现代语言学复习资料.docx

1、现代语言学复习资料Chapter 8：Socio- linguisticsDefine or explain the following terms:Sociolinguistics: The subdiscipline of linguistics that studies language variation and language use in social context.Speech community: A group of people who form a community (which may have as few members as a family or as m

2、any members as a country), and share the same language or a particular variety of language.Speech variety: Also known as language variety, refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or group of speakers.Language planning: Language standardization is known as language planning. Th

3、is means that certain authorities, such as the government or government agency of a country, choose a particular speech variety and spread the use of it, including its pronunciation and spelling systems, across regional boundaries.Idiolect: An idiolect is a personal dialect of an individual speaker

4、that combines aspects of all the elements regarding regional, social, and stylistic variation, in one form or another. (In a narrower sense, what makes up ones idiolect includes also such factors as voice quality, pitch and speech rhythm, which all contribute to the identifying features in an indivi

5、dual s speech.)Standard language: A superposed, socially prestigious dialect of language. It is the language employed by the government and the judiciary system, used by the mass media, and taught in educational institutions, including school settings where the language is taught as a foreign or sec

6、ond language.Nonstandard language: Language varieties other than the standard are called nonstandard, or vernacular, languages.Lingua franca: A variety of language that serves as a medium of communication among groups of people from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The term lingual franca can be gene

7、ralized to refer to any other language used as a trade or communication medium. Thus, any language can be it.Pidgin: A marginal contact language with a limited vocabulary and reduced grammatical structures, used by native speakers of other languages as a means of business communication.Creole: A cre

8、ole language is originally a pidgin that has become established as a native language in some speech community. When a pidgin comes to be adopted by a population as its primary language, and children learn it as their first language, then the pidgin language is called a creole.Diglossia: A term first

9、 introduced by Ferguson in 1959 to refer to a sociolinguistic situation in which two very different varieties of language co-exist in a speech community, each with a distinct range of purely social function and appropriate for certain situations.Bilingualism: Bilingualism refers to a linguistic situ

10、ation in which two standard languages are used either by an individual or by a group of speakers, such as the inhabitants of a particular region or a nation. There are bilingual communities in which their members commonly use two languages in their daily lives.Domain使用域: Domain refers to the phenome

11、non that most bilingual communities have one thing in common, that is, a fairly clear functional differentiation of the two languages in respect of speech situations. For example: the Home Domain, Employment Domain etc.Code-switching: A bilingual speaker often uses two languages alternatively during

12、 a conversation with another bilingual speaker, a speech situation known as code-switching.Ethnic dialect: An ethnic language variety is a social dialect of a language, often cutting across regional differences. An ethnic dialect is spoken mainly by a less privileged population that has experienced

13、some form of social isolation, such as racial discrimination or segregation.Social dialects (or sociolects): Varieties of language used by people belonging to particular social classes.Register: Registers are language varieties appropriate for use in particular speech situations, in contrast to lang

14、uage varieties that are associated with the social or regional grouping of their customary users. For that reason, registers are also known as situational dialects.Address term: An address term, or address form, refers to the word or words used to address somebody in speech or writing.Slang: Slang i

15、s a casual use of language that consists of expressive but nonstandard vocabulary, typically of arbitrary, flashy and often ephemeral coinages and figures of speech characterized by spontaneity and sometimes by raciness.Linguistic taboo: Refers to a word or expression that is prohibited by the “poli

16、te” society from general use. Obscene, profane, or swear words are all taboo words that are to be avoided entirely, or at least avoided in mixed company.Euphemism: A euphemism is a mild, indirect, or less offensive word or expression substituted when the speaker or writer fears more direct wording m

17、ight be harsh, unpleasantly direct, or offensive. For example, we say “portly” instead of “fat”. In many cultures, people avoid using direct words that pertain to death or dying.What are the distinctions between bilingualism and diglossia? Bilingualism refers to a linguistic situation in which two s

18、tandard languages are used in a speech community; whereas in a diglossic community, two varieties of language are used for different situations, one being more standard and higher, and used for more formal matters, and the other less prestigious, and used for colloquial situations.Discuss with examp

19、les some of the linguistic differences between Standard English and Black English. (features of Black English)One of the most prominent phonological characteristics of Black English is the frequent simplification of consonant clusters at the end of words when one of the two consonants is an alveolar

20、 /t/, /d/, /s/, or /z/.The application of this simplification rule may delete the past - tense morpheme, so “past “and “passed “are both pronounced like “pass.” Another salient characteristic of Black English phonological system concerns the deletion of some word-final stop consonants in words like

21、“side” and “borrowed.” Speakers of Black English frequently delete these word-final stops, pronouncing “side” like “sigh” and “borrowed” like “borrow.” One prominent syntactic feature is the frequent absence of various forms of the copula “be” in Black English, which are required of Standard English

22、. Compare the following expressions in Black English and Standard English: (1) Black English Standard English They mine. They re mine. You crazy. You re crazy.Another distinctive syntactic feature of Black English is the systematic use of the expression “it is” where Standard English uses “there is”

23、 in the sense of “there exists”: Is it a Mr. Johnson in this office? Another aspect of Black English is the use of double negation constructions. Whenever the verb is negated, the indefinite pronouns “something”, “somebody”, and “some” become the negative indefinites “nothing”, “nobody”, and “none”,

24、 for example: He dont know nothing. (He doesnt know anything.) List several ways in which the speech of women and the speech of men differ from each other.(理解) Women tend to use more prestigious forms, more polite and indirect language, and more specific color terms than their male counterparts. Fem

25、ales are found to use more questions than declarative statements in comparison with males.展开：1) In normal situations, female speakers tend to use more prestigious forms than their male counterparts with the same general social background. For example, standard English forms such as “I did it” and “h

26、e isnt” can be found more often in the speech of females, while the more colloquial “I done it” and “he aint” occur more frequently in the speech of males. 2) Another feature often associated with so-called womens language is politeness. Usually, tough and rough speeches have connotations of masculi

27、nity and are not considered to be desirable feminine qualities. In general, mens language is more straightforward, less polite, and more direct, and womens language is more indirect, less blunt, and more circumlocutory. 3) This phenomenon of sex-preferential differentiation is also reflected in the

28、relative frequency with which males and females use the same lexical items. For example, certain words that are closely associated with women may sound typically feminine as a result of that association. For example, some English adjectives like “lovely”, ”nice”, ”darling” and “cute” occur more ofte

29、n in female speeches and therefore cause feminine association. 4) Females have also been shown to possess a greater variety of specific color terms than males, in spite of the fact that men do not necessarily possess less acute color perception than women. On the other hand, males have the reputatio

30、n of possessing a larger vocabulary in traditionally male-dominated domains such as sports, hunting and the military.5) Sex-preferential differentiation is also seen in the speech acts of males and females. A request in English such as “Close the door when you leave” can be phrased in a number of wa

31、ys ranging from a harsh command to a very polite request: a. Close the door when you leave.b. Please close the door when you leave. c. Would you please close the door when you leave?d. Could you close the door when you leave? Although the above options are all available to both men and women, it is

32、usually the more polite forms that are selected by female speakers. In general, females are found to use more questions than declarative statements in comparison with males. The following words are considered instances（实例） of sexist language. Find alternatives to these masculine-marked words:businessman business executivecleaning woman housekeeperforefather ancestor housewife homemakerkinsman relative layman nonspecialistspokesman speaker, representativestatesman leader stewardess flight attendantworkmanship skilled job, quality jobmankind people manp