论文部分内容阅读
[Abstract] When we travel around the world, we will hear different languages from different national people; in the same way, when we have a journey round one country, we will find different people in different regions speak differently more or less. But we also can encounter this situation that people of the same language cannot understand with each other, and people from different languages can communicate with each other freely. What can we explain about this phenomenon? In this paper, I want to say something about this issue through the basic ideas of language and dialect.
[Key words] Basics；language and dialects；origin；standard；difference
I. INTRODUCTION
While people do usually know what language they speak, they many not always lay claim to be fully qualified speakers of that language. They may experience difficulty in deciding whether what they speak should be called a language proper or merely a dialect of some language. Such indecision is not surprising: exactly how do you decide what is a language and what is a dialect of a language? What criteria can you possibly use to determine that, whereas variety X is a language, variety Y is only a dialect of a language? What are the essential differences between a language and a dialect?
II. ORIGIN
According to Einar Haugen, the term dialect was borrowed in the Renaissance to England, as a learned word from Greek. Since the distinction written varieties in use in Classical Greece, each associated with a different area and used for a different kind of literature. Ancient Greece was actually a group of distinct local varieties descended by divergence for a common spoken source with each variety having its own literary traditions and uses, e.g., Ionic for history, Doric for choral and lyric works, and Attic for tragedy. Later, Athenian Greek, the koine — or ‘common’ language — became the norm for the spoken language as the various spoken varieties converged on the dialect of the major cultural and administrative center.
III. “BETTER” DIALECT: STANDARD LANGUAGE
It is probably fair to say that the only kind of variety which would count as a “proper language” is a standard language. Standardization, as the first principle of Bell’s seven criteria, refers to the process by which a language has been codified in some way. Haugen also has indicated certain steps that must be followed if one variety of a language is to become the standard for that language: (1) Selection-somehow or other a particular variety must have been selected as the one to be developed into a standard language. The choice is a matter of great social and political importance, as the chosen variety necessarily gains prestige and so the people who already speak it share in this prestige.
(2) Codification-some agency such as an academy must have written dictionaries and grammar books to “fix” the variety, so that everyone agrees on what is correct. Once codification has taken place, it becomes necessary for any ambitious citizen to learn the correct forms and not to use in writing any “incorrect” forms that may exist in their variety.
(3) Elaboration of function-it must be possible to use the selected variety in all the functions associated with central government and with writing: for example, in parliament and law courts, in bureaucratic, educational and scientific documents of all kind and, of course, in various forms of literature.
(4) Acceptance-the variety has to be accepted by the relevant population as the variety of the community — usually, in fact, as the national language. Once this has happened, the standard language serves as a strong unifying force for the state, as a symbol of its independence of other states, and as a marker of its difference from other states.
May we have been aware that the standard variety of any language is actually only the preferred dialect of that language? It is the variety that has been chosen for some reason, perhaps political, social, religious, or economic, or some combination of reasons, to serve as either the model or norm for other varieties.
IV. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LANGUAGE AND A DIALECT
Strange as it may seem, there’s no really good way to distinguish between a “language” and a “dialect”, because they’re not objective or scientific terms. People use the words “dialect” and “language” to mean different things. “Language” can often refer to your own linguistic variety and “dialect” to the variety spoken by someone else, usually someone thought of as inferior. Or “language” can mean the generally accepted “standard” or radio-talk language of a country, while dialects are homely versions of it that vary from region to region and may not be pronounced the way the so-called “language” is.
1. Which one is more decisive, writing system or pronunciation system?
The answer is absolutely writing system, which is decisive judging whether a variety is language or not. Whether some variety is called a language or a dialect depends on whether it is used in formal writing. Accordingly, people in Britain habitually refer to languages which are unwritten as dialects, or “mere dialects”, irrespective of whether there is a proper language to which they are related. The fact that we put so much weight on whether or not it is written in distinguishing between “language” and “dialect” is one of the interesting things that the terms show us about British culture and the importance of writing. 2. Size and prestige
A language is more prestigious than a dialect. A dialect is popularly considered to be “a substandard, low status, often rustic form of a language, lacking in prestige. Dialects are often being thought of as being some kind of erroneous deviation from the norm — an aberration of the ‘proper’ or standard form of language.”
A language is bigger (has more speakers) than a dialect, since a language is considered to be the sum of its dialects. Dialects are therefore considered to be subcategories of a language. A language then would be some unitary system of linguistic communication which subsumes a number of mutually intelligible varieties. It would therefore be bigger than a single dialect or a single variety.
3. Problems of mutual intelligibility
Another criteria used for distinguishing language from dialect is mutual intelligibility. If two speakers are able to understand one another, we can assume that they are speaking different varieties of the same language. We can also note that mutual intelligibility is not always mutual. For example, Danes understand Norwegians better than Norwegians understand Danes. This is probably due in part to the suggestion that “Norwegian is pronounced like Danish is spelt.”
V. CONCLUSION
A final comment seems called for with the regard to the terms language and dialect. A dialect is a subordinate variety of a language, so that we can say that Texas English and Swiss German are, respectively, dialects of English and German. The language name (i.e., English or German) is the superordinate term. We can also say of some languages that they contain more than one dialect. Consequently, to say that we have dialect A of language X must imply also the existence of dialect B of language X, but to say we have language Y is to make no claim about the number of dialect varieties in which it exists: it may exist in only a single variety, or it may have two subordinate dialects: dialects A, B, and so on.
References：
[1] Carole Slade(2000), Form and Style: Research Papers, Reports and Theses(tenth edition). Thomson Learning Asia Houghton Mifflin Company.
[2] R. A. Hudson(2000), Sociolinguistics(second edition). Cambridge University Press.
[3] Ralph Fasold(2008), The Sociolinguistics of Language. Blackwell Publisher Ltd.
[4] Dialect, Wikipedia. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect.
[5] Dani Mason, Language and Dialect. from http://www.squidoo.com/.
[6] Language, Wikipedia. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_dialect.
[7] Sunqingjun, Language Variety in England. Journal of Chengde Vocational and Technical College for Nationalities(Issue No. 03, 2005).
[Key words] Basics；language and dialects；origin；standard；difference
I. INTRODUCTION
While people do usually know what language they speak, they many not always lay claim to be fully qualified speakers of that language. They may experience difficulty in deciding whether what they speak should be called a language proper or merely a dialect of some language. Such indecision is not surprising: exactly how do you decide what is a language and what is a dialect of a language? What criteria can you possibly use to determine that, whereas variety X is a language, variety Y is only a dialect of a language? What are the essential differences between a language and a dialect?
II. ORIGIN
According to Einar Haugen, the term dialect was borrowed in the Renaissance to England, as a learned word from Greek. Since the distinction written varieties in use in Classical Greece, each associated with a different area and used for a different kind of literature. Ancient Greece was actually a group of distinct local varieties descended by divergence for a common spoken source with each variety having its own literary traditions and uses, e.g., Ionic for history, Doric for choral and lyric works, and Attic for tragedy. Later, Athenian Greek, the koine — or ‘common’ language — became the norm for the spoken language as the various spoken varieties converged on the dialect of the major cultural and administrative center.
III. “BETTER” DIALECT: STANDARD LANGUAGE
It is probably fair to say that the only kind of variety which would count as a “proper language” is a standard language. Standardization, as the first principle of Bell’s seven criteria, refers to the process by which a language has been codified in some way. Haugen also has indicated certain steps that must be followed if one variety of a language is to become the standard for that language: (1) Selection-somehow or other a particular variety must have been selected as the one to be developed into a standard language. The choice is a matter of great social and political importance, as the chosen variety necessarily gains prestige and so the people who already speak it share in this prestige.
(2) Codification-some agency such as an academy must have written dictionaries and grammar books to “fix” the variety, so that everyone agrees on what is correct. Once codification has taken place, it becomes necessary for any ambitious citizen to learn the correct forms and not to use in writing any “incorrect” forms that may exist in their variety.
(3) Elaboration of function-it must be possible to use the selected variety in all the functions associated with central government and with writing: for example, in parliament and law courts, in bureaucratic, educational and scientific documents of all kind and, of course, in various forms of literature.
(4) Acceptance-the variety has to be accepted by the relevant population as the variety of the community — usually, in fact, as the national language. Once this has happened, the standard language serves as a strong unifying force for the state, as a symbol of its independence of other states, and as a marker of its difference from other states.
May we have been aware that the standard variety of any language is actually only the preferred dialect of that language? It is the variety that has been chosen for some reason, perhaps political, social, religious, or economic, or some combination of reasons, to serve as either the model or norm for other varieties.
IV. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LANGUAGE AND A DIALECT
Strange as it may seem, there’s no really good way to distinguish between a “language” and a “dialect”, because they’re not objective or scientific terms. People use the words “dialect” and “language” to mean different things. “Language” can often refer to your own linguistic variety and “dialect” to the variety spoken by someone else, usually someone thought of as inferior. Or “language” can mean the generally accepted “standard” or radio-talk language of a country, while dialects are homely versions of it that vary from region to region and may not be pronounced the way the so-called “language” is.
1. Which one is more decisive, writing system or pronunciation system?
The answer is absolutely writing system, which is decisive judging whether a variety is language or not. Whether some variety is called a language or a dialect depends on whether it is used in formal writing. Accordingly, people in Britain habitually refer to languages which are unwritten as dialects, or “mere dialects”, irrespective of whether there is a proper language to which they are related. The fact that we put so much weight on whether or not it is written in distinguishing between “language” and “dialect” is one of the interesting things that the terms show us about British culture and the importance of writing. 2. Size and prestige
A language is more prestigious than a dialect. A dialect is popularly considered to be “a substandard, low status, often rustic form of a language, lacking in prestige. Dialects are often being thought of as being some kind of erroneous deviation from the norm — an aberration of the ‘proper’ or standard form of language.”
A language is bigger (has more speakers) than a dialect, since a language is considered to be the sum of its dialects. Dialects are therefore considered to be subcategories of a language. A language then would be some unitary system of linguistic communication which subsumes a number of mutually intelligible varieties. It would therefore be bigger than a single dialect or a single variety.
3. Problems of mutual intelligibility
Another criteria used for distinguishing language from dialect is mutual intelligibility. If two speakers are able to understand one another, we can assume that they are speaking different varieties of the same language. We can also note that mutual intelligibility is not always mutual. For example, Danes understand Norwegians better than Norwegians understand Danes. This is probably due in part to the suggestion that “Norwegian is pronounced like Danish is spelt.”
V. CONCLUSION
A final comment seems called for with the regard to the terms language and dialect. A dialect is a subordinate variety of a language, so that we can say that Texas English and Swiss German are, respectively, dialects of English and German. The language name (i.e., English or German) is the superordinate term. We can also say of some languages that they contain more than one dialect. Consequently, to say that we have dialect A of language X must imply also the existence of dialect B of language X, but to say we have language Y is to make no claim about the number of dialect varieties in which it exists: it may exist in only a single variety, or it may have two subordinate dialects: dialects A, B, and so on.
References：
[1] Carole Slade(2000), Form and Style: Research Papers, Reports and Theses(tenth edition). Thomson Learning Asia Houghton Mifflin Company.
[2] R. A. Hudson(2000), Sociolinguistics(second edition). Cambridge University Press.
[3] Ralph Fasold(2008), The Sociolinguistics of Language. Blackwell Publisher Ltd.
[4] Dialect, Wikipedia. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect.
[5] Dani Mason, Language and Dialect. from http://www.squidoo.com/.
[6] Language, Wikipedia. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_dialect.
[7] Sunqingjun, Language Variety in England. Journal of Chengde Vocational and Technical College for Nationalities(Issue No. 03, 2005).