Lesson 2

Mai comes from Quang Binh, a province in the central of

Vietnam. She is studying at ULIS, VNU.
When she talks to her classmates, almost none of her
classmates realize that she is not from Hanoi or the
nearby provinces. But when overhearing her on the
phone with her family members, her friends in Hanoi
can t understand what she is talking about though she is
using Vietnamese language.
What explanation could you suggest this case?
 Speech community: (B. Spolsky- 1998:24)
(1). All the people who speak a single language
(share same or different notions in phonology
and grammar)
(2). A complex interlocking network of
communication whose members share
knowledge about and attitudes towards
language use.
 Wardhaugh, R. (2006:120)
Not only must members of the speech community
share a set of grammatical rules, but there must also be
regular language use and social structure; i.e. there must
be norms which may vary by sub-group and social
setting.
 Gumperz (in Wardhaugh 2006:120)
Wherever the relationships between language choice
and rules of social appropriateness can be formalized,
they allowed us to group relevant linguistic forms into
distinct dialects, styles and occupational or other special
parlances.
More recently, this term has been narrowed down to
communities of practices, which are composed of
people who:
develop activities and ways of engaging in those
activities, they develop common knowledge and beliefs,
ways of relating to each other, ways of talking – in short,
practices.
(Eckert and McConnell-Ginnet 2003: 57 –in Chaika,E.
2007: 374)
 The community of practice is smaller than a speech
community. People may belong to several
communities of practice.
E.g. People work in a certain organization may adopt
speech forms different from other organizations or
teams.
 People belong to several speech communities at the
same time: occupational, regional, social, ethnic,
foreign language(s), age, race, gender, education,
common disabilities or illnesses and perhaps even
others; and these interact in highly variable ways for
each speaker. These are what were later named
communities of practices. (Romaine, p14)
 As we have seen, we each learn our language s by
ourselves, so individual variation is inevitable… )t
has also been shown that the more people interact
with each other, the more alike they sound. In
turn, this may be affected by community
standards.
Chaika, E. – 2007: 375
E.g. Students at a university come from different
regions  different dialects  affect their speech
 Local variation of speech
Dialect

Dialect
 A variety of a language used recognizably in a
specific region or by a specific social class (a
social dialect or sociolect) (Spolsky- 1998:122)
 A variety of a language, spoken in one part of a
country (regional dialect) or by people
belonging to a particular social class (social
dialect), which is different in some words,
grammar, and/or pronunciation from other
forms of the same language.
A dialect is often associated with a particular
accent. (J. Richards – 1996)
 Local variation of speech
Dialect

 E.g. Pronunciation:
The Yorkshireman: broad [æ], the glottal stop of
the Cockney, the [r]–less dialect of upper-class
Boston…
Lexicon:
Peanuts may be called ground nuts or goobers
or pinders in different parts of America
 Local variation of speech
Dialect
The British have stereotypes of American
pronunciation:
 Pronouncing /r/ in words like car, girl, bachelor
and park.
 Pronouncing words like can’t, aunt and dance
with [æ] rather than the British [a:]
 Pronouncing the vowel in body and top as [a]
rather than [o]
( Chaika, E. – 2007: 395 )
 Eskimos: 4 words for snow aput, qana, piasirpaq
and qimuqsuq.
 African languages do not have a word for snow.
 Russian has six separate words denoting different
friendly relationships: drug, podruga, tovarisc,
prijatel and znakomyj.
 Friends in American is a very loose term.
(Chaika, E. – 2007: 423,424)
 Vietnamese has many words to talk about rice:
gạo, cốm, nếp, lúa, thóc …
 Do English pronouns encode the
gender of the speaker?
 Sexist language represents women and men
unequally.
 Sexist language also presents stereotypes of
women and men.
 Whether the language counts as sexist or not can
be argued to depend on the distribution of power
in society as a whole.
(Thomas, L. 2004: 76)
E.g. man and mankind; female judge; lady doctor;
male nurse
 Symmetry and Asymmetry
Symmetry
Generic horse
Female mare
Male stallion
Young foal (either sex)
Young female filly
Young male colt
 Symmetry and Asymmetry
Asymmetry
Generic Man
Female woman
Male man
Young child
Young female girl
Young male boy
 Symmetry and Asymmetry
Asymmetry

Woman Miss./ Mrs./ Ms.

Man Mr.
 Unmarked and marked terms
- Marked terms (additional suffix)
waiter waitress
host hostess
actor actress
- Unmarked terms
Some terms imply the norm of gender: surgeon,
doctor, professor and nurse  refer to woman
surgeon, lady doctor, woman professor and male
nurse.
 Semantic derogation
Semantic  meaning, deroge  to cause to seem
inferior.
E.g. Master Mistress
(e s my master  (e s my boss/ (e has more
power than me.
She s my mistress  She s my illicit lover. less
powerful, in a sexual capacity)
 Semantic derogation
E.g. Bachelor Spinster Old maid
Bachelor  positive connotation: someone who has
succeeded in not getting tied down.
Spinster and Old maid  someone old, grey, ugly
and unable to get a man.
 The problem is therefore not so much a linguistic
one as a cultural one. Lakoff believes that the
distinction between men s and women s language is
a symptom of a problem in our culture, and not
primarily the problem itself. Rather, it reflects the
fact that men and women are expected to have
different interests and different roles, hold different
types of conversations, and react differently to other
people.
Wardhaugh,R (2006: 320)
 Topic development
Another way women s and men s conversations appear
to vary is in the topics they choose to discuss. Women, it
is said, select more personal topics: their family, their
emotions and their friendships. Men, on the other hand,
are said to prefer more impersonal topics, often based on
factual or technical knowledge, such as football, cars or
home improvements. These require fewer intimate
revelations, and also emphasis the exchange of
information as the reason for the conversation. Women s
conversations focus more on the development and
maintenance of the relationship between speakers,
fostered by the exchange of intimate details and
supportive listening.
Shân Wareing 2004: 89
(1)
A: what- what are these pictures doing here?
B: careful of them, darling. Gangan [grandmother]
painted them.
A: me like a little one best.
B: do you?
A: which one do you like first? A big one or a little
one?
B: I like that white one.
(Fletcher - 1988: 545)
(2)
A: Anna s so weird.
B: Anna. Sometimes kind of hyper hyper.
A: and sometimes kind of lowper lowper.
B: no and [laughter] sometimes kind of We
should care for the animals of this world, you
know.
(Coates - 1996)
 A language reflects kinds of distinctions that are held
important.
 Age distinctions are frequently reflected in many
languages.
E.g. the use of certain pronouns and addressing forms to
show respects to the older.
in English: senior citizens…
in Vietnamese: Cụ, Ông, Bà, Bô lão đáng kính …
 Slang is the linguistic prerogative of young people
and generally sounds odd in the mouth of an older
person.
(Holmes,J. - 2008: 174)
 Internet slang
Some examples of internet slang are: "lol"
meaning "laugh out loud", "rofl" meaning
"rolling on the floor laughing" , "lmao"
meaning “laughing my ass off”, "omg or
omfg" meaning "oh my god".
 What is meant by politics ?
Politics is concerned with power: the power to make
decisions, to control resources, to control other people s
behaviors and often to control their values.
(Jones, J. in Thomas, L – 2004: 36)
E.g. Buy a Samsung smartphone made in Vietnam.
Your decision:
whether:
- to support Samsung business?
- to contribute to the Vietnamese workers pay.
- to help Vietnamese government collect more
taxes?
 Linguistic determinism: language can be said to
provide a framework for our thoughts, and that it is
very difficult to think outside that framework.
(Jones, J. in Thomas, L – 2004: 39)
Language can be used not only to steer people’s
thoughts and beliefs but also to control their thoughts
and beliefs.
 A future Conservative Government will introduce a
fairer funding formula for school.
(Conservative Shadow Education Secretary, Damian
Green, 16 March, 2003)
 We have arrived at an important moment in
confronting the threat posed to our nation and to
peace by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of terror.
(George W. Bush in the White House press conference
of 6 March 2003)
(extracted from Jones, J. in Thomas, L – 2004: 39)
Choose one of the following topics
1. Select some newspapers over a few days and collect as
many examples as you can to find sexist references to
men and women.
2. Make a collection of current slang words used by
children and teenagers. Ask 5 people of different ages if
they can give you a definition for those words. Do
people of different age groups have differing
perceptions of what those words mean and how they
are used?
3. Listen or read transcripts of interviews with politicians
and find instances where the presuppositions in the
interviews questions can help the politicians
emphasizes their intended meanings .