English as a national language: regional and social dialects, national variants.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1053.

Language is an abstraction from speech, a generalization of speech; and speech is a reality of language. National language is treated as a historical category evolving from conditions of economic and politic concentration which characterize the formation of notion. National language is a socio-historical category that denotes a language which a means of intercommunication of a nation, it's the standard of its form, the language of a nation's literature. Spoken language is not uniform it may vary from locality to locality and from one social group to another. National language falls into dialects. A dialect is a variation of a national language used as a means of communication by a group of people that are connected be region or territory profession, social class, education, age, sex, religion, occupation. Dialects: territorial/social. Dialectology as a brunch of linguistic is concerned with territorial dialects. Its main aim is to study geographical differences. On the territory of UK recognize 4 dialects: Welsh English, Scottish English, Irish English, English English (Northern + Southern). Difference between Northern and Southern dialects. 1) Southern: blood/one/but. The short variant of ‘a' is used. Northern: blood – short ‘u'; one – short variant of ‘a'; but – schwa sound [#] is used. 2) Southern: ‘a:' is used in path and ask. Northern: Before fricatives [f + s] and sonorant clusters [m + n] is pronounced instead of ‘a:'. 3) Southern: in such words as city and money – the long ‘i' is used. Northern: the short variant of ‘i' is used in the same words. 4) In the North and England, East England and Northern Ireland glottal stop [?] is used simultaneously with [p], [t], [k] between vowels. ['pit?i:]. 5) In the North and West-Midland [ng] is pronounced instead of [n]. ['sing#], ['wing]. Dialects are distinguished (on the territory of the UK) also according to how sound [r] is pronounced. Whether sound [r] is pronounced not only before vowels but also before consonants and in word final position. Wherever [r] is spelled it is pronounced – it is a rhotic language. Scottish and Irish English are the rhotic dialects. Social dialects. The science which researches into these relations is called social linguistics. It is connected with the social differentiation of the language – the study of the language in relation to society. Sociolinguistics studies are concerned with the ways in which language varies according to the social context in which it is used and according to the social groups the speaker belongs. British social linguists divide the society into: 1) Upper class; 2) Upper-middle class; 3) Middle-middle class; 4) Lower-middle class; 5) Upper-working class; 6) Middle-working class 7) Lower-working class. Classes are split into major and minor social groups. The validity/correctness of classification is acquired because British linguists oriented to smaller groups – microcosms of the whole society. The linguists of our country recognize the influence of the society on language by means of both – micro and macrocosm.

National variants we mean variants of pronunciation that are used by more than 1 person and which originated from 1 mother-tongue. Due to historical, geographical factors national variants differ from their mother-tongue. At the same time they have much in common as they originated from one mother-tongue.