1 Page Linguistics Essay

\ movê aw-ay. They move across the river or over a mountain and form ".",..- ü]!19". Suppose the sepa - öi;of New Village have no contact Thelanguage of.both villages will cha lan_guage ot theù common ancestors. But the drift will not be in the same direciigJr. In both villages there wiII be_new expressions and new pro_nunciations, but not the same on s. In the course of time the ian_guage.df Old Village anf \ew Vilage will be mutually unintelli$ùìL*ilh,l.:l1Ter"-S-" they both started-with. They will al'so be;;-t;lly unintelligible with one another.

t /Speech Communities

PAUL ROBERTS

divides itséllf and half the people

The concept of speecl.ttr"a¡"i-íi dth"i.;;i communities is basic to an under-

o, a¡atåtll íî'riïfiäland sociat oariation in tanguage, ::t;#ri"ïizn{;!rË:";j'rt:{;H""!::k:rtÍ f l;:;U|i:å:'i#"W::#::,1::,::",:n";* ,^pr,oii,,i ;;î',;å;::lu| w.ith.in those communities. He i:iî;;:!*i#::,f,,:úî:,':í"0",,i,":|;::;..r#; peopte. 1 often really oalue judgments abottt

, .An interesting thing-¡and one for which there is no perfectlyclear explanation-is thalthe ¡ate of change wilr not o.ai"*ily üãii-,å :.""," jor. both villages. The language of

"Ota Village "h;"t*;;rt*than. the language of New vinage-. oáe might expect that the oppositewould be rrue-thar the emigrã4ts, placeà'in nåw ,"*"ir;d;;', "Jnew conditions, would,uld.1g9 móre rapid language .t"";"i i"ìhistory reports otherwisè. Amè-rican English, fo, "îu.ipt., ù"."p-; il;violence and agony and confusion to ;hich the demands oË u nl*continenr have subjected it, iíprobabry essentially croser to the laì-guage of Shakespeare than Lonàon fngtisn is.

Suppose one thing.more. Suppose-Old Village is divided sharplyinto an upper class and a lower aåss. tt¡e so.r, irrd a"ugt t"r, oiääupper class go to preparatory school and then to the un-iversiry; thechildren of the lower class gô to work. The upper_cluæ p"opt.,í""rnto read and write and develop a flowering literature; the lower_classpeople remain illite¡ate. D^ialects derrelop,"ar,à the speech of af,. *oclasses steadily diverges. O.ne might suppose that *åJ;ï,h";;;;would go on among the illiteratt tnui it " upper_class p"opt", "oi_scious of their- heritage, would tend to p..r"*" the foås ;"á ;;;_nunciations of their ancestors. Not só. The opposite is true, Inspeech, the educated tend to Þe radicar and the uneducated conserva-live. In England one finds Eliz-abethan forms and sounds ";i ;;;"gQford and Cambridge graduates but among the people of backwardvillages. A village-is a fairly simple kind of.speech community_a group ofpeople steadily in communìcaüon with one another, ,,å¿iùï""íins'o.ne another's speech. But the v'rage is uy

"o means the basic unit..Wi*h'." the simplest village llr*" lli -" i;;"-il"r;;-:;;p,";based on age, class, occtr-pation. All these'grãups play i"d';;t"if ;îone another and against òne anothe¡, and"a language that seems at'first a coherent whole yil l* out on,inspectioñ to"Ue .o-po""ã oimany differing parts. Some forces tend to make tf,"se pais'aiue.g.;other forces hold thesr together. Thus the ru.tg.rug" continued in ten- 'sion.

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