Diversity Within English Essay -- essays research papers

Diversity Within EnglishIn order to understand how manner of speaking variation descriptors are used, wefirst must understand what language variation is. We fucking say that the U.S. islinguistic aloney diverse because of the multitude of languages spoken here, butwe can also find diversity within these languages. All languages slang bothdialectical variations and registral variations. These variations, or dialects,can differ in lexicon, phonology, and/or syntax from the Standard quarrel thatwe often think of as correct Language, although they are non necessarily lessproper than, say, Standard English. It depends on where, by whom, and in whatsituation the dialect is used as to whether or not it is appropriate.Most raft are familiar with regional dialects, such as Boston,Brooklyn, or Southern. These types of variations usually occur because ofimmigration and settlement patterns. People tend to seek out others samethemselves. Regional variations tend to become to a greater ext ent pronounced as the speechcommunity is much isolated by physical geography, i.e. mountain ranges, rivers.Linguists have through extensive studies on regional dialects, producing detailedLinguistic Atlases. Many linguists can tell where a person is from just byknowing whether a person carries groceries home from the supermarket in a paperbag or from the grocery store in a paper sack (Yule 184). And the person whocomes home from the supermarket with a paper sack serves to remind us thatlanguage variation is not a discrete, but rather a continuous variable.Characteristics of the dialect are more pronounced in the center of the speechcommunity and tend to be less discernible at the outer boundaries, where theyoften overlap other regional dialects.Within, and between, these regional variations we find the socialdialects. The primary social factors that influence dialects are class,education, occupation, ethnicity, sex, and age (Ferguson 52, Yule 191). Andsocial dialects can vary on a ny or all three descriptor levels syntax orgrammar, lexicon or vocabulary, and phonetics or pronunciation. Socialdialects are also where the described differences are often defined asstigmatized or nonstigmatized (Ferguson 52). Stigmatized items include use ofthe double negative (grammar), substituting the d sound for t... ...frequency. Using in for ing, as in goin is universal acrossstatus groups, but it is strand almost twice as often in the lower working classthan in the lower middle class, and almost four times more than in the uppermiddle class (Ferguson 61).With all these different variables that intersect and overlap with thedifferent dialect variations is is a wonder that any sense can be made ofAmerican English at all. But there two other important point to remember.Language universals such as displacement, arbitrariness, productivity, ethnicaltransmission, discreteness and duality are unique to human language (Yule 22)and provides a base or norm for measuring variations. Implicationalrelationships provide a room of measuring relative distance between the differentvariations and also serve as a means to predict changes in individual dialects(Ferguson 66).Works ConsultedFerguson, Charles A., and Shirley Brice Heath, eds. Language in the USA.Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1981.Piatt, Bill. Only English? Law and Language Policy in the United States.Albuquerque U of New Mexico P, 1990.Yule, George. The Study of Language. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1985.