An Introduction to Language and Society

by Martin Montgomery

Overview

This study explores how our ways of seeing and engaging with the world may be shaped by the categories, systems and patterns of language. It also assesses the ways in which we communicate with each other, including satellite and cable communication systems, and virtual reality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134908356
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/07/2008
Series:	Studies in Culture and Communication
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Martin Montgomery is director of the Programme on Literary Linguistics at the University of Strathclyde where he is also a member of the John Logie Baird Centre for film and television.

Table of Contents

Preface to the second edition     xiii
Preface to the third edition     xv
Acknowledgements     xvii
Transcription conventions     xix
Introduction     1
Background sources and further reading     8
The Develoment of Language     11
The beginnings of language development     13
Learning language: the first words     13
Some precursors of language development     15
The early communicative expressions as a protolanguage     18
From protolanguage to holophrases     22
Two-word utterances as the beginnings of syntax     24
Basic meaning relations during the two-word phase     27
A problem of method     30
Background sources and further reading     33
Follow-up activities     35
Dialogue and language development     41
Further developments in meaning     41
The child's strategies for dialogue: establishing shared attention     46
Further dialogic strategies: responses     47
Ideational and interpersonal developments are closely interdependent     49
Dialogue as an arena for language development     51
Theoretical paradigms of language development     62
Conclusion     66
Background sources and further reading     67
Follow-up activities     68
Lingustic Diversity and the Speech Community     71
Language and regional variation: accent and dialect     73
Regional variation within a speech community     73
Regional variation and social structure     74
The social stratification of pronunciation     75
Shifts in pronunciation according to situation     76
Attitudes to pronunciation within the speech community     76
Working-class loyalty to non-prestige forms     77
'Hypercorrection' in the lower middle class     78
How do some patterns of pronunciation become the prestige forms?     78
Accents as a residue of earlier dialect differences     79
Factors underlying the survival of accents     80
Accent evaluation     82
Accents in television advertisements     83
Changing attitudes to accents     83
Surviving dialect differences     85
Dialect levelling and 'Estuary English'     87
Background sources and further reading     89
Follow-up activities     91
Language and ethnicity     95
Language variation and ethnicity     95
Linguistic markers of African-Caribbean identity     97
Origins and emergence of Caribbean Creole     98
Some linguistic differences between Jamaican Creole and Standard English     99
Social situation and the use of Creole     100
Asymmetrical selection of Creole forms within the African-Caribbean community     101
The continuance of Creole     103
Emphasising ethnicity in speech     104
Youth, subcultures and 'crossing' ethnicity     105
Background sources and further reading     106
Follow-up activities     108
Language and subcultures: anti-language     113
Anti-language     113
Linguistic features of an anti-language     113
Rapping and anti-language     115
Anti-language and social structure     117
Anti-language and the speech community     119
Background sources and further reading     119
Follow-up activities     120
Language and situation: register     123
Language is sensitive to its context of situation     123
Register     125
Conclusion     148
Background sources and further reading      148
Follow-up activities     151
Language and social class: restricted and elaborated speech variants     159
Language and social class     159
Restricted and elaborated speech variants     160
Two kinds of social formation     164
Role systems and codes     165
Codes and social class     166
Reactions     168
An alternative hypothesis     169
Background sources and further reading     169
Follow-up activities     171
Language and gender     173
Introduction     173
'Gender' versus 'sex'     173
Do men and women talk differently? The claims and the evidence     177
Conclusions: difference and dominance     192
Background sources and further reading     198
Follow-up activities     199
Linguistic diversity and the speech community: conclusion     201
The speech community     201
Diversity in language     202
The relationship of the standard dialect to other varieties     203
Communicative styles, subcultures, and the speech community     204
Conclusions: language and community     210
Background sources and further reading      213
Language and Social Interaction     215
Language and social interaction     217
Doing things with words: utterances perform actions     218
The normal coherence of talk: the actions performed by utterances typically cohere, one with another     219
Formats for providing coherence: the two-part structure or 'adjacency pair'     220
How do we recognize what an utterance is doing: in particular, what counts as a question?     221
Doing things with words: managing the discourse     231
Social relations and the management of discourse     235
Social relations, language, and culture     236
Conclusion     241
Background sources and further reading     242
Follow-up activities     245
Language and Representation     247
Language and representation     249
Language and representation     249
Two conflicting positions: the 'universalist' versus the 'relativist'     250
Vocabulary differences between languages     251
Grammatical differences between languages     252
Difficulties in the relativist position     253
The 'interested' character of linguistic representation     254
The vocabulary of modern warfare      257
After 9/11     262
Sentences and representation     266
Transitivity and the depiction of civil disorder     269
Industrial disputes and civil disorder: the miners' strike (1984-5) and the Paris riots (2007)     271
Language in the news: violent men and crimes against women     277
Conclusions     280
Background sources and further reading     283
Follow-up activities     286
References     289
Index     305