Language geography

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A map of the language divisions within Justinian I's Byzantine Empire .mw-parser-output .legend{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .legend-color{display:inline-block;min-width:1.25em;height:1.25em;line-height:1.25;margin:1px 0;text-align:center;border:1px solid black;background-color:transparent;color:black}.mw-parser-output .legend-text{} Greek Greek and native Latin Latin and native Aramaic Coptic Caucasian and Armenian Linguistic Map of Justinian I's Empire c. 560.png
A map of the language divisions within Justinian I's Byzantine Empire
  Greek
  Greek and native
  Latin
  Latin and native
  Aramaic
  Coptic
  Caucasian and Armenian

Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elements. Linguistic geography can also refer to studies of how people talk about the landscape. For example, toponymy is the study of place names. [1] Landscape ethnoecology, also known as ethnophysiography, is the study of landscape ontologies and how they are expressed in language. [2]

Contents

There are two principal fields of study within the geography of language:

  1. geography of languages, which deals with the distribution through history and space of languages, [3] and/or is concerned with 'the analysis of the distribution patterns and spatial structures of languages in contact'. [4]
  2. geolinguistics being, when used as a sub-discipline of geography, the study of the 'political, economic and cultural processes that affect the status and distribution of languages'. [5] When perceived as a sub-discipline of linguistics that incorporates contact linguistics, one definition appearing has been 'the study of languages and dialects in contact and in conflict with various societal, economic, ideological, political and other contemporary trends with regard to a particular geographic location and on a planetary scale'. [6]

Various other terms and subdisciplines have been suggested, but none gained much currency, [7] including:

Many studies in what is now called contact linguistics have researched the effect of language contact, [14] as the languages or dialects (varieties) of peoples have interacted. [7] This territorial expansion of language groups has usually resulted in the overlaying of languages upon existing speech areas, rather than the replacement of one language by another. For example, after the Norman Conquest of England, Old French became the language of the aristocracy but Middle English remained the language of a majority of the population. [15]

Linguistic geography

Linguistic geography, as a field, is dominated by linguists rather than geographers. [11] Charles W. J. Withers describes the difference as resulting from a focus on "elements of language, and only then with their geographical or social variation, as opposed to investigation of the processes making for change in the extent of language areas." [7] Peter Trudgill says, "linguistic geography has been geographical only in the sense that it has been concerned with the spatial distribution of linguistic phenomena." [12] Greater emphasis has been laid upon explanation rather than mere description of the patterns of linguistic change. [11] [7] That move has paralleled similar concerns in geography and language studies. [16] Some studies have paid attention to the social use [17] of language and to variations in dialect within languages in regard to social class or occupation. [18] Regarding such variations, lexicographer Robert Burchfield notes that their nature "is a matter of perpetual discussion and disagreement" and notes that "most professional linguistic scholars regard it as axiomatic that all varieties of English have a sufficiently large vocabulary for the expression of all the distinctions that are important in the society using it." He contrasts this with the view of the historian John Vincent, who regards such a view as

"a nasty little orthodoxy among the educational and linguistic establishment. However badly you need standard English, you will have the merits of non-standard English waved at you. The more extravagantly your disadvantages will be lauded as 'entirely adequate for the needs of their speakers', to cite the author of Sociolinguistics. It may sound like a radical cry to support pidgin, patois, or dialect, but translated into social terms, it looks more like a ploy to keep Them (whoever Them may be) out of the middle-class suburbs."

— John Vincent, The Times [19]

Burchfield concludes, "Resolution of such opposite views is not possible.... future of dialect studies and the study of class-marked distinctions are likely to be of considerable interest to everyone." [20]

In England, linguistic geography has traditionally focused upon rural English, rather than urban English. [21] A common production of linguistic investigators of dialects is the shaded and dotted map showing to show where one linguistic feature ends and another begins or overlaps. Various compilations of these maps for England have been issued over the years, including Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (1896–1905), the Survey of English Dialects (1962–8), and The Linguistic Atlas of England (1978). [22]

Geolinguistic organizations

Most geolinguistic organizations identify themselves as associations of linguists rather than of geographers. This includes the two oldest which both date to 1965 with "Amici Linguarum" (language friends) being founded by Erik V. Gunnemark and The American Society of Geolinguistics by Mario A. Pei. The research in geolinguistics which these organizations and others, which are more geographically oriented, promote is often interdisciplinary, being at times simultaneously both linguistic and geographic, and also being at times linked to other sub-disciplines of linguistics as well as going beyond linguistics to connect to sociology, anthropology, ethnology, history, demographics, political science, studies of cognition and communication, etc.

See also

Related Research Articles

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology.

In sociolinguistics, a variety, also known as a lect or an isolect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, registers, styles, or other forms of language, as well as a standard variety. The use of the word variety to refer to the different forms avoids the use of the term language, which many people associate only with the standard language, and the term dialect, which is often associated with non-standard language forms thought of as less prestigious or "proper" than the standard. Linguists speak of both standard and non-standard (vernacular) varieties as equally complex, valid, and full-fledged forms of language. Lect avoids the problem in ambiguous cases of deciding whether two varieties are distinct languages or dialects of a single language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isogloss</span> Geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature

An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Isoglosses are a subject of study in dialectology, in which they demarcate the differences between regional dialects of a language; in areal linguistics, in which they represent the extent of borrowing of features between languages in contact with one another; and in the wave model of historical linguistics, in which they indicate the similarities and differences between members of a language family.

In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, age group, or other social group.

In the field of dialectology, a diasystem or polylectal grammar is a linguistic analysis set up to encode or represent a range of related varieties in a way that displays their structural differences.

Peter Trudgill, TBA is an English sociolinguist, academic and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Speech community</span> Group of people who share expectations regarding linguistic usage

A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language. It is a concept mostly associated with sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.

In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow prescriptive norms for formal usage than in a casual setting, for example, by pronouncing words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal, choosing words that are considered more "formal", and refraining from using words considered nonstandard, such as ain't and y'all.

In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally considered by a society to be the most "correct" or otherwise superior. In many cases, they are the standard form of the language, though there are exceptions, particularly in situations of covert prestige. In addition to dialects and languages, prestige is also applied to smaller linguistic features, such as the pronunciation or usage of words or grammatical constructs, which may not be distinctive enough to constitute a separate dialect. The concept of prestige provides one explanation for the phenomenon of variation in form among speakers of a language or languages.

Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect. In the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is today by some considered a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. Dialectology deals with such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation.

Jenny L. Cheshire is a British sociolinguist and professor at Queen Mary University of London. Her research interests include language variation and change, language contact and dialect convergence, and language in education, with a focus on conversational narratives and spoken English. She is most known for her work on grammatical variation, especially syntax and discourse structures, in adolescent speech and on Multicultural London English.

Geolinguistics has been identified by some as being a branch of linguistics and by others as being an offshoot of language geography which is further defined in terms of being a branch of human geography. When seen as a branch of linguistics, geolinguistics may be viewed from more than one linguistic perspective, something with research implications; approaches to geolinguistics involve the study of dialectology and of linguistic areal features.

A diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of late with that of wait or eight. Other English varieties contrast the vowel of late or wait with that of eight. This non-overlapping pair of phonemes from two different varieties can be reconciled by positing three different diaphonemes: A first diaphoneme for words like late, a second diaphoneme for words like wait, and a third diaphoneme for words like eight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Koiné language</span> Contact language from mutually intelligible dialects of the same language

In linguistics, a koine or koiné language or dialect is a standard or common dialect that has arisen as a result of the contact, mixing, and often simplification of two or more mutually intelligible varieties of the same language.

Sociolinguistic research in India is the study of how the Indian society affects and is affected by the languages of the country.

Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation, lexicon, grammar, and other features. Different communities or individuals speaking the same language may differ from each other in their choices of which of the available linguistic features to use, and the same speaker may make different choices on different occasions.

Dialect levelling is the process of a dialect increasingly adopting features with widespread social currency, due to contact with one or more other dialects, at the expense of more local or traditional features. Typically, this comes about through assimilation, mixture, and merging of certain dialects, often by language codification, which can be a precursor to standardization. One possible result is a koine language, in which various specific dialects mix together and simplify, settling into a new and more widespread form of the language.

The Language Atlas of China, published by Hong Kong Longman Publishing Company in two parts in 1987 and 1989, maps the distribution of both the varieties of Chinese and minority languages of China.

In the field of sociolinguistics, social network describes the structure of a particular speech community. Social networks are composed of a "web of ties" between individuals, and the structure of a network will vary depending on the types of connections it is composed of. Social network theory posits that social networks, and the interactions between members within the networks, are a driving force behind language change.

Geolinguistic organizations may be divided into academic associations, research institutes, and academic journals.

References

  1. ↑ Kadmon, Naftali (2000). Toponymy : the lore, laws, and language of geographical names (1st ed.). New York: Vantage Press. ISBN   0533135311.
  2. ↑ Johnson, Leslie Main; Hunn, Eugene S., eds. (2012). Landscape Ethnoecology: Concepts of Biotic and Physical Space. New York: Berghahn Books.
  3. ↑ Delgado de Carvalho, C.M. (1962). The geography of languages. In Wagner, P.L.; Mikesell, M.W. Readings in cultural geography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 75–93.
  4. ↑ Williams, C.H. (1980). "Language contact and language change in Wales, 1901–1971: a study in historical geolinguistics". Welsh History Review 10, 207–238.
  5. 1 2 Gunnemark, Erik (1991). "What is geolinguistics ?". Geolinguistics, Journal of the American Society of Geolinguistics. 17. American Society of Geolinguistics: 12. ISSN   0190-4671.
  6. ↑ "International Conference on multilingual perspectives in geolinguistics, April 11, 2015".
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Withers, Charles W.J. [1981] (1993). Johnson, R.J. The Dictionary of Human Geography, Gregory, Derek; Smith, David M., Second edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 252–3.
  8. ↑ Dell'Aquila, V. (1997). Mapping the languages of Europe in Herberts K., Laurén C., Laurén U, Strömann S. (Eds.): "Flerspråkighetens dimensioner. Individ, familj och samhälle", Vaasan Yliopiston Julkaisuja: Vaasa/Vasa, 103–131.
  9. ↑ Pei, M. (1966). Glossary of linguistic terminology. New York: John Wiley.
  10. ↑ Trudgill, P. (1974). Linguistic change and diffusion: description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 3:2, 215–46.
  11. 1 2 3 Trudgill, P. (1983). On dialect: social and geographical perspectives. Oxford: Basil Blackwell; New York: New York University Press.
  12. 1 2 Trudgill, P. (1975). Linguistic geography and geographical linguistics. Progress in Geography 7, 227–52
  13. ↑ Iordan, I.; Orr, J. (1970). An introduction to romance linguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell; Berkeley: University of California Press.
  14. ↑ Weinrich, U. (1974). Languages in contact. The Hague: Mouton.
  15. ↑ Burchfield, Robert [1985] (2003). The English Language, New York: Oxford University Press, 14.
  16. ↑ Withers, C.W.J. (1984). Gaelic in Scotland 1698–1981: the geographical history of a language. Edinburgh: John Donald; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
  17. ↑ Hult, F.M. (2009). Language ecology and linguistic landscape analysis. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 88–104). London: Routledge.
  18. ↑ Giglioli, P.P. (1972). Language and social context. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  19. ↑ The Times, 23 February 1983, p. 12
  20. ↑ Burchfield, Robert [1985] (2003). The English Language, New York: Oxford University Press, 128–130.
  21. ↑ In 1985, one could still say, "We still know far more about the distribution of byre/shippon/mistall/cow-stable/cow-house/cow-shed/neat-house/beast-house for 'cow-shed' than we do about urban synonyms for pedestrian crossings, lollipop men, machines used to wash cars, forecourts of petrol stations, bollards, sleeping policemen, pay-out desks, supermarket trolleys, traffic wardens, telephone booths and hundreds of other items found in every city in the United Kingdom." Burchfield, Robert [1985] (2003). The English Language, New York: Oxford University Press, 128.
  22. ↑ Burchfield, Robert [1985] (2003). The English Language, New York: Oxford University Press, 125.
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