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An Introduction To Sociolinguistics
An Introduction To Sociolinguistics
Knowledge of Language
A society is a group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes.
A language is what the members of a particular society speak (p. 1); a code or a system of communication
employed when two or more people communicate with each other in speech (p. 2)
A language is essentially a set of linguistic items, such entities as sounds, words, grammatical structure,
and so on (Hudson, 1966 in Wardaugh p. 10)
Sometimes a society may be plurilingual (multilingual) which means many speakers may use more than
one language, however we define language.
Code-switching is a phenomenon when two (or multiple) speakers who are bilingual (having access to
two codes) for one reason or another shift back and forth between the two languages as they converse
Dead languages (e.g. Latin or Sanskrit)
Language universals concerns the learnability of all languages, the characteristics they share, and the
rules and principles that speakers apparently follow in constructing and interpreting sentences.
Competence and performance
Communicative competence
Variation
Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing. Speakers
may vary pronunciation (accent), word choice (lexicon), or grammar.
The paradox: many linguists would like to view any language as a homogenous entity and each speaker
of that language as controlling only a single style, so that they can make the strongest possible
theoretical generalizations, in actual fact that language will exhibit considerable variation, and single-
style speakers will not be found (p. 5)
The debate: theoretical linguists VS sociolinguists
However, there is considerable variation in the speech of any one individual, but there are also definite
bounds to that variation: no individual is free to do just exactly what he or she pleases so far as language
is concerned. The variation you are permitted has limits.
Scientific Investigation
The study of language is an empirical investigation (Chomsky: 1965 in Wardhaugh p. 3)
The attempts to the general principles of language and the uses of language:
Saussure (1959) Langue vs parole
Bloomfield (1933) stress the importance of contrastive distribution (pin and bin are different words
in English, so /p/ and /b/ must be contrastive units in the structure of English.
Pike (1967) emic and unit
Sapir (1921) & Chomsky (1965) stress distinction between ‘surface’ characteristics of utterances and the ‘deep’
realities of linguistic form
Comrie, Cook and Newson language unversals (i.e. the essential properties and various typologies of
languages)
Pinker (1994) the factors that make languages learnable by humans but not by non-humans
Labov and McMahon (1994) conditions that govern such matters as linguistic change
What is social factor? what determine the choice of language (style, grammar, metaphors, etc.) to
speak in a certain social circumstance. What are social factors?
- The participants
- The setting
- The topic
- The function
Possible relationships between language and society:
Social structure may influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behavior (social structure:
age-grading phenomenon, regions, religion, occupation, physical location, social class, kinship,
race, ethnic, gender, education, leisure activity, etc.)
Linguistic structure and/or behavior influence or determine social structure
Bi-directional: social structure and speech behavior are in a state of constant interaction.
Language and society influence each other.
There is no relationship at all between linguistic structure and social structure.
language is an indicator of identity, more important that cultural artifacts (dress, food choices, and table
manners). Identity is very important. Although it may change, because it is quite malleable, it may also
stay fixed if change is not allowed.
The role of ‘power’ in language
Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language
Sociolinguistics investigates the relationships between language and society with the goal of better
understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communication
Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society (Hudson, 1980)
Sociology of language seeks to discover how social structure can be better understood through the study
of language, e.g. how certain linguistic features serve to characterize particular social arrangement.
Sociology of language is the study of society in relation to language (Hudson)
Both require systematic study of language and society (Wardaugh, p. 13)
Methodological Concerns
‘Sociolinguistics should encompass everything from considering ‘who speaks (or writes) what language
(or what language variety) to whom and when and to what end’ (Fishman, 1972, in p. 17).
It must be oriented toward both data and theory. Data must be collected for a purpose.
Correlational studies attempts to relate two or more variables
Implicational studies if X, then Y (if someone says tess for tests, does he/she also say bes’ for best?)
Microlinguistics vs Macrolinguistics. Determine whether each description below is micro or
macro linguistic study!
Focuses on very specific linguistic items or individual differences
and uses and seek possibly wide-ranging linguistic and/or social
implications.
Examines large amounts of language data to draw broad
conclusions about group relationships
Deals with phonetics, grammar, etc. on the individual level
Deals with comparative studies among languages, language
families, large influences on language development
Covers sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and other related
disciplines
An example: studying the choices in language planning
An example: studying the distribution of singing and singin’
Other studies seek to arrive at a general understanding about certain universal characteristics of
human communication, e.g. conversational structure
Bell’s Eight Principles of Sociolinguistic Investigations:
1. The cumulative principle
2. The uninformative principle
3. The principle of convergence
4. The principle of subordinate shift
5. The principle of style-shifting
6. The principle of attention
7. The vernacular principle
8. The principle of formality
Overview
‘Sociolinguistics brings together linguists and sociologists to investigate matters of joint concern’ (p. 20)
there are many interconnections between sociolinguistics and other disciplines, and between concerns
‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’