Sociolinguistics

Introduction to
Sociolinguistics

Presented by Abdeslam JAMAI

Ibn Zohr University, Agadir. Morocco

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 Contents

 What is sociolinguistics?
 Why study sociolinguistics?
 What is the scope of sociolinguistics?

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 What is Sociolinguistics?

 What the academics say…

Hudson (1996:1) says:

“We can define sociolinguistics as the study of

language in relation to society.”
Hudson, R.A. (1996) Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: CUP.

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 What is Sociolinguistics?
 What the academics say…

Trudgill (2000:21) says:

“Sociolinguistics… is that part of linguistics which is
concerned with language as a social and cultural
phenomenon. It investigates the field of language and
society and has close connections with the social
sciences…”

Trudgill, P. (2000) Sociolinguistics, Fourth edition. London: Penguin books.

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 What is Sociolinguistics?
 What the academics say…

Holmes (1992:16) says:

The sociolinguist’s aim is to move towards a theory
which provides a motivated account of the way
language is used in a community, and of the
choices people make when they use language

Holmes, J. (1992) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman.

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 What is Sociolinguistics?

 No set definition or single approach, but a set

of reoccurring themes

Combining linguistic AND social theory

Using knowledge of the social world one

belongs to, to better understand language

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 What is Sociolinguistics?

Language Society

Attitudes

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 What is Sociolinguistics?

Language Politics:
capitalist,
communist,
sexist,
Setting: democratic,
formal, fascist…
casual…
Power:
rights,
norms,
Attitudes: judgements
religious,
gender,
education… History: war,
change,events
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 Why did sociolinguistics emerge?

The legacy of formal linguistics

• Constructs models of the linguistic system

• Phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantics
• Interest in humans’ underlying knowledge of
language structure

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 Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

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 Isolating language structure
Chomsky (1965:4) Says:
“We thus make a fundamental distinction between
competence (the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his
language) and performance (the actual use of
language in concrete situations) … Observed use of
language (…) may provide evidence as to the
nature of this mental reality, but surely cannot
constitute the actual subject matter of linguistics, if
this is to be a serious discipline.”

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press.
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 ‘Idealised’ view of language
Chomsky (1965:3) Says:

“Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal

speaker-listener, in a complete homogeneous speech
community, who knows its language perfectly and is
unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as
memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and
interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his
knowledge of the language in actual performance.
This seems to me to have been the positions of the founders
of modern general linguistics, and no cogent reason for
modifying it has been offered”

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press.
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 Let’s think about that…

 Do ALL speakers share the same underlying

knowledge of language?
– How do we know?
 Is language solely a cognitive process?

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 What do we use language for?
Communication AND achievement of social goals

Language without social knowledge

=
“a social monster” (Hymes 1974:75)

• Attitudes
• Stances
• Judgements

Hymes, D. (1974) Foundations in Sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: University

of Pennsylvania Press.
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 How do we know what to say?
 It is important to know, not only the linguistic
rules, but to also to the social rules.
– When is it appropriate to speak?
– Who is able to speak?
– Which speech forms are affective in getting what you
want done?
 Our sociolinguistic knowledge is structured…
– Communicative competence (Hymes 1971)

Hymes, D. (1971) On Communicative Competence. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press.
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 Exercise

 You want someone to pass you a copy of the

course notes. How would you ask:
– your friend?
– your professor?

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 ‫ﻫﻝ ﺍﻟﻔﻁﻭﺭ ﺟﺎﻫﺯ ﻳﺎ ﺍﻣﻲ؟‬

‫‪17‬‬
 Is this the way we talk in Morocco?

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 What do sociolinguists want to do?

 Provide “socially realistic linguistics”

 To do this we must:
– Represent all speakers
– Not rely upon speaker intuition
– Be descriptive not prescriptive

 This allows us to learn more about language

and society

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 Example of a socially-realistic linguistics
 Developing the work of dialectologists
– To represent all sorts of social identities, social groups
and individuals
 Region…
+ social class
+ age
+ gender
+ social group
– How do linguistic features pattern according to social
groupings?
 Also known as: Variationist sociolinguistics or
quantitative sociolinguistics

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 Anything else?
 Solve social problems involving language
– To do this, we must:
 Think about the role of power in
language
 Look to language for evidence of social
inequality
 Examine social policy with respect to
language
 This allows us to learn more about society

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 Examples of policy implications…
 Sexism/racism in language
• Does our language render women invisible

 Dialect and education research and inequality

• Is it harder for nonstandard children to achieve
academic success?

 Language policy and planning affects social policy

• Multilingualism; Standardisation; Education;
Globalisation

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 The structure of language variation

 Variation based on social factors is not FREE

VARIATION
She were
a good
Free Variation: laugh

Whichever form
is used, is
linguistically
insignificant She was a
good laugh

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 Sociolinguists believe in structured
heterogeneity(the quality or state of being
diverse in character or content).

 Social constraints
 Linguistic constraints She were a
good laugh

Social: Linguistic:
Social class Type of pronoun?

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 Social constraints on language

 We learn to speak in  Language is indexical:

different ways It reflects our social
because of our memberships
place in society
 It also helps to
– Social class construct and define
– Gender our social
– Ethnicity memberships
– Age
– Region of origin
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 Are we all experts?

 We all have stories about our experience of

language and its interaction with society
– Sociolinguistics: a target for disparagement:
negative views?

 Sociolinguistics: as scientific and rigorous as

any other academic field

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 Summing Up…

 Sociolinguistics is interdisciplinary
 It emerged from a particular stance towards
formal linguistics
 We’ll focus on the branch of sociolinguistics
that aims to provide a socially-realistic
linguistics

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 References and Additional Reading
Chomsky, Noam. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hudson, R.A. (1996) Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
Holmes, Janet (1992) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London:
Longman.
Hymes, Dell (1971) On Communicative Competence. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hymes, Dell (1974) Foundations in Sociolinguistics. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Meyerhoff, Miriam (2006) Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh:
EUP.
Trudgill, Peter. (2000) Sociolinguistics, Fourth edition. London:
Penguin books.

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