Sociolinguistics“There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has

gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk

of the shares!” Mark Twain

1. Formal vs. Casual Speech

فصحى التراث fuṣḥā at-turāṯ, 'heritage classical'

فصحى العصر fuṣḥā al-aṣr, 'contemporary classical'

عامية المثقفين āmmiyyat al-muṯaqqafīn, 'colloquial of the

cultured’

المتنورينعامية āmmiyyat al-mutanawwarīn 'colloquial of the basically

educated'

عامية األميين āmmiyyat al-ummiyyīn, 'colloquial of the

illiterates'

ARABIC:

2. Social Class

“They had nothing in common but the English language.”E.M. Forster, Howards End

British class

3. Gender

He said, She said Why Gender Matters

4. Standard vs. Vernacular

Standard & Non-Standard English

5. Geographical Regions

“The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in

one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian ‘pahks’ his ‘cah,’ the

lost ‘r’s migrate southwest, causing a Texan to ‘warsh’ his car and invest in

‘erl wells.” (Author unknown)

Language AttitudesEvolving of English

Social Networks

Ebonics

Mapping Dialects: Isoglosses

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Whorf HypothesisLanguage & Mind

1897 – 19411884-1939

Forensic Linguistics

Linguists as DetectivesThe Language of Texting