LING 6301

FUNDAMENTALS OF
SOCIOLINGUISTIC THEORY
WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS
 Overview of Language
 Language is the most powerful representations of social
behaviour.
 
 It is used by human beings to convey social messages about
their identity.
 
 Language as a social activity focuses on discovering the
specific patterns or social rules for conducting conversation
and discourse.
 Overview of Language
Society can be defined as any group of people drawn together
for a certain purpose or for different purposes.

Language is deemed as a communal possession so that

members of a particular society use language for
communication.
 
When two or more people communicate with each other in
speech, the system of communication they employ is termed a
linguistic code
 What is Sociolinguistics?
Researchers who examine the role of language and society
have become more and more interested in applying the results
of their studies to the broadly based social, educational, and
political problems that generally gave rise to their
sociolinguistic themes.
Sociolinguistics offers a unique opportunity
to bring together theory, description, and
application in the study of language.
 
  

Sociolinguistics examines how people

manage their language in relation to their
cultural backgrounds and their goals of
interaction.
 
Sociolinguistics attempts to gain an understanding
of the values and viewpoints of a community in
order to explain the language behaviours and
attitudes of its members
Sociolinguistics examines the role of language in
society based on the fundamental notion that
language use symbolically represents core
dimensions of social behaviour and human
interaction.
 
There is a correlation between language and
society and Sociolinguistic is concerned with
language as a social and cultural phenomenon.
 
 DEFINITION
 

Sociolinguistics then 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
especially social physiology, anthropology, human
geography and sociology
(Peter Trudgill).
 

Sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the

relationships between language and society with the
goal being a better understanding of the structure of
language and how language functions in
communication
(Ronald Wardhaugh).
 
 DEFINITION
Sociolinguistics is the study of language in
relation to society- we study language and
society in order to find out as much as we can
about what kind of thing language is.
(R. A. Hudson).
 
 DEFINITION
linguists study the relationship between language and society.
are interested in explaining why we speak differently in different
l context, and they are concerned with identifying the social
ons of language and the ways it is used to convey social
ing. Examining the way people use language in different social
xts provides a wealth of information about the way the language
s, as well as about the social relationships in the community.
t Holmes)
 DEFINITION 
Micro- sociolinguistics investigates how social structure
influences the way people talk and how language varieties and
patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as class, sex,
and age. Macro-sociolinguistics, on the other hand, studies what
societies do with their language, this is, attitudes and attachments
that account for the functional distribution of speech forms in
society, language shift, maintenance, and replacement,
delimitation and interaction of speech communities.
(Florian Coulmas).
 
 CLASS ACTIVITY
1a. Which definition of sociolinguistics do you find
most appropriate?
1b. Give reasons for your answer.
2a.Which definition of sociolinguistics do you find least
appropriate?
2b.Give reasons for your answer.