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.

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