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In this video, I will be discussing sociolinguistics, which is the study of the relationship between language and society. In this video, I'll be discussing the concepts of differentiating between languages and dialects, the concept of a dialect continuum, isoglosses, dialect boundaries, the notion of an accent, and slang. Let's get started.
There's an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 languages in use today. That includes spoken and signed languages. Now you might wonder, why such a broad range?
Why can't we pinpoint the exact number of languages by counting them? And the answer is that the distinction between a language and a dialect is not always clear. So, one language may have multiple dialects, and each dialect may enjoy different levels of prestige. So depending on who's doing the counting, A specific dialect or language may not even be counted at all. Now, of course, we as linguists approach the study of language descriptively, not prescriptively.
So we recognize that no language or dialect is inherently better than another language or dialect. However, in the real world, the fact of the matter is that some dialects and languages are more stigmatized than others. So, for example, Received Pronunciation, a dialect of British English, enjoys higher prestige compared to, say, Southern American English.
And this is evidenced by the fact that if, for example, you turn on your television and watch a national news broadcast, the anchor is very likely not to use Southern American English. Now, very generally, dialects are mutually intelligible, whereas languages are mutually unintelligible. So, if I'm speaking to you and I understand you and you understand me, then we're probably speaking the same language.
Whereas, if I don't understand you and you don't understand me, we're probably not speaking the same language. Now, this is easy enough in theory, but in practice it becomes complicated because dialects exist along what is called a dialect continuum. A dialect continuum is a situation in which a large number of contiguous dialects exist. And each of those dialects is mutually intelligible with the next, but with dialects at the opposite ends of the spectrum being mutually unintelligible.
Now let me give you an example from English. So I speak Western American English, and Western American English as a dialect is contiguous with or neighbors with Southern American English, which I can also understand. Southern American English in turn neighbors with Eastern American English, and I could... pretty much understand that with relative ease.
But, if we take a dialect at the other end of the continuum in English, say Scottish English, now the differences are really pronounced. So even though Western American English and Scottish English are drawing from essentially the same grammatical system, the differences in the lexicon and pronunciation are so different that you could be forgiven if you mistook Western American English. and Scottish English as different languages entirely.
So the notion of a dialect is intricately bound up with this concept of an accent. Now an accent often has a really negative connotation when people say, oh so-and-so has an accent, or I'm embarrassed to talk because I have an accent. But from a linguistics perspective, an accent is a totally neutral idea because everyone has an accent.
If someone's speaking a language, they're going to be speaking a dialect of that language. And if they're speaking a dialect of that language, they're going to have an accent. So an accent, therefore, are really just aspects of pronunciation that help identify where we are from, whether regionally or socially.
So the important thing to understand is that an accent is not just a regional phenomenon in terms of where you're from and where you were raised. It's also a social one. So depending on certain demographic factors like age, gender, socioeconomic status, your accent will be different from your peers. And that's a perfectly normal thing in the study of language.
Now one of the most well-known studies in sociolinguistics that highlights the close relationship between dialect and accent and prestige comes from William Lebov, who in the 1960s studied arlessness among English speakers in New York City's department stores. So very briefly, R-lessness just has to do with either the presence or absence of the R sound in some words. So for example, if I say the phrase, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, I'm using the R sound.
But if I say, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, I'm not using the R sound. So this was really the focus of Lebov's study. So what he did is to kind of...
He talked to salespeople from three department stores in New York City on the assumption that salespeople from those department stores would try to match the language of their customers. And this is a well-known phenomenon in sales today. So what he would do is he would go to these three department stores which had very different levels of prestige. One was Saks Fifth Avenue, which was treated as the high prestige store in his study.
Macy's, which was the middle prestige store, and S.Kline, which was the low prestige store in his study. So, he went to each of those stores and basically asked questions of the salespeople that elicited the response, fourth floor. And he used that phrase specifically because there's two opportunities to hear the R sound, in fourth and again in floor. So, he would ask the salespeople, for example, excuse me, where are men's shoes located? And, the salesperson would say, oh, they're on the fourth floor.
But, then he would lean in and pretend not to have heard them, asking them to repeat it and they would say, they're on the fourth floor. So, not only in the use of the phrase fourth floor are there two opportunities to hear the R sound, but there's also a casual and a more careful pronunciation that is provided by the salespeople. So, This is something we typically do when somebody asks us to repeat a bit of information.
We give them a little bit more of a careful pronunciation, right? So this was a very clever method that he was using, and the results supported his hypothesis. So what he found was that salespeople from the store with the highest prestige, Saks Fifth Avenue, those salespeople were more likely to use R in their speech compared to...
salespeople from the store with the lowest prestige, S. Klein, they were much less likely to use R in their speech. Or, to put it another way, salespeople from Saks Fifth Avenue were more likely to say fourth floor, whereas salespeople from S.
Klein were more likely to say fourth floor. So, what this highlights here is again that variation in sociolinguistics is not just about the geographical variety, where you are from, it's also about where you are from socially. So again, age, socioeconomic status, gender, these things can affect our accent and maybe more generally our dialect as speakers.
And that's a perfectly natural thing. So this study, again, remains one of the most famous to this day. And this is why we call William Lebov the father of variationist sociolinguistics.
So now that we've differentiated between a language and a dialect, and we've discussed dialects in terms of existing on a continuum. Now, let's address the question of, well, how do we know where one dialect stops and another begins? And as you may have guessed, this answer is not always clear, but there is one concept that's really useful here, and that is the notion of an isogloss.
An isogloss is a boundary that separates the use of one linguistic form from another linguistic form. Now, this is not a political boundary, mind you. An isogloss really corresponds to some sort of prominent geographic boundary, such as a mountain range or a broad river, which in the past served as real barriers that prevented groups of speakers from interacting freely with one another, right? It's not so easy to climb over a mountain range or cross a broad river to talk to people on the other side. So, I could propose that there is actually an isogloss that corresponds with the Sandia Mountains.
So I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is nestled at the base of the Sandia Mountains. And on the other side of the Sandia Mountains, going east and headed towards Texas, I think that there are some differences in how words are used and how words are pronounced. So, for example, I could propose an isogloss where on the other side of the Sandia Mountains, speakers are more likely to use the word y'all to refer to second person plural. Whereas on this side, or in Albuquerque, on that side of the isogloss, speakers are more likely to say you all or you for the second person plural form. So again, we're just looking at one linguistic form here.
I could also propose another isogloss where, for example, east of the Sandia Mountains, speakers are more likely to merge the vowels i and e in the pronunciation of certain words. So, for example, the words pin. and pen are two different pronunciations for me.
So I'll say I need to put a pin on my coat, or I need to write with a pen. So they have different vowels in each of those words. But east of the Sandia Mountains, speakers are more likely to merge those pronunciations into one single form. So that a speaker east of the Sandia Mountains is more likely to say, I need to put a pin on my coat and I need a pin to write with.
So this pin-pen merger is well documented in linguistics and again represents another possible isogloss. So as these isoglosses accumulate in the same geographical location, this gives linguists cause to propose a dialect boundary. So...
A dialect boundary is really nothing more than a bundle of isoglosses. Finally, let's discuss the concept of slang. Slang is words and phrases, informal language, that are typically used by younger speakers to reinforce group membership.
So, as I mentioned in my language change video, language changes from one generation of speakers to the next. As long as there are speakers around, language will change, and that's a perfectly natural phenomenon. Although, many older speakers of a language really don't like language change. And I'm thinking specifically in terms of slang here. So maybe you have grandparents or parents who just kind of deride the use of slang among kids these days, or very generally just rail against the way younger speakers use the English language.
Well, like I said, language change is perfectly natural, but a lot of people do have well-entrenched beliefs that just never seem to go away about how language should be used. So slang constantly shifts from one generation to the next. So you know, some terms like tubular, far out, groovy, they've really fallen out of use. But we may see the same for slang terms that are used these days. So lit, on fleek, yeet, these may disappear sometime in the future as well.
They might stick around, we're not so sure. So The really interesting thing here about slang is that everyone is an expert. And along those lines, I'd be really curious if you could post a comment below and provide an example of slang that you use or that you have heard, and let's talk about them.
So will it have a long shelf life or will it disappear soon? I'd be curious to know your thoughts on that as well. Okay, that's it for this video.
I hope you found this useful. Thank you so much for watching, and in the meantime, I'll see you soon. Take care.