2.3
Dialect and working class writing

Ian Syson

• Language
• Dialect
• Accent
• Pidgin
• Creole
• Code-switching

1. Language as concept versus a specific Language

Language defns

1. Method of expression and communication
2. A vocabulary and way of using it in one or more countries

The linguists (who are prone to be scientific in their approaches) tend to think that the term language (when used to denote the 2nd version -- a specific language like English of French) is a non-technical term � somewhat vague and as much guided by national political boundaries as it is by anything cultural and historical. Language Variety is a preferred term for discussion of major linguistic groupings.

How do we define a language? A dialect with an army and a navy!!

It's tempting to define a language as a group of dialects that are mutually intelligible.

However: Chambers and Trudgill (Dialectology) point to the example of the Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish which are mutually intelligible as opposed to the variations in German which are mutually unintelligible.

There are the variations within English that are virtually unintelligible: Geordie, Scots Highland (but interestingly not the English as second language among the Gaelic communities) and Glasgow, Aberdeen and Belfast working class social dialects.

Dialect

Macquarie Dictionary � One of the forms of a given language which differ from one another in details of sound system, lexis, grammar, etc., each of which is usually to be found in a particular region or social class, but the speakers of which are typically mutually intelligible: Australian English is a regional dialect of English

Significant here is

• sound system (pronunciation)
• lexis (words used)
• grammar (the way speech is put together in order to be meaningful and intelligible)

Accent

According to Peter Trudgill: �The term dialect refers, strictly speaking, to differences between kinds of language which are differences of vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation. The term accent on the other hand refers solely to differences of pronunciation.�

This does seem to raise the question of whether Australian English can be called a dialect or an accent, given its similarity to forms of standard English.

It also raises the question as to whether we have internal differences in dialect within Australia or whether they are mere differences in accent.

Pidgin

That which emerges out of the necessity of communication between two mutually unintelligible languages � often as a result of trade and other forms of exchange that don't require sustained and sophisticated communication.

Creole

Second generation Pidgin with greater lexical, grammatical sophistication. A pidgin becoming a language?

2. Unspoken Hierarchies

What I've failed to discuss thus far is the assumed hierarchies involved in a number of the distinctions made.

Dialect is not merely a sub-section of a language � it is also often-considered a sub-standard version of the language.

This presumes that there is a standard and correct form of a language: received pronunciation RP; standard English; the Queen's English, BBC English etc from which all other dialects vary in an inferior way.

Telling quotation from the first part of the video. When people heard language spoken �correctly' they felt is was also spoken truly. The notion of a correct standard carries with it the air of authority.

Linguitic correctness and its responses

• prescriptive
• permissive

The two handouts given out today discuss these positions

The prescriptive position believes that languages evolve rules for very good reasons � reasons to do with intelligibility and cultural values � that need to be preserved. This position goes too far though when it sets a central standard or is completely against language change (a demonstrably Canute-like attitude).

Bloomfield says:

If we take a lax attitude towards tradition in language, we are denying the role of value in writing and to some extent speech . Continue p269

The Permissive position refuses hierarchies of value between dialects but can take that refusal too far into an �anything goes� mentality. Again Bloomfield , �The Fact that language changes does not . . . require us to speed up the process.�

Cite Shepherd for a more permissive perspective.

3. Dialect in literature

Three different stages or levels

1. Dialect, Creole and pidgin historically used in fiction for comic or tragic-comic effect (Caliban in The Tempest ; Great Expectations character who says �Wot larks eh Pip!')
   
2. Dialect etc introduced as serious matter for representation. (Mary Barton; Bobbin Up; Morality of Gentlemen) Barnes �Madam, you can get rooted.� Code-Switching
   
   In these two levels the narrative returns to standard English to report �objectively'. Even in a book like Bobbin Up . Hewett might well have said in her defence, �Well that's the way I speak' � but as we know it isn't. But it is the way she writes . Because our culture has requested this kind of narrative personae from its novelists when constructing the objective narrator. Obviously, first person narration is a different matter � but so many of the great first person narrators have been middle class speakers of RP .
   
3. Dialect enters the narrative level of literary works. Whole tradition of British dialect poetry (including Burns and many others).
   When dialect enters the outermost narrative level, what does it bring to the task apart from the obvious grammatical, lexical and pronunciation?
   � altered conceptions of (narrative) grammar and modes of reading?

I want to finish up by reading out some excerpts and poems and working out just how each of them conforms to the three stages outlined.