The
Fifteen Online Questions
Below
you will find fifteen questions, 14 of which correspond to the chapters in An
Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Question 15 is based on a film that you
watch.
You
are required to answer only five of the fifteen below. You will submit your
answers in Canvas, but the questions are duplicated below so that you can
decide in advance which ones you would like to answer.
I
strongly recommend that among your five you do Questions 1, 3, and 9. You will
find them especially interesting.
Write
your answers to five questions outside of Canvas, and then paste your answer
into the textbox that corresponds to the question. Your answers must be at
least 300 words long, and some answers should be longer. Make sure that you
carefully edit your answers before submitting them.
I
will grade only five questions, so do not submit more than five.
As speakers of a language, we vary our speech depending upon whom
we are speaking to. Try this simple experiment. Find a person whom you are
close to--spouse, child, or significant other--and in your next conversation
speak in complete and grammatical sentences. You should observe a
reaction of some sort in a short period of time. Keep up this behavior for a
little while.
After you finish, tell your subject what you were doing and ask him/her to
explain the reaction that he/she had.
Now write the results of your study and send it to me. Include the following:
Identify the person in the conversation.
Describe the scene and topic of conversation.
Describe and discuss the person's reaction.
Why did the person have that reaction?
What did you learn about how you speak to someone you are close to?
What is a standard dialect? How does the standard dialect differ from non-standard dialects? In other words, do the two types of dialects differ grammatically? How are the dialects evaluated by the society? Who speaks the dialects? And how are they learned? To more effectively answer this question, watch the short movie, American Tongues.
Reread the section on networks in your textbook. Now list the six people with whom you communicate most frequently. Designate yourself "A" and draw lines from A to the other six people. Now draw lines between those of the six who communicate frequently with each other. You can easily draw this figure in Word.
Are you a member of a dense or loose network?
Are you involved in a simplex or multiplex network?
Defend your answers to the previous two questions.
If you were not able to draw the figure, carefully describe your network, and then answer the questions above.
Some speech communities have three codes that they can use, essentially two languages and intra-sentential code mixing. Why wouldn't people in a diglossic situation, such as that of German speakers in Switzerland, practice intra-sentential code mixing?
Explain how pidgins arise and describe at least five grammatical features that characterize them.
or
Explain how creoles arise from pidgins and describe at least five grammatical differences between the two.
Studies in quantitative sociolinguistics are correlational. In such studies the dependent variable is always the linguistic variable. What are some of the independent variables used by sociolinguistics? Explain why the same independent variables are not of equal importance in all societies.
Although the studies reviewed in this chapter are from different speech communities, certain similarities in the findings are evident. Briefly discuss these similarities. Particularly think about socio-economic class and contextual styles.
Briefly summarize Labov’s findings from his research on Martha’s Vineyard. How can a study conducted at a single point in time show linguistic change over time? Explain how subsequent studies have validated or invalidated Labov’s original findings.
Think of a communicative event that you have participated in with another individual and describe it according to the eight factors proposed by Hymes.
Two Japanese speakers can show their relative social positions to each other through the use of honorifics. Even though English does not have grammatical honorifics, can two English speakers still show an awareness of their relative social status through the use of language? Use examples to support your answer.
Answer Question 2 on pages
303-304 in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics.
Answer Question 1 on pages
332-333 in An Introduction to Linguistics.
Briefly discuss Bernstein's major claims on the relationship between language and social structure (class). How have linguists criticized these claims?
Are multilingual nations
attempting to protect the linguistic rights of language minorities?
How? Which countries seem to be more successful? Which are least successful?
Watch
the movie “Speaking in Tongues: Birth and Death, the Life Cycle of Language,”
which is found in Module 4. Then answer
the prompts below with an answer of no fewer than 300 words.
Explain
how the topic of language loss is related to the protection of the rights of
language minorities that you read about in Chapter 14 of your textbook.
What
are the consequences of language loss?
Which
areas of the world are losing the most languages? Why are some languages in Europe in danger of
becoming extinct?