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8 Sociolinguistics: Regional and social

varieties of English

8.1 Different types of varieties

8.2 British and American English: A comparison
8.3 Regional varieties
8.4 Social varieties
8.5 Feminist linguistics
8.6 Sociolinguistics and language change

Language as a social phenomenon: Similar to pragmatics, the field of facets of linguistic

sociolinguistics studies language use in real life. It is an illusion to think heterogeneity
that language communities are homogeneous; instead, heterogeneity de-
termines everyday language use. Linguistic heterogeneity has many dif-
ferent facets. Besides differences in linguistic competence and expressive
ability among the members of any language community, each speaker
uses certain linguistic features which distinguish him or her from the
other members of their language community.
Idiolects and varieties: Each individual has his or her specific idiolect. language and
In everyday language use, heterogeneity also means that each member of group identities
a language community chooses between different language forms, or va-
rieties, depending on the communicative situation (see section 8.1). This
can happen either consciously or subconsciously. Sociolinguistics studies
the effects social factors have on language use and language structures.
Acknowledging that human beings are “social beings”, sociolinguistics is
aware of the fact that language use and language structures cannot be
separated from, and indeed depend upon, the speaker’s social self, i. e.
the diversity of (coexisting) group identities and social networks every
one of us is a part of. A given female speaker, for example, can at the
same time be a woman, somebody’s partner, daughter, mother or friend,
a student, a Catholic, a villager, a member of a political party, a member
of a choir or team, and so on. The group identity of a speaker is largely
formed by his or her geographic, social and/or ethnic background (see
sections 8.2 to 8.4), but other factors may also play a role, such as the
speaker’s age, profession, level of education and gender (the latter espe-
cially brought to the fore in feminist linguistics; see section 8.5).
Language and identity: Language plays an important role in identity language = win-
formation, although we are not aware of it most of the time. Quite often, dow into speakers’
a few utterances or words are all we need for drawing conclusions on a social reality
speaker’s sociological background (origin, level of education, etc.), while
the speakers themselves are not aware of the fact that the language they
use serves as a window into their social reality. But speakers can also use
language deliberately to signal that they (want to) belong, or not belong,
to a certain group. Consciously or unconsciously they can, for example,
adapt their language or language style to that of their interlocutors, thus

J.B. Metzler © Springer-Verlag GmbH Deutschland, ein Teil von Springer Nature, 2020
B. Kortmann, English Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05678-8_8 201
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Sociolinguistics: Regional and social varieties of English

improving the social relationship with them and creating a basis for more
successful communication. How “successful” this verbal interaction is
primarily depends on whether the speaker accomplishes his or her com-
municative goals (for more details see 8.5).
a difference in Sociolinguistics vs. sociology of language: Two scientific disciplines
perspective constitute the interface between linguistics and sociology: sociolinguistics
and the sociology of language.
■ The focus of sociolinguistics, which only started to flourish in the po-

litical climate of the late 1960s, is on the relationship between lan-

guage and society. Its aim is to study the use of different forms or va-
rieties of language and the social factors which determine them.
■ The research interest of the sociology of language is the exact opposite:

its main motivation for investigating language is to increase the ability

to understand social structures.

Thus the distinction between sociolinguistics and the sociology of lan-

guage is mainly motivated by a difference in perspective. What is com-
mon to both disciplines is that they are strictly empirical and exhibit a
high degree of methodological rigour, as known from sociology.
Three branches of sociolinguistics: When speaking of the relationship
between sociolinguistics and the
sociolinguistics sociology of language, we are
adopting a narrow definition of so-
geographical anthropological sociological ciolinguistics, namely sociological
(since 19th c.) (since 1920s) (since 1960s) (or: variationist) sociolinguistics.
But we should not forget that there
Figure 8.1: are two other, considerably older areas of research which can be sub-
Branches of sumed under a broader concept of sociolinguistics. These are anthropo-
sociolinguistics logical sociolinguistics, which is concerned with the relationship between
language, culture and thought (just recall the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ac-
cording to which language determines thought; chapter 6.4.2) and, above
all, geographical sociolinguistics, better known as dialectology, which
was already popular in the 19th century.
focus on British Of these three branches of sociolinguistics, only geographical and so-
Isles and US ciological sociolinguistics will be addressed in this chapter. Its primary
aim will be to present the basic structural properties of different regional
and social (standard as well as non-standard) varieties of English used in
the British Isles and the United States. But let us first have a look at the
range and nature of varieties we encounter in language.

8.1 | Different types of varieties

variationist Sociolinguistics is most easily defined as variationist linguistics, that
sociolinguistics branch of linguistics which is concerned with the different forms of a
language and the factors that determine their structure and use.
Variation is possible on all structural levels. The individual varieties of
a given language may differ with regard to their phonetics, phonology,

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