Sociolinguistics

• Intertwining of linguistics and social

facts
• Taking care of how social facts
influence language and how
language influence social life.
 Focus of the mapping

• Variation at a time of study (synchronic)

• Variation over time (diachronic)

this lead to…..

 Subject of enquiry
Micro Sociolinguistics Macro Sociolinguistics
• Conversation • Sociology of Language
• Speech acts • Dialectology
• Stylistic • Bilingualism
• Code • Pidgins and Creole
• Dialect • Language Planning
• Discourse • Folklore and Literacy
 background

• is out of autonomous field (historical and

descriptive)
• starts taking a look at variation in language
(deny the universalities of language)
• distinguishes from other interdisciplinary field
– psycholinguistics, neuro-linguistics, applied
linguistics.
 Final words (Labov, 1989)
Language is not a property of the individual,
but of the community. Any description of a
language must take the speech community as
its object if it is to do justice to the elegance
and regularity of linguistics structure
 Speech community
• A set of people who have something in
common linguistically.
• Interactions by means of speech.
• A given range of variety and rules for using
them.
• A given range of attitudes to varieties and
items.
 Dialect
• Dialect vs language
• Grouping form of utterances
• Differences in : grammatical usages
vocabulary
pronunciation
• Regional dialect
• Social dialect
• Chronological dialect
 Regional Dialect
• Variations due to regional areas
• mutual intelligibility
• Dialect continuum *_____*______*_____*
• Intra-national variations
- intra language
- overlap within the dialects
• Intra continental variation
- social and political influence
 Social Dialect
• Accents vs dialects
• Cover others but area:
 standard language vs vernaculars
- based on prestige
(selection, codification, elaborate function,
acceptance)
- prescriptively taught
- based on size
(though the standard may have less speakers)
 social caste
e.g. Javanese, Indian language
 social class
being rich and poor --- somehow related with
standard language
e.g. the /h/ dropping; /r/ dropping; /in/ vs /ing/
 though it may have arbitrary occurence
 Dialect and diglossia
• Diglossia : language variety with different
social status in each usage; H and L status
–1 language with two varieties
–2 different languages
Chronological dialect

• Refers more on historical linguistics

• Shows the progress of changes

e.g. Bahasa indonesia has a rapid changes.

Speech which reflects the context
Things to consider:
1.The influence of addressee on the speaker’s
language.
2.The features of speech style in a range of
context
3.Functional demands that shape distinctive
style –- register
• Social distance/solidarity
- less familiar, more standard use
• Age
- baby talk, simpler range of vocab. and less
complex grammar (to define child, adult,
elderly)
• Social background of the addressee
- higher class, more standard/formal use
• A person’s speech converges toward the
speech of the addressee (style changes)
- e.g by simplifying language when the
addressee is a child
• Considered as polite speech strategy
• Convergence vs divergence
- Arabic communicate the oil in Arabic not to
accommodate westerners
• Over convergence may be seen as making fun
of others
• Accent accommodation may mislead the
‘true’ identity
• Deliberate divergence may show antagonistic
or uncooperative
To differ the colloquial style and the formal one
• Formal context and social roles
- e.g. court vs home
• The existence of audiences – in obtaining a more casual
style
- e.g in case of interviewer or observer
• Social class
- higher social class fewer use of colloquial style
- to shift style, people adopt the linguistics features of
different group (in general the lower shift the style
more , as they may use hypercorrection as well)
• Honorific language
• is occupational style
• associated with particular groups of people or
sometimes specific situation of use
• The specific features are not arbitrary mostly,
but it is more motivated by demands
• E.g. sport announcer talk (p.247)
- shows syntactic reduction, syntactic inversion,
has routines and formulas