SOCIOLINGUISTICS - UNIT 1

SOCIOLINGUISTICS
UNIT 1
TRƯƠNG VĂN ÁNH
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SÀI GÒN
UNIT 1
SOCIOLINGUISTICS DEFINITIONS AND APPLICATIONS
I. INTRODUCTION
This unit introduces the concept of sociolinguistics as an academic discipline and also the applications of sociolinguistics and finds out the essence of the social function of language.






Language and society are intertwined because a society moves with language. When communication takes a proper process whereby meaning is generated, and a society moves with the pace of the language. A language defines the linguistic behaviour of a group of people in a given society. We will find out what sociolinguistics means by examining the various definitions and unearth their points of convergence.







II. GENERAL OVERVIEW
Numerous definitions of sociolinguistics are presented. However, each of these definitions does not fail to acknowledge that sociolinguistics has to do with language use and a social response to it.







1. The study of the relationship between language and society, of language variation, and of attitudes about language.
2. A branch of anthropological linguistics that studies how language and culture are related, and how language is used in different social contexts.
3. A study of the relationship between language and social factors such as class, ethnicity, age and sex.
4. The study of language in social contexts.
5. The study of the sociological factors involved in the use of language, including gender, race, class, etc.







6. The study of stylistic and social variation of language (vernacular).
7. The study of language in relation to its socio-cultural context.
8. Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used.
9. The study of social and cultural effects on language.







In all these definitions, it is clear that sociolinguistics is a discipline that yokes sociology with linguistics. It is a branch of sociology and as a concept, it is concerned with how language use is a determinant of a given society’s linguistic requirements. Every society has linguistic codes acceptable for communication and interaction. Sociolinguistics show how groups in a given society are separated by certain social variables like ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.







and how adherence to these variables is used to categorise individuals in social class or socio-economic classes. The social study of language is a modern linguistic paradigm because it was the modern linguists who first acknowledged and accepted that language by its nature is totally a social phenomenon. All the definitions here acknowledge that sociolinguistics has to do with language use and a society’s response to it.







III. SOCIOLINGUISTICS FACTORS
Sociolinguistics is a developing branch of linguistics and sociology which investigates the individual and social variation of language. Just as regional variation of language can give a lot of information about the place the speaker is from, social variation tells about the roles performed by a given speaker within one community, or country. Sociolinguistics is also a branch of sociology in that it reveals the







relationship between language use and the social basis for such use. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the latter`s focus is on the language`s effect on the society. Sociolinguistics is a practical, scientific discipline which researches into the language that is actually used, either by native speakers or foreigners, in order to formulate theories about language change. There are numerous factors influencing the way people speak which are investigated by sociolinguistics:







1. Social class: the position of the speaker in the society, measured by the level of education, parental background, profession and their effect on syntax and lexis used by the speaker. An important factor influencing the way of formulating sentences is, according to sociolinguists, the social class of the speakers. Thus, there has been a division of social classes proposed in order to make the description accurate.







Two main groups of language users, mainly those performing non-manual work and those with more years of education are the ‘middle class’, while those who perform some kind of manual work are ‘working class’. The additional terms ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ are frequently used in order to subdivide the social classes. Therefore, differences between upper middle class can be compared with lower working class.







2. Social context: the register of the language used depending on changing situations: formal language in formal meetings and informal usage during meetings with friends, for example. It is notable that people are acutely aware of the differences in speech patterns that mark their social class and are often able to adjust their style to the interlocutor. It is especially true for the members of the middle class who seem eager to use forms associated with upper class;







however, in such efforts, the forms characteristic of upper class are often overused by the middle class members. The above mentioned process of adapting own speech to reduce social distance is called convergence. Sometimes, however, when people want to emphasise the social distance, they make use of the process called divergence, purposefully using idiosyncratic forms.







3. Geographical Origins: slight differences in pronunciation between speakers that point at the geographical region which the speaker comes from. Sociolinguistics investigates the way in which language changes, depending on the region of the country it is used in. To describe a variety of language that differs in grammar, lexis and pronunciation from others, the term dialect is used. Moreover, each member of community has a unique way of speaking due to the life experience, education, age and aspiration. An individual personal variation of language use is called an idiolect.







4. Ethnicity: differences between the use of a given language by its native speakers and other ethnic groups. There are numerous factors influencing idiolect, some of which have been presented above; yet two more need to be elucidated, namely jargon and slang. Jargon is specific technical vocabulary associated with a particular field of interest, or topic. For example words such as convergence, dialect and social class are







sociolinguistic jargon. Whereas slang is a type of language used most frequently by people from outside of high-status groups, characterized by the use of unusual words and phrases instead of conventional forms. For example, a sociolinguist might determine, through study of social attitudes, that a particular vernacular would not be considered appropriate language use in a business or professional setting; she or he might also study the grammar, phonetics, vocabulary, and other aspects of this sociolect much as a dialectologist would study the same for a regional dialect.







5. Nationality: clearly visible in the case of the English language: British English differs from American English, or Canadian English; Nigerian English differs from Ghanaian English; The study of language variation is concerned with social constraints determining language in its contextual environment. Code- switching is the term given to the use of different varieties of language in different social situations. William Labov is often regarded as the founder of the study of sociolinguistics. He is especially noted for introducing the quantitative study of language variation and change, making the sociology of language into a scientific discipline.







6. Gender: differences in patterns of language use between men and women, such as quantity of speech, intonation patterns.
7. Age: the influence of age of the speaker on the use of vocabulary and grammar complexity.







IV. CONCLUSION
Sociolinguistics is an important discipline which studies the effects of language use on a given society. Sociolinguistics studies those types of language variation which result from the correlation between language and social factors, such as social stratification (status), role, age, sex, ethnicity. Depending on the degree and pattern of their actualization, participants select from a variety of available codes (languages, dialects, varieties), they may switch between them, accommodate or mix them.







The social status indicates an individual’s social position in a society, which is based on power differences, prestige and social class, along with the associated rights and duties. The broadest social class categories are upper, middle and lower classes which correlate with accents (e.g., posh, refined, RP vs. low, uneducated, regional, local dialect) and speech varieties (Standard English vs. non-standard varieties).







V. SUMMARY
In sociolinguistics, it can be shown that speakers change the forms of language they use in quite precisely describable social circumstances. Speakers might switch from a ‘high’ form of their language to a ‘low’ form as and when the social environment suggests that they should do so: they speak, for instance, a standard educated form of their language in formal situations, and use a dialect form (whether social or geographical or both) of their language in informal, casual situations.







Speakers are seen to be aware of the `correlations`; that one social situation demands the use of a particular form of the language and that another social situation demands another. The role of the social is to establish the correlation; the role of the individual is to implement and instantiate it as appropriate sociolinguistic behaviour. Speakers demonstrate a competence that goes well beyond the grammatical/syntactic competence proposed by Chomsky. Thus, sociolinguistics relates linguistic behaviour with social demands.







VI. EXERCISES
1. What is the social significance to the choice of words from the above comparison?
2. Can sociolinguistic phenomena be found in language classroom interaction?
3. Why do you think that the standard English still has linguistic and social variations?
4. How do you believe that sociolinguistic phenomena are also found in language classroom interaction?
5. How can you bring the phenomena of sociolinguistics into EFL teaching and learning?






Good luck!