SOCIAL DIALECTS

TYPES OF LINGUISTICS ITEM

SOCIAL DIALECTS
Social dialects /sociolects : varieties of a
language used by particular social classes or
particular group

Social dialects originate among social groups
and are mainly related to social class, age,
gender, education, occupation, religion, and
ethnicity or racial differences, and so on.

E.g. In Baghdad, the Christian, Jewish, and
Muslim inhabitants speak different varieties of
Arabic.

SOCIAL DIALECTS
Italians pronounce bad with the vowel of beard
Jews pronounce dog with the vowel of book.
SOCIAL DIALECTS
Sociolects related to formality of speech, are categorized
as high and low sociolect.

The formal speech The informal speech


higher sociolect lower sociolect.

SOCIAL DIALECTS
The study of social dialects has been mainly
concerned with speakers in town and cities. In the social
study of dialect, it is social class that is mainly used to define
groups of speakers as having something in common. The
two main groups are generally identified as middle class,
those who have more years of education and perform non-
manual work, and working class, those who have fewer
years of education and perform manual work of some kind.
The problem of defining social group or social class and giving
proper weight to the factors used to determine social position,
e.g., occupation, education, income, caste, etc.

These factors are related to how people speak. There are British
public-school dialect and also an African American Vernacular
English dialect. People have stereotypical notions of how other
people speak. Social dialects can indeed be described
systematically.
SOCIAL DIALECTS
TYPES OF LINGUISTIC ITEMS
Types of Linguistic items can be named as at phonological level,
syntactic level and at lexical level.
Phonological level
A phonological component, which converts string of syntactic
elements into pronounceable utterance. The word phonology can
also refer to the phonological system (sound system) of a given
language.

Syntactic level
A syntactic component, comprising a basic set of phrase structure
rules which together with lexical information provides the deep
structure information about sentences, and a set of
transformational rules for generative surface structures.
Semantic level
A semantic component, which provides representation of
the meaning of lexical items to be used in a sentence.

CONVENTION AND NECESSITY
To find a general solution to the conflict
between convention and necessity as
explanations for the facts. It is that one
explanation is right in some cases.
For example, the choice between get and
obtain is a matter of convention, since there is no
general requirement that the more specific of two
terms should be the more formal.

Social Dialects
The most important social dialect in America is called
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).
AAVE is also called Black English and Ebonics.
Syntax is an important feature as it relates to the
verb to be. In AAVE, the verb to be is not always
conjugated (e.g., He be sick.)
AAVE differs from Midland English mostly in matters
of pronunciation.
Social Dialects
Feature Example
Dropped l help = hp
Dropped r your = y
th = ch with = wch
th = d the = d
sk = ks ask = aks
st = sk street = skreet
Examples of AAVE Pronunciation