Sociolinguists study the relationship between language and society, examining why we speak differently in different social contexts and identifying the social functions of language and the ways it is used to convey social meaning.
One utterance can simultaneously convey both information and express feelings.
Sociolinguists are also interested in the different types of linguisticvariation used to express and reflect social factors, including vocabulary, sounds, word-structure, and grammar.
Sociolinguists use the term variety to refer to any set of linguistic forms which patterns according to social factors.
The ethnography of speaking approach is particularly valuable in highlighting the unnoticed ‘rules’ that operate in any interaction.
Speech acts such as directives and requests, compliments, refusals and apologies vary cross-culturally.
Brown and Levinson identified three social factors which they suggested qualified as universal influences on linguistically polite behaviour: the social distance/solidarity dimension, the status dimension, and the ranking of the imposition.
Early sociolinguists and anthropological linguists were typically outsiders in the cultures they researched and described, which had some advantages since it was often easier to identify ways of speaking and rules of interaction that contrasted with those they were familiar with.
The ethnography of speaking (also known as the ethnography of communication since it embraces features of non-verbal communication too) is an approach to analysing language which has been designed to heighten awareness of culture-bound assumptions.
Emblematic switching or tag switching is a type of code-switching where a linguistic tag in the other language serves as an ethnic identity marker.
Caste dialects are characterised by linguistic differences reflecting very clear-cut social or caste divisions.
Accent/dialect
A: Pronounciation alone
D: pronounctiation,vocabulary, grammar
Regional- social dialect
Rd: pronounciation,vocabulary and grammar according to a geographical area
sd: pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar. According to the social group of the speaker
language vary
overtime,physical space, socially
new englishes
varieties develop in post-colonial societies
colonial power disappear but the legacy remains
analogical creation
speaker prefer regular patterns over patterns with many exceptions
register
a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context, situation, occupation, topical
regligeous,legal,linguistic register
dialecto mexicano/puertoriqueño
mexicano: convierte hiatos en diptongos: kuete
portoriqueño_ neutraliza r,l
develop a language
code the language
produce a dictionary
words available for teaching science
embedded language
a programming language that is designed to be used inside another host language or environment
provides the grammatical structure of the language
matrix's language
use for the majority of sentence content
lexical content of the sentence
creoles and pidgind
creoles: develop from pidgins. primarly language of a community. complex grammar
pidgins: means of communication between speakers of different languages
linguistic context
co-text
surrounding words
understanding meaning in language interaction
Domain of language use
code choice in different speech communities
code or codes selected in different situations
Social factors
The participants:
(a) who is speaking and
(b) who are they speaking to ?
2. The setting or social context of the interaction: where are they speaking?
3. The topic: what is being talked about?
4. The function : why are they speaking?
Social dimensions
1.A social distance scale concerned with participant relationships.
2. A status scale concerned with participant relationships.
3. A formality scale relating to the setting or type of interaction.
4. Two functional scales relating to the purposes or topic of interaction
Linguistic repertoire refers to the various languages and language varieties used in different contexts.
"domains of language use" refers to the typical contexts or situations in which particular languages or language varieties are characteristically used within a multilingual speech community.
Lexical Borrowing:
Involves using a single word (usually a noun) from another language when the speaker lacks the vocabulary in the language they are speaking
Motivated by lexical need rather than a choice between codes
The "equivalence constraint" suggests switches only occur at points where the grammars of the two languages match (e.g. adjective-noun order)
The "matrix language frame" model proposes that one language (the matrix) provides the morphosyntactic frame, while the other (embedded) provides content words.
Code-switching Attitudes
Positive-multilingual communities
Negative- monolingual
When people switch from one code to another for reasons which can be clearly identified, it is
sometimes called situational switching
Fused lect
Rapid swirching
it is a sociolinguistic variety
code meshing
codes are integrated in a variety
Single utterance
intra-sentential switching
switches only occur within sentences
inter-sentential switching
people who are less profi cient will tend to switch
at sentence boundaries or use only short fi xed phrases or tags
Language shift refers to the gradual process by which one language displaces another as the primary means of communication within a community.
ethnolinguistic vitality’.
the likelihood that a language will be maintained
status,size of population, institutional support
linguistic landscape
how languages are visually displayed and hierarchized in multilingual societies