Lecture 3. When languages collide

SPEECH COMMUNITY: All the people that you talk to everyday who use your language and dialect and now we can add: people who you talk to everyday you who use your language and dialect or languages and dialects.

VERBAL REPERTOIRE: The total range of linguistic resources a person has at his disposal is called a verbal repertoire. This could be another language, or it could be a regional or social dialect.

CODE-MIXING: The mixing of two distinct languages or codes in a sentence.

PIDGIN: a language made up of two or more languages, used as a way of communicating by people whose first languages are different from each other.

The requirements of a Pidgin are:

1. The language is specially constructed by its users to suit the needs of its users. So if it is for trading in cattle, there will be few words for discussing anything else, like the weather, or vegetables, or your favorite painter.
2. It should be as simple and easy to learn as possible.
3. The vocabulary is usually based on the vocabulary of the dominant group—wherever people are speaking the pidgin.
4. It is a compromise language between the language of one group and the other in some way, whether its grammar from one vocabulary from the other, or a mix of both of these.

CREOLE: A language that is a mixture of two or more other languages and is spoken as the first language of a people.

Gullah verb tenses:

Uh h'ep dem -- " I help them/I helped them" (Present/Past Tense)

Uh bin he'p dem -- " I helped them" (Past Tense)

Uh gwine he'p dem -- " I will help them" (Future Tense)

Uh done he'p dem -- " I have helped them" (Perfect Tense)

Uh duh he'p dem -- " I am helping them" (Present Progressive)

Uh binnuh he'p dem -- " I was helping them" (Past Progressive)

LANGUAGE PLANNING: a deliberate, systematic, and theory-based attempt to solve the communication problems of a community by studying the various languages or dialects it uses, and developing a policy concerning their selection and use; also sometimes called language engineering or language treatment. Corpus (‘body’ of the language) planning deals with norm selection and codification, as in the writing or grammars and the standardization of spelling; status planning deals with initial choice of language, including attitudes toward alternative languages and the political implications of various choices.

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Lecture 4. The relationship between language and society, part 1. Speech as social interaction, social identity and solidarity