Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Quote of the Day: What Does This Mean?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119072256.ch24
Sociolinguistic theory provides a dynamic view in which change is apprehended in progress, so that leaders and laggards can be identified and both the course of its diffusion and its rate can be delineated. The philosopher William James distinguished concepts, the idealization of reality, from percepts, the apprehension of reality. In order to demonstrate how the analysis of variable linguistic data proceeds and what its correlations with independent variables reveal, the chapter discusses a well-studied variable of English often symbolized (CC) but sometimes called (more descriptively) final stop deletion or morpheme-final consonant cluster simplification. The core social attributes affecting language use are social class, social networks, sex and gender, ethnicity, and age. Sociolinguistics is the science of parole or ergon or performance. Like grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence is neither taught nor consciously learned. It is simply acquired by virtue of human nature, and deeply embedded in it.
The fruits of wondering what my student meant when referring to social-linguistic theory.
I’d prefer we don’t blame this on William James. I like James. He makes sense.
Published in Culture
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members.
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community
of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.
There are 65 comments.
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
Word salad.
The more scientific word for this is not BS, it’s gibberish.
I don’t know what the writer meant by “a dynamic view”, but I DO know exactly what “Sociolinguistic theory apprehends change in progress” means.
It means that sociolinguistic theory looks at progress, and see that change has occurred.
For example, if sociolinguistic theory were to look at a woman walking and she made progress of 10 meters, it would apprehend that a change in her position had occurred.
How much change? 10 meters?
As far as we know from this expert analysis, sociolinguistic theory could not give that level of detailed knowledge.
I will venture an evaluation of sociolinguistic theory, based just on the first sentence of the expert analysis.
It doesn’t provide any knowledge that I would pay money for.
But on the plus side, it’s got to be something that major universities can get a buttload of money for awarding a useless degree.
“Like grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence is neither taught nor consciously learned. It is simply acquired by virtue of human nature, and deeply embedded in it.”
Is this how hip-hop evolved? N-word, N-word, N-word, whore, whore, whore, blah, blah, blah.
Or maybe this is learned.
Or is this a treatise on original sin?
As my father said whenever he came across a foreign language station on the radio, “You do, and you’ll clean it up…”
People talking funny can make others talk funny. I think there’s a grant in this if we can defend the Blank Slate for another year.
It reads like something plagiarized from Noam Chomsky.
An “ergon” is a unit of work, or perhaps loosely just “work.” By “parole” he probably means the freedom to keep moving.
If he’d said “a science” then it’d be ok, he’d have meant that s13s is a work in progress. (Well, he could have meant that, and I can be generous.) But no, I’m pretty sure he said it’s the science of how things evolve and emerge.
Arrogance. I’ll quit here.
A wannabe art critic.
I wonder if it only means something in context. I wonder if they’re saying it’s the science of how students perform or improve in the study of linguistics.
I think it means when you’re making sense, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.
What happened to the simple premise, or premises? Then a conclusion. Trying to define the terms in this word-wall would take an entire semester. Those thumping sounds you’re hearing is the heads of students hitting their desks as they try to find a blissful state of unconsciousness.
I think this means how languages can be seen changing over time by those competent enough to see the changes, while those who are using it are unaware of the changes. How many people use “gender” today though unconscious of the change from “sex”.
Or else it’s just BS and I’m projecting my own quasi-ambivalent juxtapositions inwardly upon it.
Sociolinguistics? Give me the parameters for a language that is not inherently social. This is a nonsense term.
Plus, it adds to the word count of the text book the author is undoubtedly writing.
Well, it might be. But it might be like “neurolinguistics” which is a rather obscure biological view of language and the programming of thoughts and reactions. It sounds like sociolinguistics is an off shoot of that, but I haven’t looked it up.
It’s really not gibberish. It’s the five sentences I have parsed above, written in Academicese rather than in English.
I’m not saying it’s a good bit of writing, just that it does carry a coherent message when translated. I deleted the business about William James as it de-focuses both the original summary and my translation.
So poorly written, but not gibberish and even comprehensible to people with the right vocabulary?
Ok. Likely enough.
What precisely “idealization” and “final stop deletion” mean are lost on me. Most of the other vocab I think I can work out.
Please note that Saint Augustine responded to my first version, which I edited for clarity even as he was typing. What a pity that J. K. Chambers did not do the same.
Final stop deletion could refer to deleting a final glottal stop, or perhaps more likely something akin to final consonant deletion.
Still lost.
A glottal stop is like the H in Hombre, or more like the apostrophe in Oh, no you di’int. The final consonant deletion is the droppin’ the G in dropping.
If that’s what the original sentence means, it’s just a guess.
Pussome respek on my name!
Yes, final consonant.
Back in the day Wisconsin had a real problem with final stop deletion. With all the huntin’ and fishin’ going on the politicians became alarmed at the prospect of a society that had completely forgotten the seventh letter. By special act of the legislature they ordered an emergency deployment of “G”s, to be worn on every ball cap, t-shirt, jacket, and jersey in the state.
That’s progress.
Well, it was gibberish, @doctorrobert until you translated it. Thanks for that, I guess. So if I go for my PhD in grievance studies, can you reverse translate all my papers to make them more gibberishy?
Maybe, if the “context” is the whole structure of critical theory or something equally broad and house-of-cardish. Your definition is probably close, but I don’t know how William James and (cc) are related.
public static void main(String[] okThen) {
System.out.println(“You may be right. I’m still thinking about it.”);
}
That one isn’t inherently, but it should be in addition.
English is defective. For one thing, it’s ambiguous. Your language is not ambiguous.
For another, it allows nonsense statements. Your language doesn’t.
For another, it allows contradictory statements. Your language doesn’t.
For another, it allows for references to undeclared and undefined classes and variables. Your language doesn’t.
For another, it does not allow extensions or concurrent work from different authors to be reliably linked into a single piece. Your language does.
I have long felt very strongly that all philosophy, including all science, including economic science, and all applied philosophy (political and social debates) should be written in some good programming framework, and tested for a clean compile and execution before publishing.
I think I see where you’re going. I think what we really want is for all debates and discussions to use words and concepts that comport well with set theory. I define “rational” as being “treatable by set theory.” Does that agree with your notion?
For those who don’t do reason well, which is most of you, set theory is the basis of mathematics. Set theory is the responsible working out of the idea that “things have identity.”