CHAPTER I : Sociolinguistics - Language and Society

When we are talking or studying on languages, it is impossible to just focus on linguistic

terms. Because in the nature of language itself, it is not alone. Language exists and lives with a couple
of companions such as culture, geography, habits and lifestyles of people who use it.

Every person gives some clues about themselves when they speak with another one. Even if
they cannot be aware of it, their speech has some codes about them and their life. Because we are
speaking as we are educated and we represent our families, homelands and our background. So we
cannot think that language and society are not related.

As mentioned in this chapter, when we want to find the borderlines where dialects change,
we cannot specify anything certain by looking at linguistic terms. Because social needs and language
are nested in there. There are some examples like that among languages, also. For example, speakers
from different countries of Scandinavia can communicate with each other. Because these languages
are autonomous according to ‘mutual intelligibility’ criterion. When we determine which languages
are autonomous or heteronomous, we look at the sociopolitical aspects of the places. So we cannot
discriminate languages by just looking at linguistic criteria.

There are 3 popular accents of English we mostly heard of. The differences between these
accents are because of just pronunciation. But some people think that a particular accent is more
accurate or nicer than the others. For that reason, some individuals tend to employ other accents’
style of speech. It can be explained by social norms or prestige norm. Or it can be just because of
social attitudes. In linguistics, there is no difference among the accents except pronunciation. All
languages or accents are equal and well-organized. The differences are in the value judgements of a
society or our way of thinking. We can see examples of linguistic changes in Labov’s studies in this
chapter.

Lastly, language and society affect themselves bidirectionally. The existing words in our
language maybe not exist in a different language, and it means that it is worth using these words in
our country, they are valuable, but in the other language there is no place for these words. Humans
build particular patterns in their minds by the means of their words. So they perceive inside and
outside by their language systems. We can understand that by an example; the changes in a society
reflect on residents’ languages in the process of time. So society has effects on language and these
effects are mutual.

Summarized by Zeynep KESKİN