Hudson Sociolinguistics
Language
2.2.1 'Language' and 'dialect'
We shall spend
the rest of this chapter looking at the most widely recognised types
of language variety: 'language', 'dialect' and 'register'. We shall see
that all three types are
extremely
problematic, both from the point of view of finding a general definition for
each one
which will distinguish it from the others, and also from the point of view of
finding criteria
for delimiting varieties.
We first need
to consider the concept 'language'. What does it mean to say that some variety is a language?
This is first of all a question about popular usage: what do ordinary people mean when they
say that some variety is a language? Having answered the question in this form, we may or
may not wish to take 'language' as a technical term, and say how we propose to use
it in sociolinguistics. We shall want to do so if we (30 Page Break 31) find that popular
usage reflects some kind of reality to which we would like to refer in
sociolinguistics,
but if we come to the conclusion that popular usage reflects no such reality, then there will
be no point in defining 'language' more explicitly in order to use it as a technical term.
One thing that
is not in question is the importance of studying popular usage of the term 'language'
simply as part of English vocabulary, along with 'well-spoken', 'chat' and
other vocabulary
which reflects the parts of our culture which are related to language and
speech.
It is part of
our culture to make a distinction between 'languages' and 'dialects' - in fact,
we make
two, separate, distinctions using these terms, and we may draw
conclusions from this fact about our culturally inherited view of language (in the same way
that we can usevocabulary as evidence for other aspects of culture - see
3.2.1).
We may contrast
our culture in this respect with others where no such distinction is made.
For example,
according to Einar Haugen (1966), this was the case in England until the term dialect was borrowed, as a learned word, from Greek
in the Renaissance. In fact, we may see our distinction between 'language' and
'dialect' as due to the influence of Greek culture, since the
distinction was developed in Greek because of the existence of a number of
clearly distinct
written varieties in use in Classical Greece, each associated with a different
area and
used for a
different kind of literature. Thus the meanings of the Greek terms which were translated as
'language' and 'dialect' were in fact quite different from the meanings these
words have in
English now. Their equivalents in French are perhaps more similar, since the French word dialecte
refers only to regional varieties which are written and have a literature, in contrast
with regional varieties which are not written, which are called patois. The
point of
this discussion is to show that there is nothing absolute about the distinction
which English
happens to make between 'languages' and 'dialects' (and for readers familiar
with
some language
other than English, this discussion will hardly have been necessary).What then
is the difference, for English speakers, between a language and a dialect?
There
are two
separate ways of distinguishing them, and this ambiguity is a source of great confusion.
(Haugen (1966) argues that the reason for the ambiguity, and the resulting
confusion, is
precisely the fact that 'dialect' was borrowed from Greek, where the sameambiguity
existed.) On the one hand, there is a difference of size, because a
language is
larger than a
dialect. That is, a variety called a (31 Page Break 32) language contains more items than one
called a dialect. This is the sense in which we may refer to English as a language,
containing the sum total of all the terms in all its dialects, with 'Standard
English' as
one dialect among many others (Yorkshire English, Indian English, etc.). Hence
the
greater 'size'
of the language English.
The other
contrast between 'language' and 'dialect' is a question of prestige, a
language having
prestige which a dialect lacks. If we apply the terms in this sense, Standard
English (e.g.
the kind of English used in this book) is not a dialect at all, but a language,
whereas the varieties
which are not used in formal writing are dialects. Whether some variety is
called a language
or a dialect depends on how much prestige one thinks it has, and for most
people
this is a
clear-cut matter, which depends on whether it is used in formal writing.
Accordingly,
people in Britain habitually refer to languages which are unwritten (or which they think are
unwritten) as dialects, or 'mere dialects', irrespective of whether there is a
(proper)
language to which they are related. (It would be nonsense to use 'dialect' in
this way intending
its 'size' sense, of course.) The fact that we put so much weight on whether or
not it
is written in distinguishing between 'language' and 'dialect' is one of the
interesting things
that the terms
show us about British culture, and we shall return to the importance of writing in 2.2.2.
It is probably
fair to say that the only kind of variety which would count as a 'proper language' (in
the second sense of 'language') is a standard language. Standard
languages are
interesting in
as much as they have a rather special relation to society - one which is quite abnormal when
seen against the context of the tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of years
during which
language has been used. Whereas one thinks of normal language development as taking place
in a rather haphazard way, largely below the threshold of consciousness of the speakers,
standard languages are the result of a direct and deliberate intervention by society. This
intervention, called 'standardisation', produces a standard language where before there
were just 'dialects' (i.e. non-standard varieties).
The notion
'standard language' is somewhat imprecise, but a typical standard language will have passed
through the following processes (Haugen 1966; for a somewhat different list, see Garvin
& Mathiot (1956). (32 Page Break 33)
(1) Selection
- somehow or other a particular variety must have been selected as the one
to be
developed into a standard language. It may be an existing variety, such as the
one used in
an important political or commercial centre, but it could be an amalgam of
various varieties.
The choice is a matter of great social and political importance, as the cosen variety
necessarily gains prestige and so the people who already speak it share in this prestige.
However, in some cases the chosen variety has been one with no native speakers at all - for
instance, Classical Hebrew in Israel and Bahasa Indonesia (a newly created language) in
Indonesia (Bell 1976: 167).
(2) Codification
- some agency such as an academy must have written dictionaries and
grammar books
to 'fix' the variety, so that everyone agrees on what is correct. Once codification
has taken place, it becomes necessary for any ambitious citizen to learn the
correct forms
and not to use in writing any 'incorrect' forms he may have in his native variety, which
may take literally years of a child's school career.
(3) Elaboration
of function - it must be possible to use the selected variety in all the functions
associated with central government and with writing, for example in parliament
and law courts,
in bureaucratic, educational and scientific documents of all kinds, and of course in
various forms of literature. This may require extra linguistic items to be
added to the
variety, especially technical words, but it is also necessary to develop new
conventions for
using existing forms - how to formulaic examination questions, how to
write formal letters,
and so on.
(4) Acceptance
- the variety has to be accepted by the relevant population as the variety
of the
community - usually, in fact, as the national language. Once this has happened,
the standard
language serves as a strong unifying force for the state, as a symbol of
its independence
of other states
(assuming that its standard is unique and not shared with others), and as
a marker of its difference from other states. It is precisely this
symbolic function
that makes states go to so me lengths to develop one.
This analysis
of the factors typically involved in standardisation has been quite widely accepted by
sociolinguists (for more details and examples, see Garvin 1959, Garvin & Mathiot 1956,
Hall 1972, Macaulay 1973, Trudgill 1974b: 149). However, there is ample scope for
debate and disagreement about the desirability of certain aspects of
standardisation.
For instance,
it is not essential either that standardisation should involve matters of pronunciation as well as of writing (Macaulay 1973), or
that the standard language should be presented as the only 'correct' (33 Page
Break 34) variety (a point argued by many linguists and sociolinguists, notably
Trudgill 1975a; see also 6.2 below). Moreover, a policy suitable for
one community may not fit another, so great care, sensitivity, wisdom and knowledge are
needed for success in any standardisation programme (Kelman 1972). The present
section on standard languages is the only part of this book that deals in any detail with the
large-scale issues of the sociology of language (see 1.1.3 for the difference between
sociolinguistics and the sociology of language), but it has been included for
three
reasons.
Firstly, it is relevant to the discussion of the second meaning of 'language' introduced in
2.2.1 (where 'language' = 'standard language'). Secondly, it is interesting to
see
that language
can be deliberately manipulated by society. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it
brings out the unusual character of standard languages, which are
perhaps the least
interesting kind of language for anyone interested in the nature of human
language (as most
linguists are). For instance, one might almost describe standard languages as
pathological in
their lack of diversity. To see language in its 'natural' state, one must find
a variety
which is neither a standard language, nor a dialect subordinate to a standard
(since these
too show pathological features, notably the difficulty of making judgments in
terms of the
non-standard dialect without being influenced by the standard one). The irony,
of course, is
that academic linguistics is likely to arise only in a society with a standard
language, such as Britain, the United States, or France, and the first language
to which linguists pay attention is their own - a standard one.
2.2.3
The delimitation of languages
We now return
to the question posed at the beginning of 2.2: what does it mean to say of some variety
that it is a language? We can now clarify the question by distinguishing between the two
meanings of 'language' based, respectively, on prestige and size. We have
already given
an answer on the basis of prestige: a language is a standard language. In principle this
distinction is an absolute one: either a variety is a standard language, or it
is
not. (It is clear,
however, that some languages are more standard than others; for instance, Standard French
has been more rigidly codified than Standard English.) When we turn to the other
distinction, based on size, the situation is very different, since everything
becomes relative
- for example, in comparison with one variety a chosen variety may be large,
yet compared
with another it (34 Page Break 35) may be small. The variety containing all the items used in
Britain looks large compared with, say, Standard English or Cockney, but Orly small compared
with the variety which consists of all the items used in any of the
'Englishspeaking'
countries. This
being so, the claim that a particular variety is a language, in the 'size' sense,
amounts to very little. Is there, then, any way in which the distinction
between
'language' and
'dialect' based on size can be made less relative? (To anticipate, our answer
is that
there is not.)
The obvious
candidate for an extra criterion is that of mutual intelligibility. If
the speakers of two varieties can understand each other, then the varieties concerned
are instances of the same language; otherwise they are not. This is a widely used
criterion, but it cannot be taken
seriously
because there are such serious problems in its application.
(1) Even popular
usage does not correspond consistently to this criterion, since varieties which we (as
laymen) call different languages may be mutually intelligible (e.g. the
Scandinavian
languages, excluding Finnish and Lapp) and varieties which we call instantes of the same
language may not (e.g. the so-called 'dialects' of Chinese). Popular usage
tends to
reflect the other definition of language, based on prestige, so that if two
varieties are both standard languages, or are subordinate to different standards, they
must be different languages, and conversely they must be the same language if they are
both subordinate to the same standard. This explains the difference between our ideas on
the varieties of Scandinavia and of China: each Scandinavian country has a separate
standard language (indeed, Norway has two), whereas the whole of China only has
one. (The effect of the Chinese situation is curious: a man from Peking cannot understand a
man from' Canton or
Hong Kong when
he is speaking his own dialect, but predictably can understand him fully when he writes
the standard.)
(2) Mutual
intelligibility is a matter of degree, ranging from total
intelligibility down to total unintelligibility. How high up this scale do
two varieties need to be in order to count as
members of the
same language? This is clearly a question which is best avoided, rather than answered, since
any answer must be arbitrary. (It is worth noting that Gillian Sankoff has developed a system
for calculating degrees of mutual intelligibility (1969), which clearly shows that
mutual intelligibility may only be partial when applied to particular communities.)
(3) Varieties
may be arranged in a DIALECT CONTINUUM, a chain of adjacent varieties
in which each
pair of adjacent varieties are mutually (35 Page Break 36) intelligible, but pairs taken
from opposite ends of the chain are not. One such continuum is said to stretch from Amsterdam
through Germany to Vienna, and another from Paris to the south of Italy.
The criterion
of mutual intelligibility is, however, based on a relationship between
languages that
is logically different from that of sameness of language, which it is supposed
to
illuminate. If
A is the same language as B, and B is the same language as C, then A and C must also be
the same language, and so on. 'Sameness of language' is therefore a transitive relation, but
'mutual intelligibility' is an intransitive one: if A and B are mutually
intelligible, and
B and C are mutually intelligible, C and A are not necessarily mutually
intelligible. The problem is that an intransitive relation cannot be used to elucidate a
transitive relation.
(4) Mutual
intelligibility is not really a relation between varieties, but between people,
since it
is they, and not the varieties, that understand one another. This being so, the
degree of mutual
intelligibility depends not just on the amount of overlap between the items in
the two varieties,
but on qualities of the people concerned. One highly relevant quality is motivation: how much does
person A want to understand person B? This will depend on numerous factors such as
how much A likes B, how far he wishes to emphasise the cultural differences or similarities
between them, and so on. Motivation is important because understanding another person
always requires effort on the part of the hearer - as witness the possibility
of 'switching
off' when one's motivation is low. The greater the difference between the
varieties concerned,
the more effort is needed, so if A cannot understand B, this simply tells us
that
the task was
too great for A's motivation, and we do not know what would have happened if his motivation
had been higher. Another relevant quality of the hearer is experience: how much experience
has he had of the variety to which he is listening? Obviously, the more previous
experience he has had, the more likely he is to be able to understand it. Both
of these
qualities raise another problem regarding the use of mutual intelligibility as
a criterion, namely
that it need not be reciprocal, since A and B need not have the same
degree of motivation
for understanding each other, nor need they have the same amount of previous experience of
each other's varieties. Typically, it is easier for a non-standard speaker to understand a
standard speaker than the other way round, partly because the former will have had more
experience of the standard variety (notably through the media) than vice versa,
and partly
because he may be motivated to minimise the cultural differences between
himself and
the standard (36 Page Break 37) speaker (though this is by no means necessarily
so), while
the standard speaker may want to emphasise these differences.
In conclusion,
mutual intelligibility does not work as a criterion for delimiting languages in the 'size'
sense. There is no other criterion which is worth considering as an alternative,
so we
must conc1ude (with Matthews 1979: 47) that there is no real distinction to
be Dracn between
'language' and 'dialect' (except
with reference to prestige, where it would be better to use the term
'standard language' or just 'standard', rather than just 'language'). In other
words, the concept 'language X' has no part to play in sociolinguistics - nor, for exactly the same reasons, can it have any place in linguistics. All we need is the notion 'variety X', and the obvious and unsurprising observation that a given variety may be relatively similar to some other varieties and relatively different from others.