Today I discovered a handful of handouts on sociolinguistics by Peter L. Patrick of the University of Essex. The document whose URL is below contains links to several other handouts by Patrick and others.
http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lg/lg474/CoreIdeasSociolx.pdf
Monday, 22 October 2012
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Linguistics is music to my ears
I don't like rap or hip-hop but this I found aesthetically pleasing to the ear, to use a flowery expression. It's not about the study of language, though. The man is called Linguistics and this is his flagship song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPkASX1nKTs
On the other hand, this song really is about linguistics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mktl_7Hr4GA
This one is in Japanese. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e_Nio8Qy5I
Last but not least is a poem written as a phonetic exercise by Yuen Ren Chao. It consists of minimal pairs, all pronounced 'shi' or 'szy' (the latter's for Polish readers) and differing only in their tone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIY6iFc5lUw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPkASX1nKTs
On the other hand, this song really is about linguistics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mktl_7Hr4GA
This one is in Japanese. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e_Nio8Qy5I
Last but not least is a poem written as a phonetic exercise by Yuen Ren Chao. It consists of minimal pairs, all pronounced 'shi' or 'szy' (the latter's for Polish readers) and differing only in their tone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIY6iFc5lUw&feature=related
Monday, 15 October 2012
'Things ain't what they used to be': Handke again
Kwiryna Handke's Socjologia języka (Sociology of Language) (Warsaw, 2008) turned out to be a book partly on sociolinguistics and partly on sociology of language, as the title indicates. It's also concerned with stylistics, etymology and correctness (that's right, not grammaticality and not standard usage). Almost all of the book deals with Polish so that reading it makes sense only to students of Polish and other people who are fluent in the language. I'm sorry to say that unless I misunderstood the author she believes in the following:
1. Polish can be beautiful and correct or ugly and incorrect.
2. In the past Poles cared about correctness, while these days nobody does.
3. In the past nobody used slang or swear words, while these days everyone does. Poles swear all the frigging time!
4. It is okay to prove points 2 and 3 by comparing letters written by writers over a hundred years ago and things heard in the street in recent years. It's like comparing 19th-century portraits painted by professionals to someone's doodles made with a pen to prove that art is dead.
5. It is okay to write about 21st-century Polish and all of a sudden quote a poem written in the Romantic period as if it really represented the real spoken or written Polish of today.
6. In the past women taught their children to use correct Polish, whereas these days, since no one cares anyway, they don't even know what correct Polish is. This is connected with a total lack of patriotism, apparently.
7. It was okay to borrow heavily from a variety of languages in the past, while now it's not okay to borrow words or structures from English.
8. Language change in the past was cool but now it's language decay.
9. Last but not least Standard Polish is in fact literary or cultured Polish.
Much as I respect and appreciate Handke's scholarship, as a thirty-year-old I can't help feeling accused of being too stupid to speak my language 'properly' and therefore stabbing it with a knife every time I use 'cool' or fail to decline someone's surname in the only 'correct' way till my mother tongue bleeds to death. It's just a pity the author provides no statistics because I'd like to see actual numbers proving that my language is deteriorating. Maybe then I'd launch a Polish language saving campaign myself.
1. Polish can be beautiful and correct or ugly and incorrect.
2. In the past Poles cared about correctness, while these days nobody does.
3. In the past nobody used slang or swear words, while these days everyone does. Poles swear all the frigging time!
4. It is okay to prove points 2 and 3 by comparing letters written by writers over a hundred years ago and things heard in the street in recent years. It's like comparing 19th-century portraits painted by professionals to someone's doodles made with a pen to prove that art is dead.
5. It is okay to write about 21st-century Polish and all of a sudden quote a poem written in the Romantic period as if it really represented the real spoken or written Polish of today.
6. In the past women taught their children to use correct Polish, whereas these days, since no one cares anyway, they don't even know what correct Polish is. This is connected with a total lack of patriotism, apparently.
7. It was okay to borrow heavily from a variety of languages in the past, while now it's not okay to borrow words or structures from English.
8. Language change in the past was cool but now it's language decay.
9. Last but not least Standard Polish is in fact literary or cultured Polish.
Much as I respect and appreciate Handke's scholarship, as a thirty-year-old I can't help feeling accused of being too stupid to speak my language 'properly' and therefore stabbing it with a knife every time I use 'cool' or fail to decline someone's surname in the only 'correct' way till my mother tongue bleeds to death. It's just a pity the author provides no statistics because I'd like to see actual numbers proving that my language is deteriorating. Maybe then I'd launch a Polish language saving campaign myself.
Friday, 12 October 2012
Eff off and die! Customer service the Polish way
The book by Kwiryna Handke I mentioned in my previous post quotes some Polish clerks and shopkeepers to exemplify rudeness in women's speech that according to her seems to have become commonplace in the late twentieth century as a result of communism. Poles appear to be so used to rude nurses, physicians, post office clerks, railway ticket vendors and college administration staff, male and female alike, that they hardly notice such behaviour. The old office hag stereotype has given rise to many a joke as well as comic strips about Mrs Halinka, who embodies the dean's office lady, a figure unknown to people outside Poland. The comics are here (in Polish): http://www.pani-halinka.pl/ .
Why am I writing about this? Well, although the French are said to be rude to foreigners who can't speak their langue, I'm afraid it's far, far worse here in Poland. I know quite a few Britons and Americans living in Poland who haven't learnt our language enough to run errands and they've all experienced yelling, cursing or pretending not to see them, on the part of women in particular. Whether it's a greengrocer's, a railway station or a clinic, you can always find someone who serves you without a modicum of respect or shouts "Polish!" and refuses to talk to you any longer if you're a foreigner. I've not only heard dozens of such stories or seen such things myself, but today I heard a checkout assistant at a supermarket yell at her customers to go to another checkout just because she saw her workmate having fewer shoppers to serve. Then she served me with a face contorted with wrath, for whatever reason.
Whenever I go abroad the customer service is impeccable. With one exception, however: in Latvia, another post-communist country, they yelled at me all the time just because I could understand neither Latvian nor Russian. It must have been the political and economic system that made the nation impolite too.
I wonder how many generations it will take Poles to start treating others they way they would like to be treated themselves. Or should I look for another place to live?
Why am I writing about this? Well, although the French are said to be rude to foreigners who can't speak their langue, I'm afraid it's far, far worse here in Poland. I know quite a few Britons and Americans living in Poland who haven't learnt our language enough to run errands and they've all experienced yelling, cursing or pretending not to see them, on the part of women in particular. Whether it's a greengrocer's, a railway station or a clinic, you can always find someone who serves you without a modicum of respect or shouts "Polish!" and refuses to talk to you any longer if you're a foreigner. I've not only heard dozens of such stories or seen such things myself, but today I heard a checkout assistant at a supermarket yell at her customers to go to another checkout just because she saw her workmate having fewer shoppers to serve. Then she served me with a face contorted with wrath, for whatever reason.
Whenever I go abroad the customer service is impeccable. With one exception, however: in Latvia, another post-communist country, they yelled at me all the time just because I could understand neither Latvian nor Russian. It must have been the political and economic system that made the nation impolite too.
I wonder how many generations it will take Poles to start treating others they way they would like to be treated themselves. Or should I look for another place to live?
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Sociolinguistics vs sociology of language
Having passed my philosophy exam last week I can focus on the most important pre-PhD examination, namely sociolinguistics and 'linguistic culture', a typically Polish approach to normative issues such as the development and current shape of Standard Polish.
Today I began to read Socjologia języka (Sociology of Language) by Polish linguist Kwiryna Handke (2008) and I can clearly see that the book is primarily about sociolinguistics. Ever since I attended classes in sociolinguistics I have considered it the study of how society influences language (with emphasis on language) and sociology of language the opposite approach, i.e. the study of how (a) language influences society. I can now see, however, that the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics by P.H. Matthews (2007) does not contain a separate entry on sociology of language, calling sociolinguistics "any study of language in relation to society ...". Does that mean that when we analyse prejudice against monolingual Spanish speakers in the USA we do sociolinguistics and not sociology of language? Or is the difference unimportant? My PhD dissertation studies language attitudes but I don't consider it as part of sociology of language since I focus on language issues and I do not even cite reference sources dealing with 'pure' sociology.
When I finish reading Handke's book I'll tell you if the sociolinguistics/sociology of language distinction, if any, has become clearer to me.
Today I began to read Socjologia języka (Sociology of Language) by Polish linguist Kwiryna Handke (2008) and I can clearly see that the book is primarily about sociolinguistics. Ever since I attended classes in sociolinguistics I have considered it the study of how society influences language (with emphasis on language) and sociology of language the opposite approach, i.e. the study of how (a) language influences society. I can now see, however, that the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics by P.H. Matthews (2007) does not contain a separate entry on sociology of language, calling sociolinguistics "any study of language in relation to society ...". Does that mean that when we analyse prejudice against monolingual Spanish speakers in the USA we do sociolinguistics and not sociology of language? Or is the difference unimportant? My PhD dissertation studies language attitudes but I don't consider it as part of sociology of language since I focus on language issues and I do not even cite reference sources dealing with 'pure' sociology.
When I finish reading Handke's book I'll tell you if the sociolinguistics/sociology of language distinction, if any, has become clearer to me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)