Sociopsychological variation (SPV)
Gender, minorities and code-switching
Ana Celia Zentella who comes from the bilingualism research paradigm, studied female
identities in the Puerto Rican community of “El Barrio” in East Harlem, New York, between 1978 and
1981. The pressures on the Puerto Rican minority are high: As the most disadvantaged group in the
United States, it has the highest poverty level. Moreover, Puerto Ricans are prone to several identity
conflicts: “What am I? Puerto Rican or American? What color am I? White or Black? Which language
should I speak, Spanish or English? Which Spanish should I speak, Puerto Rican's or Spain's? Which
English should I speak, Black or White?” Thus culture, race and language are
issues of great conflict, with different values attached to them by different age groups and networks.
Participant observation in this community revealed several different networks with different linguistic
repertoires: older women who speak Spanish; younger mothers for whom English is the dominant
language; “young dudes” for whom English is also dominant; and children who grow up bidialectal
and bilingual. As Zentella notes, the young children “are always subject to the supervision of one of
the networks. As a result, the children are intermittently addressed by monolingual standard or
nonstandard Spanish speakers, monolingual standard and nonstandard English speakers, and by
bilingual and bidialectal speakers of both languages”
Children speak the language which is normally directed at them; female children specifically
accommodate and are more polite. The principal burden of maintaining the
Spanish language lies on the shoulders of Puerto Rican women; a survey of language attitudes
revealed that women do not regard English monolinguals as Puerto Rican anymore.
On the one hand, women preserve older and more conservative forms, even if the language changes,
yet on the other hand, women are also leading linguistic changes that correlate with the prestigious
language variety. This aspect has not yet been studied thoroughly, and it is likely that this fact could
also be dependent on networks or professions (Nichols, 1983).
Code-switching is an important strategy of communication in this community. In
contrast to other opinions , which claim that code-switchers are not fluent in their
codes, Zentella notes that the most prolific code-switchers are the most competent speakers of the
language varieties and that these are mostly women:
But contrary to prevalent stereotypes, the reality is that most Puerto Rican women do
succeed in raising their children to be healthy people, despite the triple jeopardy of
gender, race, and class, and despite the conflicts about national origin and linguistic
and cultural differences. When we seek out the wellsprings of the coping strength of
these women, we find that bilingualism and code-switching are vital.
Puerto Rican female survivors turn what others see as deficiencies or liabilities into strengths. These
women are not only responsible for language education, they are also, as Zentella states, the leaders
“for equity and excellence in education via the bilingual model”. Thus the context-sensitive
approach in combination with methodologies developed in research on bilingualism thus provides us
with more detailed and subtle explanations of language change than survey studies.
Sociopsychological variation (SPV)
Language attitudes
The sociopsychological approach to variation has been pursued in Vienna since 1975. Some studies
concentrate on actual language behavior , while others, such as those by Moosmüller), focus on regional and gender-specific language attitudes towards Austrian German.
Moosmüller analyzed the language use and evaluation of opinion leaders: politicians, schoolteachers,
university professors, and radio and TV anouncers. Negative attitudes towards dialect are greater
when women use dialect in official contexts: “it is not surprising that being spoken to in dialect in
certain contexts is perceived as a sign of disrespect”In this study, the
context-sensitive approach has allowed for a differentiation between regions, dialects, professions,
and gender. The use of dialect is polyfunctional, both men and women use dialect for very specific
occasions, for example, when responding aggressively to a politician in a parliamentary debate.
Explanations stressing the notion of “covert prestige” (see p. 137) are barely scratching the surface in
cases like these.
Situational parameters, social class and gender
In a study about the language of defendants in court Ruth Wodak used
audio recordings of a standardized setting (a courtroom) to study the sociophonological variation in
Vienna, paying particular attention to social class, gender, topics, and certain situational factors. She
developed a model which assumes a continuum of styles between the two poles of dialect and
standard language in Viennese German. The linguistic model uses Stampe's natural phonology as a
point of departure.
In studying the interaction between one judge and 15 defendants (15 cases of examination, 2 women
and 13 men), the style registers of each person and the frequencies of style-switching were
uncovered, in connection with five situational parameters which were defined according to
psychological factors, sociological factors based on role theory, and on discursive characteristics of
the interaction between judge and defendant .
Figure 8.3Interactions between a judge and defendants (after Leodolter, 1975: 260).
Wodak was interested in trials about car accidents, as this violation is not linked with a specific social
class. The analysis of the repertoire of MC speakers revealed that they applied only a few variable
rules and almost no input switches. Their language behavior contained very few style shifts due to the
polite and kind questioning by the judge, and they showed almost no emotional involvement. In
contrast, UMC-speakers and the working-class women covered the whole range of the linguistic
repertoire including hypercorrect speech. Most of the WC men formed a different group of
defendants, for they had already been convicted several times before (up to 20 times) and knew the
situation. They spoke in pure dialect applying all the dialect rules without shifting to the standard.
Moreover, the interaction between gender and social class could be detected: UMC men and the two
women (WC, UMC) showed the largest linguistic repertoires.
Mothers and daughters: Women and language change. The relationship between mothers and daughters is extremely complex and different from the
relationship of mothers and sons an interaction
between psychological and sociological factors determining the sociophonological variation was
revealed.
In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 mother–daughter pairs from all social classes. Topics
were family problems, education, negative and positive sanctions, self-images, problems with female
identity, etc. All the women interviewed were asked about their relationships with their own mothers
and daughters respectively. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed with respect to the
significant linguistic variables in Viennese German.
Wodak was specifically interested in determining whether the daughters used their linguistic styles to
distinguish themselves from their mothers . Was the variation therefore dependent on
the relationship between mothers and daughters, on the family structure and the self-image and
desired gender identity of the girls? Wodaksummarized the results in the following way:
Family styles exist – “mother–daughter styles” – which sometimes contradict class-specific tendencies
in variation. Professional women tended to speak more formally than nonprofessional mothers in all
social classes. If the relationship between mother and daughter was ambivalent and in conflict, the
daughter used a significantly different style from the mother, more formal or informal depending on
the mother's style – thus there was no significant tendency towards language change between the
generations. The differences between mother and daughter were bigger than between mother and
son, even in stable and friendly relationships. Accommodation to peer groups is an important
intervening variable. The same is true for social mobility – upwardly mobile daughters spoke
hypercorrectly, in obvious demarcation from their mothers and their social class.