2 Ling 204

• Cumulative principle
• The unifromation principle
• Principle of convergence
• Principle of subordinate shift
• Principle of style shifting
• Principle of attention
• Vernacular principle
• Principle of formality

More known about language the more we can find out

Linguistic processes we observe around us are the same as the past

Value of new data for confirming/interpreting old finds is directly proportional to the differences in the ways new data is gathered

Speakers of a non-standard variety shift their response either to/from standard

No one speaks exactly the same way in all circumstances

More aware of what you say the more formal you say it

Style most regular in its structure is vernacular

Observer's paradox (Labov)

The philosophy or approach that describes how language is represented in the mind

A distinction drawn by Chomsky (1965) (vs. performance) that refers primarily to what speakers know about language

What speakers actually produce hen speaking (which might be full of false starts, errors, hesitations, and other such "noise" as well as switches between dialects)

The philosophy or approach that knowledge comes through sensory experience

A branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of individual cultures

A group of people who are in habitual contact with one another, who share a language variety and social conventions or sociolinguistic norms about language use.

The different groups of people that each of us had interacted with over the years

Unit of analysis that looks at a smaller analytical domain that social networks. A community of practice is characterized by mutual engagement, a jointly negotiated enterprise and a shared repertoire

A combination of expressed attitudes and variable linguistic behaviors shared by all members of a speech commmunity

A term used to describe the number of connections within a social network. In a low density network people know a central member but not each other. In a high density network members know and interact with each other

A term used to describe social networks in which members have multiple connections with one another. The opposite of a uniplex network.

The ability of speakers to control what they do and to make conscious choices

Guidelines for how to approach a research problem

People who participate in multiple communities of practice and bring ideas from one into the other, that is, people who introduce innovations to their social networks

A linguistic research method based on the quantative analysis of collections of naturally occurring language data, usually very larage

Usury smaller scale intensive research, using methods like interviewing and ethnography that aims to study meanings and motivation, rather than large scale quantitative frequencies or correlations

Among other things, this method looks at the sequential organization of conversation and how participants manage the conversation using strategies like turn talking

• Affects how we use language.
• -We need to specify "language" and "social group" to be rigorous in studying that relationship

Recording/documenting actual language (empirical methods)

What "counts" as a language?

• Elicit Lang forms of interest: "How do you say this in your Lang?"
• Use that information to build up a grammar: Description of how that Lang is represented in the mind
• Actual use isn't helpful, because it's full of "noise": (false starts, etc), Competence vs. Performance

• Empiricist
• Lang is actually used and recorded
• Everyday "real" Lang is more structured than you'd think

• Recording people: Sociolinguistic interviews designed to encourage focus on content of speech and not the form
• Harvesting data from existing sources: Media, internet, data collected for other purposes, personal letters, diaries etc

• Usage of surveys
• Attitude surveys, experiments

• Standard language: From school/formal documents, often seen by non-lings as more "correct"
• Associated with a prescriptive approach: How people "should" talk
• Other Lang (non-standard, dialect): often seen as chaotic, not rule governed

• There's no "good" or "bad" Lang, it's descriptive
• How people actually talk

• Different ones are seen as good/bad by members of society
• Different ones are considered appropriate in different social contexts

• Linguistically: mutual intelligibility (Can we understand each other? If yes we are speaking the same Lang)
• Socially/politically: Who gets to decide?

• Social distance affects how much we expect to understand someone: Power imbalance means more powerful people don't have to try to understand less powerful people
• Context affects how much we understand: what do we expect people to be talking about?

If a subgroups has the power (politically/socially) to convince people that its Lang is distinct it becomes a known as a language (ex. Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian are mutually intelligible but considered different languages)

Are not mutually intelligible but are considered dialects of the same Lang because there is a political interest in unity over diversity

Lexicon that are new or have new meanings

Phonetics/phonology (pronunciation)

What many sociolinguistics call a subset of a language

Usually a regional subset of a language (sometimes used to mean variety)

Lang gets its meaning and power through speaker's participation in language-using groups, but which groups matter/how does the group relate to the language use?

• Speech community
• Social network
• Community of practice

• Group of people sharing social conventions or Sociolinguistic norms about language use
• A Sociolinguistic concept discovered through investigation of the Lang of a community
• But based on other social boundaries (Cities, ethnic groups etc)
• Members don't always agree on norms/usage

• Can be expressed attitudes
• Or a variable linguistic behavior

People in a speech community tend to have very similar linguistic behaviors compared to other distinctions so researchers can study a small sample and still "get" how a community's variety works

• Term from social anthropology, we all build networks (personal communities) to deal with life
• Out social networks influence how we use language and how we participate in language change

Introduce new forms

• Term from reach on social learning, it's a groups with mutual engagement in a jointly negotiated enterprise, involving (or leading to) a shared repertoire
• Smaller groups, local practices
• More room for speaker agency, the idea that people make conscious choices

• Speech community: Your town
• Social network: youth street, school, workplace
• Community of practice: your club, study group

Some people are leaders of change (brokers) they are more gregarious, plugged into multiple groups and have status or legitimacy within groups