Western Washington University

Chapter 2, Language, Dialects, Varieties

Key concepts:

language variety - a language, dialect, or style; to all the definitions in Wardhaugh, you may add the following: a system of rules that is used by members of a speech community to produce and interpret the structure of strings of symbols from a given set (either phones or manual signs); the system used by one speech community may vary in either the rules it has or the symbols used; there may be a few or many differences between the language variety of one community and that of another
language - a term used to denote a language variety that has relative autonomy in a political sense from another language variety; some very closely related varieties are viewed as different languages by the people who speak them; Hindi and Urdu, as well as Serbian and Croatian, are examples

dialect - a term used to denote a language variety that is viewed as a regional or social variant of a language

style - a language variety the use of which is restricted to a given social context ranging from intimate and informal to public and formal

patois - a dialect (regional variety) that lacks a literary tradition

koiné - an auxiliary language, a type of lingua franca, which is used by speakers of different vernaculars of a given language; examples given are Greek koiné, a unified version of Greek vernaculars that became widespread after the conquests of Alexander (c. 330 BC)

lingua franca - an auxiliary language used by speakers of different languages

auxiliary language - a language adopted for purposes of international communication, even though only a small proportion of the population may speak it natively; English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch have been used as auxiliary languages

dialect continuum - also called dialect chain, it is a line of dialects; speakers living near each other on the chain can understand their dialects, but individuals living far apart will have greater difficulty, and indeed entirely different languages may be spoken; there are Dutch-German, French-Italian, and Spanish-Galician-Portuguese dialect chains, among many others

dialect geography - the study of the geographical or spatial distribution of linguistic variants

isogloss - a boundary between two speech varieties that are distinguished by a single feature

dialect boundary - a bundle of isoglosses, indicating significantly differentiated language varieties

Ferguson’s language types based on prestige and vitality - Fasold (1984) reviews these types, and although they are not mentioned in Wardaugh, they are important to learn. Using just two attributes, prestige (the degree to which a language has been standardized) and vitality (the number of native speakers of a language), Ferguson (1966) was able to distinguish among five language types:

Vernacular (V) - unstandardized native language of a speech community (-prestige, +vital)

Standard (S) - native language of a speech community codified in dictionaries and grammars (+prestige, +vital)

Classical (C) - language codified in dictionaries and grammars which is no longer spoken (+prestige, -vital)

Pidgin (P) - hybrid language with lexicon from one languages and grammar from another language (-prestige, -vital)

Creole (K) - language acquired by children of speakers of P, or subsequently by speakers of K (-prestige, ± vital)

Stewart’s language attributes - Stewart (1968) proposed four attributes, which could then be used to distinguish major classes of language varieties:

standardization (St) - norms of usage for the language have been codified and accepted, typically in grammars and dictionaries

autonomy (Au) - the linguistic system is independent, can be referred to without being connected to another language

historicity (Hi) - the language has developed normally over time, typically a period of several centuries

vitality (Vi) - the community of native speakers is not isolated; vitality is also defined as the number of native speakers

Stewart’s language types - using the four attributes, Stewart distinguished the following types of language varieties:

St	Au	Hi	Vi	Type	Symbol	Example
+	+	+	+	Standard	S	English
+	+	+	-	Classical	C	Latin
+	+	-	-	Artificial	A	Esperanto
-	+	+	+	Vernacular	V	Chinese
-	-	+	+	Dialect	D	Andalusian
-	-	-	+	Creole	K	Haitian
-	-	-	-	Pidgin	P	Dutch Pidgin

accent - although Wardaugh cautions us not to confuse dialect and accent, he never provides a clear definition of accent, in the sense of a kind of dialect; "accent" is not used in this way by linguists, but sociolinguists are certainly interested in what people mean when they talk about "someone’s accent;" the term typically refers to the pronunciation of an individual or area

hypercorrection - the tendency of the middle class to correct their speech excessively; hypercorrection can produce either a proportion of prestige forms that is higher than that used by the more prestigious class, or hypercorrection can produce a form which is considered stylistically unacceptable; some examples follow:

Standard Form	Hypercorrect Form
toilet	terlet (since one should say "bird," not "boid," then one should day "terlet," not "toilet"
between her and me	between she and I (one should not say "her and me are good friends," so one should avoid "her and me"
the lady kicked me and another	the lady kicked myself and another juror (the reflexive pronoun sounds more educated)

social dialectology - the study of social variation in speech