lang choice 1

8/12/2019 Lang Choice 1

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1Prof. I. AlFallay


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Sociolinguistics only exists as a field of study becausethere are choices in using language.

Societal multilingualism refers to the fact that there

can be several languages in a society.

In diglossia, there are High and Low varieties.Speakers have to choose.

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There are choices that can be made in a society amonglanguage varieties.

Language choice investigates what makes people in asociety choose to use onelanguagerather thananother in agiveninstance.

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Three kinds of language choice

1- Whole languages = total shift = code-switching: oneclause has the grammatical structure of one language

and the next is constructed according to the grammarof another. It happens between/among languages.

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2- code-mixing= conversational code-switching: pieces ofone language are used while a speaker is basically usinganother language. The language 'pieces' taken from

another language are often words, but they can also bephrases or larger units. It happens between/amonglanguages.

3- variation within the same language = intra-languagevariation: a speaker must choose which set of variants touse within a single languagein any given situation. Ithappens between/among dialects and styles.

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These three kinds of choice cannot be cleanlyseparated from each other.

The three kinds of choice are best viewed as points ona continuum from relatively large-scale to relativelysmall-scale choices. The middle category, code-mixing,

is very difficult to distinguish from the other two.

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Borrowing: words are taken from one language whilea speaker is basically using another.

Three types of vocabulary borrowing

1- Foreign words become indistinguishable from the

native vocabulary due to repeated/frequent use; forexample, thug (from Hindi), stucco (from Italian) andpatio (from Spanish).

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2- Foreign words are used without awareness of theirorigins, but can be identified as such with a littlereflection; for example, bouquet (from French).

3- Foreign words are consciously imported from otherlanguages; when written, they are often underlined orprinted in italics; when spoken, some attempt isusually made to imitate the pronunciation of the

original language, and any diacritical marks thatwould appear in the orthography of the lendinglanguage are retained ; for example, raison d'etre (fromFrench);gemutlichkeit (from German).

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These orthographic and pronunciation conventionsmight be used as criteria for true examples ofswitching.

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Language choice is studied by three different

disciplines/approaches 1- Sociology

2- Social psychology

3- Anthropology

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1- Sociology: domain analysis Methodology: sociologists would search for a social

structure, such as domains, conduct a survey of a sample ofthe target population relating to the proposed socialstructure, and do a statistical analysis of the results

Fishman introduced the examination of language choice

from the sociologist's point of view.

Fishman proposed that there were certain domains(institutional contextsin which one language variety ismore likely to be appropriate than another).

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Domains are taken to be constellations of factors suchas location, topic, and participants.

Example (family domain): If a speaker is at hometalking to another member of her family about aneveryday topic, that speaker is said to be in the family

domain.

Domain analysis is related to diglossia, and somedomains are more formal than others.

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In a community with diglossia, the Low language is theone that will be selected in the family domain, whereasthe High language will most often be used in a moreformal domain, perhaps education.

Three studies have approached language choice from asociological point of view.

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1- Greenfield's research(1972): in New York City:among Puerto Ricans

Aim: to investigate the choice between Spanish and atleast three congruent components: persons, places,

and topics, to test whether a combination of thesethree factors were actually associated in the minds ofmembers of the community.

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Methodology: Greenfield distributed a questionnaire inwhich subjects were given two congruent factors and askedto select the third, and also the language that they would

use in that combination of circumstances.

Example: subjects were told to think of a conversationwitha parent(person) on a family matter(topic) and asked toselect the place from among 'home', 'beach', 'church',

'school', and 'work-place'. Then, the subjects were asked toindicate which language went with that domain (English Spanish). 100 per cent of the subjects selected the expectedlocation and language.

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Greenfield proposed five domains:

Two intimate: family & friendship

Three status: religion, education & employment

Results:

1- The validity of the five domains as real in the minds

of the subjects. 2- Spanish is significantly more likely to be chosen in

situations when intimacy is salient, and English wherea status difference is involved.

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2- Parasher (1980): in two cities in south India

Aim: to investigate people's language choice (language: English

Hindiregional language

mother tongue

other language) invarious domains

Methodology: Parasher used self-reported questionnaire dataand attempted to determine people's language use in seven

domains: (1) family, (2) friendship, (3) neighborhood, (4)transactions, (5) education, (6) government, and (7)employment. Parasher's domains, instead of being explicitlycomposed of persons, places, and topics as Greenfield's are, aresimply the total of a set of similar situations.

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Example: friendship domain: Q: Which language doyou usually use in the following five situations?

1- conversing with friends and acquaintances;

2- conversing with people at clubs and socialgatherings;

3- introducing friends to others;

4- discussing personal problems withfriends/colleagues;

5- arguing with friends/colleagues in heateddiscussions.

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Results:

1- Mother tongue dominates in the family domain.

2- English dominates in all other domains. (Englishdominated in the friendship and neighborhooddomains because (1) most of the educated bilinguals inthe sample did not share a mother tongue with theirfriends (2) any discussion with friends concerning a

topic from a more formal domain, such as education,science, or technology, is likely to trigger the selectionof English no matter what the setting or how close thespeaker is to the people he is talking to.)

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3- Laosa (1975): Cuban Americans in Miami; MexicanAmericans in Austin, Texas; and, New York City PuertoRicans: elementary-school children

Aim: to examine the language used by elementary-school children from three Spanish-speaking

communities in the United States (Cuban Americansin Miami; Mexican Americans in Austin, Texas; and,New York City Puerto Ricans)

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Methodology: Examining language selection betweenSpanish and English in three contexts - within the family,in the classroom, and in recreation activities at school

Results: Laosa found that the use of Spanish was mostoften reported in the family context, less often in the

recreation context, and least often in the classroom, in allthree communities. The difference between the family andthe two school contexts was greater than the differencebetween classroom and recreation at school.

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2- Social psychology:

Methodology: Social psychologists are moreinterested in people's psychological processesthanin large societal categories and they search for

individual motivationsrather than social structures.Social psychological research on language choice ismore person-centered than society-centered.

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Two studies:

1- Simon Herman - overlapping situations (1968)

Herman sees the problem of language choice as aresult when a bilingual speaker finds himself in more

than one psychological situation simultaneously.

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Herman talks about three kinds of situation:

(1) Personal needs: concerned with the speaker's personalneeds. In a given situation, a speaker may feel herselfpulled in different directions by her personal desire tospeak the language she knows best and the languageexpected of her by the social group.

(2) Background situation: the group may be theimmediateone, that is, the people who are actually thereat the time, or the 'background'group: 'groups in the

wider social milieu that are not directly involved in the

immediate situation but yet may influence the behavior -"hidden committees".

A speaker may want to be seen as a member of some socialgroup that is not present, or may want to dissociate himselffrom that group.

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(3) Immediate situation: task-orientated.

Ex. asking a fellow worker to pass a tool. The speaker willuse whatever language he normally uses in that situation,

without worrying about what group associations thatlanguage has, or what language he personally feels mostcomfortable with (task orientation).

If two people always use a particular language between

themselves, then that language will be selected wheneverthey talk to each other; the immediate situation takesprecedence over background and personal considerations(established relationships).

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Since these situations overlap, there ought to be aconsideration of the circumstances that cause one ofthe three situations to gain salienceat the expense of

the other two. The situation with salience is the mostprominent one at a particular time and the one thatthe speaker will respond to.

Example: Israeli immigrants use of Hebrew or nativelanguage: native language at home (private setting),but Hebrew on a bus (public setting).

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Circumstances causing an increase in salience for one of threepsychological situations

CircumstancesSituation

1 - Setting is private ratherthan public.

Personal needs

2 - The situation provokesinsecurity, high tension, orfrustration.

3- The situation touches thecentral rather than theperipheral layers of thepersonality.

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1 - The activity takes place in a public rather thana private setting.

Background situation

2 - The behavior in the situation may beinterpreted as providing cues to groupidentifications.

3 - The person involved in the activity wishes toidentify with a particular group or be dissociatedfrom it.

1 - The person is not concerned about groupidentifications.

Immediate situation

2 - The behavior is task oriented.

3 -Well-established patterns of behavior characterizea relationship.

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There is a potential conflict between choosing alanguage that is most comfortable for the speaker, thatallows her to 'be herself and choosing a language thatidentifies her with one or another of the society's

sociocultural groups.

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2- Howard Giles and his associates (Giles 1973; Giles,Bourhis and Taylor 1977)

Giles's accommodation theory: refers to accommodationinlinguistic behavior which takes the form of convergence ordivergence.

Convergence: a speaker will choose a language or languagevariety that seems to suit the needs of the person beingspoken to.

Divergence: a person might make no effort at all to adjusthis speech for the benefit of the other person and mighteven deliberately make his speech maximally unlike theother person's.

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This will happen when the speaker wants to emphasizehis loyalty to his own group and dissociate himselffrom his interlocutors' group.

Convergence and divergence do not require theselection of one choice (that is, convergence,nonconvergence, and divergence). It is possible to

make numerous combinations of choices among thevariants within a language, as well as to use strategiessuch as translating portions of one's discourse orslowing down the rate of speech.

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Possible degrees of accommodation in terms of aspeaker's interaction with an outgroup member(someone from a different sociocultural group).

divergence

Increasingdivergence

IncreasingconvergenceLinguistic dimensions

Outgroup language withnative-like pronunciation

Outgroup language with

features of ingrouppronunciation

Ingroup language withslow speech rate

Ingroup language with

normal speech rate 32Prof. I. AlFallay


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Speakers can adjust their linguistic behavior inreaction to the person they are talking to by changingto a different language, using words or larger units

from another language , selecting among within-language variants in one direction or another; andusing strategies such as short-passage translation,modifying rate of speech, and maximizing or

minimizing their accent.

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Whenis a speaker likely to use convergent,nonconvergent, or divergent strategies?

To answer the question, we should know (1)whetherthe speaker is a member of a dominant or subordinatesociocultural group in the society and (2)whether or

not he thinks social change is possible.

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Subordinate groupDominant groupPerception of socialchange

ConvergenceNonconvergenceNo possibility of socialchange perceived

Divergence

'Downward' convergencePossibility of socialchange perceived(favorably)

-------------DivergencePossibility of socialchange perceived

(unfavorably)

lang choice 1

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