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ELE 12 Midterm Handouts

This document discusses several topics related to language and linguistics, including: 1. The definitions of race, ethnicity, nationality, and other sociolinguistic concepts. 2. The different types of language change, including sound, morphological, syntactic, semantic/lexical, and changes due to borrowing. 3. How language change spreads from group to group, style to style, and word to word. 4. The functions of speech and concepts of politeness, face, and face-threatening acts. 5. Robin Lakoff's work on gender differences in speech and characteristics of women's language. 6. The topics of gossip and the linguistic construction of sexuality.

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Mayeeng Cosenello II
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40 views3 pages

ELE 12 Midterm Handouts

This document discusses several topics related to language and linguistics, including: 1. The definitions of race, ethnicity, nationality, and other sociolinguistic concepts. 2. The different types of language change, including sound, morphological, syntactic, semantic/lexical, and changes due to borrowing. 3. How language change spreads from group to group, style to style, and word to word. 4. The functions of speech and concepts of politeness, face, and face-threatening acts. 5. Robin Lakoff's work on gender differences in speech and characteristics of women's language. 6. The topics of gossip and the linguistic construction of sexuality.

Uploaded by

Mayeeng Cosenello II
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Race refers to a group of people who possess similar and distinct physical characteristics … such as skin color

or hair type.
Ethnicity or ethnic group refers to a category of people who regard themselves to be different from other
groups based on common ancestral, cultural, national, and social experience.
Nationality pertains to the country of citizenship meaning it generally refers to where a person was born and
holds citizenship. It is the legal relationship between a person and a sovereign state.
Density refers to whether members of a person’s network are in touch with each other.
Plexity is a measure of the range of different types of transaction people are involved in with different
individuals.
A uniplex relationship is one where the link with the other person is in only one area.
Multiplex relationships, by contrast, involve interactions with others along several dimensions.
The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth
to eighteenth centuries. It was triggered by the ascendency of King William the Conqueror.
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation (phonetic change) or
sound system structures (phonological change).
Morphological change is a type of language change that may affect the phonetic representation of, the
meaning conveyed by or the usage rules of a given morpheme.
Syntactic change is a type of language change that may affect the basic word order of the sentence.
Ex: Old English: John I know. Modern English: I know John.
Semantic/Lexical change is a type of language change that affects the meaning of the words. Change in the
meanings of words is known as semantic change and can be viewed as part of the more general phenomenon
of lexical change, or change in a language's vocabulary. Words not only can change their meaning but also
can become obsolete. For example, modern readers require a note to explain Shakespeare's word hent (take
hold of), which is no longer in use.
Change due to borrowing: Linguists use the terms borrowing and loan to refer to instances in which one
language takes something from another language. The most obvious cases of borrowing are in vocabulary.
English, for example, has borrowed a large part of its vocabulary from French and Latin. Most of these
borrowed words are somewhat more scholarly, as in the word human (Latin humanus).

How does language change spread?


From group to group: A change may spread from one particular age group to another particular group.
Linguistic changes infiltrate groups from the speech of people on the margins between social or regional
groups – via the ‘middle’ people who have contacts in more than one group.
From style to style: In the speech of a particular individual, it suggests the change spreads from one style to
another (say from more formal speech to more casual speech), while at the same time it spreads from one
individual to another within a social group, and subsequently from one social group to another.
From word to word: Language change also spread from one word to another. Sound changes typically
spread through different words one by one. This is called lexical diffusion.
Functions of speech:
1. Expressive utterances express the speaker’s feelings, e.g. I’m feeling great today.
2. Directive utterances attempt to get someone to do something, e.g. Clear the table.
3. Referential utterances provide information, e.g. At the third stroke it will be three o’clock precisely.
4. Metalinguistic utterances comment on language itself, e.g. ‘Hegemony’ is not a common word.
5. Poetic utterances focus on aesthetic features of language, e.g. a poem, an ear-catching motto, a rhyme,
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
6. Phatic utterances express solidarity and empathy with others, e.g. Hi, how are you, lovely day isn’t it!

Politeness: Politeness can be defined as the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face.
Face means the public self-image of a person. It refers to that emotional and social sense of self that everyone
has and expects everyone else to recognize.
Face-Threatening Act (FTA) is one that would make someone possibly lose face, or damage it in some way.
Negative Face is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed by others.
Positive Face is the need to be accepted, even liked, by others, to be treated as a member of the same group,
and to know that his/her wants are shared by others.
Politeness can be expressed through positive politeness to try to make the other person like you: e.g.
"please" or negative politeness to try to give the other person some space and not impose: e.g. "I know this is
a terrible imposition"
Robin Lakoff: She was the first researcher to approach the topic of gender-based differences in speech. Her
work laid the foundations for a considerable body of subsequent research.
Lakoff suggested that women’s speech was characterized by linguistic features such as the following.
(a) Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know , sort of , well , you see.
(b) Tag questions, e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?
(c) Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it’s really good.
(d) Empty adjectives, e.g. divine , charming , cute .
(e) Precise color terms, e.g. magenta , aquamarine .
(f) Intensifiers such as just and so , e.g. I like him so much .
(g) Hypercorrect grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms.
(h) Superpolite forms, e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms.
(i) Avoidance of strong swear words, e.g. fudge , my goodness.
(j) Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance.
Gossip describes the kind of relaxed in-group talk that goes on between people in informal contexts. In
Western society, gossip is defined as ‘idle talk’ and considered particularly characteristic of women’s
interaction. Its overall function for women is to affirm solidarity and maintain the social relationships between
the women involved. Women’s gossip focuses predominantly on personal experiences and personal
relationships, on personal problems and feelings. It may include criticism of the behavior of others, but women
tend to avoid criticizing people directly because this would cause discomfort.

The linguistic construction of sexuality:


Sexism in language exists when language devalues members of a certain gender. Sexist language, in many
instances, promotes male superiority. Sexism in language affects consciousness, perceptions of reality,
encoding and transmitting cultural meanings and socialization.
Feminist language reform or feminist language planning refers to the effort, often of political and grassroots
movements, to change how language is used to gender people, activities and ideas on an individual and
societal level.

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