SOCIOLINGUISTICS

• Sociolinguistics


  The study of language and how it is affected by region, social class, relationship, and even gender – in other words, how language varies from person to person and culture to culture
• Variance due to region


  • According to sociolinguistics, the way people speak has very much to do with where they were raised
• Variance due to social class


  • Sociolinguists cite differences in social class as contributing to language variation
  • Children from higher classes tend to enunciate their words, specifically the ends of words, more than children from lower classes
• Variance due to relationships


  • The use of terms of address vary depending on the relationship between the speakers
  • When people know each other very well and feel equal to one another, they use each other's first names
• Roger Brown and Marguerite Ford: 'Explored the use of surnames within relationships'