Language variation (social)

3 types of linguistic variation in the English language: regional/ social /stylistic - Social variation (sociolect) - Stylistic variation (idiolect) (Halliday, 2003) 3 meta-functions 1) Textual: relates to mode; the internal organisation and communicative nature of a text 2) Ideational: choosing words that represent people, things, concepts and words about what these participants are doing to, with, or for one another (social practices and social identities) 3) Interpersonal: texts promote ideology in the way language is used to represent relationships between two people who are communicating In a wedding ceremony, an officiator says: “I pronounce you man and wife. You may now kiss the bride.” which are fixed expressions. The speech act “pronounce” and the modal auxiliary verb “may” is a politeness and formality marker that also shows the power of the officiator. Additionally, the phrase “man and wife” implies that the man is dominant in the relationship and, “the bride” is the recipient of the material verb “kiss” with the husband as the agent, reflecting a patriarchal ideology. Language variation (Grafmiller, 2019) Language variation is synchronic (during a specific period of time), influenced by factors such as region, class, gender setting - Speech community: any social or regional group in which the members share a number of linguistic characteristics - Social practice (Eckert, 2000): what speakers share when they take part in an activity together (purpose) - Introduced when people questioned Labov’s focus on demographic categories (age, gender, ethnicity, social class) as the biggest influence on language use (audience) - Social network (Milroy and Milroy, 1980): an abstract mechanism that denotes the social relationships an individual contracts with other individuals in a society; structure of the network defined by density and multiplexity (How many members know each other? How well do they know each other?) - Multiplexity refers to any factor or link that can deepen a social relationship, or how many layers are there to a relationship (e.g. three-way multiplex: two people are not only sisters, but are also each others close friend and colleague) Sociolect: language used by a particular social group, influenced by social variables to signal the users’ identity and their membership of particular groups

(Dent, 2016) “...our lingo is our identity.” “If language is used to signal aspects of