

"bean" "ackee"(not Jamaican Ackee), "chenette", "guinip", "gap" [nb 2]

How developed: New features emerge the growing complexity of the social circumstances where the language is used. It is not a contact language within limited social functions. The process is called creolization. The language expands and develops, displaying greater phonological and grammatical complexity.

–

(Hawaiian Creole, Haitian Creole)

–

The creoles have much of the same grammatical complexity as other natural languages. They also show the characteristics of their original pidgin status, such as the blended phonology, and the existence of two or more grammatical and lexical bases. One of the features showed as Black English which derives from an original Creole like the Gullah still spoken in some communities. Some argued that it’s as a separate language, and called for its recognition and maintenance. The controversy over what is called Black English, Afro-American Vernacular English, or Ebonics has raged in American Educational situations for at least thirty years.

12. What –

is the melting pot policy? How important is it in learning American English?

The melting pot is a place or situation in which people of different cultures, races and religions or ideas of different kinds gradually get mixed together. The term originates from the United States, is often used to describe societies experiencing large scale immigration from many different countries.

15

–

The melting pot policy is the American policy to receive a large scale of immigration from many different countries.

–

How important: Since voluntary immigrants have moved to the United States, as the world’s foremost receiver of voluntary immigration country, a multilingual society has been formed. In the 19th and early 20th century, large communities of speakers of German, Norwegian, Greek, Italian, Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, Japanese, Various Chinese languages and Spanish. After 1923, the rate of absorption was slowed down, strict immigration laws were passed. There were some relaxation of this policy in the post war period, including an influx of South East Asian speakers of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and other languages. In recent wave of immigrants are from the former Soviet Union. Most of the groups have given up using their traditional language and have acquired English. Over the time, legally and illegally, especially, the number of Spanish speaking immigrants is growing. The significant aspect for the multilingualism in a society is the rise of ethnic awareness has been threatening to upset this comfortable monolingual trend.

13. What

–

is Language Loyalty?

The ability (or lack of it) of speakers of a language to stand up to the pressure of more powerful languages.

–

The resistance to language shift was found in groups that they chose to isolate themselves both linguistically and culturally from the mainstream. They both reject not only the language but also the dress and social conduct of their new country.

–

Group1:1) Mennonite- Hutterian &Old Order Amish (It sounds like a King James Bible) 2) Ultra-orthodox Hassidic Jews

–

Group2: The group was segregated and isolated by the outside society and whose access to the easy social mobility that other immigrants enjoyed was obstructed by

16

social discrimination. (the indigenous native American and the various Spanishspeaking indigenous and immigrant groups) –

Language shift: the revitalization of Hebrew, in Ottoman Palestine, by returning to Zionists who were looking to build a new nation using an old language. After 1700 years during which it had been learned as an additional language, it had the component of vitality or natural intergenerational transmission restored.

14. What

are Language Rights?

- The issue language or linguistic rights provides an opportunity to attempt to take an ethical rather than a scientific view of language contact and conflict. - The differences between the rights of the speakers of a language to use it and their rights to maintain it by teaching it to their children. 1) The rights of linguistic minorities or of individuals who do not speak the national or official language of a political unit. 2) The provision of interpreting and translating services to those who have not yet had the opportunity to learn the national language. The first language is the right to learn the national language, and in the meantime, to be assisted in dealing with those situations where lack of control of it serious handicaps. (Bruh-ha-ha: controversy) 3) The right of a group of speakers of a language to preserve and maintain their own favored language or variety and to work to reverse any language shift to the status or prestige variety. (Complex issue) a) The potential conflict between the rights of individuals and the groups. b) Who should pay for the reverse shift efforts? Should it be the language community, and should it be provided outside the regular school system?)