Language and Society evidence & Identity
Based on Prof. David Britains course for MA Students of English Languages and Literatures at the University of Bern.
Based on Prof. David Britains course for MA Students of English Languages and Literatures at the University of Bern.
Kartei Details
| Karten | 28 |
|---|---|
| Lernende | 18 |
| Sprache | English |
| Kategorie | Englisch |
| Stufe | Universität |
| Erstellt / Aktualisiert | 06.12.2017 / 08.12.2021 |
| Lizenzierung | Keine Angabe |
| Weblink |
https://card2brain.ch/box/20171206_language_and_society
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| Einbinden |
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What kind of evidence is traditional linguistics interested in for formulating grammars of languages and how did they go about collecting this evidence?
They were looking for native speakers intuitions about language. These were obtained through either introspection or a battery of intuition tests posed to native speakers.
What are some of the problems that sociolinguists see in the intuitive evidence that Chomsky and others use as a base for their work?
1) They don't see intuition as empirical, in the way a opticians test of your eyesight might be.
2) Every person and region has distinct variations, if someone writes a grammar it might as well be called "my grammar of this variety I speak"
3) Things deemed ungrammatical by syctacticians so-called 'evidence' are actually used by native speakers, their invented sentences in the intuition test, on the other hand, test a formal decontextualised grammaticality that is never used.
4) There are many cases (elaborated by Labov in When Intuitions Fail 1996) that show intuitions to be very unreliable. Evidence of this evidence being wrong.
What evidence against intuition did Prof. Britain demonstrate in practice with our participation?
He gave us the quiz with all the questions that showed our distinct interpretations of different questions about language and showed us that we don't remember the last thing we said in a conversation.
1. Look! Is that a donkey stand there?
2. My Hair needs washed.
3. I'm not sure - I might could do it.
4. She love him very much.
...
What do we gather from the fact that these sentences were all ushered by native speakers?
Native speakers are unable, and it is infact near impossible, to recognise all sentences of what we call a language; they do so no better than no-natives. So what is our language?
It follows that native speakers also disagree in their evaluations and interpret sentences differently.
What was the point illustrated by this experiment?
A postman is walking down the street. He sees a big
pile of money drop from an old tramp’s bag in front
of him.
The old tramp doesn’t realise what has happened. The
postman goes to pick up the money. The old tramp
sees this and goes to pick up the money as well. They
start struggling with each other. The old tramp
screams for help.
A policewoman and a big strong man are standing
nearby…..
Who do you wanna help?
Even though they wanna help the tramp (object interpretation) is the only interpretation of this according to synctacticians, 35% of students would say they want the policewoman to help (subject interpretation) even though *They wanna the policewoman to help is supposedly ungrammatical.
So? Things seen as ungrammatical are used by native speakers in context.
What does this graph tell us?
And why is that so? (according to Labov)
Speakers intuitions about their use of language can be way off.
Leave taking (saying goodbye) is intuitively something ritualised and banale, which basically means not sincere. However: Saying goodbye can be difficult and risky in CONTEXT, there it is spontaneous and emotional and this kind of behaviour is not captured well by intuition, which excels more in ritualised behaviour. Hence the mismatch.
Lessons from having a closer look at intuition... (this is quite big, sorry.)
- Examining our intuitions from decontextualised examples can often provide inaccurate results about use;
- The social stigma of certain non-standard forms can prevent native speakers having accurate intuitions about their own language use;
- Context is crucial. Because so many intuition tests rely on decontextualised sentences, the pragmatic and interactional force of the phrases studied is stripped away and jeopardises the accuracy of the test;
- Literacy and advanced study can cloud the accuracy of intuition as a window on the spoken language;
- Speakers don’t always have clear intuitions, or black and white intuitions, or even agree with other people from the speech community.
Principle of Experimenter (Labov's principles of intuition)
Principle of Experimenter:
If there is any disagreement on introspective judgements, the judgments of those who are familiar with the theoretical issues may not be counted as evidence.
