Language and social variation

The study of Language by George Yule (2006)

New words
Postvocalic: used after a vowel
Overt prestige: status that is generally recognized as ‘better’ or more positively valued in the larger community
Covert prestige: status of a speech style or feature as having positive value, but which is ‘hidden’ or not valued similarly among the larger community

Study questions
1 An idiolect is a personal dialect of an individual speaker.
2 A speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language.
3 He wanted to know the frequency of occurrence of postvocalic /r/ as a linguistic variable, which could mark the speech samples as upper middle class versus middle class versus working class.
4 The final pronunciation of –ing with [n] is a social marker associated with working-class speech.
5 A register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific situation, occupation or topic.
6 Be is used as a way of expressing habitual action in AAVE. “He don’t be smoking now?” means that smoking in not a habitual action for him now or he has stopped smoking.