Jenny Kim

I am an undergraduate student at University of Southern California majoring in Computer Science. Currently working at JPL NASA as an APX.

What counts as a language?

Speakers of ‘languages’ may have linguistic rights to use their language. Speakers of ‘dialects’ almost never have similar rights.


Two linguistic theories of the definition of “language”

📚 The Invariant System Hypothesis

Assume that a language should be taken to be the combination of a set of vocabulary and grammatical rules shared and used in the same way by a particular community

  • Problem: no two individuals make use of an identical set of rules and vocab when they speak.
  • We all have different, idiosyncratic ways of speaking -> idiolect

📢 The Mutual Intelligibility Hypothesis (MIH)

Speakers don’t need to share identical rule systems and vocabularies to be viewed as speakers of a single language, but they must be speakers of varieties which are mutually intelligible.

  • Problem: Counter-examples
    • Type 1: 2+ varieties of speech are mutually intelligible, but are classified as different languages
    • Hindi and Urdu
    • Type 2: 2+ varieties are mutually unintelligible, but are classified as varieties (dialects) of the same language.
    • Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese…

Socio-political factors matter

“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. -Max Weinreich”



Dialects

📍 Property 1:

A dialect is a variety that is NOT recognized as a distinct language, but is related to some officially-recognized language – dialects are both similar to and different from some languages.

📍 Property 2:

Differences between dialects and standard forms of language occur in:

  • Accent - pronunciation
  • Vocabulary
  • Grammar

    📍 Property 3:

    Dialects are commonly associated with a single geographical area/region.

    📍 Property 4:

    Linguists assume that the dialects of a language are all mutually intelligible, to a large degree.

  • Isoglosses: Boundary lines marking the distribution of dialect variables
  • Dialect continuum: Dialects blend into each other, and it’s hard to identify where one ends and another begins.

Three kinds of non-regional dialects

  • Religious dialects
  • Social dialects
  • Ethnic dialects



📣 Styles and Registers

  • All speakers use their language in different ways -formal and informal styles of speaking.
  • Register: a type of speech used in a specific activity/job

🎨 Factors influencing shifts in style

  • The participants
  • The setting
  • The topic
  • Relationship between participants
    • Solidarity
    • Power

A range of factors trigger different ways of speaking.



Languages with special roles

🗃 Official Languages

OLs are established for pragmatic reasons. Official languages are specified for:

  • Area of life/activity
  • Geographical area - either all of a country or a sub-part

    🌏 National Languages

    NLs are symbolic and intended to represent the nation and its projected national identity.



Language Planning

When developing a national or official language, language planning must be carried out.

📍 [Step 1] Status Planning

Giving special roles to certain language/varieties (selecting new NLs and OLs).

📍 [Step 2] Corpus Planning

Further developing the languages selcected in Step 1.

  • Develop vocab
  • Create dictionaries
  • Decided pronunciation
  • Decide how the language should be written (graphization)

    📍 [Step 3] Promotion of new NLs/OLs

  • Mass education
  • Mass media
  • Positive incentives

    📍 [Step 4] Winning acceptance

  • Encourage people to use and be proud of the new NL/OL.
  • Emphasize the practical value

🛠 NLs should fulfill four special functions:

  1. Unifying
  2. Separatist (distinguish its speakers from those of other nations)
  3. Prestige
  4. Frame-of-reference (be well-standardized)

Language purification and Linguistic protectionism

🧼 Language purification

  • Borrowed words (loanwords) are replaced with new native/internally-sourced words.

🥽 Linguistic protectionism

  • Policy that new words should only be created from internal resources
  • Old borrowed words are not eliminated (<-> language purification)



Languages under pressure: minority groups and language loss

What causes people not to use or learn their Heritage Languages?

  1. Political factors
  2. Social pressures
  3. Economic factors
  4. Social status
  5. Inter-marriage
  6. The influence of school
  7. Children’s lack of motivation to learn/use the HL.

Capacity-Opportunity-Desire / COD

A framework for assessing prospects for HL maintenance to be successful.

  • Capacity: abilities that individuals develop in the HL
  • Opportunity: the chances that speakers have to use the HL outside the home in daily life
  • Desire: the eagerness that individuals have to use the HL


📉 Language endangerment and language death

Languages all over the world are becoming moribund.

  • If a language is not being transmitted well to younger generations, it is “moribund”.

Large languages and small languages

  • There are 8 languages with 100+ million L1 speakers.
    • English, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Bengali
    • 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by only 4% of the world’s population.
    • If a language with 20,000 speakers or less should be characterized as endangered, then:
      • 2/3 of the world’s languages are currently endangered, and may completely disappear during the course of the 21stC.

👿 Causes of language endangerment

  1. Economic factors
  2. Social factors
  3. The growth of larger languages
  4. Globalization
  5. Urbanization
  6. Invasion and colonization
  7. Physical causes

Positive reactions to language endangerment

📑 Language documentation

  • The goal is establishing good descriptions and records of endangered languages before they disappear.

☀️ Language revitalization

  • Bilingual education
  • Pre-school “language nests”


Speakers of endangered languages don’t need to abandon their heritage languages to acquire another major language.


Diglossia and Code-switching

Diglossia

  • Diglossia: Switching between two different varieties of the same language in different areas of life.
    1. Two distinct varieties of the same language are used by speakers in a population
    2. High and Low varieties each have different functions - used in different areas of life.
    3. H and L are learned at different times and in different environments.
    4. The H variety is never used in informal conversation.
    5. The H variety my often be standardized.
    6. Literature/writing is predominantly in H.

🎤 Domains of H/L use

  • Religious activities are carried out in H (not L).
  • Newspapers and technical/academic writing are regularly in H.
  • TV soap operas are in L.

🪢 Extended diglossia

  • Two distinct languages patterning in the typical H and L ways.


Code-switching

  • Code-switching: Switching between two (or more) different languages in a single conversation.

🎛 Levels of code-switching

  1. Sentence-boundary CS
  2. Extra-sentential CS (tag-insertion)
  3. Clause-boundary CS
  4. Intra-sentential CS (code-mixing)
    • Insertional CS: words from L2 are inserted into the L1 base.
    • Alternational CS: both L1 and L2 appear in equal amounts.

💡 What causes people to CS?

  1. Imbalanced in the knowledge of L1 and L2.
  2. Stylistic reasons
    • “For fun”
    • To emphasize what they are saying
  3. Identity-related reasons
    • Convergence
      • To stress solidarity/closeness with others
      • Downwards shifting: to stress solidarity
    • Divergence
      • To signal unfriendliness and social distance
      • “Linguistic dueling”
      • Upward shifting: to show education
    • Unmarked language: The language that is conventionally used in a situation X.
    • Marked language: The language that is not usually used in a situation X.

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