domingo, 29 de octubre de 2017

PORTFOLIO 11-Chapters 18, 19 & 20.

Chapter 18: Language variety

In every single language, variations exist widespread in the world, especially when it is spoken. English is not the exception. Of course, an idealized language exists and  it has no specific region. This type of language is called STANDARD LANGUAGE and it is associated with administrative, commercial and educational centers. It is also used in the mass media and is taught in most schools. At least, that's what they believe.
Speaking a standard variety of English or any other, people speak with an accent, which refers to a restriction of the description of aspects of pronunciation in an individual level. However, the term dialect refers to the cluster of features; grammar, vocabulary and pronunciations.
The dicipline wich studies dialects rekons a criteria,which is called DIALECTOLOGY. This criteria distinguishes between two different dialects of the same language and it helps to stablish the differences between dialects.
As regard to the location of a community , it can affect the accent and how the people speak due to the features of dialects which they share. Region's dialect is related to stereotyped pronunciation and consistent features of speech founf in one geographical areacompared to another.
In order to document the differences in dialects, specialists draw a map wich represents a boundary werween the areas with regard to another particular linguistic item. This is called Isoglosses. When a number of isoglosses come together in this way, a more solid line is drawn to indicate a dialect boundary.

People who speak two dialects are called BIdialectal and whose who speak two languages are called Bilingual. The latter  is connected with members of a small community growing  up in a larger communit whiose official language is not the same, The communities need to lear both in order to be part in the larger dominant linguistic community. It is no necessary to belong to a dominant community, It also happens when parents are from different countries and their mother tongues are differen as well. So, children learn both languages. The larger community  has one official language which is selected by the gorvenment , legal and educational organizations i the country.These organizations study which variety of the languge is the best to use for official business. This is called Lnguage planning, the selection of a language as official language is followed by codification.Codifications involves studying basic grammar, dictionaries and written models which are used to stablish the standard language.
However, in order to select the official language, thera are two instances before being selected; Pidgin and Creoles. The former is a variety of language that is developed for some practical purpose, such as trading, among groups whihc are in contact with each others, but who do not know each others' languages. A pifgin language is characterized by the lack of any complex grammatical morphology and limited lexis; The latter is the result of the internalization of the pidgin as first language. Creole languages have large numbers of native speakers and are not restricted at all in their users.

Capter 19: Variations in language

Uses of language are likely to be found in the speech of some individuals in society. People, who live in the same area  or region, can differ in terms of education and economic status, they speak in different ways due to social groups or communities.
People in society creat culture and, of couse, language. How these two elements are related to each other is what Sociolinguistics studies. This is not the only discipline which studies language, Social dialects concerns wirh language in small towns and cities, However Social Class defines groups of speakers  as having something in common. Thw two main groups are identified  as "middle class", those who have more years od education and perform non-manual and "working class".Those who have fewer years of education and perform manual work of some kind.
We can also devide groups in terms of economic level;  upper and lower, making middle-class  speech another type of social dielect ir socialect. The features of a dialect are pronunciation, words por structures which are used by working-class speakers and in another form by middle-class speakers. By doing so, pronunciation indicates  the social status.
Although individuals tend to speak with a personal dialect, their way of speaking is seen to be affected by those who are near, they tend to sound like those who share similar educational  background or occupations. People who have spent more time in the sducational system tend to have more features in their spoken language that derive from the time spent with the written language. However, these features will be absent in those peolple who have spent less time in the educational system. Educational system reflects on the way of speaking  in their occupation and spcio-economic status.
Social markers are related to a particular speech sound which occurs frequently  (or not) and marks you as a member of a particular social group.  This is a social feature as well as speech style, which refers to the uses of formal ir informal speech. The former is when we pay attention  to how we are speakinf and the latter is when we pay less attetion to it known as casual style. The change from one to another by an individual is called  Style-shifting.
when an individuals try to use a prestige form associated with a higher-status group in a formal situation, they have the tendency to overuse the form. Overt prestige happens when people imitate ways of speaking from higher social status and covert prestige  ehich occurs the other way around. This type of langua, vovert or overt prestife, is attatched to imitate freatures of language (pronunciation and grammar).
We must not think that accomodation speech is the same as Pretige. Accomodation speech refers to rthe abilityn to modify our speech style toward or away from the perceived style of the person we are talking to. We can adopt a speech stle which reduces social distance, this is called Convergence. Or we can make our speech style diverge from another's by using forms that are distinctly different.
This change of style of speech has to do with the register, know to whom we are talking to in order to change and use the language aprpropiate un a specific xontext. This context can be situational,  occupational or topical. One of the defining features of register is the use of hargon, which is special technical vocabulary, usually associated with a specific area of work or interest.
Slang is the opposite to jargon,. Slang is more typically used among those who are outside established higher-status groupr. To put it in other words, It refers to colloquial English, how commo people use words and phrases in dayly life.

Chapter 20 : Cultural differences

Sociolinguistic variation is attatched to cultural differences; and aspects of languag are  identified as characteristics features of languages. The disciple which studies language and culture is anthropology.
Culture is the the group of ideas and assumptions  about the nature of things and people. Even, knowlegde which is acquired unconsciously to become a member of a society. The transition of culrure is a process in which people  categorize the world around us, people, things and ideas as distinct and identifiable categories. A category is a group with cerain features in common and it is thought of the vocabulary we learn as an inherited set of categories. These are the words for reffering to concepts  that people in social life  need to talk about.  In soma ceases, there are conceptual distinctions that are lexicalized (expressed as a single word) in one language and not in another, like phrasal verbs. These lexicalized caterories are words to refer to people who are members in society. This is called "kinship terms".

The structure of  a language is predetermined and influenced by the reality we percieve the world. The different ways of talking about the world is called Linguistic relativity, using the words provided  by our language.
The language can be categorized in some groups; one of them is Cognitive category, which refers to how people think inhereted by the language system. The second category is social. This refers to the social organization which can use and say how people are connected or related to others. There are some terms, we use, which refer to attemp tp create solidarity

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