5.9 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dialect levelling | 7/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_levelling | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:40:54.369184+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Mutual accommodation === Kerswill mentions that standardisation does not necessarily follow from dialect levelling; it is perfectly possible for dialects to converge without getting closer to the standard, which does happen in some situations. The mechanism for standardisation lies in the kinds of social networks people have. People with more broadly based (more varied) networks will meet people with a higher social status. They will accommodate to them in a phenomenon known as upward convergence. The opposite, downward convergence, where a higher-status person accommodates to a lower status person, is much rarer. This accommodation is thought to happen mainly among adults in Western societies, not children or adolescents, because in those societies children and adolescents have much more self-centred, narrower peer groups. In societies where standardisation is generally something that adults do, children and adolescents perform other kinds of levelling. Accommodation between individual speakers of different dialects takes place with respect to features that are salient, displaying phonetic or surface phonemic contrasts between the dialects. This process is mostly limited to salient features, geographical (distance), and demographic (population size) factors. Accommodation is not the same thing as levelling, but it can be its short-term preamble.
=== Koinéization === Koinéization, unlike dialect levelling, "involves the mixing of features of different dialects, and leads to a new, compromised dialect". It results from "integration or unification of the speakers of the varieties in contact". Clearly, dialect levelling is not strictly synonymous with koinéisation. First, dialect levelling does not merely take place in the space between dialects; it may also occur between a dialect and a standard language. Second, its end product cannot be equated with that of koinéisation, a koiné being the structurally stabilized and sociologically more or less standard product of heavy intermixture. According to Milroy (2002), the difference between dialect levelling and koinéization is that dialect levelling involves the eradication of linguistic variants due to language contact while koinéization involves the creation of a new linguistic variety based on language contact.
== See also == Accent reduction Language death Language shift Lingua franca Linguistic discrimination Linguistic prescription Linguistic purism Prestige language Cultural cringe Decreolization Language attrition Linguistic imperialism
== References ==
== Bibliography == Anderson, Bridget. 2002. Dialect leveling and /ai/ monophthongization among African American Detroiters. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(1). 86–98. Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York: H. Holt and Company. Britain, David. 1997. Dialect Contact and Phonological Reallocation: "Canadian Raising" in the English Fens. Language in Society 26(1). 15–46. Chambers, J. K., & Trudgill, P. 1980. Dialectology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Cheshire, Jenny; Ann Gillett; Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams. 1999. The role of adolescents in dialect levelling: Final report submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council. Fitzmaurice, Susan M. 2000. The Great Leveler: The Role of the Spoken Media in Stylistic Shift From the Colloquial to the Conventional. American Speech 75(1). 54–68. Gibson, Maik. Dialect Levelling in Tunisian Arabic: Towards a New Spoken Standard. Language Contact and Language Conflict in Arabic, Aleya Rouchdy. Routledge, 2003. Hinskens, Frans. 1998. Dialect Levelling: A Two-dimensional Process. Folia Linguistica 32 (1-2). 35–52. Hinskens, Frans. (ed.) 1996. Dialect levelling in Limburg: Structural and sociolinguistic aspects. Linguistische Arbeiten. Hsu, Hui-ju and John Kwock-ping Tse. The Tonal Leveling of Taiwan Mandarin: A Study in Taipei. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics 35, no. 2 (2009): 225–244. Kerswill, Paul. 2001. Mobility, meritocracy and dialect levelling: the fading (and phasing) out of Received Pronunciation. "British studies in the new millennium: the challenge of the grassroots". University of Tartu, Tartu. Kristensen, Kjeld and Mats Thelander. 1984. On dialect levelling in Denmark and Sweden. Folia Linguistica 28(1/2). 223–246. Lefebvre, C. 1998. Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar: The case of Haitian creole. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lefebvre, Claire. 2004. The relexification account of creole genesis: The case of Haitian Creole. Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Lefebvre, Claire (ed.) Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. pp. 59-180 Miller, Michael I. 1987. Three Changing Verbs: Bite, Ride and Shrink. Journal of English Linguistics 20(1). 3-12. Schøning, Signe Wedel and Inge Lise Pedersen. 2009. Vinderup in Real Time: A Showcase of Dialect Levelling. ed. by Dufresne, Monique, Fernande Dupuis and Etleva Vocaj. 233–244. Siegel, J. 1985. Koines and koineization. Language in Society 14/3, 357–78. Siegel, Jeff. 1997. Mixing, Levelling and pidgin/creole development. In A. Spears and D. Winford (eds.), The structure and status of pidgins and creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 111–49. Trudgill, Peter, Elizabeth Gordon, Gillian Lewis and Margaret MacLagan. 2000. Determinism in new-dialect formation and the genesis of New Zealand English. Journal of Linguistics 36 (2). 299–318. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Twaddell, William. F. 1959. Standard German: Urbanization and Standard Language: A Symposium Presented at the 1958 Meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Anthropological Linguistics 1(3). 1–7. Wrong, Margaret. 1942. Ibo Dialects and the Development of a Common Language. Journal of the Royal African Society 41(163). 139–141.