ABSTRACT The present study has concentrated on the relationship between language variation and social structure of society. It has taken into account language usage of speakers and their social background, namely social class and gender. In order to clarify this relationship,the research has been conducted in Turkish society, in particular, Istanbul, and in the Turkish language. The sociolinguistic view adopted advocates the view that language change is the result of the combination of the internal linguistic factors and external social factors. Thus, a brief overview of internal linguistic rules of /h/ deletion in the Turkish and the external social factors in the Istanbul society has been determined. A broad picture of the relationship between the internal rule of language variation and the social structure of the society is provided, as well as a discussion of some controversial issues related to language and its social context. The data for the present study shows that /h/ is a differentiator of social classes and gender in Istanbul. It is worth noting here that the reason of the discrepancy between the speech pattern of the male and female is answered by adopting the term “habitus” as a biopsychosocial process to sociolinguistics. In conclusion, the present study, like many previous studies, demonstrates that language is deeply attached to the social structure of society.

This thesis investigates language variation among a group of young adults in Beijing, China, with an aim to advance our understanding of social meaning in a language and a society where the topic is understudied. In this thesis, I examine the use of Beijing Mandarin among Beijingborn university students in Beijing in relation to social factors including gender, social class, career plan, and future aspiration. Language variation in this context can further our understanding of Chinese culture in a newlyreformed society while exploring important constructs such as gender and aspiration in China, in part by establishing the social meaning of the local vernacular and its role in identity construction among speakers. The study presents data from both sociolinguistic interviews, conducted with 21 Beijingers who have di erent class backgrounds, career plans, and future aspiration, and self-recordings, from a subset of 10 Beijingers in conversation with their family and/or friends. I focus on three thus far under-examined linguistic variables { neutral tone, classi er omission, and intensi er te { while incorporating an additional variable { erhua (word- nal rhotacisation) in the discussion of stylistic variation in Beijing Mandarin. The results rst provide an overview of language variation in Beijing Mandarin, as shown in the use of di erent features and their linguistic and social constraints. We observe familiar patterns often found in sociolinguistic literature for some social factors (e.g. gender), while more complex interactions exist for others (e.g. aspiration and career path). The ndings suggest that Beijing Mandarin conveys localness and masculinity which is expected for a vernacular variety. Finer distinctions in the social meanings of these variables are found in sub-groups of Beijingers with di erent gender, future career path and/or aspiration. Moreover, speakers are seen to utilise these variables and their meanings in the construction of personae.

Using the combined approach of Variationist Sociolinguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, this thesis undertakes the classification and analysis of certain prepositions in spoken Quebec French. The study examines 21 interviews that make up part of the Corpus de français parlé au Québec (CFPQ). The aim of this thesis is to examine the use of the variables expressing the concept of ‘possession’, and those equivalent to English before/in front of and after/behind. These three variables are represented as (POSS), (ANTE) and (POST). An initial quantification of the variants is carried out, which establishes the contexts of production, and helps determine the areas of linguistic analysis to be explored. For the (POSS) variable, the data is examined in terms of linguistic factors such as the reference of the possessor, the avoidance of hiatus, and inalienable/alienable possession. Interpersonal variation is also considered, including age and gender in addition to level of education. From the Cognitive Linguistic perspective, we investigate ‘reference point theory’ and how it can shed light on the alternation between the variants. The (ANTE) and (POST) variables are studied in terms of the type of reference (i.e. locative or temporal), the locating noun category, and the age, sex, and level of education of the speakers. The Cognitive Linguistic theory of ‘subjectification’ is also considered for these two variables. For the (POSS) variable, the reference of the possessor and the level of education are seen to be important factors for the use of possessive à. In addition, the ‘reference point theory’ contributes to our understanding of the use of this variant. With the (ANTE) and (POST) variables certain variants are seen to be employed both with and without an overt complement. The variant devant is predominantly found in contexts involving narrative discourse, and the variants en avant and en avant de are preferred for locative reference. Once again, the Cognitive Sociolinguistic approach highlights the possibility that the difference in variant choice is linked to the speakers’ cognitive construal of the situation.

The word zenzen is an adverb that is used frequently in daily conversational Japanese. From the Meiji period (1868-1912) until the early Showa period (1924-1989) the word was used together with both affirmative and negative words to form expressions. In the early Showa period the grammatical rules in education changed so that the only acceptable use was together with a negative word. From the 1990’s onward, the use together with an affirmative word has made a comeback especially among younger Japanese people. However even though the usage together with an affirmative word has made a comeback and was considered normal once in history, in today’s society it is still considered as slang and thus not recommended usage in formal situations. Foreign language learners however, tend not to learn a language only by textbooks but also by imitating the language of native Japanese speakers and Japanese popular culture. This may lead to a confusion regarding what words are acceptable to use in conversations. Therefore in this study, an online survey that examines the usage and attitudes regarding the word zenzen aimed at Japanese language learners at Swedish universities was conducted. The results of the survey showed that although a majority of the learners showed a good understanding of the usage, more than half of the learners displayed a feeling of confusion regarding the usage of the word. The gender comparison regarding the usage showed no major differences. Having lived in Japan, having Japanese friends whom you speak Japanese with regularly and length of Japanese study was associated with an increased understanding of the usage. Regular consumption of Japanese popular culture, however, was not associated with an increased understanding of the usage. A literature analysis was also conducted to examine the attitudes regarding the usage of zenzen in a variety of books with topics including business language and books aimed at Japanese language teachers. The results showed that zenzen used together with a negative word was considered as the norm while zenzen used together with an affirmative word was not recommended to be used in formal situations. When recommending proper usage of the word zenzen together with an affirmative word to foreign learners of Japanese, hijou-ni and totemo was seen as better alternatives to zenzen in a formal situation.

This dissertation is an investigation of the use, change, and status of the distinctive local dialect in rural Valdres, Norway. The Norwegian sociolinguistic situation has long been recognized as complicated by a protracted history of language planning and standardization, in which two competing written norms of Norwegian, called Bokmål and Nynorsk, are symbolically and ideologically associated with urban and rural identities, respectively. In addition, while Norwegians can choose from two written norms, no recognized standard exists for spoken Norwegian, and citizens are officially encouraged to use their native, local dialects. The present study approaches this situation through a case study of language use in Valdres today.In the summer of 2005, the distinctive dialect of the rural Valdres valley was voted "Norway's most popular dialect" on one of the country's most listened-to national radio programs, an event that both reflects and has contributed to a recent revaluation of the local dialect. Yet the results of previous dialectological research in Valdres have clearly pointed to long-term convergence toward what locals call "city language" -- the speech of nearby urban Oslo. While evidence of this decades-long trend is not contradicted by the findings of this dissertation research, the present study suggests that there may be more than one direction of dialect change in Valdres today. Despite ongoing changes in dialect morpho-lexis and phonology in the direction of urban regional speech, there is also a large number of relatively resistant dialect features in contemporary Valdresmål, and, even more importantly, evidence of a re-expansion of the dialect among younger speakers, which appears to align with forms found in written Nynorsk, the alternative "rural" norm. The simultaneous sociolinguistic trends of dialect convergence, non-convergence, and divergence in the contemporary Valdres dialect vis-a-vis urban regional norms thus provide an interesting and complicated case of language variation and change.This dissertation combines methods from linguistic and cultural anthropology, ethnographic sociolinguistics, and acoustic phonetics to provide an illuminating analysis of the local relationships between standard and non-standard varieties, between written and spoken forms, and between contemporary language use and historically-rooted language ideologies.

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À is the prototypical preposition used before city names in French, yet there are reports that, since the mid-20th century, sur also appears in this context in vernacular varieties of European French. To date, research on the choice between à and sur has focused on semantic and pragmatic differences between the two, and has relied on made-up examples, small participant usage surveys, or empirical datasets that were not systematically analyzed. Moreover, the influence of social factors has received only scant attention. This thesis addresses these shortcomings by providing a quantitative, variationist and longitudinal account of à/sur alternations. It asks the following question: Which factors (linguistic and social) can account for prepositional variation before city names in Hexagonal French? The data was drawn from two publicly available corpora of spoken Hexagonal French, representing three locales: the Parisian city-centre, a group of suburban cities surrounding Paris, and the midsize provincial city of Orléans. The speakers (N = 151) were born between 1878 and 1994, providing a mixture of real- and apparent-time perspectives on variation. Following variationist methods, the analysis considers all contexts where à/sur variation is possible (N = 2542) and seeks to elucidate the variable grammar. Results indicate important differences between the three areas under study, both in terms of social patterns and in terms of linguistic constraints. In Paris, the use of sur is restricted to a few speakers and a few linguistic contexts, and is overall very infrequent. In the suburbs and Orléans, sur is more widely attested across speakers and contexts, but it remains a minority variant which seems to be on the decline, especially in the suburbs. Further, in Orléans, the variable grammar is less linguistically constrained, suggesting a trajectory of geographic diffusion. Overall, the quantitative findings support some of the semantic and pragmatic hypotheses proposed in earlier work while shedding light on how geographic, social and linguistic factors combine to explain a phenomenon of variation that has never been studied using variationist methods before. / Graduate / 2022-07-19

abstract: Spanish is a pluricentric language spoken within the linguistic continuum with high variation. The understanding of the attitudes towards such variation with regard to its geography (diatopic variation) is key to capacitate its students and speakers as a foreign language to successfully communicate in changing and emerging transnational contexts. The research of linguistic attitudes is a topic that has traditionally been approached in Western contexts, with scholars requiring alternative research environments to provide a richer picture of this construct. China, given its steady growth in the number of Spanish as a foreign language students and its current role in the global, transnational arena, becomes a research environment where the study of linguistic attitudes gain even more relevance. Based on this reality, this study seeks to unveil the attitudes towards diatopic variation and towards the five most widely spoken diatopic varieties of Spanish (i.e., Mexico, Argentina, the United States, Spain, and Colombia) in Chinese students of initial level (n = 95) and their professors (n = 16). In doing so, this study collected data through (1) empirically validated questionnaires on attitudes towards diatopic variation, (2) perceptual dialectology tasks and (3) interviews. The main findings of this research showed the presence of positive attitudes towards diatopic variation by students and teachers. Such attitudes can be explained in light of their previous sociolinguistic knowledge and their previous experience as learners of a second pluricentric language. Regarding the attitudes toward the most spoken varieties, this study showed that the variety associated with Spain was the best known by the observed students and teachers, and received the categorization of prestige variety by students. Teachers did not show affective or status assessments toward any of the diatopic varieties. Further analysis of these results, based on ethnolinguistic vitality , and the levels of familiarity of students/teachers with each variety, suggests that teaching expansive proposals from initial levels can provide a more inclusive view of the diatopic variation of the Spanish language in class. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2019

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The main aim of this study was to assess the degree of similarity or variation between the two cross-border standardised varieties of the Sena language spoken in Malawi and Mozambique. The study sets out to test the hypothesis that the two varieties are similar enough to be standardised into one common standard Sena. A contrastive analysis was done on the translated Biblical texts of Jonah and Matthew in both varieties on the grammatical, orthographical and lexical level. The findings show that on a grammatical and lexical level there is minimal variation, but on an orthographical level there is a 20% variation partly due to different orthographic conventions used by the translators. These findings suggest that in the light of the current trend of regionalisation, standardisation is desirable and could be achieved by a cross-border language commission. / Linguistics / M.A.