Sociolinguistic issues of the British Isles.

Sociolinguistics – the study of the relationship between language and society.

Social variation

Society affects a language: people belong to different social classes, perform different social roles, and carry on different occupations. Their use of language is affected by their sex, age, ethnic group, and educational background. English is being increasingly affected by all these factors, because its developing role as a world language is bringing it more and more into contact with new cultures and social systems.

Regional Variation

Geography affects language, both within a country and between countries, giving rise to regional accents and dialects, and to the pidgins and Creoles which emerged around the world whenever English first came into contact with other languages. Intranational regional have been observed within English from its earliest days, as seen in such labels as ‘Northern’, ‘London’, and ‘Scottish’. International varieties are more recent in origin, as seen in such labels as ‘American’, ‘Australian’, And Indian’. Regional language variation is studied by sociolinguists, geographical linguists, dialectologists, and others, the actual designation depending on the focus and emphasis of the study.

Within, and between, these regional variations we find the social dialects. The primary social factors that influence dialects are class, education, occupation, ethnicity, sex, and age. And social dialects can vary on any or all three descriptor levels; syntax or grammar, lexicon or vocabulary, and phonetics or pronunciation.

The British are well-known for being extremely sensitive about how they and others speak the English language. Accent differences seem to receive more attention here than is general anywhere in the world, including other English-speaking countries. Even within the country of England alone there is great diversity of accents both regionally and socially. Although some people may change the way they speak during their lifetimes, most people "carry at least some trace" of their accent and dialect origins throughout their lives. It is common in Britain for people who display particularly broad accents to be labeled by terms such as "Geordie", "Cockney", "Jock" or "Scouse." All of these identify a specific regional accent, most of which are recognizable to many of the people in the country.

The more localizable the accent, the more it will described as a "broad" accent. Broad accents reflect: 1/ regionally, the highest degree of local distinctiveness; 2/ socially, the lowest social class, 3/ linguistically, the maximal degree of difference from RP.

Surveys show that in Britain speech is regarded as more indicative of social class than occupation, education and income. People associate speakers with standard accents with such status traits as intelligence, success, confidence. Many regional speakers feel uncomfortable about their accent. Recent studies have shown that RP speakers will often be chosen for jobs, despite the superior skills of regional-speaking competitors.

Some presenters on radio and television are employed even though they have strong regional accents. However, they tend to be used on programmes which are not very prestigious, such as weather forecasts, arts programs, and regional news bulletins.

As language change continues to take place within Britain and within England, there are some who claim that a relatively newly established accent, Estuary English, is due to replace the traditional educated accent of England Received Pronunciation (RP). Estuary English is reported to be used by speakers who constitute the social "middle ground"

45. Estuary English, or Estuary, is a variety of the English language spoken in and around Greater London, especially among younger people. It is so named because it was first noticed in the early 1980s in Essex and Kent, counties north and south of the Thames.

Estuary appears to be spreading north and west, partly encouraged by egalitarianism, and partly by popular culture and the media. Among its features are: (1) The use of short /u/ rather than /l/ at or near the end of syllables with /tow/ for TALL and /st. pauwz ka?idraw/ for St. Paw’s Cathedraw. In Estuary, FORTY and FAULTY have the same pronunciation “fowty”; (2) The loss of the t in such words as "Sco'land", "ga'eway", "Ga'wick", "sta'ement", "sea'-belt", "trea'ment", and "ne'work"... (3) An Estuary speaker uses fewer glottal stops for t or d than a London speaker, but more than an RP speaker. Use of glottal stops instead of the consonants /k, p, t/ at the ends of syllables, as in “ te?nicaw ma?er” for a paper on a technical matter. (4) The use of /i/ instead of /i/ in word-final position: “citee” for city, “lovelee” for lovely, “reallee” for really. (5) The process of shedding /j/ after /l/ and /s/, now established in RP, is observed with Estuary speakers. E.g., ABSOLUTE, REVOLUTION. For many speakers LIEU and LOO are now homophones. Similarly, ASSUME, CONSUME, PRESUME, PURSUIT, SUIT(ABLE..

Characteristic feature of Estuary English is frequent prominence given to prepositions and auxiliary verbs normally unstressed in General RP. This prominence is often marked to the extent that the nuclear tone can fall on prepositions. An example of this would be: "Let us get TO the point". Another characteristic feature is a rise fall intonation, and a greater use of question tags such is IZNT’T IT? and DON’T I? The speaker’s voice range of Estuary appears to narrower than in RP. In particular, rises often do not reach as high a pitch as they would in RP. The overall effect might be interpreted as one of deliberateness and even an apparent lack of enthusiasm.

For many, RP has long served to disguise origins. Estuary English may now be taking over this function becoming the new model for general imitation. Generally perceived as a compromise between popular London usage (especially Cockney) and Received Pronunciation (RP), it is largely the province of the young, used by both the upwardly mobile and pupils of the public (that is, private) schools. It is also to be heard in the House of Commons, in the City, business circles, the Civil Service, local government, and the media in the south-east. Estuary is in a strong position to exert influence on the pronunciation of the future. What for many starts as an adaptation first to school and then working life, can lead to progressive adoption of Estuary English into private life as well. These developments may be seen as a linguistic reflection of the changes in class barriers in Britain.

Pidgin

A Pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of other languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues. Pidgins have simple grammars and few synonyms, serving as auxiliary contact languages. They are learnt as second languages rather than natively. Pidgin English was the name given to a Chinese-English-Portuguese pidgin used for commerce in Canton during the 18th and 19th centuries. In Canton, this contact language was called Canton English. Also referred to as chinglish ("Chinese English") or engrish ("English Chinese").

Etymology

The word is said to be derived from the Chinese pronunciation of the English word business. Likely the origins lie in the exclusively-Cantonese term which means establishing a good business relationship. Scholars though dispute this derivation of the word "pidgin", and suggest alternative etymologies since it was known also as "Pigeon English" in reference to imagery of the carrier pigeon. Unfortunately there exists no historical evidence for the term's origins to prove any suggestion.

Creation of Pidgins

The creation of a pidgin usually requires:

• Prolonged, regular contact between the different language communities

• A need to communicate between them

• An absence of (or absence of widespread proficiency in) a widespread, accessible interlanguage.

Also, Keith Whinnom (in Hymes 1971) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others.

Common Traits among Pidgins

Since a Pidgin strives to be a simple and effective form of communication, the grammar, phonology, et cetera, are as simple as possible, and usually consist of:

• A Subject-Verb-Object word order in a sentence

• No codas within syllables (Syllables consist of a vowel, with an optional initial consonant)

• Basic vowels, like /a/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /o/

• Separate words that indicate tense, usually before the verb

• Words are repeated twice to represent plurals, superlatives, and other parts of speech that represent the concept being increased

Caribbean Pidgins

Caribbean pidgins are the result of colonialism. As tropical islands were colonised their society was restructured, with a ruling minority of some European nation and a large mass of non-European laborers. The laborers, natives, slaves or cheap immigrant workers, would often come from many different language groups and would need to communicate. This led to the development of pidgins.

Pacific Pidgins

The Melanesian pidgins may have originated off their home islands, in the 19th century when the islanders were abducted for indentured labour. Hence they were developed by Melanesians for use between each other, not by the colonists on whose language they are based. English provides the basis of most of the vocabulary, but the grammar has many Melanesian features

The most well-known pidgin used in America is the now creolized Hawaiian Pidgin where locals mixed the traditional dialect of Hawaiian with English, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages of immigrants of Hawaii and Pacific traders.

Pidgins become creole languages when a generation whose parents speak pidgin to each other teach it to their children as their first language. Often creoles can then replace the existing mix of languages to become the native language of the current community. However, pidgins do not always become creoles—they can die out or become obsolete.

-Creole language

A creole language, or just creole, is a well-defined and stable language that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or more languages, typically with many distinctive features that are not inherited from either parent. All creole languages evolved from pidgins, usually those that have become the native language of some community.

History of the concept Colonial origins

The term creole comes from Portuguese crioulo, via Spanish criollo and French creole. The term was coined in the 16th century, during the great expansion in European maritime power and trade and the establishment of European colonies in Americas, in Africa, and along the coast of South and Southeast Asia up to the Philippines, China and Japan, and in Oceania.

The term "Creole" was originally applied to people born in the colonies, to distinguish them from the upper-class European-born immigrants. Originally, therefore, "Creole language" meant the speech of those Creole peoples.

Historical neglect

Because of the generally low status of the Creole people in the eyes of European colonial powers, creole languages have generally been regarded as "degenerate", or at best as rudimentary "dialects" of one of its parent languages. This view, incidentally, is the reason why "creole" has come to be used in opposition to "language", rather than a qualifier for it; so that one would say "a French creole" (rather than "a French-based creole language"), or "the Papiamentu creole" (rather than "the Papiamentu creole language").

This prejudice was compounded by the inherent instability of the colonial system, which led to the disappearance of many creole languages due to dispersion or assimilation of their speech communities. Another factor that may have contributed to the longtime neglect of creole languages is that they do not fit the "tree model" for the evolution of languages, which was adopted by linguists in the 19th century In this model languages may evolve, split, or die out — but cannot ever merge.

Recognition and renaissance

Since the middle of the 20th century, however, linguists have promulgated the idea that creole languages are in no way inferior to other languages. Linguists now use the term "creole language" for any language that is formed from multiple languages by the same mechanism, without geographic restrictions or ethnic implications. As a consequence of these social, political, and academic changes, creole languages have experienced a revival in recent decades. They are increasingly and more openly being used in literature and in media, and many of their speakers are quite fond and proud of them. They are now studied by linguists as languages on their own; many have been standardized, and are now taught in local schools and universities abroad.

Development of a creole language

All creoles start as pidgins, rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages. If a pidgin manages to be learned by the children of a community as a native language, it usually becomes fixed and acquires a more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding. The syntax and morphology of such languages may often have local innovations not obviously derived from any of the parent languages.

Classification of creoles Whose creole?

By definition, a creole is the result of a nontrivial mixture of two or more languages, usually with radical morphological changes and a syntax which is not obviously borrowed from either of the parent tongues. The parent tongues may themselves be creoles or pidgins that have disappeared before they could be documented. For these reasons, the issue of which language is the parent of a creole — that is, whether a language should be classified as a "Portuguese creole" or "English creole", etc. — often has no definitive answer, and can become the topic of heated disputes, where social prejudices and political considerations may predominate.

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