Sociolect

Question 1

Labov’s Department Store Study

Answer 1

Looked at 3 different department stores (Saks, Macys and S.Kleins) in New York and asked for directions to departments on the fourth floor and then asked them to repeat it.
- Looks at different classes, conscious and unconscious speech.
264 ‘interviews’ which were representative of numbers in each class
- Found an increase of ‘r’ in careful speech, Saks used the rhotic’’ the most and was used most in word final position.

Question 2

Milroy and Milroy, Belfast Study

Answer 2

Looked at inner-city Belfast in the 1970s and 3 working class communities.
- Milroy lived within the community which reduced Hawthorne effect but also meant more bias and human error.
- They looked at the correlation between the integration of people in the community and they way they speak.
Each person was scored between 1-5 about how integrated they were
They found that a high score was correlated with the use of more non-standard forms. This suggests that accent/dialect was strongly influenced by the level of integration into a social network.
Close-knit networks are important for dialect maintenance as it promotes solidarity and identity

Question 3

Bernstein

Codes

Answer 3

• Classified language into ‘restricted code’ and ‘elaborated code’ as believed that the titles ‘Standard English’ and ‘Regional Accent’s detract from observing the complexity of language and only look at the use of regional words.
• Elaborated Code - formally correct syntax, more subordinate clauses, fewer unfinished sentences, more logical connectives such as ‘if’ and ‘unless’.
• Restricted Code - looser syntax, simple connectives like ‘and’ and ‘but’, more clichés, compound sentences and pronouns.

Question 4

Penelope Ekhert, Jocks and Burnouts (2000)

SOCIAL PRACTICES

Answer 4

• Research in high schools in Detroit.
• Two distinctive groups - the jocks and the burnouts.
• Burnouts were actively rebellious and refused to take part in school activities
• The jocks participated in school life enthusiastically.
• Burnouts - exaggerated pronunciations to sound more ‘Detroit’
• Jocks - more concerned with speaking in a socially prestigious way

Question 5

Jenny Cheshire, Reading

Answer 5

• Identified 11 non-standard features and measured their frequency of use in boys and girls in a Reading playground, differentiating between those who approved or disapproved of minor criminal activities.
• All children who approved of peer group criminal activities were more likely to use nonstandard forms, but boys more so.
• All children who disapproved of such activities use non-standard forms less frequently, but the difference between the groupings of girls was starker.
• Suggests that variation in dialect is a conscious choice, influenced by (declared) social attitude.
• Males are more susceptible to covert prestige, but social attitude is more of a determining factor than gender.
• A more negative attitude to the peer group’s criminal activities can be seen as aspirational, and therefore those children would be less susceptible to the covert prestige forms (and more susceptible to the overt prestige of standard forms).

Question 6

De Klerk, Taboo (1972)

Answer 6

• Asked teenagers in the 12-14 and 15-17 age ranges about the “slang” that they used for various terms.
• The teenagers came up with 141 derogatory terms for boys and 117 for girls.
• It turns out that the most popular words used to describe an unpleasant girl are perhaps stronger (bitch, cow, slut, cunt) than the ones used against males (bastard, asshole, dog, dick),
• However, the range of words that girls use to describe unpleasant or ugly boys is a bit broader than the range used by boys about girls.
• De Klerk concluded that social pressure acts on male and female teenagers alike.
• Slang is picked up by careful observation and is used casually and coolly - asking about the meaning of slang items is tantamount to admitting failure as a teenager.”

Question 7

Philip Hensher (2002)

Answer 7

Writing in The Independent, highlighted the complexity of the situation that people in a group can call each other names, e.g. nigger, queer etc. but that when called these names from someone outside the group it becomes offensive.