Problems defining language and dialect

However, problems arise when we start to try to differentiate dialects from languages.

First off, the term dialect in popular usage often carries a connotation of substandard. That is, it is somehow not as good as the standard language. The term itself is equally applicable to all varieties of a language—including the dialect that might become the standard. REMEMBER: EVERY DIALECT IS EQUAL

Linguists usually approach dialects as descriptively neutral terms, seeing them as regionally or socially distinct varieties of a language that are mutually intelligible with other varieties.

**PUT ON BOARD:

MUTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY Means speakers of two or more different languages or dialects can converse with each other and understand each other’s meanings.

Now, most speakers can give a name to whatever it is they speak. While people do usually know what language they speak, they may not always claim to be fully qualified speakers of that language.

They may experience difficulty in deciding whether what they speak should be called a language proper or merely a dialect of some language. Such indecision is not surprising, exactly how do you decide what is a language and what is a dialect of a language?

Let’s look at some of the problems first.

SLIDE #6

There is often what are called asymmetries in intelligibility, that is one group can understand another group but not the other way around.

For example:

Danish speakers can understand Swedish, but Swedish speakers cannot understand Danish speakers.

For example:

Portuguese speakers from Brazil can understand Spanish, but Spanish speakers cannot understand Portuguese speakers from Brazil.

SLIDE #7

Similarly nonlinguistic criteria such as political, historical, or geographic differences may play a role.

For example:

Mandarin Chinese speakers and Cantonese Chinese speakers are NOT AT ALL understandable to each other. They cannot have a conversation. Yet, they are considered dialects of the same language. Why not two different languages? —because it might politically divide China to admit the difference.

Another example:

Serbian and Croatian are very much mutually intelligible languages. A speaker of Serbian could hold a conversation with a Croatian speaker and vice versa. However, they are referred to as separate languages because the two peoples want to remain politically separate—they don’t want to admit a shared language.

Swedish and Norwegian are also mutually intelligible—but considered two distinct languages.

And finally, the same is true for Czech and Slovak.

What about English?

1. For example:

A speaker of Cockney, a London variety of English, may find it extremely difficult to communicated with a person from the Ozark Mountains in the United States. Therefore, do they speak separate languages?

2. What about English speakers from New Zealand and the Southern United States.

3. What about a speaker of African-American Vernacular English, also sometimes called Black English Vernacular and the kind of English you hear in some rap songs, how well would he converse with an English speaker from the Scottish Highlands?

4. For that matter, is one English spoken in Britain and another, different dialect, spoken in America? The famous American journalist H.L. Menken thought there was as early as the 1930’s. How much more different have American and British English become in the past nearly 100 years? I have included an article by him in your readings.

How do the different varieties of English spoken in Jamaica relate to other varieties of English in Canada? Would two English speakers from these diverse places understand one another?

It’s even fun to picture these different speakers of English trying to speak to one another because the English they speak is so different, but all of these questions are real examples of how linguists try to understand variation and make sense of differences within a language.

Perhaps some of the difficulties we have with trying to decide what constitutes a language and a dialect of a language arise from trying to subsume various different types of systems of communication under that one label.

Another approach would be to admit that there are different types of language. We can differentiate these types of language following a certain set of criteria proposed by the linguist R. T Bell in his book Bell, R.T. (1976). Sociolinguistics: Goals, Approaches and Problems. London: Batsford.

We can also speak of a language being more developed using these criteria, in terms of fitting into more of the criteria’s categories. A dialect would then be a sub-variety of a language fitting one of these categories.

To use the criteria, you take a given variety of a language and compare it to the seven categories. The more categories the variety fits the more developed it is and the more likely it is that it probably should be considered a language.

**PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR HAND OUT

Bell’s 7 categories are:

1. Standardization: A language that has been standardized.
2. Vitality: Whether a language is alive or dead.
3. Historicity: A language that has a long historical bond with its speakers.
4. Autonomy: A language must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages.
5. Reduction: Reduction is when the speakers of a particular variety of a language regard it as a sub-variety or a dialect.
6. Mixture: Mixture refers to how “mixed” a language’s speakers feel their language has become.
7. Norms: Norms refers to the feeling that many speakers have that there are both good speakers and poor speakers, and that the good speakers represent the norms of proper usage.

Let’s look at an example:

An example of how these categories work is Serbian and Croatian, I have taken this from a paper entitled Sociolinguistic Analysis of " Serbo-Croatian" published in 1996 by a scholar named Sean McLennan, according to him:

From a linguistic standpoint, we must come to the conclusion that Serbo-Croation are simply dialects of the same language. There are no more variations between Serbian and Croatian than there are between Canadian English and any other dialect of English, indeed, perhaps even fewer in some cases.

Syntactic and morphological constructions remain the same and the languages are mutually intelligible.

But, regardless of the linguistic facts presented, on the whole, the speakers of the language perceive the variants as being different languages

If we compare them:

1) Standardization: Both Serbian and Croatian are standardized. There are different standardized spellings for the same words. As well, media and literature use both variants.

2) Vitality: Obviously, both variants have a living community of speakers.

3) Historicity: Although Serbian and Croatian have shared very similar histories and

at times, language was a basis for unity, this is not true now. In fact, historical differences are

being emphasized (primarily by Croats). For example the influence of Turkish on Serbian

4) Autonomy: Croats certainly feel that they speak a different language.

5) Reduction: It cannot be claimed that either variant is seen as a sub-variety of the other. If anything, the feeling is that they have nothing to do with each other at all (Personal Consultation).

6) Mixture: In neither case do the speakers feel that their language is impure or is a

marginal variety of some other language.

7) Presence of De Facto Norms: Both Croatian and Serbian have a continuum of

" good" and " poor" speakers. Unsurprisingly, the poorest speakers of Croatian are those

with a variant closest to Serbian.

So, therefore, according to these criteria the author finds that, at least from the perspective of

those involved, Serbian and Croatian can be considered different languages.

DIFFERENT LANGUAGES!!!

Now, some linguists rely only on the single category of Standardization to differentiate one language from another—if both have a standard form then they are both languages. Remember this is the first of Bell’s criteria. Therefore, the chosen STANDARDIZED DIALECT becomes the STANDARD LANGUAGE and every other dialect is considered a dialect of the language only. This is the description in you book. For a language to be considered Standardized it must fulfill the following requirements:

PUT ON BOARD

Standardization:

1. Selection: A particular variety is selected as the one to be developed into the standard.
2. Codification: Some agency such as the academy creates dictionaries and grammar books to fix the language variety so that everyone agrees on how to use it and what is correct.
3. Elaboration of function: You can use this variety of the language for all the functions you need it for. For example government documents, education, literature etc.
4. Acceptance: Acceptance means that the RELEVANT population accepts this variety of language as the community’s language.

The best example of this is French which has a governing body, called the Acad e mie Francaise, that was established in 1635 and still creates rules about usage, as well as new words for things originating in other languages.