Proposal-paper

XXXIV Aedean Conference (Almería 2010)

PANEL: SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND DIALECTOLOGY (Coordinator: Nila Vázquez)

SESSION 1
Speaker Design as a Style-shifting Practice: A Case Study
Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy and Juan A. Cutillas Espinosa (University of Murcia)

Lexical Transfers from English to the Spanish Spoken in Murcia
Eduardo Saldaña Navedo y Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy (University of Murcia)

SESSION 2
The Grammar of British Teenagers' Language. A Preliminary Study
Ignacio Miguel Palacios Martínez (University of Santiago de Compostela)

A Transnational Approach to South-East Asian Englishes: The case of Singapore and Hong Kong
Cristina Suárez Gómez (University Illes Balears) and Elena Seoane (University of Santiago de Compostela)

SESSION 3
Diffusion and Supralocalization of Linguistic Innovations in late Middle English: Theoretical Models and Dialect Evidence
Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre (University of Murcia)

Assessing the Provenance of the Antidotary in G.U.L. MS Hunter 513 (ff. 37v – 96v)
Teresa Marqués Aguado (Universidad de Murcia)

SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND DIALECTOLOGY
ABSTRACTS

Speaker Design as a Style-shifting Practice: A Case Study
Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy and Juan A. Cutillas Espinosa (University of Murcia)

This study demonstrates that traditional variationist conceptualizations of style shifting as a primarily responsive phenomenon, conditioned by matters external to the speaker such as audience and formality of the situation, are inadequate to account for all stylistic choices. The paper focuses on the unexpected (and controversial) use of many features of the local dialect by a female former President of the Local Government of Murcia, in southeastern Spain. The Murcian dialect is stigmatized within Spain but also carries covert prestige for Murcians as a marker of local identity and solidarity. The former President commands standard Castilian as we ll as Murcian Spanish. The data consist of archived radio broadcasts of the President’s speech in a number of public venues, ranging from less formal interviews to a very formal discussion of her investiture (i.e. inauguration). The President’s broadcast speech is compared with that of other Murcian female politicians, Murcian male politicians, Murcian non-politicians, and non-Murcian politicians. Surprisingly, the President shows higher usage levels for dialect features than any of the other groups. In addition, her most dialectal speech occurs in the highly formal investiture discussion. The president’s hyper-use of Murcian dialect features indicates that she is not shifting her speech in reaction to formality, or even in accommodation to the many Murcians in her audience (whose radio speech is more standard than her own). Rather, she is purposely designing her speech to project an image that highlights her Murcian identity and her socialist ideals. Thus, more recent conceptualizations of stylistic variation as creative and strategic, and as essential to identity projection and creation and the furthering of one’s specific situational goals, can be used to explain people’s stylistic choices even in seemingly stylistically constrained settings such as publicly broadcast political speech.

Lexical Transfers from English to the Spanish Spoken in Murcia
Eduardo Saldaña Navedo y Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy (University of Murcia)

Nowadays, there is a language which has a privileged position: English. It is spoken (as a first, second or foreign language) in most countries, and its influence is so important that many of its elements and/or structures are being transferred to other languages, such as Spanish. This oral presentation deals with lexical transfers from English to Spanish; more specifically, with foreignwords and loanwords transferred from English to the Spanish spoken in an southeast area of Spain: Murcia. Several factors about this topic were empirically researched in a master thesis developed by Eduardo Saldaña Navedo and directed by Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy. In this oral presentation we will focus on how certain socio-demographic factors seem to be connected with the rates of knowledge and usage of loanwords and foreignwords come from English. Moreover, these factors also seem to have a significant relationship with the linguistic and social attitudes speakers have about these transferred words.

The Grammar of British Teenagers' Language. A Preliminary Study
Ignacio Miguel Palacios Martínez (University of Santiago de Compostela)

The language of teenagers has been has been the subject of extensive study in recent years due to its highly innovative nature and richness of expression. Most attention has been paid to the phonological and lexico-semantic levels of analysis; grammar, and more particularly syntax, have been addressed less frequently. In this paper I will focus on some of the most distinctive features of the grammar of this language, using data from the COLT corpus (Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language) and from the SCOSE corpus (Saarbrücken Corpus of Spoken English) plus material from other written and oral sources such as magazines for teenagers, British Library archival sound recordings and web-based glossaries of teen language. The analysis here will examine those grammatical properties which distinguish teenage language from the language of adults and which can be said to characterise it as a sociolect. Under discussion will be the following grammatical features: the general structure of the clause, the verbal and pronoun systems, the use of tags, the system of polarity with particular reference to the expression of negation, quotatives, the expression of vague language through the use of approximators, placeholders and general extenders, ways of intensifying language, the use of abuse and insult words as vocatives and the syntax of discourse. This study is preliminary in nature and most of the grammatical phenomena considered here would merit independent and more thorough analysis.

This study compares the expression of perfect meaning in two South-East Asian varieties, Hong Kong English and Singapore English, which are at different phases of nativization according to Schneider’s Dynamic Model (2007). Based on data drawn from the spoken component of the ICE (International Corpus of English) corpora from Hong Kong (ICE-HK) and Singapore (ICE-SG), we will first revise the forms available for the expression of the perfect meaning; then we compare their distribution in both varieties. Special emphasis will be placed on the levelling of the functional distribution between the analytic perfect and the synthetic preterite, a feature shown by both varieties.
Keywords: Hong-Kong English, Singapore English, Dynamic Model, have + past participle, preterite

Diffusion and Supralocalization of Linguistic Innovations in late Middle English: Theoretical Models and Dialect Evidence
Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre (University of Murcia)

This paper deals with the concept of ‘supralocalization’ in historical dialectology. Within this model, the typical patterns of ‘epidemic’ (wave-like) and ‘hierarchical’ (dialect-hopping) diffusion of linguistic innovations are discussed and their possible prevalence in the past is examined. The theoretical tenets of geolinguistics are then considered and the gravity model designed by Conde Silvestre and Hernández Campoy (2002) to speculate on the spatial diffusion of innovations in Middle English is also discussed. This model, after pondering the relevant geographical and demographic information, allowed them to speculate on the role that certain late medieval urban centres could have played in establishing the possible courses followed by linguistic innovations spreading from London to the rest of the country. The conclusions highlighted the role of towns like Coventry and Bristol, which, on account of their population and interaction potentials, could have received supralocalized innovations earlier than other places closer to London. Moreover, such urban centres were also likely to have behaved as catalysts, promoting the spread of innovations within their respective areas of influence. In the last part of this paper, these hypotheses are plotted against the dialect evidence afforded by the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986). The profiles of several mid-15th-century manuscripts located in Coventry, Bristol and their hinterlands are compared, both in search of supralocalized innovations and with the aim of reconstructing their most l ikely pattern of diffusion.
Keywords: dialect geography, Middle English, linguistic innovation, spatial diffusion, supralocalization.

Assessing the Provenance of the Antidotary in G.U.L. MS Hunter 513 (ff. 37v – 96v)
Teresa Marqués Aguado (Universidad de Murcia)

The present paper discusses the dialectal provenance of G.U.L. MS Hunter 513 (ff.37v – 96v), which holds one of the Middle English versions of the Antidotary. In order to establish the linguistic profile of this medieval treatise, the methodological approach developed in A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English is followed. This will allow us to draw conclusions about the production of the treatise.
Keywords: Middle English, dialectology, LALME, Antidotary.