Segregated vowels: Language variation and dialect features among Gothenburg youth

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Gross
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Housing Segregation ◽  
Vowel Systems

AbstractThis paper examines the effects of housing segregation on variation in the vowel systems of young speakers of Swedish who have grown up in different neighborhoods of Gothenburg. Significant differences are found for variants of the variables /i:/ and /y:/, which are strongly associated with the local dialect; these two vowels also exhibit coherence. Another vowel pair, /ε:/ and /ø:/, are involved in a coherent leveling process affecting many of the central Swedish dialects but differing in degree of openness in different neighborhoods of Gothenburg. The results show that the variation is not simply a reflection of foreign background, nor of groups of youth adopting single variants; rather, a number of social factors conflate in housing segregation, which interferes with the transmission of more abstract aspects of the local dialect's vowel system to young speakers in certain neighborhoods.

Variasi dan Register Bahasa dalam Pengajaran Sosiolinguistik

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Sunahrowi Sunahrowi
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Social Classification ◽  
Social Circumstance

 Teaching sociolinguistics is so important since it involves at least two disciplines, i.e. social studies and lingusitics. Sociolinguistics is a study of language linking to social circumstance. There are so many varieties of social classification, such as sex, age, status and classes in collective life that rise so many languange variation. Language variation is usually influenced by at least three factors; geographical area that rise local dialect, social factors relating to social classes and status, and educational background. Those aspects develop social dialect and register. Keywords: Variation, Register, Sociolinguistics, and Teaching.

Constructing the (m)other: A-prefixing, stance, and the lessons of motherhood

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Burkette
Keyword(s):  
Language Variation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Appalachian English ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Conversational Narrative ◽  
Mother And Daughter

AbstractThe present study examines two unprompted versions of the same story, related by a mother and daughter in separate sociolinguistic interviews. Following a quantitative intraspeaker comparison of their use of grammatical features associated with Appalachian English within the entirety of their interviews, this study undertakes a close reading of the narratives (along with additional passages from the daughter) to demonstrate the manner in which the two women construct their identities as “mother” and as “other” through conversational narrative and the use of local dialect features. Specifically, this article addresses the use of regional grammatical variables to enact speaker stances toward mothering, focusing on two women's independent recollections of a single incident and how these narratives dialogically construct the (m)other. (Language variation, Appalachian English, stancetaking, motherhood)*

scholarly journals Second-generation Persians’ Participation in the Oklahoma Dialect

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shima Dokhtzeynal
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Speech Styles ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Social Affiliations ◽  
Demographic Traits ◽  
The Us ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
Acoustic Variation ◽  
Linguistic Influences

Vowel systems are a rich source of information about speakers’ social affiliations and linguistic influences. With the purpose of contributing to recent dialect investigations of immigrant communities inside the US, this study examined the acoustics of bilingual Persian-Oklahomans and their participation in Oklahoma dialect features. Twenty Oklahoma-born second-generation Persian-Americans were compared to ten monolingual European-Oklahomans with respect to their production of local dialect features. Results showed similar vowel spaces between the groups indicating that second-generation Persian-Oklahomans participated in the local mix of Southern and Midland features, with one notable exception: they did not display the pin/pen merger, a feature of Southern dialects. Similar studies on European-Oklahoman speakers suggested a uniform presence of pin/pen merger among Research on the Dialects of English in Oklahoma (RODEO) project respondents. However, Persian-Oklahomans’ productions of these vowels were consistently unmerged across the continuum of speech styles. Accordingly, this study argues for a connection between this acoustic variation and speakers’ demographic traits, make-up of social network, and heritage Farsi despite their frequent contact with the merger and their rich social network with middle-class European-Oklahoman speakers of the Oklahoma dialect.

Children’s emerging ability to discriminate L1-varieties

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 447-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irmtraud Kaiser ◽  
Gudrun Kasberger
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Performance ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
German Language ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Discrimination Ability ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
German Standard ◽  
Abstract Categories

Children in Austria are exposed to a large amount of variation within the German language. Most children grow up with a local dialect, German standard language and ‘intermediate’ varieties summarized as ‘Umgangssprache’. Using an ABX design, this study analyses when Austrian children are able to discriminate native varieties of their L1 German (standard German vs local dialect). The results show children’s early ability to register differences and similarities on an across-speaker level when sentences are held constant (i.e. to discriminate translation equivalents in the two varieties) and a later, rather sudden emergence of more abstract categories of the varieties, which encompass different phonological and lexical variables and enable children to match sentences which also differ lexically. In sum, discrimination ability seems to be relatively stable and consistent at the age of 8/9. Other than age, the mother’s educational background, language variation at home and the immediate sociolinguistic setting (urban/rural) predict children’s discrimination performance.

scholarly journals A Brief Introduction on a Research of Lanzhou Tonal Variation

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 244
Author(s):  
Li Yi ◽  
Tianxin Wen
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Chinese Mandarin

<em>This paper gives a brief introduction on a research of an ongoing tonal variation in Lanzhou dialect, a northwest Chinese Mandarin. After doing data collection and sample analyses, we find that the tonal variation in this dialect appears in two ways: “Yinping” has two variants: a falling contour and a level contour; “Shangsheng” and “Qusheng” are merging. This phenomenon has been examined from three perspectives: a) phonology of Lanzhou dialect; b) perception test; c) social factors in language variation.</em>

Regional dialect leveling in Najdi Arabic: The case of the deaffrication of [k] in the Qaṣīmī dialect

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yousef al-Rojaie
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Major City ◽  
Socioeconomic Changes ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Local Variant ◽  
Najdi Arabic ◽  
Regional Dialect ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis study investigates the effect of linguistic and social factors (age, gender, and level of education) on the patterns of variation in the affrication of [] for [k] in the stem and suffix in the informal speech of 72 speakers of Qaṣīmī, a local dialect of Najdi Arabic, spoken in the Qaṣīm province in central Saudi Arabia. Findings indicate that affrication is significantly favored in the phonological context of front vowels, particularly the high front ones. Whereas suffix-based affrication is categorically used as [-], stem affrication is strongly correlated with the age, educational level, and gender of the speaker. In particular, older uneducated speakers from both sexes tend to maintain the use of the local variant [], whereas younger and middle-aged educated speakers, particularly women, increasingly shift toward the use of the supralocal variant [k]. The present findings are suggestive of patterns of variation that are typical in regional-dialect leveling, wherein the supralocal variant(s) associated with the major city dialect is (are) diffusing outward, at the expense of traditional and socially marked variant(s), by speakers of smaller towns' dialects. The substantial socioeconomic changes that Saudi Arabia has undergone in the last half century are suggested to have triggered and accelerated the linguistic shift.

J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics.) Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. 2002. xii + 807 pp.

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 769-772
Author(s):  
Rajend Mesthrie
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Variation Theory ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Per Se

This is the eleventh volume in the Blackwell series “Handbooks in Linguistics.” Of the previous ten, one was devoted to general sociolinguistics (Coulmas 1997), making this the first in the series to deal with a specific branch of sociolinguistics. For many scholars, variation theory (including the study of change in progress) is the heartland of sociolinguistics, though not everyone would go as far as Chambers 2003 in equating sociolinguistic theory with variation theory alone. As the earlier Blackwell handbook suggests, the field of sociolinguistics is broader than variation theory per se. However, considering the richness of the handbook under review, one can understand why variation theory should hold the high ground in sociolinguistics. The handbook comprises 29 chapters, divided into five sections: methodologies, linguistic structure, social factors, contact, and language and societies.

Cross-dialectal comprehension as evidence for boundary mapping: Perceptions of the speech of southeastern Ohio

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly Olson Flanigan ◽  
Franklin Paul Norris
Keyword(s):  
Third Generation ◽  
Ohio University ◽  
The South ◽  
Dialect Contact ◽  
Branch Campuses ◽  
Comprehension Test ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
Boundary Mapping

Previous studies have shown that speakers have difficulty interpreting the sounds of another dialect when they are heard in isolation or reduced context, and that this difficulty is greater in areas of dialect contact where exposure to mergers or near-mergers is experienced (Labov & Ash, 1997; Labov, Karen, & Miller, 1991). A cross-dialectal comprehension test was conducted at Ohio University and three of its branch campuses. Responses were elicited to seven words digitally excerpted at three levels of reduced context from a story read by a third-generation resident of southern Ohio. Results indicated that vowel changes occurring in southern Ohio were generally interpreted by the respondents in terms of their own vowel systems, and that limited exposure to the local dialect by outsiders led to recognition only of the more salient or stereotyped sounds. Moreover, students from southern Ohio had difficulty with the same words that outsiders did, presumably reflecting semantic confusion caused by their increased exposure to other dialects. A new boundary for the South Midland dialect area is proposed on the basis of these findings.

Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Conditioning Factors ◽  
Quantitative Analyses

What explains variation in human language? How are linguistic and social factors related? How do we examine possible semantic differences between variants? These questions and many more are explored in this volume, which examines syntactic variables in a range of languages. It brings together a team of internationally acclaimed authors to provide perspectives on how and why syntax varies between and within speakers, focusing on explaining theoretical backgrounds and methods. The analyses presented are based on a range of languages, making it possible to address the questions from a cross-linguistic perspective. All chapters demonstrate rigorous quantitative analyses, which expose the conditioning factors in language change as well as offering important insights into community and individual grammars. It is essential reading for researchers and students with an interest in language variation and change, and the theoretical framework and methods applied in the study of how and why syntax varies.

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