Linguistics and Language Essay Example for Free

philology and Language EssayThe term expression (from the ancient Greek word dialektos, discourse, from dia, through + lego, I tattle) is make use ofd in 2 distinct ways, withal by linguists. One utilisation refers to a manakin of a lyric that is a trace of a resolveicular group of the expressions speaker system units. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, more(prenominal)over a dialect may also be defined by opposite factors, such as amicable class.2 A dialect that is associated with a particular complaisant class shadower be termed a sociolect, a dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed as ethnolect, and a regional dialect may be termed a regiolect or topolect. The other usage refers to a linguistic process that is neighborlyly subordinate to a regional or national standard language, often historically cognate to the standard, but not a manikin of it or in any other sense derived from it. Dialect This is a complex and often mis be showtimestood concept.For linguists, a dialect is the collection of attributes (phonetic, phonological, syntactic, morphological, and semantic) that make one group of speakers noticeably contrasting from some other group of speakers of the same language. COMMON SOURCES OF MISUNDERSTANDING 1) DIALECT is NOT a damaging term for linguists. . Often times, for example, we hear people refer to non-standard varieties of English as dialects, usually to say something dark intimately the non-standard phase (and thus nearly the people who speak it). This happened quite a bit during cobblers last years ebonics controversy.But, the term dialect refers to ANY variety of a language. Thus, by definition, we all speak a dialect of our native language. 2) DIALECT is NOT synonymous with accent. Accent is only a part of dialectal change. Non-linguists often think accents define a dialect (or that accents alone identify people as non-native or foreign languag e speakers). Also, non-linguists tend to think that its always the other people that engender an accent. So, what is accent? 3) evinceThis term refers to phonological variation, i. e.variation in pronunciation Thus, if we talk about a southerly Accent were talking about a generalized property of English pronunciation in the Southern part of the US. But, Southern dialects project more than particular phonological properties. Accent is thus about pronunciation, sequence dialect is a broader term encompassing syntactic, morphological, and semantic properties as well. A final note on accent. WE ALL ease up ONE at that place is no such thing as a person who speaks wi kelvint an accent. This is not an praxis in political correctness, by the way. It is a fact.In sum, a dialect is a particular variety of a language, and we all have a dialect. Accent refers to the phonology of a given dialect. Since we all have a dialect, we all have an accent. Idiolect Another term that we must be fa miliar with is idiolect. Whats an idiolect? you ask, on the distinctness of your seat. An idiolect is simply the technical term we use to refer to the variety of language spoken by all(prenominal) individual speaker of the language. Just as thither is variation among groups of speakers of a language, there is variation from speaker to speaker. No two speakers of a language speak identically.Each speaks her or his own particular variety of that language. Each thus speaks her or his own idiolect. Role of Dialect Language says a lot about our identity. Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans all speak distinguishablely. When we meet somebody from a different part of the country, they may use different words, sounds or well-formed expressions. A dialect is a variety of language that is characteristic of a certain argona. For instance, in the Northern Cape, people refer to older people as grootmense and topic as pampier whereas in Pretoria they atomic number 18 called oumense and papier.If you hear colored people from Cape Town speech Afrikaans, they sound different to Afrikaans spoken elsewhere. People from Natal speak English in different ways to people from Johannesburg etc. So often, the way we speak says a lot about where we are from, who we are and what we care about. So determineing dialects is one way of validating peoples identities and ways of life. Characteristics of Dialect in that respect are ten characteristics of dialect. 1. Dialect can be identified by variation of grammar. 2. Dialect can be identified by variation of vocabulary. 3.Dialect can be identified by variation of prosody. 4. Dialect can be identified by variation of sentence structure. 5. Dialect can be identified by variation of figures of speech. 6. edition of parent language by social class of speakers. 7. Variance of parent language by region inhabited by speakers. 8. plausibly will not have its own written literature. 9. Likely speakers will not have st ate or nation of their own. 10. Likely region-specific for speakers. Difference between Dialect and shew To describe differences we have to first understand these two legal injury separately. What is Dialect?A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists Cockney is a dialect of English. What is study? In linguals, a memorial is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting.For example, when speech production in a formal setting, an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words final result in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g. walking, not walkin), choose more formal words (e. g. father vs. dad, chela vs. kid, etc. ), and refrain from use contractions such as aint, than when verba lize in an informal setting.Now it is time to differentiate both terms. A dialect is a variety of language used by different speech communities, whereas register is a variety of language associated with peoples occupation. depict is to do with variation in language use connected with topic matter. Ones dialect shows who (or what) he/she is, while ones register shows what he/she is doing.Dialect is a special form of speaking belonging to a group. demonstrate is a linguistic term used to describe changing how one talks based on the situation. 1. Dialect a topical anesthetic variety of a language*, usually understood by speakers of other dialects of the same language, often without a standardized grammar or spelling, used mostly for non-formal purposes in a local community or among people coming from the same community but living in another community than that they came from. There is often no consensus if such a local language variety is a dialect or a language.The choice is usuall y taken on the basis of political or courtly criteria and never on linguistic ones. 2. A speech register a way of speaking or writing including vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation (or spelling) chosen by individuals to express themselves depending on the circumstances they speak high register (formal occasions like parliamentary speech, official documents, celebrations), low register (informal occasions, conversations among family or friends group). There are also many in-between registers and specialized occasions like religious services, sport dismantlets, and so on.An individual may choose his dialect as a speech register for informal occasions, and a standardized language of a larger social unit on formal occasions (often called diglossia). Register In linguistics, one of many styles or varieties of language determined by such factors as social occasion, purpose, and audience, also called stylistic variation. More for the most part, register is used to indicate degrees of fo rmality in language use. The different registers or language styles that we use are sometimes called codes.According to a linguist Robert MacNeil (1989) the example of Register is It fascinates me how differently we all speak in different circumstances. We have levels of formality, as in our clothing. There are very formal occasions, often requiring written English the job application or the letter to the editorthe dark-suit, serious-tie language, with everything press and the lint brushed off. There is our less formal out-in-the-world languagea more comfortable suit, but still respectable. There is language for close friends in the evenings, on weekendsblue-jeans-and-sweat-shirt language, when its good to get the tie off.There is family language, even more relaxed, full of grammatical short cuts, family slang, echoes of old jokes that have become intimate shorthandthe language of pajamas and uncombed hair. Finally, there is the language with no clothes on the talk of couplesmurmurs , sighs, gruntslanguage at its least self-conscious, open, vulnerable, and primitive. Role of Register Its brain importance is social. It signalises the kind of interaction the speaker wants, or acceptance/no acceptance of the kind of interaction expected in any situation. For instance, level of formality is a major(ip) aspect of English register. extremely formal register can signal authority, disapproval, unfriendliness. Informal register can signal various things reliable friendliness a fake attempt to come across as friendly or even deliberate disrespect if the other speaker expects formal register. Choice of register can also signal social class, in areas where this is still an issue. Higher classes tend to use a more formal register in ordinary conversation. Understanding the difference between register and grammar is important, as many speakers confuse the two particularly in thinking that only formal register is correct grammar.This can lead to major errors of register for instance, the highly formal It is I is only correct in the most formal register, and employ it under any other circumstances will make a speaker sound a pompous idiot to most speakers. Characteristics/ Features of Register 1) Language Styles Every native speaker is normally in command of several different language styles, sometimes called registers, which are varied according to the topic under discussion, the formality of the occasion, and the medium used (speech, writing, or sign).Adapting language to suit the topic is a fairly naive matter. Many activities have a specialized vocabulary. If you are playing a ball game, you need to jazz that zero is a duck in cricket, love in tennis, and nil in soccer. If you have a drink with friends in a pub, you need to know greetings such as Cheers Heres to your good health separate types of variation are less clear-cut. The same person might utter any of the following iii sentences, depending on the circumstances I should be grateful i f you would make less noise. Please be quiet. come together upHere the utterances range from a high or formal style, down to a low or informal oneand the choice of a high or low style is partly a matter of politeness. (Jean Aitcheson, Teach You linguistics. Hodder, 2003) 2) Participants in an Exchange Like variation in our manner of dress, stylistic variations in language cannot be judged as appropriate or not without reference to the participants in the interchange (i. e. , speaker and listener or reader and writer). For example, you would not speak to a 5-year-old child, an intimate friend, and a professor using the same style of speech.Using the term eleemosynary charitable would probably be inappropriate for the child and the friend, while using number one urinate would probably be inappropriate for the friend and the professor. (Frank Parker and Kathryn Riley, Linguistics for Non-Linguists, 3rd ed. Ellyn Bacon, 1999) 3) Register Features Register features are core lexical a nd grammatical characteristics found to some boundary in almost all texts and registers. . . . Any linguistic feature having a functional or conventional association can be distributed in a way that distinguishes among registers.Such features come from many linguistic classes, including phonological features (pauses, intonation patterns), tense and aspect markers, pronouns and pro-verbs, questions, nominal forms (nouns, nominalizations, gerunds), passive constructions, dependent clauses (complement clauses, relative clauses, adverbial subordination), prepositional phrases, adjectives, adverbs, measures of lexical specificity (once-occurring words, type-token ratio), lexical classes (hedges, emphatics, discourse particles, stance markers), modals, specialized verb classes (speech act verbs, mental process verbs), reduced forms (contractions, that-deletions), co-ordination, negation, and grammatical devices for structuring information (clefts, extra position). A comprehensive linguis tic analysis of a register requires consideration of a representative selection of linguistic features. Analyses of these register features are necessarily quantitative, because the associated register specializations are based on differences in the relative distribution of linguistic features. (Douglas Biber Dimensions of Register Variation A Cross-Linguistic Comparison. Cambridge University Press, 1995) Sociolinguistics(Wikipedia) Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of conjunction, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the sociology of language focuses on languages effect on the society. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics. It is historically closely related to linguistic anthropo logy and the distinction between the two fields has even been questioned recently.It also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e. g. , ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc. , and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place language usage also varies among social classes, and it is these sociolect that sociolinguistics studies. Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings. In its broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse ways in which language and society entwine.This vast field of inquiry requires and combines insights from a number of disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, psychology and anthropology. Sociolinguistics examines the interplay of language and society, with language as the s tarting point. Variation is the key concept, applied to language itself and to its use. The basic premise of sociolinguistics is that language is variable and changing. As a result, language is not homogeneous not for the individual user and not within or among groups of speakers who use the same language. By studying written records, sociolinguists also examine how language and society have interacted in the past.For example, they have tabulated the frequency of the singular pronoun thou and its replacement you in dated hand-written or printed documents and correlated changes in frequency with changes in class structure in 16th and 17th century England. This is historical sociolinguistics the study of relationship between changes in society and changes in language over a period of time.Branches of sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics can be defined broadly or narrowly Broad branch of linguistics studying those properties of language which require reference to social, including conte xtual, factors in their report Narrow seeks to explain patterned co-variation of language and society seeks rules to account for that variation. Some traditions of sociolinguistic investigation1) Linguistic variation (sociolinguistics proper) focuses on the linguistic variable that correlates with social differences. Unit of study is language itself considered a part of linguistics.2) Ethnography of speaking emphasis on various aspects of context that are involved in differing interpretations of language use. Unit of analysis is not language itself but rather the users of language the speech community generally considered part of sociology or anthropology. 3) Language planning (also applied sociolinguistics, sociology of language) emphasis on practical aspects of this study. Much about language contact issues and language use in education.