8/14/2019 TE 407 Linguistic Variance Handout

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TE 407: Emily MullinsSGI: Linguistic Variance

"Linguistic Variation in Spike Lee's School Daze"(1987) by MargaretThomas

Focus: That powerful social and psychological forces drive speakers bothtoward and away from a standard language, resulting in a complex anddynamic interplay of standard and non-standard usage both for individualspeakers and within speech communities

The narrative concerns social and political tensions between two groups, "theHaves" and "the Have-Nots." The "Haves" are light skinned and upper class;the "Have-Nots" are darker-skinned and some of them are the first in theirfamilies to attend college.

The particular scene we will look at has a number of properties that make it arich source of data about language variation. Please look out for:

Examples of speech used in different social contextsLanguage of intimates (Dap and friends talking together in the car)Conventionalized service language (The students interacting with thewaitress)Language between strangers (the locals in confrontation with the students)Examples of speech display in a range of affectsPlayful joking on the way to KFCLanguage communicating veiled resentment from the waitressLanguage charged with explicit hostility in the clash with the localsStudents' sobered conversation on their way back to the campusExamples of different speech actsLanguage is used to tease, inform, request, reject, challenge, conciliate,insult, deny, attach, support, threaten, reflect, agree, and disagree

Questions to Consider:Can you distinguish instances where speakers shift speech styles betweenAAV and Standard English (code-switching)?Where, why, and by whom does code-switching take place?Ex: Look closely at how Monroe speaks in the car, and the conversationbetween Jordan and a local in regards to the saltshaker; How does he startthe conversation? How does he respond?How do the locals speak in comparison to the "Have-Nots"?Why might a speaker employ one style rather than another?

Some Helpful Features of Standard Dialect AAV:Consonants /t,d,s,z/ occurring at the end of words are often deleted orweakenedTestbecomes what can be represented orthographically as tes';coldas col';seat, seed, and see can become homonymsBut because linguistic behavior is so complex, not all such consonants areequally subject to deletion. For example, an omission of final consonants is

8/14/2019 TE 407 Linguistic Variance Handout

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less likely in AAV when they carry grammatical significance, as in lookedandclosedwhere /t/ and /d/ signal past tense.In AAV, Standard English diphthongs (vowels which exhibit a noticeablechange in quality within a single syllable, like the /aI/ in nice or the /au/ inhouse) often become long "pure" vowels ("monophthongs").Nice may be pronounced as /naIs/ and house as /haIs/

Speakers of AAV often substitute the voiced alveolar stop /d/ for the voicedinterdental fricative // so that there sounds like dareSpeakers of AAV may delete the liquids /r/ and /l/ after vowels ("in post-vocalic position"), as in /wiI/ (will) and /maid/ (mired).Negative concord ("Double negative") is often usedNegative inversion is utilized; a rule which moves a negative modal intosentence-initial position around an indefinite subject in declarativeutterances, as in Can't nobody tag you thenInvariant be indicating habitual or durative aspect, as in cause the officebe closed on weekendsNull be signaling stativity, as in She prettyAAV distinguishes between the habitual aspect ofShe be busyand the

stativity ofShe busy(here indicating a temporary state) where standardEnglish has only the ambiguous She's busyLoss of Standard English genitive case-marking as in They daddy in the houseor There go Willie mother right thereFrequent absence of nominal plural -s (Two boy just left) and of third-personsingular verbal -s in simple present tense (My father, he work at Ford)Use of the negative copula, ain't