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48-539: As with other types of language variation , there tends to be a spectrum of registers rather than a discrete set of obviously distinct varieties—numerous registers can be identified, with no clear boundaries between them. Discourse categorization is a complex problem, and even according to the general definition of language variation defined by use rather than user, there are cases where other kinds of language variation, such as regional or age dialect , overlap. Due to this complexity, scholarly consensus has not been reached for

96-407: A report style, aiming to communicate factual information, whereas women have a rapport style, more concerned with building and maintaining relationships. People tend to accommodate their language towards the style of the person they are interacting with. Thus, in a mixed-gender group, gender differences tend to be less pronounced. A similarly important observation is that this accommodation

144-577: A visiting scholar at the University of Alberta , the University of Belgrade , and the University of Edinburgh . During World War II, Joos was a cryptologist for the US Signal Security Agency. The War Department awarded him a Distinguished Service citation in recognition of his work developing communication systems. After the war he returned to the University of Wisconsin, eventually serving as

192-428: A change is in progress. However, not all variation is involved in change; it is possible for competing ways of "saying the same thing" to coexist with each other in "stable variation" for an extended period of time. Studies of language variation and its correlation with sociological categories, such as William Labov 's 1963 paper "The social motivation of a sound change," led to the foundation of sociolinguistics as

240-568: A daughter named Shari. After his service in WWII, Joos went back to the University of Wisconsin and served as chairman of the Department of German. In the years following, he was a visiting professor at University of Alberta, University of Edinburgh, and University of Belgrade. Among Joos's books on linguistics is The Five Clocks (1962), which introduced influential discussions of style , register , and style-shifting , noting systematic characteristics in

288-405: A language tend to preserve the same word order or fit new sounds into the language's established inventory of phonemes (the study of such restrictions known as phonotactics , morphotactics , etc.); however, exceptions to these restrictions are possible too. Linguistic variation does not equate to ungrammatical usage of the language, but speakers are still (often unconsciously) sensitive to what

336-449: A particular activity, such as academic jargon. There is very little agreement as to how the spectrum of formality should be divided. In one prominent model, Martin Joos describes five styles in spoken English: The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has defined the international standard ISO 12620 , Management of terminology resources – Data category specifications . This

384-471: A particular speaking style more than men do is akin to saying that men are taller than women (i.e., men are on average taller than women, but some women are taller than some men). The initial identification of a women's register was by Robin Lakoff in 1975, who argued that the style of language served to maintain women's (inferior) role in society ("female deficit approach"). A later refinement of this argument

432-481: A specific vocabulary which one might commonly call slang , jargon , argot , or cant , while others argue against the use of the term altogether. Crystal and Davy, for instance, have critiqued the way the term has been used "in an almost indiscriminate manner". These various approaches to the concept of register fall within the scope of disciplines such as sociolinguistics (as noted above), stylistics , pragmatics , and systemic functional grammar . The term register

480-605: A subfield of linguistics . Although contemporary sociolinguistics includes other topics, language variation and change remains an important issue at the heart of the field. Studies in the field of sociolinguistics typically take a sample population and interview them, assessing the realisation of certain sociolinguistic variables. Labov specifies the ideal sociolinguistic variable to Phonetic variables tend to meet these criteria and are often used, as are morphosyntactic variables, morphophonological variables, and, more rarely, lexical variables. Examples for phonetic variables are:

528-499: A survey on the inter-influence of geographic and social factors. By the end of the 1960s, it was examined that linguistic and dialect diversity cannot be solely interpreted by geography, which social differences existed in the same geographical area. Thus, social and geographical factors were to be seen as interrelated. Men and women, on average, tend to use slightly different language styles. These differences tend to be quantitative rather than qualitative. That is, to say that women use

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576-451: Is "the total event, in which the text is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or writer; includes subject-matter as one of the elements." Mode is "the function of the text in the event, including both the channel taken by language – spoken or written, extempore or prepared – and its genre, rhetorical mode, as narrative, didactic, persuasive, ' phatic communion ', etc." The tenor refers to "the type of role interaction,

624-779: Is a group in which "the dominant ideology treats as a single entity". The homogenization of Asian Americans is problematic due to their distinct cultural and national backgrounds as well as history of immigration to the U.S. Therefore, research on Asian American speech is often homogenized because of racial homogenization. Research on Asian Americans in particular have noted the variation of Asian American speech. Affluent Vietnamese Americans and middle-class Japanese Americans are shown to align to more standard English varieties, while Laotians and other Southeast Asians have more vernacular speech patterns. Ito (2010) looked at bilingual Hmong Americans in Wisconsin and found that local features like

672-556: Is a registry for registering linguistic terms used in various fields of translation, computational linguistics and natural language processing and defining mappings both between different terms and the same terms used in different systems. The registers identified are: The term diatype is sometimes used to describe language variation which is determined by its social purpose. In this formulation, language variation can be divided into two categories: dialect , for variation according to user , and diatype for variation according to use (e.g.

720-561: Is a rule-governed, valid language variety that adequately and uniquely expresses the collective experiences of its speakers. Very little attention has been paid to Asian American speech despite the rise in Asian American immigrants to the United States. Even though Asian Americans are perceived as a distinct racial group, their speech has not been categorized as an individualized ethnolect. Asian Americans in particular have been seen as

768-404: Is an essential component of language change . This is because language change is gradual; a language does not shift from one state to another instantaneously, but old and new linguistic features coexist for a period of time in variation with each other, as new variants gradually increase in frequency and old variants decline. Variationists therefore study language change by observing variation while

816-423: Is and is not possible in their native lect . Language variation is a core concept in sociolinguistics . Sociolinguists investigate how linguistic variation can be influenced by differences in the social characteristics and circumstances of the speakers using the language, but also investigate whether elements of the surrounding linguistic context promote or inhibit the usage of certain structures. Variation

864-481: Is focused mainly on "language maintenance issues or code switching", and rarely feature linguistic portraits of Asian Americans who have grown up within the diverse atlas of the United States. Martin Joos Martin Joos (1907–1978) was an American linguist and professor of German . He spent most of his career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison , and also served at the University of Toronto and as

912-399: Is on the way language is used in particular situations, such as legalese or motherese , the language of a biology research lab, of a news report, or of the bedroom. M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan interpret register as "the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features—with particular values of the field, mode and tenor." Field for them

960-432: Is taken as an indication of linguistic change in progress. A commonly studied source of variation is regional dialects (regiolects). Dialectology studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. Sociolinguists concerned with grammatical and phonological features that correspond to regional areas are often called dialectologists. In 1968, John J. Gumperz conducted

1008-462: Is the speech of street youth. Just as street youth dress differently from the "norm", they also often have their own "language". The reasons for this are the following: (1) To enhance their own cultural identity (2) To identify with each other, (3) To exclude others, and (4) To invoke feelings of fear or admiration from the outside world. Strictly speaking, this is not truly age-based, since it does not apply to all individuals of that age bracket within

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1056-484: Is usually towards the language style, not the gender of the person . That is, a polite and empathic male will tend to be accommodated to on the basis of their being polite and empathic, rather than their being male. Communities of African Americans and Whites have been popular groups with particular attention to their linguistic variation. This variation helps inform much about the origins and evolution of other varieties, especially African American English. Understanding

1104-449: The ING variable , the optional pronunciation of -ing at the end of a word as -in' , as in "I kept walkin'" (e.g. Fisher 1958; Labov 1966/1982; Trudgill 1974 ). Analyzing sociolinguistic variation often involves the use of statistical programs to handle its multi-variable nature. One essential part of the methodology is to count up the number of tokens of a particular variant and compare it to

1152-452: The " model minority ", in which they are stereotyped as being comparable to whites in academic achievement and economic success. However, this assumption neglects Asian Americans who are less fortunate and may experience poverty. Furthermore, the term "Asian Americans" cover a vast diaspora of individuals from various national and ethnic origins ( Koreans , Chinese , Japanese , Vietnamese , Cambodian , Laotian , Hmong , etc.). However, this

1200-435: The 1960s and 1970s with many linguists including Robbins Burling , Ralph Fasold , Joey Dillard , William Labov , Williams Stewart, Geneva Smitherman , and Walt Wolfram to name a few. While African American English is still not considered an official variety by the dominant culture and educational system in the United States, it is a legitimate and verified variety by many scholars. The Ebonics Controversy help to influence

1248-504: The New England coast from Boston north. Examining the speech across several generations of a single family, one would find the grandparents' generation would never or rarely merge these two vowel sounds; their children's generation may on occasion, particularly in quick or informal speech; while their grandchildren's generation would merge these two vowels uniformly. This is the basis of the apparent-time hypothesis where age-based variation

1296-502: The United States of America doing crypt-analyses. When he went back for his masters, Joos decided to pursue linguistics and got a degree in German. This led to him receiving a position in Canada at the University of Toronto and at University of Wisconsin. Somewhere during this time before WWII, he married Jennie Mae Austin on September 8, 1938, to whom he was married for forty years, and they adopted

1344-457: The United States, it is pronounced 'zee'. A linguistic survey found that in 1979 two-thirds of the 12-year-olds in Toronto ended the recitation of the alphabet with the letter 'zee' where only 8% of the adults did so. Then in 1991, (when those 12-year-olds were in their mid-20s) a survey showed only 39% of the 20- to 25-year-olds used 'zee'. In fact, the survey showed that only 12% of those over 30 used

1392-490: The case of linguistic change in progress, one would expect to see variation over a broader range of ages. William Bright provides an example taken from American English, where in certain parts of the country there is an ongoing merger of the vowel sounds in such pairs of words as 'caught' and 'cot'. This merger used to be distinctive of the western United States, but since World War II, it has developed independently in two other regions: western Pennsylvania and southwestward, and

1440-586: The chairman of the Department of German. Martin George Joos was born on May 11, 1907, into a farming family near Fountain City, Wisconsin. He was one out of ten children and it is noted that his filial relations while growing up were very close. He grew up speaking English and German which later influenced his decision to go into linguistics. He graduated with a bachelor's in electrical engineering, and applied this with linguistics while serving with Signal Security Agency of

1488-464: The channel of communication, such as spoken, written or signed. Language variation Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation (e.g., more than one way of pronouncing the same phoneme or the same word), lexicon (e.g., multiple words with the same meaning), grammar (e.g., different syntactic constructions expressing

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1536-462: The community. Age-graded variation is a stable variation which varies within a population based on age. That is, speakers of a particular age will use a specific linguistic form in successive generations. This is relatively rare. J.K. Chambers cites an example from southern Ontario, Canada where the name of the letter 'Z' varies. Most of the English-speaking world pronounces it 'zed'; however, in

1584-405: The definitions of terms such as register , field , or tenor ; different scholars' definitions of these terms often contradict each other. Additional terms such as diatype, genre , text types , style , acrolect , mesolect , basilect , sociolect , and ethnolect , among many others, may be used to cover the same or similar ground. Some prefer to restrict the domain of the term register to

1632-524: The description of language, coined the terms diatopic (place-related dialect), diastratic ( social class/stratum related sociolect ) and diaphasic (formality-related register ) to describe linguistic variation. There are several different types of age-based variation one may see within a population. They are: vernacular of a subgroup with membership typically characterized by a specific age range, age-graded variation, and indications of linguistic change in progress. One example of subgroup vernacular

1680-483: The form 'zee'. This is hypothesized to be tied to an American children's song frequently used to teach the alphabet. In this song, the rhyme scheme matches the letter Z with V 'vee', prompting the use of the American pronunciation. As the individual grows older, this marked form 'zee' is dropped in favor of the standard form 'zed'. People tend to use linguistic forms that were prevalent when they reached adulthood. So, in

1728-448: The frequency of the glottal stop , the height or backness of a vowel or the realisation of word-endings. An example of a morphosyntactic variable is the frequency of negative concord (known colloquially as a double negative ). Two well-known and frequently studied morphophonological variables are T/D deletion, the optional deletion of the sound /t/ or /d/ at the end of a word, as in "I kep' walking" (Wolfram 1969; Labov et al. 1968 ); and

1776-516: The low-back vowel merger did not seem to play a noticeable role in Hmong English. Despite the variety of ethnic background, Asian American speech shows distinctiveness in perception tests. Michael Newman and Angela Wu found that in perception tests, participants regardless of ethnic background were found to recognize Asian American, indexed by a set of distinctive features. While the amount of sound change studies are dearth, when they are addressed, it

1824-567: The number of times the variant could have occurred. This is called the "Principle of Accountability" in Tagliamonte (2012). Comparing the tokens to the total number of words in a corpus or comparing one corpus to another leads to erroneous results. This count of the possible occurrences can be difficult at times because some variants alternate with zero (such as relative pronouns that , who , and zero). In 1970 Eugenio Coșeriu , revisiting De Saussure's synchrony and diachrony distinction in

1872-413: The realization of these meanings." Register, in the view of M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan, is one of the two defining concepts of text. "A text is a passage of discourse which is coherent in these two regards: it is coherent with respect to the context of situation, and therefore consistent in register; and it is coherent with respect to itself, and therefore cohesive." One of the most analyzed areas where

1920-501: The same grammatical function), and other features. Different communities or individuals speaking the same language may differ from each other in their choices of which of the available linguistic features to use, and how often ( inter-speaker variation ), and the same speaker may make different choices on different occasions ( intra-speaker variation ). While diversity of variation exists, there are also some general boundaries on variation. For instance, speakers across distinct dialects of

1968-408: The set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the participants involved". These three values – field, mode and tenor – are thus the determining factors for the linguistic features of the text. "The register is the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in

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2016-620: The shifts in speech between high and low formality settings. The five aspects of register are: Acoustic Phonetics was published in 1948 as a supplement to the journal, Language . It was written in times of exploration of phonetics and explored the unknown in phonetics, more specifically the acoustic aspect of phonetics. Martin Joos wrote the monograph to help the world come to a unified phonetic theory and to introduce acoustic information to phonetics. Joos's 1958 book, Readings in Linguistics Volume 1 collected important papers on

2064-656: The sociohistorical background of the settlement of the southern colonies is a crucial step in understanding the origins of AAE. African American English and Southern White American English both had origins in the British settler dialects introduced into the South within the Colonial Period (1607 and 1776). With time these two varieties continued to evolve and influences one another. However, research on African American English did not become continuously and overwhelming explored until

2112-408: The specialised language of an academic journal). This definition of diatype is very similar to those of register. The distinction between dialect and diatype is not always clear; in some cases a language variety may be understood as both a dialect and a diatype. Diatype is usually analysed in terms of field , the subject matter or setting; tenor , the participants and their relationships; and mode ,

2160-483: The use of language is determined by the situation is the formality scale. The term register is often, in language teaching especially, shorthand for formal/informal style, although this is an aging definition. Linguistics textbooks may use the term tenor instead, but increasingly prefer the term style— "we characterise styles as varieties of language viewed from the point of view of formality"—while defining registers more narrowly as specialist language use related to

2208-680: The way America thinks about African American English. In December 1996 the Ebonics Controversy erupted from the Oakland School Board's resolution to identify Ebonics as the first language of African American students with consequences for their Language Arts lessons. There have been many different perspectives to engaging with African American English as a variety. Although there is some evidence that linguistically sensitive approaches are helpful, there are gaps in and questions about these approaches which require new research. However, AAE

2256-427: Was first used by the linguist T. B. W. Reid in 1956, and brought into general currency in the 1960s by a group of linguists who wanted to distinguish among variations in language according to the user (defined by variables such as social background, geography, sex and age), and variations according to use , "in the sense that each speaker has a range of varieties and choices between them at different times." The focus

2304-421: Was that gender differences in language reflected a power difference ("dominance theory"). However, both these perspectives have the language style of men as normative, implying that women's style is inferior. More recently, Deborah Tannen has compared gender differences in language as more similar to 'cultural' differences ("cultural difference approach"). Comparing conversational goals, she argued that men have

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