Language and Society II

8.2.1.6 Ethnic dialect

An ethnic dialect is a social dialect of a language that is mainly spoken by a less privileged population. Black English is an ethnic dialect of English.

Black English is often regarded as “bad”, “poor” or “uneducated” English. Such an evaluation is only social. The opinion shows the social prejudice against the Black people.

This biased opinion has no linguistic basis. Linguistically, there is nothing inherent in Black English that makes Black English inferior to any other varieties.

Black English has its distinctive features in its phonological, morphological and syntactic systems:

One of the most prominent phonological characteristics of Black English is the frequent simplification of consonant clusters at the end of words when one of the two consonants is an alveolar /t/, /d/, /s/, or /z/.

Words Black English Standard English Passed /pa:s/ /pa:st/ Past /pa:s/ /pa:st/ Desk /des/ /desk/

Syntactically, Black English tends to delete various forms of the copula "be":

Black English Standard English

Mary interesting. Mary is interesting.

Socks mine. The socks are mine.

Besides, the use of double negation constructions is the characteristic of Black English, for example:

He don't know nothing.

In Black English, it means “He doesn't know anything.” The double negation rule in Black English is systematic.Whenever the verb is negated, the indefinite pronouns "something", "some body", and "some" become the negative indefinites "nothing", "nobody", and "none".

8.2.3 Register

Some linguists use the term “register” in a restricted sense, referring two the variety of language related to one’s occupation.

Halliday believes that language varies as its function varies; it differs in different situations. The type of language which is selected as appropriate to the type of situation is a register.

Halliday distinguishes three social variables that determine the register: field of discourse( 语场） , tenor of discourse （语旨） and mode of discourse （语式） .

Field of discourse （语场） refers to what is going on: to the area of operation of the language activity. It is concerned with the purpose and subject-matter of communication. It answers the questions of “about what” communication takes place.

Field of discourse may be non-technical or technical: shopping, game playing and a personal letter are non-technical while specialized fields are technical. The field of discourse determines to a great extent the vocabulary to be used in communication.

Tenor of discourse （语旨） refers to the role of relationship in the situation: who the participants in the communication groups are and in what relationship they stand to each other.

Mode of discourse （语式） mainly refers to the means of communication. It is concerned with how communication is carried out.

Any instance of communication can be analyzed in terms of these three dimensions: For example, a lecture on biology in a technical college could be identified as

Field: scientific (biological)

Tenor: teacher-students ( formal,

polite)

Mode: oral (academic lecturing)

The three variables are the features of the context of situation which determine the features of language appropriate to the situation, i.e. register.

8.5 Diglossia and bilingualism

Diglossia

Diglossia, advanced by Ferguson in 1959, usually describes a situation in which two very different varieties of language co-exist in a speech community, each with a distinct range of purely social function and appropriate for certain situations.

Usually, one is a more standard variety called the high variety or H-variety , which is used for more formal situations or as a written form of communication such as in government offices, mass media, educational field and churches.

The other is a non-prestige variety called the low variety or L-variety, which is used in colloquial and other informal situations such as among family members, friends, or the instructions by the superiors to inferiors.

Diglossia used to occur in China when Classical Chinese “Wen Yan Wen” and its spoken form “Bai Hua Wen” co-existed and their social functions are clearly distinguished, with the former as the H-variety and the latter as the L-variety.

Diglossia also includes the situations in which two varieties involved are not genetically related. For example, in Paraguay, Spanish is a H-variety while Guarani is a L-variety.

Bilingualism

Bilingualism refers to a linguistic situation in which two standard languages are used either by an individual or by a group of speakers. A community cannot be described as bilingual unless a sufficient number of its members regularly use two languages.

Canada, in which both French and English are official languages, is a typical example of official bilingualism.

Perfect bilingualism, however, is rare. Most bilingual speakers only approximate to perfect bilingualism by being equally competent in both languages over a fairly wide range of situations.

Most bilingual communities have one thing in common: a fairly clear functional division of the two languages. A variety may be used to talk informally with other members of the family at home about domestic matters while the other variety may be reserved for communication in educational domain.

A bilingual speaker often uses two languages alternatively, a speech situation known as code-switching.

Code switch may occur in three situations:1) a change in topic; 2) one speaker uses one language and the other speaker answers in a different language;3) the change of a language to another one in the middle even of a sentence.