INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES
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MOCK TEST
SUBJECT: SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Date: Time: Offline Closed book Exam

Section 1: Multiple choice questions. Choose the best answer. (12 points)
1. Which of the following second parts is the dispreferred response in the adjacency
pair?
A. Would you like a cup of tea?
Yes, please.
B. Would you like a cup of tea?
Tea keeps me awake.
C. Would you like a cup of tea?
Please add some sugar to it.
2. What is missing in the telephone conversation regarding the opening in American
English (Schegloff, 1968, 1972, 1986)?
Phone ringing
A: Hello?
B: How are you?
A: Good. What’s up?
B: I went home late.
A: What time?
B: By midnight.
A: Fine. See you.
B: See you.
Phone hanging up.
A. the adjacency pair of summon – response
B. the adjacency pair of identification – confirmation
C. the adjacency pair of asking for each other’s well-being
3. What difference is illustrated in the following cartoon?

A. gender difference
B. social class difference
C. ethnicity difference
4. The denial of a variety in education is an example of ______________.
A. corpus planning
B. status planning
C. acquisition planning
5. Which of the following is NOT an example of sexist language?
A. mistress
B. guys
C. policeman
6. The mutual use of title + last name in English indicates _______________________.
A. power inequality
B. unfamiliarity
C. equality and familiarity
Section 2: Decide whether the following statements are true or false. Correct the false
statements (24 pts)
1. Ethnographic research is generally carried out through participant observation.
2. The involvement of the researcher in ethnographic study makes no change to the
language practices under study.
3. The term “linguistics competence” was introduced by Hymes in 1972.
 4. Language socialization describes the act of learning to communicate in ways
appropriate to the group in which we are doing that language learning.
5. Letter A in the SPEAKING models by Hymes (1972) stands for Attitude.
6. “Can I ask you a favor?” is considered as a pre-invitation.

Section 2: Provide the answers to the following questions. (40 points)

1. What is the focus of ethnomethodology and what method is often employed in this
approach?
2. What does the term “gender preferential language” suggest? Provide examples to
illustrate this point.
3. What is the role of linguists in language planning?
4. What is the multilingualism policy in Belgium?

Section 3: Read the extract from the following research paper. Answer the questions
(24 points)
A. Read the following research title and abstract
Title: Discourse-pragmatic variation across situations, varieties, ages: I DON'T KNOW
in sociolinguistic and medical interviews
Heike Pichler, Ashley Hesson
Abstract:
Our analysis of I DON'T KNOW (IDK) variability in four sub-corpora of sociolinguistic and
mental health interviews clarifies the context-dependency of discourse-pragmatic
variation, and demonstrates the translational potential of socially responsible, linguistic
research. Systematic and accountable analysis of over 700 tokens of IDK in these data
reveals that while IDK variants, functions and syntactic configurations are differentially
distributed across situation, variety and age, form-function correlations in IDK use are
robust across these parameters. These results demonstrate that discourse-pragmatic
variables such as IDK retain some probabilistic relationships that aid in consistent
interpretation across contexts of use, while other aspects of variability are used in
stylistically distinct ways across e.g. situations and social groups. Moreover, our analysis of
IDK in mental health interviews shows how the variationist analysis of site-particular
communicative practices can uncover language variation patterns that have the potential to
affect practice, research and teaching outside of the sociolinguistics community.

1. What is the focus of the study?

2. What is the result of the study?
3. What is the possible implication of the study?
 B. Read the following conversation and explain how ‘politeness’ is represented in
the language use of the 2 participants.

* dressing: a type of bandage used to cover a wound

* third degree: a level of burn