1. .
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Language
and Dialect
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Regional
Variation

2. Introduction
 We are dealing with language and society, and in
particular with the English language and society
 Examples:
 RP (Received Pronunciation)
 Norwich
 Edinburgh
 Australia
 South Africa
 Football commentary
 Dinner table conversation

3. Reviewing Basic Terms
 language: “The systematic,
conventional use of
sounds, signs, or written
symbols in human society
for communication and self
expression.”
 variety: Most neutral term,
can be used for all the
others
 dialect: regional variety
 sociolect: social
variety
 accent: variety
characterised by
pronounciation
 register: occupational
varieties
 style: varieties
according to formality
of situation

4. Language variation
 No two speakers of a language speak exactly
the same way
 No individual speaker speaks the same way
all the time

5. Dimensions Of Variation
Temporal variation
long term short term
Social variation Regional variation
Personal variation

6. Social and Regional Variation
Regional variation
social
variation
RP
(Trudgill)

7. Language and Dialect
 Language and Dialect are ambiguous terms
(Haugen 1966)
 “these terms represent a simple dichotomy
in a situation that is almost infinitely
complex”
 Language can be used to refer either to a
single linguistic norm or to a group of related
norms, and dialect to refer to one of the
norms.

8. Dialect
 A variety of a language spoken by a group of people
that is characterized by systematic features (e.g.,
phonological, lexical, grammatical) that distinguish
it from other varieties of that same language
 Idiolect: the speech variety of an individual
speaker

9. Language = a continuum of
dialects
Language
dialect A dialect C
dialect B

10. Dialect = a continuum of
idiolects
Dialect A
idiolect A idiolect C
idiolect B

11. Some Popular Social Beliefs
about Dialects
 Dialects are structurally inferior to languages,
lacking formal grammatical rules and standards
of speaking;
 Dialects are communicatively inferior to
languages, lacking the full range of
expressibility found in a formal language;
 Dialects are orthographically inferior to
languages, lacking their own system of writing;
 In short, dialects are inferior to languages.
FACT: Everyone speaks a dialect

12. The linguistic view of
Languages and Dialects.
 Dialect: A dialect represents a commonly held way
of speaking for a community, admitting to only
minor variations in structure. (Mutual Intelligibility)
 Language: A language consists of a cluster of
dialects that are found to be mutually intelligible.
 Two dialects are held to be mutually intelligible
when a speaker of one dialect finds that he can
understand, without too much difficulty the speech
of a person speaking another dialect and vice
versa.

13. The linguistic view of Languages
and Dialects Admits
 British and American English, are mutually
intelligible
 prior to the Norman invasion of 1066, when
English and Norwegian were mutually
intelligible, that they were dialects of the same
language.
 The Dutch/German interface (Indeterminate
results)

14. The Political definition
 A dialect is a language with an army and a navy,
(i.e., a government).
 Examples Norway and Sweden, Spain and Italy,
Netherlands and Germany.
 This definition seems to work better than the
formal linguistic one.
 But not perfect

15. Tests of the Political Definition
 Definition could be used to exclude Catalan, a
Romance "language" spoken in the Barcelona
area of Spain because it is not backed up by an
army and navy.
 Chinese. While we may be popularly aware that
people in China speak Chinese we may not be as
aware that many of the so called "dialects" of
Chinese are not mutually intelligible.

16. Tests of the Political Definition
 Igbo. Igbo is spoken by over 3 million people in
eastern Nigeria. Yet, here, too, not all dialects of
Igbo are mutually intelligible.
 English. The claim has been made, that not all
dialects of English are mutually intelligible. When
National Public Television presented a 15 part
series on The Story of English many of the
"dialects" represented had to have subtitles
because they were not at least clearly mutually
intelligible.

17. Language vs Dialect
 Certain important questions to be asked are
 Is there really any essential difference between a
language and a dialect?
 Is there any scientific basis for making this
distinction?
 Why after all one variety is called a “language”
and another a “dialect”?
 Why certain dialects are believed to be part of one
particular language?

18. Dialect
 The word dialect was originally borrowed from
Greek language.
 In ancient Greece, this word was used to refer to
certain written varieties which were distinct from
one another.
 But in English this term is used in a different
sense.

19. Popular Usage of the Term
‘Dialect’
 Dialect in English is used to refer to a certain
variety which has no written form e.g. Scottish
Dialect, Irish Dialect etc.
 English employs dialect in a number of different
senses, including also various types of 'informal'
or 'non-standard' varieties:


20. Popular Usage of the Term
‘Dialect’
 “In general usage it therefore remains quite
undefined whether such dialects are part of
the 'language' or not. In fact, the dialect is
often thought of as standing outside the
language ... As a social norm, then, a dialect
is a language that is excluded from polite
society.” (Haugen 1966)

21. Language and Dialect in English
and French?
In French, there are two terms to refer to these
varieties i.e. ‘dialect' for written varieties and
‘patois’ for unwritten varieties but there is no such
distinction in English.
English
language
dialect
French
une langue
un dialecte
un patois

22. The Problems
 Perhaps there is something wrong with the
dichotomy between language and dialect.
 Not all languages draw the distinction between
language and dialect.

23. Language
 4 arguments for status as a language
 written form (would exclude many aboriginal
languages)
 standard variety (as above)
 mutual intelligibility (not a relation between
varieties but between people, motivation is very
important)
 relative similarities (i.e. grammatical differences
make it a language)

24. Bases for Distinction Between
Language and Dialect: Prestige
 A language is prestigious variety and speakers
consider it prestigious. Variety that is used in formal
writing is called language.
 This is the sense in which “STANDARD ” variety can
be called a language and all other varieties dialects.
“Whether some variety is called a language or a
dialect depends on how much prestige, one thinks it
has, and for most people this is clear-cut matter,
which depends on whether it is used in formal
writing.” (Hudson)

25. Bases for Distinction Between
Language and Dialect: Size
 It is considered that a language is larger than
a dialect. Thus we may refer to English as a
language “cotaining the sum total of all the
terms in all its varieties”
 This is again a relative answer and question
of size can’t solve the problem

26. How languages can be
delimited?
 Mutual Intelligibility:
if two dialects are mutually intelligible, they are
dialects of the same language.
 Family Tree Model:
Developed and used in Historical Linguistic, this
model helps in locating the origins of languages

27. Mutual Intelligibility
 The parameter of mutual intelligibility can’t serve as
a solid basis for relating different varieties
Some classic ‘problem’ cases:
 Swedish/Danish
 Hindi/Urdu
 Chinese
 Mutual intelligibility is a matter of degree Two
varieties may be more mutually intelligible than
others as dialects exist on a continuum. The relative
distance of two dialects on the same continuum
would affect their mutual intelligibility.

28. Mutual intelligibility: Problems
 Degree of mutual intelligibility?
“Dialect continuum”
1 2 … 5 …8 9

29. The Family Tree Model
 Languages that share a common ancestor are genetically related
 Similarities between languages suggest that they may be sisters,
cousins...
 When groups of people are isolated from each other, each
develops unique innovations in their language
 New dialects, new languages appear The family tree model
clarifies the historical relations among the varieties concerned,
and in particular that it gives a clear idea of the relative
chronology of the historical changes by which the varieties
concerned have diverged.Lynch

31. Problems with the Family Tree
Model
 Languages do not exists in such neat and clean
boundaries. Family Tree Model fails when two
converge because one variety may be product of
two or more than two different varieties.
 The family tree model suggests that new languages
appear suddenly
 In reality, languages diverge gradually
 Just as the distinction between dialect and
language is fuzzy, the distinction between parent
and daughter language is fuzzy

32. Disadvantages of the Family Tree
Model
 The disadvantage of the family tree model:
 1. Showing only vertical descendant
(subclassification) but not horizontal
influence (cross-classification)
 2. only represents a gross simplification of
the relations between varieties

33. Disadvantages of the Family Tree
Model

34. Isoglosses
 Boundaries between two regions which differ with
respect to some linguistic feature (i.e. a lexical item,
the pronunciation of a particular word, etc.) are called
isoglosses.
 Isoglosses that fall together form a so-called bundle
of isoglosses. Such bundles often occur along natural
boundaries, such as rivers or mountain ridges.
 Bundles of isoglosses may indicate dialect
boundaries.
 But are they distributed in neat and clean
boundaries?
 Can different isoglosses intersect each other?

35. Dialect Status
 Notice that the BVE dialect is still a rule-based grammatical
system.
 Has some syntactic rules that SAE does not have.
 Linguistically-speaking, no basis for saying AAVE is an
‘inferior’ form of English, or that SAE is ‘better’.
 Just a different dialect of English.

36. Dialect Status
 Better’, ‘inferior’ are moral and social judgments.
 Since no linguistic basis for calling one dialect better
than another, when people call one dialect better than
another, they are really moral judgment on the people
who speak the disprefered dialect.
 Sometimes it’s subtle racism.
 Sometimes it’s just xenophobic discomfort with ‘the
other’, or with unfamiliar speech varieties.

37. Four British Dialects
Hughes Arthur and Peter Trudgill 1987. English
Accents and Dialects.London:Edward Arnold, p ii

38. London (Cockney)
 /h/ almost invariably absent
 The glottal stop is extremely common
 Contrast between / / and /f/ sometimes lost:
thin /fin/; Cathy /kæfi:/; both /bouf/
 Contrast between / / and /v/ often lost:
together ; bathe /beiv/
 Certain diphthongs are markedly different
 -ing as /in/

39. Bristol
 There is post-vocalic /r/
 “Bristol l”: the presence of /l/ after final schwa;
America / /
 The glottal stop may represent /t/ before a
pause, e.g. Pete, [ ]
 By comparison with RP, short vowels are often
of longer duration
 /h/ is variably absent

40. Newcastle
 The final vowel in words like city and seedy is /i:/
not / /.
 As in other northern accents put and putt are not
distinguished.
 As in other northern accents, dance and daft
have /æ/.
 -ing is /in/

41. Edinburgh
 The vowel system of Scottish English accents are
radically different from those of England.
 Vowels such as RP / / or / / do not occur.
 Scottish accents have preserved post-vocalic /r/.
 Bee and beer are distinguished by presence or absence
of /r/
 Length is not generally a distinctive feature: cot/caught;
pull/pool and Pam/palm are not distinguished

42. Linguistic Items
 Lexical Items
 Phonology
 Morphology
 Syntax
 Can you tell whether these items are susceptible
to variation equally?
 Are certain items more susceptible to variation?

43. Conclusion
 The formal linguistic distinction between language and dialect
doesn’t work:
 There is no way to group the dialects of the world into languages
in such a way that the dialects within are mutually intelligible and
such that they are not mutually unintelligible with dialects without.
 The distinction arose in association with the development of
writing and in that context served a useful purpose, namely to
distinguish between the written form and those oral varieties
which subscribe to it. This distinction, however, is not absolute,
but relevant only to situations where a writing system has been
instituted. Consequently when it is applied to areas where no
written system has been instituted, problems develop.