Language or Dialect: Which Do You Speak?

It is an obvious fact that people of different nations tend

to use different languages: Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Portugal, Japanese in Japan, Somali in
Somalia, and so on. Along with physical appearance and cultural characteristics, language is part of
what distinguishes one nation from another. Of course, it isn’t only across national boundaries that
people speak different languages. In the Canadian province of Quebec, ethnic French-Canadians
maintain a strong allegiance to the French language, while ethnic Anglos maintain a loyalty to
English. In India, scores of languages are spoken, some confined to small areas, others spoken
regionally or nationally. Among speakers of any widely spoken language there is considerable
international variation, as with Australian, American, British, Indian, and Irish English, among others.
Striking differences can be noted between the varieties of French spoken in Montreal and Paris and
among the varieties of Spanish in Spain, Mexico, and various Central and South American countries.
In addition, even casual observers know that residents of different parts of a country speak regional
varieties of the same language. When Americans speak of a “Boston accent,” a “Southern drawl,” or
“Brooklynese,” they reveal their perception of American English as varying from place to place. These
linguistic markers of region identify people as belonging to a particular social group, even when that
group is as loosely bound together as are most American regional groups. In countries where
regional affiliation may have social correlates of ethnicity, religion, or clan, regional varieties may be
important markers of social affiliation. Like the existence of different languages, the existence of
regional varieties of a language suggests that people who speak with one another tend to speak like
one another. It’s also reasonable to think that people who view themselves as distinct from other
groups may tend to mark that distinction in their speech. A language can be thought of as a
collection of dialects that are historically related and similar in vocabulary and structure. Dialects of a
single language characterize social groups whose members choose to say they are speakers of the
same language.

Social Boundaries and Dialects Language varies from region to region and also across ethnic,
socioeconomic, and gender boundaries. Speakers of American English know that white Americans
and black Americans tend to speak differently, even when they live in the same city. Similarly, middle-
class speakers can often be distinguished from working-class speakers. Women and men also differ
from one another in their language use. Throughout the world, in addition to regional dialects, there
are ethnic varieties, social class varieties, and gender varieties. These constitute what some call social
dialects, although the word dialects is commonly limited to regional varieties.

Distinguishing Among Dialect, Register, and Accent Dialect and Register The term dialect refers to
the language variety characteristic of a particular regional or social group. Partly through his or her
dialect we recognize a person’s regional, ethnic, social, and gender affiliation. Thus the term dialect
has to do with language users, with groups of speakers. In addition, as we saw in the preceding
chapter, all dialects vary according to the situation in which they are used, creating what in the
previous chapter we called registers: language varieties characteristic of situations of use. In this
chapter we deal with dialects—language varieties characteristic of particular social groups.
Languages, dialects, and registers are all language varieties. What this means is that there is no
linguistic distinction between a language and a dialect. Every dialect is a language, and every
language is realized in its dialects. From a linguistic point of view, what is called a language and what
is called a dialect are indistinguishable. Dialect and Accent Dialect refers to a language variety in its
totality—including vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, pragmatics, and any other aspect of the
linguistic system. The terms language and variety also refer to an entire linguistic system. By contrast,
the word accent refers to pronunciation only. When we discuss a “Southern accent” or a “Boston
accent,” we mean the pronunciation characteristic of the Southern dialect or the Boston dialect.
How Do Languages Diverge and Merge? How is it that over time certain language varieties, once
similar to one another, come to differ while other varieties remain very much alike? There is no
simple answer to that question, but the more people interact, the more alike their language remains
or becomes. The less the contact between social groups, the more likely it is that their language
varieties will develop distinctive characteristics. Geographical separation and social distance promote
differences in speechways. From the Proto-Indo-European language spoken about 6000 years ago
have come most of today’s European languages and many languages of Central Asia and the Indian
subcontinent. Not only the Romance languages but the Germanic, Celtic, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, and
Indo-Iranian languages have developed from Proto-Indo-European. When you consider that only
about 200 generations have lived and died during that 6000-year period, you can appreciate how
quickly a multitude of languages can develop from a single parent language. Just as physical distance
can promote dialect distinctions, social distance can help create and maintain distinct dialects. In
part, middle-class dialects differ from working class dialects because of a relative lack of sustained
interactional contacts across class boundaries in American society. African-American English remains
distinct from other varieties of American English partly because of the social distance between
whites and African Americans in the United States. A dialect links its users through recognition of
shared linguistic characteristics, and speakers’ abilities to use and understand a dialect mark them as
“insiders” and allow them to identify (and exclude) “outsiders.” But as we will see, it is not
necessarily the case that varieties differ from one another in a tidy fashion. It may be that two
varieties share vocabulary but differ in pronunciation, or share a good deal of their phonology but
differ in some other respects. All language varieties change and develop continuously.

Language Merger in an Indian Village Just as physical and social distance enable speakers of one
variety to distinguish themselves from speakers of other varieties, so close contact and frequent
communication foster linguistic similarity. As varieties of the same language spoken by people in
close social contact tend to become alike, different languages spoken in a community may also tend
to merge. Kupwar is a village in India on the border between two major language families: the Indo-
European family (which includes the languages of North India) and the unrelated Dravidian family
(the languages of South India). Kupwar’s 3000 inhabitants fall into three groups and regularly use
three languages in their daily activities. The Jains speak Kannada (a Dravidian language); the Muslims
speak Urdu (an Indo-European language closely related to Hindi); and the Untouchables speak
Marathi (the regional Indo-European language surrounding Kupwar and the principal literary
language of the area). These groups have lived in the village for centuries, and most men are
bilingual or multilingual. Over the course of time, with individuals switching back and forth among at
least two of these languages, the varieties used in Kupwar have come to be more and more alike. In
fact, the grammatical structures of the village varieties are now so similar that a word-forword
translation is possible among the languages because word order and other structural characteristics
of the three languages are now virtually identical. This merging is remarkable because the varieties
of these languages that are used elsewhere are very different from one another. Even in Kupwar,
though, where the three grammars have been merging, the vocabulary of each language has
remained largely distinct. On the one hand, the need for communication among the different groups
has encouraged grammatical convergence. On the other hand, the social separation needed to
maintain religious and caste differences has supported the continuation of separate vocabularies. As
things now stand, communication is relatively easy across groups, while affiliation and group identity
remain clear. This is the linguistic equivalent of having your cake and eating it, too.