AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS (JANET HOLMES)
Chapter One: What
do sociolinguists study?
- Sociolinguistics: a term that refers to the study of the relationship between language
and society, and how language is used in multilingual speech communities.
Q what aspects of
language are Sociolinguists interested in?
Sociolinguists are
interested in explaining why people speak differently in different social
contexts. And the effect of social factors such as (social distance, social
status, age, gender, class) on language varieties (dialects, registers, genres,
etc), and they are concerned with identifying the social functions of language and
the way they are used to convey social meanings.
Q what do
sociolinguists mean by the term variety?
A variety is a set
of linguistic forms used under specific social circumstances, with a
distinctive social distribution.
* Formality
increases between participants (speaker and hearer) when the social
distance is greater. Informality (Solidarity) increases when the social
distance is little between participants (speaker and hearer).
* Social status
depends on a number of factors such as social rank, wealth, age, gender and so
on; therefore the person with the higher social status has the choice of using
formality or informality (solidarity) when addressing other persons of lower
social status. But the person with the lower social status uses only formality
when addressing a person of higher social status.
Chapter Two:
Multilingual speech communities
- Domains: domains of language use, a term popularised by an American
sociolinguist, Joshua Fishman. A domain of language involves typical
interactions between typical participants in typical settings about a typical
topic. Examples of these domains are family, friendship, religion, education
and employment.
- Setting: the physical situation or the typical place where speech interactions
occur (code choice), settings such as home, church, mosque, school, office, etc.
- Diglossia: communities rather in which two languages or language varieties are
used with one being a high variety for formal situations and prestige, and a
low variety for informal situations (everyday conversation). Diglossia has
three crucial features; two distinct varieties of the same language are used in
the community, with one regarded as high (H) variety and the other as low (L)
variety. Each variety is used for quite distinct functions; H & L
complement each other. No one uses the H variety in everyday conversation.
Example: the standard classical Arabic language is the high variety in Arab
countries, and it is used for writing and for formal functions, but vernacular
(colloquial) Arabic is the low variety used for informal speech situations.
- Polyglossia: basically polyglossia situations involve two contrasting varieties
(high and low) but in general it refers to communities that regularly use more
than two languages.
- Code-switching: it is to move from one code (language, dialect, or style) to another
during speech for a number of reasons such, to signal solidarity, to reflect
one's ethnic identity, to show off, to hide some information from a third
party, to achieve better explanation of a certain concept, to converge or
reduce social distance with the hearer, to diverge or increase social distance
or to impress and persuade the audience (metaphorical code-switching)
- Lexical borrowing: it results from the lack of vocabulary and it involves borrowing
single words – mainly nouns. When speaking a second language, people will often
use a term from their first language because they don't know the appropriate
word in their second language. They also my borrow words from another language
to express a concept or describe an object for which there is no obvious word
available in the language they are using.
* Code switching involves a choice between the words of two languages or varieties, but Lexical
borrowing is resulted from the lack of vocabulary.
Chapter Three:
Language maintenance and shift
- Language shift: it happens when the language of the wider society (majority) displaces
the minority mother tongue language over time in migrant communities or in
communities under military occupation. Therefore when language shift occurs, it
shifts most of the time towards the language of the dominant group, and the
result could be the eradication of the local language
Q What factors lead to
language shift?
Economic,
social and political factor
1-The dominant
language is associated with social status and prestige
2-Obtaining work is
the obvious economic reason for learning another language
3-The pressure of institutional
domains such as schools and the media
Demographic
factors
1-Language shift is
faster in urban areas than rural
2-The size of the
group is some times a critical factor
3-Intermarriage
between groups can accelerate language shift
Attitudes
and values
1-Language shift is
slower among communities where the minority language is highly valued,
therefore when the language is seen as an important symbol of ethnic identity
its generally maintained longer, and visa versa.
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Language death and Language loss:
When all the
people who speak a language die, the language dies with them.
With the spread of
a majority group language into more and more domains, the number of contexts in
which individuals use the ethnic language diminishes. The language usually
retreats till it is used only in the home, and finally it is restricted to such
personal activities as counting, praying and dreaming.
Q How can a minority
language be maintained?
1- A language can be maintained and preserved, when it's highly valued as
an important symbol of ethnic identity for the minority group.
2- If families from a minority group live near each other and see each
other frequently, their interactions will help to maintain the language.
3- For emigrate individuals from a minority group, the degree and
frequency of contact with the homeland can contribute to language maintenance.
4- Intermarriage within the same minority group is helpful to maintain
the native language.
5- Ensuring that the minority group language is used at formal settings
such as schools or worship places will increases language maintenance.
6- An extended normal family in which parents, children and grandchildren
live together and use the same minority language can help to maintain it.
7- Institutional support from domains such as education, law,
administration, religion and the media can make a difference between the
success and failure of maintaining a minority group language.
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- Language
revival: sometimes a community becomes aware that its language
is in danger of disappearing and takes steps to revitalises it.
Example:
In 1840, two thirds
of the Welsh people spoke Welsh, but by 1980, only 20% of the population
spoke Welsh, therefore the Welsh people began a revival process of Welsh
language by using a Welsh-language TV channel and bilingual education
programs that used Welsh as medium of instruction at schools.
Chapter Four:
Linguistic varieties and multilingual nations
- Vernacular
language: It generally refers to a language which has not been
standardised or codified and which does not have official status (uncodified or
standardised variety). It generally refers to the most colloquial variety in a
person's linguistic repertoire.
- Standard
Language: a standard variety is generally one which is written,
and which has undergone some degree of regulation or codification (in a grammar
and a dictionary).
* The development of Standard English illustrates the three essential
criteria which characterise a standard: It emerged in the 15th as a
delicate of the London area and it was influential or prestigious variety
(it was used by the merchants of London, it was codified and stabilised
(the introduction of the first printing press by Caxton accelerated its
codification), and it served H functions in that it was used for
communication at Court, for literature and for administration.
- World
Englishes: world English languages are classified into, inner
circle Englishes as in the UK, USA (English as a native or first language);
Outer circle Englishes as in India, Malaysia, Tanzania (English as a second
language with an official status), and Expanding circle Englishes as China,
Japan, Russia (English as a foreign language).
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- Lingua
franca: a language used for communication between different
language users, for people whose first languages differ, such as pidgin between
European colonizers and African slaves (Swahili).
- Pidgin: it is a language which has no native speakers. Pidgins develop as a
means of communication between people who don't have a common language.
- Creole: when a pidgin becomes the language of newly-born generations as a
mother-tongue or first language, and acquires additional vocabulary and
grammatical structures to serve their various necessary communicative needs
(referential and social functions) it becomes a Creole.
Chapter Five:
National languages and language planning
-
National language: it is the main language of political,
social and cultural practices, where people use it as a symbol of their
national unity / Official language is the language used by governments
for formal functions / In a monolingual community, a national language
is usually also the official language, but in bilingual or multilingual
communities, it may or may not be the official language. For example: English
and French are both official languages in Canada.
Planning for a national official language:
1- Selection: selecting the variety or code to by
developed.
2- Codification: standardising its structural or
linguistic features.
3- Elaboration: extending its functions for use in new
domains.
4- Securing its acceptance: acceptance by people in
terms of attitude & prestige.
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*
Linguists have played an important role at
the micro level of language planning activates. Many of them work as members of
communities with a lot of influence on language planning, and especially on the
standardization or codification of a particular variety. Example: Samuel
Johnson's 40,000-word dictionary was a landmark in the codification of English.
-
Acquisition planning: sociolinguists can make a contribution
to organized efforts to spread a language by increasing the number of its
users, by using it in the education system (language-in- Education planning)
or in the media domains such as news papers, radio, etc.
Chapter Six:
Regional and social dialects
-
Accent: accents are distinguished from each other
by pronunciation.
-
Dialects: linguistic varieties which are
distinguishable by their vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
* Examples of different regional dialects:
Example
one: in British English: pavement, boot,
bonnet, petrol, baggage. But in American English: sidewalk, trunk, hood,
gas, luggage.
Example
two: the word tog in English refers to clothes
one wears in formal dinner, but in New Zealand, it refers to clothes one wears
to swim in.
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-
Social dialects: a variety of language that reflects social variation
in language use, according to certain factors related to the social group of
the speaker such as education, occupation, income level (upper-class English,
middle-class English and lower-class English. For example: Standard
English can be classified as a type of social English spoken by the
well-educated English speakers throughout the world.
* Received Pronunciation (the Queens English) or BBC
English (the accent of the beast educated and most prestigious members of
English society) is classified as a social accent.
Q Is there a relationship between one's language and
one's social identity?
The
language one uses often reflects one's social identity and education, for
example: dropping the initial h in words like house can indicate
a lower socioeconomic background. On the other hand, pronouncing the letter r
in the city of New York is considered as a prestigious feature, but the
opposite is true in London.
-
Isogloss: a term that refers to the boundary lines
that mark the areas in which certain dialect words are used.
-
Sharp Stratification: it refers to the pattern that certain
pronunciation features such as h-dropping and grammatical features such as
mutable negation divide speaking communities sharply between the middle class
and the lower classes.
Chapter Seven:
Gender and age
* It is claimed that women are linguistically more polite than men
Q How are the
language forms used by men and women different in western societies, give
examples? (just read)
In western
societies, women and men whose social roles are similar do not use forms that
are completely different, but they use different quantities or frequencies of
the same form. For example: women use more standard forms than men, and
men use more vernacular forms than women / women use more ing-forms than men
and fewer ing-forms in words like coming or running. But in
western communities, such differences are also found in the speech of different
social classes, therefore the language of women in the lower and higher classes
is more similar to that of men in the same group.
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Q Explain women's
linguistic behavior (using forms that are more
standard):
1- Social status: women generally have a lower social status in
society; therefore they try to acquire social status by using Standard English.
2- Women's role as guardian of society's values: women use more
standard forms than men, because society tends to expect 'better' behavior from
women than from men (women serve as modals for their children's speech).
3- Subordinate groups must be polite: women use more standard forms
than men, because children and women are subordinate groups and they must avoid
offending men, therefore they must speak carefully and politely.
4- Vernacular forms express machismo: men prefer vernacular forms
because they carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness. Therefore
women might not want to use such form, and use standard forms that associated
with female values or femininity
5- women's categories: Not all women marry men from the same social
class, however it is perfectly possible for a women to be more educated then
the man she marry, or even to have a more prestigious job than him.
6- The influence of the interviewer and the context: women tend to
become more cooperative conversationalists than men.
Chapter Eight:
Ethnicity and social networks
* It is often possible for individuals to signal their ethnicity by the
language they choose to use. Even when a complete conversation in an ethnic
language is not possible, people may use short phrases, verbal filers or
linguistic tags, which signal ethnicity. For Example: In New Zealand many Maori
people routinely use Maori greetings such as kia and ora, while
speaking in English, to signal their ethnicity.
- African
American Vernacular English: a distinct variety or dialect
that was developed by African Americans as a symbolic way of differentiating
themselves from the majority group.
Some of AAVE
linguistic features (pp186-187)
- Complete absence
of the copula verb be in some social & linguistic contexts
- The use of
invariant be to signal recurring or repeated actions
- Mutable negation
- Constant cluster
simplifications
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British Black English
1-Patois: a Jamaican Creole in origin, which is used by Jamaican immigrants in
London and by young British Blacks in group talks as a sign of ethnic identity.
Some of
Patois linguistic features (p190)
- Lexical items
such as lick meaning 'hit' and kenge meaning 'week,
puny'
- Different
pronunciation like then and thin are pronounced 'den' and
'tin'.
- Plural forms
don't have s on the end.
- Tenses aren't
marked by suffixes on verbs, so forms like walk and jump are used
rather than walked, walks, jumped, and jumps.
- The form mi
is used for I, me and my (mi niem / my
name).
- The form dem
is used for they, them and their (dem car / their
car).
2- Midland Black
English: a variety of Standard English with a west midland
accent which is an informal variety with some Patois features.
3- Multi-cultural
London English: a variety used by adolescents (teenagers) from a
range of ethnic backgrounds, including Jamaican & Asian backgrounds. Its
features include using monophthongs instead of diphthongs and a
distinctive vocabulary, for example: blood
/ mate and nang / good and yard / house.
- Social
networks: who we talk and listen to regularly is an important
influence on the way we speak (regular patterns of informal social
relationships among people.
- Density:
it refers to whether members of a person's network are in touch with each
other.
- Plexity: is a measure of the range of different types of transaction people are
involved in with different individuals.
- Uniplex
relationship: is one where the link with the other person is in
only one area.
- Multiplex
relationship: it involves interactions with others along several
dimensions.
- Community
practice: the activities that group members share, and their
shared objectives and attitudes (one belongs to many communities of practice
such as family, workgroup, sports team, etc).
Chapter Nine:
Language change
* Variation
and Change: the cause behind language change is the variation of
use in the areas of pronunciation and vocabulary.
Post-vocal |r| its spread and its status:
In many parts of England and Wales, Standard English
has lost the pronunciation post-vocal r. The loss of r began in
the 17th century in the south-east of England and is still spreading
to other areas. Accents with post-vocal |r| are called rhotict,
and these accents are regarded as rural and uneducated. On the other hand in
cities like New York, pronouncing the letter r is regarded as prestigious.
The spread of vernacular forms: some
times a vernacular feature in some communities as a reflection of ethnic
or social identity such as what happened in Martha's Vineyard Island. Labov's
1960 study showed: when the island was invaded by summer tourists, the island
community of fishermen changed their pronunciation of some word vowels to older
forms from the past as a reaction to the language of tourists.
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Q How do language
changes spread?
1- from
group to group: changes spread like waves in different directions,
and social factors such as age, gender, status and social group affect the
rates and directions of change.
2- from
style to style: from more formal to more casual, from one individual
to another, from one social group to another, and from one word to another.
- Lexical
diffusion: the change from one word's vowel to another, the
sound change begins in one word and later on in another, etc.
Q How do we study
language change?
A-
Apparent-time studies of language change: it is the study
of comparing the speech of people from different age groups, to find out any differences
that could indicate change (whether increase or decrease).
B- Studying
language change in real time: in this study, the
researcher studies the language in a community and then comes back to it after
a number of years to study it again, and find out any changes.
Reasons for language change:
1- Social
status and language change: members of the group with
most social status, for example, tend to introduce changes into a speech
community from neighboring communities which have greater status and prestige
in their eyes.
2- Gender
and change: differences in women's and men's speech are a source
of variation which can result in linguistic change.
3-
Interaction and language change: interaction and
contact between people is crucial in providing the channels for linguistic
change (social networks).
4- The
influence of the media: some researcher belief that
media has a great influence on people's speech patterns and new forms.
Chapter Ten: Style,
context and register
* Language varies according to use and users and according to where it is
used and to whom, as well as according to who is using it. The addresses and
the context affect our choice of code or variety, whether language, dialect or
style.
1- Addressee's
influence on style: many factors influence the addressee's style such as
social distance / solidarity / age / gender / social background.
2-Formal
contexts and social roles: the formal setting where the
social roles of participants override their personal relationship in
determining the appropriate linguistic form (style).
3- Topic or
function: style is sometimes determined by the function which
language is used for.
- Audience
design: the influence of the audience (listeners) on a
speaker's style, for example: the same news is read differently by
newsreaders on different radio stations during the same day, therefore
producing different styles for each audience.
Accommodation Theory
- Speech
converges: each person's speech converges towards the speech of
the person they are talking to. It tends to happen when the speakers like one
another, or where one speaker has a vested interest in pleasing the other or
putting them at ease.
- Speech
diverges: deliberately choosing a different language style not
used by one's addressee, it tends to happen when a person wants to show his
cultural distinctiveness, social status, ethnic identity, etc.
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-
Hypercorrection: it is the exaggeration of some lower class speakers in
imitating middle class standard speech. For example: the use of 'I' rather
than 'me' in constructions such as 'between you and I'.
- Register: occupational style using specialized or
technical jargon, it describes the language of groups of people with
common interests or jobs, or the language used in situations associated with
such groups, such as the language of doctors, engineers, journals, legalese,
etc.
Q in sports
announcer talk; what is the difference between ply-by-play commentary and color
commentary?
- Play-by-play
commentary: it focuses on actions by using telegraphic grammar.
- Colour
commentary: it focuses on people, with heavy and long modifications or
descriptions of nouns.
Chapter Eleven:
Speech functions, politeness & cross-cultural communication
Functions of Speech
1- Referential
function: to convey information and this is done through
different forms of speech, such as declarative or interrogative statements.
- Declarative
statements (After this semester, I'm going to visit London)
- Interrogative
statements using Wh-questions (what is your name?)
- Interrogative
statements using yes/no questions (do like London?)
- Alternative
questions with answer choices (do like tea or coffee?)
2- Directive
function: giving orders or making requests by using imperative
statements. An imperative statements may express a strict demand such as saying
(open the door) or it can seem less demanding by using the politeness
strategy such as saying (open the door, please) or through using
question tags in the case of informality between mother and son (Max the TV
is still on!)
3-
Expressive function: to express personal feelings, thoughts, ideas and
opinions, with different choice words, intonation, etc. These expressions are
submissive to social factors and to the nature of the expression as negative (I'm
very gloomy tonight) or positive (I'm feeling very good today).
4- Phatic or
Social function: it is one of the most common speech acts in everyday
interactions; it consists of greetings, complements, gossip, etc. for greeting a
friend, a speaker can say (hi/hello). As for greeting a stranger,
the speaker can use (hello), but the more formal greetings between
strangers are (good morning/afternoon/evening).
5- Metalinguistic
Function: it is used to describe parts of language such as
grammar, or words that describe language itself (I is a personal pronoun)
6- Poetic
Function: using poetic features such as rhyming words,
alliteration or paronomasia and antithesis (An apple a day keeps the doctor
a way).
7- Heuristic
Function: Halliday identified this function of language which concerned
with learning, the main concentration of researching this function of speech is
to identify the spoken language of learning children.
8- Commissives: it involves using threats and promises (I will clean my room, I
promise).
Politeness: it is the
consideration of social factors (social distance in terms of solidarity or
formality), social status, type of situation or context, intonation, etc when
communicating with others.
* One may ask somebody to sit down by using different utterances:
Sit down / please sit down / I want you to sit down / won't you
sit down / you sit down / why don't you make yourself more
comfortable?
- Positive
politeness: a type of politeness based on solidarity between
speakers and hearers who share values and attitudes, and in which formal
expressions in addressing are avoided.
- Negative
politeness: a type of politeness based on formality between
speakers and hearers in which formal expressions in addressing are used in
order to protect hearers' face and avoid intruding on them.
Chapter Twelve:
Gender, politeness and stereotypes
Women's language and confidence
- Lakoff's
linguistic features of women's speech:
1- Lexical hedges or fillers (you know, sort of, well, you see)
2- Tag questions (she's very nice, isn’t she?)
3- Rising intonation on declaratives (it's really good)
4- 'Empty' adjectives (divine, charming, cute)
5- Precise colour terms (magenta, aquamarine)
6- Intensifiers such as just and so (I like him so much)
7- 'Hypercorrect' grammar (consistent use of standard verb forms)
8- 'Super-polite' forms (indirect requests, euphemism)
9- Avoidance of strong swear words (fudge, my goodness)
10- Emphatic stress (it was a BRILLIANT performance)
Q What are tag
questions for Lakoff and what are their functions?
According to
Lakoff, Tag questions are syntactic devices that are used more by men to
express uncertainty (she's very nice, isn't she) and they are used more
by women to express positive politeness (you will study for the exam, won't
you?).
Interaction
Q Who interrupts
more, men or women? Why?
Studies showed that
men, and even boys interrupt more, due to women's gender rather than to their
role or occupation.
Q who gives more
feedback during conversation, men or women?
Studies show that
women are more cooperative and give more feedback.
Q What is gossip?
What functions does gossip have for women? What is men's equivalent activity to
women's gossip?
Gossip is a social
not a referential function to affirm solidarity, and relieve feelings. The equivalent
activity for gossip to men is mock-insults and abuse, with the function of
expressing solidarity & maintaining social relationships.
Chapter Thirteen:
Language, cognition and culture
Language and perception
Q What is verbal
hygiene?
It is a thought–provoking
term, used by Deborah Cameron describe how People respond to the 'urge
to meddle in matters of language'. It covers a wide range of activities, from
writing letters to Editors complaining about the 'deterioration' and 'abuse' of
language, through prescriptions and proscriptions about what constitutes
'proper', 'correct' and 'acceptable' usage in a range of contexts, to using
language as a political weapon.
- Euphemism:
substituting unacceptable terms with nicer words or
terms, such as disabled instead of crippled, cosmetically
different instead of ugly.
-
Dysphemism: using derogatory terms of language to reflect
society's perceptions of particular groups, such as referring to a coloured person
as a nigger or a homosexual male as gay or queer.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
In his analysis of
Native American languages, Whorf noticed that the particular words selected to
describe or label objects often influenced people's perceptions and behavior.
Q What is linguistic
determinism?
The medium is the
message, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic determinism) is that people from
different cultures think differently because of differences in their languages.
* Testing Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: if Whorf is right
then it is difficult to identify colours which your language does not have a
name for. But although people form the Dani tribe in New Guinea, use
only two colour terms (corresponding to black and white or dark and light),
it was found that they could recognize and distinguish between subtle shades of
colours that their language had no names for (pale blue vs. turquoise).
* Different discourse patterns can reflect different patterns of thinking
or socio-cultural relationships, for example: a similar news report can
be represented differently from one newspaper to another, in form and content.
Chapter Fourteen: Analysing
discourse
Q What is discourse?
For sociolinguists,
the term discourse is generally used to refer to stretches of spoken or written
language which extend beyond an utterance or a sentence.
For philosophers,
discourse is a broader term; it is regarded as a means of structuring knowledge
and social practice, and language is just one symbolic form of discourse.
Q How is discourse
viewed by pragmatics?
Pragmatics are
concerned with the analysis of meaning in interaction, context is crucial in
interpreting what is meant, and pragmatics extends the analysis of meaning
beyond grammar and word meaning to the relationship between the participants
and the background knowledge they bring to a situation, which is analysed in
terms of conversation maxims and politeness.
Q What are
conversation maxims?
Paul Grice formulated four maxims of cooperative talk:
1- Quantity: say as much as but no more than necessary
2- Quality: do not say what you believe to be false, or that for which you lack
evidence
3- Relation: be relevant
4- Manner: be clear, unambiguous, brief and orderly
Q What are the
politeness rules that Lakoff introduced?
1- Don't
impose: use modals and hedges: I wonder if I might just
open the window a little.
2- Give
options: use interrogatives including tag questions: do you
mind if I open the window? It would be nice to have the window open a little
wouldn't it?
3- Be
friendly: use informal expressions endearments: Be a honey
and open the window darling.
Ethnography of speaking: or ethnography of communication, it is an approach developed by the
sociolinguist Dell Hymes, for analysing language, which has been
designed to heighten awareness of culture-bound assumptions.
* The frame work
that Hymes developed for the analysis of communicative events involved the
following components:
- Genre type
of event: phone call, conversation, business meeting, etc.
- Topic of
what people are talking about: holidays, sports,
politics, etc.
- Purpose of
function: the reason (s) for the talk.
- Setting: where the talk takes place.
- Key of
emotional tongue: serious, jocular, sarcastic, etc.
-
Participants: characteristics of those present and their
relationship.
- Message
form: code and/or channel (telephone, letter, email, etc).
- Message
content: specific details of what the communication is about.
- Act
sequence: ordering of speech acts.
- Rules for
interaction: prescribed orders of speaking.
- Norms for
interpretation: what is going on?
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Interactional sociolinguistics: Interactional sociolinguists typically make use of the detailed tools of
conversation analysis, by paying careful attention to turn-taking behavior, hesitations,
pauses, and paralinguistic behavior (sights, laughter, in-breaths, etc) to
interpret what the speaker intended.
Q What is
Contextualisation cause?
In an interactional
sociolinguistics perspective, features 'by which the speakers signal and
listeners interpret what the activity is, how the semantic content is to be
understood and how each sentence relates to what precedes or follows'.
Conversational analysis: CA researchers approach communication as a jointly organized activity
like dancing, or cooperative musical. Discourse is conversation (talk) which has
its own structure (openings, closings, overlaps, turn-taking, interruptions,
etc.)
Critical Discourse Analysis: it is concerned with investigating how language is used to
construct and maintain power relationships in society; the aim is to show up
connections between language and power, and between language and ideology.
Chapter Fifteen:
Attitudes and applications
Attitudes to language
* Language attitudes (positive or negative) towards a language or a
variety have much impact on language and education
Q Explain overt
prestige & covert prestige from a sociolinguistic perspective?
The meaning of overt
prestige is reasonably self-evident; it is associated with the standard
variety in a community 'the best way of speaking in a community'. In contrast
the term covert prestige refers to positive attitudes towards vernacular
or non-standard speech varieties.
Q What are the
methods of collecting attitude data?
1- Direct observation
2- Direct questions
3- Indirect measures
Q Why do
working-class children fail in schools more than middle-class children from a
sociolinguistic perspective?
1- The criteria for success are middle-class criteria, including
middle-class language and ways of interaction
2- Many of the children, recognizing that schools are essentially
middle-class institutions, deliberately and understandably rebel against all
that they represent.
