CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

SOCIOLINGUISTIC
Study Program : English
Program
Scores :

CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

NAME : INKA NOFAMELTRIANI HAREFA

NIM : 192108041
CLASS/SEMESTER : B/ III
SUBJECT : SOCIOLINGUISTIC

Lectures:

Dra. Nursayani Maru’ao, M.Pd

INSTITUTE OF TRAINING TEACHING AND EDUCATION OF GUNUNGSITOLI

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION
ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM
ACADEMIC 2019/2020
 PREFACE

First of all, thanks to Lord because of the help of Lord the writer finished this paper
about Critical Book Review right in the calculated time.

The purpose in writing this paper to fulfill the assignment that given by Mrs.Nursayani
Maruao, M.Pd as lecture in sociolinguistic course.

In arranging this paper the writer trully get lost challenges and obstruction, but with
help of many individuals, those obstruction could passed because that, the writer say thank
you to all individuals who helps in the process in writing this paper. Writer also realized
there are still many misakes in processs of writing this paper, then the writer hope the
suggest and criticism from the readers can be help the writer prefecting the next paper.
Hopefully this papper can be help readers to gain more knowledge about Sociolinguistic
course.

i
 TABLE OF CONTENT

Preface ............................................................................................................. i

Table of Content ......................................................................................... ii

Chapter I INTRODUCTION ....................................................................... 1

A. Rationalization of the Important of CBR ......................................... 1

B. The Purpose of CBR .......................................................................... 1
C. The Benefit of CBR .......................................................................... 1
D. Identity of the Book .......................................................................... 2

Chapter II SUMMARY .............................................................................. 3

Chapter III DISCUSSION ........................................................................... 13

Chapter IV CLOSING .................................................................................. 14

A. Conclusion ........................................................................................ 14
B. Recommendation .............................................................................. 14

Reference ..................................................................................................... 15

ii
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. RATIONALIZATION OF THE IMPORTANCE OF CBR

The skill making a critical book review can increase the ability in summarize and
analysis a book and also in compare the book that analyzed with the other book, recognize
and give appreciate and also criticisize the book that analyzed.

Oftentime, it’s make us confused in choosing the references book to read and
comprehend. Sometime we just choose one book to read but finnaly it’s result is
unsatisfied for instance in language analysis and discussion, therefore the author arranges
a crtical book review about Phonology subject, in order to can help the reader to choose
the references book especially in Sociolinguistic Book.

B. THE PURPOSE OF CBR

The purpose of CBR is to criticize and compare a book about Sociolinguistic Subject and
also compare it with the other book that have the same topic. The thing that need to
compare is the complitely of the discussion, the relation of each chapter, and also tha
weakness and tha strenghtness of the book.

C. THE BENEFITS OF CBR

The benefits of making a critical book review are:

1. Increase the knowledge about the Sociolinguistic subject and the other theory in it.
2. Help tha reader in order toget the point of a book by summarize of the book, the
discussion, and also the weakness and the strengthness of the book.
3. To train the collegian in formulating adn take conclusions of the book that
analyzed.

1
 D. IDENTITY OF THE BOOK

Title : Blackwell Textbooks In Linguistics : An Intoduction to

Sociolinguistic – Fifth Editon

Author : Ronald Wardhaugh

Publisher : BLACKWELL

Publication year : 2006

Publication place : United Kingdom

Publication website : www.blackwellpublishing.com.

ISBN : 978-1-4051-1559-7

Number of pages : 424 sheets

Edition : Fifth edition

2
 CHAPTER II

SUMMARY OF THE BOOK

Chapter 1 Introduction

Sociolinguistics brings together linguists and sociologists to investigate

matters of joint concern but they are not the only researchers involved in studies of
language in society. Scholars from a variety of other disciplines have an interest too,
example anthropologists, psychologists, educators, and planners. We will see, for
example, that a number of anthropologists have done work which we can describe as
sociolinguistic in nature, for example in the exploration of kinship systems. As we will
discover in the latter case, some sociolinguists have been quite active in trying to
influence educators in their attitudes toward certain kinds of linguistic behavior or
varieties of language spoken by specific groups of children. Language planners
obviously need a considerable amount of linguistic knowledge in making sound
decisions about. This chapter will observe that there are many interconnections
between sociolinguistics and other disciplines and also between concerns which are
sometimes labeled theoretical and others which are said to be practical. At the very
least, sociolinguistics is a socially relevant variety of linguistics, but it is probably much
more.

PART I LANGUAGES AND COMMUNITIES

Deals with some traditional language issues: trying to separate languages from
dialects and looking at types of re- gional and social variation within languages
(chapter 2); reviewing the phenomena of pidgins and creoles (chapter 3); conceiving
of languages as codes (chapter 4); and trying to figure out what kinds of ‘groups’
are relevant when we study language use (chapter 5).

Chapter 2 Language, Dialects, and Varieties

The writer stated in the introductory chapter that all languages exhibit internal
variation, that is, each language exists in a number of varieties and is in one sense the
sum of those varieties. But what do we mean by variety? Hudson defines a variety
of language as ‘a set of linguistic items with similar distribu- tion,’ a definition that
allows us to say that all of the following are varieties: Canadian English, London
English, the English of football commentaries, and so on. According to Hudson, this
definition also allows us ‘to treat all the languages of some multilingual speaker, or
community, as a single variety, since all the linguistic items concerned have a similar
social distribution.’ A variety can therefore be something greater than a single language
3
as well as something less, less even than something traditionally referred to as a dialect.
Ferguson offers another definition of variety: ‘any body of human speech patterns which
is sufficiently homogeneous to be analyzed by available techniques of synchronic
description and which has a sufficiently large repertory of elements and their arrangements
or processes with broad enough semantic scope to function in all formal contexts of
communication.’ Note the words ‘sufficiently homoge- neous’ in this last quotation.
Complete homogeneity is not required; there is always some variation whether we
consider a language as a whole, a dialect of that language, the speech of a group
within that dialect, or, ultimately, each individual in that group. Such variation is a
basic fact of linguistic life.

Chapter 3 Pidgins and Creoles

A pidgin is a language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but

is a contact language. That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those
who wish to communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will
enable them to do so. Very often too, that situation is one in which there is an
imbalance of power among the languages as the speakers of one language dominate
the speakers of the other languages economically and socially. A highly codified
language often accompanies that dominant position. A pidgin is therefore sometimes
regarded as a reduced variety of a normal language, one of the aforementioned dominant
languages, with simplification of the grammar and vocabulary of that language,
considerable phonological variation, and an admixture of local vocabulary to meet the
special needs of the contact group.

In contrast to a pidgin, a creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the
first language of a new generation of speakers. As Aitchison says, creoles arise when
pidgins become mother tongues. A creole, therefore, is a normal language in almost
every sense. Holmes says that a creole is a pidgin which has expanded in structure and
vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions required of
a first language.

Chapter 4 Codes

As the writer indicated in chapter 2, it is possible to refer to a language or a

variety of a language as a code. The term is useful because it is neutral. Terms like
dialect, language, style, standard language, pidgin, and creole are inclined to arouse emo-
tions. In contrast, the ‘neutral’ term code, taken from information theory, can be used
to refer to any kind of system that two or more people employ for communication. (It can
actually be used for a system used by a single person, as when someone devises a
private code to protect certain secrets.) All of the above, then, are codes by this,

4
admittedly loose, definition. What is interesting is the factors that govern the choice of
a particular code on a particular occa- sion.

In this chapter we will look mainly at the phenomenon of code-switching in

bilingual and multilingual situations. However, many of the issues that we will see
there will also arise with those codes which can be called sub-varieties of a single
language, e.g., dialects, styles, and registers. In particular, we will examine the so-called
diglossic situation in which clear functional differences between the codes govern the
choice. Following a brief look at some types of bilingual situ- ations, we will consider
code-switching as a phenomenon that requires serious explanation.

Chapter 5 Speech Communities

Sociolinguistics is the study of language use within or among groups of speakers.

‘Group’ is a difficult concept to define but one we must try to grasp. For our
purposes, a group must have at least two members but there is really no upper limit to
group membership. People can group together for one or more reasons: social, religious,
political, cultural, familial, vocational, avocational, etc. The group may be temporary
or quasi-permanent and the purposes of its members may change, i.e., its raison d’être.
A group is also more than its members for they may come and go. They may also
belong to other groups and may or may not meet face-to-face. The organization of
the group may be tight or loose and the importance of group membership is likely to vary
among individuals within the group, being extemely important to some and of little
consequence to others. An individual’s feelings of identity are closely re- lated to that
person’s feelings about groups in which he or she is a member, feels strong (or weak)
commitment (or rejection), and finds some kind of success (or failure).

The kind of group that sociolinguists have generally attempted to study is called the
speech community. For purely theoretical purposes, some linguists have hypothesized the
existence of an ‘ideal’ speech community. This is actually what Chomsky proposes, his
completely homogeneous speech community. However, such a speech community cannot
be our concern: it is a theoretical construct employed for a narrow purpose. Our speech
communities, whatever they are, exist in a real world.

PART II INHERENT VARIETY

Is sometimes regarded as ‘core’ sociolinguistics. Here the concerns are factors in

language variation (chapters 6–7) and what these might show us about how
languages change (chapter 8).

Chapter 6 Language Variation

5
 One way of characterizing certain variations is to say that speakers of a particular
language sometimes speak different dialects of that language. Just as a regional dialect
marks off the residents of one region from those of other re- gions, a social dialect
would be a variety associated with a specific social class or group, marking that class
or group off from other classes or groups. How- ever, if this further differentiation of
varieties is to be successful, it will require us to be able to find linguistic features which
are associated with differences in classes or groups and, of course, to define what we
mean by these latter terms.

Sociolinguists today are generally more concerned with social variation in

language than with regional variation. However, if we are to gain a sound understanding
of the various procedures used in studies of social variation, we should look at least briefly
at previous work in regional dialectology. That work points the way to understanding
how recent investigations have proceeded as they have. Studies of social variation in
language grew out of studies of regional variation. It was largely in order to widen the
limits and repair the flaws that were perceived to exist in the latter that investigators
turned their attention to social-class variation in language. As we will see, there may
still be certain limitations in investigating such variation but they are of a different kind.
It is also important to note that even if there are limitations to this kind of work, many
sociolinguists regard it as being essentially what sociolinguistics is or should be all
about . In this view the study of language variation tells us important things about
languages and how they change. This chapter and the two that follow deal with such
matters.

Chapter 7 Some Findings and Issues

Having looked briefly at some of the problems investigators face in using the
concept of the linguistic variable to examine linguistic variation in society, this chapter
can now turn to some representative quantitative studies. This chapter will look at only a
few, and then at only certain of their findings; to deal with all such studies at length
would require several book-length treatments. This chapter will comment on various parts
of the studies selected to show something of the range of concerns that investigators
have had and to indicate the kinds of problems they have faced. This chapter also will also
look at certain claims that have been made concerning the relevance these studies have to
achieving a better understanding of the structure of language and of its acquisition and
use.

Chapter 8 Change

Recent work in sociolinguistics has raised once again a long-standing question:

can linguistic change be observed while it is actually occurring? In modern linguistics the

6
answer to that question has usually been a resounding negative. Following the example
of two of the founders of the modern discipline, Saussure (1959) and Bloomfield (1933),
most linguists have maintained that change itself cannot be observed; all that we can
possibly hope to observe are the consequences of change. The important consequences
are those that make some kind of dif- ference to the structure of a language. At any
particular time, it certainly may be possible for linguists to observe variation in
language, but that variation is of little importance. Such variation must be ascribed
either to dialect mixture, that is, to a situation in which two or more systems have a
degree of overlap, or to free variation, that is, to unprincipled or random variation.
Linguists therefore attached little or no theoretical importance to variation. Only in recent
decades have some of them seen in it a possible key to understanding how languages
change.

PART III WORDS AT WORK

Is concerned with some traditional social and cul- tural issues: language as a
possible shaper of culture (chapter 9); speech in a broad social context (chapter
10); terms of address and expressions of politeness and what they mean (chapter 11);
and certain essential characteristics of every- day language, i.e., how utterances can
be acts and how conversation works (chapter 12).

Chapter 9 Words and Culture

The exact nature of the relationship between language and culture has fas-
cinated, and continues to fascinate, people from a wide variety of backgrounds. That
there should be some kind of relationship between the sounds, words, and syntax of a
language and the ways in which speakers of that language experi- ence the world and
behave in it seems so obvious as to be a truism. When we do try to specify any such
relationship, we run into problems that are no less formidable than those just
mentioned: we may be misled by the obvious. In this chapter we will look at various
ways in which language and culture have been said to be related. As we will see, some of
the resulting claims are unprovable, others are intriguing, but only one or two are
potentially of great interest.

A few words are necessary concerning what I mean by culture. we do not

intend to use the term culture in the sense of high culture, the appreciation of music,
literature, the arts, and so on. Rather, I intend to use it in the sense of whatever a
person must know in order to function in a particular society. This is the same sense as
in Goodenough’s well-known definition a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one
has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to
do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. That knowledge is socially

7
acquired: the necessary behaviors are learned and do not come from any kind of
genetic endowment. Culture, therefore, is the know-how that a person must possess to
get through the task of daily living; only for a few does it require a knowledge of some,
or much, music, literature, and the arts.

Chapter 10 Ethnographies

Speech is used in different ways among different groups of people. As we see,

each group has its own norms of linguistic behavior. A particular group may not encourage
talking for the sake of talking, and members of such a group may appear to be quite
taciturn to outsiders who relish talk, or they may feel over- whelmed by the demands
made on them if those others insist on talking. In contrast, in another group talk may
be encouraged to the extent that it may even appear to be quite disorderly to an
observer who has internalized a differ- ent set of rules for the conduct of talk. Listening
to thunder or stones, as in the Ojibwa examples mentioned earlier , may appear to be
bizarre, even to those who listen to their consciences as a matter of course. We must try to
understand how different groups of people use their language (or languages) if we are to
achieve a comprehensive understanding of how that language (or those languages) is
related to the society that uses it. A society that encourages a wide variety of kinds of talk
is likely to be rather different in many non- linguistic ways from one in which
speakers are expected neither to waste words nor to use words lightly. In this chapter,
therefore, this chapter will look at how we can talk about the various ways in which
people communicate with one another, in an attempt to see what factors are involved.

However, this chapter also be concerned with the fact that much of that
communication is directed toward keeping an individual society going; that is, an
important function of communication is social maintenance. Language is used to sustain
reality. Consequently, a second purpose of this chapter is to look at ways in which
individuals cooperate with one another to sustain the reality of everyday life and at how
they use language as oneof the means to do so.

Chapter 11 Solidarity and Politeness

When we speak, we must constantly make choices of many different kinds: what
we want to say, how we want to say it, and the specific sentence types, words, and
sounds that best unite the what with the how. How we say something is at least as
important as what we say; in fact, the content and the form are quite inseparable, being
but two facets of the same object. One way of looking at this relationship is to examine a
few specific aspects of communication: namely, pro- nominal choice between tu and vous
forms in languages that require a choice; the use of naming and address terms; and the
employment of politeness markers. In each case we will see that certain linguistic

8
choices a speaker makes indicate the social relationship that the speaker perceives to
exist between him or her and the listener or listeners. Moreover, in many cases it is
impossible to avoid making such choices in the actual packaging of messages. We will
also see that languages vary considerably in this respect, at least in regard to those aspects
we will examine.

Chapter 12 Talk and Action

In speaking to one another, we make use of sentences, or, to be more precise,

utterances. We can attempt to classify these utterances in any one of a variety of ways.
We can try to classify them by length, by counting the number of words in each
utterance, but that appears to be of little interest except to those who believe that shorter
utterances are more easily understood than longer ones. We can try to classify them by
grammatical structure along a number of dimen- sions, their clausal type and complexity:
active–passive; statement–question– request– exclamatory; various combinations of
these; and so on. We may even try to work out a semantic or logical structure for each
utterance. But it is also possible to attempt a classification in terms of what sentences to
take a functional approach, but one that goes somewhat beyond consideration of such
functions as stating, questioning, requesting, and exclaiming. In recent years a number
of philosophers have had interesting things to say about what utterances do as well as
mean, observing that part of the total meaning is this very doing.

PART IV UNDERSTANDING AND INTERVENING

Looks into three areas of life in which sociolinguistics offers us some hope of
understanding pressing problems (and which some sociolinguists argue require our
deliberate intervention). Gender, one of the great ‘growth areas’ in language study,
is the first of these (chapter 13). Education, particularly because certain practices
seem to ‘advantage’ some students and ‘disadvantage’ others, is the second
(chapter 14). Language plan- ning issues, as well as the spread of English and the
‘death’ of many languages, are the third (chapter 15). Chapter 16 provides a few
concluding remarks.

Chapter 13 Gender

A major topic in sociolinguistics is the connection, if any, between the

structures, vocabularies, and ways of using particular languages and the social roles of
the men and women who speak these languages. These issues generated a considerable
amount of thought and discussion in the last decades of the twentieth century and
many are still unresolved. They are also very emotional issues for many who have

9
chosen either to write on them or to discuss them, and that they should be so is quite
understandable. The literature on these issues is now vast; it has been one of the
biggest ‘growth’ areas within sociolinguistics in recent years. In this chapter I will
attempt to see what some of the underlying facts are and to avoid the kinds of
rhetoric and dialectic that characterize much of the discussion of sexism in language, a
topic which often seems to invite large arguments based on small data.

Gender is also something we cannot avoid; it is part of the way in which

societies are ordered around us, with each society doing that ordering differently. As
Eckert and McConnell-Ginet say: ‘The force of gender categories in society makes it
impossible for us to move through our lives in a nongendered way and impossible not to
behave in a way that brings out gendered behavior in others.’ Gender is a key component
of identity.

Chapter 14 Disadvantage

As we have seen, each language exists in a number of different varieties, and

individuals vary in their language use according to occasion. Not every indi- vidual
will necessarily command the same range of varieties as every other person.
Throughout the total linguistic community there will be a considerable overlap, a
situation which seems necessary if there is to be good communication. However,
such differences may exist within the total community that the variety (or varieties)
spoken by one group may be quite unlike the variety (or varieties) spoken by some
other group, while both groups may still be said to be speaking the same language. A
standard variety of a language is ‘better’ only in a social sense: it has a preferred status;
it gives those who use it certain social advantages; and it increases their life chances.
Nonstandard varieties tend to produce the opposite effect. These are some of the
consequences that follow from elevating one var- iety and denigrating others, but
there is no reason to suppose that any one of the varieties is intrinsically more worthy
than any other.

This attitude that linguists have toward different languages and their different
varieties is not one that everyone else shares. Many people believe that some
languages or varieties are better than others, example that some languages are
particularly beautiful, others primitive, some dialects more expressive, others deficient,
and so on. In other words, it is widely believed that you can be advantaged or
disadvantaged not just socially or esthetically, but also cognitively, intellectually, by the
accident of which language or variety of a language you happen to speak.

Chapter 15 Planning

10
 As a final topic this chapter want to turn attention to some of the numerous
attempts that have been made to change a particular variety of a language, or a particular
language, or some aspect of how either of these functions in society. Such changes
are usually described as instances of language planning. According to Weinstein,
‘Language planning is a government authorized, longterm, sustained, and conscious
effort to alter a language’s function in a society for the purpose of solving communication
problems.’ It may involve assessing resources, complex decision-making, the assignment
of different functions to different lan- guages or varieties of a language in a community,
and the commitment of valuable resources. As we will see, language planning can take
a variety of forms and produce many different kinds of results. It is also not without its
controversies. Language planning has become part of modern nation-building
because a noticeable trend in the modern world is to make language and nation
synonym- ous. Governments have had to plan to develop or promote certain
languages and sometimes to hinder or demote others, and a demand for ‘language
rights’ is often one of the first demands made by a discontented minority almost
anywhere in the world.

This chapter will discuss some of the ideas that have gone into planning efforts
made on behalf of some of these languages and, in doing so, mention briefly what
planning has meant for certain other languages. I will also comment on the global
nature of English at the beginning of the third millennium.

Chapter 16 Conclusion

Perhaps the study of language in society is best served by resisting premature

urges to declare that it must proceed along certain lines and may not proceed along
others. Repeatedly, we have seen the multi-dimensional nature of any issue we have
looked at. Even when we took a uni-dimensional approach, we did so knowing full
well what we were doing and in the knowledge that another approach or other
approaches might cast a different light on the issue. Although people have long been
interested in the relationships between language and society, it is only fairly recently
that scientific approaches have been adopted. It seems wiser to encourage a variety of
scientific approaches and the genera- tion of a range of theories than to put our entire
trust and hope into a single way of doing sociolinguistics. That is certainly the
way the writer have gone about looking at how language and society are related.
The writer have not avoided theor- etical issues, and I have not avoided looking at data
themselves, and not simply in the sense that ‘you cannot have data without a

11
theory.’ However, the writer have found it neither useful nor possible to adopt a single
theoretical approach.

12
 CHAPTER III

DISCUSSION OF THE BOOK

From the cover and looks side, this book has the weakness is because of it is a
softcopy book the real cover cannot be seen, it just show the white sheet that consist of title
and the author of the book. Of course , this is not interest to look. But over all, the
appearances of the whole book is good.

From the book’s layout, is has the strengthness. It is arranged sistematically and
orderly, it can make the reader can read flowly from chapter to chapter. But here also has
the weakness is about the left margin of book . For example, left margin of page one is fine
but in the following page the left margin is forward inside about one margin tabulation and
the right side is move forward also, the following page also back to first page and
continuously. Beside uninterest look, it also make us difficult to distinguish the quotations
and the forward margin.

From the content of the book, this book has the strengthness is it has the expert
opinion that support the content of the book, it also has the disscussion for every sub tittle
that can help the reader tho practice the material, it also has the further reading for reading
book recommendation about the material to enlarge our knowledge in the end of every
chapter. But it also has the weakness is too much of Italic font and quotation mark in the
content. The explanation also is too wide and long, it makes the reader difficult to
understand the content of the book clearly.

From the language of the book, this book has the weakness. The language of this
book is quite complex and difficult to understand. It use the high level of language or
international standard of language so it’s hard to comprehend by the reader.

13
 CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

A. Conclusion
After reviewing this book, finnaly the reviewer conclude that this book is
good to be a reference and source for the course or subject in sociolinguistic matter
but only for the high level collegian because of its content that has the international
standard. It’s not fit to the begginer. This book is really dig more and widely about
sociolinguistic. The reviewer recommend it for guidance book in learning high level
sociolinguisic.

B. Recommendation
For recommendation, the reviewer recommed this book for sociolinguistic guidance book
to the high level of collegian or international stamdard. For the begginer of sociolinguisitc,
possible the author arranges tha simple one of sociolinguistic book.

14
 REFERENCE

Wardhaugh Ronald, 2006. Textbooks In Linguistics : An Intoduction to Sociolinguistic.

United Kingdom: Blackwell

15