Sociolinguistic Variation Research Articles

Variation in Negation in the Jordanian Arabic Dialect of Ma’an

The study investigates variation in negation in the Jordanian Arabic dialect spoken in Ma’an (Ma’an Jordanian Arabic, MJA hereafter). Both verbal and non-verbal clauses in MJA use different negative variants. The study shows that negation of verbal clauses in MJA is categorical with a strong preference for the old preverbal negative proclitic maa- over the new negative markers that include the discontinuous negative variant maa … ʃ and the enclitic -ʃ. Negation of non-verbal clauses, on the other hand, manifests significant variation with an indication of a change in progress toward more use of the new non-verbal negative variant muʃ at the expense of the remaining two old variants muu and the negative pronouns. The study reveals that variation in the negation system of non-verbal clauses in MJA is constrained by some social factors such as age, sex, level of education, and place of origin. In particular, the study shows that young, female, educated, rural speakers of MJA are leading the change toward the new non-verbal negative variant muʃ. The observations that are based on the distributional and statistical analyses of the study indicate that level of education and place of origin show the highest statistical significance followed by age and sex factors. Finally, we claim that the new non-verbal negative variant muʃ in MJA has not resulted from the Jespersen’s Cycle; rather, it has been borrowed into MJA from other local Jordanian Arabic vernaculars that have already undergone the Cycle. Keywords: Variationist Sociolinguistics, Negation, Language Change, Language Contact, Ma’an Jordanian Arabic.

A Corpus-based Investigation of Modals in Spoken British English: Gender Variation and Change in the Years 1994 and 2014

ABSTRACT Existing studies have described the diachronic development of modals in early periods, or their uses in more recent times. Works with a synchronic orientation have examined modals in contemporary English, and sociolinguistic variation linked to age. There are no studies that investigate gender variation and change of modals in contemporary spoken British English. The present research is a corpus-based investigation that aims to fill this gap and to describe the use of the central modals can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would in the years 1994 and 2014, and gender-based differences/similarities. The analysis has been undertaken on the spoken section of the BNC1994 and the Spoken BNC2014. The analysis reveals that there are limited differences between men and women and ongoing innovation in the years 1994 and 2014.

Sociolinguistic representations of variation in Moroccan spoken Arabic: discourses, practices and internet memes

Abstract This paper explores metalinguistic representations of Moroccan Arabic, through speakers’ discourses – taken from various spontaneous recordings and interviews with Moroccan Arabic speakers, of various ages, social backgrounds, and, for the most part, living in Meknes – and humoristic images and memes mocking local accents to be found on social media. By comparing language practices and metalinguistic representations with internet memes related to language stereotypes, our objective is to highlight indexicality, iconization and rhematization, in the circulation of metalinguistic representations, especially their reproduction through copy and imitation, which is the main attribute of memes that interests us. Markers, values, meanings associated with variation constantly change and shift through speakers’ practices and discourses, interacting with language ideologies, representations and stereotypes. With that in mind, we examine metalinguistic discourses and sociolinguistic variables in parallel to each other in order to study old and new representations along with social categories such as young/old, virile/effeminate, as well as regional stereotypes.

The Sociolinguistic Variation of (āʔ) in Hatim

This sociolinguistic study investigates the variation in the pronunciation of the variable (āʔ) in the variety of Hatim, north-west Jordan. This variable is studied in relation to five factors: age, gender, education, outside contact and following linguistic environment. Data were collected via informal sociolinguistic interviews. Sixty-four participants (30 males, 34 females) were recorded spontaneously by the researchers (duration=2227 minutes). Two variants for the variable (āʔ) were found in the variety of Hatim: the tradition variant [ā] and the innovative one [āʔ]. The Rbrul analysis of the data shows that only outside contact, gender and following linguistic environment are statistically significant. Put differently, participants with high contact with other speech communities used the innovative variant more than those with low contact. As it is the case in most speech communities, female participants favoured the innovative variant over the traditional one. In relation to the following linguistic environment, it was found that the innovative variant is favoured when it does not occur at utterance boundaries. There appear to be two competing forces in the variety of Hatim, one for the traditional Horani feature (i.e., dropping the final glottal stop) and another for an innovative feature (i.e., keeping the final glottal stop) that happened to coincide with the pronunciation in Modern Standard Arabic. It can safely be argued that the driving force behind this change in progress is not a reversion to Modern Standard Arabic. Rather, it is the present-day social prestige associated with the pronunciation of the final glottal stop that is pushing for this change.
 
 Received: 8 August 2022 / Accepted: 20 October 2022 / Published: 5 November 2022

A variationist perspective on the comparative complexity of four registers at the intersection of mode and formality

Abstract In this paper, we operationalize register differences at the intersection of formality and mode, and distinguish four broad register categories: spoken informal (conversations), spoken formal (parliamentary debates), written informal (blogs), and written formal (newspaper articles). We are specifically interested in the comparative probabilistic/variationist complexity of these registers – when speakers have grammatical choices, are the probabilistic grammars regulating these choices more or less complex in particular registers than in others? Based on multivariate modeling of richly annotated datasets covering three grammatical alternations in two languages (English and Dutch), we assess the complexity of probabilistic grammars by drawing on three criteria: (a) the number of constraints on variant choice, (b) the number of interactions between constraints, and (c) the relative importance of lexical conditioning. Analysis shows that contrary to theorizing in variationist sociolinguistics, probabilistic complexity differences between registers are not quantitatively simple: formal registers are consistently the most complex ones, while spoken registers are the least complex ones. The most complex register under study is written-formal quality newspaper writing. We submit that the complexity differentials we uncover are a function of acquisitional difficulty, of on-line processing limitations, and of normative pressures.

A Variationist Sociolinguistics Study of Ewe Kente at Agortime Traditional Area in the Volta Region

The proud kente cloth has knowledge and cultural heritage which has ceremonial, symbolic and authority about the wearer that is best known and mostly widely recognized of all textiles in Africa. Its unique features are wide and invokes powerful emotions as well as symbolizes the fundamental nonverbal codes ever imagined in Ghana which cuts across religion, ethnicity and instill national pride. The purpose of the study was to establish the unique message kente possesses and communicates to society as well as its status. Most of the existing writers center on textile weaving, tools and techniques in textile weaving and the aesthetic nature of kente. Though these writings are important contributions to kente, its nonverbal communicative codes have not been well documented. The adoption of the kente among Agortime-Kpetoe weavers was primarily influenced by sensory experience, fit, and interpersonal impact, which serves as an example of how several parts of the kente clothing are interconnected. The sociolinguistic theory is used as a theoretical lens in this work as well. The study made use of qualitative data for its purpose. 15 people were chosen to take part in the study using purposive sampling methods. Participants included kente cloth consumers and weavers. Data for the study was collected using an interviewing guide. Present the study’s findings before you conclude. The study finds that the Agotime Kente mostly use non-verbal codes to communicate. The study's conclusions showed that while most modern kente cloths do not communicate, certain distinctive ones do, particularly those that are currently being woven. These include clothes that express concepts of religion, rivalry, position, authority, and royalty to the user. This supports the belief of the Agotime society that non-verbal codes are more reliable and plausible for expressing royalty, authority, status, and communication between people. Keywords: Ewe kente, Symbols, Sociolinguistics, Communication, Agortime-Kpetoe

Cognitive Sociolinguistic Variation in the Old Bailey Voices Corpus: The Case for a New Concept‐Led Framework

AbstractThe current paper contributes to a greater understanding of concepts in the context of cognitive sociolinguistic variation. We show how concepts, which we root in thesauri‐based units, co‐occur with other concepts and how they vary between and within groups of speakers as represented in historical transcripts from the Old Bailey court. In order to carry out distributional sociosemantic analysis at a conceptual level we have developed a tool which combines word sense disambiguation with dependency analysis, which we refer to as Conceptual Dependency Corpus. A case study of gendered concepts from the Old Bailey Voices Corpus demonstrates that there are differences in the usage of concepts both within and between sociodemographic groupings of speakers. In particular, the co‐occurrence distributions of the concepts MAN, WOMAN and CHILD vary according to a speaker's gender and role in the court. By introducing methodological innovations, we empirically elicit socioconceptual polysemy, that is different speakers using the same concept in different ways and propose a framework to analyse and interpret this phenomenon. The results also provide support for engaging computational semantics in researching cognitive and sociolinguistic phenomena.

Non-wh relatives in English and Kurdish: Constraints on grammar and use

The paper looks at constraints on non-wh relatives in Sorani Kurdish (Iranian) and English (Germanic). We argue that some of them are grammatical, whereas others introduce social meaning. We present a basic, lexicalist syntactic analysis and expand it with social meaning constraints. We propose that classical sociolinguistic variables have the status of conventional implicatures and the overall assessment of a style is treated as a particularized conversational implicature.

Sociolinguistic Variation, Speech Acts, and Discursive Injustice

Abstract Despite its status at the heart of a closely related field, philosophers have so far mostly overlooked a phenomenon sociolinguists call ‘social meaning’. My aim in this paper will be to show that by properly acknowledging the significance of social meanings, we can identify an important new set of forms that discursive injustice takes. I begin by surveying some data from variationist sociolinguistics that reveal how subtle differences in the way a particular content is expressed allow us to perform importantly different illocutionary actions, actions we use to do things like constructing a public persona and building a rapport with an audience. The social importance of these activities and the pervasiveness of our engagement in them means that the ethical stakes involved are high—substantial injustices may result if speakers from different social groups are differently empowered with regard to the illocutionary possibilities made available to them by variation.

A Critique and Call for Action, in Response to Sexist Commentary About Vocal Fry

Purpose: This letter to the editor discusses recommendations and publicity from a recent article by Gallena and Pinto (2021) that appeared in Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups. We contextualize the recommendations made by Gallena and Pinto that young women actively suppress their use of vocal fry, a normal part of linguistic and sociolinguistic variation, to make themselves more marketable to employers who discriminate on the basis of vocal fry use. By reviewing research on vocal fry, social evaluation, and linguistic discrimination, we show how this recommendation is fundamentally flawed and how it perpetuates sexist tropes about language use. We argue that this is particularly dismaying when publicized by a journal of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, which aims to promote the universal use of language, in all its forms, as a human right. Conclusions: People stigmatize linguistic differences to devalue those who have less power. Vocal fry is not a problem; the problem is absurd sexist judgments against those who use vocal fry. The recommendations made in Gallena and Pinto (2021) and Perspectives' publicity about those recommendations both contribute to sexist linguistic discrimination. Rather than recommending that victims of sexism change their behavior to suit the biased views of others, we should use our energy to eradicate the underlying sexism.

Variable Schwa Deletion in French of Orléans: The Role of Age as a Sociolinguistic Factor: A CORPUS STUDY

The present paper is a micro diachronic and a socio-comparative study which examines the behaviour of a well-known pronunciation variant in French, the so-called schwa. The aim of it is to understand the nature of this variation (elision and maintenance) in monosyllabic words; clitics (#c(ə)#c) in French of Orléans, considering age as a sociolinguistic factor leading to this simplification process. Also, the evolution of the variational behaviour of this vowel in the same context across a diachronic interval of forty years (from 1968 till 2014) will be studied. To achieve the research objectives, a corpus-based research procedure was implemented, using ESLO Corpus “Enquête Sociolinguistique à Orléans”. It is divided into two sub-corpora ESLO 1 (collected between 1969 and 1974) and ESLO 2 (collected starting from 2014). Based on the findings, it comes clear that the young generation drops more frequently schwa in their spontaneous speech. Their rate of elision was higher in both corpora compared to the one of the old speakers (34,6%, for the old generation compared to 41,7% for the young one). Yet, it is found that the increase of schwa deletion through the diachronic period of forty years is not highly significant. However, it was found that schwa deletion is conditioned by other linguistic and sociolinguistic variables which have not been addressed in this research paper. Consequently, the discussion is left for future research.

Social network geometry, linguistic ideologies, and identity negotiation among Latinx English speakers in New Orleans

AbstractThis article presents an analysis of the role of social networks in shaping patterns of /æ/ realization among Latinxs in Post‐Katrina New Orleans. Social network metrics are shown to be statistically significant predictors of pre‐nasal /æ/ tensing. I argue that social network metrics operationalize important aspects of the sociolinguistic context and contribute to our understanding of factors influencing how Latinx speakers recruit locally significant sociolinguistic variables in linguistic performance. The data and analysis strongly argue against distinctiveness approaches to studies of language and ethnicity, where “racial categories are equated with empirically distinctive sets of linguistic features” (Rosa & Flores, 2017), by demonstrating that Latinx speakers participate in a local change‐in‐progress in ways that are shaped by the same types of sociolinguistic factors that shape linguistic variation generally. The analysis is based on excerpts from a series of interviews conducted with Latinxs in the city (n = 33) in 2017–2018. The interviews were transcribed and coded for tokens of /æ/. Participants were categorized into one of three systems of /æ/ realizations, and tokens of /æ/ were further analyzed using inferential statistics to determine which independent variables were significant predictors of pre‐nasal /æ/ tensing. This research contributes to a growing body of work rejecting distinctiveness approaches to the linguistic performance of minoritized speakers, focusing instead on the ways in which individual speakers recruit linguistic features in the negotiation of identity (Eckert, 2008, 2018; Rosa & Flores, 2017; King 2016, 2018) and helps advance our understanding of how linguistic ideologies and articulations of ethnicity shape linguistic performance.

Variable grammars are variable across registers: future temporal reference in English

AbstractIt is widely accepted that internal constraints on variation are not modulated by social and stylistic factors (e.g., Labov, 2010:265). Is this also true for register differences as a special type of sociostylistic factor? To address this question, we investigate future temporal reference (FTR) variation in English (It'll be funversusIt's gonna be fun) via a variationist corpus study (n= 2,600 tokens) and a supplementary rating experiment (n= 114 participants) across four broad registers: conversations, parliamentary debates, blogs, and newspaper prose. Multivariate analysis of the corpus dataset indicates that register modulates the effect of five out of nine internal constraints, suggesting that variable grammars vary considerably across registers. The experiment confirms that language users are indeed sensitive to, and aware of, the register-specificity of how variation is conditioned. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for variationist sociolinguistics and for variational linguistics in general.

Suitability of online and offline remote recording for vowel reduction analysis

Increasing demand for remote research techniques has led to several initial investigations of the suitability of remote recording for vowel production research. An initial consensus has emerged that remote recording may provide broadly accurate data for broad-strokes analysis, such as analyzing the relative positions of a speaker’s vowels, although some minor distortions may occur; fine-grained analysis of sociolinguistic variation suffers greatly from remote data collection (Freeman and De Decker, 2021). This study investigates the quality of data obtainable through two remote recording methods (online recording through Gorilla and offline recording via smartphone) for a vocalic phenomenon requiring a medium level of sensitivity of analysis, namely vowel reduction. Ten subjects completed a shadowing task eliciting target words containing one of five English vowels in reduced or unreduced form, taking simultaneous online and offline remote recordings. To determine whether the variability introduced through the remote recording process was sufficient to alter the findings of the study, results were compared to data from a second group of subjects who completed the task in person in a traditional laboratory setting. This comparison to in-person data allows for an assessment of the suitability of online and offline remote recordings for vowel reduction research.

Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable

AbstractSwearwords influence social evaluation of a speaker in a variety of ways depending on social context (Jay & Janschewitz (2008), The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2), 267–288). Little attention has been paid to the role of linguistic variation in social perceptions of swearing, however. This paper presents two experiments that test the role of sociolinguistic variation in the social evaluation of swearing. Experiment 1 is a variant categorization task, in which participants categorized acoustically ambiguous swearwords and phonetically matching neutral and nonwords as ending in either “‐ing” or “‐in.” Results suggest that swearwords led participants to hear “‐ing” on ambiguous items. Experiment 2 is a matched‐guise task in which listeners heard a passage featuring a mix of swearwords and neutral “‐ing” words in one of four conditions: fully velar (All‐ing), fully alveolar (All‐in), only swearwords as velar (Swear‐ing), or only neutral words as velar (Swear‐in). Participants rated speakers on Likert scales (Schleef et al. (2017), Regional diversity in social perceptions of (ING). Language Variation and Change, 29(1), 29–56). Participants again displayed a tendency towards hearing “‐ing” on swearwords. As a result, responses to the Swear‐in guises were similar to those for the All‐ing guises. The consequences for our understanding of swearing, sociolinguistic perception and cognition, and style, are discussed.

“Missouree Was Always Out of Step with Missourah”

Language users can create moral geographies, in which values are mapped in space, by indexically linking values and spatial referents. One understudied aspect of linguistic practice in this domain is the role of toponyms in constructing a moral geography. This investigation illustrates how sociolinguistic variants of a toponym can be used to construct a moral geography. I take as a case study sociolinguistic variation in the US state name Missouri, which can be produced as Missouree or Missourah. Qualitative analysis of a set of local newspaper columns shows these variants can be used as place names. However, they do not distinguish regions of physical space. Rather, the variants label moral spaces by setting each variant on opposing ends of cultural, geographic, and political axes of contrast. Because their primary role is to label moral space, I suggest that toponymic studies should consider the kind of geography that a toponym labels space within. I consider the usage here to be examples of “moral toponyms”, in contrast to traditional toponyms which label physical space.

Analogy and similarity as a resource in new speaker styles of Basque

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The study examines contact between the Basque standard variety, Spanish, and Basque dialects in the speech of new speakers of Basque, euskaldun berriak, who have Spanish as their language of primary socialization and who have learned standard Basque in classroom contexts. The overall goal of the study is to determine what linguistic features new speakers draw from in the construction of a colloquial style of Basque. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study combines third-wave approaches of sociolinguistic variation with cognitive, usage-based approaches to language contact. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the city of Bilbao between 2016 and 2017. Data and Analysis: Forty-seven new speakers of Basque participated in metalinguistic interviews. Many others were observed in the larger context of the ethnographic fieldwork. The data consist of field notes and more than 30 hours of recordings. The analysis combines the metalinguistic commentary of the participants with observation of their linguistic practices. Findings/Conclusions: New speakers’ morphosyntactic and stylistic variation in constructing a colloquial style is explained through analogy and similarity, as they draw from interlingual and intralingual analogies and similarities in the process of register construction. The variation can be largely explained by the speakers’ social networks and their involvement in the Basque-speaking cultural sphere. Originality: This study examines the role of new speakers in linguistic change. The study presents a novel approach by combining analyses of common cognitive processes with an understanding of shared social language practices that are influenced by language ideologies. Significance/Implications: An integrated approach of cognitive processes and the social meaning of language change allow the examination of the interplay of social competence and human faculty. Variationist studies can benefit from studies conducted at the sites of language revitalization with complex indexical fields and rapidly changing social dynamics.

Changes in the commemorative streetscape of Leipzig over the past 100 years

AbstractThis article presents the results of an interdisciplinary project that explores street name changes in Leipzig, a city in eastern Germany, over the past one-hundred years. Our analysis focuses on the ways in which semantic choices in the streetscape are recruited to canonize traces of the national past that are “supportive of the hegemonic socio-political order” (Azaryahu, 1997:480). We triangulate results from variationist sociolinguistics, Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies and geographical analysis to visualize waves of street (re)naming during a century of political turmoil. Drawing on historical archival data allows us to interpret spatial and temporal patterns of odonymic choices as the public embodiment of subsequent political state ideologies. The analysis provides quantitative and longitudinal support to Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) claim that the indexing of officially sanctioned identity and ideology as well as the appropriation of human space are performed by and in turn index state-hegemonic politics of memory.

Reallocation: How new forms arise from contact

AbstractIn the last 35 years, ‘reallocation’ has come to be widely used to describe how structural linguistic features in contact settings may remain as part of a new language variety and take on new functions as sociolinguistic variables rather than be lost over time, as is typically expected in koineization contexts. Classic examples involve originally regional differences that come to carry social, grammatical, or stylistic rather than regional meanings. We define and illustrate reallocation and then explore how it has been used in different ways and applied to various contact settings. Along the way, we also put reallocation into the context of notions like focussing and accommodation, and observe a shift from looking at dialect contact to language contact as a trigger of reallocation. Reallocation increasingly connects with enregisterment, and we consider these notions in cultural as well as strictly linguistic terms. We conclude briefly with paths for future investigation.

Reverse Back the Car: Reduplication as Language Variation in Nigerian English Usage

This paper investigates the use of reduplicated English elements as aspects of Nigerian English usage in the speech events among participants in Calabar, a multilingual city in Southern Nigeria. The study adopts Variationist Sociolinguistics and Sociopragmatic Competence as the theoretical foundations because both account for the occurrence of variation and semantic change resulting from interference from L1 and other factors. The data for the study were generated through a two-year field investigation by means of participant observation and audiotape recording of interactions among participants who are bi/multilingual in English and one or more Nigerian indigenous languages. The active sites where the data were extracted include interactions among participants in the University environment, markets, churches and other social gatherings, and discussants on television and radio programmes. The findings indicate that the use of reduplicated elements cut across ages, gender, social status, and the diverse ethnolinguistic and educational backgrounds of Nigerians. These features of Nigerian English occur as lexical reduplication which combines identical elements in the open class system and the semantic reduplication that denotes redundancy and other contrastive forms. The features generate new semantic forms that perform several sociopragmatic functions within the Nigerian sociocultural context indicative of variant of new Englishes as outcome of English contact with indigenous languages.