Seeds of change

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina García
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Leading Change ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Hispanic Linguistics ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Physiological Differences

Abstract Intervocalic /s/ voicing is of much interest recently in Hispanic Linguistics for two principal reasons: this feature has been attested in diverse dialects of Spanish, and it has been shown to correlate in production and perception with social factors (Davidson 2014; Chappell 2016; García 2019; among others). One finding that often surfaces is that male speakers voice more than female speakers, and recent studies consider whether this may be due to physiological differences (File-Muriel, Brown, and Gradoville 2015; Chappell and García 2017). The present study examines the interaction of gender, age, and interspeaker variation in the voicing of intervocalic /s/ in the speech of 31 natives of Loja, Ecuador. While variationist studies overwhelmingly show women leading change in progress, I argue that young men are leading voicing in Lojano Spanish and that this study of a smaller, non-English speaking community further elucidates the intricacies of gender and linguistic change.

A cross-linguistic study on the linguistic expressions of Cantonese and English requests

Pragmatics ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Direct Sequence ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Academic Context ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Native English Speaking

This study investigates the cross-linguistic devices of requests written by native English-speaking (NSE) and native Cantonese-speaking (NCS) respondents in an academic context on the basis of 197 discourse completion tests. Both groups asked in a direct sequence accompanied by a different proportion of syntactic and lexical devices to reduce directness. NES used a higher frequency and a wider range of syntactic downgraders than NCS. NCS, however, used a higher frequency of lexical downgraders and a greater number of combinations of lexical devices than NES. The cross-linguistic comparison of the linguistic features of Cantonese and Engish requests demonstrates how the distinctive linguistic properties of each language and social factors combine to constitute a request. Further investigation could be made between idealized and authentic English and Cantonese requests for a range of age groups and contexts, or to compare the linguistic forms of requests made by NCS in English with the linguistic forms of requests made by NES in Cantonese.

Social influence in the use of the present perfect in Bilbao

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Burgo
Keyword(s):  
Social Influence ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Constraints ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
Semantic Domains

The Present Perfect (PP) in some Peninsular Spanish dialects is following the same path as other Romance languages; it is going through a grammaticalization process where the PP is usurping the semantic domains of the Preterite. This is the case of many Peninsular dialects such as Alicante (Schwenter, 1994) and Madrid (Serrano, 1994) among others as well as Bilbao (Kempas, 2005). He found that the frequencies of PPs in hodiernal contexts were higher than in other Spanish cities so these findings point out to a more advanced path of grammaticalization in this city. Previous studies have paid more attention to the linguistic constraints that favor the use of the PP instead of the Preterite rather than the social factors that influence this linguistic change. In this article, I focus on the study of three social variables (age, gender and class) to account for evidence of a change in progress in Bilbao Spanish.

Linguistic change in El Pont de Suert: The study of variation of /3/

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuria Alturo ◽  
Ma. Teresa Turell
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Geographic Factors

ABSTRACTCatalan sociolinguistics has investigated in depth the uses of Catalan and the attitudes toward it but has only analyzed very sporadically the mechanisms of linguistic change in this language. The study presented in this article is an attempt to describe an ongoing linguistic change that has been observed in a speech community (E1 Pont de Suert) of the Alta Ribagorça, a region in Catalonia (Spain) where the borderline between Catalan and Aragonese, a variety of Spanish, can be delimited. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, the article seeks to demonstrate that a gradual substitution of the autochthonous variant [t∫] by the normative [3] of the phoneme /3/ appears to be taking place in El Pont de Suert, and to determine, at the same time, the linguistic and social factors that favor this substitution. Second, its purpose is to analyze the variation of this phoneme in relation to not only geographic but also social and linguistic variables; this is because a study that considers only geographic factors would describe the characteristics that differentiate the Ribagorca speech from other Catalan speech varieties but would not account for the existing variation in the use of both the voiceless affricate and the voiced fricative.

scholarly journals Otto Maass, 1890-1961

1963 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 183-204 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Research Laboratory ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Strong Feeling ◽  
War Effort ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Scientific Research Laboratory

Probably to the great majority of English speaking people, the expression ‘O.M .’ has no very definite connotation. Certainly no strong feeling of affection, no marked sense of loyalty, is conjured up by saying ‘O.M .’. Yet for more than thirty years, in almost every scientific research laboratory in Canada, ‘O.M .’ had one well-known and very definite meaning: Otto Maass. The expression was used not frivolously, but with a sense of very real esteem and affection. It is, of course, not uncommon for young men to refer to their chiefs as ‘the Master’, ‘the King’, etc. whether these chiefs be artists or generals, directors of academic research laboratories or directors of theatrical productions. Such nicknames usually have a variety of connotations, but among Maass’s former students, the intense loyalty and depth of feeling of personal friendship that were implied by ‘O.M .’ was quite exceptional. While Dr Maass’s contributions to Canadian science and to Canada’s war effort were indeed remarkable, perhaps even more remarkable was the highly personal and enduring character of the veneration which he inspired in his students and close associates.

Youth Gangs and Youth Violence in Australia

2016 ◽  
pp. 955-973
Author(s):  
Rob White
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Youth Violence ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Youth Gangs ◽  
Positive Elements ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Broad Overview

This chapter provides an introduction and overview of issues pertaining to youth gangs and youth violence in Australia. The first part features the voices of young people from around Australia describing their experiences of youth gang violence. The second part provides a broad overview of biological, psychological and social factors that together shape the propensities for young people, and young men in particular, to join gangs and to engage in youth violence. The final part of the chapter provides more detailed exposition of two gang members, 'Mohammad' and 'Tan', and the everyday complexities of their lives. The chapter concludes by noting that the gang does not have to be seen as an overwhelming influence in the lives of young people, and that their activities and behaviours are more diverse, and include positive elements, than generally given credit in mainstream youth gangs research and analysis.

scholarly journals Relative risk of HIV infection among young men and women in a South African township

2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 331-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
C MacPhail ◽  
B G Williams ◽  
C Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Hiv Infection ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Sexual Debut ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Sexual Partners ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Sexually Transmitted ◽  
Age Cohorts ◽  
Social Explanations

The prevalence of HIV infection in Africa is substantially higher among young women than it is among young men. Biological explanations of this difference have been presented but there has been little exploration of social factors. In this paper we use data from Carletonville, South Africa to explore various social explanations for greater female infection rates. This paper reports on data from a random sample of 507 people between 13 and 24 years old. Subjects were tested for HIV, as well as other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and answered a behavioural questionnaire. The age-prevalence of HIV infection differs between men and women with considerably higher rates of increase with age among young women. The age of sexual debut did not differ significantly between men and women (15.9 and 16.3 years, respectively) and below the age of 20 years there was no difference in the number or distribution of the number of sexual partners reported by men or women. The risk of infection per partnership was substantially higher among women than among men. Women have sexual partners who are, on average, about five years older than they are with some variation with age. Scaling the age-prevalence curve for men by the age of their sexual partners gives a curve whose shape is indistinguishable from that for women but is about 30% lower for men than for women. In terms of social explanations for HIV rates among women, the data indicates that this difference can be explained by the relative age of sexual partners, but not by other factors explored. In addressing the epidemic among young women it will be essential to deal with the social factors that lead young women to select their partners from older-age cohorts and that shape their sexual networking patterns.

scholarly journals Social Influences on Phonological Transfer: /r/ Variation in the Repertoire of Welsh-English Bilinguals

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Jonathan Morris
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Social Influences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
North Wales ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Community Language

It is well known that cross-linguistic interactions can exist between the two languages in a bilingual speaker’s repertoire. At the level of phonetics and phonology, this interaction may result in the transfer of a feature from one language to the other or the ‘merging’ of phonetic properties between languages. Although there are numerous studies of bilingual speakers which show such interactions, relatively little is known about the nature of transfer in communities of long-term bilingualism. The current study investigates phonological transfer of /r/ in Welsh-English bilinguals’ speech in north Wales. Specifically, it compares the influence of speaker gender, home language, and speech context on the production of /r/ in both English and Welsh in two communities which differ in the extent to which Welsh is spoken as a community language. It is commonly assumed that the alveolar trill [r] and alveolar tap [ɾ] are the variants of /r/ in Welsh. In English, the alveolar approximant [ɹ] is typical across Wales, but the trill and tap are reported in areas where a high proportion of the population speaks Welsh. Data in both languages were collected from 32 Welsh-English bilinguals (aged 16–18) via sociolinguistic interview and wordlist tasks. The sample was stratified equally by speaker gender, home language, and area (predominantly Welsh-speaking vs. predominantly English-speaking). The results show areal differences in the production of /r/ in both languages, which, I argue, could be attributed partly to differing social structures in the communities under investigation. Consequently, the results showed evidence of bi-directional phonological transfer, which is community-specific and influenced by a number of social factors.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Holes
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Early History ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Arabic Dialects ◽  
Early Occurrence

This chapter outlines the scholarly background of the study of Arabic historical dialectology, and addresses the following issues: the early history of Arabic: myth and reality; the definition and exemplification of ‘Middle Arabic’ and ‘Mixed Arabic through history’; evidence for the early occurrence of certain Arabic dialectal features; examples of substrates and borrowing in Arabic dialects; the dialect geography of Arabic and its typology, especially the ‘sedentary’ and ‘bedouin’ divide; how and why dialects have undergone change, large-scale and small-scale, and the causative social factors; a classification of the typology of internal linguistic change in Arabic; causes of the social indexicalization of dialectal features of Arabic; examples of the pidginization and creolization of Arabic, and the reasons for the apparent rarity of this phenomenon.

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