Introduction to Sociolinguistics

An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

CONTENTS FOR THE UNIT:

What is sociolinguistics?

Process of Language variation and change

Pidgins and Creoles

Identity and Intelligibility

What is Sociolinguistics?

Wardhaugh and Fuller open their book An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2014) by arguing that “sociolinguistics is the study of our everyday lives––how language works in our casual conversations and the media we are exposed to, and the presence of societal norms, policies, and laws which addresses language” (1).

Many people believe that the fate of a language is mainly determined by its “inherent linguistic qualities” (whether learning English it’s easier than Chinese, or whether Italian sounds more romantic than, say, Russian). However, sociolinguistics disagree. Scheinder, in his book English Around the World (2011, 36-37) suggests: “At the end of the day [...] it seems clear that language-external, social and historical conditions are more decisive for what happens to language than its internal structure and quality.”

What does this mean? Essentially, that the change in language is essentially also

extra-linguistic. When we aim to understand why languages appear, change, or die, we shall look at both external and internal factors. For instance, why has English become the world language? Certainly, a major cause has been the economic and military power of those peoples who use English as their language.

1.1. Stop and think!

Now that we have concluded that external factors are a key part in the understanding of language evolution, we have to address a new set of issues. Whereas traditional linguistics could, arguably, be conceived of as objective; sociolinguistics implies the introduction of external (social) factors such as identity, power, or race are considered… what happens?

Click here for the answer!

Process of language variation and change

So we already have determined what sociology is, and what kinds of factors do sociologists use when studying languages. Now, we can move on to determining the different ways in which languages change. The process whereby a language is changed or modified is what we call language change. Language change is permanently occurring in any language (as long as the language is not considered to be a “dead language”). The most essential process of variation is that which is caused by individuals.

Calvin and Hobbes are a pretty friendly way of explaining how we all change language, ain't it?

Any process of variation renders a new dialect. A dialect is “a particular way of speaking a language” (Wardhaugh, 403). Download this handout (HO01-Language Variation) and try to link all the dimensions with the causes.

1.2. Handout 01 - Language Variation

Once you have completed the handout, please note:

The different processes and causes of variation are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they can appear at the same time. For instance, a particular ethnic group that is generally impoverished and also lives in a certain area of the city could show several of these factors. An interesting case is African-American Vernacular English. What kinds of variation dimensions can you image it may go through? If you need help, check out this brochure on AAVE published by the Linguistics Society of America.

Pidgins and Creoles

Ethnologue: Languages of the
World is a well-known online
data base on language statistics. 

Now that we have a general idea about what sociology is and the kind of changes it may study within socilinguistics, it’s time to focus more closely on our own subject: Gullah language (also known as Sea Island Creole Englishes). Let’s start by visiting Ethnologue’s fact-sheet about Gullah. It’s likely that the first thing you are wondering is why it’s called “Sea Island Creole English.” Already in the introduction, we said that Gullah is limited to a certain part of the US, which is formed by the Sea Islands. So we have that clear. Now, let’s go for “Creole.” Oh, wait. Bad news: the idea of creole cannot be considered by itself, it’s always explained in relation to “pidgin”...

We can warm up by watching this great YouTube video about pidgins and creoles. Then, you can fill in the questions below the video to check that you have understood properly (I’m sure you will!).

1.3. Activity: Pidgins and Creoles

1. How do pidgins begin? What characteristics do pidgins tend to have or lose?
2. When did most pidgins appear? What were the most important centers for pidgins?
3. What is the perfect formula for linguistic innovation?
4. What languages tend to lend many things to the new pidgins?
5. What happens when new generations of kids grow up in piding-speaking contexts?
6. What is the main difference between pidgins and creoles?

The video did mention the concept of Universal Grammar. We won’t be talking much about it, but––should you be curious––here’s the definition we can work with: “Universal Grammar, a concept devised by Noam Chomsky, answers the following problem: how is it that children learn to talk proficiently so quickly? Because they have grammar and structures ‘hard-wired’ into their brains!” For a nicer explanation, click here.

Now, the video did mention some very interesting things. However, if we want to be a little more professional (and we kind of do) we can have a look at these definitions taken from two introductory books to sociolinguistics. This is gonna be a very brief introduction to the early stages of Gullah language, and more will follow in the “History of Gullah Language” unit.

Piding: Pidgins are defined as reduced second language forms which are not anybody’s mother tongue but used only in interethnic contacts where there is no other shared language. 

Creole: a class of languages resulting from heavy language contact and restructuring, typically amongst slaves in European plantation colonies; characterised by a mixture of substrate and superstrate influences

As they say in the video, we do have a succession of events, from Pidgin to Gullah. In the case of Gullah (although several theories are being discussed as of how Gullah come into being), the pidgin stage would have occurred when African slaves were brought to work in the rice plantations of the Sea Islands. Those peoples, as we’ll later see, spoke very many different African languages. Furthermore, they had to work under the orders of a minority of white overseers and planters who would speak English.

Had they been left to their own devices, without planters, the kind of pidgin they would have created would bear no resemblance to English. However, since they were forced to talk to the white masters and overseers, English became an essential part of the mixture. The video also mentions a very important concept: limited exposure to the target language. Had there been a majority of English speakers in the islands, the African slaves would be likely to have eventually have dropped their tongues and adopt English. As the English-speakers were limited, this did not occur, and the pidgin developed with an influence of English, but also of African languages.

Charleston, Georgia, was one of America's largest slave port. Most
Gullah-Geechee people arrived at this town to be sold. 

If you go back to the definition of creole, you’ll find two words highlighted in pink and purple (aren’t they cute?!). They are technical terms to refer to the different languages that influence the pidgin. In the appearance of Gullah, we can have two groups of languages: English and the native African languages. Because English was the language used by the planters and those in a position of power, it became the “target language” or prestigious language. Also, it became a “lexifier language:” that from which a pidgin borrows much vocabulary (for instance, slaves would have to use English words to refer to new things for them, such as tools, cabins, or names for food). The language that is both a target language and a lexifier language is the superstrate. The African language, on the other hand, become the substrate, the kind of basis upon which the pidgin evolves.

As generations passed, and slaves were freed, the pidgin became a creole: its vocabulary expanded to accommodate new realities, and it became a more stable language. This is the creole. Another view of how creoles appear, considers the range of functions (contexts) where that language is used: for instance, Gullah as a pidgin would have been mostly used among enslaved peoples, but as a Creole could have been used for church services or prayers.

The process whereby a creole becomes a language is most complex and still a very heated debate among linguists and politicians. We’ll stick to a very simple maxim:

(http://www.quotehd.com/quotes/words/dialect)

Identity and Intelligibility

As you might have seen in Ethnologue (if you didn’t you can click here and see it again, look how nice we are!), Gullah has a low literacy rate in L1 (this means that only between 1% and 5% of the people born in the area where Gullah exist speak it as a mother tongue), but a pretty high L2 rate (75%-100%). Most likely, most people learn English as a mother tongue, to, then, study and learn Gullah. So... let’s think for a moment, shall we? 

Why would people who already speak English (a powerful language in terms of economy)
want to learn Gullah? The answer is IDENTITY! Languages (and language variants) have the incredible power of creating a sense of community. People sharing a set of linguistic norms form a “speech community” (Wardhaugh 2014, 418). Belonging to a community is essential for us all. Even when many of these childrens or adults are unlikely to ever use Gullah outside places such as St. Helena’s Island; they still feel that being able to speak Gullah is part of their identity as members of the Gullah Geechee Nation. Furthermore, speaking Gullah may be the only way they have to communicate with, for example, their grandparents (who may be part of that 5% of L1 Gullah speakers).

1.5. Language File: Clarence Thomas

(Wikipedia)

Justice Clarence Thomas is a native speaker of Gullah. Up to the age of six, he lived in Pin Point, Georgia, an area where freed slaves had settled and where Gullah (back then, Geechee) was spoken. He acquired Gullah as his mother tongue. At the age of six, he moved to Savannah, where he attended Middle and High School. In an interview for the New York Times, he recalls being a speaker of Gullah:

“When I was 16, I was sitting as the only black kid in my class, and I had grown up speaking a kind of a dialect. It's called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then. It's not standard English. When I transferred to an all-white school at your age, I was self-conscious, like we all are.”

Here you can see how damaging it can be for somebody to have their language made fun of. After all, your language is part of your identity, and if you are ashamed of your language (or they make you feel ashamed of it), you are essentially ashamed of who you are.

As a closing remark, I would like to think just a little bit about how languages are not made up of words, verbs, and sounds. They have speakers, culture, power, economy, and class behind. They are complex cultural objects. As such, we should regard them all with respect. Gullah is not uglier or less-useful than any other. It as rich and expressive as the next one.
Gullah is now a developing and growing language, recognised at an international level, and with a strong community of speakers. However, it was not always like that. As you will see in the following unit, the history of Gullah is full of suffering and pain, but also hope.

Therefore, we can establish our two basic principles: identity (language as being part of a community) and intelligibility (being able to communicate with other people).

1.4. Stop and Think!
Do you speak in the same way when you are in working/studying, at the club, or baking a nice pie with your granny? Why do you think you change some of the words you use, or even avoid using some expression people would find offensive or inappropriate? 

If you had to stick to a way of speaking forever and ever, which one would you chose: the one you sound like when giving a presentation? the one you use when trying to flirt? the one you use when writing a letter to your boss?

If you went over the previous Stop and Think activity (if you didn’t, you broke our little hearts), it’s likely that you chose a particular idiolect (the way you speak). If you are bilingual or multilingual (that you speak more than one language as mother tongues), you may have also chosen one of those languages. When we think of Gullah speakers, we need to acknowledge that most of them are, in fact, bilingual and speak––at least––English and Gullah. However, as you saw in the activity, some languages we regard higher than others.

The phenomenon whereby some languages are considered “better,” or “nicer” than others is called “prestige.” English has, nowadays, a very high prestige and is considered the language of the future. However, Kalispel-Pend d’Orell, a nearly extinct language spoken in northeast Washington, has a very low prestige. This does not only occur due to the numbers of speakers, but also because languages are burdened with connotations: people make fun of the way Mexican people speak English in the US, and Chicanos aim to learn to sound “like a native.” This very same thing happened to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

(http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3w0k9i)

We do hope this is one of the realisations you've come to.

Some sources you may find useful: 

Wardhaug, Ronald and Janet M. Fuller. 2015. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing.

Schneider, Edgar W. 2011. English Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.