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Change From Below
Change from below is linguistic change that occurs from below the level of consciousness. It is language change that occurs from social, cognitive, or physiological pressures from within the system. This is in opposition to change from above, wherein language change is a result of elements imported from other systems.Labov, William. "Transmission and Diffusion". ''Language''. Volume 83, Number 2, June 2007, 344–387. Linguistic Society of America.Ash, Sharon. "Social Class". ''The Handbook of Language Variation and Change'', 402–422. Malden, Mass: Blackwell. Change from below first enters the language from below the level of consciousness; that is, speakers are generally unaware of the linguistic change. These linguistic changes enter language primarily through the vernacular and spread throughout the community without speakers' conscious awareness. Since change from below is initially non-salient, the changing features are not marked characteristics and are difficult for speaker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Change From Above
In linguistics, change from above refers to conscious change to a language. That is, speakers are generally aware of the linguistic change and use it to sound more dominant, as a result of social pressure. It stands in contrast to change from below Change from below is linguistic change that occurs from below the level of consciousness. It is language change that occurs from social, cognitive, or physiological pressures from within the system. This is in opposition to change from above, where .... Change from above usually enters the speech of educated people, not the vernacular dialects. This change usually begins with speakers in higher social classes and diffuses down into the lower classes. Upper classes use these new linguistic forms to differentiate themselves from the lower classes, while lower classes use these forms to sound more educated and similar to the upper class. However, the concepts of change from above and below refer to consciousness and not social class. Diffu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Labov
William Labov ( ; born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics. He is a professor emeritus in the linguistics department of the University of Pennsylvania and pursues research in sociolinguistics, language change, and dialectology. He retired in 2015 but continues to publish research. Biography Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, Labov majored in English and philosophy and studied chemistry at Harvard (1948). He worked as an industrial chemist in his family’s business (1949–61) before turning to linguistics. For his MA thesis (1963) he completed a study of change in the dialect of Martha's Vineyard, which he presented before the Linguistic Society of America. Labov took his PhD (1964) at Columbia University studying under Uriel Weinreich. He was an assistant profes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curvilinear Principle
In sociolinguistics, the curvilinear principle states that there is a tendency for linguistic change from below to originate from members of the central classes in a speech community's socioeconomic hierarchy, rather than from the outermost or exterior classes.Labov, William. Principles of Linguistic Change, vol iii: Social Factors. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. 2001. Overview First proposed by William Labov,Labov, William. 1973. The social setting of linguistic change. In Thomas Sebeok (ed.), ''Diachronic, Areal, and Typological Linguistics'' (Current Trends in Linguistics 11), 195–253. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. the curvilinear principle departs from traditional nineteenth century notions that language change generally originates in the highest or lowest classes of society. Instead, it states that variant forms leading to language change are typically introduced and motivated by the intermediate groups—the upper-working class and lower-middle class. The principle can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curvilinear Principle
In sociolinguistics, the curvilinear principle states that there is a tendency for linguistic change from below to originate from members of the central classes in a speech community's socioeconomic hierarchy, rather than from the outermost or exterior classes.Labov, William. Principles of Linguistic Change, vol iii: Social Factors. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. 2001. Overview First proposed by William Labov,Labov, William. 1973. The social setting of linguistic change. In Thomas Sebeok (ed.), ''Diachronic, Areal, and Typological Linguistics'' (Current Trends in Linguistics 11), 195–253. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. the curvilinear principle departs from traditional nineteenth century notions that language change generally originates in the highest or lowest classes of society. Instead, it states that variant forms leading to language change are typically introduced and motivated by the intermediate groups—the upper-working class and lower-middle class. The principle can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prestige (sociolinguistics)
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 (where a non-standard dialect is highly valued). 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. The presence of prestige dialects is a result of the relationship between the prestige of a group of people and the language th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families ( comparative linguistics) # to develop general theories about how and why language changes # to describe the history of speech communities # to study the history of words, i.e. etymology Historical linguistics is founded on the Uniformitarian Principle, which is defined by linguist Donald Ringe as: History and development Western modern historical linguistics dates from the late-18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity. At first, historical linguistics served as the cornerstone of comparative linguistics, primarily as a t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain; that is, the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language. Psycholinguistics is concerned with the cognitive faculties and processes that are necessary to produce the grammatical constructions of language. It is also concerned with the perception of these constructions by a listener. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were in the philosophical and educational fields, due mainly to their location in departments other than applied sciences (e.g., cohesive data on how the human brain functioned). Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information science to study how the mind-brain processes language, and less so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
