theory

west vs. east : African American youth active in Urban Hip Hop culture must choose among grammatical, lexical and phonological variables which identify them as aligned with either the West or East coast.

• identifying social functions of a language and its usage to convey social meaning

• concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is used

• studies relationship between language and society

• explains why we speak differently in different social settings

FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

1- give information

2- express indignation / annoyance / admiration / respect

3- express feelings

4- indicates aspects of social identity

• relevant in accounting for used variety

• some relate to users of language, others to uses of language aka. social setting/ function of interaction

• linguistic choices indicate peoples awareness of the following components:

1. participants WHO SPEAKS AND TO WHOM?

2. setting/ context WHERE?

3. topic ABOUT WHAT?

4. function WHY?

SL, through exploring the relationship between linguistic chooice and social contexts, aims to describe variation and explain it in 2 steps

1. identify ling. variation

2. identify differnet social or non-linguistic. factors which lead speakers to their choice of form

language provides a variety of possibilities, our final choice provide clues to social factors (relationship between speakers)

linguistic variation can provide social information

lingusitic variation used to express/reflect social factors

• have variation within, which offers speaker a choice of expression

• different linguistic sytles for different social contexts

• ppl acquire knowledge of varieties + how to use them the same way as language itself:

  • exposure

  • process of osmosis (learn by immersing yourself in a language)

• the semantic change that a word must undergo in order to serve as an intensifier

• used to achieve expressivity, which thrives on novelty, innovation and semantic change

• occurs mainly in spoken language, informal conversations

• is used by younger speakers

a word loses its own meaning over time

absolutely and terribly (partially delexicalized)

different clines of delexicalization, such as the following:

o The scalar category that involves adverbs of degree, which describe nothing BUT the notion of degree.

o The evaluative category that expresses a notion of judgement on the part of the speaker.

o The comparative category which is restricted to one lexical set: the comparison.

o The modal category which includes those adverbs that state the extent to which an adjective quality holds true. They can also be characterized as clause-level modal adverbs.

lexical item evolves into a grammatical one or fulfilling a grammatical function

very

• The range of varieties (languages, dialects, styles) that a speaker uses depending on context.

• Multilingual speakers often switch between languages or varieties based on social context and purpose.

1. participants: who is speaking and to whom?

2. setting: where is the interaction happening?

3. topic: what is being discussed?

4. function: why are the speakers communicating?

   
   

a sociolinguistic situation where two language varieties are used for distinct purposes

• high (h) variety: used in formal settings (e.g., education, religion).

• low (l) variety: used in informal settings (e.g., daily conversations).

switching between languages or varieties depending on context or topic

blending elements of two languages within the same sentence.

domains refer to typical settings where certain varieties are used

(e.g., family, education, religion, government).

speakers may switch codes to signal group membership, authority, or solidarity

a social setting where specific varieties of language are preferred

a common language used for communication between speakers of different native languages

swahili in east africa, used to bridge communication between speakers of different tribal languages.

• occurs when a community gradually stops using one language and adopts another.

• often results in the loss or death of the original language.

when a language loses all native speakers and ceases to be used.

rapid in communities without intergenerational transmission.

strategies to preserve a minority language and encourage its use across generations.

requires community support, education, and institutional backing.

efforts to bring a dead or endangered language back into use.

often involves standardization, education, and cultural promotion.

hebrew: successfully revived and modernized as the official language of israel after centuries of limited use.

māori: revitalized in schools and media to strengthen its use in everyday life.

spoken as the native language; typically informal and used in daily interactions

3 components

1) uncodified/unstandardised variety,

2) it is acquired at home, as the first variety,

3) it is used for relatively circumscribed functions. It usually refers to the most colloquial variety in a person’s linguistic repertoire.

3 essential criteria:

1) it was influential or prestigious,

2) it was codified and stabilized,

3) it served high function such as it was used by the administration or in court

codified, formalized versions of a language used in education, government, and media.

can serve both purposes of an official and national language, but some countries have different languages for each role.

pidgin: a simplified language that develops for communication between speakers of different languages.

creole: a pidgin that becomes a native language for a community and develops more complex grammar and vocabulary.

adapt to the needs of multilingual communities, often tied to colonial or trade histories.

signal identity, solidarity, and local community membership.

serve as symbols of unity, identity, and cultural heritage for a country.

may or may not be the most widely spoken language in the country, but are officially recognized as central to national identity.

efforts made to manage and develop a language, including decisions about standardization, education, and usage in public life.

focuses on planning for either maintaining, developing, or revitalizing languages, especially in multilingual societies.

3 TYPES

4 interrelated steps

1) Selection: choosing the code/variety to be developed;

2) Codification: standardizing its structural or linguistic features, linguistic processing is known as corpus planning ;

3) Elaboration: extending its function for use in new domains,

4) Securing its acceptance: status of new language is important, so the attitude of people is important.

arises when different languages compete for dominance, often leading to tensions between speakers of different languages or dialects.

can be influenced by political, economic, or social factors.

regional or social variations of a language characterized by

differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

may vary within a region or social group.

higher social classes often use more standardized forms of the language, whereas lower social classes may use non-standard dialect features.

linguistic features can signal social status or group membership.

differences in speech patterns between men and women can reflect social roles, expectations, and power dynamics.

women are often more likely to use standard language forms, while men may prefer non-standard or vernacular forms.

• women´s role as guardian of society`s values (taking care of children and therefore

• being a role model to them), the subordinate role of women in society,

• as well as the function in which a woman acts, but also the machismo that is connected to the vernacular form

in some communities, men and women use entirely different linguistic forms due to cultural norms (e.g., specific words or grammar).

patterns of language use that are more common among one gender

• women may use speech features that emphasize politeness, hedging, or solidarity (e.g., "sort of," "kind of," or tag questions like "isn't it?").

hedging: softening statements to appear less assertive (e.g., "I think").

• men may use more assertive, direct, or competitive speech styles.

  
  

  women	men
  put more emphasis on the polite/affective functions of tags	use tags for expressing uncertainity
  are facilitative and supportive conversationalists rather than unconfident or tentative talkers	se far less politeness forms to each other than women and are competitive and less supportive of others in their speech.
  more standard forms, which can also be seen as a positive response to their addressee	less standard forms
  get interrupted by men frequently	tend to interrupt other speakers more often than female speakers.

age grading: language features associated with specific life stages,

such as teen slang.

women often lead language changes, adopting innovative forms earlier than men.

younger speakers are typically at the forefront of linguistic shifts.

language often reflects ethnic identity.

distinctive linguistic features can signal membership in an ethnic group (e.g., phonology, syntax, vocabulary).

the likelihood of an ethnic language surviving based on factors like institutional support, demographics, and status

variations within a language influenced by ethnic identity

(e.g., African American Vernacular English, Chicano English)

dense networks (close-knit groups) maintain strong local speech norms — reinforcing local speech

loose networks (diverse, weaker ties) encourage linguistic innovation.

Different social networks can be described with two terms: density and plexity.

→ density: refers to whether members of one social network know each other (e.g. do

you friends know each other separated from you)

→ plexity: refers to the range of different types of transaction people are involved inwith different individuals, we can differ between uniplex and multiplex relationships.

• Uniplex would be a collegue at work that you do not meet outside of work.

• Multiplex would be a colleague that you also go to the gym with and the pub.

linguistic features vary across time, driven by social and contextual factors

innovations often spread from one group to another, starting with women and younger speakers.

types of change:

lexical: new words (e.g., slang).

phonological: sound changes.

grammatical: shifts in syntax.

causes of change:

internal factors: simplification or regularization.

external factors: contact with other languages, social prestige.

introducing new linguistic features

specialized language used in specific contexts (e.g., medical, legal).

speakers adapt their speech to converge or diverge from their interlocutors

language conveys information (referential) or feelings (affective)

1) expressive (speakers feelings) ,

2) directive, to get someone to do something,

3) referential (provide information) ,

4) metalinguistic (comment on language itself) ,

5) poetic (aesthetic of language) ,

6) phatic (express solidarity and empathy)

managing face (self-image) in interactions:

• positive face: desire for approval.

• negative face: desire for freedom from imposition.

japanese speakers avoid direct refusals, using indirect phrases like “It’s a bit difficult.”

british speakers use "please" more frequently than americans.

women tend to use more polite forms to maintain social harmony

reinforcing gender roles through speech

gendered language often reinforces societal norms (e.g., bossy for women, assertive for men)

refers to varieties which developed in post-colonial societies, where the colonial influence has been displaced but English remained the

prime languages

different dialect come into contact

A koine therefore emerges from the mixing and blending of different dialects or languages.

language influences thought (linguistic relativity)

people from different cultures think differently because of

differences in their language

language shapes perception

cultural differences affect how concepts (e.g., colors, time) are expressed

focuses on the relationship between social class and language use

studying turn-taking and repair mechanisms

exploring power dynamics in language use

understanding meaning in context

• The interactional sociolinguistics approach focuses on the linguistic as well as non-linguistic clues which determine how people interpret conversational interactions.

• The approach of conversation analysis goes beyond analyzing a conversation and puts emphasis on the significance of any utterance and its dependency on its position within a sequence.

• The Critical Discourse Analysis approach focuses on how discourse constructs and maintains power relationships and creates a certain view of ‘reality’.

judgments about prestige and correctness

understanding and using language appropriately across contexts

cleaning up language by making it more proper, correct and acceptable.

(Example: feminism → making language less sexist).

intertwined with political correctness.

• Identifying and explaining common trends in the ways social factors account for linguistic variation in different speech communities.

• The generalisations they seek could be described as

  sociolinguistic universal tendencies

Every spoken language evolves over time in its sounds, grammar, and meaning.

Living languages change; only dead languages remain static.

Changes occur due to social, historical, or environmental factors.

Example: The English spoken by Shakespeare is very different from modern-day English.

• All languages, regardless of prestige, are capable of expressing complex ideas and adapting to new needs.

• No language is inherently superior or inferior.

• Example:

English lacked technical words like “aeronautical engineering” until needed.

AAVE (African American Vernacular English) can convey just as much as standard English.

• Grammaticality: Sentences follow the internal rules of a language (e.g., “I seen him yesterday” is grammatical in some dialects).

• Social grammaticality: Influenced by societal norms and expectations.

• Communicative effectiveness depends on clarity and context, not prescriptive grammar.

• Example: “Ain’t nobody can beat me” is socially non-standard but perfectly clear and effective.

All languages have variations in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary based on social, regional, or situational factors.

Variation helps signal identity, group membership, and social context.

Example:

Y’all (Southern U.S.) vs. You guys (Midwestern U.S.) as plural forms of you.

regional: “pop” (midwest) vs. “soda” (northeast). social: a lawyer’s formal language in court vs. casual speech with friends.

1 Language internal pressures, arising in part from the mechanics of production and perception.

2 External influences on language, such as geographic mobility and social behavior subject to normative and other formative social pressures.

3 Variation arising from language as a creative vehicle of free expression.

Prescriptive grammar: Rules about how language should be used, often based on social prestige.

Descriptive grammar: Rules based on how language is actually used by speakers.

Example:

Prescriptive: “My sister is taller than I”.

Descriptive: “My sister is taller than me”.

Double negatives: “He don’t know nothing”.

Omission of “is” (copula absence): “She nice” (instead of “She is nice”).

Habitual “be”: Used to express recurring actions (“She be working late”).

Example:

“He be running every morning” means he runs regularly, not just now.

• A systematic and rule-governed variety of English used primarily by African Americans.

• Features distinct grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary.

• Example:

Double negatives (“I ain’t got none”), habitual be (“She be working”).

segregation is responsible for the current troubles in

the African American community

1 proposes that AAVE-speaking children shift toward other varieties of English as a first step toward better performance in school and an improvement in reading scores for the disempowered. He sees this as an important and even primary goal.

2 What is needed to make this shift happen is early contact between AAVE speakers and speakers of other (unnamed) varieties of English.

3 The result of early contact – handled correctly – would be true integration, in which the two groups really interact.

4 True integration will bring about linguistic convergence and the shift away from AAVE, which would be better than what is now happening (the two varieties are becoming less alike).

African American attitudes: AAVE can be seen as a marker of identity, solidarity, and authenticity.

• Pressure to assimilate to *SAE norms originates from outside and from inside the African American community.

• No evidence of real resistance to linguistic assimilation

• AVE is not accepted, and may never be accepted as a socially viable language by the majority of U.S. English speakers.

• internal conflict in the African American community centered around AAVE:

  • The bidialectal feel the need to justify their choice to be so;

  • Blacks who are not comfortable speaking AAVE are often defensive about their language, and protective of their status as members of the Black community.

• trouble with Black English: AAVE is tangible and irrefutable evidence that there is a distinct, healthy, functioning African American culture which is not white, and which does not want to be white.

Anglo attitudes: Often negative, viewing AAVE as “incorrect” or “lazy”.

Anglo discomfort with AAVE is often externalized in a paternalistic voice.

Criticisms:

1. morphological markers (for example, third person singular verb endings as in she sit, he go, she say, he yell)

2. the pronunciation of specific words.

Example:

employers rejecting candidates who use aave features in interviews.

parents encouraging children to "speak properly" to avoid discrimination.

• AAVE is often used to express authentic Black identity.

• 80-90% of AAVE speakers are AA

• even when no grammatical, phonological or lexical features of AAVE are used, a person can, in effect, still be speaking AAVE.

• AAVE speakers come from all socioeconomic backgrounds and circumstances

• Speakers may face pressure to code-switch (switch to Standard English) in professional settings.

Example:

A Black professional may speak Standard English at work but AAVE with friends to assert identity.

judgments about a speaker’s race or ethnicity based solely on speech. aave features are often used to identify and discriminate against black speakers.

housing discrimination: landlords refusing to rent to callers who sound african american.

• stigmatization devalues black identity and culture: stereotypes about AAVE originate primarily through the information and entertainment industries which have portrayed it as the lingo of criminals

• the issue is not the language itself but the refusal to accept aave speakers and their experiences.

• was talked by the inner-city poor for half a decade: the most segregated and poorest African Americans are the most persistent speakers of AAVE and thus provide a great deal of useful data —> growth of an African American middle class —> evolution of African American Standard English (AASE) —> African American English (AAE) or Black Standard English (BSE)

• increasing wealth and the growth of the Black middle class, the community becomes more socially complex, and AAVE keeps pace.

quote from james baldwin: “it is not the black child’s language which is despised: it is his experience.”

similarities:

• negative inversion

• regularized past form

• 
  

feelings of anxiety or self-consciousness about one’s language variety, often resulting from societal stigma.

the process through which a dominant group devalues a non-standard variety of language.

misconceptions about language, such as the idea that non-standard varieties are “sloppy,” “illogical,” or “incorrect.”

the myth that double negatives (“i don’t know nothing”) make a sentence illogical.

the way language use reflects and reinforces social hierarchies (e.g., class, race).

upper-class speakers are more likely to use standard english forms compared to working-class speakers.

language varieties are assigned either stigma (negative value) or prestige (positive value) based on societal attitudes.

the value placed on certain language varieties as social currency that provides access to power and opportunities.

• contradictory cultural assumptions about

  • discourse

  • rhetorical strategies

  • styles of speaking

• AA: passionate, emotional, and “hot”

• EU: objective, detached, and “cold,”

• firstly references a musical movement

• in US: refernece to an urban, youth-focused culture which has evolved in the 70s

• origin: Latino and AA communities on both coasts

  
  

Oakland Unified School District Board of Education affirmed the legitimacy of AAL as a language system —> caused Oakland Ebonics controversy in 1990

• first speakers were black working‐class, urban youth who spoke a highly vernacular variety

• Sociolinguistic contact between whites and blacks over the generations may have resulted in speakers of both ethnicities picking up features from one another so that the two dialects became very similar.

• independent dialect innovation, patterns of segregation, and cultural factors related to ethnic identity led to significant dialect diver­ gence.

BUT AAE includes a vernacular–standard continuum and cuts across a wide range of social categories of speakers rather than concentrating on a focused set of structural linguistic traits associated with working‐class speakers

• mostly working-class AA, but also across an array of social classes and situations

• may index ethnicity using language resources that range from

  • prosodic differences

  • greeting routines

  • to canonical phonological and grammatical structures

  • affiliation with African American ethnicity

  • affiliation with character traits (stereotypically) associated with it (e.g. coolness, being street‐smart).

(1) the relation of vernacular varieties of African American speech to comparable European American vernacular varieties;

(2) the origin and early development of African American speech in the United States

(3) the nature of language change currently taking place, including the continuing development of the speech of African Americans into a widely recognized symbol of cultural identity.

some non‐black speakers may use elements of AAE to index affiliation with

• African American ethnicity

• character traits (stereotypically) associated with it (e.g. coolness, being street‐smart) —> white youth who regularly use African American English‐derived features of hip hop language.

• show affiliation with the group

• focus is thus on speakers who select from a pool of available linguistic features that they use to index ethnicity along with other social, cultural, and individual traits.

• This approach emphasizes an individual’s use of features in social practice rather than a uni­tary system that characterizes a community of speakers

• Neither European American nor African American speakers delete the copula when the form is am

(e.g. neither group of speakers uses forms like I nice).

• Both African Americans and European Americans delete the copula frequently when the form corresponds to are (e.g. You ugly), but African Americans have a higher frequency of are absence.

• Both European Americans and African Americans delete the copula form is when it is followed by the item gonna (e.g. She gonna do it).

• copula absence with forms other than gonna:

• <5% of European Americans

• 50% of African Americans

1. habitual be for habitual or intermittent activity

   e.g. Sometimes my ears be itching.

2. copula absence for contracted forms of is and are

   e.g. She nice.They acting all strange.

3. present tense, third‐person ‐s absence

   e.g. she walk for she walks

4. possessive ‐s absence

   e.g. man_ hat for man’s hat

5. general plural ‐s absence

   e.g. a lot of time for a lot of times

6. remote time stressed béen to mark a state or action that began a long time ago and is still relevant

   e.g. You béen paid your dues a long time ago. I béen known him a long time.

7. had + verb for simple past tense

   e.g. They had went outside and then they had messed up the yard.

8. ain’t for didn’t

   e.g. He ain’t go there yesterday.

9. reduction of final consonant clusters when followed by a word beginning with a vowel

   e.g. lif ’ up for lift up

10. skr for str initial clusters

    e.g. skreet for street

11. Use of [f ] and [v] for final th

    e.g. toof for tooth smoov for smooth

12. be done to indicate potential action leading to inevitable result

    If you love your enemy, they be done eat you alive in this society

13. 
    

1. come in constructions with an ‐ing verb: INDIGNATION

   she come acting like she was real mad.

   
   

   SAE: come in structures like She came running —> BUT use as auxiliary verb indicating

   annoyance or indignation on the part of the speaker

2. call oneself with an ‐ing verb: FALSELY ATTRIBUTING QUALITIES/SKILLS TO THEMSELVES

SAE: She calls herself a painter, with noun phrases or adjectives, same meaning

• wider range of intonation contours

• more frequent use of primary stress

• use of a lower “basic pitch” level – or fundamental frequency

• Under this historical scenario, slaves brought a number of different African languages with them when they were transported

• but over the course of a couple of generations only a few minor traces of these ancestral languages remained.

  —> Africans simply learned the regional and social varieties of surrounding white speakers as they acquired English

• emerged in 1960/70s

• AAE developed from a creole language that emerged during the early contact between Africans and Europeans.

  • the creole that gave rise to AAE was fairly widespread in the antebellum (pre‐Civil War) South

  • shows a number of similarities to well‐known English‐based creoles in the African diaspora (the dispersal of people from Sub‐Saharan Africa to other parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and North America)

  • includes Krio, spoken today in Sierra Leone and elsewhere on the west coast of Africa, as well as English‐based creoles of the Caribbean such as the creoles of Barbados and Jamaica.

  • the vestiges of the creole that gave rise to AAE can still be found in Gullah, more popularly called “Geechee,” the creole still spoken by some African Americans in the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia.

• decreolization: Contact with surrounding dialects eventually led this creole language to be modi­fied so that it became more like other varieties of English

  • creole structures are lost or replaced by non‐creole features.

  • process was gradual and not necessarily complete —> the vestiges of its creole predecessor may still be present in modern AAE.

• examples:

  • copula absence (e.g. You ugly),

  • inflec­tional ‐s absence (e.g. Mary go_; Mary_hat)

  • consonant cluster reduction

• insular varieties ( risen from AA migation to peninsula of Samaná in the DR / Nova Scotia in Canada) were quite similar to earlier European American varieties rather than to a presumed creole predecessor —> criticizescreole hypothesis

• AAE has since diverged so that it is now quite distinct from contemporary European American vernacular speech.

• AAVE originated as English, but as the African American community solidified, it innovated specific features

• many important features of the modern dialect are creations of the 20. century and not an inheritance of the 19.

≠ neo‐Anglicist position: AAE was not fundamentally different from any other earlier vernacular American English variety

• claims longstanding ethnolinguistic divide, since some enduring differences between AAE and SAE varieties have also been found in enclave communities ( North Carolina, Appalachia)

• due to lasting influence from early contact between African Americans and European Americans

  • inflectional ‐s absence (e.g. She go),

  • copula absence (e.g. He ugly),

  • word‐final consonant cluster reduction (e.g. lif ’ up for lift up)

—> no answer to its origin, surely AAE is rooted in

the rural South

• the de facto segregation that persists in US society

• con­siderations of cultural and individual identity.

• demographic movement during the Great Migration in which African Americans moved from the rural South to large metropolitan areas in the early and mid‐twentieth century

• 
  

Pre-Civil War:

African Americans, primarily enslaved in the rural South, developed distinct speech patterns influenced by African languages and Southern English.

Post-Civil War:

African Americans remained in the rural South, where unique AAE features solidified in segregated communities.

Great Migration:

Millions moved from the rural South to Northern urban centers (e.g., Chicago, Detroit, New York) during the 20th century, introducing Southern AAE to new regions.

Urbanization:

In cities, AAE developed supra-regional norms—shared features that transcend regional dialects—while retaining Southern roots.

Reverse Migration:

In the late 20th century, some African Americans returned to the South, where urban AAE influences spread to Southern communities.

There are several factors that account for this uniformity.

1. a set of common substrate structures from the ear­liest contact situations provided a linguistic foundation for the development of an endur­ing ethnolinguistic divide between AAE and localized European American vernaculars

1. legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and segregation that most African Americans have endured served to preserve this unique linguistic heritage

2. Patterns of mobility and inter‐regional, intra‐ethnic social relations helped support the maintenance and development of a supra-regional base for AAL in the 20./21st (travelling outside US)

3. de facto segregation: lack of regular interaction between African Americans and European Americans in large urban areas provides a linguistic context for the growth of ethnolinguistic distinctiveness

4. strong, coherent sense of cultural identity and, in recent decades, have cultivated overt pride in this cultural heritage

5. enormous impact on American and global popular culture and on youth culture through community‐based social networks / media projections of AALC

6. avoidance of features associated with “white speech,” whether regional white vernacular dialects or MAE

because African Americans position themselves against other cultural groups, especially dominant white society —> against “sounding white”

INTENSIFIED

+++ habitual be in sentences such as Sometimes they be playing games seems to be escalating, to the point of becoming a stereotype of AAL

+++ finite be used in hip hop language in lyrics as iconic marker of African American speech while extending its previous restriction from habitual actions to more permanent states

Dr Dre be the name

NEW

+ + had + past or perfect form of the verb to indicate a simple past tense action

they had went outside and then they had messed up the yard

++ camouflaged forms such as indignant come

He came here talking trash

1. school start: children entering school were relatively vernacular, ➡️

2. elementary school: then reduced their use of vernacular features during the first few years of schooling. ⤵️

3. middle school: vernacular features of students (grades 6–8) peaked ⤴️

4. (post-) secondary school: only to be reduced again ⤵️