Language and Society

Here’s a good example of linguistic differences which I found in John Mullan’s ‘How Novels Work’.

“Hardy typically gives the impression of dialect through idioms and patterns of syntax, without attempting phonetic reproduction. He complicates this by having characters who can vary between dialect and standard English. One such is Tess Durbeyfield, ‘who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National school’ and ‘spoke two languages; the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality’ (Tess of the D’Urbevilles, Chap iii, 27). p129 in Mullan.

Remind anyone of Bernstein’s language codes?

And of course, this sort of thing still goes on; maybe, due to migration, there is more of it, with people speaking completely different languages at home.

This raises a host of sociological issues and questions. Here are just a few:

Do you speak differently at home compared to say school or work?

How is a person’s social status - and indeed life chances - influenced by their accent and use of non-standard English?

....And I haven’t even got on to the topic of speaking other languages.