Language in society / Society in language

Language v. dialect

DialectSubordinate variety of a language

English language has many dialects

These dialects may be of different kinds

Regional dialec

Social dialectWhere we come from

Who we are

Geographical features(rivers and mountains)

Social native(social class group) The study of

dialects or dialectology has

to do with boundaries

Language and dialect in Papua New Guinea

Most of the

languages in

Papua New

Guinea are

spoken by small

groups

40% have

fewer than

500

speakers

The greatest

concentration of

diversity is found in

Melanesia

Where up to 1500

languages are spoken

People are multilingual and speak four or five

languages

New Britain

Ten examples illustrate how people in different villages

would request someone to given them

“betelnut to chew”Results

-Varieties 6 and 7 -> identical-Varieties 8 and 9 -> similar to 6 and 7-Varieties 3, 4 and 5 -> show close relationship . Differ in terms of vowel in the roof and in the prefix of the verv chew.- Variety 10 -> not very different

Two major language families

in Papua New Guinea

comprising 700 to 800 languages

Language and dialect in Europe

TheWest Romance dialects

Germanic dialect

continua

Stretches through rural communities from the Athlantic

coast of France through Italy, Spain,

and PortugalMutual

intelligibility exists

between adjacent villages

Find one another mutually

unintelligible to varying degrees

Connects a series of

historically realted

varieties that differ from one another with respect

to one or more

features

In Scandinavia, if a traveller knows

Danish, Swedish or Norwegian

It is possible to

communicate across

language boundaries

Linguistically the languages are

very close to be considered

dialects of one language

Danish NorwegianSwedish

Have a great deal of

vocabulary in common, but

differ in pronunciatio

n.

Differ more in

vocabulary, but have a

more similar

pronunciation.

¼ Swedes -> claim to read anything in the other two languages41% of Danes and 52% Norwegians ->listen Swedish radio9% Swedes -> listen Norwwegian or Danish radio

English: Language and dialect-George Bernard Shaw characterized England and America as two nations divided by a common language.

- Noah Webster authored his dictionary of American English and employed spelling for certain words which were different from British English norms

American English is

a dialect of English or a separate language?

Accent v. dialectConsists of a way of pronuncing a variety

Accent

Varies from other dialects of the same language simultaneously on at least 3 levels of organization

Dialect

pronunciation

Grammar or syntax vocabular

y

Register and Style

Register

Gives you a clue about what we are doing

Is typically concerned with variation in

language conditioned by uses rather than

users.

Style

Can range from formal to informal depending

on social context, relationship of the

participants, social class, sex, age, physical

enviroment and topic.

Speech communities and communicative competence

Speech comunity

Comunicative competence

The conventions

the share about their

speech variety can be calledGroup of people

who do not know necessarily share

the same language, but share a lot of

norms and rules for the use of

languages

This term is used by sociolinguists

to refer to a speaker’s

underlying knowledge of the rules of grammar and rules for their

use in socially appropiate

circumstances.

Language, society, and reality: different words, different

worlds?

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