Linguists know that language dialects can be territorial and social. And today the topic of our article is precisely the second category. But first, briefly touch on the concept of territorial dialect. What it is?
What is a territorial dialect
This linguistic education is a reflection of linguistic options and discrepancies of past periods - from the primitive communal system and the era of feudalism to the present day. Also, local dialects can be the result of the movement of peoples and groups in different territories and countries.
One or another territorial dialect can become the basis of a language common to the whole nation. An example is the Moscow dialect - the basis of the modern literary language in our country.
As the name implies, the emergence of a local (territorial) dialect speaks of the separation of language in a geographical sense (as opposed to social). But this language variety also applies to social categories, since it has a strictly defined circle of people in the local dialect. As a rule, we are talking about the older generation of rural residents. Linguists emphasize that any territorial dialect can be considered social to some extent.
The main properties of the territorial dialect
Each of these performs a certain social function, limiting the circle of its carriers to age and to some extent sexual characteristics. Most often, the local dialect is used by elderly residents of villages. The scope of its use is limited to the range of domestic and family situations.
As a result of the merger and interaction of different dialects, half-dialects are formed. A peculiar speech is leveled out under the influence of the educational system and enriched with elements of the literary language.
Speaking of the Russian national language, several groups of territorial dialects can be distinguished. There are three of them: North Russian, Central Russian and South Russian. Each group has a characteristic number of features inherent in vocabulary, grammar and phonetics.
Which ones?
Examples of dialects of each of the three mentioned groups are familiar not only to linguists. So, representatives of one of the northern Russian dialects (living in the Vologda, Novgorod, Arkhangelsk regions) often "wrap", "clatter", "pull together" some vowels in personal forms of verbs and do not distinguish certain forms of cases.
Representatives of the South Russian dialects living in the Tambov, Oryol, Voronezh regions often "yak", pronounce the sound "u" in a special way, use soft "t" in verb forms. Central Russian dialects became the basis of the modern literary language in our country. That is why the features inherent in them ("hiccups", etc.) are not perceived by us as outsiders.
In addition, each of them has certain lexical features. Today, there is a steady destruction of local dialects under the influence of literary forms of the language.
Let's talk about social dialects
But back to the topic of our article. Today we would like to briefly touch upon the concept of a social dialect (or sociolect). This term refers to the totality of certain linguistic features that are inherent in a particular social group. This group can be class, professional, age, etc. Each of the social dialects is limited by the framework of a specific subsystem of its national language.
In practice, few people think about this, but in everyday life we are constantly confronted with various manifestations of the linguistic subculture. As an example, it is worth mentioning the features inherent in the modern school language, thieves' argo and jargon (professional slang) of computer scientists.
About the features of the concept
The term "social dialects" itself appeared due to its convenience as a concept denoting various language formations having the main attribute uniting them among themselves - they all serve to satisfy the communicative needs of socially limited human groups.
None of the sociolects is a holistic communicative system. It is only about the features of speech, manifested in the form of phrases, single words and syntactic constructions. That is, about the so-called slang vocabulary. That vocabulary and grammatical basis on which any sociolect is based practically has no differences from the generally accepted in this national language.
They bow and conjugate, combine into sentences, etc. slang words and all kinds of specific notations according to general models and rules of the language. With the exception of specific vocabulary, even in professional social dialects, mainly general language constructions are used.
Terms of sociolects
To distinguish between social dialects among themselves, use a number of terms. Which exactly?
Argo, according to the interpretation of well-known dictionaries (for example, Rosenthal) is classified as the language of individual social groups, created artificially and aimed at linguistic isolation. Sometimes argo is used as a "secret" language. Its main characteristic is the presence of words incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
Jargon is a coarser, with a "derogatory" shade variety of argo. Slang vocabulary is most often characteristic of a marginal environment.
Slang (a very common term these days) is a set of words and expressions that is used by representatives of specific professions or social strata.
A group using one or another language education can be isolated both professionally and socially from other society. An example of a specific professional language education is computer slang or jargon, variations of social specific subcodes are student slang or thieves' Russian jargon.
Sometimes a group of speakers of a social dialect can be isolated both socially and professionally. Then the speech of its representatives combines the properties of different types of jargon. An example is the communication of soldiers in their own “language” (military affairs are an independent profession, its representatives live a separate, quite socially isolated life from the whole society).
What is vernacular?
Colloquially called a separate subsystem of the national Russian language, which does not have a clear fixation for some territory. This is a kind of language spoken by a poorly educated urban population (those who are not accessible to its literary norms). Colloquialism was formed as a result of mixing different dialects in the conditions of the city, where there was a constant influx of villagers.
What is the difference between vernacular and territorial dialects? The main feature is that colloquialism is not characterized by localization within specific geographical frames. This distinguishes it from any of the territorial dialects. At the same time, vernacular can not be called a part of the literary language, even such a variety as colloquial speech, in connection with its inherent properties of anormativeness, non-codification and the mixed nature of the language used.
Where can I eavesdrop
The vernacular received its implementation exclusively in oral form. At the same time, it can be reflected in certain samples of fiction and in private correspondence of persons who are its carriers. The places where vernacular is most often practiced are the family circle (communication between relatives), gatherings in city courtyards, contacts in courts (witnesses often speak vernacular), and also in doctor's offices (when patients share complaints). There is colloquy in a fairly narrow sphere, limited by communicative situations of a family and domestic nature.
Linguists-researchers distinguish in modern vernacular two separate layers of different temporal properties - a combination of traditional old means with a pronounced dialect origin and a layer of relatively new language forms that "flowed" into this type of dialect mainly from some kind of social jargon. Thus, we can arbitrarily talk about the first and second types of vernacular.
What kind of species are these?
The first type is usually characteristic of elderly citizens with a very low cultural and educational level. The carriers of the second are representatives of the young and middle generations, who are also insufficiently educated and do not have a high cultural level. Here we can talk about age (as well as sexual) differentiation of carriers of each of these two types. The first of them is characterized by a predominance of older women, and the second by younger men.
As for the linguistic relationship, then both of these types simply differ from each other in a number of features - from phonetic to syntactic.
A large number of linguistic elements, previously related to socially or vocationally limited use of words, are now borrowed from the literary language. This is precisely due to the second variety of vernacular. Many examples of jargon expressions today are considered quite literary and can be found not only in the works of individual authors, but also in the media.
Dialect Examples
In the course there are completely stable phraseological units and types of personal treatment (examples - “such as”, “I, in short”, “sits like this”, etc.) One of the characteristic features is the use of terms of relationship or social roles as references - “dad”, “friend”, “man”, “boss”, “mother”, “master”, “commander”, etc.
Both varieties of vernacular are used to transmit messages in those communicative areas that are narrowly domestic in nature. Most often they are realized in the speech acts of the indictment, reproach, etc. character. We are talking about quarrels, quarrels, abuse of the elders in relation to the younger, etc. But even with other types of communication, the speakers of this social dialect use precisely the vernacular variety of the Russian language due to the inability to switch to higher forms of communication.
Universal slang
Mention should also be made of the concept of koyne, characteristic of megacities. Modern sociolinguistics considers under this term an interdialect that acts as a means of everyday communication for people who use a variety of social or regional variants of their native language. This linguistic form arose in the conditions of life of a big city with the mixing of a huge mass of people who have completely different speech skills. For intergroup communication in such conditions, it took the development of a universal means of communication, understandable to everyone.
Summing up the brief results, we can conclude that the national language in our country in practical terms is realized in the form of a large number of very different subsystems - social dialects of the Russian language, designed to serve the whole variety of spheres of social activity and the needs of specific groups. As a universal subsystem of the national language, linguists recognize the modern literary Russian language, functioning in the field of education and the media. Its objectives are the consolidation of all existing social groups and the preservation of the identity of the linguistic community due to the presence of the main core - the linguistic norm, the social and cultural role of which is difficult to overestimate.