Sociolinguistics: Crash Course Linguistics #7 - By CrashCourse
Transcript
00:0-1 | Hi , I'm taylor and welcome to crash course linguistics | |
00:02 | . Everyone has an accent . There's no such thing | |
00:04 | as an accent , this version of english or any | |
00:07 | other language . The many varied ways we speak are | |
00:10 | influenced by who we grew up with and where we | |
00:12 | live and tons of other demographic factors and the way | |
00:15 | we feel about how we speak and how other sound | |
00:18 | to us is influenced by society . Language can have | |
00:20 | a huge impact on our workplaces , media and even | |
00:24 | a trip to the store . So it's no wonder | |
00:26 | our personal accents and languages get tangled up in our | |
00:29 | identities . Looking at the social element of language and | |
00:32 | how language forms . Part of our identity is the | |
00:34 | study of socio linguistics . We talk like the people | |
00:49 | we know that can include our accent , the way | |
00:51 | we pronounce things , but also other linguistic features like | |
00:54 | the words and grammar we use and especially before the | |
00:57 | internet . One of the biggest factors that affects who | |
01:00 | we know and who we can talk to is geography | |
01:03 | . One of the earliest kinds of socio linguistics was | |
01:06 | dialect ology , trying to map out all of the | |
01:09 | regional variations of a given language dialect . Ologists were | |
01:12 | historically focused on regional variations . A dialect is any | |
01:16 | variety of a language associated with a group of people | |
01:19 | . Early dialect . Ologists traveled around by car or | |
01:22 | bicycle with a notebook or tape recorder interviewing locals and | |
01:25 | recording how they spoke as technology evolved . They also | |
01:29 | started using telephone calls and then internet surveys and social | |
01:32 | media data . They found that generally speaking , the | |
01:35 | longer a group of people has been living somewhere and | |
01:37 | speaking the same language , the more dense the linguistic | |
01:40 | variation in that area . There are a few specific | |
01:43 | languages that have stayed relatively stable in places like Switzerland | |
01:47 | and Papua new guinea . So we see lots of | |
01:49 | variation and a pretty small area between individual villages . | |
01:53 | In contrast , languages like Arabic , chinese , english | |
01:56 | , french spanish and Bansal have spread over wider geographic | |
02:00 | areas because of more recent colonization . So we see | |
02:04 | a variation between larger , more spread out regions like | |
02:07 | the city or country level by the way , Bansal | |
02:10 | is the name for the group of related signed languages | |
02:12 | , including british sign language . Asl unused in Australia | |
02:16 | . New Zealand sign language as well as south african | |
02:18 | sign language . Anyway , you may even have encountered | |
02:21 | some of the fruits of english dialect ology here on | |
02:24 | Youtube . Those accent challenge videos you may have watched | |
02:27 | actually use a list of words from a linguistic study | |
02:29 | from 2003 and I've experienced variations in real life myself | |
02:34 | . When I was growing up in Wisconsin , I | |
02:35 | always called that thing that you drink water from in | |
02:37 | school a bubbler . But then when I moved to | |
02:39 | new york , I learned that people here didn't know | |
02:42 | what I was talking about and I had to learn | |
02:43 | to call it a water fountain . But it's not | |
02:45 | a straightforward switch . When I'm on the phone with | |
02:47 | my family in Wisconsin , I switch right back to | |
02:49 | bubbler and bag instead of fountain and bag . I | |
02:53 | also encountered regional accent variations . When I was learning | |
02:55 | spanish , my professor in the U . S . | |
02:57 | Spoke spanish from Argentina and sounded completely different from the | |
03:01 | professors I met abroad in Madrid . Now in New | |
03:04 | York , I mostly encounter Puerto Rican and Dominican varieties | |
03:07 | of Spanish . It's fun to notice all the variations | |
03:10 | even within a geographic region . Other factors influence how | |
03:13 | we speak . For example , we tend to spend | |
03:15 | more time with people close to our own age than | |
03:18 | 30 years older or younger than us which is why | |
03:21 | linguists find that people of different ages talk differently . | |
03:24 | Other demographic factors also influence who people hang out with | |
03:27 | and sound like things like education , class , race | |
03:31 | , ethnicity , gender and sexuality . Traditionally speaking , | |
03:34 | socio linguists have studied these demographics as a way of | |
03:37 | getting insight into how different people talk . And sure | |
03:40 | enough , they do find linguistic varieties associated with all | |
03:43 | of these demographics . The way I talk represents important | |
03:46 | parts of me . I'm a 20 something college educated | |
03:49 | , multiracial queer woman and I use differences in my | |
03:52 | language to express each of those identities and all of | |
03:56 | the combinations of them in certain ways at certain times | |
03:59 | . Now that social media lets us more easily graph | |
04:01 | out people's social connections though , linguists have found that | |
04:04 | our individual networks play a big role in our language | |
04:07 | choices beyond demographic categorization . So if most of your | |
04:10 | friends are actually much older or younger than you , | |
04:13 | for example , you might talk more like them than | |
04:15 | your age mates . Like I was on tumblr and | |
04:18 | Youtube a lot in the early 20 tens and it | |
04:20 | definitely had an effect on how I speak , like | |
04:23 | saying lol out loud signed languages also display variations in | |
04:27 | dialect . For example , american sign language is more | |
04:30 | closely related to french sign language than to the Bansal | |
04:32 | group because french signers were involved in early american schools | |
04:35 | for the death . There are also differences between black | |
04:38 | sl and white sl because of racial segregation in deaf | |
04:41 | education . Similarly , in the past , there were | |
04:43 | clear distinctions between the varieties of irish sign language used | |
04:46 | by men and women because of gender segregation and irish | |
04:49 | schools for the deaf . Though younger , I sl | |
04:52 | signers have been breaking down these differences . Socio linguists | |
04:54 | have also found that the more closely we identify with | |
04:57 | a group , the more likely we are to speak | |
04:59 | like members of that group , People who expressed more | |
05:01 | rootedness in their local community tend to speak with more | |
05:04 | features of Appalachian english , jewish women . In one | |
05:06 | study showed variation depending on how closely they related to | |
05:09 | their jewish faith and young men in Washington , D | |
05:12 | . C . With one black parent and one white | |
05:14 | parent are likely to talk differently depending on whether they | |
05:16 | identify as biracial or black . But because people often | |
05:19 | change the way they talk depending on who they're talking | |
05:22 | to socio linguists trying to study linguistic variety can run | |
05:26 | into the observer's paradox . That's when the very act | |
05:28 | of participating in a study makes people talk differently . | |
05:31 | Because university research is a formal social context with a | |
05:35 | very different atmosphere than say talking to your friend on | |
05:38 | twitter . Let's observe how one language researcher dealt with | |
05:41 | the observers paradox with a visit to the thought bubble | |
05:44 | . William Lobov is a linguist who is interested in | |
05:46 | the classic new york city accent . The one that | |
05:49 | drops the R after vowels . You might have seen | |
05:51 | it on T shirts like I love new york , | |
05:54 | I'm new here , I'm very sorry . Back in | |
05:56 | the 19 sixties Lobo wanted to figure out what social | |
05:59 | factors influenced whether people said they are . Instead of | |
06:02 | the lab , he went to a fancy department store | |
06:04 | , a mid range department store and a bargain department | |
06:07 | store . In each store , he picked a department | |
06:09 | on the fourth floor , say the shoe section . | |
06:12 | Liubov then approached various sales people and ask them where | |
06:15 | to get shoes . Since both fourth and floor are | |
06:17 | words with an R . After a vowel . He | |
06:19 | could listen closely to hear whether they said they are | |
06:22 | not . When they replied , the salesperson would either | |
06:24 | say fourth floor or fourth floor and then Lobo would | |
06:27 | say pardon . So the salesperson would repeat it more | |
06:29 | carefully above would then head off . But instead of | |
06:31 | buying shoes he'd pull out his notebook and write down | |
06:34 | whether the person used the are . Each time He | |
06:36 | repeated this over and over at three Department stores . | |
06:39 | And if you think that sounds a bit suspicious you'd | |
06:41 | be right . Apparently . He got questioned a few | |
06:43 | times whoops . At the end of the study , | |
06:46 | Lebow found that the staff at the fanciest department store | |
06:49 | were most likely to pronounce the R followed by the | |
06:52 | mid range store and finally the bargain store . He | |
06:54 | also noticed that people at all three stores were more | |
06:56 | likely to use the r pronunciation when they were asked | |
06:59 | to repeat themselves . If they had come into the | |
07:01 | university for a study they might have all used this | |
07:04 | more careful style of speech the whole time That are | |
07:07 | , was associated with how prestigious someone wanted to sound | |
07:10 | , even if everyone was from new york . Thanks | |
07:13 | thought bubble for taking a shopping . This study found | |
07:16 | a way out of the observers paradox and opened the | |
07:18 | door to framing language differences around social identities and not | |
07:22 | only where someone was from , other researchers have navigated | |
07:25 | the observers paradox by studying a community that they are | |
07:28 | a research assistant are members of this means people are | |
07:31 | less likely to change the way they speak . Some | |
07:33 | linguists also specifically look at language that's public , like | |
07:37 | news interviews or Youtube videos because people in those recordings | |
07:40 | have already decided who they're speaking for . However , | |
07:43 | there's also a certain Youtuber voice . When I started | |
07:46 | to make vlogs , I noticed myself speaking differently . | |
07:49 | I've watched enough videos online that I found myself doing | |
07:52 | this sort of what's up guys upbeat Youtuber voice when | |
07:55 | I was in front of the camera . I'm actually | |
07:57 | a lot more mellow when I'm hanging out with my | |
07:59 | friends or even in my own videos compared to this | |
08:01 | video where I've two people directing me and I'm adjusting | |
08:04 | my speech to the conventions of the more academic content | |
08:07 | , changing the way we speak , depending on which | |
08:09 | group we're speaking to is called code switching . I | |
08:12 | also code switch depending on whether I'm talking with my | |
08:14 | black friends and white friends because one of my parents | |
08:17 | is black and the other one is white . I | |
08:19 | was exposed to two varieties of english from my family | |
08:21 | , african american english or E and standardized american english | |
08:26 | . So I'm a swap dialects depending on the situation | |
08:29 | . There's more pressure for many people to use white | |
08:31 | sounding standardized accents in professional contexts . Kind of like | |
08:35 | this one . And there's research backing me up socio | |
08:38 | linguists like john baugh and kelly , right ? Have | |
08:41 | found linguistic discrimination in areas like the housing market when | |
08:44 | someone calls and asks about renting a house with the | |
08:46 | black sounding accent , they're more likely to be told | |
08:49 | that it's no longer available only to get a yes | |
08:51 | . If they call back in a few minutes with | |
08:53 | the white sounding accent , that's just one example . | |
08:55 | But linguistic discrimination is pervasive affecting things from education to | |
09:00 | job prospects , even though african american english speakers face | |
09:03 | discrimination A . E . Has as much grammatical sophistication | |
09:07 | as any other variety of english . One example of | |
09:10 | the grammar of A is from a 2005 study by | |
09:13 | Janice Jackson and lisa green . These linguists showed young | |
09:16 | Children pictures of cookie monster's sick in bed with no | |
09:19 | cookies while Elmo was nearby eating all the cookies . | |
09:22 | When the kids were asked who is eating all the | |
09:24 | cookies , all the kids pointed to Elmo . But | |
09:27 | when Jackson asked who be eating cookies , the black | |
09:30 | kids who spoke a E pointed to cookie monster . | |
09:33 | While the white kids who spoke standardized american english pointed | |
09:36 | to Elmo . That's because B is a specific verb | |
09:39 | form and a E . Grammar known as the habitual | |
09:42 | be , which indicates an action that someone usually does | |
09:46 | . And as these kids new cookie monster's usual state | |
09:49 | involves eating cookies . Words from e regularly get appropriated | |
09:52 | into the non black american mainstream as the latest cool | |
09:55 | trends and onto the rest of the world through american | |
09:58 | cultural exports like shows and music . This popularity is | |
10:02 | actually part of a problematic double standard where non black | |
10:05 | people are rewarded for the same linguistic features that black | |
10:08 | people , their original creators face discrimination for seriously brands | |
10:12 | you can stop replying to my tweets like yes period | |
10:16 | says just like e every linguistic variety has its own | |
10:19 | cool features . When you start looking at it deeply | |
10:22 | . We could do a whole series about any of | |
10:24 | the hundreds of varieties just with an english alone , | |
10:27 | the social beliefs that people have about accents and dialects | |
10:30 | , whether they sound cool or boring , ugly or | |
10:33 | beautiful , silly or serious are really a reflection of | |
10:37 | our attitudes toward the people we associate with those ways | |
10:40 | of speaking . Standards like national languages and style guides | |
10:43 | exist because they're supported by people with power , not | |
10:46 | because some forms of language are inherently better than others | |
10:49 | . As people learning about linguistics , we have a | |
10:52 | responsibility to use our newfound understanding of how language works | |
10:56 | , to fight linguistic discrimination and to use language as | |
10:59 | a way of being more compassionate and respectful with each | |
11:02 | other . Next time we'll continue learning about the way | |
11:04 | people talk by looking at the study of speech sounds | |
11:06 | and the way linguists write them down . Thanks for | |
11:09 | watching this episode of crash course linguistics . If you | |
11:11 | want to help keep all crash course free for everybody | |
11:14 | forever , you can join our community on Patreon . |
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