Well, I'm back to the blogosphere after a holiday break. I traveled a lot, and had a merry time with family, and I hope everyone had the chance to do the same.
Over the break, I was thinking about possible topics, and one popped right out of social media. Many people took the NYT's dialect quiz, and were quite surprised by the results. Some of our mountain brethren and sistren were taken aback by reading that their closest 'city' was somewhere flat. So, a brief word about dialect maps and the popular notion of dialects.
First off, the maps were/are cool. Anytime language variation gets positive attention in the media and social media, I am for it. However, there were a few issues. There weren't enough questions, and the questions that were contained were mainly lexical (what word do you have for X). The other questions were really broad (how do you say the vowel sound in X). They pulled those questions from something much larger and more refined. I understand why; it was meant to be fun and fast. But, the biggest issue is that everyone's lexicon changes A LOT over time. For example, growing up in rural Appalachia, we didn't have a road that went parallel to the interstate/freeway. I mean, we had to drive 45 minutes to get to an interstate/freeway, so I was barely aware of the nuances. So, what word do I use? Well, I lived in TX for a while, where people say frontage road. So, that's the word I use. But, I also understand access road, which is very common. Also, with the word caramel. Different members of my family say it the two main ways, the two syllable version and the three syllable version. I think I actually vary in how I say it. So, I liked the maps, but again, we need to recognize their limitations.
Moving to the popular idea of dialects will require more words, so hold on and bear with me (this usually takes an entire class period, and reminders for an entire semester, so I apologize now for the length of this). When many people think of dialects, there are two common notions. One is that a dialect is somehow inferior to the 'standard' or 'mainstream'. The other is that everyone in a particular area (say the South, or NYC, or Boston) speaks a dialect, and other areas (like the Midwest) don't. First off, we all speak dialects, and everyone speaks more than one. A dialect (or as we linguists usually refer to them, a variety) is just a rule-governed system of language spoken by a group of people. I want to highlight two ideas: rule-governed and group of people. All native speakers of any language variety on this planet speak a rule-governed language. Now, you may be thinking, 'What about people who say (thing that I think is wrong or have been told is wrong)?'. An example can help. Let's start with a bugaboo for many people, double negation. We've all heard the cliche 'two negative make a positive' from either a teacher, parent, or someone. According to this logic, a statement like 'I don't got no money' would mean that the speaker actually has money. Now, would any native speaker of English really interpret this sentence that way? I say no. Or, perhaps more tellingly, say a child is about to put a penny in a light socket. A nearby person says, 'No, no, no, no!!!'. Does the child count the 'no's', divide by 2, realize that the negatives cancel, and then say, 'Aha! Even number, negation cancelled. That means I can continue by electricity experiment!'. Obviously not. Besides this, there are languages (French, Spanish, many others) where double negation is *required*, as in 'Je ne parlez pas anglais', which is literally 'I no speak no English'. Now, is the entire French language illogical? Of course not. So, what about those rules I mentioned? Linguistically, rules are more like ways of defining how a system works (kind of like laws of physics, descriptions of how things behave). When I say that there are rules of language, what I mean is that certain things are common among native speakers and are allowable in a given language or variety, and other things are not. So, in lots of varieties of English, I can say, 'I ain't got no money.'. Technically, I have broken no rule of English. There is a subject: I, a verb: ain't got, and a direct object: money, with a negative marker: no. English usually requires a subject, verb, and often needs an object. So, what rule was broken? No linguistic rule. Now, before I get the emails about how I am saying anything goes, a sentence like Over the I ball fence hit the is not English (in any variety). Why? Because it does not adhere to what native speakers do. There is no variety of English that I am aware of that would call this sentence allowable. But, there are many varieties that allow double negation and other things. However, there is a social side to language also, perhaps even more important. We are judged, positively and negatively, on how we speak and write. Some things that are totally fine spoken in one arena of life, say with family, may not be in other areas. Or sometimes the way we write is different from how we speak. I liken this to clothing. There are some clothes that are appropriate for a fancy dinner, but a tux at a sports bar would be a bit out of place. The same can be said for sweat pants and a T-shirt. Great for hanging out at home or somewhere really casual. Not so good for an awards ceremony. There is no rule preventing me from rocking a sweet zoot suit tux when I want to watch a ball game with my friends. However, I expect that there will be jokes (a lot of them...). Or if I wore gym shorts and a T-shirt to a formal dinner, I might get some weird looks and probably I won't be asked back. Was I wrong? No, I wasn't indecent in either case (or breaking any laws), but there were certain expectations about what to wear. Now, these expectations change. No one I know wears a powdered wig anywhere, but that was the style in the 1700s. Do we lambast people who don't wear powdered wigs anymore? No, but people did. As style changed, behavior changed. Some people didn't like it, but that passed.
The same thing happens with language. The rules, which describe behavior, change as the behavior changes. We don't say thee or thou very much anymore, so the rules of how to use them have definitely changed. Very few people in the U.S. pronounce vowels like in Great Britain, so that has changed. The behavior changed, and thus, so did the rules. This is a part of language.
In fact, language varies in time, space, and within space. We all know that our grandparents sound a little (or a lot) different than us, as do our parents. We also know that people in different areas sound a little different (vowels and consonants) or use different words (like schlep or gum band or holler). We also know that people who hang out together sound a lot alike and/or use words to demonstrate membership in a group. Education, group, sex/gender, language varies by all of these and more. I think this is the coolest part of language. It is so complex, yet we all can use it. There are so many ways it can vary, yet we can still communicate.
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