Key Concepts
Exploration 5.4: Language Contact Phenomena
Similarities and Differences
From descriptions in this chapter and chapter 4, what do you see as the differences between multilingual discourse, creole languages, and mixed languages? Address this question both in terms of the social situations which give rise to these different language contact phenomena, and in terms of their structural features.
Chapter Summary
While the chapter 4 explored how speakers use their diferent languages, this chapter investigated how the languages themselves change and develop in diferent types of multilingual scenarios. he main focus is on pidgin and creole languages, and we explore the diferent ideas that researchers have about how these languages are formed and why they share certain similarities. A inal section introduces another type of contact language, called mixed languages, which both are structurally very diferent from pidgins and creoles and arise in diferent types of social scenarios.
Exercises
1. Look at the following questions and answers about pidgin and creole language from Wikianswers.com (see http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_pidgins_
and_creoles). What problems are there with these answers, and how could you improve on them?
What are pidgins and creoles?
Answer:
Pidgins and creoles are two types of artiicial language.
A pidgin is formed when two cultures irst come into contact with each other; since neither speaks the other’s language, an artiicial basic language is created as both sides try to communicate. he word itself is a corruption of the English word business as pronounced by 19th-century Chinese.
134 Languages and Communities
A creole is what a pidgin evolves into, if it’s maintained for more than one generation.
It’s named for the Creole people of Louisiana, whose ancestors were African slaves but who weren’t permitted to speak their native tongue in the presence of their English- and French-speaking owners. So they invented a form of French-English with a strong African lavor, and passed the new language on to their children.
2. Look at the story at the link below, collected and translated by Peter Patrick, and write a description of how verb marking is done in Jamaican Creole based on these data. How can you tell if verbs are in the present, past, and future tenses? Are there other tenses, moods, or aspects that are marked?
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/∼patrickp/Shots.html
Further Reading
Ansaldo, Umberto, Stephen Matthews, and Lisa Lim (eds.) (2007). Deconstructing Creole.
Typological Studies in Language series, vol. 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
his volume combines intellectual history with linguistic analysis, presenting both an overview and critical assessment of ideas and theories in creole linguistics as well as theoretically motivated studies of the features of speciic creole languages.
Holm, John (2010). Contact and Change: Pidgins and Creoles. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), he Handbook of Language Contact. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 252–62.
An excellent brief introduction to the study of pidgin and creole languages, summariz- ing the themes of research on the development of these varieties.
Lang, George (2009). Making Wawa: he Genesis of Chinook Jargon. Vancouver: UBC Press.
A discussion of the origin and social context of the lingua franca spoken widely on the Northwest coast of North America.
Lefebvre, Claire (2006). Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar: he Case of Haitian Creole, vol. 88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
A study of the cognitive processes involved in creole formation as exempliied with data from Haitian Creole.
Matras, Yaron and Peter Bakker (eds.) 2003. he Mixed Language Debate: heoretical and Empirical Advances. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
his book examines a range of languages, looking at both social and structural issues, to further reine the deinition and description of mixed languages.
For further resources for this chapter visit the companion website at www.wiley.com/go/wardhaugh/sociolinguistics
References
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Aitchison, J. (1991). Language Change: Progress or Decay? 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ansaldo, Umberto, Stephen Matthews, and Lisa Lim (eds.) (2007). Deconstructing Creole.
Typological Studies in Language series, vol. 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Arends, Jacques (1993). Towards a gradualist model of creolization. In Franic Byrne and John Holms (eds.), Atlantic Meets Paciic: A Global View of Pidginization and Creoliza- tion . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 371–80.
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DeCamp, D. (1977). he Development of Pidgin and Creole Studies. In A. Valdman (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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Holm, J. (1988, 1989). Pidgins and Creoles, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holm, J. (2004). Languages in Contact: he Partial Restructuring of Vernaculars. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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Kishe, A. M. (2003). Kiswahili as Vehicle of Unity and Development in the Great Lakes Region. Language Culture and Curriculum 16(2): 218–30.
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McWhorter, J. H. (2005). Deining Creole. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mufwene, S. S. (2001). he Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mufwene, S. (2008). Multilingualism in Linguistic History: Creolization and Indigenization.
In T. K. Bhatia and W. C. Ritchie (eds.), he Handbook of Bilingualism. Oxford: Wiley- Blackwell, 460–88.
Mühlhäusler, P. (1982). Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea. In R. W. Bailey and M. Görlach (eds.), English as a World Language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
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Inherent Variety
Part II
Variety is the spice of life.
William Cowper
He [John Milton] pronounced the letter R very hard – a certain sign of satirical wit.
John Aubrey
He likes the country, but in truth must own, Most likes it, when he studies it in town.
William Cowper
Since ’tis Nature’s law to change, Constancy alone is strange.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Seventh Edition. Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M. Fuller.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
his chapter builds on the discussion of varieties in chapter 2 to present a history of variationist sociolinguistic research which focuses on regional and social dialects.
Sociolinguists today are generally more concerned with social variation in language than with regional variation. However, if we are to gain a sound understanding of the various procedures used in studies of social variation, we should look at least briely at previous work in regional dialectology. hat work points the way to under- standing how recent investigations have proceeded as they have. Studies of social variation in language grew out of studies of regional variation. It was largely in order to widen the limits and repair the laws that were perceived to exist in the latter that investigators turned their attention to social variation in language. As we will see, there may still be certain limitations in investigating such variation but they are of
Key Concepts
Dialect regions
Methodology in dialectology: assumptions and challenges Linguistic variables and social meaning
Deining social class categories and membership Data collection: how do we know what we have?
What correlations can tell us
Language Variation
142 Inherent Variety
a diferent kind. It is also important to note that even if there are limitations to this kind of work, many sociolinguists regard it as being essentially what sociolinguistics is – or should be – all about. In this view, the study of language variation tells us important things about languages and how they change. his chapter and the two that follow deal with such matters.
Regional Variation
he mapping of regional dialects has had a long history in linguistics (see Petyt 1980, Chambers and Trudgill 1998, and Wakelin 1977). In fact, it is a well-established part of the study of how languages change over time, that is, of diachronic or historical linguistics. Traditionally, dialect geography, as this area of linguistic study is known, has employed assumptions and methods drawn from historical linguistics, and many of its results have been used to conirm indings drawn from other historical sources, for example, archeological indings, population studies, and written records. In this view, languages diferentiate internally as speakers distance themselves from one another over time and space; the changes result in the creation of dialects of the languages. Over suicient time, the resulting dialects might become new languages as speakers of the resulting varieties become unintelligible to one another. So Latin became French in France, Spanish in Spain, Italian in Italy, and so on.
In this model of language change and dialect diferentiation, it should always be possible to relate any variation found within a language to the two factors of time and distance alone; for example, the British and American varieties, or dialects, of English are separated by well over two centuries of political independence and by the Atlantic Ocean; Northumbrian and Cockney English are nearly 300 miles and many centuries apart. In each case, linguists working in this tradition try to explain any diferences they ind with models familiar to the historical linguist, models which incorporate such concepts as the ‘family tree’ (Latin has ‘branched’ into French, Spanish, and Italian), phonemic ‘split’ (English /f/ and /v/ are now distinctive phonemes whereas once they were phonetic variants, or allophones, of a single phoneme) or phonemic ‘coalescence’ (English ea and ee spellings, as in beat and beet, were once designated diferent pronunciations but they have now coalesced into the same sound), the ‘comparative method’ of reconstruction (English knave and German Knabe come from the same source), and ‘internal reconstruction’ (though mouse and mice now have diferent vowel sounds, this was not always the case).
Mapping dialects
Dialect geographers have traditionally attempted to reproduce their indings on maps in what they call dialect atlases. hey try to show the geographical boundaries of the distribution of a particular linguistic feature by drawing a line on a map. Such a line is called an isogloss: on one side of the line people say something one way,
for example, pronounce bath with the irst vowel of father, and on the other side they use some other pronunciation, for example, the vowel of cat. Quite oten, when the boundaries for diferent linguistic features are mapped in this way the isoglosses show a considerable amount of criss-crossing. On occasion, though, a number coincide; that is, there is a bundle of isoglosses. Such a bundle is oten said to mark a dialect boundary. One such bundle crosses the south of France from east to west approximately at the 45th parallel (Grenoble to Bordeaux) with words like chandelle, chanter, and chaud beginning with a sh sound to the north and a k sound to the south. Quite oten, that dialect boundary coincides with some geographical or political factor, for example, a mountain ridge, a river, or the boundary of an old principality or diocese. Isoglosses can also show that a particular set of linguistic features appears to be spreading from one location, a focal area, into neighboring locations. In the 1930s and 1940s, Boston and Charleston were the two focal areas for the temporary spread of r-lessness in the eastern United States. Alternatively, a particular area, a relic area, may show characteristics of being unafected by changes spreading out from one or more neighboring areas. Places like London and Boston are obviously focal areas; places like Martha’s Vineyard in New England – it remained r-pronouncing in the 1930s and 1940s even as Boston dropped the pronunciation – and Devon in the extreme southwest of England are relic areas. Wolfram (2004) calls the dialect of such an area a remnant dialect and, in doing so, reminds us that not everything in such a dialect is a relic of the past for such areas also have their own innovations. Huntley, a rural enclave in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where Marshall worked (2003, 2004), is also a relic area.
he Rhenish Fan is one of the best-known sets of isoglosses in Europe, setting of Low German to the north from High German to the south. he set comprises the modern relexes (i.e., results) of the pre-Germanic stop consonants *p, *t, and
*k. hese have remained stops [p,t,k] in Low German but have become the frica- tives [f,s,x] in High German (i.e., Modern Standard German), giving variant forms for ‘make’ [makәn], [maxәn]; ‘that’ [dat], [das]; ‘village’ [dorp], [dorf]; and ‘I’ [ik], [ix]. Across most of Germany these isoglosses run virtually together from just north of Berlin in an east–west direction until they reach the Rhine. At that point they
‘fan,’ as in igure 6.1. Each area within the fan has a diferent incidence of stops and fricatives in these words, for example, speakers in region 2 have ‘ich,’ ‘maken,’ ‘Dorp,’
and ‘dat,’ and speakers in region 4 have ‘ich,’ ‘machen,’ ‘Dorf,’ and [dat]. he bounda- ries within the fan coincide with old ecclesiastical and political boundaries. he change of stops to fricatives, called the Second German Consonant Shit, appears to have spread along the Rhine from the south of Germany to the north. Political and ecclesiastical frontiers along the Rhine were important in that spread as were centers like Cologne and Trier. he area covered by the fan itself is sometimes called a transition area (in this case, between Low and High German) through which a change is progressing, in contrast to either a focal or relic area.
Very oten the isoglosses for individual phonological features do not coincide with one another to give us clearly demarcated dialect areas. As shown in igure 6.2, while the ideal is that isoglosses coincide as in (a), in reality isoglosses may
Figure 6.1 he Rhenish Fan
wi makt ik
maken machen
Dorp Dorp opauf
dat das
appel apfel ich
1
2
3
4
5
6
Speyer Bad Hönningen
St. Goar Bad Honnef Benrath Uerdingen Issel
Figure 6.2 Isoglosses The main kinds of isogloss
A
A A A A B B B B
B
B A
A
B
(a) (b) (c)
Term isolex isomorph isophone isoseme
The expectation Isoglosses will form neat bundles, demarcating dialect A from dialect B.
The reality Isoglosses criss-cross an area, with no clear boundary between A and B.
Focal and transitional On a larger scale, the isoglosses are seen to constitute a transitional area between the focal areas A and B.
Separates lexical items
morphological features phonological features semantic features
Examples nunch vs nuncheon dived vs dove put /pυt /vs /p t /
dinner (mid-day meal) vs (evening meal)
cross-cross as in (b); some examples of how diferent features of dialects might pattern can be seen in (c). Such patterns are just about impossible to explain using the traditional family-tree account of language change. Isoglosses do cross and bundles of them are rare. It is consequently extremely diicult to determine bounda- ries between dialects in this way and dialectologists acknowledge this fact. he postulated dialect areas show considerable internal variation and the actual areas proposed are oten based on only a few key items (or linguistic variables in our terminology). Consequently, as Le Page (1997, 18) says, ‘the dialect areas outlined by the isoglosses on the maps were artifacts of the geographer; they had to be matched against such stereotypes as “southern dialect” or “Alemmanic” or “langue d’oc,” concepts which oten related in the minds of outsiders to just one or two vari- ables characterizing a complete, discrete system.’
Methods in dialectology
here are methodological issues which have caused sociolinguists to question some dialect studies. One of these issues has to do with the sample used for the research.
First, sampling methods were based on assumptions about who ‘representative’
speakers of dialects were. For example, the focus was almost exclusively on rural areas, which were regarded as ‘conservative’ in the sense that they were seen to preserve ‘older’ forms of the languages under investigation. Urban areas were acknowledged to be innovative, unstable linguistically, and diicult to approach using existing survey techniques. When the occasional approach was made, it was biased toward inding the most conservative variety of urban speech. Ignoring towns and cities may be defensible in an agrarian-based society; however, it is hardly defensible in the heavily urbanizing societies of today’s world.
Further, there was a circularity in how social class was addressed; in the data collection for the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada, the analysis was partly intended to ind out how speech related to social class, but speech was itself used as one of the criteria for assigning membership in a social class. For example, the informants chosen for the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada were of three types (Kurath 1939, 44), chosen as follows:
Type I: Little formal education, little reading, and restricted social contacts
Type II: Better formal education (usually high school) and/or wider reading and social contacts
Type III: Superior education (usually college), cultured background, wide reading, and/or extensive social contacts
Each of these three types was then sub-categorized as follows:
Type A: Aged, and/or regarded by the ield worker as old-fashioned
Type B: Middle-aged or younger, and/or regarded by the ield worker as more modern