Falling asleep straight after sex proves you are in love

If your blood boils as your other half passes out immediately following sex, calm down - it's because they love you. Nodding off is a sign of affection, not indifference, say psychologists. Contrary to popular belief, it is not always the man who dozes off first in a heterosexual relationship. And women are more likely to go to sleep first if there has been no sex.
"The more one's partner was likely to fall asleep after sex, the stronger the desire for bonding," said study leader Daniel Kruger of the University of Michigan.
"Perhaps men stay awake longer as an artefact of mate guarding - making sure the woman doesn't leave them for another partner," said co-author Susan Hughes of Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania. "Men may also stay awake longer in an attempt to entice their partner into having sex. Reproductive strategies don't end with intercourse; they may influence specific behaviours directly following sex. Falling asleep before one's partner may be a non-conscious way to foreclose on any commitment conversation after sex," she said.

How to Get Back Together After a Divorce

Getting back together after a divorce is the cherished goal of numerous couples, but few really know how to go about it. It's natural that as time goes by, you'll reflect on the reasons that led to your divorce, and realize just how trivial and insignificant they really were. What's more, it's only after divorce that most couples discover the true value of their ex-spouses; perhaps you will too. This is one big reason that will compel you to think and act more rationally, rather than emotionally, to make things work the second time around.

Instructions

1. • 1
     Rediscover love. If true love was what got you and your ex-spouse together in the first place, true love is what can and will also rekindle your relationship and put it back on track. If you talk to your ex, let him know that you still truly care. Express you true inner feelings in an honest manner, and mean every word you say.

     Don't ask or expect your ex to reciprocate. With all the hurt and misgivings that follow divorce, now may not be the right time for her to do so.
   • 2
     Admit your shortcomings. An admission of your faults, along with a sincere apology, can go a long way toward rebuilding your broken relationship. As a result, this could also evoke feelings of guilt in your ex and compel him to do some soul-searching ... and perhaps reciprocate with an apology, too.
   • 3
     Address old problems. If certain problems are what led to your divorce, discuss them with your ex-spouse in a candid and honest manner. However, it's important to come up with practical solutions before you decide to move back in together. Once both of you find some common ground, you will have made a good start.
   • 4
     Move slowly and surely. If Rome wasn't built in a day, neither are relationships, especially a broken relationship like yours. Expect that everything won't fall into place the moment you and your ex decide to get together. A step-by-step approach to re-establishing the love and trust that both of you once shared will be far more effective than acting in haste.
   • 5
     Try becoming "friends" again. After all, friendship is what took you from" I like you" ... to "I love you." Perhaps a date with your ex-spouse would be a great way to re-start a friendship, and you can see how things develop from there. An informal date will also be a good opportunity to let your ex know, in no uncertain terms, that you'll always be there for her.
   • 6
     Forgive and forget. This may be the hardest part, for both you and your ex. However, if you can sincerely forgive and forget each other's past transgressions, and mutually pledge never to repeat them, the relationship will be positive, smoother and more meaningful when you finally decide to get back together.

Read more: How to Get Back Together After a Divorce | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_5073083_back-together-after-divorce.html#ixzz1kDc8PsSB

In what senses can we call EITHER Les Liaisons dangereuses OR Candide a masterpiece?

Candide by Voltaire is set in and around Europe and the Americas in the mid-18^th century. It   is a novel of satire, irony, sarcasm and hyperbole. Voltaire’s sentences are brief and sharp with a narrative that moves with lightning speed. His style in the novel though, does become tedious and burdensome at times. The novel Candide serves as a window to a past – Greco-Roman. This Greco-Roman period has given us so many great works that have survived the test of time. For instance we have all around the world, sculptures depicting human form such as the Roman disc thrower or the powerful winged goddesses like Nike of Samothrace which we consider as Masterpieces. These are vivid examples of the importance of beauty, strength, movement and athletic ability played by classical times. It is not always necessary to know who the masters were as their mastery communicates universal values that have not faded with passage of time. But a question springs to mind; is all that we encounter and that stays with us for the rest of our lives, Masterpieces?    

Aptly put, a Masterpiece is the work of an artist who has been absorbed by the spirit of his/her times and can transform a personal experience into a universal one. However, it is often easy to forget the artists and most likely to direct our attention to their works. A particular work can get us transposed although we wonder how, about its execution in the aftermath. A Masterpiece is an art sometimes deeply brought into creation, that our consciousness is actually expanded. However, there are some differentiating criteria on the exact elements involved in selecting a Masterpiece. Most Masterpieces would share lots of common criteria like evoking feelings whether it is curiosity, disgust or awe. There is also style, the technique, harmony and a degree of balance imbued. It is also helpful when perspective and form are discussed but still, this would not fully describe that elusive element essential to any moving work. So do these factors then solely determine what is and what is not a Masterpiece?

Not limited obviously, to these aforementioned. So to fully appreciate Voltaires Candide, I must not delve into the storyline casually in order to catch a few bright ideas that will last forever, or rapidly try to make an outline of Voltaire’s magnificent thoughts. I will instead slowly; and sensing the multiple aspects of what he discusses, grasping as I go along, his thoughts in its rich and often complex continuity, appreciating the vivid, forceful manner in which despite the tides of the era, he managed to drive through perfectly his satire on the Enlightenment. He uses most of the seven most important factors like universal appeal, history, rarity, skill or quality of the protagonist, age, subject matter and lastly, the time and effort Voltaire put into Candide has to be commended. These factors when combined in various degrees of importance can indicate how a work of art becomes quantified. Eventually it is common to think historians, critics, dealers and collectors are mostly responsible in deciding what a Masterpiece is.

After Candide’s secretive publication, it became widely banned because it mostly contained a veil of naïveté with an undertone of religious blasphemy, political sedition and intellectual hostility. It also parodies many adventures and romance clichés; the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact. Voltaire succeeds in inviting the reader to commune with his unique sensibility and take on death, sex, travel, friendship, but above all, Candide is a confirmation of the belief that the best place to learn the lessons of life is in the everyday as in the Leibnitzan mantra of Pangloss; “Tous est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes”. Finally, Candide is a conspicuous assault on Leibnitz and his theory of optimism. The conclusion of the novella, in which Candide finally dismisses his tutor’s optimism, leaves unresolved what philosophy the protagonist is to accept in its stead. This element of the novel has been written about voluminously, perhaps above all others. It concludes enigmatically and the analysis is contentious.  

The fact that Candide was published simultaneously in five different countries deliberately to overwhelm censors in 1759, has led some to describe this “subversive tale” a Masterpiece. It is not only for the fact of its simultaneous publication that one would say makes this novel a Masterpiece but the fact that this has continuously been interpreted in different languages and adapted into other forms of art. Candide a Masterpiece just like Les Liaisons Dangereuses has various styles and conventions which as aforementioned, has been very effective even with passage of time and the change in language. Voltaire just like Laclos used different literary techniques such as sarcasm, paradox and even imagery to assist in conveying the mockery of philosophical optimism. In Candide, an old Turk instructs Candide in the futility of needless philosophising by saying that “. . . le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux: l’énnui, le bésoin et le vice.” In these, the character chosen by the author comes across as a reasonable person thereby not only making the author’s point of view, but making it stick. 

Many chapters in Candide, end with some sort of lead-in to the next chapter, giving it a certain feel similar to today’s television serials. Voltaire used this method in an exaggerated manner to effectively capture and keep the readers’ attention and make them want to read on to find out what happens. This gets in with the effort, energy and quality of the author to keep within the remits of the subject matter which should have a universal appeal. Voltaire’s stories were written in such a way that the main character and usually one or more companions would set out on a journey in life loaded with adventure. In Candide, Candide’s outlook of life’s journey is challenged; he is forced to become less optimistic about this world being the best of all possible worlds – “O Pangloss! S’écria Candide, Tu n’avais pas deviné cette abomination: c’en est fait, il faudra qu’a la fin je renounce a ton optimisme.” This renunciation of optimism is still prevalent today. Hence Voltaire’s style during the Enlightenment period just like writers before him has helped to effectively communicate a point to the modern-day reader. Times may have changed and the issues different but Candide still appeals like it did back in the 18^th century.

This therefore leads me into the realms of qualifying Candide a Masterpiece, as a rarity. Voltaire’s technique in Candide of taking actual people and events like the 1755 Lisbon earthquake or the Seven Years’ War, and weaving them into his work of fiction, was a mockery of his political and literary adversaries. With this technique, Voltaire would speak against people and practices in a way that was less confrontational than public renunciations, as well as state his opinion in a form whereby contradiction is retarded. Amidst all the seriousness in the storyline, Voltaire’s periodic use of the comic style of exaggeration also makes Candide a rarity. Voltaire’s Candide vigorously propagates an ideal of progress to which people of all nations have remained responsive. Again and again, we see in Candide how Voltaire returns to his chosen themes on the establishment of religious tolerance, growth of material prosperity, and respect for the rights of man by the abolition of torture and useless punishments. By such means in most of his works, Candide retains a leadership in his Masterpieces.

In Candide, Voltaire’s tour de force goes beyond most other famous satires. He satirizes the problem of the existence of evil in the world that has bothered man every since man dared to speculate about the nature of things. It is a historical context of a life for what comes through very strongly, is an inspiring sense of remarkable independence of thought and enduring relevance. It is treated in the literature of the West at least as early as the bible, which attributes evil to man’s disobedient nature. God limited his own interference in the world when he created man “sufficient to stand though free to fall” according to St Augustine. The Book of Job in the Bible centres more specifically on the problem of suffering. Its answer is essentially no answer except God’s overwhelming demonstration of power, which humbles Job into acceptance. Candide is an exemplary field of dispute between two nearly matched powers – light and darkness with Candide caught in the middle. Thus Candide which is a parody of the Theodicean theory by Leibnitz, in which apparent evil is compensated by some greater good which may not be evident in the short term to the limited human being, can be considered without apprehension, to be a Masterpiece.

My cultural/linguistic autobiography

I was born and raised in Cameroon, which is often referred to, as “Africa in miniature” to a banker father and teacher mother. Both came from the same tribe but different ethnic origins, within the same linguistic region. Cameroon has two geo-political linguistic regions with a multitude of not less than 240 ethnic dialects/languages. I come from the English-speaking region of the country thereby making this my L1 (first language – mostly used). I grew up using English and Bakossi (dialect). Thinking back to my childhood, it is quite amazing I ever learned to communicate with normal people. The weirdest people in the world are so easy to talk to, but peers and friends are sometimes the most difficult to communicate with. This is the resulting build-up of my wide linguistic history with linguistics being a science of human communication; stereotypically, the study of the structure and variety of signals which carry complex grammatical and lexical information from one individual to another.

My exposure to languages thus started from birth although, it later became linguistically challenging growing up. My exposure to languages besides my parents began with our house helps and playmates. I also spent some years at university in the French-speaking region of Cameroon and after some self-assessment, learned far too much about my own speech and mannerisms. My collegiate English also became punctuated with some pidgin words I picked up from the playground. From our interactions, my English probably didn’t change theirs much but a lot of their words and style of speaking found their ways into my lexicon. I noticed strong differences in how my siblings and I spoke compared to our playmates/house helps. They would rarely use the first person narrative, while we did so far too much. We used a lot of questions as opposed to our mates who rarely asked questions. I suppose our inquisitive nature came from our differing raisings and linguistic background.

I do speak English, French, Pidgin and Italian fluently, but, English as previously mentioned, is my dominant language. My parents spoke to us in Bakossi and English predominantly. Being multilingual has always been an advantage. However, I grew up strongly with English because my father spoke a different variation of Bakossi to my mother’s which made English usage constant. It always struck me as a child when I was growing up that my mannerism, as in the way I spoke English, was different to most of my peers. It was common to ascribe levels of education and social class of a family, to the way individuals speak. This may have been or may not have been the case. As often construed, individuals with “non-academic English” accents are typically thought to be uneducated or from an underprivileged background because they speak a non-standard form of English diced with pidgin. My siblings are all college-educated but as is common, would sound out of place within our city, in the midst of most of our peers.

Growing up in Cameroon exposed me to many different cultures as well as languages thereby dispelling the worries of learning other languages beside English. I had to learn how to balance the languages around me and at the same time create my own identity. Balancing the languages was sometimes harder for me because I used English more often than French and Pidgin. Italian was picked up later in life, owing to time spent in Italy. I found it hard adjusting to my social environment and therefore became interested in looking through languages to see how people say things to each other. I am also deeply interested in communication, as commonly put, and I have the ability to convey emotions that don’t have a description. My background has prepared me to cope and has also provided me with fundamental values for the guidance of my behaviour. This leads me to discuss the strong emotional element, like the expression of my emotions in the different languages.

Bearing in mind that the purpose of language is to communicate and express ideas, I intend to use Susan Fussell’s definition as a guide in discussing the different linguistic and communicative competence which I have developed as a result of my encountered difficulties in communicating emotions. Communication of emotions in L2 and L3 languages does however become even harder and more complex than L1 as I struggle with communicative anxiety. “The interpersonal communication of emotional states is fundamental to both everyday and clinical interaction. One’s own and others’ affective experiences are frequent topics of everyday conversations, and how well these emotions are expressed and understood is important to interpersonal relationships and individual well-being” – (Fussell 2002). However, my emotional exchanges as a NNS (non-native speaker) has a more controlled processing which involves word searches, expressions, grammar rules, pragmatic rules including idioms and metaphors.

Over the past decades, linguists have made substantial progress in understanding how emotions are expressed through nonverbal mechanisms like facial expressions, gestures, postures and even tone of voice. However, these mechanisms in themselves are insufficient in expressing the full range of human emotional expressions. Reason being that these mechanisms just do not provide detailed information about a person’s emotional state although they can indicate what general class of emotions a person is feeling. For instance happiness; if I am laughing, others may assume that I am happy. The extent of laughter may infer the intensity of my happiness, but the loudness of the laughter does not provide any information about any particular experience of happiness. The intensity of the emotions from within and the communication of these emotions are inextricably linked within linguistics with one referring to other in most papers.

These nonverbal mechanisms thus can only provide the expression of external emotions. It is also a known fact that people will talk about emotions that occurred in the past mostly with friends and family. These experiences are always a major topic of discussion in therapeutic contexts. This is mostly how we as humans prefer to communicate about emotions and feelings which we are not experiencing at the time of the conversation. As can be seen from these synopses, I have tried to address a variety of issues I encountered with communicating my emotions via the verbal and nonverbal mechanisms. However, my contributions are not wholly based on an empirical analysis but most of the emotions expressed do touch on the impact and the interpretation of nonverbal signs. According to Fussell, an understanding of the ways verbal and nonverbal cues are integrated has become especially relevant today because new technology allows for communication through media.

However, expression of emotion in a second language is a paradigmatic issue. It is very important to think of the grammar of a second language and its mechanics as matters of convention or mutual agreement among the users of that language. Such an agreement is necessary for that language to work because to communicate with the simplest words, as an example, we will have to agree on their meaning. These conventions within the grammar of that language come partly from a need to be clear and accurate. And like other conventions, rules of grammar change continually. Learning grammar, then, is not just a matter of memorising puritan laws laid down by language teachers, but of attending to how that language is actually used in the society pertaining to how it works, how it affects others and why it works the way it works. Cross-culture research thus of any kind cannot afford to ignore the problems posed by semantic differences between languages.

Learning a foreign language, to me has been very critical because it has aided me to communicate within different communities with different cultures, and in different dialects. For instance when I emigrated from England to Italy, learning the local language became an important tool in my integration in the community. The ability to use Italian was very powerful as it enabled me to convey emotions, mitigated the distinction between what I already knew about the language and what I did not know. Although some of the locals could speak English, it was also pertinent that I learn their language as a demonstration of interest and a commitment to my new community. But I was confronted with another quagmire during my sojourn as learning and using Italian felt like who I was had been taken away. As earlier mentioned, every language has got its own grammar rules which need to be in convention with the culture as that defines that community.  

It is a known fact that language and identity are in tandem. Its most important tenet is that any speaker of that language needs to develop a relationship with at least that language for social and emotional development to occur normally. The ideology behind this is a systematic construct on particular ways of using that language and of its baggage invested in certain moral, religious and most importantly, socio-political values, which in turn gives rise to most assumptions about that particular language. An example of this would be classical Arabic used in the Holy Koran as a language of ideology and it has always been correlated with Islamic practices. Language ideologies involve interpretations and judgements about grammar, accent and vocabulary. Again, just as aforementioned, my experience with languages has led me to understand that certain aspects of social identity and status are very much judged by its differing social speech styles.

It is also notable that communicating emotions in a foreign language can easily lead the speaker into a concurrent usage of more than one language or better still, language variety, if engaged in a conversation. My personal experience in Italy was more like living in a diglossic situation whereby, I felt obliged to choose a code, depending on where, what and with whom I was having a conversation. I had Pidgin, English, French and Italian and spoke Italian in class but English at home while with friends, I spoke French. This tendency of aligning the syntaxes of the languages is known as code-switching. It is common though for me to switch from French to Italian between my nouns and adjectives as they both share a common language rule rather than switching from English to French. Reason being that, French adjectives would usually follow a noun and increase the difficulty in syntactic alignment at the boundary of the sentence sub-structures of English.

There is an expectation in language choice and a perception on individual’s usage of languages. Michael Burgoon, a retired professor of medicine, carried out a research on this expectation of language behaviour. According to him, these language behaviours falls within expectations determined by a source’s perceived credibility. Therefore, his Language Expectancy Theory is based on language persuasion. It is the assumption that language is a rules-based system, that people develop with expected norms as to appropriate language usage in given situations, and that unexpected linguistic usage can affect the receiver’s behaviour resulting from attitudes towards a persuasive message. This theory views language expectancies as enduring patterns of anticipated communication behaviour which are grounded in society’s cultural and psychological norms. People develop both cultural and societal expectations about language behaviours which affect their acceptance of persuasion.

Languages differ in how they represent experience, so the languages I learned would have affected the way I communicate my emotions or talk about objects and events. According to Eve Clark, when we first acquire a language as a child, we build on what we know as in the conceptual information that discriminates and helps create categories for the objects, relations and events we experience. This provides a starting point for language from the age of one onwards. Linguistic researches on acquisition across a range of languages, creates the picture of what children know and which categories their language picks out depending on the map each unfamiliar word and construction would align to a relevant conceptual representation. This again can lead to a form of social dynamic where we may invent contemporary forms of conceptualization and expressions as part of a language-game which in itself designates other forms of simpler language.

This leads me into that area of sociopragmatics which basically is the study of language use in a social context. Aptly put, “. . . the ability to act and interact by means of language” (Kasper and Roever, 2005). This is an ability to have online control and offline knowledge of the linguistic and the cultural aspects of sociopragmatics of an L2. When I began learning Italian, I would miss requisite politeness markers in my utterances and it would be difficult to determine whether this was as a result of sociopragmatic deficits whereby these markers are known but I would not be aware those markers needed to be used in that situation. But I may have been subjective and chosen not to follow these pragmatic rules because I did not want to lose the person I was. I did not want a total loss of connection with my language and my identity although this newfound language was a source of freedom to me.

This highlights a shift in my communication in language emotions and this introduces an intentional component into which this basic concept enters. I am assuming here that this shift of language emotions is double-edged and can sustain the two communicative functions whether it is internal within the brain or external among homo-sapiens, so as to bypass all complex inferences. By implication, it is a signal that sets up characteristic emotional modes within species. In humans, happiness, fear, anger and sadness exert a modifying influence such that it is proportional to that cognitive evaluation caused by that emotion signal. In the absence of this signal, the content of the emotion fails to impinge on consciousness thereby rendering the shift meaningless. My view here is a demonstration of how some sociocultural aspects of the communication of emotions and the human physiology in emotion come together as part of an integrated system.  

Based upon these experiences, I have come to the conclusion that without knowledge of a language, we are completely excluded from that society and its culture. Locals are more receptive if their language is spoken by a stranger or if at least an effort is made to speak the language. Language is what makes us human as I have tried to show in this paper. Language is the only medium we as humans, use in sharing our thoughts and emotions with the rest of the world. I was struck with profound melody and meanings when I began learning another foreign language. It is a moment I will always cherish as I was not stubborn to ignore the opportunity. To me, Italian is just plain sexy and I am not insinuating one-liners when one is out on the streets but actually knowing the language and applying it tastefully is undeniably attractive. Some say it implies education, refinement, good taste and it makes you standout against competition. However, the task of learning another language appears to be daunting but the reward is immeasurable.

What is the difference between a dialect and a language? 

Max Weinreich defined language as a ‘dialect with an army and a navy’. This a short pithy instructive statement which points out the influence that political condition can have over a community’s perception of the status of a language or dialect. There are many different definitions of language but I find the Harrap’s definition very apt at this instance. Harrap’s defines language as the ‘mental faculty or power of vocal communication’. With this in mind, my résumé will commence in establishing what a language is, and then move on to show that language varies systematically according to context, moment and with the speakers. It is complex to try to distinguish between a language and a dialect as these terms are often regarded as a simple dichotomy in a situation that is almost infinitely complex by sociolinguists. Thus my desire in seeking to point out that a dialect does share some similarities with a language or is a language variety, depending on criteria and perception. And I will conclude after using some authors’ empirical evidence and references based on a linguistic stand point that the two are both tied in distinctive ways by sociolinguists.

 More so, to fully understand the difference a dialect may have to a language and if at all it does, what other similarities are shared, I will have to look at what a dialect is as well. Harrap’s defines a dialect as ‘the usage of vocabulary that is characteristic of a particular or specific group of people’. This can be referred to a language socially subordinate to a regional or national standard language often historically cognate to the standard, but not a variety of it or in any other sense derived from it. With this in mind, I will seek to establish in my résumé that, some differences do exist to an extent, between what is commonly termed a language and a dialect and how these differences compliment their commonness. According to Ronald Wardhaugh (2010, p.24), people may often experience difficulty in deciding whether what they speak should be called a language or merely a dialect of some language. Thus highlighting the desire to comprehend if the language they speak is a bona fide language or considered inferior.

It is apparently complex to determine what differences really exist between a language and a dialect. The distinction I will raise will be very subjective because of this complexity. A language can have a number of dialects where the words, the way they are pronounced, or the grammar may be slightly different. It can also have a number of accents, which we all have despite the popular believes that accents only belong to a specific class. An accent is a reference to the differences in sound patterns within a particular dialect. People speaking the same language but different dialects would normally be considered to have the ability of understanding each other. However, this aspect varies depending on what is considered a dialect and why it is considered that way. An English speaker from Newcastle will not use the same accent as some one from East London but would understand if spoken to. A regional grammatical construction of past tenses and reflexive pronouns common with Geordie speakers can be said to be a dialect within the Standard English language. This difference in the vocabulary and grammar within the same English language is variable. It is a variation in language which is commonly called ‘dialect’ because it is not often written.  

Then again, Ronald Wardhaugh (2010, p.29) quoted Gomperz’s Scandinavian example. According to Gomperz, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are recognized as different languages yet if you speak any one of them, you will experience little difficulty in communicating while travelling in Scandinavia excluding of course Finland or at least the non-Swedish-speaking parts of that country. Incidentally, Norwegian and Danish have common vocabulary but differ in their pronunciation meanwhile Swedish and Norwegian are miles apart in their pronunciation but happen to share similarities in their vocabulary. Here again is a difference in mutual intelligibility which appears to reflect power relationships. Denmark had long dominated the Norwegians and today Sweden is the most influential in the region. So, can it be assumed that these countries all possess different dialects within the same language? The existence of mutual intelligibility in this instance does not enhance the argument of a common dialect within a language as opposed to a bona fide dialect.

 Although a language can differ as well as well as its usage, it does not really need to be accentuated but sometimes can be seen as a dialect. We can acknowledge different kinds of languages and an attempt to discover how languages can differ from one another and yet still be a variable within a language that most of us may call language rather than a dialect. For example, geographical origins can actually have a very strong influence on the way a language is spoken. Take Germany, where two speakers from Bavaria and Munich would barely understand each other although they are both speakers of the same bona fide language. It cannot be said that a difference in dialects or incomprehension constitutes language difference. Take this example of the Bavarians and speakers from Munich; why are they not considered speakers of different language? This just comes to highlight the complexity which exists in trying to differentiate between a language and a dialect. This also highlights the fact that dialects can differ a lot from each other within the same language.           

On a linguistic stand point, the difference between a language and a dialect is not usually based on linguistic criteria but on politics, power, geography and identity. Take for example, China where Chinese is often referred to as a language with hundreds of dialects whereas there are dialects in Chinese that are way apart from each other as Basque and English. A Cantonese and a Mandarin would project the opinion that they speak the same language because of the socio-politico drill and common writing system imposed on that society. They would strongly insist that they speak same language with different dialects instead of difference in languages. For political reasons though, a common language has been upheld through literacy by the projection of a common writing system. This shared writing system and strong tradition of political, cultural and social unity, have come to form an essential part of their definition of what a language is.

Judging by what I have been trying to portray, the difference between a language and a dialect is a hugely emotive issue. Describing a dialect, would lack precision and coherence, according to Ermlich, because there is impossibility in defining a dialect. For instance, try attending a football game between Barcelona FC and Real Madrid and tell any fan from Barcelona that Catalan is a dialect in Spanish, and then measure the reaction with telling an individual from Essex that the English they use is a dialect within the English in London. The importance of a language cannot be invaluable in nation-building previously reiterated by the Chinese example. Accurately, Catalan which is widely recognised in Spain and used within that autonomy, for the political reasons, is not classified as a language but a dialect within Spain.  In the interest of national unity, Catalan is viewed just like Basque as a language of regional pride.  In countries like Spain, language and dialect differences have become much obscured particularly as many speakers are likely to be multilingual.

 Differences in language and dialect can be almost infinite as language is so complex. At one extreme is the idiolect or the unique form of language used by some individuals while at the other extreme is the sociolect or aptly put a “social dialect”, which is the language used by a particular social group. Therefore, it can be said, an idiolect aids the possibility of identifying differences in a language when it is broken down. By breaking it into vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and the areas it covers within the society. In the example below, I seek to demonstrate the uniqueness of any format of a language used by individuals. It highlights the different forms of language usage which conveys a similar message be it through a differentiation in accents or class. In the example below, I will use these differences taken from the English English and the American English.

Ex. Table 1

Vocabulary	Pronunciation	Grammar	Subject areas
Hood Bonnet	Car /kah/ /karr/	‘Did you do it already?’ ‘Have you done it yet?’	Religious or scientific language

         

From the above table, I have tried to distinguish a dialect from a language by its vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. The particularity in any language varies because we all have a dialect hence the tendency to have an accent in the phonology of any given dialect. Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, then that becomes an accent. It becomes easy to confuse the speech pattern of a spoken dialect as another language. An accent is about the pronunciation, the way a dialect is spoken whilst a dialect would be broader because it would encompass the semantic and morphological properties also. For example, when talking about the East London English (cogney), we talk about the generalization of a variant property of English pronunciation in that part of London. This raises the issue; – is a dialect a variant of a language? This is a pertinent but very separate issue that I choose not to discuss at this instance.

Also, we can only understand what difference there maybe between a language and a dialect, if we actually know what a dialect is. As aforementioned, some sociolinguists believe a dialect refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of that language’s speakers. It does vary though, with the regional speech patterns of a language and the social stratification which has been the theme running through my résumé and as also shown in the table above (Ex. Table 1). A dialect that is associated with a social class or spoken with a particular speech pattern or better known as a ‘sociolect’ can be synonymous with an ethnic group or upper class. In most cases it is then considered, a language by the political machinery. In a case like the France, it is a country made up of many regional ‘languages’, but the Parisian language that was used in the royal courts by early kings, became imposed as the official language. It made it easy for royalty to govern the ‘Hexagon’ as one entity thus reducing the status of the other regional languages to dialects. Usually, this choice of a court language often is regarded as an important means of identification because it strengthens the feeling of belonging.

A dialect is also often used as a derogative or is pejorative, in describing particular persons who speak a non-standard variety of a language. Most speakers do give a name to whatever they speak, according to a research by Ronald Wardhaugh (p.24) but some of these names on occasion, may be strange to linguists because these methods have a very large untested component in the naming process. In a linguistic context, speech style and social class cannot alone be the determining factor, whether a language is inferior or superior.  All language as is the bona fide language of any nation can be said to be a dialect. These national languages were regional dialects but later became languages of prestige favoured by the courts and even governments. In accordance with my course work, the status and prestige of standard spoken and written languages have been formalised by a prescriptive tradition in education and broadcasting. A dialect would often refer to any variety of a language thus by definition, we all speak a dialect of our native language.

A dialect is a complex and often misunderstood concept. To linguists, a dialect is a collection of attributes which can be phonetics, phonological, syntactic, morphological and even semantic, that makes one group of speakers of a particular language, noticeably different from another group of speakers of that same language. Take Cameroon for instance; French and English are the two official languages. French is widely used by more than 80% of the indigenous population however, the difference it possesses from the Parisian French due to the above-mentioned attributes, does not conclusively render it a dialect as may commonly be called. Same can be said with ‘Québécois’ and Parisian which have got enormous differences in both their vocabulary and pronunciation but Canadians would think it pejorative if theirs is referred to as dialect. The terminology dialect is nothing more than a label of convenience in these contexts.

The study of dialects has been an interest of many sociolinguists over the time due to the systematic and irregularity of this form of informal speech. It has and will continue to have its twists and turns because this study has been inconclusive due to the superfluity of data. If I quote William Kretzschmar, Schneider & Johnson (1989): “the development of dialect studies, whether geographical or sociolinguistic, has always been hampered by a superfluity of data . . . Even smaller surveys have had to settle for selective analysis of their data because the wealth of possibilities for analysis overran the editors’ time and human capacity for holding in mind only so much information at once. Computers can help overcome these problems: they are wonderful tools for quickly sorting and matching pieces of information and for performing complex calculations on the results, and these days they are practically unlimited in their ability to store data” However, Mesthrie used Labov’s case studies of successful empirical analysis he carried out on speakers from different works of the society to highlight the effects and drastic changes in the study of dialects. A quantitative study in sociolinguistics on the differences or speech variations and its effectiveness is not obvious because of the never ending subject matter.

I have demonstrated all through this résumé that, there is a very fine line between a language and a dialect. Although these differences can be said to exist, the notion of a difference in their classification, boils down to socio-politico stratification. The issue raised here, obviously tantamount to the ambiguity of the terms. A dialect or a particular dialect, only seeks to develop the role of a language for a wider communication in a multilingual area. A dialect is, as many sociolinguists hold, a language that has been considered so because it lacks political grandeur and it is the language spoken by an inferior class, hence lacks prestige. There is no fixed criterion in determining what is a dialect or a language. As already mentioned, the difference cannot be determined by ascertaining that the variable spoken by a particular group of persons is a dialect of a language whereas that spoken by another is a language. I strongly hold the view that, the difference between what is a language and what can be termed a dialect can be contestable. I have put together the extent of societal classification and to another extent how that which is commonly regarded as the standard form of a language can be regarded as a dialect.