Questions

1 What is pragmatics?

2 What four conversational maxims form the cooperative principle?

3 What is speech act theory?

4 What are frames?

5 Explain two ways in which a person might make a piece of prose more cohesive.

6 Explain what is meant by adjacency pairs. Give two examples.

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Language and society

Sociolinguistics is often defined as the study of language and society. Whereas many linguists concentrate on discovering unity beneath the diversity of human languages, sociolinguists try to analyse the social factors which lead to this diversity. In brief, sociolinguists are interested in language differences, and especially in variation within a particular language.

The notion of a language

Perhaps the first question that a sociolinguist needs to ask is, "What is a language?' Can the notion of 'a language' be defined geographically? Can it be equated with nationality? Or should a language be defined by the mutual intelligibility of its speakers?

The answer to all these questions appears to be 'no'. A geographical definition of a language would separate Australian, British and American English, which is obviously unsatisfactory. Nationality is a vague notion which has little to do with the language a person speaks. Numerous Soviet Jews, for example, regard themselves as essentially Jewish, yet speak Russian. Mutual intelligibility is of little help, since a Glaswegian and a Cockney are likely lo find it harder to understand one another than a Dutchman and I German who are considered to be speaking distinct languages. And there is no objective linguistic crite­rion which can be applied. Dutch and German are not only mutually intelligible, they are also structurally mows alike than some of the so-called dialects of Chinese.

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Faced with this dilemma, sociolinguists prefer to start with the notion of a speech community rather than a 'language'. And they define a speech community as any group of people who consider that they speak the same language. Consequently, Dutch and German must be regarded as separate languages, since, in spite of their simi­larities, the Dutch consider that they speak Dutch and the Germans consider that they speak German. And all the Chinese dialects must be classified as one language, because, in spite of far-reaching differ­ences, their speakers all consider they speak Chinese.

Dialect and accent

Within a speech community, there is considerable language variation. The speech of its members varies according to many factors, includ­ing geographical location, age, occupation, socio-economic status, ethnic group and sex.

The most obvious type of variety in a speech community is the use of different dialects. A dialect is usually associated with a particular geographical area, such as the Geordie and Cockney dialects of English, which are spoken in Tyneside and London respectively. The term 'dialect' refers to a far greater difference than mere pronuncia­tion. The Lancashire dialect differs from standard British English in sound system, syntax and vocabulary, with phrases such as, / don't want for to go, summat for 'something', nowt for 'nothing'. American English ranks as a different dialect from British English, with phono­logical innovations such as nasal vowels, and constructions such as 'I kinda figured maybe' and 'He said for you not to worry'.

Unfortunately, in everyday usage, the term dialect is often confused with the word accent An accent refers only to a difference in pronun­ciation. A Scotsman and a Londoner are likely to speak English with different accents. But if the underlying system and the vocabulary are the same, they will be speaking the same dialect. In fact, although a considerable number of local accents are still found in Britain, dialects are dying out, due to the influence of education, radio and television.