Presented By: Aymen Latif

Style
The variations of speech that occurs within
individual speakers who come from a single
location.
 Style andFormality
At times, we are more careful or relaxed
in our speaking or writing.
The varying levels of attention to
variety forms a natural continuum.
Explanation: the stylistic variation is
the result of the care that speakers and
writers take with their expression.
The more formal de situation, the more
attention we pay to our language.
 Audience Design,
AccommodatioandNormativism
Audience design: a speaker who can
control more than one variety chooses a
level of speech according to the audience
he or she is addressing.
Accommodation: we automatically
adjust our speech to be more like that of
our interlocutor.
Normativism: the approach taken by
purists who claim that there is one
‘correct’ version and that all variation is
incorrect and bad.
 Specialized varieties
 Register: the special variety especially
marked by a special set of vocabulary
associated with a profession, occupation
or social group and forming part of its
jargon.
 A specialized jargon serves to label new
and needed concepts and also to establish
bonds between members and enforce
boundaries for outsiders
 Cant: thieves and underworld jargon,
which goal is to make it hard for outsiders
to comprehend conversations.
 Domains
These are the typical social situation with
three defining characteristics: place, role-
relationship and topic. Domains are named
usually for a place or an activity in it.
• A one common domain is
home.
• Role-relationships include:
family members and visitors.
• Topics (which depends on
the cultural patterns) may
be: activities of the family,
news about a family
Slang and Solidarity
 Slang is one way of estabilishing social identity.
 Its main characteristics are:
 the special kinds of ‘intimate’ or in-group speech.
 The rejection of formal rules.
 Its freshness and epheremerality.
 Free usage of taboo expressions., e.g. fuck, shit.
 It’s the feature of speech of the young and the powerless.

 Solidarity is an important social force that has a major

impact on language, which underlies the notion of
accomodation.
 By choosing the form of language associated with a specific
group, we are claiming to be counted as a member of that
group.
Language and gender
 Traditionally, the word gender was restricted to the gramatical distinciones
between men and women.
 Children pick up social stereotypes that underlies women and men
discrimination.
 Women’s talk is associated with the home and domestic activities.
 Men’s talk is associated with the outside world and economic activities.
 Studies of gender have shown the power of stereotyping:
 Generic masculine: however well-meaning and neutral the speaker’s
intention may be, it reinforces the secondary status of women.
 Anthropocentic speech: it is the prejudicial use of language which
assumes that men are more important than women.
 Social Stratification
 It is the study of class distinction.
 Free variation: the notion that the choice of variant was
uncontrolled and without significance.
 Variations in speech provide clear evidence of social
status.
 Each social level (determined on the basis of income,
occupation and education) had a similar gradation
according to style or degree of formality.
 Hypercorrection: there is a tendency to over-use socially
desirable features in careful speech and reading.
 Accomodation and Audience Design
 Audience design: in this view, the speaker,
consciously or not, chooses a stylistic level
appropriate for the audience he or she wishes to
address. The announcer is identifying himself or
herself with the audience or caliming membership
of the group that it constitutes.

 Accomodation: it is the tendency for the intention

of people talking together to move slightly closer
together by modifying their speech in the direction
of the new norm.
 Some may choose to diverge instead of
converging, by moving their speech away from
the other party.