Читать книгу An Introduction to Sociolinguistics - Ronald Wardhaugh, Janet M. Fuller - Страница 53

The term dialect can also be used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes. An immediate problem is that of defining social group (see chapter 3) or social class (see chapter 5). Proper weight needs to be given to the various factors that can be used to determine social position, for example, occupation, place of residence, education, income, ‘new’ versus ‘old’ money, racial or ethnic category, national or cultural background, caste, religion, and so on. Such factors as these do appear to be related to how people speak.

Whereas regional dialects are geographically based, social dialects originate among social groups and are related to a variety of factors, the principal ones apparently being social class, religion, and race/ethnicity. In a study of the role of religion in variation in Arabic across Arabic‐speaking countries, Germanos and Miller (2015, 96) note that ‘even tiny sociolinguistic variation (including salutations and terms of address) will often be enough to identify a speaker as Muslim, Jew or Christian in the same way that he will also be identified as urban or rural, as coming from such and such region, as belonging to popular or middle‐class etc.’

Such studies in social dialectology, the term used to refer to this branch of linguistic study, examine how ways of speaking are linked to social differences within a particular region. Socioeconomic class is a main factor which will be addressed in chapter 5. Another factor in social dialectology which has received a great deal of attention is race/ethnicity; later in this chapter we will focus on African American Vernacular English, a variety which has been studied extensively by sociolinguists. First, however, we will introduce a German social dialect which is controversial both in German society and among linguists, a case which brings to the forefront the concerns inherent to social dialectology.