The Reasons of Social Variation’s Importance

1、the reasons of social variations importanceabstract:the intricate social relationship lead all kinds of variation in the language,and produce many speech variation.the speech variation has a great effect in humans social activites.this paper mainly talk about the factors of social variation and why

2、it is important to our social life.key words:language;social variation;speech;difference .introductionlanguage is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas,emotions,and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.these symbols are,in the first instance,auditor

3、y;thus language is primarily a matter of speech as oppose to,say,sign language.edward sapirspeech has allowed human beings to develop in a completely different way from other animals.language is generally considered to be a form of communication between human beings,while the faculty of speech is co

4、nsidered to be inherited,the system that we use,the specific language,is determined by the society in which we grow up,and being culturally transmitted.communicating by speech requires people to speak orally in order to show the relationship between them. the form of speech will be affected by geogr

5、aphy,socioeconomic status,ethnicity/race,age,occupation,religion,gender and so on.we may speak to express our emotions,feelings,with different utterance to reinforce a relationship with somebody.for example,you would say”good morning,sir.”when you see your boss in the office,while you whould say”hey

6、,man.”when you meet your best friend in the street.of course,you can choose the later sentence depending on the close relationship with your boss.this kind of”dialect”which change after the changing of social facts,called”social variation”.there are many factors of this social variation,so before st

7、udy the reasons of social variations importance,we should discuss its factors first. .difiningthe standard languageones social standing is higher,then,he is less likely to use a regional dialect,and he is more likely to use a more standardised variety.this is partly due to the greater mobility of th

8、ose on the higher social levels;ones social and geographical horizons are wider,then,more his speech and his children will lose regional features.another major factor is the prestige,which is associated with the more standardised varieties.a person who has high prestige would not speak vulgar langua

9、ge and use informal words in the public.a standard language is setted apart by this prestige.it is just another dialect and its origins are usually as humble as those of the other dialect.but socially it has been elevated.according to r.a.hudson(1996,p.33),there are four characteristics of a standar

10、d language:first,it has been selected from among the varieties of the language;second,it has been codified;third,it is suitable for us as an official,written medium,and fourth,it has been accepted by”the relevant population”.after reading these four characteristics,we may naturally conclude that,as

11、it is codified,as it is using as a literary language,the standard language is going to be more conservative and it can be used as a yardstick for assessing a persons “correctness”;moreover,it can also serve as a symbol of nationhood.the social dimension“hello,its me again.”you may find that a friend

12、 who is phoing you for a second time whould say that,because it would be more natural for him to say”good moring,this is me once more.”people might consider it more approprate to use the latter sentence.in these examples,there is a difference of vocabulary(again is less formal than once more)and mor

13、phology(its is more likely in informal speech).the imformal style is more likely to be spoken with a regional pronunciation.what people say and how they say it varies in accordance with who they are,who they are speaking to and the context of the conversation.such variation forms part of the field o

14、f study of socioliguistics.are wealth,occupation and education all relevant factors?are there others?what is their relative signigicance?where do you rank a succussful “self-made”entrepreneur relative to a doctor or the son of a rich landowner?one of the available marks for measuring is the socio-ec

15、onomic groupings used by planners.generally,people in higher socio-economic groups,or people who desire to be in such groups,have an idiolect that is less influnced by the region in which they grew up,that is more closely to a standard variety.this is likely to be a variety that they were exposed by

16、 their parents and friends.in addition,it may have been consolidated by a public school education.their profession may require the use of a standard form of speech and they have been a lot of other places.the urban vanguardas just say,a standard language is just another dialect and it becomes accept

17、ed by most people after setting as formal language.this standard language generally would choose a dialect used by the political,cultural and economic city centre.such factors tend to affect urban areas rather than rural areas.this complicates yet further the attempt to represent on a map bounaries

18、between features,for rather than advancing by pushing forward a front,stansardisation often establishes itself in urban centres and then spreads from them into the surrounding area.thus may show urban islands surrounded by unaffected rural areas.trudgill(1995,p.149)illustrates this state of affairs

19、by comparing the speech of london,manchester and hyde.the city of manchester exhibits the vowel /u/ where london has /,the word “such”being pronounced /sut/ in the former as opposed to /st/ in the latter,but the differences are systematic;in hyde,which lies immediately to the south-east of mancheste

20、r,there was not the same influence from london,and the forms were less predictable.(an introduction to linguistics,p112.last line)from this,we can find that the ubran vanguard is one of the important factors to the social variation.men and womenwe have discussed that a persons speech tends to relate

21、 to his social class,to his education and occupation.city-dwellers may speak differently compared to those who live in the surrounding rural areas.next,weer going to see whether a persons speech relates to we are a men or a women.many studies have shown that women generally use forms which approxima

22、te more closely to those of the standard language than those of the standard language than do men of the same social background,age,and so on.for example,women were more likely to use the standard form /i/ than men were(trudgill,1995,p.70).moreover,women were more likely to believe that they use for

23、ms closer to the standard language than those they actually use.this has been explained in terms of a greater consciousness of status on the part of women.the status of men,it has been argued,has been traditionally defined by their occupation and wealth,while women have had to find other ways of est

24、ablishing their position and one of these has been their speech.women are in employment much more,one can argue that they tend to work in service industries where a high standard of communication is particularly important.on the other hand,perhaps women are increasingly feeling that they do not have

25、 the same need to impressmto judtify themselves.if so,they might move towards the less formal style of speech that has been more associated with men.men,may associate masculinity with the physical labour of the working class.according to hudson,this correlation between sex and style of speech must b

26、e regarded as “one of the most robust findings of socio-linguistics”(hudson,1996,p.114)power and solidarity when you speak to a passer-by or a person who has higher status than you,you should use formal language;when you speak to your families or best friends,then use informal language.the formal la

27、nguage concerns about the social relationship,that is power;which the informal language pays attention to the relationship of the same status-solidarity.women,then,tend to want to give an impression of high status more than men do.women are more concerned than men are with a vertical social dimensio

28、n,men setting greater store than women by a horizontal social dimension by group identity. whether it is power or solidarity that is more significant in a particular social relationship depends not only on who is speaking but also on whom the speaking to.”hello,lizzie”is an appropriate way of greeti

29、ng a sister of friend called elizabeth;if you were talking to the queen of the united kingdom,it would be more appropriate to say “good morning,your highness”.saying “hello,lizzie”to the queen would be considered extremely disrespectful.if you said “good morning,elizabeth”to your sister,she might wo

30、nder that what she had done to upset you.in a conversation with the queen,it is the rules associated with power that are the most relevant,there being a substantial difference in social status.in a conversation with your sister,it is the rules of solidarity that apply.the former requires a more form

31、al speech variety than the latter do.if we use formal speech to speak our equals,they might have the impression that we consider ourselves better than them or,as we have just said,that they have done something to upset us.if we wish to use a persons name when talking to them or talking about them,wh

32、en need to decide whether it is appropriate to use their given name(e.g. elizabeth)or their surname(e.g. miss green).for example,you can say “mr.hu or mr.hu jingtao came to guangzhou last week.” instead of saying “hu jingtao came to guangzhou last week.”in reporting this news no matter through the t

33、v set or the radieo.of course,you can called your mother mrs.li when you are playing joy with her. our relationship with somebody may affect not only how we address him ,but also what we say.if somebody rings you on the telephone you may feel an obligation to ask him or her who he or she is if that

34、person is a friend.so,taking the above-mentioned into consideration,i may reasonably conclude that we should think it over how to say and what to say before we have a talk to a person,and it may brings the different meanings in the same sentence. registers and diglossia people in different surroundi

35、ngs need to act different social roles,of course,his speech would change when the social role is changed.a speech variety that is apprapriate to a limited social context is known as a register.alternating between registers is known as code-switching or style-switching.if we are talking to a judge,we

36、 may be in court,perhaps as a lawer,perhaps as a witness;if we are talking to a friend,we may be playing basketball or discussing a personal problem.thus,related to the consideration of who we are talking to is the consideration of the social context in which we are talking.we interact with others i

37、n many different situations.i am a classmate,a student,a daughter,a sister and a member of an english club,so my speech will vary somewhat between roles.in addition,the postman and the doctor will use different registers when talking to members of their family and when talking to members of the publ

38、ic in the course of their work.for example,a postman would say “i will stick a stamp on you and send you to the africa if you still being lazy”when he came into his sons bedroom.what he said is based on his job and transmited from his professional language. trurdgills study of the variation between

39、/i/ and /in/ in norwich showed that it correlated not only with the social class of the speaker but also with the formality of the situation.middle-class people generally use the standard /i/ in casual speech,whereas working-class people generally use the non-standard /in/.all groups increase their

40、use of /i/ in formal speech,particularly those in the middle class,those who had already preferred it in casual spech.an introduction to linguistics,p116,para.3 it is clear that if a person uses an informal variants of a particular feature,there is a greater chance that they will use informal varian

41、ts of other features in the same utterance.for example,if a new yorker says “hes thinking”instead of “he is thinking”,he will pronounce the word thinking with /t/ as opposed to /.there tends to be co-occurrence of features.when such co-occurrence is so systematic that there are two distinct varietie

42、s for formal context and informal context respectively,generally we can say that there is a state of diglossia.where there is diglossia the social position of the speaker may not be a significant factor,the choice of variety being determined principally by the degree of formality of the context.an e

43、xample that is often referred to in texts on the subject of diglossia is the situation in german-speaking switzerland;there a form of high german is used in more formal situations while the distinctive local variety of german,schweizerdeutsch,is used in less formal situations.taboo and political cor

44、rectness some words and expressions are rarely used in formal situation.this is called taboo.then,people quote some words which are easy accepted to express,that become euphemism.the euphemism is already accepted by political area.you might use the word “crap”when talking to a friend but you would n

45、ot do your employment prospects much good if you used it in a job interview.the sensitive areas will vary from society to society depending on their values.they may invove death or religion.when scandinavians swear they often refer to the devil.such socially sensitives terms are often called taboo w

46、ords. with society becomes more egalitarian,more liberal,we are less sensitive to terms related to sex and other bodily functions,but more sensitive to the concerns of the disadvantaged;people with dificient eyesight,for example,are now often described by the phrase “visually impaired” rather than “

47、blind”. in addition,“crap” is on the way in,”cripple” is on the way out.this is called political correctness.no matter it is taboo words or political correctness,when we give our speech in the public,we should pay more attention to what we are going to say and whether we are talking to a special per

48、son that we should change our words into formal and special.euphemism as alternatives to using taboo words we can either use medical terms or evasive terms.thus acceptable alternatives to “piss” are “urinate” and “pass water”.if ,like me,one were particularly considerate,one might even use such cons

49、tructions as “expel the bodys waste material!”this is not a new phenomenon.we can avoid profanity by amending a word or phrase;thus “heck” can be used instead of “hell.jeepers creepers” and also can be used instead of “jesus christ”.such alternatives to unacceptable terms are known as euphemisms.the

50、 euphemism can through time become as tainted as the term that it replaced.thus a concept may be denoted by a succession of terms. americans are unwilling to refer to a farmyard bird as a cock because of its association with the wale genitals and they use the word rooster instead.such so-called “fou

51、r-letter-words” often denote illness,death,sexual organs,sexual intercourse,or the expulsion of the bodys waste material. euphemisms are everywhere.in english,for example,there are many ways to talk about death and dying:to pass away,to expire,to be no more,to rest in peace,to be out of his or her m

52、isery,to go to meet his or her maker,to cross over the great divide;to go to his or her final resting place,go to a better place.so,what is the difference between saying “his father died” and “his father passed away”?one can not answer this question without referring to our attitude towards death.pe

53、opoles attitudes to the subject of death are reflected in their linguistec behavior;euphemstic expressions are indirect and have positive connotations.therefore,the references to departure,rest,absence,and travel to another world(i.e.heaven) in the above expressions all soften the taboo subject of d

54、eath. some everyday expressions are also euphemistic.for example,”i am listening” is an acceptable reply by anyone who is not interested in the proposal being put to him,actually it means:”i have already made up my mind”, “i hear what you say” is much more polite than “i do not agree with you”.the s

55、ource for euphemism is the power of the connotations and associations that a word or expression carries.it is accepted because it is more indirect and less unpleasant.however,when it is used too often or for too long,it becomes direct and therefore loses its euphemisitic function.then new expression

56、s will be created to replace the old ones.this is why we often have several euphemisms for one unpleasant subject.slang taboo words are often avoided because they are unacceptable in many social situations,other words may not be widely used because they are not even known to most people.a section of

57、 society may wish to reinforce its identity and exclude other people.other sections of society may strive to achieve the same end by going to the other extreme,by using a variety that is so different from the standard language that it can not be easily understood by the uninitiated.such a variety is

58、 slang.when slang is used to conceal the activities of a group of people such as criminals it may be called argot. one example of slang is the rhyming slang associated with the east end of london.this refers to an object,action,and so on by using a phrase which rhymes with the stansard term;thus a t

59、elephone may be referred to as a “dog and bone”.the exclusivity may be increased by omitting the element that rhymes with the standard term;thus a londoner may refer to his friend or mate as his china,the first element of the phrase china plate.an introduction to linguistics,p120.para.3 some examples,on the other hand,have been more widely adopted to the extent that people are often unware that the