The characters` dialects and their social background in mark twain`s the adventures of huckleberry finn - USD Repository
THE CHARACTERS’ DIALECTS AND
THEIR SOCIAL BACKGROUND IN MARK TWAIN’S
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
WIVINA TOMAS
Student Number: 034214079
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
2007
THE CHARACTERS’ DIALECTS AND
THEIR SOCIAL BACKGROUND IN MARK TWAIN’S
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
WIVINA TOMAS
Student Number: 034214079
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
2007
i
HE MAKES ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL IN HIS TIME
JUST DO THE BEST,
AND LET GOD DO THE REST .
The past is gone, The future is unpredictable. All we have is now, Then make great use of it.
- Still Thoughts
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My highest gratitude goes to Father Jesus and Holy Mary for the endless blessing, love, and grace upon me in every single path of my life. I would also like to thank:
My advisor, Dr. Fr. B. Alip, M. Pd., M.A., for the patience and guidance in doing the undergraduate thesis. My co-advisor, J. Harris Hermansyah S., S.S., M. Hum., for checking, correcting and giving me advices for my thesis. My academic advisor, Dewi Widyastuti S.Pd. M. Hum., for watching and supporting the undergraduate thesis completion. My lecturers in English Letters Department and USD staff, for the help, knowledge and friendliness. Thanks to Mbak Nik for all information and help. My great family: My loveliest Mother, Father, Brothers (Da Ge & Xiao Ge), and especially My Inspiring Sister (Miss Yulie): “You’re great! I’m really proud of you.” My sisters in Legi 6B: Nit&Ko, Toi&Ga, Pan&Wan, Ci Nurie&Her Someone.
Thank you for coloring my days in Jogja. Everything is as wonderful as a dream! My great partner in Warta Nusantara Mandarin Jogja TV, Kristina Yappy. I love
our happy-crazy moments so much. They were so memorable! And to all friends of 2003 English Letters, Sanata Dharma University.
Wivina Tomas
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3. Relationship Between Language and Society ................................. 16
CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 35 A. The Main Characters in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .............................................................................................................. 35 B. Speech of Huck, Jim, and Tom ................................................................... 38 C. The Main Characters’ Social Background as Reflected in Their Speeches. 56 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION
B. Method of the Study .................................................................................... 31
A. Object of the Study....................................................................................... 29
.......................................................................... 29
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY
C. Theoretical Framework ............................................................................... 26
c. Language and Geography………………………………………. 21
19
b. a b. Language and Ethnic Group…...…………………………........
a. Language and Social Class........................................................... 17
2. The Dialects Spoken in the USA .................................................... 13
TITLE PAGE APPROVAL PAGE ....................................................................................................... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE ................................................................................................. iii MOTTO PAGE ............................................................................................................. iv DEDICATION PAGE ................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................ vi TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................. vii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. ix ABSTRAK .................................................................................................................... x
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8 1. Language and Dialect …................................................................ ..
8 Theories of Character and Characterization...........................................
6 B. Review of Related Theories ........................................................................
6 A. Review of Related Studies ..........................................................................
4 CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW .............................................................
4 D. Definition of Terms .....................................................................................
3 C. Objective of the Study .................................................................................
1 B. Problem Formulation ..................................................................................
1 A. Background of the Study .............................................................................
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................
.................................................................................. 61
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 64
APPENDIX ………………………………………………………………………..........66
ABSTRACT
Wivina Tomas. The Characters' Speech Styles and Their Social Background in Yogyakarta: Department of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2007.
The existence of language varieties in English language can be found not only in this real world, but also in literary works. One American famous author who presents this phenomenon is Mark Twain in his book The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn .Twain states in the beginning of the novel that a number of dialects are used in
this literary work. Therefore, this study aims to find out the varieties of English language used by each main character in the novel. Besides, what social background can be learned from those language varieties will also be the topic of this study.
There were three problems formulated in this study. First, the writer analyzed who the main characters are found in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn . Second, the writer went further to the dialects which are used by those main
characters. Third, the writer answered what social background is reflected from the dialect used by each main character.
Some steps were taken in accomplishing this study. First, the writer read and reread the novel. Then, the writer collected all the utterances of the three main characters and then put them in a list. Further, the writer put them into groups based on the ‘who spoke to whom’ way. Next, the writer made a deep analysis on each character’s speeches. Last, the writer described about the social background which was reflected from the dialects of the main characters by using some theories about the relationship between language and society.
The present writer concludes Huckleberry Finn, Jim and Tom Sawyer as the main characters in Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Then, the writer analyzes that Huck and Tom speak the Southern dialect from the characteristics of their speech, while Jim speaks the Southern Negro dialect. By viewing the dialect spoken by each main character, each character’s social background is analyzed. First, she concludes that Huck is a lower class white American boy who does not experience much formal education in school. Moreover, Jim is a black person who speaks Black English but has quite poor language competence in Standard English and comes from poor society. He also never experiences the formal education in school. The last one is Tom, who comes from a higher social class than Huck and has a good educational background. It means that Tom does not come from a poor family.
ABSTRAK
Wivina Tomas. The Characters' Speech Styles and Their Social Background in Yogyakarta: Jurusan Sastra Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2007.
Adanya keberagaman bahasa dalam bahasa Inggris tidak hanya dapat ditemukan dalam kehidupan nyata, tetapi juga dalam karya-karya sastra. Salah seorang pengarang terkenal dari Amerika yang menyajikan fenomena ini adalah Mark Twain dalam salah satu karyanya yang berjudul The Adventures of Huckleberry. Twain sendiri menyatakan bahwa dalam karya sastranya yang satu ini terdapat beberapa macam dialek yang berbeda. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis keberagaman bahasa Inggris yang digunakan oleh karakter utama dalam novel tersebut. Disamping itu juga akan diteliti latar belakang sosial yang dapat dipelajari dari keberagaman bahasa itu.
Penulis mencoba menjawab tiga permasalahan yang telah dirumuskan. Pertama, penulis menganalisis siapa saja karakter utama yang terdapat dalam karya
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Kemudian, penulis menganalisis lebih jauh
tentang dialek yang digunakan oleh karakter-karakter utama dalam novel tersebut.Ketiga, penulis mencoba menjawab latar belakang sosial yang tercermin dari dialek yang digunakan oleh setiap karakter utama.
Ada beberapa langkah yang dilakukan untuk menyelesaikan penelitian ini. Pertama, penulis membaca dan membaca ulang novel ini. Kemudian, penulis mengumpulkan ucapan-ucapan dari ketiga karakter utama and memasukkannya ke dalam sebuah daftar. Setelah itu, penulis mengelompokkannya ke dalam grup berdasarkan siapa berbicara kepada siapa. Selanjutnya, penulis membuat analisis mendalam terhadap ucapan setiap karakter. Di bagian terakhir, penulis mencoba mendeskripsikan latar belakang sosial yang tercermin dari dialek yang digunakan oleh setiap karakter utama dengan menggunakan teori-teori mengenai hubungan antara bahasa dan masyarakat.
Penulis menyebutkan Huckleberry Finn, Jim dan Tom Sawyer sebagai karakter utama dalam novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn karangan Mark Twain. Kemudian penulis menganalisis bahwa Huck dan Tom menggunakan dialek daerah Selatan, sedangkan Jim menggunakan dialek Negro daerah Selatan. Dengan meninjau dialek yang digunakan oleh setiap karakter, penulis mencoba menganalisis latar belakang setiap karakter. Pertama, penulis menyimpulkan bahwa Huck adalah seorang pemuda kulit putih yang berasal dari kelas bawah dalam masyarakat Amerika, dan juga tidak mendapatkan banyak pendidikan formal. Selanjutnya, Jim adalah seorang kulit hitam yang mengunakan Bahasa Inggris orang Negro tetapi mempunyai kemampuan berbahasa Inggris baku yang memprihatinkan dan berasal dari masyarakat kelas bawah yang tidak pernah merasakan pendidikan formal di bangku sekolah. Yang terakhir adalah Tom, yang berasal dari kelas menengah dalam masyarakat Amerika. Terakhir penulis menyimpulkan bahwa Tom memiliki latar belakang pendidikan yang cukup memadai yang juga berarti bahwa Tom tidak berasal dari keluarga yang miskin.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study Language, which is the principal means in human communication, can be
analyzed as the reflection of some particular things in a society. As in her book
Language and Culture
, Kramsch considers language as a system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value (Kramsch, 1998: 3). Therefore, we can use language to study deeper about the cultural, social, or even educational background of the people who live in a particular society.
By most of the time speakers try to identify themselves and others through their use of language. They also view their language as a symbol of their social identity (Kramsch, 1998: 3). For instance, we can make our conclusion about someone’s educational background, whether he or she is well-educated or not, by analyzing the way he or she speaks. We might also get a clue about people’s origins by paying attention to their way of speaking. Moreover, there is no one speaking in the same way all the time even in one language, as stated by Wardhaugh in his book
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics :
When we look closely at any language, we will discover time and time again that there is considerable internal variation, and that speakers make constant use of the many different possibilities offered to them. No one speaks the same way all the time, and people constantly exploit the nuances of the languages they speak for a wide variety of purposes. (Wardhaugh, 1992: 5)
2 These different ways in speaking one language then lead us to language variation, in which each language might exist in a number of different varieties.
English is one of those which exist in many varieties, since there are British English, American English, Black English, and kinds of English dialects. The existence of language varieties in English language can be found not only in this real world, but also in literary works. One American famous author who presents this phenomenon in his literary works is Mark Twain. In some of his novels, Twain tries to describe the different social background in one society by showing different kinds of dialects used by each character.
Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is chosen as the object of this study since it is stated clearly by Twain himself that a number of dialects are used in this literary work. They are the Missouri Negro dialect, the backwoods South- Western dialect, the ordinary ‘Pike-County’ dialect, and four modified varieties of this last. Twain labels each character with their own particular way of speaking, in which the way of speaking of a character is different from another’s. For instance, we can take a look on the conversation below between Huck and Jim the runaway nigger after they think they have missed Cairo:
‘Maybe we (Huck and Jim) went by Cairo in the fog that night.’ He (Jim) says: ‘Doan’ less’ talk about it, Huck. Po’ niggers can’t have no luck. I awluz ‘spected dat rattle-snake skin warn’t done wid its work’ ‘I wish I’d never seen that snake-skin, Jim – I do wish I’d never laid eyes on it.’ ‘It ain’t yo’ fault, Huck; you didn’ know. Don’t you blame yo’ self ‘bout it.’ (TAHF, page 150-151) We might also find the entirely different way of speaking by another character in the novel. For example, the conversation between Huck and Colonel Grangerford: I (Huck) says: ‘George Jackson, sir. I’m only a boy.’ ‘Look here; if you’re telling the truth, you needn’t be afraid – nobody ‘ll hurt you. But don’t try to budge; stand right where you are. Rouse out Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is there anybody with you?’ ‘No, sir, nobody.’ (TAHF, page 154) From the two examples above we can see the differences in the way of speaking of each character. The way Jim speaks is entirely different from Huck’s or
Colonel Grangerford’s. Therefore, this study aims to find out the varieties of English language used by each main character in the novel. Besides, what social background can be learned from those language varieties will also be the topic of this study.
There are three problems to be analyzed in this study. They are:
1. Who are the main characters found in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn ?
2. What dialects are used by those main characters in Twain’s The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn ?
3. What social background is reflected in the dialect(s) used by each main character?
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B. Problem Formulation
4 C. Objectives of the Study There are three objectives of this study. The first objective is to find out the main characters in Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. The second objective is analyzing and deciding what dialects are used by those main characters. Moreover, in the last objective the writer is trying to conclude what social background can be reflected from the dialect used by each main character.
D. Definition of Terms
In this study, the terms that will be used frequently are character, dialect, and social background. Therefore, the writer will explain the meaning of each term.
a. Character In Encyclopedia of Literature, the term character is defined as personality as represented or realized in fiction or drama (Kuiper, 1995: 229). Meanwhile, Abrams in his book A Glossary of Literary Terms states more specifically:
Character is a person presented in dramatic interpreted by the readers as being endowed with moral and dispositional qualities that are expressed in what they say—the dialogue—and what they do—the action (Abrams, 1981:20).
b. Dialect In Dictionary of Sociology: And Related Sciences, dialect is defined as a specific variety of language, showing sufficient peculiarities of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary to be considered a distinct entity, yet not sufficiently distinct from other dialects to constitute a separate language (Fairchild [ed.], 1970: 93).
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c. Social Background In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, social is defined as something related to the position in society that we have, according to our job, family, wealth, etc., and background is defined as someone’s family history, education, social class, etc. Meanwhile, in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, social is connected with one’s position in society, and background is defined as the details of a person’s family, education, experience, etc. Therefore, the writer defines the term social background as the position of a person related to his or her family, education, job, experience, etc in a society. Moreover, the ‘person’ here means the characters found in Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW This chapter is divided into three parts: review of related studies, review of
related theories, and theoretical framework. In the first part the writer presents the studies which have been done on the same topic or the same literary work. In the second part some related theories are provided in order to help the writer in solving the problems mentioned in the previous chapter. And the last chapter contains the contribution of the theories in solving the problems.
B. Review of Related Studies
There are some related studies that have been done on Twain’s The Adventure
of Huckleberry Finn . Some of them are undergraduate theses. In his thesis study
entitled English Negation as a Dialect Feature in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn , Bagus Widyatmoko from Department of English Letters, Sanata
Dharma University, analyzes the negative constructions in Tom Sawyer’s dialect features. He finds out that Tom Sawyer uses the word ain’t, hain’t, warn’t, and double negation as negative constructions in daily life. Moreover, Widyatmoko also concludes that Sawyer’s purposes in using one dialect to a certain person and another to other person are feeling solidarity and showing power (Widyatmoko, 1999).
Another thesis study on the same literary work was done by Edelbertus Witu, a student of Department of English Letters, Sanata Dharma University. Instead of
7 analyzing the dialect feature, Witu emphasizes his study on the American values found in Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: freedom and equality. He concludes that the two values are revealed in the novel, as Huck fights for freedom by going out from a conservative family; by helping Jim to be free from slavery; Huck fights for equality by having a sense of tolerance to Jim; and by paying attention to education and process of learning from experience that emphasizes the abolishment of slavery (Witu, 1998).
Meanwhile, there is a study on language varieties done by Citra Rinanty, who is also from Department of English Letters, Sanata Dharma University, in her thesis study entitled English Varieties Spoken by Walter Morel in Lawrence’s Sons and
Lovers
. Rinanty analyzes the English varieties used by Walter Morel, and then uses the results to study the sociolinguistics factors influencing Walter Morel in using those varieties. As the conclusion, Rinanty states that 75.4% of Walter Morel’s utterances are non-standard English and the rest of them are considered Standard English. Further, she adds that Morel changes the varieties of English according to the setting, addressee, topic, status, formality, and function (Rinanty, 2006).
Different from the studies on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn above, the writer is going to emphasize her study on the dialects used by each character and what social background can be reflected from them.
8 C. Review of Related Theories
1. Theory of Character and Characterization
According to Laar and Schoonderwoerd in the book of An Approach to
English Literature,
characters, which are the important elements in a fiction, are built through the novelist’s imagination and actual life. What the actual life means here is how the novelist tries to recreate the image of the persons in an actual life imaginatively to the novel. The imaginative human being is put in human situation and behaves as human (Laar and Schoonderwoerd, 1969: 165-171).
As stated by Koesnosoebroto (1988), character can be distinguished into two types, namely major character and minor character. He explains that major character is the most important character in a story, and a story is usually about this character. However, major character can not stand on his own; he needs other characters to make the story more convincing and lifelike. Minor characters are characters of less important than those of the main (Koesnosoebroto, 1988:67). Furthermore, Koesnosoebroto states:
Characters may appear briefly as mere hints. These are minor figures who are there in the story to show us what is going on. Minor characters, appearing once only, may ornaments. They are bonuses thrown in for our enjoyment. Characters may also be secretaries whose function is little more than to communicate something e.g., Marlowe in Lord Jim, a novel by Joseph Conrad (Koesnosoebroto, 1988:67). Characterization deals with the process of creating or defining characters in a novel or play by an author. There are some ways used by authors to disclose characters in fiction. In Fiction: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, Roberts and Jacobs (1989) mention four different ways used by an author in conveying information about characters in fiction. They are: a. What the characters themselves say and think. It is stated further that speeches can be accepted at face value to indicate the character of the speaker, and it may also reflect a momentary emotional or intellectual state.
b. What the characters do. By understanding the saying “actions speak louder than words,” then we can interpret actions as the signs of character.
c. What other characters say about them. By paying attention to the opinion of other characters, we might get some clue about a particular character. As a description given by Roberts and Jacobs, an author may give us a good impression of characters by having a bad character say bad things about them, since what a person’s enemy says is usually slanted, unfair or untrue.
d. What the author says about them, speaking as storyteller or observer. We usually accept what the author says about a character as the truth. When an author interprets the actions and characteristics of his characters, he himself assumes the critic’s role, and his opinion can be either right or wrong. (Roberts & Jacobs 1989:1147-148).
In his book, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Wardhaugh (1992) states that it is difficult to differentiate between language and dialect, especially when a language is spoken by so few people and because of that situation the people only
9
2. Language and Dialect
10 have one language and one variety, which is the language itself. We might tend to say that language and dialect become synonymous in that case (Wardhaugh, 1992:37). He also gives an example that some speakers of Black English insist that their language is not a variety of English, but it is a separate language in its own right. On the other hand, speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin state that they do not speak different languages but just two varieties of Chinese (Ibid., 35).
In his book Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, Trudgill (1983) considers language as not simply a means of communicating information about weather or any subject, but a very important means of establishing and maintaining relationships with other people. He also defines dialect as the differences between kinds of language which are differences of vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation (Trudgill, 1983: 17). On the other hand, the term
accent refers to differences of pronunciation, and it is important to distinguish clearly
between dialect and accent. He states further that the term dialect can be used to apply to all language varieties, not just to non-standard varieties, but also the standard one like standard English. Basically, dialect is divided into two types, namely regional and social dialect.
a. Regional Dialects Regional dialect deals with the different choice of words that is used in a certain area compared with the other. The differences usually exist in pronunciation, the choices and forms of words, and syntax. It is also known as dialect geography, the term which is used to describe attempts made to the map the distributions of various
11 linguistics features (Wardhaugh, 1992: 42). Holmes in his book An Introduction to
Sociolinguistics gives some examples about the different vocabularies spoken in
some English-speaking areas: Australians talk of sole parents, for example, while people in England call them single parents, and New Zealanders call them solo parents. South Africans use the term robot for British traffic-light. British while the word
togs refers to very different types of clothes in different places. In New
Zealand togs are what you swim in. in Britain you might wear them to a formal dinner (Holmes, 2001: 124-125). Besides the differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, there are also differences which exist in grammatical forms. Sometimes we might hear ‘Did you eat yet?’ instead of ‘Have you eaten yet, or ‘She has gotten used to the noise’ instead of ‘She’s got used to the noise’.
Further, Holmes states that dialectologists in the USA can identify the distinguishing features of the speech of people from different regions. They make three main divisions namely Northern, Midland and Southern areas, and within those areas a number of further divisions can be made. Even the different towns and parts of town can still be distinguished. As it is explained specifically by Holmes:
Within the Midland area, for example, the Eastern States can be distinguished; and within those the Boston dialect is different from that of New York City; within New York City, Brooklynese is quite distinctive (Holmes, 2001: 127). He also adds that pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary are those which distinguish these dialects. One can also hear pronunciations such as accrost and clifft, as well as verbs with a-prefixes, such as a-fishin’ and a-comin’ in the rural Appalachians (Holmes, 2001: 127). b. Social Dialects Dialects, which can be simply distinguished by their linguistic varieties like pronunciation or vocabulary, can also be distinguished from different social groups, and it is called as social dialects. Some factors used to determine social groups are occupation, education, caste, and etc.
Standard English is classified into one of them. It has been the dialect used by well-educated English speakers worldwide and also used for national news broadcasts and in print. Generally, English-speaking schools teach their students using this variety. Some characteristics of Standard English are:
1. According to Thompson and Martinet (1986) in A Practical English Grammar, be has three forms in the simple present tense: am, are and is. Am is used with the subject I; are is used with you, we and they; and is is used with he, she, and it. It is also stated that verbs other than be (is, am, are) have two forms in the simple present tense. They are the simple form and the –s form. Here, the –s form is used with the third person singular subjects such as he, she, it, etc. (Thompson & Martinet, 1986: 116).
2. There are two types of nouns, singular and plural nouns.
3. In Leech and Svartvik’s (1975) A Communicative Grammar of English, the negative forms in English are made by adding not after the auxiliary verb, if there is one in the sentence, as in the sentence John is not here. In the book A
Communicative Grammar of English , the contracted form –n’t occurs after the
operator in informal or spoken English (Leech and Svartvik, 1975: 246).12
13 Meanwhile, the linguistic form which are not part of Standard English are called non-standard one. Sometimes it acquires negative connotations since it is usually associated with the speech of less prestigious social groups. Holmes explains that non-standard forms are just simply different from the standard ones, and there is nothing linguistically inferior about them. Therefore, some sociolinguists prefer the term vernacular as an alternative to non-standard forms (Holmes, 2001: 132-133).
3. The Dialects Spoken in the USA
It is explained in The Dialects of American English that the establishment of various colonial dialects, in which American English dialects are included, was led by the British colonization of other continents ( www.pandora.cii.wwu.edu ). Furthermore, it is also stated that the development of those dialects are caused by some following factors:
1. The language spoken by emigrants who first established the colony was a particular variety of British English, or called the founder’s effect.
2. This language may have mixed with some non-English language in the colony, which is then called the substrate effect.
3. There may have been further mixing with other English dialects in the colony, called the leveling effect of dialect mixing.
4. Innovations in British English that did not occur in the more conservative overseas dialects, or innovation in the colonial dialect which did not occur in Britain.
14 There are four main migrations of English speaking people to America, which caused the main dialect areas of the USA ( www.pandora.cii.wwu.edu /2007). The following table shows the explanation of each migration:
No. Migration fleeing from Main linguistic features Result Dialect Areas Britain
1. The Puritans, fleeing - pronunciation of [O] in - influencing the speech from East Anglia to caught and bought in many areas of the Massachusetts, then - low fronted [a], instead Northeast, from Main called New England of back [A] as in word to Wisconsin,
father especially in the
- deletion of syllable final Chicago area
[r] as in far (pronounced - New York English as fah)
- Compensatory addition of after final schwa
2. The Royalists, also called - the classic Southern - resulting in the the Cavaliers, fleeing drawl, caused vowels Southern dialects from the south and become long, house = - later developed the southwest England, with ha:wse , eggs = ai:gz American Tidewater their indentured servants, - Lost of final t or d after speech, or Coastal settled in Virginia another consonant, e.g. Southern English an(d), tol(d), etc - Black English
- First syllable accented, as in word: guitar,police
- Using yall for you all,
aksed (instead of asked),
and ain't (instead of isn't)
- The use of double negatives - The loss of –ng, e.g.
nothin’, somethin’
3. The Quakers, or Society - the pronunciation of - resulting dialects of Friends from north back rounded [Å] in spoken in parts of midlands of England and words caught, saw Pennsylvania and Wales to the Delaware - the pronunciation of [E] New Jersey valley instead of [
œ] in bad,
and, sack , etc.
- Retention of the syllable
4. English speakers left North Britain and Northern Ireland, and settled in the Appalachian backcountry. They are called “Scottish-Irish”
- Pronouns: hit (it),
- the Scottish-Irish dialects
- the Appalachian English - the backwoods, or highlands Southern dialects, spoken in western North Carolina to Oklahoma and East Texas, which comes from Cherokee and other Native American languages.
(possessives) hisn, hern,
yorn, theirn them
used as an adjective in place of their; them boys.
- Retention of preposition in the progressive aspect: I’m a taking to
you
- Special distance words:
This here, that there, that yonder
( http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/
AmericanDialects.htm /2007)
It is stated further that some southern features from the poorer classes are shared with the dialects of the rural midwest since poor southerners helped colonize the midwest. Also, some features of Appalachian English are shared with the speech of poorer southern whites for the same reason. Besides, the use of double negatives e.g. ain’t, is avoided by the upper classes, which choose the innovative single negatives preferred by the British upper classes. Moreover, we might also find the pronunciation of the sound -ng become –n. For example, we might hear the word
somethin instead of something, or nothin instead of nothing.
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4. Relationships Between Language and Society Most sociolinguists agree that language and society are related to each other.
Wardhaugh states about some possible relationships between language and society in his book An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Wardhaugh, 1992:10-11).
First, social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure and behavior, since studies show that particular ways of speaking, choices of words, and rules for conversing are determined by certain social requirements. Second, linguistic structure and behavior may either influence or determine social structure.
Third, the influence is bi-directional, which means that language and society may influence each other. Dittmar mentions that speech behavior and social behavior are in a state of constant interaction (Wardhaugh, 1992: 11). And the last possibility says that there is no relationship at all between linguistic structure and social structure.
However, people do not really pay attention to the last possibility since most studies show that there is a relationship between language and society. Therefore, only the first three possibilities will be used further.
Trudgill in Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society (Trudgill, 1983: 14) says:
For whenever we speak, we cannot avoid giving our listeners clues about our origins and the sort of person we are. Our accent and our speech generally show what part of the country we come from, and what sort of background we have.
Indeed, language and society do really correlate strongly to each other. Trudgill states further that there are two aspects of language behavior which are very important from
17 social point of view. The first is the function of language in establishing social relationships and the second is the role played by language in conveying information about the speaker.
Bram in his book Language and Society (Bram, 1955:19) gives the description about the relationship between language and society in the process of socialization of a child. He states that language is related to this process in a number of ways. First, the mastery of speech and techniques of writing and reading constitute a prerequisite to full participation in one’s society. Second, social beliefs and attitudes are communicated to the growing child through language as the principal channel.
Third, language describes and clarifies the roles which the child will be called upon to identify and to enact. And finally, language initiates the child to the esprit de corps of his speech community, and provides the feeling of belonging.
a. Language and Social Class
Montgomery in his book An Introduction to Language and Society (Montgomery, 1986:121) states:
We have in a sense already touched upon the relationship of language to social class. Accent and dialect, we noted, have more than a purely regional basis: they have come to act as indicators not of one’s relationship to a locality but also of one’s social class position.
An example given by Montgomery describes that members of the middle class have access to ways of organizing their speech that are fundamentally different from the ways habitually adopted by the working class.
18 According to Trudgill, the study on language and society will bring us to
social-class dialects , which is similar to social dialects. He adds that the internal
differentiation of human societies is reflected in their languages. Trudgill states further that the diffusion of a linguistic feature through a society can be halted by barriers of social class, age, race, religion, etc. And social distance may have the same sort of effect as geographical distance in regional dialect; the highest social group will affect the lowest social group. Studying social-class dialects then will lead us to
social-stratification , a term used to refer to any hierarchical ordering of groups within
a society (Trudgill, 1983: 34-35).Furthermore, Trudgill states: In the class societies of the English-speaking world the social situation is much more fluid, and the linguistic situation is therefore rather more complex, at least in certain respects (Trudgill, 1983: 36-37). Therefore, we can say that social classes in English-speaking world are not clearly defined since the social mobility—movement up and down the social hierarchy—is perfectly possible. He also adds that in obtaining a correct picture of the relationship between language and social stratification, we must be able to measure both linguistic and social phenomena so that we can correlate the two accurately (Trudgill, 1983: 43).
Measuring language from the social class point of view is quite difficult, and Standard English is generally used in those studies. A survey in Detroit shows that the third person present-tense singular form, orthographic –s, is often not present, like ‘She like him very much’, or ‘He don’t know a lot, do he?’ Since Standard English
19 has the –s and it generally closely associated with higher social groups, it is said that there might be a direct correlation between social class position and the usage of –s (Trudgill, 1983: 43).
b. Language and Ethnic Group
When we view language from the point of view of ethnicity, we will find out on how great this ethnic problem influences the language in a society. According to Holmes in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Holmes, 2001: 175), “Where a choice of a language is available for communication, it is often possible for an individual to signal their ethnicity by the language they choose to use”. It is not a new fact that people may use short phrases, verbal fillers or linguistics tags, which signal ethnicity, when a complete conversation in an ethnic language is not possible. Another description on language and ethnicity is also shown by Holmes (Holmes, 2001:176), as he states that: “Food, religion, dress, and a distinctive speech style are all ways that ethnic minorities may use to distinguish themselves from the majority group”.
Moreover, ethnic groups often respond to a situation by using the majority language in a way which signals their ethnic identity.
A very clear description shown by Trudgill is the language difference between the White and the Black Americans in the USA. He states that: In the English-speaking world as a whole one of the most striking examples of linguistic ethnic-group differentiation—and one where the postulated role of some kind of substratum effect is a controversial subject—is the difference we have already noted between the speech of black and white Americans (Trudgill, 1983: 58).
20 When Whites and Blacks have different ways of speaking, it means that there are different ethnic-group language varieties.
Trudgill prefers the term ‘Black Vernacular English’ (or abbreviated as BVE) to refer to the non-standard English spoken by the lower-class Blacks in the urban ghettoes of the northern USA and elsewhere (Trudgill, 1983: 60). We can find the peculiarities in the speech of the Blacks as shown in the example taken from a survey of New York speech led by Labov:
A Fifteen-year-old Harlem Boy: ‘You know, like some people say if you’re good your spirit goin’ t’heaven…’n’ if you bad, you spirit goin’ to hell. Well, bullshit! Your spirit goin’ to hell anyway. I’ll tell you why. ‘Cause, you see, doesn’ nobody really know that it’s a God. An’ when they be sayin’ if you good, you goin’ t’heaven, tha’s bullshit, ‘cause you ain’t goin’ to no heaven, ‘cause it ain’t no heaven for you to go to.’ (Trudgill, 1983:60)
From the example above we can see some peculiarities of the English spoken by the Black speakers in the USA. Some characteristics of phonological features of BVE as cited by Trudgill (Trudgill, 1983:61-62):
1. Many black speakers have do not have non-prevocalic /r/ as in the word cart or car. Many lower-class Blacks demonstrate loss of intervocalic /r/ like in the words Carol (Ca’ol) and Paris (Pa’is). Some black speakers also show loss of /r/ after initial consonants, like protect (p’otect).
2. Many black speakers often do not have , as in thing, or , as in that, this.
Therefore, they simply pronounce this as dis.
21
3. Plurals of nouns ending in standard English in –st, -sp, and –sk are often formed on the pattern of class: classes rather than of clasp:clasps. For example, the plural of desk can be desses.