Urban Dialect Research Articles

Adolescent social structure and the spread of linguistic change

ABSTRACTDetailed participant observation among Detroit area adolescents provides explanations for the mechanisms of the spread of sound change outward from urban areas and upward through the socioeconomic hierarchy. The use of local phonological variables in adolescence is determined by a social structure within the age cohort, dominated by two opposed, and frequently polarized, school-based social categories. These categories, called “Jocks” and “Burnouts” in the school under study, embody middle-class and working-class cultures respectively, and articulate adolescent social structure with adult socioeconomic class. Differences between Jock and Burnout cultures entail differences in social network structure and in orientation to the urban area, and hence to urban sound changes. Parents' socioeconomic class is related to, but does not determine, category affiliation, and while category affiliation is a significant predictor in phonological variation, parents' socioeconomic class is not. (Variation, sound change, adolescents, urban dialects, suburban dialects, schools)

The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban centers

The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban centers

Taalgebruik, van Surinaamse Kinderen op de Basisschool

While research data indicate that Dutch education is problematic for Surinamese children, Dutch educational policy takes the view that the children can adapt to the curriculum quickly or even im-mediately, because they supposedly have a Dutch-speaking background. However, the language situation of Surinamese children is complex: a vast proportion of the children is bilingual and speaks a non-standard variety of Dutch: Surinamese Dutch (SN). Therefore, it is important to find out how the school fits the specific situa-tion of these children. The curriculum and the demands of the school, as well as the expectations of the teachers toward the children partly define the success of failure of the child. Language attitudes, too, can lead to a self fulfilling prophecy as regards to teacher expectations. This article deals with the perceptions of teachers with respect to language problems in the school and with teacher attitudes con-cerning the language use of Surinamese children. According to the majority of the teachers. Surinamese children have difficulties with a number of schoolsubjects as a consequence of their different home language. In particular the 'concentration schools', schools with a population of more than 15% Surinamese children, experience these problems most acutely. The majority of teachers indicate that they pursue command of the standard language as an objective. Most of the teachers locate the problems with the chil-dren, not with the school system itself. Investigating to what extent teachers-attitudes influence the educational results of the children is a complex task. First of all, the question needs to be answered wether teachers already have specific attitudes toward SN, since it is a rather new phenomenon to have Surinamese children in the classroom. The data suggest that, at this point, many teachers do not view SN as a seperate language variety, but as 'poor Dutch'. Nevertheless they are reasonably positive about the characteristics of SN, which may reflect their insecurity about this variety of Dutch. Comparing attitudes towards urban dialects and SN shows that teachers have a more pronounced and somewhat more negative attitude towards the urban dialects of their Dutch pupils. There is an important attitudinal difference between teachers from different cities. Teachers do not express stereotypes about the consequences of bilingualism for a child's intellectual development, but as regards the specific classroom situation, the majority of the teachers reports difficulties for children with a different home language. However, most teachers oppose special provisions in the school for use of the home language as a medium of instruction or as a subject. It seems that the views of teachers are linked to societal norms and educational policy, in which an ethnocentric point of view predominates. While information about sociolinguistic insights may not on its own change these norms, ignoring such information will certainly not bring about a change. Therefore, specific language curricula need to be developed.

Stadsdialect en Streekdialect

In this paper an outline is given of an investigation of language attitudes. In a matched guise experiment rural (Westfrisian) and urban (Amsterdam) subjects were confronted with rural and urban accented speech and had to give judgments on the factors 'competence/ambitiousness', 'personal integrity', 'social attractiveness' and 'toughness'. The purpose of the study was 1. to collect data comparable with similar research in other countries; 2. to explore the feasibility of a unifying approach to the two types of language differentiation: regional and social. In the tentative conclusions below, reference is made to the following treatments: (i) rural subjects give judgments of urban speakers; (ii) urban subjects give judgments of rural speakers; (iii) urban subjects give judgments of urban speakers; (iv) rural subjects give judgments of rural speakers. It appears that accented speakers are always stigmatized as less competent, but urban speakers more so than rural ones. For urban judges, personal integrity is associated with standard speech. For rural judges, this is not the case. Social attractiveness is associated with accented speech, but this effect is mitigated under treatment (iv) - in this case the origin of the speaker is more important than his speech variety. Toughness is associated with accented speech, but under treatment (ii) the effect is not great: rural speakers are considered less tough by urban judges, even when they use substandard language. Note that rural people do not consider themselves to be less tough (treatment iv). Language is an important means whereby groups of people differentiate themselves from other groups. The importance of this instrument will increase when other differentiators are not readily available, due, i.a., to the complexity and diffuseness of the social environment. The opposition between regional and social language differentiation is not a useful one. Both urban and regional dialects are social dialects. Both kinds of varieties carry the same value for their speakers: 'I belong to this group'. Both are determined by the same factors; the difference lies in the different weights of each factor: the ways in which the groups are formed.

De Studie Van Stadsdialekt

From the beginning, sociolinguistics has mainly been focusing on the study of urban dialects. The sociolinguistic approach seems to complement dialectology, as dialectology is mainly oriented towards rural dialects. However, this vision of dialectology (oriented towards the rural part of society) being complemented by sociolinguistics (oriented towards the urban part of society) has to be rejected. It is rather a matter of contrast. Sociolinguistics emphasizes the empirical synchronic study of language variation. Dialectology, on the other hand, emphasizes the diachronic dimension of language variation, because this discipline is looking for the norms of a language community rather than for the actual forms of language in that language community. Until now, sociolinguistics can be considered as a linguistic discipline especially. The development of an empirical basis of linguistics was one of the main objects. However, too strong an emhpasis on this aspect pushed the sociological part of the amalgamation of "sociolinguistics" too much into the background. In this paper I pay some extra attention to the sociological part of sociolinguistics by analyzing some data of a sociolinguistic investigation held in the town of Nijmegen. These data concern the opinions and views of the autochthonous population of Nijmegen about the dialect of their town. Special attention is paid to the question of where the dialect of Nijmegen is spoken, and by whom. Firstly, these data tentatively suggest the existence of a notion of language ideology: some current beliefs are found about the dialect of Nijmegen, beliefs that form the basis of language behaviour and the basis of develop einen ts in the relationship between dialect and standard language. Secondly, the data indicate the importance of two urban disciplines: urban sociology and urban geography. Two important aspects of these disciplines are discussed. The first aspect is the history and the development of urbanisation. The second aspect is the internal social and geographical structure of urban regions. The conclusion is that sociolinguistics has always been concious of the heterogeneous and socially complex character of urban regions, but that it has paid too little attention to the internal structure of this kind of region.

Verbal strategies in communal meetings: Code-switching and status manipulation in a bi-dialectal Yoruba speech community

The bi-dialectal situation in the Yoruba town of Ikorodu reflects the dual nature of the community's value orientation and normative behavior; that is, traditionalism and modernity. In both interindividual and intragroup verbal interactions, code-switching between the local variety of the Ijebu dialect and the Lagos urban dialect of Yoruba occurs in accordance with the degree of interplay between the socio-cultural factors of status, integrity and self-estimation present in the speech situation. In communal meetings where more formally structured interactions occur, verbal exchange is governed by these socio-cultural factors which can be identified as components in speech events within which code-switching takes place. This paper analyzes code-switching in relation to the variations in the way speakers operate the parameters of status in the process of speaking.

Phonological change and the development of an urban dialect in Illinois

ABSTRACTThe distribution of raised, nasalized variants of /æ/ in such words as hat, bag, and back in the speech of many Illinoisans cannot be explained by geographical or historical processes; rather the correlations are nearly isomorphic between raised variants of /æ/ and the size of the community in which the speaker was raised. Generally, the higher the variants, the more urban the speaker's background. Raised variants of /æ/ are discussed as they relate to contemporary sound change, to urban distributions, and to phonological context. (Urban dialects, sound change, American English, Illinois.)

The Research Methods of the Arkansas Language Survey

SINCE OCTOBER 1970, when plans for a preliminary survey of Arkansas dialects were first proposed (Underwood 1973b), the research design has been considerably modified.1 The early plan was for a wide-meshed survey similar to traditional linguistic atlas projects; however, the desirability of beginning the study of Arkansas dialects as one would for a linguistic atlas has been reconsidered in light of data from three sources: from tape recordings of Arkansans interviewed for the DARE (Dictionary of American Regional English) project, made available to us by Frederic Cassidy of the University of Wisconsin, from eighteen pilot interviews conducted in Arkansas during 1970-71, and from published observations on Arkansas dialects. These data suggest that Arkansas English is much more uniform than previously assumed. While there may be numerous localized differences in vocabulary and incidental pronunciations, they are of minor importance in dialect differentiation-a point that will be treated in more detail below. Systematic differences in syntax and phonology (that is, differences in the ordered generative and transformational rules constituting native speaker competence) appear to be few. Moreover, the Arkansas survey ought to incorporate, wherever possible, the innovations and improvements in methodology and theory provided by investigators of urban dialects, such as Labov (1966) and Shuy, Wolfram, and Riley (1968). Also, the arguments set forth by critics of American linguistic geography, for example, Pickford (1956), Bailey (1968), and Dillard (1969a and 1969b), have been given serious consideration. As a result, an alternative research design for the survey was drawn up in consultation with sociologists at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Revised plans for the first coherent state-wide survey of Arkansas dialects, which has been titled the Arkansas Language Survey, were put into finished form in 1972. The general aims of the study are-

Urbanization and the Development of Gender in the Arabic Dialects

This article makes the claim that the difference between Bedouin and urban dialects of Arabic in gender representation in the plural is a function of the urbanization process the urban dialects of Arabic went through in the 7th century in the conquered territories. Contact-induced linguistic processes of koineization and structural simplification in the newly established urban centers in the Middle East and North Africa helped enhance the gender development that was already in effect before the Arab conquests. By comparing Bedouin and urban dialects to Classical Arabic, the article establishes that the three varieties were in a process of development in gender. Classical Arabic stopped at a particular stage, and Bedouin and urban dialects continued. Comparing Central Asian dialects to urban dialects of Egypt we can see that at least to the 8th century gender was a common feature of Peninsular dialects. The article concludes by stating that the urban dialects developed further to lose all gender distinction in the plural because of the leveling and borrowing processes of the koineization in the urban centers in their formative period.Keywords: Contact Arabic, feminine gender, development, koineization, simplification, Foreigner Talk

The Status Significance of an Isolated Urban Dialect

The Status Significance of an Isolated Urban Dialect

The Status Significance of an Isolated Urban Dialect

The Status Significance of an Isolated Urban Dialect