To: Werdna
Individualization in Dialect
Ariel Rudolph ENG 371 Permpikul
Ah knew a linguist wance
Wanst ah knew a linguist
She used tay git oanty mi
Ah wish I could talk like you
Ahv lost ma accent
Thi crux iz sayz ah
Shiftin ma register
Tay speak tay a linguist
Would you swear tay swear
And not abjure
The extra-semantic kinetics
Uv the fuckin poor
Ach
Mobile society
Mobile my arse
-Tom Leonard, 1984
The world is a giant masquerade ball. People mingling, talking, laughing; some incoherent and intoxicated, others sullen wallflowers lined up in the shadows. At once, overwhelming and lively, bumping elbows and cocktails; some clumsy, some confident. A masquerade ball we are in, and dialects are our masks. The way we speak to others in intonation, manner and voice represents us as human beings. Speech patterns are one of the most telling, revealing facets of a person, but can also be misleading if interpreted incorrectly. In other words, dialects speak volumes.
To hardly due the term justice, dialect can be simply explained as a variety in speech associated with a particular geographical area. Concerning dialect, Edward Sapir writes:
“A group of dialects is merely the socialized form of the universal tendency to individualize variation in speech. These variations affect the phonetic form of the language, its formal characteristics, its vocabulary and such prosodic features as intonation and stress. No known language unless it be artificially preserved for liturgical or other non-popular uses, has ever been known to resist the tendency to split up into dialects, any one of which may in the long run assume the status of independent language.” (Robinson and Sledd, 169)
The subject of dialect is much more deserving of a thoughtful definition as given by Shapir than the textbook answer introduced beforehand. Though Shapir is certainly on the right track, there are many other major components and influences to be found when exploring the causes and effects of dialect.
Language is a form of social behavior, and we react to a person’s speech patterns as we would react to any of his actions. “If his dialect differs from our own, we may consider him quaint, naïve, stupid, suave, cultivated, conceited, alien or any number of other things. Most frequently, however, our attitude toward the outsider tends to be negative, since, after all, he is not part of our group.” (Shuy, 2)
This demeanor is indicative of a larger trend in the world. People who have been classified into groups, or “stereotypes,” if you will, develop a sense of sameness with their outcast counterparts. This translates into a feeling of indentification and unity, which in turn, creates pride. With this pride comes the need to distinguish the group as superior, or at least different, from other groups. Hence, the individualization of language, as Shapir noted earlier.
“The word ‘dialect’ is associated with speech communities, groups of people who are in constant internal communication. Such a group speaks its own dialect; that is, the members of the group have certain language habits in common. For example, a family is a speech community; the members of the family talk together constantly, and certain words have certain special meanings within the family group. An even larger speech community is made up of people who live in a particular geographic region. The study of this is dialectology.” (Shuy, 2)
Somewhat paradoxically, a dialect privatizes language, makes it selective and particular to a certain group or people, while simultaneously broadening and widening the avenues of speech, making way for the possibility of breathing life into an entirely new language or introducing outsiders to its existence, and spreading the word. “We choose our style of speech in response to our interlocutor. Thus, the regular patterns of social class and stylistic variation can be said to stem, ultimately, from the interactional nature of human communication- from the fact that we speak, we orient our speech to another person.” (KKR, 1)
Languages and dialects are forever fluctuating and changing. It can be hard to think of them as finite substances, because at every possible moment they are evolving and flourishing, or growing stagnant with decay, walking the road to dormancy. But as long as they are active, they are always changing and adapting to their environment, much like any living, breathing entity. “…a language does not exist in a vaccuum: a normal state of affairs is one in which the speakers of a language are subject to the influences of other languages, and of course these other languages are particularly likely to be influential when there are invasions, incursions and mixing or populations.” (KKR, 172) “It is through constant use and modification on the part of its speakers, that the forms of a language change. By the mixing together of dialects, new conditions are constantly being set up. Moreover, linguistic scientists have noted that languages possess certain formal aspects which tend toward regularity.” (Fishman, 4)
All dialects and languages are interconnected, even if they are not directly related. The principle of variation studies contests the idea that language and dialect develops in a linear fashion throughout time, isolated and distinct. Rather, the heritage and history are defined by the different varieties as they come in contact with each other over time.
“The principle of variation studies can be held to contradict the notion that languages develop in a unilinear continuum through time, as the most basic assumption is that languages are variable at all times. It follows from this that even if a language were not influenced by external varieties, it’s true history would be the history of its varieties as they intersect and overlap through time, and phenomena like dialect-shift would play a central part in historical description. A phenomenon like the Great Vowel Shift, for example, would not in this account be a unitary phenomenon, and it would be seen as internal to a single continuously developing variety. A variational account…would be multi-dimensional and not unilinear.” ( KKR, 172)
Attributing a specific, concrete dialect to all members of a specific group is an unwise move which can lead to blinding inaccuracies in statistical data and be a poor representation of individuals within the group whom do not conform perfectly to the specified dialect. “Bickerton says, ‘it is my contention that no group exhibits either complete uniformity or complete variability, and moreover there is no group within a given language-community such that the linguistic behavior of all its members will fall within a certain range, and that all of its non-members outside of it. One can always produce discrete figures by drawing non-linguistic boundaries averaging performances within those boundaries, and then comparing the averages; if one takes individuals, irrespective of group or class membership, and ranks them along a continuum, one gets a very different picture.’” (Romaine, 241) The dialect representative of a group is less flexible than the speech of individuals-“idiolects”- contained within the group. The dialect must be standardized and remain familiar to all members to retain unity and commonality, regardless of slight twists and variations courtesy of individual members making the dialect their own. “The locus of language is in the community or group, and the speech of any social group will be less variable than the speech of any individual. Thus, variable rules are written for groups rather than individuals; and it is maintained that there is some isomorphism between individual and group grammars. In the dynamic paradigm, however, not every member of a community operates with the same set of rules; the result is then that community and individual grammars are not isomorphic.” (Romaine, 241)
There are four basic theories as to why different dialects emerge in society and what that means. The first theory is that different social groups use different varieties, or dialects, of language. Included in social groups is that of gender, divided into male and female. “The language of women, for instance, was and is different from that of men in the same society in a number of ways, which often include a predilection for euphemism and for emotionally-charged adjectives, and a closer adherence to standard forms. Even their intonation is distinctive, a point which was not lost on Shakespeare: ‘her voice was ever soft/ Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman’ [King Lear] As this last example suggests, women do not simply happen to speak differently from men but have been trained to do so in male-dominated societies, expressing their subordination in their speech.” (B&P, 4)
Minority religious groups have also employed distinctive varieties of language over the years. In the 16th and 17th centuries, English puritans were supposed to be recognizable by their nasal twang and also their vocabulary, in which terms such as “abomination,” “backsliding,” “discipline,” “edify,” “godly,” ad nauseum, were a frequent part of the vernacular. Quakers refused to use certain common words such as “church” (which was replaced with “steeplehouse”) and insisted on using the familiar “thee” and “thou” to everyone, despite its informal nature and implied rudeness.
Human beings have an innate desire to better their situation, or quality of life; it can be described as greed, or simply striving for excellence and perfection in an imperfect world. This characteristic can often be seen in the linguistic world, where there are divisions in socioeconomic status, and accordingly, dialects.
“It was the linguist Alan Ross who coined the term ‘U’ to describe the language of the British upper class, and ‘non-U’ for that of everyone else. He explained, or more exactly asserted, that ‘looking-glass’ was U, but ‘mirror’ non-U. ‘Writing paper’ U, and ‘notepaper’ non-U. Considerable anxiety seems to have been aroused by this essay, and it was likely that usage changed in some circles as a result. However, there was nothing new about this type of distinction, and although it is widely believed to reflect a peculiarly English obsession with class, it does in fact have parallels in other parts of the world. In Philadelphia in the 1940’s, for instance, it was ‘U’ to refer to one’s house and furniture, but ‘non-U’ to call them ‘home’ and ‘furnishings.’ In 18th century Denmark, playwright Ludvig Holberg put a character on stage to comment on the way in which language was changing to reflect some people’s higher social aspirations. Such people, no longer content with such traditional, homely terms as ‘boy,’ ‘fiddler’ and ‘clerk,’ preferred to speak of a ‘lackey,’ an ‘instrumentalist’ and a ‘secretary.’ ” (B&P, 5)
The Western portion of the world is not the only place where certain speech dialects function as symbols of status. In Java, the traditional elite have their own dialects (or sociolects) distinctive in grammar as well as vocabulary. The Wolof of West Africa, however, display accent- or more precisely, pitch- as a social indicator. The nobles speak in low-pitched, quiet voices, implying that they do not have to make an effort to gain their listeners’ attention, whereas commoners speak in high-pitched, loud voices.
At the end of the last century, the Norwegian-American sociologist Thorstein Volen produced the fascinating suggestion concerning the ways of speaking of the upper class (or “leisure class” as he called it). He said their dialect and speech mannerisms were necessarily “cumbrous and out of date” because such usages imply “waste of time” and hence “exemption from the use and need of direct, forcible speech.” (B&P, 6) The word “cuss” was borrowed from the word “curse” in accordance with the pronounciation of once-elegant Yankee speech, where the dropped “r” was a mark of dinstinction.
While observing the language of the pupils in some London schools, [Basil] Bernstein distinguished two main dialects, or as he called them, “codes,” which were divided into the “elaborated” and the “restricted.” “The restricted code employs expressions which are usually concrete and it leaves meanings implicit, to be inferred from the context. The elaborated code, on the other hand, is abstract, explicit and ‘context-independent.’ Bernstein has explained the contrast in terms of two very different styles of bringing up children, associated with two types of family, associated in turn with two social classes. Roughly speaking, the elaborated code is middle-class while the restricted code is working-class.”(B&P, 6) Education equals assimilation.
The second theory is that people employ different dialects and varieties of language in different situations. This extends beyond any scenario of someone adapting to a regional or specific dialect temporarily in order to blend in with the surroundings. “Religion, for example, often seems to demand a relatively high or formal register, such as classical Arabic in the Middle East…Latin was a second language, spoken as well as written in medieval and early modern Europe by anyone with pretensions to learning, and associated with particular settings such as universities and schools.
Lectures, disputations, orations were all in Latin, and not these alone. As late as 1677, at Queens’ College, Cambridge, the President and Fellows gave instructions that the undergraduates should speak Latin in Hall at both dinner and supper. The Latin speeches given at degree days in Oxford and Cambridge today are the vestiges of a long academic tradition.” (B&P, 7) Elites are not the only groups to go between different varieties of language. Different dialects are common to those living on regional borders and near major trade routes where it is necessary to communicate effectively with those coming and going.
The third theory concerning the development and usage of individualized dialects is that dialect reflects the society (or culture) in which it is spoken. It is obvious that by analyzing the vocabulary, accent and general speech style of an individual, a good deal can be learned about that individual’s social position. But linguistic forms, their variations and changes, can also tell us something about the quality of social relationships in a given culture, or mass of cultures. Roles, including those associated with gender, are fixed attributes in many societies, a precedent having been set long ago in each culture.
“It has often been pointed out that the greater hesitancy of women’s language indicates their subordinate position. Statistical measurements show that men speak more loudly and more often than women; are more apt to interrupt, impose their views, and take over the conversation; and are more inclined to shout others down. Women tend to smile obligingly, excuse themselves and stutter, or in fits of insecurity attempt to imitate and outdo men.” (B&P, 11)
The utilization of a particular dialect of language conveys information about the speaker’s loyalties, expressing unity with those who speak similarly and social distance from those who speak differently. When the upper classes of western Europe ceased using the local dialect, as they seem to have done in the 17th and 18th centuries, they were distancing themselves from a popular culture in which their ancestors had participated. In another situation, the prevalence of emerging dialects in the professional workforce is a similar method of distancing a group of speakers from predecessors or outsiders. “Again, the development of certain occupational languages, notably the languages of the law, the army and the civil service, needs to be interpreted not only in a utilitarian way, as the creation of technical terms for practical purposes, but also in a symbolic way, as the expression of a growing professional self-consciousness and of a growing distance from outsiders.” (B&P, 12)
The fourth and final theory is that language shapes the society in which it is spoken. “Language is an active force in society, used by individuals and groups to control others or defend themselves against being controlled, to change society or to prevent others from changing. Like other forms of social history, the social history of language cannot be divorced from questions of power.” (B&P, 13) For example, as the late Michel Foucault and others have emphasized, labeling certain groups “insane,” “criminals,” “witches” and so on is a way of controlling them, and as is evident in the annals of history, it is quite effective.
American dialects are incredibly diverse, which is not much of a stretch, considering the complexity of the standard American English language and the incredible variations and exceptions for spelling, grammar and syntax. “American peculiarities can best be described by briefly tracing them to 1) the historical settlement of North America and to subsequent internal migration, 2) the dynamics of American social attitudes which are partly a function of demographic history and 3) developments in dialect research and official policy toward language variation.” (Fishman, 128) No one city dominates American culture or speech; a combination of factors causes Americans to use regional forms of language rather than a “national” pattern of speech. One such factor is the very size of our country. It is simply too large for one city to develop a monopoly or tremendous influence over every other part of the country. Democracy also affects the thinking of Americans.
"If we should be told suddenly that we should pattern our speech, dress, buying habits, religion and political views after those of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, most of us would react violently. Why Cedar Rapids? The spirit of American regionalism may be seen in people from almost any area of the country. The most traditional example might be a Texan, whose loyalty is notorious. But it can also be see in the regional loyalty of the natives of Washington State, the Great Lakes area and New England. This feeling is encouraged by local businessmen whose constant plea is ‘Buy local products,’ and by the pressures of family life which causes people to take local jobs rather than to move on to some other part of the country. As a result of this loyalty, various urban areas become focal points in the culture, including the dialect, of a given area. Pronunciations, words and even grammatical choices of a city are often copied, consciously or subconsciously, by people around it.” (Shuy, 36)
In the East, rivers, mostly because they were early physical barriers, are rather clear markers of dialect areas. The Connecticut River still separates pahk the cah from park the car.
A very intriguing branch of dialectology is perceptual dialectology, where a group of people (divided by region, dialect, etc.) are surveyed as to their perception of other dialects and regions, as well as themselves. When rating “correctness” of speech, Michigan raters, most strikingly, see themselves as the only state in the 8.00-8.99 range (highest), exposing considerable linguistic self-confidence. When asked to draw a map of “the South,” Michigan voters drew one encompassing a large portion of America, on average, nearing the borders of Indiana, and in some instances, overlapping it. Conversely, Indiana also does not align itself with it’s neighbor, Kentucky, for the same purpose of avoiding identification with southern dialects. Indiana respondents classify themselves along with Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and other Great Lakes states in their own rating, which may be interpreted as their attempt to align themselves with Northern rather than Southern dialects in order to escape the associations with the South. “Indiana respondents have ‘pushed’ the ‘South’ to the south (away from them) so that they will not be contaminated (or allow others to believe that they are contaminated) by Southern speech.” (Berns, 71,79)
Society has become industrialized. As butchering, canning and like processes go the way of manufacturing and mass-marketing, fewer people will know the language of the craft; only the brand names. People are always mobile now, always looking for something better- at the very least hoping to save their jobs from the throes of corporate mechanization, and this blunts the sharpness of dialect differences. The refreshing unfamiliarity of an encounter with a new dialect will be lost in a sea of homogenization and recognizable, watered-down speech variations.
Sapir is right when he concludes that there is a universal tendency to individualize variation of speech. This has roots in both tangible, identifiable and external factors (regional differences, sex, age, socioeconomic status, etc.) and basic tenets of psychology, which emphasize the need for human beings to create their own identity and become self-aware and individualized. While the former set of factors are generally attributed to affecting the dialect of a group or society, the psychological facets of individualized dialects can be directly applied to the individual, and his/her own idiolect. Dialects may come and go, but individual speech stays with a person their entire life, regardless of the fickle nature of a specific dialect. Each idiolect is shown to the world as a representation of that person, as a mask for the ball, except these masks never come off; they only adapt or die.
“Consciousness cannot be related to experience except through the interposition of a particular language which organizes the understanding of experience.”
-Gareth Stedman-Jones
Bibliography
Present-Day Dialectology Problems and Findings. Berns, Jan and Van Marle, Jaap.
Mouton de Gruyter Press. Berlin; NY, NY. 2002.
The Social History of Language. Burke, Peter and Porter, Roy.
Cambridge University Press. NY, NY. 1987.
Dialect and Standard in Highly Industrialized Societies. Fishman, Joshua.
Mouton de Gruyter Press. Berlin; NY, NY. 1979.
Speech Past and Present: studies in English dialectology in memory of Ossi Ihalainen.
Klemola, Kytö, Rissanen: Editors. Peter Lang Inc. NY, NY. 1996.
Socio-Historic Linguistics. Romaine, Suzanne. Cambridge University Press.
NY, NY. 1982.
Discovering American Dialects. Shuy, Roger. National Council Of Teachers of English.
Champaign, Illinois. 1967.
Ariel Rudolph ENG 371 Permpikul
Ah knew a linguist wance
Wanst ah knew a linguist
She used tay git oanty mi
Ah wish I could talk like you
Ahv lost ma accent
Thi crux iz sayz ah
Shiftin ma register
Tay speak tay a linguist
Would you swear tay swear
And not abjure
The extra-semantic kinetics
Uv the fuckin poor
Ach
Mobile society
Mobile my arse
-Tom Leonard, 1984
The world is a giant masquerade ball. People mingling, talking, laughing; some incoherent and intoxicated, others sullen wallflowers lined up in the shadows. At once, overwhelming and lively, bumping elbows and cocktails; some clumsy, some confident. A masquerade ball we are in, and dialects are our masks. The way we speak to others in intonation, manner and voice represents us as human beings. Speech patterns are one of the most telling, revealing facets of a person, but can also be misleading if interpreted incorrectly. In other words, dialects speak volumes.
To hardly due the term justice, dialect can be simply explained as a variety in speech associated with a particular geographical area. Concerning dialect, Edward Sapir writes:
“A group of dialects is merely the socialized form of the universal tendency to individualize variation in speech. These variations affect the phonetic form of the language, its formal characteristics, its vocabulary and such prosodic features as intonation and stress. No known language unless it be artificially preserved for liturgical or other non-popular uses, has ever been known to resist the tendency to split up into dialects, any one of which may in the long run assume the status of independent language.” (Robinson and Sledd, 169)
The subject of dialect is much more deserving of a thoughtful definition as given by Shapir than the textbook answer introduced beforehand. Though Shapir is certainly on the right track, there are many other major components and influences to be found when exploring the causes and effects of dialect.
Language is a form of social behavior, and we react to a person’s speech patterns as we would react to any of his actions. “If his dialect differs from our own, we may consider him quaint, naïve, stupid, suave, cultivated, conceited, alien or any number of other things. Most frequently, however, our attitude toward the outsider tends to be negative, since, after all, he is not part of our group.” (Shuy, 2)
This demeanor is indicative of a larger trend in the world. People who have been classified into groups, or “stereotypes,” if you will, develop a sense of sameness with their outcast counterparts. This translates into a feeling of indentification and unity, which in turn, creates pride. With this pride comes the need to distinguish the group as superior, or at least different, from other groups. Hence, the individualization of language, as Shapir noted earlier.
“The word ‘dialect’ is associated with speech communities, groups of people who are in constant internal communication. Such a group speaks its own dialect; that is, the members of the group have certain language habits in common. For example, a family is a speech community; the members of the family talk together constantly, and certain words have certain special meanings within the family group. An even larger speech community is made up of people who live in a particular geographic region. The study of this is dialectology.” (Shuy, 2)
Somewhat paradoxically, a dialect privatizes language, makes it selective and particular to a certain group or people, while simultaneously broadening and widening the avenues of speech, making way for the possibility of breathing life into an entirely new language or introducing outsiders to its existence, and spreading the word. “We choose our style of speech in response to our interlocutor. Thus, the regular patterns of social class and stylistic variation can be said to stem, ultimately, from the interactional nature of human communication- from the fact that we speak, we orient our speech to another person.” (KKR, 1)
Languages and dialects are forever fluctuating and changing. It can be hard to think of them as finite substances, because at every possible moment they are evolving and flourishing, or growing stagnant with decay, walking the road to dormancy. But as long as they are active, they are always changing and adapting to their environment, much like any living, breathing entity. “…a language does not exist in a vaccuum: a normal state of affairs is one in which the speakers of a language are subject to the influences of other languages, and of course these other languages are particularly likely to be influential when there are invasions, incursions and mixing or populations.” (KKR, 172) “It is through constant use and modification on the part of its speakers, that the forms of a language change. By the mixing together of dialects, new conditions are constantly being set up. Moreover, linguistic scientists have noted that languages possess certain formal aspects which tend toward regularity.” (Fishman, 4)
All dialects and languages are interconnected, even if they are not directly related. The principle of variation studies contests the idea that language and dialect develops in a linear fashion throughout time, isolated and distinct. Rather, the heritage and history are defined by the different varieties as they come in contact with each other over time.
“The principle of variation studies can be held to contradict the notion that languages develop in a unilinear continuum through time, as the most basic assumption is that languages are variable at all times. It follows from this that even if a language were not influenced by external varieties, it’s true history would be the history of its varieties as they intersect and overlap through time, and phenomena like dialect-shift would play a central part in historical description. A phenomenon like the Great Vowel Shift, for example, would not in this account be a unitary phenomenon, and it would be seen as internal to a single continuously developing variety. A variational account…would be multi-dimensional and not unilinear.” ( KKR, 172)
Attributing a specific, concrete dialect to all members of a specific group is an unwise move which can lead to blinding inaccuracies in statistical data and be a poor representation of individuals within the group whom do not conform perfectly to the specified dialect. “Bickerton says, ‘it is my contention that no group exhibits either complete uniformity or complete variability, and moreover there is no group within a given language-community such that the linguistic behavior of all its members will fall within a certain range, and that all of its non-members outside of it. One can always produce discrete figures by drawing non-linguistic boundaries averaging performances within those boundaries, and then comparing the averages; if one takes individuals, irrespective of group or class membership, and ranks them along a continuum, one gets a very different picture.’” (Romaine, 241) The dialect representative of a group is less flexible than the speech of individuals-“idiolects”- contained within the group. The dialect must be standardized and remain familiar to all members to retain unity and commonality, regardless of slight twists and variations courtesy of individual members making the dialect their own. “The locus of language is in the community or group, and the speech of any social group will be less variable than the speech of any individual. Thus, variable rules are written for groups rather than individuals; and it is maintained that there is some isomorphism between individual and group grammars. In the dynamic paradigm, however, not every member of a community operates with the same set of rules; the result is then that community and individual grammars are not isomorphic.” (Romaine, 241)
There are four basic theories as to why different dialects emerge in society and what that means. The first theory is that different social groups use different varieties, or dialects, of language. Included in social groups is that of gender, divided into male and female. “The language of women, for instance, was and is different from that of men in the same society in a number of ways, which often include a predilection for euphemism and for emotionally-charged adjectives, and a closer adherence to standard forms. Even their intonation is distinctive, a point which was not lost on Shakespeare: ‘her voice was ever soft/ Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman’ [King Lear] As this last example suggests, women do not simply happen to speak differently from men but have been trained to do so in male-dominated societies, expressing their subordination in their speech.” (B&P, 4)
Minority religious groups have also employed distinctive varieties of language over the years. In the 16th and 17th centuries, English puritans were supposed to be recognizable by their nasal twang and also their vocabulary, in which terms such as “abomination,” “backsliding,” “discipline,” “edify,” “godly,” ad nauseum, were a frequent part of the vernacular. Quakers refused to use certain common words such as “church” (which was replaced with “steeplehouse”) and insisted on using the familiar “thee” and “thou” to everyone, despite its informal nature and implied rudeness.
Human beings have an innate desire to better their situation, or quality of life; it can be described as greed, or simply striving for excellence and perfection in an imperfect world. This characteristic can often be seen in the linguistic world, where there are divisions in socioeconomic status, and accordingly, dialects.
“It was the linguist Alan Ross who coined the term ‘U’ to describe the language of the British upper class, and ‘non-U’ for that of everyone else. He explained, or more exactly asserted, that ‘looking-glass’ was U, but ‘mirror’ non-U. ‘Writing paper’ U, and ‘notepaper’ non-U. Considerable anxiety seems to have been aroused by this essay, and it was likely that usage changed in some circles as a result. However, there was nothing new about this type of distinction, and although it is widely believed to reflect a peculiarly English obsession with class, it does in fact have parallels in other parts of the world. In Philadelphia in the 1940’s, for instance, it was ‘U’ to refer to one’s house and furniture, but ‘non-U’ to call them ‘home’ and ‘furnishings.’ In 18th century Denmark, playwright Ludvig Holberg put a character on stage to comment on the way in which language was changing to reflect some people’s higher social aspirations. Such people, no longer content with such traditional, homely terms as ‘boy,’ ‘fiddler’ and ‘clerk,’ preferred to speak of a ‘lackey,’ an ‘instrumentalist’ and a ‘secretary.’ ” (B&P, 5)
The Western portion of the world is not the only place where certain speech dialects function as symbols of status. In Java, the traditional elite have their own dialects (or sociolects) distinctive in grammar as well as vocabulary. The Wolof of West Africa, however, display accent- or more precisely, pitch- as a social indicator. The nobles speak in low-pitched, quiet voices, implying that they do not have to make an effort to gain their listeners’ attention, whereas commoners speak in high-pitched, loud voices.
At the end of the last century, the Norwegian-American sociologist Thorstein Volen produced the fascinating suggestion concerning the ways of speaking of the upper class (or “leisure class” as he called it). He said their dialect and speech mannerisms were necessarily “cumbrous and out of date” because such usages imply “waste of time” and hence “exemption from the use and need of direct, forcible speech.” (B&P, 6) The word “cuss” was borrowed from the word “curse” in accordance with the pronounciation of once-elegant Yankee speech, where the dropped “r” was a mark of dinstinction.
While observing the language of the pupils in some London schools, [Basil] Bernstein distinguished two main dialects, or as he called them, “codes,” which were divided into the “elaborated” and the “restricted.” “The restricted code employs expressions which are usually concrete and it leaves meanings implicit, to be inferred from the context. The elaborated code, on the other hand, is abstract, explicit and ‘context-independent.’ Bernstein has explained the contrast in terms of two very different styles of bringing up children, associated with two types of family, associated in turn with two social classes. Roughly speaking, the elaborated code is middle-class while the restricted code is working-class.”(B&P, 6) Education equals assimilation.
The second theory is that people employ different dialects and varieties of language in different situations. This extends beyond any scenario of someone adapting to a regional or specific dialect temporarily in order to blend in with the surroundings. “Religion, for example, often seems to demand a relatively high or formal register, such as classical Arabic in the Middle East…Latin was a second language, spoken as well as written in medieval and early modern Europe by anyone with pretensions to learning, and associated with particular settings such as universities and schools.
Lectures, disputations, orations were all in Latin, and not these alone. As late as 1677, at Queens’ College, Cambridge, the President and Fellows gave instructions that the undergraduates should speak Latin in Hall at both dinner and supper. The Latin speeches given at degree days in Oxford and Cambridge today are the vestiges of a long academic tradition.” (B&P, 7) Elites are not the only groups to go between different varieties of language. Different dialects are common to those living on regional borders and near major trade routes where it is necessary to communicate effectively with those coming and going.
The third theory concerning the development and usage of individualized dialects is that dialect reflects the society (or culture) in which it is spoken. It is obvious that by analyzing the vocabulary, accent and general speech style of an individual, a good deal can be learned about that individual’s social position. But linguistic forms, their variations and changes, can also tell us something about the quality of social relationships in a given culture, or mass of cultures. Roles, including those associated with gender, are fixed attributes in many societies, a precedent having been set long ago in each culture.
“It has often been pointed out that the greater hesitancy of women’s language indicates their subordinate position. Statistical measurements show that men speak more loudly and more often than women; are more apt to interrupt, impose their views, and take over the conversation; and are more inclined to shout others down. Women tend to smile obligingly, excuse themselves and stutter, or in fits of insecurity attempt to imitate and outdo men.” (B&P, 11)
The utilization of a particular dialect of language conveys information about the speaker’s loyalties, expressing unity with those who speak similarly and social distance from those who speak differently. When the upper classes of western Europe ceased using the local dialect, as they seem to have done in the 17th and 18th centuries, they were distancing themselves from a popular culture in which their ancestors had participated. In another situation, the prevalence of emerging dialects in the professional workforce is a similar method of distancing a group of speakers from predecessors or outsiders. “Again, the development of certain occupational languages, notably the languages of the law, the army and the civil service, needs to be interpreted not only in a utilitarian way, as the creation of technical terms for practical purposes, but also in a symbolic way, as the expression of a growing professional self-consciousness and of a growing distance from outsiders.” (B&P, 12)
The fourth and final theory is that language shapes the society in which it is spoken. “Language is an active force in society, used by individuals and groups to control others or defend themselves against being controlled, to change society or to prevent others from changing. Like other forms of social history, the social history of language cannot be divorced from questions of power.” (B&P, 13) For example, as the late Michel Foucault and others have emphasized, labeling certain groups “insane,” “criminals,” “witches” and so on is a way of controlling them, and as is evident in the annals of history, it is quite effective.
American dialects are incredibly diverse, which is not much of a stretch, considering the complexity of the standard American English language and the incredible variations and exceptions for spelling, grammar and syntax. “American peculiarities can best be described by briefly tracing them to 1) the historical settlement of North America and to subsequent internal migration, 2) the dynamics of American social attitudes which are partly a function of demographic history and 3) developments in dialect research and official policy toward language variation.” (Fishman, 128) No one city dominates American culture or speech; a combination of factors causes Americans to use regional forms of language rather than a “national” pattern of speech. One such factor is the very size of our country. It is simply too large for one city to develop a monopoly or tremendous influence over every other part of the country. Democracy also affects the thinking of Americans.
"If we should be told suddenly that we should pattern our speech, dress, buying habits, religion and political views after those of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, most of us would react violently. Why Cedar Rapids? The spirit of American regionalism may be seen in people from almost any area of the country. The most traditional example might be a Texan, whose loyalty is notorious. But it can also be see in the regional loyalty of the natives of Washington State, the Great Lakes area and New England. This feeling is encouraged by local businessmen whose constant plea is ‘Buy local products,’ and by the pressures of family life which causes people to take local jobs rather than to move on to some other part of the country. As a result of this loyalty, various urban areas become focal points in the culture, including the dialect, of a given area. Pronunciations, words and even grammatical choices of a city are often copied, consciously or subconsciously, by people around it.” (Shuy, 36)
In the East, rivers, mostly because they were early physical barriers, are rather clear markers of dialect areas. The Connecticut River still separates pahk the cah from park the car.
A very intriguing branch of dialectology is perceptual dialectology, where a group of people (divided by region, dialect, etc.) are surveyed as to their perception of other dialects and regions, as well as themselves. When rating “correctness” of speech, Michigan raters, most strikingly, see themselves as the only state in the 8.00-8.99 range (highest), exposing considerable linguistic self-confidence. When asked to draw a map of “the South,” Michigan voters drew one encompassing a large portion of America, on average, nearing the borders of Indiana, and in some instances, overlapping it. Conversely, Indiana also does not align itself with it’s neighbor, Kentucky, for the same purpose of avoiding identification with southern dialects. Indiana respondents classify themselves along with Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and other Great Lakes states in their own rating, which may be interpreted as their attempt to align themselves with Northern rather than Southern dialects in order to escape the associations with the South. “Indiana respondents have ‘pushed’ the ‘South’ to the south (away from them) so that they will not be contaminated (or allow others to believe that they are contaminated) by Southern speech.” (Berns, 71,79)
Society has become industrialized. As butchering, canning and like processes go the way of manufacturing and mass-marketing, fewer people will know the language of the craft; only the brand names. People are always mobile now, always looking for something better- at the very least hoping to save their jobs from the throes of corporate mechanization, and this blunts the sharpness of dialect differences. The refreshing unfamiliarity of an encounter with a new dialect will be lost in a sea of homogenization and recognizable, watered-down speech variations.
Sapir is right when he concludes that there is a universal tendency to individualize variation of speech. This has roots in both tangible, identifiable and external factors (regional differences, sex, age, socioeconomic status, etc.) and basic tenets of psychology, which emphasize the need for human beings to create their own identity and become self-aware and individualized. While the former set of factors are generally attributed to affecting the dialect of a group or society, the psychological facets of individualized dialects can be directly applied to the individual, and his/her own idiolect. Dialects may come and go, but individual speech stays with a person their entire life, regardless of the fickle nature of a specific dialect. Each idiolect is shown to the world as a representation of that person, as a mask for the ball, except these masks never come off; they only adapt or die.
“Consciousness cannot be related to experience except through the interposition of a particular language which organizes the understanding of experience.”
-Gareth Stedman-Jones
Bibliography
Present-Day Dialectology Problems and Findings. Berns, Jan and Van Marle, Jaap.
Mouton de Gruyter Press. Berlin; NY, NY. 2002.
The Social History of Language. Burke, Peter and Porter, Roy.
Cambridge University Press. NY, NY. 1987.
Dialect and Standard in Highly Industrialized Societies. Fishman, Joshua.
Mouton de Gruyter Press. Berlin; NY, NY. 1979.
Speech Past and Present: studies in English dialectology in memory of Ossi Ihalainen.
Klemola, Kytö, Rissanen: Editors. Peter Lang Inc. NY, NY. 1996.
Socio-Historic Linguistics. Romaine, Suzanne. Cambridge University Press.
NY, NY. 1982.
Discovering American Dialects. Shuy, Roger. National Council Of Teachers of English.
Champaign, Illinois. 1967.