José Dinis João

Chicondi Nzunga
Miguel João Amussini
Agostinho Basílio Maputa
Feliciano Eugénio Casseremo

Language and Power

(Licenciatura em Ensino de Inglês com Habilitações em Ensino de Português)

Universidade Rovuma
Lichinga
2023
 José Dinis João
Chicondi Nzunga
Miguel João Amussine
Agostinho Basílio Maputa
Feliciano Eugénio Casseremo

Language and Power

(Licenciatura em Ensino de Inglês com Habilitações em Ensino de Português)

Sociolinguistics Work to be
Submitted to the Department of
Arts and Social Science for
Evaluation Purpose. Lecturer:
MSc. Jenet Azizi.

Universidade Rovuma
Lichinga
2023
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Index
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4

1.1. Language and Power ........................................................................................................ 5

1.1.1. Power ........................................................................................................................ 5

1.2. The Concept of Social Class ............................................................................................ 5

1.3. Standardization ................................................................................................................. 5

1.3.1. The Standardization Process ..................................................................................... 6

1.3.2. The Standard and Language Change ........................................................................ 6

1.4. African American Vernacular English ............................................................................. 6

1.4.1. Features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) .................................... 7

1.5. Social Status and Role ...................................................................................................... 8

1.6. Women and Men Language ............................................................................................. 8

1.6.1. Dominance ................................................................................................................ 8

1.6.2. Difference ................................................................................................................. 9

1.7. Consequences in Education ............................................................................................ 10

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 11

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 12
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1. Introduction
Most linguists and specialists of different areas of study believe that when o group of language
speakers have power, they can impose their language to be spoken which brings us to the topic of
this work, language and power. In this topic, we are going to see the concept of social class,
standardization as well as how women and men use the language in their interactions; we are
also going to see the concept of African American Vernacular English, what that is and how it is
seen as well as its features, not only, but also the consequences for Education.
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1.1.Language and Power

TRUDGILL (2000:23) says that language is not simply a means of communicating information
about the weather or any other subject. It is also a very important means of establishing and
maintaining relationships with other people, of course the language is also crucial in conveying
information about the speaker. Language is used to refer either to a single linguistic norm or to a
group of related norms.
1.1.1. Power
TRUDGILL (2000), having power is having the ability to impose your way of speaking on
others as a, or the, prestigious dialect, that is, a standard language. The process through which a
standard language arises is primarily a socio-political process rather than a linguistic one.
According to CRYSTAL (2003:7), there is the closest of links between language dominance and
economic, technological, and cultural power. Without a strong power-base, of whatever kind, no
language can make progress as an international medium of communication. Language has no
independent existence, living in some sort of mystical space apart from the people who speak it.
Language exists only in the brains and mouths and ears and hands and eyes of its users. When
they succeed, on the international stage, their language succeeds. When they fail, their language
fails.
1.2.The Concept of Social Class
TRUDGILL (2000:23) believes on the existence of varieties of language which have come to be
called social-class dialects or, by some writers, sociolects. There are grammatical differences
among speakers which give us clues about their social backgrounds. There are also different
social-class accents. The internal differentiation of human societies is reflected in their
languages, which means that different social groups use different linguistic varieties.

1.3.Standardization

WARDHAUGH and FULLE (2015:26) say that standardization refers to the process by which a
language has been codified in some way. That process usually involves the development of such
things as grammars, spelling books, and dictionaries, and possibly a literature.

TRUDGILL (1995, 5–6) defines Standard English as the variety:

Usually used in printing
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 Normally taught in schools

 Learned by non-native speakers
 Spoken by educated people
 Used in news broadcasts

1.3.1. The Standardization Process

For Heller (2010), language can be viewed not as simply a reflection of social order but as
something which helps establish social hierarchies. Thus it is not just that a variety is chosen as
the model for the standard because it is associated with a prestigious social identity, but that it
also enhances the powerful position of those who speak it.

1.3.2. The Standard and Language Change

WARDHAUGH and FULLE (2015:35) standardization is also an on-going matter, for only
‘dead’ languages like Latin and Classical Greek do not continue to change and develop. The
standardization process is necessarily an on-going one for living languages. The standardization
process is also obviously one that attempts either to reduce or to eliminate diversity and variety.
However, it would appear that such diversity and variety are ‘natural’ to all languages, assuring
them of their vitality and enabling them to change.
To that extent, standardization imposes a strain on languages or, if not on the languages
themselves, on those who take on the task of standardization. That may be one of the reasons
why various national academies have had so many difficulties in their work: they are essentially
in a no-win situation, always trying to ‘fix’ the consequences of changes that they cannot
prevent, and continually being compelled to issue new pronouncements on linguistic matters.

1.4.African American Vernacular English

Linguists use the term vernacular to refer to the language a person grows up with and uses in
everyday life in ordinary, commonplace, social interactions. We should note that so-called
vernaculars may meet with social disapproval from others who favour another variety, especially
if they favour a variety heavily influenced by the written form of the language. Therefore, this
term often has pejorative associations when used in public discourse.
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WARDHAUGH and FULLE (2015), say that the interest in African American Vernacular
English (AAVE) grew in part out of the observation that the speech of many Black residents of
the northern United States, in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Detroit,
and Chicago, resembles the speech of Blacks in southern states in many respects, yet differs from
the speech of Whites in their respective regions. To some extent, this similarity is the result of
the relatively recent migrations of Blacks out of the south; in another, it is just one reflection of
long-standing patterns of racial segregation only now slowly changing, patterns that have tended
to separate the population of the United States along colour lines. Linguists have referred to this
variety of speech as Black English, Black Vernacular English, and African or Afro-American
English.
Today, probably the most-used term is African American Vernacular English, and we will use
this term (abbreviated as AAVE).

1.4.1. Features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE)

The features of AAVE which have been researched include phonological, morphological, and
syntactic characteristics. On the phonological level, consonant cluster reduction has often been
noted (e.g., from Labov 1972 to Wolfram and Thomas 2008); words such as test, desk, and end
may be pronounced without their final consonants.
Other phonological features commonly found in varieties of AAVE include r-lessness, and /ai/
monophthongization, and realization of ‘th’ sounds as /t/, /d/, /f/, /v/ or /s/ (Thomas 2007),
although these features are found in other varieties of English in North America and around the
world.
Another interesting pattern in the verbal system of AAVE is the use of the zero copula. As
Labov (1969) has explained, the rule for its use is really quite simple. If you can contract be in
Standard English, you can delete it in AAVE. That is, since ‘He is nice’ can be contracted to
‘He’s nice’ in Standard English, it can become ‘He nice’ in AAVE. However, ‘I don’t know
where he is’ cannot be contracted to ‘I don’t know where he’s’ in Standard English.
Consequently, it cannot become ‘I don’t know where he’ in AAVE. We should note that the zero
copula is very rarely found in other dialects of English.
Still another feature of AAVE has been called habitual be (also called invariant be, or be2). This
feature has become a stereotype of Black speech, often imitated in caricatures of AAVE
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speakers; for example, the US toy store ‘Toys “R” Us’ has been jokingly called ‘We Be Toys’ in
Harlem, a predominantly African American neighbourhood of New York City). The feature is
called ‘invariant’ be because the copula is not conjugated, but used in the form of be for all
subjects (i.e., I be, you be, he/she/it be, etc.). It is called ‘habitual’ because it marks an action
which is done repeatedly, that is, habitually.

1.5.Social Status and Role

Status is the position a person holds in the social structure of a community - such as a priest, an
official, a wife, or a husband.
Roles are the conventional modes of behaviour that society expects a person to adopt when
holding a particular status. Public roles often have formal markers associated with them, such as
uniforms; but among the chief markers of social position is undoubtedly language.
People exercise several roles: they have a particular status in their family (head of family, first-
born, etc.), and another in their place of work (supervisor, apprentice, etc.); they may have a third
in their church, a fourth in a local sports centre, and so on. Each position will carry with it certain
linguistic conventions, such as a distinctive mode of address, an official' manner of speech, or a
specialized vocabulary.
1.6.Women and Men Language
WARDHAUGH and FULLE (2015:325), says that one of the specialists that discussed the
concept of women’s language and place in the community is Lakoff in 1973, he focuses his
work on how women’s language revealed their place in society – a place that was generally seen
as inferior to that occupied by men. This came to be called Women’s Language that has also
been called the deficit model, as many of the features, Lakoff discusses the position women as
deficient to men: less confident in what they say, and less able to participate in serious activities
in the social sphere.
1.6.1. Dominance
What has been called the dominance approach also addresses power relations between the sexes.
Some of this research claims that there is evidence that in cross-gender conversation women ask
more questions than men, use more back channeling signals (i.e., verbal and non-verbal
feedback to show they are listening) to encourage others to continue speaking, use more
instances of you and we, and do not protest as much as men when they are interrupted.
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On the other hand, men interrupt more, challenge, dispute, and ignore more, try to control what
topics are discussed, and are inclined to make categorical statements. Such behaviours are not
characteristic of women in conversations that involve both men and women. In other words, in
their interactional patterns in conversation, men and women seem often to exhibit the power
relationship that exists in society, with men dominant and women subservient.
WARDHAUGH and FULLE (2015:326) say that many specialists believe that men tend to
dominate conversations through interruption and topic control, and to backchannel less than
women. But, this cannot be generalized because the study of James and Clarke (1993) shows that
men are much more likely than women ‘to use interruption as a means of dominating and
controlling interactions’.
James and Clarke (1993), say that the majority of studies have found no significant differences
between genders in this respect, and that both men and women interrupt other men and women.

TALBOT (1998:133–4) says that all men are not in a position to dominate all women.
Dominance clearly fails as a universal explanation of gendered language differences.
1.6.2. Difference
Almost concurrently with the focus on dominance in the study of language and gender arose
another approach which became known as the difference, or two cultures approach.
GREY (1992) and TANNEN (1990) cited in WARDHAUGH and FULLE (2015:325) developed
their works based on the idea that men and women speak differently. Their claim is that men
learn to talk like men and women learn to talk like women because society subjects them to
different life experiences. However, the process of gender differentiation is not the focus of this
approach; it is an underlying assumption (and one that has been questioned). The main claim is
that men and women have different conversational goals and thus although they may say the
same things, they actually mean different things.
MALTZ and BORKER (1982) propose that, in North America at least, men and women come
from different sociolinguistic sub-cultures. They have learned to do different things with
language, particularly in conversation, and when the two genders try to communicate with each
other, the result may be miscommunication. The mhmm a woman uses quite frequently means
only ‘I’m listening,’ whereas the mhmm a man uses tends to mean ‘I’m agreeing.’ Consequently,
men often believe that ‘women are always agreeing with them and then conclude that it’s
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impossible to tell what a woman really thinks,’ whereas ‘women . . . get upset with men who
never seem to be listening’
They conclude that women and men observe different rules in conversing and that in cross-
gender talk the rules often conflict. The genders have different views of what questioning is all
about, women treating questions as part of conversational maintenance and men treating them
primarily as requests for information; different views of what is or is not ‘aggressive’ linguistic
behaviour, with women regarding any sign of aggression as personally directed, negative, and
disruptive, and men as just one way of organizing a conversation.
1.7.Consequences in Education
BERNSTEIN (1961), regards language as something which both influences culture and is in turn
influenced by culture. A child growing up in a particular linguistic environment and culture
learns the language of that environment and that culture, and then proceeds to pass on that
learning to the next generation.
Individuals also learn their social roles through the process of communication. This process
differs from social group to social group, and, because it is different in each social group,
existing role differences are perpetuated in society.
He claims that there are two quite distinct varieties of language in use in society. He calls one
variety elaborated code and the other variety restricted code. According to Bernstein, these codes
have very different characteristics.
According to BERNSTEIN (1961:169), the elaborated code ‘is a language use which points to
the possibilities inherent in a complex conceptual hierarchy for the organizing of experience.’ In
contrast, restricted code employs short, grammatically simple, and often unfinished sentences of
‘poor’ – meaning nonstandard.
According to BERNSTEIN (1972:173), the consequences of this unequal distribution are
considerable. In particular, children from the lower working class are likely to find themselves at
a disadvantage when they attend school, because the elaborated code is the medium of
instruction in schooling. When schools attempt to develop in children the ability to manipulate
elaborated code, they are really involved in trying to change cultural patterns, and such
involvement may have profound social and psychological consequences for all engaged in the
task. Educational failure is likely to result.
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Conclusion
Many people regard to a language as just a means of communication, but it’s more than that, it is
also system of establishing and maintaining relationships with other people. It has also been
established that the way how people speak, reflects or shows their social class. What makes a
language to be powerful in not solely the number of its speaker but the position of the its
speakers, which involves not only the linguistic but also the politics, economic and technological
aspects. The recent migration of blacks from the north and the racial segregation have caused the
so-called African American Vernacular English, its features include phonological,
morphological, and syntactic characteristics. Then, we have seen the different ways in which
men and women communicate that is said to have different objectives for some and others
believe that there is no difference between them. Finally, we talked about the consequences in
Education, where the students of lower working class are disadvantaged in relation to the
opposite.
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Bibliography
TRUDGILL, Peter, Sociolinguistics: an Introduction to Language and Society, 4th Edition,
England, 2000.
RAMLAN, Language Standardization in General Point of View, Indonesia, 2018.
WARDHAUGH, Ronald and FULLER Janet M. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 7th Edition,
UK, 2015.
GU, Lihong, Language and Gender: Differences and Similarities, China, 2013.
LAKOFF, R. Language and Women’s Place. New York, 1975.
WARDHAUGH, R. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Malden, 2006.
LABOV, W. The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change, 1990.