#11 "The Study of Language" by George Yule

George Yule has worked as an English teacher in Britain, Canada, Jamaica, and Saudi Arabia. He has also taught Applied Linguistics in the Universities of Edinburgh, Hawaii, Louisiana State and Minnesota.

He is the author of several books with Oxford University Press, including Pragmatics, Explaining English Grammar, Focus on the Language Learner and The Study of Language.

On his latter book, the author presents information in bite-sized sections, clearly explaining the major concepts in linguistic, from how children learn language to why men and women speak differently through all the key elements of language.

These are my study notes on the last three chapters of this book:

CHAPTER 18: "REGIONAL VARIATION IN LANGUAGE"

The Standard Language: It is an idealized variety associated with administrative, commercial and educational centers, regardless of region. If we think of Stardard English, it is the variety we normally try to teach to those who want to learn English as a second or foreign language.

Accent: It refers to the aspects of pronunciation that identify where an individual speaker is from, regionally or socially.

Dialect: It is used to describe the features of grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of pronunciation.

Dialectology: This is one of the criteria used in the study of language to distinguish between two different dialects of the same language and two different languages. 

Regional Dialects: They refer to the feautures of speech found in one geographical area, for example: stereotype pronunciations, definitions, etc.

Isogloss: It is a line across a map separating two areas, and which represents a boundary between them with regard to one particular linguistic item. For example: paper bag in one area and paper suck in the other. 

Dialect Boundary: It occurs when a more solid line is drawn due to a number of isoglosses all together.

Bilingualism: It is the ability to speak two languages equally well because you have used them since you were very young. It can be simply the result of having two parents who speak different languages. However, one language always tends to be the dominant. 

Diglossia: It is a special situation where a speaker uses two distinct varieties of a language. There is a low variety, acquired locally and used for everyday affairs, and a high variety or special variety, learned in school and used for important matters.

Language Planning: It refers to the variety or varieties of the language that the government in any country has to plan in order to be used for official business. 

Pidgin: It is a variety of language which is developed for some practical purpose among a group of people who have a lot of contact, but who do not know each other´s languages. 

Creole: It is a person who is a descendant of a pidgin. 

CHAPTER 19: "SOCIAL VARIATION IN LANGUAGE"

Social Dailect: It is also called "sociolect" and refers to features such as pronunciation, words or structures that are used in one form by working-class speakers and in another from by middle-class speakers.

Idiolect: It is an indicidual way of speaking. 

Social Marker: It indicates the type of social stratification.

Speech style: It is a social feature of language use. It can be formal, when we pay more careful attention to how we are speaking, and informal, when we pay less attention. 

Style-Shifting: It is the ability to change from one style to the other. 

Prestige: It is the direction in which certain individuals change their speech.

Speech Accomodation: It is the ability to modify the speech style toward or away from the perceived style of the person the speaker is talking to. 

Convergence: It is a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance between speakers.

Divergence: It is a speech style that attempts to enphasize social distance between speakers.

Register: It is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context, which may be identified as situational, occupational or topical.  

Jargon: It refers to specialized vocabulary used by those inside established social groups, often defined by professional status.

Slang: It describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everydat terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests. 

African American English: It is also known as Black English or Ebonics, AAE is a variety used by many (not all) African Americans in many different regions of the USA. 

CHAPTER 20: "LANGUAGE AND CULTURE"

Culture: It is defined as socially acquired knowledge.

Category: It is a group with certain features in common. 

Kinship Term: It is a word which is used by people who are members of the same family or group. 

Linguistic Relativity: It refers to the differences in language use as evidence of different ways of talking about external reality. 

Cognitive Categories: These are categories of analyzing cognition, or how people think. 

Social Categories: These are categories of social organization that we can use to say how weare connected or related to others. 

Address Term: It is a word or phrase for the person being talked or written to. 

Gender: 

1. Biological Gender: It is the distinction in sex between the "male" and "female" of each species.
2. Grammatical Gender: It is used to classify nouns in language.
3. Social Gender: It is the distinction to classify individuals in terms of their social roles.

Gender Speech: 

Women´s speech is characterized by:

• The use of pitch movement. especially raising intonation.
• The frequent use of hedges.
• The frequent use of tag questions.
• Indirect speech acts.
• Interaction as a shared activity.

Men´s speech is characterized by:

• The use of assertive forms.
• The use of "strong" language.
• Direct speech acts.
• Interaction as a hierarchical activity.