Lipspeaking - a sociolinguistic approach
by Roz Chalmers

Before you can even begin to consider whether it is appropriate for a lipspeaker to modify language, you may want to think about your own use of language. How aware are you of your own vocabulary? How aware are you of the different ways in which we speak? Do you know some of the factors that will vary the way we use language?

I'd like you to consider four basic ways that affect the way we speak. They are:

• Place of birth
• Socio economic background
• Gender
• Age

The first is the most obvious. You can often make a good guess about a person's place of birth by their accent. We should be clear about the difference between accent and dialect before we move on. Accent is the way you pronounce the words, but dialect means using a different vocabulary. To illustrate this you might like to try thinking about the name you used for the shoes you wore at school when you were playing gym. Ask people who you know come from a different area what they call them. You may find quite a lot of variation.

When I have been giving this talk, I have asked people to describe my accent, and they can usually place me to the South of England, sometimes to London. Some have said I speak "Queen's English" (usually in a rather derogatory way!). I would like to distinguish between Queen's English – what is now called Received Pronunciation (RP), - and Standard English. A lot of people think you can only speak Standard English in an RP accent. Not so. It is possible to speak Standard – i.e. grammatically acceptable - English in accents as varied as French, Hindi, Japanese or Welsh.

The use of Received Pronunciation has often been thought to be a barometer of our second category – Socio-economic background. George Bernard Shaw said that the moment an Englishman opens his mouth and speaks, another Englishman despises him. This is still the case, as letters pages throughout the newspapers deplore the use of the glottal as in wa'er instead of water, and the rise of Estuary English. Dropping the "H" in front of words or the "G" at the end of them is thought of as an indication of lack of education. Interestingly enough, earlier this century this was the other way about. The nobility talked of their "'ouses" where they went "shootin'" and "fishin'". In America this is still the case, particularly in New England where you flavour your stew with "'erbs"

In certain areas of the world, such as Java, people signal their social background in very complicated ways. There are six different forms of the language, and you must be careful to use the correct choice of vocabulary, the correct pronunciation and the correct grammar each time you speak to someone. Not to do so puts you at risk of social ostracism.

In the 1930's Nancy Mitford described a range of words that were upper class ("U") or lower class ("non U"). She meant it ironically, but some of us still worry about whether to say "toilet" or "lavatory"!

The pronunciation of a word or the choice of vocabulary may change, but the prestige of both is always determined by how the most prestigious social group uses them.

The third influence on the way we speak is our gender. Women and men do not speak the same way as each other in any community. As an extreme example, Women in some Amazonian cultures are not allowed to set up home with someone from the same tribe. They must choose someone from a neighbouring tribe, all of whom will speak a different language. Men and women in this area speak totally different languages. Native American men are considered bisexual if they use the wrong form of vocabulary.

Even in this country there are differences. Women tend to use more standard speech patterns than men. There are theories why this may be the case. Women are sometimes seen as the guardians of society's values – it has been their responsibilty to pass these values on to the next generation. Also, standard speech has higher status in society. Could it be that women are trying to claim that higher status for themselves?

Male speech is still seen as the cultural norm, and most studies that have been made focus on women's speech as a deviant form of malespeak. Several features of women's language have been identified in these studies, such as their use of "tag questions" like "is'nt he" or "doesn't it" at the end of a sentence. Superpolite forms such as "Excuse me, I wonder if you could possibly –" or "I'm terribly sorry to disturb you –" are identified as features of women's language. When was the last time you heard a man say them? Listen, the next time you are in mixed company and try to keep a mental count.

The last area to look at is that of age. This can have a particular resonance when talking to people with acquired hearing loss. People who do not have access to language with the same ease as a hearing person are often concerned that their vocabulary will ossify at the time they lost their hearing. New words come into the language, and new ways of expressing oneself emerge. It is said that every generation finds a new word for "good" and "bad". My teenage children currently use "brill" and "pants" – neither of which would sound very good coming from me. Ask elderly friends what they would use, and what they used in their teenage years. Nothing dates a person as quickly as the language they use.

Allied to that is the way we use language when speaking to people of different ages. Contrast the way you would tell the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to a contemporary and to a five year old child. Quite apart from the simplification in the language, you can make so many assumptions about your contemporary's understanding of the world, and the information they bring to the discourse. These are called "member's resources" and they allow you to make leaps of understanding a younger, less experienced mind could not.

We must be careful as we explore the concept of language modification that we do not make such assumptions about our clients' access to the idioms and the literature that has fed into the language. Equally, we must be sure not to infantalise our language, assuming it is beyond a person's comprehension.