Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

variants than men for linguistic variables not undergoing change. Again, examples can be found from many very different societies around the world and an illustration, based on the work of Peter Trudgill, appears in figure 18, where we can see that women in each social class group are using more of the standard variants –

[ɪŋ] as opposed to the non-standard [ən] – in the British city of Norwich (exercise 2).

The ethnic group to which a speaker belongs has also been found to have an

effect on language variation. In the data from Wellington, presented in figure 19

and based on the work of Janet Holmes, the ethnic (Maori or Pakeha, i.e. White European) identity of New Zealanders is seen to be relevant to the use of a range of different phonological variables:

50

sounds

100

90

80

ng) 70

60

ons of (i 50

tia

male

40

female

% use of standard

onunci 30

pr

20

10

0

Middle Middle

Low er Middle

U pper Working Middle Working

L ower Working

Class

Class

Class

Class

Class

Social Class of speaker

Figure 18 The use of standard pronunciations of (ing) and speaker sex and social class (based on Trudgill 1974: 94)

35

30

iantar 25

20

15

10

% use of non-standard v

5

0

Use of [s] f

or /z/

Deaspir ation of initial /t/

Use of full v owels

Linguistic v ariable

Maori

P akeha (= European Ne w Zealander)

Figure 19 Ethnic variation in New Zealand English (based on Holmes 1997: 79, 85, 91)

▪

The devoicing of /z/ to [s], so that ‘was’ becomes [wɒs] instead of [wɒz]

▪

The deaspiration of word-initial /t/, so that ‘tip’ becomes [t=əp] instead

of [thəp] (note that /ɪ/ in New Zealand English is pronounced [ə])

▪

The use of full vowels in unstressed syllables, so that ‘run to school’

becomes [ɹʌn tuː skuːl] instead of [ɹʌn tə skuːl].

Here, for each variable, it is the indigenous Polynesian Maori community that uses more of the non-standard variants.

Sound variation

51

Table 4 (th) and (ʌ) in the speech of two Belfast residents

Percentage use of local

Percentage use of local

Belfast variant of (th)

Belfast variant of (ʌ)

Hannah

0

0

Paula

58

70

(th) – deletion of [ð] between vowels as in e.g. mother

(ʌ) – use of [ʌ] in words such as pull, took, foot

A final example of how social structure has been shown to determine a person’s linguistic behaviour is of a different nature from the speaker-defined categories mentioned above. Linguists have established that the quantity and nature of a person’s social network links within their community may be an important factor in such behaviour. Lesley and James Milroy, who carried out sociolinguistic

research in the Northern Irish city of Belfast, measured network strength along two dimensions: firstly, they assessed the extent to which people had close social ties with family, friends and workmates in the neighbourhood, and secondly, they looked at the extent to which these ties were multi-functional, e.g. if a tie to another network member was based on both friendship and employment, or both employment and kinship, as opposed to just one of these. People who had many

multi-functional social ties were considered to have strong social networks and people who didn’t were labelled as having weak networks. It was hypothesised that strong social networks would act as norm-enforcing mechanisms, subtly putting pressure on their members to conform to normal local behaviour, including

linguistic behaviour. A number of variables which showed an intimate connection between a person’s network strength and their use of local Belfast variants were discovered, and a small sample of the results of this research appears in table 4.

This table compares the use of two salient linguistic variables (th) and (ʌ) by Paula and Hannah, two residents of Belfast. They are both in unskilled jobs, have husbands with unskilled jobs and have a limited educational achievement. Yet their linguistic behaviour is radically different and the explanation for this appears to come from the differing strengths of their social networks. Paula is a member of a strong social network in Belfast – she has a large family living locally, she frequently visits her neighbours, many of whom she works with, and she belongs to a local bingo-playing club. Hannah, however, has fewer local ties. She has no family members in the locality, isn’t a member of any local groups and works with people who do not live in her neighbourhood.

More recently, rather than accepting the broad sociological categories of, for example, gender, ethnicity and class as universal and given, sociolinguists have been looking at how social groupings are actually created at the local level and examining the relationship between these self-defining groups and linguistic variability. Linguists such as Penelope Eckert, Miriam Meyerhoff and Mary

Bucholtz have explored the way in which people actively come together to form

52

sounds

groups that engage in a common goal or interest and that, over time, develop practices, including linguistic practices, that are shared and recognised as characteristic of that group. They label such groups ‘communities of practice’. The important advance here lies in the fact that communities of practice are developed, maintained and adapted by the very people who created them in the first place. In this respect, they differ markedly from the groups studied in ‘traditional’ sociolinguistics, which comprise collections of unattached individuals who happen to share a certain social characteristic, such as being male, or Asian or middle class.

A well-known example from the United States demonstrates how such ‘com-

munities of practice’ develop variable linguistic behaviours that help to define the group. Penelope Eckert spent several years observing teenagers in a Detroit High School. She observed where different groups congregated around the school during breaktimes, how they walked, the width of their jeans, how much they

smoked, where they ate, where they hung out and what they did after school, and, later, how they spoke. In this way, she was able to draw a highly detailed picture of the groupings that naturally emerged in the school and how these groupings

‘defined’ themselves through their everyday practices. There were two polar

groupings – the Jocks and the Burnouts – and a large, less clearly polarised, ‘in-between’ group. Jocks were more likely to buy into the ethos of the school as a stepping-stone into higher education and participate in many of the extracurricular activities which centre around the school, such as sports, the school newspaper, cheerleading and the school council. Burnouts, on the other hand, were much less likely to accept the ‘corporate culture’ of the school and resented the restrictions it sought to place upon them. Given that they aimed for local vocational employment, they did not feel that the school offered them the sort of training and guidance that would help them and so felt less inclined to participate in the extensive extracurricular activities which were dominated by Jocks. The social world of the Burnouts beyond school hours was directed towards the employment and entertainment offered by the local urban neighbourhood.

Intriguingly, Eckert found that these two polarised groupings also spoke differently.

The difference in the linguistic behaviour of the Jocks and Burnouts is demonstrated by the way they pronounced /ʌ/ (the vowel in ‘cup’ and ‘cut’). Eckert highlighted one tendency in her data for /ʌ/ to be pronounced near the back of the mouth (with realisations such as [ɔ] or [ʊ]). Figure 20 shows her results for /ʌ/ backing: Clearly /ʌ/