Summaries: "Introduction to Sociolinguistics" by Janet Holmes. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Gender and Age

This chapter discusses how women and men speech differs, as each of them use different linguistic forms.

The concept of “gender” allows for focusing on describing masculine and feminine speech behavior.

If we look at speech differences in relation to Gender in non-western speech communities like:

1-   Japan:  we will realize that the linguistic forms used by men are longer. The forms used by women usually have the prefix (o-) to show politeness or formality. In traditional Japanese, the men use different word forms (vocabulary) than women. In modern Japanese, the forms which were used by men are regarded as words to be used by anyone in casual contexts, while the forms which were used by women are used in public contexts.

2-   Montana: if men and women do not use the right linguistic forms they would be regarded as bisexuals.

3-   India: in Bengali, the women use an initial (l) while men use initial (n) in some words.  

Gender-Exclusive vs. Gender – Preferential speech features

Gender differences are also one of the aspects that reflect social class and power. It also reflects the social role. How:

Gender – exclusive linguistic forms used only by women, and others used only by men reflect gender – exclusive social roles.  This is because in such communities the responsibilities of men and women differ. For example, in Bengali, a wife (who is subordinate to her husband) will not call him by his real name, but would instead use any other word to refer to him. This is because the roles of each of them are different. The man is more superior.

However, in western communities where the roles of men and women overlap, the linguistic forms overlap too. Therefore we have gender – preferential linguistic forms. In communities like Sydney, Montreal or any English speaking city, the linguistic forms are gender-preferential. For example, in English-speaking cities women use more (–ing) and few (–in) in words like swimming, unlike men who use (-in) more than (-ing). In Montreal French, women tend to keep the pronunciation of (l) while men tend to delete it. In Sydney, men and women sometimes pronounce (th) at the beginning of the word like as (f), but men use it more than women.

How does gender reflect social class, or how does Gender interact with social class?

There are general patterns that can be identified:

1-   The speech of women and men wither in the highest social group or the lowest social group resembles each other.

2-    Across all social groups women generally use standard forms, while men use more vernacular like multiple negation constructions, or any other vernacular forms that are not prestigious. This pattern has been found in all western speech communities, and was described by Peter Trudgill. This pattern was first found in a study of American children in semi-rural New England Village thirty years ago where boys used more (-in) than girls who sued more (-ing). Later in Boston and Detroit, boys used more vernacular forms like (tol) instead of (told), and (las) rather than (last).

There are four explanations for why women speak differently:     

1-   Social status explanation: women are more status conscious than men, and they know that speech signals social status and background. Therefore, they use more standard forms to signal high social status, and some of the women lack the social prestige so they use these forms to acquire it. There is a suggestion that says women who are not in paid employment use more standard forms to acquire high social status. However, an American study proved the opposite. the study proved that women who are in paid employment are using more standard forms because they engage more with people, while the women who stayed in home used more vernacular because they did not interact with people. Therefore, the explanation of social status is not sufficient to explain why women use more standard forms than men.

2-   Women’s role as guardians of society’s values: society expects better behavior from women more than men. They are expected to be modeling correct behavior in society. Boys’ mistakes are tolerated but the girls are blamed for their mistakes. Again, this explanation is not sufficient, because it is not true in all social groups. Women in casual and personal situations do not use formal or standard forms.  For example, a mother speaking to her daughter will not use standard forms in such relaxed situations.

3-   Women’s status as a subordinate group: women as a subordinate group must speak carefully and politely. However this explanation is not sufficient because you can express yourself politely while using vernacular Liverpool and one can also be very insulting while using RP. So there is no relation between being politer with the use of standard forms. Amore sophisticated version of this suggestion is that women use high standard forms for face-protection. This suggestion is also insufficient because it is more sensible if we say that women use high standard forms according to the addressee. They are sensitive to the person whom they are addressing.    

4-   Speech express masculinity: men prefer vernacular forms because they carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness, which may explain why women tend to use more standard forms. This suggestion can be supported by evidence: Norwich men, while speaking, displayed more vernacular forms while women did not. Men regarded vernacular forms positively and value them highly. These forms have “covert prestige”, which is opposite to “overt prestige” of the standard forms.  Standard forms tend to be associated with femininity and female values. However, we find a problem in this explanation as women also use more vernacular forms in relaxed and informal situations.

Other explanations

o   Women categorization: in research, linguists classify or categorize women according to their husbands’ social class. In such cases, sometimes a woman is better educated than her husband, and then she speaks differently, using more standard forms than he does. Because of this miscategorization we relies the differences in their speech as the man uses more vernacular than the woman.

o   Interviewer and context influences: people tend to accommodate to the speech of the interviewer who is usually from the middle class. Because women are more cooperative conversationalists than men, they tend to use more standard forms to establish “speech accommodation”. On the other hand, working class men tend to be less responsive, and they even use more vernacular forms just to distinguish themselves from, and to react against the interviewer who belongs to the middle class. As for the context, women use more vernacular forms while talking to a friend rather than a stranger. This is due to the relationship between the people concerned in the interview. For example, in one of the earliest social dialect surveys, men and women where interviewed by male interviewers. They were asked questions to elicit casual style which have more vernacular forms. The women were asked about childhood games while the men were asked about fights and issues related to women. In that case, the interview context was different for men and women. As for men, they used more vernacular, but women did not. They regarded the interview as a conversation with a stranger.

o   The gender of the speaker itself may override other social factors: in some communities, being a man or a woman influences speech and is the reason for speech variation between men and women. For example, Glottalization, which is a feature of Tyneside vernacular, is described as a male norm rather than a working –class norm. This means that it is not necessary that a man who uses glottalization in his speech to belong to the working class. Glottalization involves cutting off air at the vocal cords while producing the sounds /p/, /t/ or /k/. In reading, the speech of adolescent boys and girls in an adventure playground was recorded. Each gender used its own grammatical patterns. Males used multiple negations and forms like (ain’t), while females used less of these forms. In this case, gender is the explanatory factor for different speech patterns  

o   However, there are exceptions to this pattern :

Ø Women from the lower class in Norwich use as many vernacular forms as men do, and there are other communities where women use even more vernacular forms than men like Brazlandia.

Ø Vernacular forms may express non urban and conservative values, if the standard form is the urban norm.

Ø Vernacular forms may reflect anti-establishment attitudes if the standard form is the middle-class adult norm. (See chapter 8 for details over this issue).

Age – Graded features of speech:

There are speech features that vary over age:

1-   Pitch: male voices generally sound lower in pitch than women’s. However, there are physical, social and cultural factors that contribute to the pitch change.  On the physical level, boys’ vocal cords grow faster than girls. As for the social and cultural factors, it is more masculine to speak with a lower-pitched voice. That is why young boys develop this masculine feature as well as other sociolinguistic male features like the use of more vernaculars. Also, men used to have dominance and influence in society until very recently. That is why a female politician uses a low-pitched voice. It can be explained as she to gain the society’s acceptance as the audience got used to the domination of men over society.

2-     Vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar: there are patterns or forms that are appropriate for a particular age group and can not be use by other age groups. Teenagers will use certain forms but will stop using them as they grow and have children, and make friends with families with children. For instance, swearing words used by teenagers will be changed over time.  Slang is another area of vocabulary that reflects a person’s age. It is very associated with young people, and signals the membership to the Young group.   

Age and social dialect data:   

Figure 7.3 explains the relationship between age and the use of vernacular forms. We realize that:

1-   They are high in childhood and adolescent.

2-   They decrease as people approach middle age and abide with social norms.

3-   They increase again in old age as society pressure reduces.

4-   The date reflects that the child acquires stylistic ranges beside the vernacular forms. As he/she grows up, he/she acquires more vocabulary and can be able to control grammatical constructions. He/she then will tend to use more standard forms than vernacular forms.

5-   The use of prestige forms reaches its top between the age of 30-55, as people try to abide with society norms.

6-   A similar situation to this linguistic prestige form is bilingualism in bilingual or multilingual communities. For example in Canada, the children grow monolingual in French. When they grow and become young people the bilingualism reaches its peak between 30 and 55 years of age, and they effectively use English and French. When they become old and retire they revert to French monolingualism again.

GLOSSARY:

Gender – exclusive forms: كلمات خاصة بكل جنس لا يمكن أن يستخدمها الجنس الآخر

Gender – preferential forms: كلمات يفضلها جنس عن آخر

Overlap: يتداخل ويشترك مع شيء آخر في نفس الصفة

Semi-rural شبه رعوي (غير متمدن)

Status conscious يعير اهتمام للحالة الاجتماعية

Sophisticated معقد

Face protection مصطلح لغوي يعني الحفاظ على احترام وقيمة الشخصية

Machismo الرجولية

Glottalizationالوقف المزماري (وقف مفاجئ للهواء مما ينتج عنه نطق الأحرف الساكنة كالهمزة

Male-norm قاعدة تختص بالرجال دون النساء

Summary- "Introduction to Sociolinguistics" by Janet Holmes. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Regional and Social Dialects

The chapter focuses on language variation in monolingual communities. In UK for example, the English variety used in Scotland differs than that used in England.

International varieties differ:

On the accent level:

The word (dad) pronounced by a New Zealander would sound like (dead) to a British speaker. (Bad) would also sound like (bed). The word (god) pronounced by an American would sound like (guard) to a British speaker. (Latter) would also sound like (ladder).

On Vocabulary level:

Australians use the form (sole parents), while the people of England use (single parents), and New Zealanders call them (solo parents). The American speaker would say (gas) while the British would say (petrol), (elevator) instead of (lift), and (luggage) instead of (baggage).

On the grammatical level:

The Americans would use the form (do you have) rather than (have you got), and (did you play?) rather than (have you played?) They would also use the form (gotten) while the British use (got).

The Spanish or French varieties also differ on these levels the same way the English verities differ. Canadian French and Parisian French are different French dialects. For example, the word (job) is (Travail) in Paris, while it is (djobe) in Montréal. The word beggar is (mendiant) in France while (queteux) in Quebec. The word cinema is (vues) in Canada while it is (cinema) in France. On the level of grammar, grammatical gender also differs. For example, the word appetite (appetite) and midday (midi) are feminine in Canada while they are masculine in France. Also, the pattern of using the two verbs (avoir) and (etre) to mark the aspect tense differ from Canada to Paris.

Intra-national or intra-continental variation (occurring within a single nation or between countries in a single continent)

Here the focus is on the dialect differences within one country. For example, in U.K. the Cockney differs from Scouse and from Geordie. The Cockney is distinguished with its glottal stop /?/ instead of /t/ in words like (butter) or (bottle). USA is also divided by dialectologists into three divisions: Northern, Midland and Southern. For example, within the midland area, Boston dialect differs from NY. Within NY Brooklynese is also different. In the rural Appalachians you can hear words like Clifft or acrosst, or verbs with a-prefixes such as a-fishin, a-comin. In the eastern states, words for (dragonfly) include snake feeder, snake doctor, snake waiter or darning needle, while New York uses only darning needle.

There is less regional variation in the areas where English was introduced earlier such as New Zealand and Australia although there is a social variation.  In such countries where there is intra-national communication, and small population, the regional variation was not able to develop. In New Zealand, dialect differences are greater in Maori than in English. For example, Maori words starting with (wh) differ in pronunciation from one palce to another. On the level of vocabulary, the word fish in most areas is (Ika) but it is (ngohi) in another. The word (kirikiri) means gravel in the west but means sand in the east of New Zealand.

Cross-continental variation (dialect chains) 

We have three dialect chains across Europe:

1.    One links all dialects of German, Dutch and Flemish from Switzerland through Austria and Germany to the Netherlands and Belgium.

2.    One links dialects of Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian.

3.    A Scandinavian chain links between Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. Therefore, the Swedes and Norwegians   

The chains are also found in India, and they clarify the arbitrariness of the distinction between language and dialect. Defining the contrast between German and Dutch or Swedish and Norwegian using only linguistic features is difficult.  This is because the linguistic features overlap, and usage in one area emerges to another. Therefore we must look to the social and political functions of the language as well as its linguistic features. Therefore, a language is a group of dialects that are usually linguistically similar, used by different social groups who choose to say that they are speakers of one language that unite them and represent them to other groups. This explains why a Chinese who speaks Mandarin does not understand the Chinese who speaks Cantonese, although the two dialects are dialects of the Chinese language.

Social Variation

RP (Received Pronunciation) : a social accent:

It is the accent of the best educated and the most prestigious members of English society. The label derives from the accent which was “received” at the royal court. The RP was promoted by the BBC for decades. It is a social accent not a regional one, and it conceals a speaker’s regional origin.

 You will find the most social variation at the lowest socio-economic level where regional differences abound. Further up the social ladder the amount of variation reduces till one reaches the top, where less than 5% of people use RP. Therefore, you can have more than six variation of the pronunciation of the word (grass) around England. In the present time, you can have other accents spoken beside the RP by the people who belong to the upper class. Most well-educated Scots, Irish and Welsh people do not use RP because it is not the only prestigious accent to be used in these communities. Even in previous colonies of Britain like Canada or Australia other accents have displaced RP. Now RP even tends to be perceived by many people as affected or (real posh).

Social dialects

Dialects are linguistic varieties which are linguistically distinguishable by their vocabulary, grammar and punctuation.

RP is a social accent. The Standard English is a social dialect.  Standard English is more accommodating than RP, and allows for some variation within its boundaries. It is estimated that up to 15 percent of the British regularly use standard British English.  In Standard English, a limited amount of grammatical variation is acceptable. The dialect “standard English” is spoken with different accents. Also, there are many standard Englishes. The American Standard English differs from Australian Standard English. Both also differ fro the British Standard English.

Non standard dialects:

Any linguistic form that is not a part of Standard English is regarded as “non-standard”. The standard dialect is the first to be codified, so other dialects are always compared to the standard dialect.

Non standard is a term that gives negative connotations. This is because the term is related to the less prestigious classes. But we must understand that there is nothing regarded as bad or inferior in linguistics. Therefore, linguistically speaking these non standard forms are regarded as different. Some sociolinguists use the term “vernacular” rather than “non standard” to avoid any negative implication.

Vernacular forms have features that differ from those of the standard forms. They tend to be learnt at home and used in informal and casual contexts. Vernacular dialects, like vernacular languages, lack public or overt prestige although they are valued by their users, especially as a means of expressing solidarity.

There is a patterned variation in the way people speak. This variation reflects social factors:

There is a relation between speech and social status:

A-  Castes:

People can be grouped together on the basis of similar social and economic factors. People’s languages reflect their social grouping when they use different social dialects. Social dialects can be seen clearly in Indonesia or India where social groupings are very clear. In these countries there area caste systems determined by birth, and strict social rules govern the behavior of each group. These rules govern matters like job, marriage and dressing. These social distinctions are also reflected in speech, and a person’s social dialect reflects his social background.

For example, in India there is a speech difference between the Brahmin and Non-Brahmin castes. In Indonesia, the Javanese language reflects the social status not just in the choice of linguistic forms but also in the combinations of forms which each social group uses. In example 9 the Indonesian student at a British university says that he has to choose different patterns or styles while speaking to different groups. In Javanese there are distinguishable stylistic levels. There are 3 distinct social groups and 3 associated dialects. 

1-    The dialect of the lowest status group (peasants, uneducated town people). It consists of three stylistic levels.

2-    The dialect of urbanized people with some education. It has 5 stylistic levels. Some of them are shared with the previous dialect.

3-    The dialect of the highly educated people. It consists of five stylistic levels. They are different from the stylistic levels of the urbanized people dialect.

Therefore, a particular social dialect in Javanese consists of a particular combination of style levels. Each style has its own vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.

B-   Social Class

The term (class) refers to a group of people who share similarities in economic and social status. Status differences are in relation to (family background, wealth, education).

There is a strong relationship between social class and language patter, and that’s why people of different social classes do not speak the same way.

On the level of vocabulary, For example, in England there were words that marked the upper class English people (U speakers) from the (non U speakers). For example, (U speakers) used “sitting room” rather than “lounge”. They used “writing paper” instead of “note paper”, “bag” instead of “Hand bag”, and “sofa” instead of “settee”. However, the barriers between social groups are not fixed, because you can move up or down the social ladder. This is because the choice of vocabulary is superficial and can conceal/ hide social class membership.

On the level of pronunciation, the speech of different social groups is distinguished by frequency which they use particular features.

For example, the feature of “h dropping” reflects the social class of the speaker. In West Yorkshire and Norwich, unlike the highest social group (the upper middle class UMC), the lowest social group (which are the low or working class) dropped most of their “h”s.

The figure 6.3 explains that:

1.    The “h-dropping” feature is studied in five social groupings in the West Yorkshire and Norwich.

2.    The label used for the lowest social group is (lower or working class).

3.    The label given for the highest social group is (UMC).

4.    The lowest social group (which is the low or working class) dropped most of their “h”s.

5.    The highest social group (the upper middle class UMC), dropped the least number of “h”s.

6.    The pattern is the same all over England. Although the two places differ in the percentage of h dropping, the pattern is the same in the two places, as the UMC drops the least number of “h”s and the working class drops the most of them.

7.    In each social group, you will have individual social variable. For example, a person from the third social group would drop all his/her “h”s although he doesn’t belong to the working class.

The relationship between pronunciation and social class was demonstrated by William Labov, who studied the pronunciation of vowels and consonants by 120 ppl. He concluded that there is a relationship between the social class and the percentage of standard VS vernacular use. The pronunciation of /iŋ/ vs. /in/ at the end of words like “swimming” or “sleeping” distinguishes between social groups. The people of the lower social groups will pronounce it as /in/ rather than /iŋ/.  

The second feature taken as an example is “/r/ pronunciation”. The variable pronunciation of /r/ in words like “car” or “card” or “form” distinguishes between social classes. There are two variants of /r/. It is either pronounced or absent. In some regions, the /r/ is part of the standard prestige dialect in Ireland and Scotland in UK, and in New York and Boston in USA. In such areas, sociolinguists found that the higher the person’s social group, the more /r/ he/she pronounces.  In New York, Labov asked different shop assistants where the answer of each was “fourth floor”. He realized that the more prestigious the shop was, the more people used post-vocalic /r/.  In other places like Reading in England, the more prestigious you are the fewer you pronounce /r/.

Pronouncing vowels is also one of the features. Labov in a study of New Yorkers’ speech measured the slight differences in the way people pronounce the same vowel. He made a score system to rank the vowel pronunciation in relation to the most prestigious or standard pronunciation.

- In New Zealand, a similar scoring system was used in surveying around 140 people living in the South Island to measure their pronunciation of diphthongs in words like “boat”, “bite” and “bout”. The result revealed the social grouping as the highest social group scored high percentage, and they were closer to the standard pronunciation RP, while the low social group scored less. The higher score was allocated to the pronunciation that was close to RP and vice versa. The highest social group scored high, and the lowest social group scored less. In New Zealand, the RP is regarded as a social norm.

- In Paris, the pronunciation of the first vowel in words like “Casser” or “pas” varies from one social group to another. Some people would pronounce them as “cosser” and “po”.

- In Montréal French, (Canada) /l/ deletion varies according to two different social groupings (the professional – the working class). The working class scored high deletion percentage of /l/ rather than the professional one. But /l/ deletion is also influenced by two more things: the grammatical status. ‘l’ almost disappears in impersonal “il” like in “il pleut” (it is raining). Again, the working class showed a higher percentage of deletion than the professional class. The deletion is also influenced by the surrounding sounds. It tends to be deleted when preceding a consonant rather than a vowel. In this case we see that linguistic and social factors affect the pronunciation.

- In Persian Tehrani and Swahili used in Mombassa, the higher the social group is the more standard forms it uses.

On the level of grammatical patterns, there is also a variable that prove social grouping. The higher social groups use more of the standard grammatical forms and few of non-standard or vernacular forms.  For example, the Standard English would use “she walks every day”, “I finished my homework”, while the vernacular would use “ she walk” and “I finish”.

There is a pattern of negation called “negative concord” which means double negation. It is not used by Standard English as it only uses one negation form. However, most vernacular dialects can have more than one negative form.  It is much more frequent in lower class rather than UMC.

In standard pronunciation, the glottal stop is avoided, while used more comfortably in vernacular.

Glossary:

Post vocalic: تأتي بعد حرف علة

Diphthong: صوت مكون من حرفي علة

Summaries- "Introduction to Sociolinguistics," by Janet Holmes. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

National Languages and Language Planning

Difference between official and national language:

Definition:

A national language is the language of a political, cultural and social unit. It is generally developed and used as a symbol of national unity.

Its functions are to identify the nation, and unite the people. However, the official language is a language which may be used for government business. Its functions are utilitarian rather than symbolic. One language of these two can serve both functions.

Their use by government:

Governments use the terms official and national according to their political aims.

Paraguay

                                    National                              official

                                 Guarani, Spanish                    Spanish

Tanzania

                                    National                               official

                                     Swahili                         Swahili, English

Vanuatu

                                    National                                official

                                 Bislama                         Bislama, French, English

Many countries do not make a distinction between the national and the official language. In monolingual nations, the same language serves both purposes.

In multilingual nations, the government declares a particular language to be the national language for political reasons. For example, it may be an attempt to assert the nationhood of a state just like Swahili in Tanzania, Hebrew in Israel, Malay in Malaysia, and Indonesian in Indonesia.

If this language is not capable of serving internal and external functions like government or administration, another official language is needed, just like French in Ivory Coast, Chad and Zaire. Also, Arabic is an official language in Israeli besides Hebrew.

When the choice of a national language is problematic in a multilingual nation, an official language must exist. For example, India has failed to label Hindi as a national language; therefore there are 14 official languages along side English and Hindi. Zaire has four African languages as national languages. Haiti has two national languages: Haitian Creole and French, but French is the official language.

Official status

English is an official language in countries like Pakistan, Jamaica and Vanuatu, and often shares this status with one of the indigenous languages such as Malay, and Swahili in Tanzania.   

In countries like USA, England or New Zealand, the language of the majority is not legally described as the official language. In New Zeeland, although English is the language of administration and government and education, Maori is legally declared as the official language. This declaration gave the language a symbolic meaning that acknowledged the importance of the country. In Wales, the government made Welsh the language of education and government, but it has no official status in Britain.

In India, linguistic minorities have rioted over the governmental ignorance of their demands. In Canada, although English and French were given equal status in all aspects of federal administration, the Quebec government was not happy over the English domination. 

Many minorities would like to gain official status for their languages but the costs of providing services and information in all official languages are considerable.

What price the National Language

A national language of a political entity would emerge as the official language. “One nation, one language” was an effective slogan. Linguistic nationalism in Europe grew by the 19^th century.

It then doubled in the 20^th century when colonized countries became independent. At that time Nationhood and independence were important political issues around the world.

-       In multilingual countries like Tanzania, Indonesia and China and Philippine, the symbolic value of a national language in the face of colonization became very strong.   

-       In a single dominant group, the issue of choosing an official language does not arise. In Somalia, Somali is the first language, and the national official language.  In Denmark, Danish is the first and the national language.

Political influence in multilingual countries plays a role in choosing the national language. For example: when Philippines gained independence, Pilipino became the national language. It was based on Tagalog (the language of the most influential political group in the country).  However, this is not the case in Indonesia, where the language of the elite Javanese is not selected as the national language, but rather Malay that was widely used as a trade language. It was more neutral than Javanese which had a complicated politeness system. India and a number of African countries avoided selecting a national language because the wrong choice leads to riots. However, this is not the case in Tanzania which successfully adopted a national language.

Part Two (planning)

The process of selecting the national language (Planning)

   Four steps are crucial for making a language suitable for official use:

1-   Selection (choosing the variety to be developed). It is usually based on a political decision 

2-   Codification (corpus planning – linguistic processing) it has to do with standardizing the structural and linguistic features of the variety.

3-   Elaboration (extending the functions of the variety to be used in more domains. this involves developing the necessary linguistic resources for handling new concepts and contexts).

4-   Securing its acceptance: status of the variety and attitudes of the people towards it must be taken in consideration.

Selection and acceptance are based on social and political factors. However, codification and elaboration are related to linguistic factors. The linguists must make sure of the availability of linguistic resources for that language in terms of words and structures.

The planning process of a national official language in a large multilingual country (Tanzania) where the competing varieties are distinct languages.  

Selection: the first president of Tanzania chose Swahili as the official national language. It was difficult to choose English as it was the language of the colonizer. The choice was based on the facts that Swahili was already the language of education. It also served as a lingua franca of the anti-colonial movement, and strengthened social relations between different groups that were subject to colonization. Swahili is also identified s an African language, as it belongs to the Bantu family.

Codification and Elaboration:

v Standardization began by the British Administration before independence.

v A southern variety of Swahili was selected as the basis for the standard.

v The codification involved developing spelling system, describing grammar, and writing a dictionary for the vocabulary.

v After independence, Swahili was used for many contexts like education, administration, politics and law. The vocabulary expanded to cover the needs of new contexts by borrowing from English and Arabic. 

v The president recommended that Swahili would be used for post-primary education, high courts and governments. This required more vocabulary for making new technical terms needed for different fields.

Attitudes

Because Swahili was used to unite the people of Tanzania it was regarded in a positive way. Tanzanians were very loyal to the language that united them in working towards freedom. The language also acquired the charisma of the president who used Swahili in different occasions rather than English. Literary works of Shakespeare were also translated into Swahili. Swahili had a neutral status because it was not identified with a particular tribe.

Developing a standard variety in Norway:

Selection: In Norway there was a Diglossia situation where Danish was the H Variety and the language of the oppressor from whom Norway gained independence. Other Norwegian vernaculars are the L varieties. The attitudes towards Danish were hostile, and it was not used by people at rural countries. On the other hand, choosing from the regional Norwegian varieties also stirred problems in relation to people’s attitudes, as well as form and function.

So, there were two approaches taken to develop a standard written variety of Norwegian. One approach selected a variety based on Danish with some orthographic and morphological modification reflecting Norwegian educated speech. (Bokmal). The other approach created a New Norwegian written standard by drawing on a range of Norwegian rural dialects. (Landsmal or later Nynorsk) also called New Norwegian.

Codification and elaboration:

   The New Norwegian was subject to a process of codification and elaboration by Ivar Aasen, a school teacher who:

Ø Wrote a grammar and a 40.000 word dictionary.

Ø Identified common grammatical patterns in different dialects, and chose vocabulary from a range of different dialects also. He chose the forms that were the least corrupted and influenced by Danish.

   Rural dialects solved the problem of functional elaboration or extending the use of Norwegian into domains where Danish had been regarded as the appropriate code.

   By the 20^th century, language planners tried to bring Bokmal and Landsmal together through codification efforts. After WW2, there was a gap between the two languages, and the gap widened by 1990 when there were arguments about the appropriate written form of Norwegian.

   The two languages, though different, share common syntactic features and morphological variants. However they differ in terms of words. Pronouncement is made by the Norwegian Language Council which identifies the appropriate pronouncement.

Glossary

Official language اللغة الرسمية

National Language اللغة القومية

Nationalism القومية

Indigenous أصلي

Riots أعمال شغب

Codification إرساء ووضع القواعد  

Elaboration الاستفاضة

Orthographic إملائي