Investigating Variation: The Effects of Social Organization and Social Setting (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)

Linguistic variation has been studied primarily in communities with the dominant social organization of our time: ethnic diversity, socioeconomic stratification, and a population size that precludes community-wide face-to-face interaction. In such communities variation correlates with ethnicity and class. Investigating Variation explores a different kind of social structure: small size, dense kinship ties, common occupation, and absence of social stratification. In the community investigated here, social homogeneity and constant face-to-face interaction made accommodation unnecessary, and extremely weak extra-community norming for the local minority language permitted a very high level of individual variation. Nancy C. Dorian's examination of the fisherfolk Gaelic spoken in a Highland Scottish village offers a number of explanations for delayed recognition of a linguistic variation unrelated to social class or other social sub-groupings. Reports of similar variation phenomena in locations with similar features (contemporary minority-language pockets in Ireland, Russia, Norway, Canada, and Cameroon) make it possible to identify a particular set of factors that contribute to the emergence and persistence of socially neutral inter-speaker and intra-speaker variation. Facets of language use related to social structure remain to be investigated in communities with still other forms of social organization before the few communities that represent them disappear altogether.

Politics & Social Sciences

Dorian, Nancy C.

Anthropology

Oxford University Press

Linguistic variation has been studied primarily in communities with the dominant social organization of our time: ethnic diversity, socioeconomic stratification, and a population size that precludes community-wide face-to-face interaction. In such communities variation correlates with ethnicity and class. Investigating Variation explores a different kind of social structure: small size, dense kinship ties, common occupation, and absence of social stratification. In the community investigated here, social homogeneity and constant face-to-face interaction made accommodation unnecessary, and extremely weak extra-community norming for the local minority language permitted a very high level of individual variation.  Nancy C. Dorian's examination of the fisherfolk Gaelic spoken in a Highland Scottish village offers a number of explanations for delayed recognition of a linguistic variation unrelated to social class or other social sub-groupings. Reports of similar variation phenomena in locations with similar features (contemporary minority-language pockets in Ireland, Russia, Norway, Canada, and Cameroon) make it possible to identify a particular set of factors that contribute to the emergence and persistence of socially neutral inter-speaker and intra-speaker variation. Facets of language use related to social structure remain to be investigated in communities with still other forms of social organization before the few communities that represent them disappear altogether.

<p><p>This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.</p></p>

Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect (Anniversary Collection)

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

University of Pennsylvania Press

Language Death is a language arts study of the Scottish Gaelic Dialect.

Foreign Language Study & Reference

University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection

An oral history of the East Sutherland Fisherfolk"This is the story of a small highland community in the early twentieth century, told in direct and vivid language which brings to life the varied concerns, beliefs, and loyalties of the Golspie fisherfolk. But it is more than that."A vanished way of life remembered-painstakingly recreated from the memories of those who lived it, and party in their words, the fisherfolk life of East Sutherland is here celebrated by Nancy C. Dorian, who has written extensively about East Sutherland Gaelic.

Tyranny of Tide: An Oral History of the East Sutherland Fisherfolk

Karoma Pub

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dorian, Nancy C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dorian, Nancy C.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dorian, Nancy C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Investigating Variation: The Effects of Social Organization and Social Setting (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)

Investigating Variation: The Effects of Social Organization and Social Setting (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)

Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect (Anniversary Collection)

Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect (Anniversary Collection)

Tyranny of Tide: An Oral History of the East Sutherland Fisherfolk