ANTH 104 Final Exam

William Labov studied the use of postvocalic [r] (as in car, card, four, fourth, floor) as a sociolinguistic variable in New York City department stores in the 1960s. What was the result of his study?

62% at Saks, 51% at Macy's, and 20% at Kleins

Diglossia varieties in different languages

Arabic H - Classical Arabic L - Modern regional colloquial varieties Swiss German H - Standard German L - Swiss German Haitian H - Standard French L - Haitian Creole Greek H - Katharévousa L - Dhimotiki

How did Abu-Lughod's status influence her relationship with the community at initial stages of her stay in the community?

As an unmarried adopted daughter, she was protected and more or less restricted to the women's world.

distribution of languages in the world regions

Asia + Pacific 3000 (50%) Africa 1900 (30%) Americas 900 (15%) Europe & Middle East 275 (4%)

rapid anonymous survey

Asking questions from random people in the public to quickly gather linguistic data. Used in Labor's dept store study.

Scott Kiesling analyzes the functions and meanings of the address term "dude". What kind(s) of data did he base his study on?

Survey data Ethnographic and interactional data Media (movies, comic strips)

According to the study conducted by Dennis Preston among Michigan residents, in which areas of the US people are thought to be speaking incorrectly (i.e., to not speak "correct English")?

The South and NYC

In what year did a Swiss anthropologist Alfred Métraux prognosticated that the Rapa Nui language will disappear entirely shortly?

1934

Ochs and Taylor have been conducting a larger study, but bases themselves on a particular set of observations for the paper you read. How many families participated in the larger and the particular studies? (father knows best)

20 and 7

According to an estimate by linguist Krauss (1992), how many languages in North America are learned by children at home?

20 out of 175

World languages vs number of speakers

3586 smallest languages > spoken by 0.2% world population 2935 mid-sized languages > spoken by 20.4% of world population 83 languages > spoken by 79.4% world population

Which of the following gender type is the second most common speaker-addressee in the use of dude?

Female to Female

Linguistic practice and ideology

Practice and Ideology Behaviors (things we do) <> Conceptualization, ideas, beliefs, norms, attitudes, values (above two go back and forth reciprocating and affecting each other)

Emic

approach of studying a culture's behavior from the perspective of an insider. Characteristic of an analytical approach that emphasizes units that are considered significant and contrastive by members of a community. Culture-specific.

To Give Up on Words

Basso

How does the author characterize the discourses found in literacy class textbooks? (ahearn, nepal love letters)

Ideologies of self-sufficiency, hard work, development, success, and individual responsibility

Hindi, Urdu

‐belong to Indo‐European language family (Indo‐ Iranian branch) ‐can be considered dialects of Hindustani, but many important social and political differences. Borrowings: Hindi: Sanskrit sources Urdu: Arabic and Persian sources

How does Kiesling characterize is one of the important social meanings that the term dude indicates (indexes) when it is used as an address term in interactions?

Solidarity and non-intimacy in in-group interaction

Which of the following statements would linguists agree with?

Some varieties of a language are more standard than others.

Fishman - 8 stages of language endangerment (1991)

Strong Side 1. Some language use by higher levels of government and in higher education 2. Lg is used by local government and in the mass media in the minority community. 3. Lg is used in places of business and by employees in less specialized work areas 4. Lg is required in elementary schools. Weak Side: 5. Lg is still very much alive and used in community , even on a voluntary basis in schools 6. Some intergenerational use of lg in the homes 7. Only adults beyond child bearing age speak the lg 8. Only a few elders speak the lg

What is the main research question/objective the work aims to answer/reach? (veiled sentiment)

What is the relationship between the Bedouin poetic discourse and the discourse of ordinal social interactions? How should we understand the differences between the two modes of discourse?

Northern Cities Vowel Shift

a rotation of short vowels, those appearing in caught, cot, cat, bit, bet, and but. First described in cities around the Great Lakes -- Chicago, Detroit, Rochester and Buffalo. 34m people (Labov clip). • Bit sounds like bet or even but • The vowel in bet sounds like those in cat or but • Buses sounds like bosses • Block sounds like black The Southern Shift: A movement in the opposite direction.

Lg revitalization/reclamation

an effort to reverse the process of language shift to increase a its use and user base.

Rapa Nui language is

an indigenous language spoken in Easter Island, which is part of Chile

They Speak Really Bad Down South and in New York City

Preston

Language vs dialect

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." - Difference? - When we have two or more lg varieties: - how do we know if they are different lgs, or different dialects or the same lg? - Mutual intelligibility Mutual intelligible but considered separate languages: Serbian/Croation Hindi/Urdu Zulu/Xhose Danish/Norwegian/Swedish Mutually unintelligible but considered as varieties of same language: Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, etc (8 varieties of Chinese language).

Ann Arbor School District lawsuit

"A more formal shift in the recognition of AAVE came in the "Ann Arbor Decision" of 1979 (Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al., v. Ann Arbor School District). In it, a federal judge of the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that in teaching black children to read, a school board must adjust to the children's dialect, not the children to the school, and that, by not taking students' language into consideration, teachers were contributing to the failure of such students to read and use mainstream English proficiently."

Challenges of Ethnography

- Personal - Social / cultural - Physical - Political

North American English regional varieties

1. Northern 2. Midland 3. Southern

Robin Lakoff

"Language and Woman's Place"(1973) Women and men speak differently linguistic characteristics of "women's language" (a) 'empty' adjectives (e.g., divine, adorable, charming, sweet, lovely, cute) (b) tag questions (e.g., 'This is correct, isn't it?'; adding 'right?'or 'OK?' to a sentence) (c) hedges (e.g., I think, you know, sort of, perhaps) expressing uncertainty and unassertiveness (d) avoiding swearing and taboo language (e) question intonation for declaratives (f) super-polite forms Gender difference in speech supports male dominance in our society

Laura Ahearn's study

"Literacy, Power, and Agency: Love Letters and Development in Nepal)" "Invitations to Love" Literacy and sociocultural change in "incipiently literate" community of Junigau, Nepal, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Kiesling, interactional functions of "dude"

(1) discourse structure marker, (2) express relatively strong emotion such as surprise, (3) lessen confrontational/competitive stance, (4) identify an addressee to show affiliation and connection (5) show agreement stance. others: These various interactional functions of dude have characteristic patterns in terms of prosody (such as pitch, length of sounds, loudness, intonation, stress, and rhythm). Commonly, a use of dude has multiple functions.

Three broad types of lg planning

(1) status planning: planned efforts to change the societal functions of a lg or a lg variety and the rights of those who use it. (2) corpus planning: planned efforts to codify, standardize, or modify and elaborate a lg or lg variety To standardize =to provide it with the means for serving the targeted lg function in society. (3) language-in-education (acquisition) planning: planned efforts to influence aspects of language through education -It should co-occur with the other planning types, e.g., operationalizing constitutional multilingualism in South Africa

Questions raised by the debates on AAE:

- (1) Are AAE varieties systematic and rule-governed just like other language varieties? - (2) Can an understanding and appreciation for AAE varieties help students whose home language is AAE acquire Standard American English? Help teachers teach SAE to AAE speaking children?

Gender based differences in language

- (1) Gender exclusive patterns - E.g., Chukchee (Siberia) and Koasati (Louisiana, US): specific language forms that clearly indicate/signal gender identity (e.g., -s gender morpheme added to verbs by Koasati men) - (2) Gender preference patterns - more common among world's lgs - SOCIOLINGUISTIC MARKERS of gender particular linguistic features that are COMMONLY, or PROTOTYPICALLY, associated with one or the other of the sexes, but this association is STATISTICAL and NOT MANDATORY e.g., lexical or phonological and other features

Arguments for English-only laws

- 1) English as "common bond" or "social glue" for the U.S. as a nation - 2) Languages are best learned in a situation when one is forced to do so - 3) Ethnic leaders are promoting bilingualism for selfish ends, creating dependence - 4) Language diversity leads to language conflict, ethnic hostility, and political separatism (such as Quebec) - 5) Today's immigrants do not learn English unlike the immigrants of older times

Sexism and language

- 1. Does language simply reflect the gender inequality that exist? - Language reflects social reality - 2. Does it contribute to and perpetuates sex or gender inequality? - Linguistic Determinism or Relativity: Language influences thought/attitudes

Conversational/Discourse Analysis

- Central idea: communicative interaction is structurally organized, and conversation is organized by (covert) rules - Investigates how conversation is locally managed, and meaning is jointly constructed

stereotypes vs empirically observable patterns

- Distinguish between - (1) stereotypes - (2) patterns that are empirically observable

Example with registers, partially based on gender

- Dyirbal speech community (North Queensland, Australia) has registers called: - Guwal: the normal everyday speech variety. - Dyalnguy: "Mother-in-law" speech variety. a variety used by men in the presence of their mother-in- law, and by women in the presence of their father-in-law. This variety has the same phonology and almost the same grammar as Guwal but has an entirely different vocabulary.

gender characteristics

- Gender: - is learned - is not something we are born with or have, but something we do/perform - is collaborative - involves asymmetry - interacts with other social identities (e.g., ethnicity, sexuality, religious identity) - is changing

Gender ideology

- Gender: the way people perceive, evaluate, and expect males and females to behave = socio-cultural construction - Sex = biological differences between males and females - But both gender and sex as: - influenced by cultural and social norms and practices - fluid and changeable - linked together. - Gender ideology: thoughts and values that legitimize gender roles, statuses, and customary behavior

Arguments against English-only laws

- It's unnecessary - It's unrealistic - It's educationally unsound - It's unfair and dangerous, possibly lead to discrimination - It's invasive - It's unconstitutional - the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech - the Fourteenth Amendment forbids abridging the privileges and immunities of naturalized citizens

Rapa Nui - bilingual community's communicative repertoire

- R1S2 (RN 1st, spanish 2nd) Rapa Nui Spanish: initially developed by native Rapa Nui speakers during the development of bilingualism on the island during the first half of 20th century. Simplification and interference from Rapa Nui at all linguistic levels (prosody, phonology, vocabularies, grammatical constructions) as well as conversational style. - R2S1 Rapa Nui Spanish: emergent variety of Spanish cultivated by predominantly Spanish-speaking Rapa Nui children and young people. Characterized primarily by Rapa Nui lexical "core" forms.

Literacy event

- Specific "occasions in which written language is integral to the nature of participants' interactions and their interpretive processes and strategies" (Heath)(e.g., bedtime story reading) - literacy is situated, i.e., takes place in specific social contexts

Gender preference pattern, speech act example

- Speech act of giving compliment, a study in New Zealand. Variation according to the gender of participants 1. Female to female. 2. male to female. 3. Female to male. 4. Male to male

linguistic ethnography

- Study of language in social life through ethnography - Qualitative, Social Scientific, Empirical - Language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice - Language and the social world are mutually shaping - Combines a close analysis of situated interactional language use and its broader historical, political, economic, and sociocultural contexts Research paradigms/traditions: Linguistic Anthropology, Ethnography of Communication, Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Oral History, Language Socialization, etc.

Language death (obsolescence)

- The disappearance of a lg whose speakers have shifted to using other lg(s). - A "dead" (or extinct) lg is no longer spoken as a native lg by a speech community. - Examples: many lgs in North America and Australia - Language death/obsolescence - Why do languages die? - Factors contributing to language shift and death - Misconceptions - Does number of speakers protect languages? - E.g., Navajo - Should we care? Why or why not? - "Every language reflects a unique worldview and culture complex" (Stephen Wurm 1991) - "Let them die in peace" (Kenan Malik) - Language revitalization and revival efforts - Irish - Maori, Hawai'ian - Why is it very difficult to reverse language shift or revive a dead language?

Speech act

- The smallest element of communication. It may consist of sentences or phrases. - E.g., Question - greetings

Language endangerment & revitalization

- World languages are disappearing - Being replaced by dominant languages - 400 on the verge of extinction, 3000 are endangered - 50~90% of the worlds' 6000+ languages -> extinct within 200 years - The top 11 (Mandarin, English, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German, French) are spoken by 50% of humanity - The top 80 languages (by number of speakers)are spoken by 80% of humanity - 3500 small languages are spoken by 0.2 percent of the world's people - Moribund language: when children are no longer learning the language

New Englishes

- the emergence of "New Englishes" around the world as a result of the spread of English as a colonial or a global lg. - "New Englishes": localized and nativized varieties of English that have adopted features of local languages, their structure and the norms of use (e.g., in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and the Pacific) - E.g., Singaporean English, Maori English Will English go the way of Latin? Differentiate into Will we have English as the only universal language of the world? What are some linguistic advantages and disadvantages?

Language ideologies

- the ideas with which people "frame their understanding of linguistic varieties and the differences among them, and map those understandings onto people, events, and activities that are significant to them" (Irvine and Gal, 2000, p. 35) - Shaped and influenced by political and moral interests - language's relation to power and political economy Language ideology (also referred to as linguistic ideology) is a concept used primarily within the fields of anthropology (especially linguistic anthropology), sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies to characterize any set of beliefs or feelings about languages as used in their social worlds. -------- examples of different language ideologies: Language ideologies - Conceptualizations about languages, their use and users For example: - Autonomous language-nation-culture-speech community units - Original pure, pre-contact indigenous language - Monolingualist and narrow notion of competence - Language contact as pollution - Narrow concept of native speakers and language, and even narrower concept of authentic indigenous native speakers - Standard language (universal, anonymous) - Real language has grammar and is codified and written

Literacy practice

-the general cultural ways of utilizing literacy that people draw upon in a literacy event -general tendencies regarding how written texts are produced, interpreted, or discussed

World's Top Ten Spoken Languages

1 Mandarin (955 millions) 2 Spanish (415 millions) 3 English (360 millions) 4 Hindi (310 millions) 5 Arabic (295 millions) 6 Portuguese (215 millions) 7 Bengal(Bangla) (205 millions) 8 Russian (155 millions) 9 Japanese (130 millions) 10 Punjabi (100 millions)

Laura Ahearn study in-class activity

1. Topic (about what aspect of sociocultural and linguistic phenomenon and about which social group?) This paper is about the practice of writing love letters in Junigau, Nepal. The paper discusses this phenomenon in its historical, social, and intertextual context. The social group is primarily the women of this locality. 2. Research question(s). How does the literacy practice of writing love letters in the community of Junigau, Nepal affect agency, gender relations, education, and development (or shift away from) other sociocultural factors in this social group? 3. Data collection methods. Examining sources of written development discourse such as school textbooks, love letter guidebooks, magazines, and novels. 4. Key theoretical concept(s) (old and new). - Ideology cannot be separated from literacy. - Literacy can be characterized as a set of lived experiences and values that vary from one community to another. - Early 1990's: love became associated with modernity and development, leading to courtship through love letters. - An increase in literacy can help develop ideologies of hard work, responsibility, and self-sufficiency. 5. Interpretation / Conclusion. A change in the literacy practices of a society can also be a catalyst towards facilitating a shift in their socioculturally mediated capacity to act. Increased female literacy rates in such a community do not come without their challenges. E.g. a woman who communicates in secret with a man via love letters and then elopes risks breaking ties with her family, the man may turn out to be completely different than how he seemed in his love letters, his family may mistreat her, etc.

Creolist view - Origin of AAE

AAE developed out of a creole language used during the times of slavery which ultimately traces its origins back to the various West African languages of the slaves who were transported to the New World

According to Eades and other studies, among whom in what context is the use of gratuitous concurrence (the use and interpretation of yes answers to questions) common?

Aboriginal people in interaction with the more powerful

Which example illustrates the cultural differences that may interfere with intercultural communication between General Australian English speakers and Aboriginal English speakers as discussed by Eades?

Aboriginal people's experience of courtroom and lawyers' interviews include attempting to tell or telling their own stories and elaborating narrative in answering lawyers and judges' questions while lawyers and judges expect yes-no answers and do not listen to them.

Veiled Sentiment (Ch.1)

Abu-Lughod

In linguistics, what is the difference between dialect and accent?

Accents have to do with phonological characteristics of speech; dialects differ from each other not only in phonology but also in other levels of language organization.

What language(s) do the people speak among themselves? (negotiating age, berman)

Almost exclusively in Marshallese

Which people is the "Vieled Sentiment" research about?

Awlad 'Ali community of Western Desert, Egypt

Negotiating Age: Direct Speech and the Sociolinguistic Production of Childhood in the Marshall Islands

Berman

Elise Berman's book

Book: Talking Like Children. Linguistic anthropological study of children in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, located in Pacific Ocean. Interaction and other exchange: adoption negotiations, giving and hiding food, debates about supposed child abuse. Like gender, race, and class; age differences are both socioculturally produced and shifting. "aged agency"

Which social group is the research about? (negotiating age, berman)

Children in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, located in Pacific Ocean

What does the author mean when she quotes Goodwin and Kyratzis (2012) and states "like power, age is 'emergent and interactionally achieved'"? (negotiating age, berman)

Children negotiate, mark, and produce their relative age through verbal interactions. For example, when they ask for things or refuse to give to older children, they are pulling the older children down out of being older children; when children demand goods from younger children or criticize them, they are pulling them up from baby status.

What are the different varieties of Spanish language (not Rapa Nui language) that the author describes that are used on Easter Island?

Chilean Spanish, Old Rapa Nui Spanish, and New (children's) Rapa Nui Spanish

Rapa Nui - Language revitalization

Community efforts in language documentation and revitalization: - Making grammar and dictionaries - Immersion program (kinder~ 4th grade) - Day of the Rapa Nui language - Increased role of Rapa Nui language in annual cultural festival "Tapati Rapa Nui (ʻthe Rapa Nui weekʼ) - Community TV and radio programs in Rapa Nui - Rapa Nui Language Academy - Adult and youth language classes - Dance and theater youth groups

Which of the following statements correctly describes love and courtship in Junigau as interpreted by Ahearn?

Courtship through love letters has become possible in the early 1990s when love became desirable and associated with development and modernity.

Which linguistic anthropologist does Basso extensively refer to in his theoretical discussion of verbal behavior?

Dell Hymes

Sociolinguistic changes In decolonization and national integration

Devaluation of Rapa Nui Lanage: COLONIAL DIGLOSSIA > Spanish as lg of authority, public sphere & socio- economic advancement > Development of BILINGUALISM > Intergenerational gap in competence > LANGUAGE SHIFT and LOSS > shrinking domain of use

Foucault's concept of discourse

Discourse a la Foucault - As system of representation, produced by social actors, defining a socially-valued /legitimate perspective, fixing a set of norms - Discourse as social practice - A group of statements which provide a language for talking about a particular topic at a particular historical moment.

What kind(s) of research methodology did the study by Ochs and Taylor use? (father knows best)

Discourse/ Conversational Analysis and Ethnography of Communication methods

We Still Live Here - As Nutayunean

Documentary film, produced/directed by Anne Peacemaker. - The Wampanoag language revival (southeastern Massachusetts) - Jessie Little Doe Baird, linguist.

Communication with Aboriginal Speakers of English in the Legal Process

Eades

The reading was a journal article in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology written by Elise Berman. What was the research data collection method used? (negotiating age)

Ethnographic, participant observation, interviews, and recordings of interactions recorded by children who wore a camera on their heads.

The reading was the introductory chapter of a book called Veiled Sentiments. What genre of writing, or kind of research and its data collection method does it represent?

Ethnographic, participant-observation

How should we characterize Keith Basso's study? (to give up on words)

Ethnography of communication of the use and meaning of silence among Western Apache in Arizona

Multilingual speech communities

Example 1: The Vaupés of the northwest Amazon (on the border between Colombia and Brazil) - linguistic exogamy : marriage rule where men must marry outside their language group - multilingualism as a norm in this community - Egalitarian multilingualism Example 2: Singapore Population: 4 million - 76% Chinese, 15% Malays, 7% Indians - English: the lg of administration & trade, the international (global) lg - Mandarin: the international Chinese lg - Tamil: the lg of one of the important ethnic groups in the republic - Malay: the lg of region - Hokkien: the native lg of the majority of the country's population

Cultural construction of "gender"

How do different cultures "construct" gender? - E.g., North American constructions of gender - E.g., Personality traits - females = emotional, social, physically fragile, family oriented, moody, manipulative, talkative, polite - males = aggressive, rational, physically strong, selfish, non-emotional, independent, competitive, disorganized - E.g., Careers: - females = teacher, waitress, nurse, homemaker, secretary, receptionist, nanny, - males = professor, chef, doctor, CEO, construction worker, truck and cab driver, President, oil field worker, coach

Debate in gender differences in lg

How do we explain the differences between men and women in their speech behavior - Dominance approach: difference as reflection of the dominant-subordinate relationship holding between men and women in the society; emphasizes power-imbalance - Difference (Two Sub-Culture) approach: difference as arising from the different sub-cultures in which women and men are socialized

Official English Movement

In English-speaking countries, but especially the United States, people who work to get laws passed that declare English the official language and limit government or workplace uses of other languages. - promotes English as the sole official lg of the U.S. via constitutional amendment - promotes "Official English" or "English only" laws at the state level

According to a study conducted by Dennis Preston among Alabama university students , what are their views of their own English?

Incorrect but pleasant

What characterizes the new relationship between linguists and indigenous communities according to Leanne Hinton?

Increased participation by linguists in indigenous language communities' self-empowerment and efforts toward language maintenance.

Chicano English

Influence from Spanish - Bilingual mixing

What is Diana Eades's paper about?

Intercultural communication and miscommunication between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal speakers of English in Australian court

What does Eades mean by the distinction between light and heavy varieties of Aboriginal English?

Internal variation within Aboriginal ways of speaking English where light varieties refer to varieties closer to Standard or General Australian English and heavy varieties refer to those more distinct from Standard or General Australian English.

What according to Kiesling is the attraction of using the term dude to men?

It allows them to express solidarity and non-intimacy in group interactions, other multiple/flexible uses.

Dude

Kiesling

The Social Stratification of (r) in New York City Department Stores

Labov

Which of the following has yielded the best results in creating new speakers in endangered indigenous language communities?

Language immersion schools with family involvement

US - Language planning and policy making

Language planning and policy making: Three examples from the US - (1) Bilingual Education (starting with Bilingual Education Act of 1968) - (2) Oakland school board decision, 1996 - (3) Official English movement, 1980~

What is an effort to reverse the process of language shift called?

Language revitalization

Shirley Brice Heath

Linguistic anthropological study of literacy practice and language socialization at home and school in 3 communities in the Piedmont Carolinas area (southeastern U.S.) in the 1960s & 70s. The way both adults and children participate in literacy events is very different across the three communities: - Maintown: a mainly white middle-class community - Roadville: a white working-class, four generations working in the textile mill - Trackton: a working-class black community, older generations worked as farmers, and youngers ones in the textile mill - (1) How does literacy socialization differ in Maintown, Roadville, and Trackton? - (2) What skills are valued and what skills are not valued in children of each community? - (3) What kinds of questions are preschoolers asked in each community? - (4) How does the literacy socialization affect children's performance in school?

The reading was a journal article in Language and Education written by Laura Ahearn. What is the topic of her research? (nepal love letters)

Literacy practice of love-letter writing in Junigau, Nepal, in its historical, social, and intertextual contexts

What was Labov's hypothesis?

Lower socioeconomic class is associated with less frequent use of postvocalic [r].

Which of the following best characterizes the sociolinguistic situation on Rapa Nui as described in the reading?

Many Rapa Nui children speak Spanish actively but also understand Rapa Nui language.

Kiesling makes his argument regarding the ways in which indexicality and meaning work in language. Which statement best characterizes the argument?

Meaning that speakers make by using language in interaction includes social meaning that allows them to build specific social relationships between participants in interaction.

William Labov defined "linguistic insecurity" as "hypersensitivity to stigmatized features which [speakers] themselves use." According to Dennis Preston, which one among the following groups shows the least linguistic insecurity (i.e, having the highest linguistic security, being proud of how they speak)?

Michigan residents

Gender preference pattern, Example from conversational style

Middle-class Anglo Americans - 1. volume or loudness and pitch of voice - 2. use of standard (prestige) forms - 3. conversational initiative in conversation between intimates (vs. public) - 4. accommodation to the partner - 5. interruption - 6. changing conversational topics - 7. use of interrogative intonation on declarative statements, or tag-questions - 8. use of hedging modifiers (I guess, kind of, rather) - 9. use of request vs. imperative - 10. use of curse and obscenities - 11. politeness - 12. first names; titles (Miss and Mrs. vs. Mr.) - 13. derogatory or trivializing terms (spinster vs. bachelor; witch vs. sorcerer) - 14. generic he (he, man, mankind) - 15. standard and prestige forms

In their analysis of interactions, Ochs and Taylor found that:

Mothers tended to set up the fathers as the primary recipients of the stories by children.

According to Basso, which of the following statement characterizes the study of silence prior to his study?

Neither anthropologists or linguists had paid a lot of attention to cultural differences in the use and interpretation of silence.

modern-day sociolinguistic changes in the world

New technologies are leading changes in the way we use language - Boundary between spoken and written languages - Nature of human interaction III: Spread of English as a global language Increasing # of use and users - 375 million native speakers of English (104 countries with substantial numbers of native speakers) - 375 million speak English as second language (ESL) - 750 million or more learning English as foreign language (EFL) - In total(1.5~2 billion), more English speakers than Chinese or any other languages

What was the researcher's approach to the research topic? (Veiled sentiment, Abu-Lughod)

Non-directional approach, which allowed the researcher to explore and decide on her research question after beginning to participating in the community life.

Ochs and Taylor Study

Ochs and Taylor's study : The "Father Knows Best" Dynamic in Dinnertime Narratives Research Methods: Ethnography of Communication and Conversation Analysis - Analysis of the structure of speech event and of speech acts and participant roles **(narrative roles)** - introducer, protagonist, primary recipient, problematizer, problematizee (or target) - Illustrated with transcripts of interaction - Interpretation

Which feature of social situation (context), according to Basso, is important in Western Apache speakers' decision to speak or to "take it easy"?

Other participant(s)

What kinds of data did the author collect and present in this particular study? (Makihara, Easter island)

Participant observation, recordings of public and family interactions

Eades - The use and interpretation of silence and gratuitous concurrence are examples of what kind of differences that lead to intercultural miscommunication?

Pragmatic

Narrative roles investigated by Ochs and Taylor were:

Protagonist, Introducer, Primary recipient, Problematizer, and Proglematizee

What kind of studies did Dennis Preston conduct?

Quantitative studies based on surveys on language attitudes and evaluations about how people speak.

Gender and language

Role of language - We use language both to communicate our own gender identities and to demonstrate how such identities are understood in society - Everyday conversational exchanges = important in constructing gender identities, ideologies, and relations

Father knows best, Ochas & Taylor, in-class activity

Reading title: The "Father Knows Best" Dynamic in Family Dinner Narratives (Ochs & Taylor) 1. Topic (about what aspect of sociocultural and linguistic phenomenon and about which social group?) Topic: Gender asymmetry as studied through narrating a story/report over family dinner. Social group: Middle-class European American families in USA (California). 2. Research question(s). What role do dinner-time exchanges and interactions play in negotiating, maintaining, transforming, and socializing gender identities in middle-class European-American families? 3. Data collection methods. Analysis of discourse practices in twenty middle-class, European American families, focusing especially on dinner-time communication patterns in narrative activity. Ethnography of communication methods. 4. Key theoretical concept(s) (old and new). - Gender ideologies are closely linked to the management of social asymmetries. - "Gender relations" can often be just another way of emphasizing gender hierarchy and notions of male domination and authority. - Interests of economic and political institutions have historically and socially been involved with influencing the nature of family interaction and hierarchies. - Children play an active role in "gender-implicative, asymmetrical storytelling interactions dozens of times in the course of sharing a single meal together." 5. Interpretation / Conclusion. - Awareness of gender asymmetry can develop from early childhood by children observing how mothers and fathers interact with each other (and with children of different genders). - Narrative activity and associated/implied feelings are the driver behind development of gender-role understanding in children, adults, and families. - Mothers setting up fathers as primary recipients of stories being told by children signifies the father (male) as dominant and authoritative. Father's in turn target mothers back and imply incompetence towards the mothers (females).

Rapa Nui - indigenous cultural and political movement

Remaking of Rapa Nui as a public language: Linguistic Syncretism > Breakdown of Colonial Diglossia Massive participation in local politics, negotiating with the State > Breakdown of Colonial Diglossia Expansion of domains and communicative styles and registers > Rising symbolic value of Rapa Nui language > Community-based language documentation and revitalization efforts

How can we define the concept of "communicative competence"?

Tacit sociocultural knowledge that language users develop in order to use language in socially appropriate manners. It is important in the construction of selfhood and social relations.

What is the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program suited for? (Hinton, lg revitalization)

Teaching adults

NYC neighborhood diversity

The 5 Neighborhoods with the largest number of immigrants - Washington Heights (Manhattan) - 90,300 - Flushing (Queens) - 86,900 - Astoria (Queens) - 84,700 - Bay Ridge-Bensonhurst (Brooklyn) - 78,600 - Elmhurst (Queens) - 74,600 - The 5 Neighborhoods with the largest share of immigrants - Elmhurst (Queens) -- 70% - Jackson Heights (Queens) - Flushing (Queens) - Corona (Queens) over 60 % - Woodside (Queens)

DARE (Dictionary of American Regional English)

The Dictionary of American Regional English is a record of American English as spoken in the United States, from its beginnings to the present. It differs from other dictionaries in that it does not document the standard language used throughout the country.

How does the author characterize the anthropology of childhood? (Rapa Nui, Makihara)

The author agrees with its critique of its earlier work which characterized children as nonproductive and passive members of society

What is Basso's point regarding the form and function of silence?

The form of silence is the same but the functions of an act of silence differ according to social context.

Kiesling discusses the indeterminacy of the meanings of indexes. Which statement better characterizes this indeterminacy

The meaning of the majority of indexes is vague, flexible, multiple, and therefore highly dependant on (determined by) context of language use and interaction.

What would be a good definition of language shift?

The process of replacement of a language by another as a habitual mode of communication in a society. The shift by a group of speakers toward another language, while abandoning the native language

language shift

The process of replacement of a language by another as a habitual mode of communication in a society. The shift by a group of speakers toward another language, while abandoning the native language. e.g., Navaho, Hopi, Hawaiian and other indigenous languages in USA -> shifting toward English e.g., Gaelic (Scotland and Ireland) Rapa Nui (Easter Island) (Makihara) Kinds of communities: - (1)migrantvs.indigenous - (2)minorityvs.majority - Kinds of languages - Indigenous, ethnic, national, colonial, global - Factors in language shift/death and maintenance - Mostly non-linguistic

Kiesling uses both discourse (with lower case d) and Discourse (with upper case D) in his writing. Is there a difference between the two? If there is what is the difference?

The term discourse (with little d) is used to refer to language-in-use, extended stretches of text (spoken, written, or signed); Discourse (with capital D) refers to the combination of language and other social practices such as ways of acting and thinking, clothes, values and ideologies, activities, attitudes of a specific culture or subculture.

Why did the children's song evoke mixed feelings among the community members? (Makihara)

Their performance made the Rapa Nui people feel proud but also bad that they have not taught their children their ancestral language.

Joshua Fishman's model of language shift

Three generation pattern of language shift among immigrants: - Gen 1 > Dominant in heritage language - Gen 2 > Bilingual or dominant in the receptor society's language - Gen 3 > Mostly monolingual in the receptor society's language

Literacy as studied in anthropology

Treating literacy as social practice.

Lg choice of a 'typical' Chinese child in Singapore

With parents Hokkien With siblings informal Singaporean English with friends Hokkien or informal Singaporean English Schooling formal Singaporean English and Mandarin Chinese religious practices if Christian, formal Singaporean English - if Buddhist or Taoist, Hokkien government employment formal Singaporean English and some Mandarin shopping Hokkien, informal Singaporean English, and Malay

Which social group uses the term dude most often?

Young European American men

Language planning/policy

a body of ideas, practices, laws and regulations (lg policy), intended to influence the acquisition, structure, or functions/use of lgs (or language varieties) Language policy encompasses all of the "language practices, beliefs and management of a community or polity" (Spolsky, 2004: 9).

What is 'Father Knows Best'? How do the authors characterize it?

a gender ideology that continues to characterize middle-class European American families in California which were studied by Elinor Ochs and Carolyn Taylor

What role does the acceptance of children who are not fluent in their heritage language by the older Rapa Nui people have according to the author?

help maintain Rapa Nui language

Three 'Circles' of English (Kachru 1988)

inner circle: native lg e.g. UK, US, AUS. ~380 mil. outer circle: second lg e.g. India, Nigeria, Phillipines ~150-300 mil. expanding circle: learned as a foreign lg e.g. germany, japan, china, russia, brazil ~100-1000 mil.

Stratified sociolinguistic variable

linguistic variable whose distributions across social groups are systematic and follow a continuous pattern from one social scale to the other. e.g. postvocalic r

Code-switching

switching back and forth between one linguistic variant and another depending on the cultural context. Code-switching - Definition: The juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems (Gumperz 1982) - Switching between two languages varieties, including dialects, registers, and styles - Not random or caused by incompetence or speech impairment - Requires bilingual competence: knowledge of both languages (or dialects, etc.) - there are rules of how to do code-switching "Why sometimes I'll start a sentence in English y termino en español" - Individual switches may have communicative functions such as - to create specific meaning, - toclarify,toemphasize, - toquote, - totranslate, - tochooseaddressee, - to modify the participation framework, etc. - Code-switched speech/interactional style as a whole may have an indexical value, e.g., Spanglish as performance of bilingual/bicultural identity and solidarity -- a way of saying that one belongs to two ethnolinguistic worlds

Ideolect

the form of a language spoken by one person

prosody

the patterns of stress and intonation in a language, can change the meaning -an element of phonology - Study of phonological features which are suprasegmental = larger than the single phonetic segments, such as syllable, word, or utterance. =rhythm, volume, pitch

Diglossic situation

• two codes with clear functional separation (e.g. HIGH and LOW VARIETY) • L VARIETY is learned, H VARIETY is taught • DIGLOSSIA come to being when: - there is body of literature in language close to natural language of the community - literacy in the community may be limited to elite - Diglossic arrangement as stabilizing sociolinguistic situation

Lila Abu-Lughod's study

"Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (1986)" Ethnographic fieldwork - Abu-Lughod conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community in Western Dessert - Formally introduced by her father, a Jordanian scholar of Middle East - Lived in the household of the head of the community - 'ishra ('living together') - Late 1970s for about 2 years Political, economic, and social context, late 1970s and early 1980s - Transition: from seminomadic pastoralism -> living in villages, manufacturing textiles, raising sheep and grain - -> more exposed to Egyptian state institutions an cultural forms - ->more incorporated into national and global economy Research topic Ghinnāwas ("little songs") oral lyric poetry Example: Oh eyes be strong you cherish people and then they're gone Patience brought no fulfilled wishes I wearied and hope's door closed

Some important points regarding AAE

(1) AAE, like any other lg varieties, is a rule governed linguistic system of communication AAE shares many grammatical rules with Standard and other varieties American English, but it also has certain distinctive features. (2) AAE, like any other lg varieties, also has internal variation ->not all have the same grammatical and other characteristics (3) about the name: African-American English AAE as a cover term for a continuum of internal varieties ethnic identity, and other factors which influence linguistic choice and variation *

structural characteristics of AAE, compared with Standard American English (SAE)

- (1) Pronunciation of vowels: simple vowels (vs. dipthongs) - e.g., my [ma] (SAE [maɪ]) - side [sad] (SAE [saɪd]) - time [tam] (SAE [taɪm]) - (2) Pronunciation of some consonants: [d] and [t] for [ð] and [θ] - this [dɪs] (SAE [ðɪs]) - thing [tɪŋ] (SAE [θɪŋ]) - (3) Dropping postvocalic /-r/ - ever [ɛvә]) (SAE [ɛvәr]) (4) Word-final consonant cluster simplification or weakening (a) when following word begins with a consonant feature of both AAE and SAE - cold cuts [khol khʌts] (same in SAE) - best kind [bɛs khaɪnd] (same in SAE) (b) when following word begins with a vowel AAE, but not SAE - cold eggs [khol ɛgz] (SAE [khold ɛgz]) - best apple [bɛs æpәl] (SAE [bɛst æpәl]) - burned up [brn ʌp] (SAE [brnt ʌp]) - messed up [mɛs ʌp] (SAE [mɛst ʌp]) - desk [dɛs], desks [dɛsәs] (SAE [dɛsk], desks [dɛsks]) - (5) Absence of the 3rd person singular present tense morpheme {-s} - He need to get a book from the shelf. - She want us to pass the papers to the front. - He fight to be good. - (6) Deletion of the verb be in the present tense, when used as a copula, or 'linking verb - He nice. (SAE He is nice/He's nice.) - They mine. (SAE They are mine/They're mine.) - I gonna do it. (SAE I am going to do it/I'm gonna do it.) - He as nice as he say he is.(SAE He is/He's as nice as he says he is.) - *He as nice as he say he. (SAE *He's as nice as he says he's.) - How beautiful you are. (SAE How beautiful you are.) - *How beautiful you. (SAE *How beautiful you're.) - Here I am. (SAE Here I am.) BUT *Here I (SAE *Here I'm.) Copula deletion in AAE = only where SAE allows for contraction - (7) Habitual be. - The coffee be cold there. (SAE The coffee is always cold there.) - Sometimes she be angry. (SAE Sometimes she is angry.) - She be late everyday. (SAE She is late everyday.) - John be happy. (SAE John is always happy.) - John happy. (SAE John is happy now.) - He be late. (SAE He is habitually late.) - He late. (SAE He is late this time.) - Do you be tired. (SAE Are you generally tired?) - You tired? (SAE Are you tired now?) - (8) Multiple/Double negative - e.g., I didn't have no lunch. (SAE I didn't have any lunch. / I had no lunch.) - Don't nobody never help me do my work. (SAE Nobody ever helps me do my work.) - He don't ever go nowhere. (SAE Nobody ever helps me do my work.) Two patterns re. negatives in the world's languages (a) one negation element in a sentence (b) double or multiple negation elements in a sentence - (9) The use it to express 'existential' meaning - Is it a Miss Jones in this office? (SAE Is there a Miss Jones in this office?) - She's been a wonderful friend and it's nothin' too good for her. (SAE She's been a wonderful friend and there's nothing too good for her.)

John Rickford's essay

- (1) linguistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Our goal is to describe how language works rather than to prescribe how people should or shouldn't speak - (2) All languages have dialects - regional and social varieties develop when people are separated by geographical or social barriers and their language change along different lines. - (3)All language and dialects are systematic and rule-governed

Variationist sociolinguistic method

- (1) selecting speakers, circumstances and linguistic variables - (2) collecting the texts (speech behaviors) - (3) identifying the linguistic variables and their variants in the texts - (4) processing the figures - (5) interpreting the results

Units of analysis - Ethnography of communication

- 1. Speech (linguistic) Community - a group of people who regularly and frequently interact, and share similar linguistic repertoire and norms of language use and attitudes - 2. Communication Situation (Speech Situation) - any social situation in which speech is an element. Absence of speech can be meaningful within a speech situation. - E.g., 104 class meetings 3. Communicative events (Speech events): - Social events which are carried out through communicative means especially speech - Basic unit of analysis of communicative interaction in speech communities

ethnolinguistic diversity of Queens

- 77% of NYC's Colombians - 70% Preuvians - 62% Ecuadorians - 66% Koreans - 64% "Asian Indians" - 61% Filipinos - 40% Pakistanis

Ethnic Identity & Language

- Approaches to ethnic groups - Objective approach - objective (vs. subjective) characteristics: nationality, language, religion and beliefs, kin group networks, music and art, customs and traditions, material culture, etc. - Involuntary (vs. voluntary) membership: the characteristics are considered "given" or inherited and not easily changeable - Idealist approach - "consciousness of a kind" (Max Weber) - subjective beliefs based on common traits, or - emotional or primordial ties/attachments - emphasis on ascription and self-identification as a group - Material (political economic) conditions - Group boundaries - Role of language in ethnic group formation - Lg as an important symbolic resource in identity formation

Diana Eades's study

- Background Aboriginal people inhabited Australia for 40,000 years 1770~ Arrival of Captain Cook a British explorer and later settlers 1901 Independence from the United Kingdom - Aboriginal languages: about 350 languages - Kriol - Aboriginal English - Method - Silence - Gratuitous concurrence

Marshall Islands history

- Colonial history: Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States - 1947~1958: US administered the Marshall Islands as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The US used the islands as testing grounds for 67 nuclear tests (consequently, Bikini and Enewetak islands are now uninhabited) - 1979 the Republic of the Marshall Islands -1986: a self-governing republic under the Compact of Free Association with the US -2003 the Compact renewed for another 20 years, travel and settle in the US w/o visas, $3.5 billion for continued US missile testing until 2066 in Kwajalein Atoll + The projected disappearance of the entire country due to climate change, rising sea-level

Ethnography of Communication

- Dell Hymes and John Gumperz - A linguistic anthropology research methodology - The study of communication in its widest cultural and social context, including rules of language, norms of appropriate language use in particular settings, and evaluations given by members of a culture to various speech styles - Uses the tools of anthropology to study verbal interaction in its sociocultural setting - Interested in not only the rules of a lg, but also the rules for the use of the lg and evaluations of speech styles

Syntactic variation

- E.g.1: Differences in construction of sentences e.g., in many Midwestern varieties use both variants - e.g., The house needs (to be) painted badly. - e.g., The dog wants (to be) fed. - E.g.2: Combining auxiliaries in some Appalachian and other English varieties - e.g., I useta couldn't read. - e.g., I might could make one up.

Keith Basso's study

- Keith Basso's study on silence among Western Apache "To Give up on Words" - Silence is considered appropriate when: 1. Meeting strangers 2. Courting 3. Reunion with children coming home after a long absence 4. Getting cussed out 5. Being with people who are grieving 6. Being with someone for whom they sing (at a curing ceremonies)

standard vs non-standard dialects, prestige

- Largely a sociological judgment, not a linguistic one - Changes though time and across space - E.g., At the turn of the century, the form ain't was prestigious among many upper middle class English speakers in southern England. - E.g., In the US, dropping post-vocalic /-r/ in words such as car, father, and bark are perceived as features of nonstandard speech. In Britain, however, dropping /-r/ are characteristic of Received Pronunciation and are thus considered part of the prestige dialect. - linguistically speaking, no one dialect or language variety is better, more correct, or more logical than any other

Sociolinguistic history of Marshall Island

- Marshallese (belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family) - Official language of RMI, along with English - 42,500 users in Marshall Islands (2001 UNSD). Total users in all countries: 61,000 - English: the language of government and commerce - Languages in Education - Under the American system, children were taught to read and write in English first, and then learned Marshallese later. - After independence, in the 1990s, the growing concern re. Marshallese literacy and its cultural consequence led to the change in language policy -> elementary school children taught to read and write first in Marshallese, and English writing introduced in 3rd grade.

hypercorrection

- Original meaning: A linguistic overcompensation used by a speaker to avoid a form which is assumed to be incorrect - e.g., the use of the "I" instead of "me" in the sentence "He wrote to you and I." - Labov extended the term to include a cross-over effect shown for example with postvocalic -r (LMC overtook UMC after hypercorrecting reading style, etc).

ethnography - characterizing

- Participant-observation as the most important source of data for ethnographer - Ethnography is an experience and a process - Holistic - Contextual - Longitudinal - Collaborative / participatory - Interpretative - Dynamic - Comparative - Reflexive

Verbal deprivation theory & criticisms

- Posited by educators and psychologists in the 1960s and 1970s who attempted to explain why black children in urban ghettos do poorly in school subjects. They explained the poor performance with the verbal deficit theory. Black children from the poor area are said to receive little verbal stimulation in the home environment and as a result do not have language and cannot think logically. criticisms Misunderstanding about language structure and use - (a) Interview methodology - (b) Verbal environment of these children - (c) Grammar of African American English - (d) Relationship between nonstandard language variety, logic, and thought

Race

- Race, invokes but not a biological category but a social and political category; SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED - "[R]ace is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies. Although the concept of race invokes biologically based human characteristics (so-called 'phenotypes'), selection of these particular human features for purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social and historical process" (Sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant)

Racialization & Language

- Racialization: Racial discourses frame group origin and characteristics in natural terms (where as ethnic discourses frame them in cultural terms) (Linguistic anthropologist Bonnie Urciuoli 1996) - Racism: prejudice or bias based on race as the determinant of human capacities, as bases for treating people differently

Referential and social meanings

- Referential meaning - What a word or any other linguistic form refers to in the real world - Social meaning - Linguistic signs also index social meaning, characteristics of - (A) of language user - (B) of language use situation (context of speech situation) - (C) of relationship among interlocutors Examples: - E.g., Japanese words for "I" (first person singular pronoun): ore, boku, washi; watashi, atashi, watakushi - E.g., T/V pronoun system in French (also in Spanish, Greek, Italian, Russian, German, etc.) - E.g., Address term father vs. dad, daddy, pop, (first name), etc.

Research process in linguistic anthropology

- Research topic and questions: - Be curious about something that concerns how language is related to some aspect of social life --> research topic e.g., multilingualism in a particular community - Formulate research question(s) (which may change through research) - E.g., How are children socialized to be bilingual in a New York Puerto Rican community? - How does the use of Spanish and English among Puerto Ricans shed light on unequal racial, ethnic, political, and economic relations in New York City (Urciuoli 1996)? - How do language ideologies regarding French and Corsican on the island of Corsica both reproduce and reshape cultural identities, influence the outcomes of Corsican revitalization efforts, and reinforce economic and political power (Jaffe 1999)?

linguistic variation

- different ways of saying the same thing. - All human languages have internal variations - They are always changing. - They vary over social space. - The same individuals vary how they speak (and use language otherwise, even if they are monolingual). - Lg varieties = a cover term to refer to different types of lg variation.

William Labov's Lower East Side study

- more in-depth than department store study. Correlation between: - Social groups - Language use situation (attention paid to speech) - Linguistic variables

Kinds of dialectal variations

- regional variation (regional dialect) - gender variation (gender dialect) - socio-economic class variation (social dialect) - ethnic variation (ethnic dialect) - age variation - etc.

Three Faces of language

1. Meaning In linguistics, meaning is the information or concepts that a sender intends to convey, or does convey, in communication with a receiver. 2. Linguistic Expression e.g., words, phrases, sentences, pronunciation, intonation and stress, etc. 3. Context (context of language use situation: the environment in which people are engaged, e.g. including the nature of social relations between participants, etc.)

Isogloss

A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate. _____________ is a line that demarcates the area in which some linguistic feature can be found. - DARE (Dictionary of American Regional English) - Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada

Creole language - AAE

A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.

United approach - origin of AAE

A mix of Dialectologist and Cerolist view. Earlier English > Modern Standard English with African lgs > pidgin > creole > gullah > nonstandard varieties of english > modern standard english

- Dialectologist view - Origin of AAE

AAE traces its roots back to the varieties of English spoken in the British Isles, just like other regional varieties of American English.

African American English (AAE)

Also known as: African American English Vernacular Black English Black English Vernacular Ebonics - Events and Debates: - A lawsuit against the school board in Ann Arbor, Michigan (1979). - Oakland, California school board's decision on "Ebonics" (1996)

Ethnographic study of language socialization

Bambi Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs - Children are socialized through language - Children are socialized to use language ^^ above 2 happen simultaneously. Documents and theorizes the diversity of cultural paths to communicative competence and community membership. -Communicative competence (Hymes) vs. linguistic/grammatical competence (Chomsky)

Bronislaw Malinowski

British social anthropologist (born in Poland) who introduced the technique of the participant observer (1884-1942). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Book (1922). Malinowski wrote about the importance of linguistic research for an anthropological understanding of human societies

Ethnographic theory of language

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) Social anthropologist (a) Ethnographic methods -Ethnography: describing and understanding another way of life from the native point of view -Participant observation: qualitative data collection method through an intensive involvement with people over an extended period of time (b) Importance of context of the situation for language (c) Link between culture and language (d) Language as a mode of action - Not just a reflection of thought

William Labov's NYC department store study

Classic sociolinguistic study by W. Labov in NYC "The Social Stratification of English in New York City" - variationist sociolinguistic study William Labov's studies in NYC part I Manhattan Department Stores study Variable: postvocalic /-r/ Elicitation method A: "Where can I find men's socks?" B: "Fourth floor" (casual) A: "Excuse me?" B: "Fourth floor" (careful/emphatic) Result: The results illustrated that (r) in New York City was stratified by class. The pronunciation of /r/ depended on the social-class membership of the employees: **Those with higher socioeconomic status pronounced /r/ more frequently than those with lower socioeconomic status.**

Austronesian language family tree

Confirms closeness between Polynesia and and Micronesia. The Austronesian languages are a language family that is widely dispersed throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, Madagascar and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, with a few members in continental Asia.[2] Austronesian languages are spoken by about 386 million people (4.9%), making it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages with the highest number of speakers are Malay (Indonesian and Malaysian), Javanese, and Filipino (Tagalog). The family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.

Differences between H &L varieties in diglossia

Context of use H and L with different sets of institutional domains Prestige H is considered superior/powerful L as inferior Literary heritage H as medium of literary tradition Acquisition pattern L acquired first at home, H learned later in school Standardization H is standardized (dictionaries, grammars, etc.) Grammar considerable differences between H and L Lexicon direction of borrowing is commonly H to L

contextual styles and socioeconomic classes (LES study, Labov)

Contextual Styles (Informal to formal speech styles) - A Casual speech (observed with members of the family) - B Careful speech (recorded during interview questioning) - C Reading style (subjects were asked to read stories) - D Word lists (they read lists of isolated, random words) - D' Minimal pairs (they read pairs of minimally differentiated words, pair of words which only differ in one feature in standard dialect, for example, dock/dark, sauce/source) - UMC stayed the most consistent. - LMC had the most change in reading style, word lists, and minimal pairs. Biggest cross-over on graph, overtaking UMC (HYPERCORRECTION).

lexical variation

E.g.1: American English What word(s) do you use to address a group of two or more people? a. you all (12.63%) b. yous, youse (0.67%) c. you lot (0.18%) d. you guys (42.53%0 e. you 'uns (0.20%) f. yins (0.37%) g. you (24.82%) h. other (4.62%) i. y'all (13.99%

Ayala Fader

Ethnographic study of Ethnolinguistic Communities in NYC - Hasidic Jews Ayala Fader 's (2009): "Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn." - Some features of Orthodox Jewish English (a.k.a Yeshivish, Frumspeak) - Influence from Yiddish and Hebrew - E.g., staying by us ('staying at our house') - You'll be stuck studying all day Torah. - /t/ release, e.g., pronouncing the /t/ in right - Intonation, phonology, vocabulary, and syntax - Code-switching among English, Yiddish, Hebrew

Zentella, Ana Celia

Ethnographic study of Ethnolinguistic Communities in NYC Book: Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York (1997) - Multidialectal repertoire: Popular Puerto Rican Spanish Standard PR Spanish English-dominant Spanish Puerto Rican English African American Vernacular English Hispanized English Standard NYC English - Children's language acquisition/socialization

Urciuoli, Bonnie

Ethnographic study of Ethnolinguistic Communities in NYC Wrote book- Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class (1996) - language use - race and class relations - Spanish and English Talked about inner vs outer spheres of interaction.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study.

Everyday discourse vs ghinnawas poems

Everyday discourse: Independence and honor Self-control & stoicism Code of honor Code of modesty Ghinnawas poems: Weakness and dependence Expression of emotions

Greetings among the Wolof (a Muslim society in Senegal in West Africa)

Example of communicative events - A typical Wolof greeting exchange : - (1) Salutation to be initiated by the lower social status person - (2) giving one's name if the persons are not already acquainted; - (3) asking at least one question concerning the whereabouts and health of the other person's family and friends; - (4) ending with the praising of God More examples: Trials in the US - Judge, lawyers, defendants, plaintiffs, witnesses, jurors, court officials, spectators - Rules of speaking

Discourse markers, Jakobson

In spoken language, language items used to either indicate some kind of change of direction in the discourse (e.g. anyway, actually, well), or to appeal to the listener in some way (e.g. Yukon? Right?). JAKOBSON's 6 functions of language/discourse/utterance: referential: calls attention to the context convey information eg. timetable; "Phonetics is the study of ...." expressive: to the addresser express feelings, emotions, and attitudes eg. love letter; "Linguistics is interesting" conative to the addressee influence and persuade other's behavior eg. advertisement, law; "Take a look at this case" phatic to the contact establish or maintain social relationships eg greeting cards; "OK guys, listen" meta- lingual to the code refer to the nature of the code, meaning, and interaction eg. "What do you mean it's interesting?" poetic to the message indulge in language for its own sake, using language creatively eg. literature

Data Collection Methods

Kinds of data and collection methods commonly used by sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists - Ethnographic participant observation - Interviews - Open-ended ethnographic interview - Oral history interview - Structured~semi-structured sociolinguistic interview - Surveys - Written questionnaire - Rapid and anonymous surveys - "Naturally occurring" conversations - Discussion groups - Experimental methods - E.g., Matched guise tests - Written texts, and other media - Recording interactions (audio, audio-visual, etc.) - transcription - discourse/conversation analysis

LOTE in NYC

LOTEs = Languages Other Than English Census documents 170 languages spoken in the city (Some claim up to 700) Close to half of NYC households speak a LOTE at home Nationwide, over 80% of population >5 yrs are monolingual English speaking (US Census ACS 2007) American Community Survey 2011-15: 7.8 million+ language speakers in NYC: 1. Spanish 2. Chinese 3. Russian

Levels of language variation

Language varies at all levels of linguistic structure: Lexical Phonological Morphological Syntactic Pragmatic

Language change

Languages change over time. Why do languages change? - Language decay? - Natural law? - Intentional? - Language structure? ("internally" motivated change) - Sociolinguistic Factors?

Ethnolinguistic diversity of nYC

NYC : a multilingual CITY - Immigration - The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act amendments - 36% of the city's population is foreign-born (2.9 million). - Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Russia, etc. - Puerto Ricans (US citizens) not included.

Oakland school board decision (1996)

Oakland in 1996 - African Americans = 53% of student population in Oakland schools - But average grade of D+, 71% of students classified as having special needs for language deficiency - Oakland School Board passes Ebonics resolution - To recognize Ebonics as 'home language' of many black children - To help teachers - Media reaction to the Oakland, CA school board's decision on Ebonics - AAE as 'illegitimate' - New York Times: AAE as "black slang" - Boston Globe: Oakland Board is "legitimizing gibberish." - Chicago Sun-Times: "Ebonics is just bad English"

Prescriptive vs descriptive grammar

Prescriptive, "dictatorial" E.g., - Don't use ain't. - Don't use a double negative. - Say "It is I," not "It is me". - It is not correct to end sentences with prepositions. Descriptive (expressive) e.g., English speakers frequently end sentences with prepositions in casual styles of speaking, e.g., "Who are you going with?" Ethnic Identity & Language The plural is formed in English by adding s to a root or stem. 'They' or 'one' is frequently used in place of the first person singular pronoun

Communication ethnography - relationship between units

Relationship among these terms - An example - Speech community - NYC - Communicative situation - a linguistic anthropology class meeting - Communicative events - lecture, group & class discussions - Speech acts - definitions, questions/answers, etc. - Another example - A party (communicative situation) - A conversation during the party (communicative event) - Telling a joke within the conversation (speech act)

Three kinds of signs

SYMBOL An arbitrary sign which refers to its referent (meaning) based solely on social convention ICON A sign that refers to its referent based on similarity between the sign form and its object INDEX A sign that refers to its referent based on pointing physically or metaphorically; Often happens indirectly in language and highly context dependent

SPEAKING model

Setting Participants Ends Act Sequence Key Instrumentality Norms Genre. Setting/scene (physical & psychological situation) A university classroom; courtroom Participants (& the relationship among them) An instructor and students; Ends (purposes, outcomes, goals) To teach and learn Act sequence (Speech acts, message form & content) Question-answer, proposition- acceptance Key (mood, tone, manner) Serious Instrumentalities (Channel, modes, codes of communication) Verbal, nonverbal; Spoken, written; Standard English Norms of interaction and interpretation Turn-taking Genres (kinds of event) Lecture, conversation, song, poem, joke

Slang terms

Slang terms - Have standard synonyms - Informal - Have strong indexicality - Index social (vs. referential) meanings that are highly contextual and negotiated in social interactions. - Reveal social values and ideologies in a community.

William Labov

Sociolinguist, conducted studies in NYC (dept store study AND Lower East Side study).

Dialectology

The study of regional differences in language. - Dialectologists: investigate regional dialects.

According to Kiesling, what is a fundamental misunderstanding many older people have about the address term dude and the use of like?

They falsely characterize young men's use of "dude" and "like" as inarticulateness.

Marshall Islands geography

Two archipelagic island chains of 29 atolls and 5 isles encompassing about 1225 islands and 870 reef systems. Population: 53,200. Capital: Majuro

Dialect vs register

Two broad types of language variation - Dialect: a language variety associated with a group of language users - Variation according to a group of users - E.g., regional and ethnic dialects such as New York English, African American English - Register: a language variety associated with a social situation - Variation according to the lg use - E.g., computerese, legalese

gullah - AAE

Unique language created by blacks that combined English with other African dialects. ______ is the distinct language of some African Americans along the South Carolina and Georgia coast. Gullah is an English creole: a natural language grammatically independent from English that uses mostly English vocabulary. Most Gullah speakers today probably form a continuum with the English language.

Discourse

What is discourse? discourse as (1) a unit of language beyond the sentence (2) as language-in-use, extended stretches of TEXT as a form of social interaction, often forming a coherent unit

Address terms

Words used to indicate in the second person. A term of address is a word, phrase, name, or title (or some combination of these) used to address someone in writing or in speech.

Dialect

a form of language spoken by people in a particular region or group. Lg varieties of different social groups. - when a group of speakers of a particular lg differs noticeably in its speech from another group we say that they are speaking different _________.

thick description

a research strategy that combines detailed description of cultural activity with an analysis of the layers of deep cultural meaning in which those activities are embedded. Ethnography = Thick Description "What we call our data are really our own constructions of other peopleʼ's constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to" (Geertz 1973 "Interpretation of Cultures")

Accent

a type of dialect, where a lg variety differs from others primarily at the level of PHONOLOGY.

1965 Immigration and Nationality Act

also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished an earlier quota system based on national origin and established a new immigration policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States. Changed US demographics mix, large number of immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Middle East.

Etic

description of local behavior and beliefs from the anthropologist's perspective in ways that can be compared across cultures. Characteristic of an analytical approach based on data that are verifiable objectively and applicable cross-culturally. Universal. e.g., Dell Hyme's model of the components of a speech event is an example of an etic grid

Morphological variation

differences between how morphemes are distributed (hisself vs himself for possessive). - E.g.1: The general present tense morpheme {-s} in parts of northern England and southern Wales - e.g., I likes him. (SE: I like him.) We goes. (SE: We go.) - E.g.2: No possessive morpheme with nouns in some rural British English dialects - e.g., Tom egg (SE: Tom's egg.). - e.g., The old lady purse (SE: The old lady's purse)

Historical linguistic studies vs. sociolinguistic studies

historical linguistics: study of language change over time (diachronic). sociolinguistic studies (synchronic): Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society. Sociolinguists are interested in how we speak differently in varying social contexts, and how we may also use specific functions of language to convey social meaning or aspects of our identity. - Importance of spoken, spontaneous language use as source of data - Real time studies : comparing the way people talk at one point in time with the way they talk a decade, or a generation (or even more) later. - Apparent time studies : When the diachronic data are not available, researchers often sample speakers of different ages in a single speech community at a single time. And they compare them in order to identify potential changes.

Communicative Competence:

knowledge that competent members of a speech community has about appropriate use of language for accomplishing par9cular goals (contrast with Chomsky's no9on of linguis9c competence)

Diglossia

language with "high" (formal) and "low" (informal, familial) dialects. Diglossic societies - Charles Ferguson (1959): a relatively stable _sociolinguistic situation in a society_ in which in addition to primary language variety spoken by people, there is a highly codified prestigious, superposed variety learned through formal education and used for most written and formal purposes. - H ('high') variety and L ('low') variety (-ies) are functionally compartmentalized for usage

Developing subjectivities (ways of being) through language socialization

novices > Engage in cultural/ linguistic practices with other members of the community > Come to view particular behaviors, perceptions, and affective stances as appropriate to particular goals, settings, and identities

Phonological variation

pronunciation differences between dialects, including regional "accents." - E.g.1: Pronunciation of word-initial wh - e.g., which wh as [w] (some Midland & Southern varieties) wh as [hw] (many Northern varieties) - E.g.2: Syllable-initial stress - e.g., Détroit, cígar, dírectly, Nóvember in some Appalachian & other English varieties

Indexicality

the association of a code or linguistic form with a particular social meaning. - Linguistic features/signs (e.g., word, pronunciation) index social meanings - Point toward characteristics of language users, language use situation, relationship between interlocutors, etc. - For example social, regional or other dialects index - Social groups - personal characteristics and life styles - Place and context

- the branch of linguistics that studies the connection between social distinctions and variation in language - Variationist sociolinguistics -- concepts: - Linguistic variable : linguistic item that has alternate forms or realizations (variants) - Sociolinguistic variables: linguistic variable which correlates (is associated) with social factors -E.g.,Postvocalic r as in car,park

variationist sociolinguistics

observer's paradox

when people are aware that their behavior is being observed, they may alter their behavior. - Observer's Paradox "the aim of linguistic research in the community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systematically observed; yet we can only obtain these data by systematic observation." (Labov 1972: 209) the goal is to observe the way people use lg when they are not being observed, BUT the observer's presence affects the situation being observed.