Socio Linguistics

Saigon University_Sociolinguistics_2022-2023 Compiled by: Nguyen Viet Tin
Lecturer: M.A. Vo Thuy Thanh Thao

66 items TRUE - FALSE
1. Each group of people has one official language. TRUE
2. People living one location speak the official language only. FALSE
3. People in different places tend to use varieties to be appropriate for people living there. TRUE
4. There are no varieties in sociolinguistics. However, there are written and spoken varieties in societies.
FALSE
5. It is necessary to study varieties to understand the behaviours of many people in different locations. FALSE
6. It’s possible that two speakers of a language speak exactly the same way all the time. FALSE
7. Regional dialects and social dialects are the two types of dialects. TRUE
8. Idiolects can distinguish an individual from other members of a community. TRUE
9. Among the varieties, standard variety is the best and holds the highest status in community because the
highest social classes and the most educated people use it. FALSE
10. Pidgin is a native language. FALSE (Pidgin is a variety of many languages)
11. Creolization is the development process of pidgin. TRUE
12. Creolization stimulates further change of a language and makes language grow. TRUE
13. Not every pidgin finally becomes a creole. TRUE
14. Pidgins make communication uneasy. FALSE
15. Pidgins starts in a multilingual situation. (at least 3 different languages to create a pidgin). TRUE
16. Educated people often use pidgin. FALSE
17. The most striking difference between the spoken and written language is in the grammar used. FALSE
18. This is a speech act “I’m sorry for eating all of the chicken”. TRUE
19. Language and society are intertwined because a society moves with language. TRUE
20. Speech acts and speech events’ theories are based on the interpretation of speeches as they related to
society’s acceptability. TRUE
21. The social status indicates a dialect’s social position in a society. FALSE
22. Spoken language is organized more carefully than written language. FALSE (more à less)
23. The focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of society on the language. TRUE
24. The components of a speech event are setting, participants, ends, act sequences, key, instrumentalities,
norms and genre. TRUE
25. Sociolinguistics is a discipline that yokes society with linguistics. FALSE (society à sociology)
26. A pidgin, or a contact language, is a mixture of two other languages, created usually because of trading
purposes between peoples who do not share a common means of communication. TRUE
27. Pidgin is the next stage of development for creole with different grammatical features. FALSE
à Creole is the next stage of development for pidgin with different grammatical features.
28. Creolisation and decreolisation are two processes stimulating further change of a language. TRUE
29. The written variety presupposes the presence of the interlocutor. FALSE (written à spoken)
“interlocutor: a person taking part in a conversation with you”
30. The written language is able to live with the idea it expresses. TRUE
31. Speech acts and speech events relate to grammatical performance in society. FALSE
(grammatical à communicative) speech act: ngon hanh, speech event: ngon su
32. How language is performed in society is what speech acts and speech events dealt with. TRUE
33. Linguists have paid their attention to meaning and functions of language. FALSE
34. Linguists pay more attention to the situations in which minority languages are spoken. TRUE
35. Linguists haven’t supported linguistics minorities. FALSE. ( haven’t supported à defended)
36. Linguists have researched on speech situations in community in different linguistic forms which
emphasise the varieties of speech over attitudes. FALSE
37. An idiolect is a regional variety. FALSE (regional à individual)
38. Idiolect can be used in a household with the name “ecolect”. TRUE
39. Idiolect is useful in the investigation of the police for reconising the individual idiolect. TRUE
1
40. People tend to keep their idiolects the same in different contacts. FALSE (keep à change)
41. Idiolects are stable in different generations. FALSE (stable à changed)
42. In business, people use a simplified language, a pidgin, to have a common language. FALSE
(to have a common language à to contact each other)
43. Although pidgins are second languages, they are popular in society. TRUE
44. There are at least 3 languages in a pidginization process. TRUE
45. When contacting foreigners, Vietnamese people cannot speak their languages; therefore, Vietnamese
make their languages so simple that they fail to understand. FALSE (fail to à can)
46. Pidgin are standard languages with their simplified rules. FALSE
47. Different from pidginization, creolization can take at least 2 stages: pidgin and creole. FALSE
(2 stages: pidgin and creole à 2 generations: parents and children)
48. When pidgins are used commonly, they become creoles. TRUE
49. Creolisation refer to the new adaption of human beings in a new environment. TRUE
50. One of the 3 features of creoles is that words are added more than 2 or 3 affixes. FALSE
(added more than 2 or 3 affixes à no inflectional morpheme)
51. Vietnamese languages are unnatural because they have all three features of creoles. FALSE
(unnatural à natural)
52. A slang originates in a society. FALSE (in a society à in subcultures)
53. Slangs are used to express the values in their own communities. TRUE
54. People use slangs to keep their business avoid being understood. TRUE
55. Slangs are limited in a country. FALSE (limited in a country à spread beyond regions)
56. Used for a long time, slangs are useful in enriching vocabulary. TRUE
57. Jargons are academic vocabulary. FALSE (academic à professional)
58. People in the same branch use jargons to understand each other quickly. TRUE
59. People use argot to turn information to incomprehensible to outsiders. TRUE
60. Jargons are the most effective tool of language to everybody for communicating their ideas. FALSE
(Jargons are not effective because of being comprehended by people of the same group)
61. People in different jobs regard jargons as an evidence of a lazy mind. TRUE
62. Taboo words are regarded as polite speech and now used in formal society. FALSE
63. Profanity and vulgarity are different from taboo words. FALSE
64. Taboo words don’t keep their meaning the same in different places. TRUE
65. The taboo word “cunt” means a bad woman in American, while its meaning is “an appreciation” in Great
Britain. FALSE
66. In American, the word “black” are very sensitive and it is prohibited to avoid something unlucky. FALSE
2
SOCIO-LINGUISTICS
UNIT 1: Sociolinguistics: definitions and applications.
Socio-linguistics is
1. an attempt to find correlations between social structure and linguistic structure and to observe any
changes that occur (Gumperz, 1971)
3. a study of the relationship between language and social factors such as class, age, gender, and ethnicity
(Hudson, 1996)
5. the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectation, and context
on the way language is used (Trudgill, 2000)
7. the study of language in relation to its socio-cultural context. (Van Dijk, 2009)
Fill in the blanks with ONE word

1. Based on the scope of studies, linguistics can be divided into two, namely micro-linguistics and macro-
linguistics.
2. Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society.
3. The same message may be expressed very differently to different people.
4. Sociolinguistics is concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is used.
5. Sociolinguistics focuses on using language to socially define and express who we are, where we come
from, and who we associate with.
6. The choice of language to convey specific messages with the intention of influencing people is vitally
important.
7. Above all, doctors must be extremely careful in using languages for the filling of prescriptions to avoid
unexpected situations that may lead to death.
8. Learners must make sure their speeches appeal to the public and minimize rebuttals.
9. language is an important component of education because school instructions mainly include the use of
language.
10. Sociolinguistics is applied in many fields showing a lot of practical applications useful in language of
communication.
Obviously, everyone can modify the way they speak depending on who they are with or what the situation
is. When they change the way they speak, depending on their interlocutor or situation, they provide more
sociolinguistic information which makes up the sociolinguistic knowledge in the community.
1. Micro-linguistics: The studies on language itself, such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics
2. Macro-linguistics: The studies on language phenomena in relationship with other phenomena outside
language.
UNIT 2: Sociolinguistics and language variation

I. TRUE or FALSE
1. Each group of people has one official language. TRUE
2. People living one location speak the official language only. FALSE
3. People in different places tend to use varieties to be appropriate for people living there. TRUE
FALSE
5. It is necessary to study varieties to understand the behaviours of many people in different locations. FALSE
II. Match words with descriptions

A. Is a particular language used in a particular region in a country. (Vernacular)
3
B. Reflects a situation where people can use two or even more languages in their communicative contacts.
(Diglossia)
C. Denotes aspects of pronunciation together with words and syntax slightly different from the standard
variety. (Dialect)
D. Is studied in pronouncing words characteristic of a group of people (Accent)
E. Is the next stage of the development of a pidgin. (Creole)
F. Is a mixture of two other languages. (Pidgin)
III. Spoken and written varieties

Spoken and written language can be distinguished with the following points:
1. Spoken language is generally less formal than written language
2. Spoken language tends to be less precise than written language
3. Written language is often more articulate and sophisticated than spoken language.
4. Spoken language can be more communicative than written language due to extra cues such as body
language and tone.
UNIT 3: LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY

I. Michael Halliday (1973)
Metafunctions
1. Ideational à “language as reflection” (the way we organize, understand and express our perceptions of
the world and of our own consciousness)
+ Experiential: the content/idea expressed in an utterance
+ Logical: the relationship between ideas
2. Interpersonal à “Language as action” (The way we use language to communicate ourselves with other
people) à About social world, esp. the relationship between speaker and hearer.
3. Textual à “Language as construction of text” à The way we use language to organize the text itself
=> Users may use different choices to express their ideas to make them appropriate to the environment.
II. Fill in each blank with ONE word (Society and language determinants)
1. In every society, there are many factors that determine language use.
2. The determinants of language use in a society are the factors that determine acceptable linguistic forms
in a given context.
3. The language in use in some situations/contexts is not appropriate in some others.
4. There is language use required in a certain situation of professional touch, classes, races, political
viewpoints, levels of education
5. Social life, including language use, is governed by norms – socially shared concepts of appropriate and
expected behaviour.
6. Language users do not apply a language improvisatorially, but they must follow the obligatory rules in
linguistics, such as vocabulary, phonetics, phonology, and grammar – naturally occurring norms for linguistic
description.
7. Labov (1972) both encourage to take the norms of the vernacular as the basis of grammatical description
as well as to discuss more thoroughly the nature of language norms.
8. Norms are inherently social.
III. Fill in each blank with no more than 2 words. (Sociolinguistic variation)
1. Different communities in societies use various forms of languages which are called varieties.
4
2. Vocabulary, phonology, and grammar, are gradually changed to meet new contacts and communications.
3. The more we integrate into the world, the more varieties in language develop
4. An English sentence spoken in a place may be affected by vocabulary, phonology, prosody, and grammar
in French or the native language of local people
5. Linguists study the language varieties in every aspect on any level: phonetic, syntactical, stylistic, and,
above all, lexical.
UNIT 4: SPEECH ACTS AND SPEECH EVENTS

Speech acts
-Definition: The action performed by producing an utterance
Categories
1. Locutionary acts
2. Illocutionary acts (force)
3. Perlocutionary acts.
(4. Propositional acts)
Fill in each blank to more than ONE word
1. Illocutionary act contains the purpose and function or power of speech (6 functions)
2. Locutionary act is a speech that has a true meaning (declarative, interrogative, imperative)
3. Perlocutionary act is a speech that is followed by an action.
4. The action that is carrying out through language is called speech act.
E.g. In classroom
A: Remember! Next Saturday it will be the turn of the third group to present (locutionary act)
B: I haven’t got a group (illocutionary act)
C: Well, you just join my group, it just so happens that there are only a few members (perlocutionary act)
Six kinds of functions

1. Declarative is speech act that change the world via their utterance (dismissing, sentencing, naming,
announcing, declaring...)
e.g. I now declare you are innocent
2. Representative is speech act that state what the speaker believes to be true or false for himself (asserting,
stating, claiming, affirming, making hypotheses, describing, predicting, reporting...)
e.g. I am a teacher
3. Expressive is speech act that state how the speaker feels and express psychological states such as pleasure,
pain, dislikes, joy, sorrow... (greeting, apologizing, complaining, thanking...)
e.g. You are always making noise in the classroom.
4. Directive is speech act that speaker uses to get someone else do something (commanding, requesting,
begging, warning, challenging, inviting, suggesting, giving advice...)
e.g. I suggest you should clean the room immediately
5. Commissive is speech act that speaker uses to commit themselves to some future actions (promising,
vowing, threatening, offering, ...)
e.g. I will give you a lift to the train station tomorrow.
6. Rogative is a question to request for information.

e.g. What’s your name?
5
Identify the function of these utterances.

1. I now pronounce you husband and wide. (declarative)
2. Sit down! (directive)
3. Stop this or I will punish you. (commisive)
4. What’s your name? (rogative)
5. He is alive. (representative)
6. Congratulations! (expressive)
E.g. It’s cold outside.

+ Direct: direct relationship between a structure & a function.
à The weather is cold outside.
+ Indirect: indirect relationship between a structure & a function.
à Can you close the window?
Event
- Is a physical occurrence, something that happens.
e.g.: death, marriage
But using language to talk about death and marriage is called speech event
Speech event
+ An activity in which participants interact via language.
+ Speaking about activities directly governed by rules and norms
E.g. stories, conversations, lectures, introductions
Speech events:
-8 Components (speaking): setting, participants, ends, act sequences, key, instrumentalities, norms, genre.
Unit 5: DIALECTS, IDIOLECTS, SOCIOLECTS

I. Match the terms with their descriptions
1. Idiolect is a speech variety of an individual speaker.
2. Lect is a language variety of speakers in a region, appearing when there is isolation of long-term separation
of groups, characterised by systematic features (phonological, lexical, grammatical,...)
3. The language variation between groups is called intergroup variation.
4. The language variation between two speakers is called intraspeaker variation
5. A diolect appears in a specific region when an official language is in use first and then changes.
II. TRUE/FALSE
1. It’s possible that two speakers of a language speak exactly the same way all the time. FALSE
2. Regional dialects and social dialects are the two types of dialects. TRUE
3. Idiolects can distinguish an individual from other members of a community. TRUE
highest social classes and the most educated people use it. FALSE
III. Definitions
1. A person’s unique way of using spoken language based on education, class, etc. (idiolect)
2. The way a person speaks based on where they grew up. (accent)
3. A way of speaking used by a certain social class, profession or group. (sociolect)
4. A way of speaking found in certain areas; words may be different. (dialect)
6
5. An idiosyncratic language which is invented and spoken by only one or a very few people, usu. the private
languages of young children. (idioglossia)
UNIT 6: PIDGINS AND PIDGINISATION

I. TRUE/FALSE
1. Pidgin is a native language. FALSE
2. Creolization is the development process of pidgin. TRUE
3. Creolization stimulates further change of a language and makes language grow. TRUE
4. Not every pidgin finally becomes a creole. TRUE
5. Pidgins make communication uneasy. FALSE
6. Pidgins starts in a multilingual situation. (at least 3 different languages to create a pidgin). TRUE
7. Educated people often use pidgin. FALSE
UNIT 7: CREOLES AND CREOLIZATION

-Creole originates as a common-used pidgin. It share more lexical and grammatical similarities with each
other than with the native languages.
-Creolisation can take at least two generations (Parents who develop a pidgin and children who acquire a
creole as their first language)
-Some features of a creole
+ no inflectional morpheme (or no more than two or three affixes added to words)
+ only mono-syllables
+ no opaque context when people contact each other.
UNIT 8: SLANG AND CLICHÉ IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS

I. Fill in the blanks with appropriate words.
1. Argot an informal vocabulary used by secret groups, underground, particular criminal gangs, usually
used to turn information to incomprehensible to outsiders.
2. Jargon is a specialized or technical vocabulary of a certain group, profession, or people who share the
same interest.
e.g.
+ Bottom line: the total profit or loss of a company at the end of a particular period of time
(The bottom line is that he should be fired)
+ Cookies – used by programmes to track information on a user’s computer that has accessed the Internet.
(We set a cookier when you first access our site)
3. Slang is informal word or expression that is not considered standard and appropriate for formal
occasions, just in ordinary situations
E.g. drunkenness (soured, stewed, plastered), bus from omnibus, buzz off! For go away!
4. Cliches is an expression that has been worn out through constant use. Although they are common in
speech, they make writing seem stale.
E.g. busy as a bee, easier said than done, make ends meet,...
7
1. Each group of people has one official language.
2. People living one location speak the official language only.
3. People in different places tend to use varieties to be appropriate for people living there.
5. It is necessary to study varieties to understand the behaviours of many people in different locations.
6. It’s possible that two speakers of a language speak exactly the same way all the time.
7. Regional dialects and social dialects are the two types of dialects.
8. Idiolects can distinguish an individual from other members of a community.
highest social classes and the most educated people use it.
10. Pidgin is a native language.
11. Creolization is the development process of pidgin.
12. Creolization stimulates further change of a language and makes language grow.
13. Not every pidgin finally becomes a creole.
14. Pidgins make communication uneasy.
15. Pidgins starts in a multilingual situation. (at least 3 different languages to create a pidgin).
16. Educated people often use pidgin.
17. The most striking difference between the spoken and written language is in the grammar used.
18. This is a speech act “I’m sorry for eating all of the chicken”.
19. Language and society are intertwined because a society moves with language.
20. Speech acts and speech events’ theories are based on the interpretation of speeches as they related to
society’s acceptability.
21. The social status indicates a dialect’s social position in a society.
22. Spoken language is organized more carefully than written language.
23. The focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of society on the language.
24. The components of a speech event are setting, participants, ends, act sequences, key,
instrumentalities, norms and genre.
25. Sociolinguistics is a discipline that yokes society with linguistics.
26. A pidgin, or a contact language, is a mixture of two other languages, created usually because of trading
purposes between peoples who do not share a common means of communication.
27. Pidgin is the next stage of development for creole with different grammatical features.
28. Creolisation and decreolisation are two processes stimulating further change of a language.
29. The written variety presupposes the presence of the interlocutor.
31. The written language is able to live with the idea it expresses.
31. Speech acts and speech events relate to grammatical performance in society.
32. How language is performed in society is what speech acts and speech events dealt with.
33. Linguists have paid their attention to meaning and functions of language.
34. Linguists pay more attention to the situations in which minority languages are spoken.
35. Linguists haven’t supported linguistics minorities.
36. Linguists have researched on speech situations in community in different linguistic forms which
emphasise the varieties of speech over attitudes.
37. An idiolect is a regional variety.
38. Idiolect can be used in a household with the name “ecolect”.
39. Idiolect is useful in the investigation of the police for reconising the individual idiolect.
40. People tend to keep their idiolects the same in different contacts.
41. Idiolects are stable in different generations.
42. In business, people use a simplified language, a pidgin, to have a common language.
43. Although pidgins are second languages, they are popular in society.
44. There are at least 3 languages in a pidginization process.
8
45. When contacting foreigners, Vietnamese people cannot speak their languages; therefore, Vietnamese
make their languages so simple that they fail to understand.
46. Pidgin are standard languages with their simplified rules.
47. Different from pidginization, creolization can take at least 2 stages: pidgin and creole.
48. When pidgins are used commonly, they become creoles.
49. Creolisation refer to the new adaption of human beings in a new environment.
50. One of the 3 features of creoles is that words are added more than 2 or 3 affixes.
51. Vietnamese languages are unnatural because they have all three features of creoles.
52. A slang originates in a society.
53. Slangs are used to express the values in their own communities.
54. People use slangs to keep their business avoid being understood.
55. Slangs are limited in a country.
56. Used for a long time, slangs are useful in enriching vocabulary.
57. Jargons are academic vocabulary.
58. People in the same branch use jargons to understand each other quickly.
59. People use argot to turn information to incomprehensible to outsiders.
60. Jargons are the most effective tool of language to everybody for communicating their ideas.
61. People in different jobs regard jargons as an evidence of a lazy mind.
62. Taboo words are regarded as polite speech and now used in formal society.
63. Profanity and vulgarity are different from taboo words.
64. Taboo words don’t keep their meaning the same in different places.
65. The taboo word “cunt” means a bad woman in American, while its meaning is “an appreciation” in
Great Britain.
66. In American, the word “black” are very sensitive and it is prohibited to avoid something unlucky.

Socio Linguistics

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Saigon University_Sociolinguistics_2022-2023 Compiled by: Nguyen Viet Tin

Lecturer: M.A. Vo Thuy Thanh Thao

Fill in the blanks with ONE word

UNIT 2: Sociolinguistics and language variation

II. Match words with descriptions

III. Spoken and written varieties

UNIT 3: LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY

UNIT 4: SPEECH ACTS AND SPEECH EVENTS

Six kinds of functions

6. Rogative is a question to request for information.

Identify the function of these utterances.

E.g. It’s cold outside.

Unit 5: DIALECTS, IDIOLECTS, SOCIOLECTS

UNIT 6: PIDGINS AND PIDGINISATION

UNIT 7: CREOLES AND CREOLIZATION

UNIT 8: SLANG AND CLICHÉ IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS

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