Language and Society
10/13/13
MIDTERM EXAM

The difference between language and dialect is that a language is more vast than a dialect. That is because dialects come from a language , like a division of a language. People speak more of a language than dialect because most dialects are sectional, so most of the population will speak a language. Languages are in a right or correct form , you would most likely see them on documents than dialects which are mostly spoken because they are seen as lesser than a language.
Linguists say that the contrast between dialect and a language is categorized by it government., influence , and place on earth. An example is , 'Portuguese and
Spanish. However, for political reasons, they are seen as two different languages.
Chinese is pointed out to as one language with many different dialects when in reality there are 'dialects' of Chinese that are as different from the other as
English and Spanish . For political rationality it is referred to as one language to make the country seem as one.
Watch here now stand still
You no pay me light bill
If you test the ragamuffin

Girl gwan get kill
Girl keep 'way
Cause you ah crebbie crebbie
And the lyrics whey me talk, or if ah Dee-Jay
Girl come out
Because you nah shack out
Now when yuh hear the ragamuffin
You haffi jump and shout
Nah touch me gate
You nah pay my water rate
Because great is great, Great can't under rate
The verse above is from the song “Murder she wrote” by Chaka Demus. In this verse he is saying that he does not need help from any girl , he can pay his own bills and that she is useless to him. He wouldn't even care if she was killed. He only speaks when he is producing music, and if its not about music its about other important personal situations. Chaka wants all the girls to come out from where ever they are and have fun/ dance with him. He calls for the girls to come jump and shout. Again , he talks about the useless girl and wants her to stay away from him because she cant do anything for him. He refers to himself as great and he will never be under looked.

Based on that transcription , I feel that Jamaican patois is a dialect of English because it is not spoken much around the world , mostly only in that area of
Jamaica. I feel like I can understand what they are saying because I am from
Caribbean background myself and I can infer what they say by the recognition of some of the english language I hear in it. To me, it is a big difference because I know I wouldn't be able to understand Haitian Patois (creole) because it is mostly broken French , and I don't know any French at all , so it would be impossible. That would be a separate language to me, but a dialect to people who knows some
French background.
William Labov did a case study on Martha’s Vineyard. It is a tourist island and more then 50% of its homes are occupied by the season. It is more crowded during the summer than the winter. he tried to find the discrepancies of dialect between the Vineyard and the regular speech of the rest of the state. He interviewed a lot of people and had an investigation to the diphthongs he wanted to review. He found that people over 25 and younger than 55 were using the diphthongs more centrally than the others, and that the people living in the upper part of the island focused on using diphthongs more than people who were living in the southern part of the island. Using the diphthongs showed the islanders attitude toward where they lived. The people who didn't like the Vineyard