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WHY IS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND DIALECT A DILIMNA FOR THE SOCIOLINGUIST TILL NOW?
There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of paradigms exist, which render sometimes contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user’s frame of reference.
Language varities are often called dialects rather than languages:
solely because they are not (or not recognized as) literary languages,
because the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own,
because they are not used in press or literature, or very little.
or because their language lacks prestige.
A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists.
The problem with this definition is that it implies that there is some sort of “standard” language from which all of the various dialects of that language differ. In English, however, this is true. English language is far too widespread and varies too much for anyone to say that the English spoken in _ is “standard” and everything else is a “dialect.” Even if it were narrowed down to a single country, there is still a great deal of variation within that country, and who is to say which region/city/state/province speaks proper English?
Dialect is simply this: “A variation of a given language spoken in a particular place or by a particular group of people.” Therefore, when I use the term dialect, It is making any sort of judgment about the quality or “correctness” of that variety of English. American, British, Canadian, and Australian English are all dialects of the English language, and that none of them is any better or more proper than any other.
In writing about English dialects on this site, my goal is to make English speakers – both native and non-native – aware of the differences in English as it is spoken around the world. I don’t think that the English I speak is “right” English, nor do I think that British and Australian are “wrong” English. I am fascinated by language in all its forms, and this site provides me with the opportunity to discover more about the language I speak and how it varies from the English spoken by others.
Anthropological linguists define dialect as the specific form of a language used by a speech community. In other words, the difference between language and dialect is the difference between the abstract or general and the concrete and particular. From this perspective, no one speaks a “language,” everyone speaks a dialect of a language. Those who identify a particular dialect as the “standard” or “proper” version of a language are in fact using these terms to express a social distinction.
Often, the standard language is close to the sociolect of the elite class.In groups where prestige standards play less important roles, “dialect” may simply be used to refer to subtle regional variations in linguistic practices that are considered mutually intelligible, playing an important role to place strangers, carrying the message of where a stranger originates (which quarter or district in a town, which village in a rural setting, or which province of a country); thus there are many apparent “dialects” of Slavey, for example, by which the linguist simply means that there are many subtle variations among speakers who largely understand each other and recognize that they are each speaking “the same way” in a general sense.
Differentiating languages and dialects is almost impossible. Some would define languages as being the main branch, while dialects are just variants to it. More specifically, I would say it’s very politically defined. Take Japanese for example, it’s the official language of Japan, yet the Ryukyuan ‘languages’ are just dialects to it, despite not being mutually intelligible. In other instances, such as Inuktitut, it’s not quite one language, but a whole set of dialects/languages. From group or tribe to another, the language is still intelligible, but if you skip from East to West, the Inuktitut language might be completely different. To further point that politics win over linguistics; There are two tribes somewhere in Western Canada that speak basically the same language, except for a few variants, which thus make them related to each other, if not the same language. But because they refuse to associate to each other, they’re both independent languages political-wise. Determining who the “language” is, and who speaks the “dialect” is basically impossible. Language is constantly changing, evolving, merging, etc. While being mutually intelligible, or even historically related, are not alone strong enough factors to decide
.
Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants, generally referred to as dialects. However, the mutual unintelligibility of the sub varieties is the main ground for classifying them as separate languages or dialect groups. Each dialect group consists of a large number of dialects, many of which may themselves be referred to as languages. The boundaries between one so-called language and the next are not always easy to define. Because each dialect group preserves different features of Middle Chinese (dating back to early or even pre-Tang times), they have proven to be valuable research tools in the phonological reconstruction of Middle and even to some extent its ancestor, Old Chinese. Most Chinese speak one of the Mandarin dialects, which are largely mutually intelligible.
It is wondering what the exact difference between a language and a dialect is. It seems odd that there are mutually unintelligible dialects and yet mutually intelligible languages. What prompts people to classify them can also be political, too; having its own language, as opposed to speaking a dialect of someone else’s, can sound pretty attractive. Why can’t we all just say that this is a language and that is a dialect, and leave it at that? We don’t have to get all this political and emotional and religious boop mixed up in a purely linguistic problem. Somehow I’m really starting to like the whole ‘different varieties’ theory, since whether something is a ‘dialect’ or a ‘language’ doesn’t really say anything valuable at all in the end. Why can’t we all just say that this is a language and that is a dialect, and leave it at that? We don’t have to get all this political and emotional and religious boop mixed up in a purely linguistic problem. Such is the nature of man. Somehow I’m really starting to like the whole ‘different varieties’ theory, since whether something is a ‘dialect’ or a ‘language’ doesn’t really say anything valuable at all in the end. Everyone agree, there is a gradient scale of everything. Thinking about it, it would be really neat to see a genus-species chart of all the languages and dialects in the world, from ‘language’ down to ‘North Midwestern English’.
Since we will be drawing primarily on linguistic research to tell the story of African American Vernacular English, we need to explain some of the premises under which linguists operate the kinds of principles which are usually covered in the first chapter of introductory textbooks on linguistics.
The first such premise is that linguistics is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive discipline. By this we mean that our objective is to describe the systematic nature of language as used by the members of particular speech communities rather than to pass judgments about how well they speak or how they should or should not be using their language. The study of people’s attitudes towards one variety or another is an interesting sub field of linguistics, one which can help us to understand the social distribution of dialects or the direction of language change, and one which can be helpful in formulating policy about which varieties to use in the schools and how. But even here, the linguist is primarily describing the attitudes rather than prescribing what they should be.
A second, related premise is that every naturally used language variety is systematic, with regular rules and restrictions at the lexical, phonological and grammatical level. Although non-linguists sometimes assume that some dialects–unusually non-standard ones –don’t have any rules, or that they are simply the result of their speakers’ laziness, carelessness, or cussedness, linguists usually feel quite differently, both on empirical grounds, and on theoretical grounds. The theoretical reason is that the successful acquisition and use of a language variety in a community of speakers would be impossible if language were not systematic and rule-governed. If every speaker could make up his or her own words and rules for pronunciation and grammar, communication between different speakers would be virtually impossible.
Note, too, that linguists use the term dialect as a neutral term to refer to the systematic usage of a group of speakers–those in a particular region or social class, for instance–and that the term has within linguistics none of the negative connotations which it sometimes has in everyday usage of language. Everyone speaks a dialect–at least one.
The third premise of linguistics which we think it is important to emphasize is that in trying to understand and describe the system of a language, we give primary attention. One obvious reason for this is that the written to speech rather than writing language omits valuable information about the pronunciation or sound system of a language. But there are other reasons, including the fact that people all over the world learn to speak before they learn to read or write, and the fact that competence in the spoken variety of at least one language is universal to all normal human beings, but literacy is a more restricted skill. Of course the written language is, to varying extents, related to the spoken language. Comparing and contrasting the two is a fascinating enterprise and some of the evidence which we will consider in this book will be drawn from literature, as some of the excerpts considered above already demonstrate. But because non-linguists often attach greater authority to the written rather than the spoken word it’s important to emphasize that linguists tend to make precisely the opposite assumption.
The fourth and final premise of linguistics is that although languages are always systematic, variation among their speakers is absolutely normal. Although we sometimes think or act as if there were one entity called American or British English–and grammatical handbooks help to reinforce this fiction–we know from actual experience that the “language” varies from one region to another, from one social group to another, and even when region and social group are held constant, from one occasion or topic to another.
The most significant variations or differences within languages occur at the level of the lexicon, phonology, grammar and usage. Moreover, they are not just qualitative, in the sense that dialect A uses one feature and dialect B another, but they may also be quantitative, in the sense that dialect A uses one feature more often than dialect B does. Finally, variation may be regional, social or stylistic in its origins, and the methods that linguists have used to study each type differ slightly. We will now elaborate on these important concepts and provide examples.
Lexical variation
Differences in vocabulary are one aspect of dialect diversity which people notice readily and comment on quite frequently. They are certainly common enough as markers of the differences between geographical areas or regions–for instance the fact that “a carbonated soft drink” might be called England, and cold drink, drink or dope in various parts of the South. Or the fact that a person who was “tired” or exhausted” might describe themselves as being pop in the inland North and the West of the United States, soda in the Northeast, tonic in Eastern New all in if they were from the North or West, but wore out or give out if they were from the South. Accordingly, lexical differences play a significant role in regional dialectology, and in popular treatments of American dialects like the documentary film American Tongues, lexical differences are given prime coverage.
Lexical differences are not as salient in distinguishing the speech of different social or socioeconomic classes, and they have accordingly played a much smaller role in social dialectology, which has concentrated instead on differences in phonology and grammar. Nevertheless they are certainly an aspect of ethnic differences–for instance, knowledge of the term ashy to describe the “whitish or grayish appearance of skin due to exposure to wind and cold” is widespread among African Americans but less so among European Americans and several dictionaries of African American English have appeared over the past several years. Lexical differences are also a factor in stylistic variation, and in what are sometimes called the “genderless” of men versus women.
Phonological variation
Phonological variation refers to differences in pronunciation within and across dialects, for instance the fact that people from New York and New England might pronounce “greasy” with an s, while people from Virginia and points further south might pronounce it with a z. Or the fact that working class people across the United States are more likely than are upper middle class speakers to pronounce the initial th of they and similar words with a d.
One relevant aspect of phonological variation worth noting is that it is often conditioned by the phonological environment–that is, by where in a utterance, word-initially, word-finally, before r, and so on, the sound occurs. We’ve already seen one example of this in the fact that post vocalic [r] is not lost in Boston when the next word begins with a vowel; this is sometimes referred to as “linking r”.
Phonological variation–particularly insofar as it involves consonants–is central to social variation and stylistic variation too, and we will provide relevant examples below.
Grammatical variation
What we have been referring to as grammatical variation really involves two sub-types: morphology and syntax. Morphology refers to the structure or forms of words, including the morphemes or minimal units of meaning which comprise words, for instance the morphemes {un}”not” and {happy} “happy” in unhappy , or the morphemes {cat}”cat” and {s} “plural” in cats. Syntax refers to the structure of larger units like phrases and sentences, including rules for combining and relating words in sentences, for instance the rule that in English yes/no questions, auxiliaries must occur at the beginning of sentences, before the subject noun phrase, e.g. Can John go? versus the statement John can go.
One can find examples of regional variation of both types. For instance, the form or morphology of the past tense of catch, climb and draw was sometimes catched, clum and drawed respectively in parts of the East but only caught, climbed and drew respectively in the Western US, at least according to a report more than forty years ago. In the Midwest of the US (including Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa) and other regions (parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia), one can use anymore with the meaning of “nowadays” in positive sentences like “He smokes a lot anymore,” but in the rest of the country, anymore can only be used with the meaning of “no longer” and only in negative sentences, as in “He doesn’t smoke a lot anymore” (Labov 1973). Perhaps even more dramatic is the use of “So don’t I” in Boston and other parts of New England where other dialects would use “So do I”.
Tags: English Language, Literature, Speech Pattern
position seems to echo the statement of Iyengar (2000): “English has become ours, it is not less ours for being primarily the Englishman’s or the American’s”.