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SOCIAL DIALECTS

TYPES OF LINGUISTICS ITEM

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SOCIAL DIALECTS

Social dialects /sociolects : varieties of alanguage used by particular social classes or

particular group

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Social dialects originate among social groups

and are mainly related to social class, age,

gender, education, occupation, religion, and

ethnicity or racial differences, and so on.

E.g. In Baghdad, the Christian, Jewish, and

Muslim inhabitants speak different varieties ofArabic.

SOCIAL DIALECTS

Italians pronounce badwith the vowel of beard

Jews pronounce dogwith the vowel of book.

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SOCIAL DIALECTS

Sociolects related to formality of speech, are categorized

as high and low sociolect.

The formal speech The informal speech

higher sociolect lower sociolect.

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SOCIAL DIALECTS

The study of social dialects has been mainly

concerned with speakers in town and cities. In the socialstudy of dialect, it is social class that is mainly used to define

groups of speakers as having something in common. The

two main groups are generally identified as middleclass,

those who have more years of education and perform non-

manual work, and working class, those who have fewer

years of education and perform manual work of some kind.

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The problem of defining social group or social class and giving

proper weight to the factors used to determine social position,

e.g., occupation, education, income, caste, etc.

These factors are related to how people speak. There are British

public-schooldialect and also an African American Vernacular

Englishdialect. People have stereotypical notions of how other

people speak. Social dialects can indeed be described

systematically.

SOCIAL DIALECTS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_grouphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_classhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_classhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_classhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_classhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_grouphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_grouphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_group

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TYPES OF LINGUISTIC ITEMSTypes of Linguistic items can be named as at phonological level,

syntactic level and at lexical level.

Phonological level

A phonological component, which converts string of syntactic

elements into pronounceable utterance. The word phonology canalso refer to the phonological system (sound system) of a given

language.

Syntactic levelA syntactic component, comprising a basic set of phrase structure

rules which together with lexical information provides the deep

structure information about sentences, and a set of

transformational rules for generative surface structures.

Semantic level A semantic component, which provides representation ofthe meaning of lexical items to be used in a sentence.

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CONVENTION AND NECESSITY

To find a general solution to the conflict

between convention and necessity as

explanations for the facts. It is that one

explanation is right in some cases.

For example, the choice between get and

obtainis a matter of convention, since there is no

general requirement that the more specific of twoterms should be the more formal.

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Social Dialects

The most important social dialect in America is called

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).AAVE is also called Black English and Ebonics.

Syntax is an important feature as it relates to the

verb to be. In AAVE, the verb to beis not always

conjugated (e.g., He be sick.)

AAVE differs from Midland English mostly in matters

of pronunciation.

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Social Dialects

Feature ExampleDropped l help = hp

Dropped r your = y

th = ch with = wch

th = d the = d

sk = ks ask = aks

st = sk street = skreet

Examples of AAVE Pronunciation