Linguistics post 3: Lects - 07/14/10 04:18 PM
Lects
Welcome to the third in a series of threads on linguistics. (The first two were “Why I Dislike Ultra Woman” and “What is Linguistics, Anyway?”) Today’s post is on lects. A lect is a variety of a particular language as used by an individual or a group of language users. Lects may vary markedly from one another in terms of their pronunciation and their vocabulary. Different lects within a language are far less likely to vary in their morphology (word structure) and syntax (sentence structure), although there may be some variation in these areas as well.
The most well-known type of lect is a dialect – the variety common to a group within a particular geographical area. At what point do dialects become so different that they are considered to be different languages? Is it when they differ so much that speakers of the two varieties can no longer understand one another (the mutual intelligibility criterion)?
It may surprise you to know that the answer to whether two communication systems are dialects of the same language or two different languages is NOT determined either by their mutual intelligibility or by their linguistic similarity. It is generally determined by the geopolitics of the speakers. There is an aphorism that says that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
Some of the different dialects of Chinese are mutually unintelligible when spoken orally – in order to communicate, speakers of two such different dialects will either find a dialect they have in common (often Mandarin); or, failing that, while they speak they will use their index fingers to “write” what they are saying on the palm of their hands for the other conversant(s) to read. The Chinese system of writing attempts to transcribe the meanings rather than sounds of the language; it uses ideograms or logograms rather than letters. Each word would be represented by one or more ideograms. The speakers of the different dialects all share a writing system.
From a linguistic standpoint, and from the standpoint of mutual intelligibility, Swedish and Norwegian are much more alike than are some of the different dialects of Chinese. The same could be said of Spanish and Italian. The reason that the Chinese variants are considered to be dialects of a single language while Swedish and Norwegian, and Spanish and Italian, are considered to be separate languages has far more to do with national boundaries than linguistic ones.
Of course, the dialect vs. language decision is not as easy as using the “army and navy” test. If it were, I would not speak English; I would speak the “United States-an” language. (Of course, Noah Webster, the creator of the first American English dictionary, had wanted the U.S. to have our version of English be considered a separate, American, language, as a further means of showing our independence from England. Incidentally, it is him we can thank for many of the spelling differences such as our “color” vs. England’s “colour”.)
Another example: Is Scots a dialect of English or is it a separate language? Your answer will likely have at least as much to do with your political leanings as it will with any linguistic analysis.
As an aside, this discussion brings to mind a line from my favourite musical – My Fair Lady. In the song which begins, “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?” Henry Higgins says, “Why in America, they haven’t used it [i.e., English] for years!” The musical is based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. It was also Shaw who pointed out that, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.”
So, as with many things language-related, the difference between a dialect and a language can by no means be determined by a single test. The division between a dialect and a language is societally imposed; there is no single criterion (e.g., mutual intelligibility, linguistic similarity, or geo-political boundaries) which an objective observer would be able to apply as a litmus test.
Incidentally, *everyone* who speaks a language speaks a dialect of that language. Some dialects are considered more favourably within a given society than others, and some mark one more obviously than others as having lived in a particular region, but *everyone* speaks a dialect. If you hear someone contrasting using a dialect with using “standard” English, you can rest assured that the person speaking has not learned the technical definition of a dialect! The “standard” would be considered a dialect, as well. I also wish to emphasize that *from a linguistic perspective* no lect is inherently superior to any other lect. Any perceived superiority is purely a subjective, social construct, not an objective, linguistic one. I plan to go into more detail about this in another thread.
In addition to dialects, there are other lects. For example:
- Age lects: You are far more likely to hear octogenarians than teenagers refer to ice boxes and horseless carriages, for example. Slang terminology tends to be very age specific. Everyone knows how ridiculous adults sound when they try to talk to their teenagers using the teenager’s slang.
- Gender lects: These are more pronounced in some languages than in others. A few generations ago, men in America were much more likely than women to swear aloud; that difference has lessened considerably in recent years.
To take an extreme example of a genderlect, according to http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/examples.jsp , “In one segment of the Dublin deaf community, the native [Irish Sign Language] vocabularies for women and men are so different that they can impair communication on the most mundane topics. For example, men and women have different signs for everyday terms, such as 'cat,' 'Monday,' 'night' and 'red.' These varieties emerged from sex-segregated education at two residential schools for the deaf in Dublin.”
A single word or phrase might mark multiple lects. If you knew nothing about a person other than that they would say, “Oh, dearie me!” when they were flustered, you would likely guess the person to be an older woman.
- Idiolects: An idiolect is the way an individual speaks. No two people speak a language in the exact same way. Although there is obviously a great deal of overlap – or mutual intelligibility would be impossible – different individuals have slightly different vocabularies, and may use the same words in slightly different ways. Different people will have slightly different pronunciations of words and different preferences for how to assemble a sentence. It is such variations which allow experts to say with reasonable confidence that it was, in fact, the defendant who left the harassing message on the plaintiff’s answering machine or that a newly discovered text is not a hitherto unknown play by Shakespeare.
Please note that I have liberally scattered “weasel words” such as “tend,” and “likely,” throughout my discussion of lects. Although I would be rather surprised to find a teenage boy seriously uttering “Dearie me,” it could well happen. Most people have probably heard some adult *attempting* to sound “cool” by using teenage slang. And of course if one moves, one’s own idiolect may gradually change from being typical of the dialect spoken in the old place and may acquire aspects of the dialect spoken in the new region. Many people are bi- or multi-lectal: Able to switch the lect they use depending on the people with whom they are speaking.
“Register” is the term used for the language variety used for a particular purpose or social setting. For example, “The broad croaked” and “The woman passed away” convey the same basic meaning – that an adult female human being died – but the meaning is expressed using very different registers. The two sentences would not be used interchangeably, and they would have very different impacts upon the listener. A more subtle example would involve how carefully one chooses to articulate words: For example, “walking” would sound more formal than “walkin’,” and “Did you eat?” would be more formal than, “Djeet?” (If you listen closely, in the United States, at least, you will often hear people say something that sounds much more like the latter than the former.) Every language actually has five different registers; if you are interested in learning a little about all five, I would refer you to http://www.pflugervilleisd.net/curriculum/ela/grade1/documents/LanguageRegisters.pdf .
There is a misconception that the more formal registers are better than the less formal ones; but each serves its own purpose. Each is appropriate in some settings and inappropriate in others. An analogy frequently used by linguists is that registers are like clothing: One cannot say that a tuxedo is better than a bathing suit: The former would be uncomfortable and not particularly useful on a beach; the latter would be preposterous at a wedding. Each article of clothing, and each register or lect, has its own place.
*Much* more could be said about lects; but I hope that this post has given you a general feel for some of the different types of lects. In my next thread, I plan to discuss common misconceptions about signed languages.
Welcome to the third in a series of threads on linguistics. (The first two were “Why I Dislike Ultra Woman” and “What is Linguistics, Anyway?”) Today’s post is on lects. A lect is a variety of a particular language as used by an individual or a group of language users. Lects may vary markedly from one another in terms of their pronunciation and their vocabulary. Different lects within a language are far less likely to vary in their morphology (word structure) and syntax (sentence structure), although there may be some variation in these areas as well.
The most well-known type of lect is a dialect – the variety common to a group within a particular geographical area. At what point do dialects become so different that they are considered to be different languages? Is it when they differ so much that speakers of the two varieties can no longer understand one another (the mutual intelligibility criterion)?
It may surprise you to know that the answer to whether two communication systems are dialects of the same language or two different languages is NOT determined either by their mutual intelligibility or by their linguistic similarity. It is generally determined by the geopolitics of the speakers. There is an aphorism that says that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
Some of the different dialects of Chinese are mutually unintelligible when spoken orally – in order to communicate, speakers of two such different dialects will either find a dialect they have in common (often Mandarin); or, failing that, while they speak they will use their index fingers to “write” what they are saying on the palm of their hands for the other conversant(s) to read. The Chinese system of writing attempts to transcribe the meanings rather than sounds of the language; it uses ideograms or logograms rather than letters. Each word would be represented by one or more ideograms. The speakers of the different dialects all share a writing system.
From a linguistic standpoint, and from the standpoint of mutual intelligibility, Swedish and Norwegian are much more alike than are some of the different dialects of Chinese. The same could be said of Spanish and Italian. The reason that the Chinese variants are considered to be dialects of a single language while Swedish and Norwegian, and Spanish and Italian, are considered to be separate languages has far more to do with national boundaries than linguistic ones.
Of course, the dialect vs. language decision is not as easy as using the “army and navy” test. If it were, I would not speak English; I would speak the “United States-an” language. (Of course, Noah Webster, the creator of the first American English dictionary, had wanted the U.S. to have our version of English be considered a separate, American, language, as a further means of showing our independence from England. Incidentally, it is him we can thank for many of the spelling differences such as our “color” vs. England’s “colour”.)
Another example: Is Scots a dialect of English or is it a separate language? Your answer will likely have at least as much to do with your political leanings as it will with any linguistic analysis.
As an aside, this discussion brings to mind a line from my favourite musical – My Fair Lady. In the song which begins, “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?” Henry Higgins says, “Why in America, they haven’t used it [i.e., English] for years!” The musical is based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. It was also Shaw who pointed out that, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.”
So, as with many things language-related, the difference between a dialect and a language can by no means be determined by a single test. The division between a dialect and a language is societally imposed; there is no single criterion (e.g., mutual intelligibility, linguistic similarity, or geo-political boundaries) which an objective observer would be able to apply as a litmus test.
Incidentally, *everyone* who speaks a language speaks a dialect of that language. Some dialects are considered more favourably within a given society than others, and some mark one more obviously than others as having lived in a particular region, but *everyone* speaks a dialect. If you hear someone contrasting using a dialect with using “standard” English, you can rest assured that the person speaking has not learned the technical definition of a dialect! The “standard” would be considered a dialect, as well. I also wish to emphasize that *from a linguistic perspective* no lect is inherently superior to any other lect. Any perceived superiority is purely a subjective, social construct, not an objective, linguistic one. I plan to go into more detail about this in another thread.
In addition to dialects, there are other lects. For example:
- Age lects: You are far more likely to hear octogenarians than teenagers refer to ice boxes and horseless carriages, for example. Slang terminology tends to be very age specific. Everyone knows how ridiculous adults sound when they try to talk to their teenagers using the teenager’s slang.
- Gender lects: These are more pronounced in some languages than in others. A few generations ago, men in America were much more likely than women to swear aloud; that difference has lessened considerably in recent years.
To take an extreme example of a genderlect, according to http:/
A single word or phrase might mark multiple lects. If you knew nothing about a person other than that they would say, “Oh, dearie me!” when they were flustered, you would likely guess the person to be an older woman.
- Idiolects: An idiolect is the way an individual speaks. No two people speak a language in the exact same way. Although there is obviously a great deal of overlap – or mutual intelligibility would be impossible – different individuals have slightly different vocabularies, and may use the same words in slightly different ways. Different people will have slightly different pronunciations of words and different preferences for how to assemble a sentence. It is such variations which allow experts to say with reasonable confidence that it was, in fact, the defendant who left the harassing message on the plaintiff’s answering machine or that a newly discovered text is not a hitherto unknown play by Shakespeare.
Please note that I have liberally scattered “weasel words” such as “tend,” and “likely,” throughout my discussion of lects. Although I would be rather surprised to find a teenage boy seriously uttering “Dearie me,” it could well happen. Most people have probably heard some adult *attempting* to sound “cool” by using teenage slang. And of course if one moves, one’s own idiolect may gradually change from being typical of the dialect spoken in the old place and may acquire aspects of the dialect spoken in the new region. Many people are bi- or multi-lectal: Able to switch the lect they use depending on the people with whom they are speaking.
“Register” is the term used for the language variety used for a particular purpose or social setting. For example, “The broad croaked” and “The woman passed away” convey the same basic meaning – that an adult female human being died – but the meaning is expressed using very different registers. The two sentences would not be used interchangeably, and they would have very different impacts upon the listener. A more subtle example would involve how carefully one chooses to articulate words: For example, “walking” would sound more formal than “walkin’,” and “Did you eat?” would be more formal than, “Djeet?” (If you listen closely, in the United States, at least, you will often hear people say something that sounds much more like the latter than the former.) Every language actually has five different registers; if you are interested in learning a little about all five, I would refer you to http:/
There is a misconception that the more formal registers are better than the less formal ones; but each serves its own purpose. Each is appropriate in some settings and inappropriate in others. An analogy frequently used by linguists is that registers are like clothing: One cannot say that a tuxedo is better than a bathing suit: The former would be uncomfortable and not particularly useful on a beach; the latter would be preposterous at a wedding. Each article of clothing, and each register or lect, has its own place.
*Much* more could be said about lects; but I hope that this post has given you a general feel for some of the different types of lects. In my next thread, I plan to discuss common misconceptions about signed languages.