SOCIOLINGUISTICS- Examines the relationship between language use and the social world, particularly how

language operates within and creates social structures. Studies in sociolinguistics explore the common place

observations that everyone does not speak the language in the same way, that we alter our speech to accommodate

our audience, and that we recognize members and non-members of our communities via speech. Sociolinguistic

studies have looked at speech communities based on social categories such as age, class, ethnicity, gender,

geography, profession and sexual identity. To be sure, such categories are fluid: they exist in context, and rather

than standing independent of speech are generally produced though it. In short, these categories exist largely as a

matter of social perception.

The social aspects of language were in the modern sense first studied by Indian and Japanese linguists in

the 1930s, and also by Gauchat in Switzerland in the early 1900s, but none received much attention in the West

until much later. The study of the social motivation of language change, on the other hand, has its foundation in the

wave model of the late 19th century. Sociolinguistics in the West first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by

linguists such as William Labov in the US and Basil Bernstein in the UK.

William Labov is often regarded as the founder of the study of sociolinguistics. He is especially noted for

introducing the quantitative study of language variation and change, making the sociology of language into a

scientific discipline. Is an American linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist

sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of

the methodology" of sociolinguistics.

Language learners must go beyond grammatical competence if they are to be successful users of a

language. One area of sociolinguistic competence is the use of speech acts. As Cohen (1996:383):

‘ Sorry about that!’ may serve as an adequate apology in some (cultural) situations. In others it

may be perceived as a rude, even arrogant nonapology. In yet other situations, it may not even be intended as an

apology in the first place. Hence, it has become increasingly clear that the teaching of second language words and

phrases isolated from their sociocultural context may lead to the production of linguistic curiousities which do not

achieve their communicative purposes.

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 *When two people speak with one another, there is always more going on than just conveying a message. The

language used by the participants is always influenced by a number of social factors which define the relationship

between the participants. Consider, for example, a professor making a simple request of a student to close a

classroom door to shut off the noise from the corridor. There are a number of ways this request can be made:

a. Politely, in a moderate tone "Could you please close the door?"

b. In a confused manner while shaking his/her head "Why aren't you shutting the door?"

c. Shouting and pointing, "SHUT THE DOOR!"

The most appropriate utterance for the situation would be a. The most inappropriate would be c. This statement

humiliates the student, and provides no effort by the professor to respect him/her. Utterance b is awkward because it

implies that the teacher automatically assumes that the student should know better than to leave the door open when

there is noise in the hallway. The inappropriateness is a social decision tied to the social factors which shape the

relationship between speaker (the professor), and the listener (the student).

MICRO-SOCIOLINGUISTICS- Refers to research with a linguistic slant, often focusing on dialect and

stylistic/register variation.

MACRO-SOCIOLINGUISTICS- Looks at the behaviors of entire speech communities exploring issues such as

why immigrant communities retain their native languages in some social context but not in others, or how social

identity can affect language choice

SPEECH COMMUNITIES- People who speak a certain dialect are called a SPEECH COMMUNITY.

It is a concept in sociolinguistics that describes a more or less discrete group of people who use language in a unique

and mutually accepted way among themselves.

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 The adoption of the concept speech community as a focus of linguistic analysis emerged in the 1960s. This

was due to the pioneering work by William Labov, whose studies of language variation in New York City and

Martha's Vineyard laid the groundwork for sociolinguistics as a social science. His studies showed that not only

were class and profession clearly related to language variation within a speech community (e.g. Martha's Vineyard),

but that socio-economic aspirations and mobility were also of great importance.

Prior to Labov's studies, the closest linguistic field was dialectology, which studies linguistic variation

between different dialects. The primary application of dialectology is in rural communities with little physical

mobility. Thus, there was no framework for describing language variation in cities until the emergence of

sociolinguistics and the concept of speech community, which applies to both rural and urban communities.

Since the 1960s a number of studies have been performed that have furthered our knowledge about how speech

communities work and extended its use. Notable sociolinguists who have worked on speech communities include

William Labov, John J. Gumperz, Lesley Milroy, Robin Lakoff, and Penelope Eckert.

Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon, distinct social groups like

high school students or hip hop fans, or even tight-knit groups like families and friends. Members of speech

communities will often develop slang or jargon to serve the group's special purposes and priorities.

SOCIAL Classes:

The existence of differences in language between social classes can be illustrated by the following table:

Bristolian Dialect (lower class) ... Standard English (higher class)

I ain't done nothing ... I haven't done anything
I done it yesterday ... I did it yesterday
It weren't me that done it ... I didn't do it

Any native speaker of English would immediately be able to guess that speaker 1 was likely of a different

social class than speaker 2, namely from a lower social class, probably from a working class perigee. The

differences in grammar between the two examples of speech is referred to as differences between social class

dialects or sociolects. It is also notable that, at least in England and Australia, the closer to standard English a dialect

gets, the less the lexicon varies by region, and vice-versa.

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LINGUA FRANCA - is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother

tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues.

Lingua franca is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic history or structure of the

language: though pidgins and creoles often function as lingua francas, many lingua francas are neither pidgins nor

creoles. Lingua franca may also refer to the de facto language within a more or less specialized field.

A synonym for lingua franca is “vehicular language.” Whereas a vernacular language is used as a native language

in a single speaker community, a vehicular language goes beyond the boundaries of its original community, and is

used as a second language for communication between communities. For example, English is a vernacular in

England, but is used as a vehicular language (that is, a lingua franca) in the Philippines.

PIDGINISATION- is the process that results from the context of two or more languages in a context where

language needs can or must be satisfied through use of a simplified code.

CREOLISATION- process, speakers (generally of succeeding generations) develop an elaborated code that can

accommodate the full range of life’s functions.

DIALECTOLOGY- The study of DIALECTS, that is, of variant features within a language, their history,

differences of form and meaning, interrelationships, distribution, and, more broadly, their spoken as distinct from

their literary forms. The discipline recognizes all variations within the bounds of any given language; it classifies

and interprets them according to historical origins, principles of development, characteristic features, areal

distribution, and social correlates. The scientific study of dialects dates from the mid-19c, when philologists using

data preserved in texts began to work out the historical or diachronic development of the Indo-European languages.

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Their interest was etymological and systematic. Scientific phonetics and the principle that sound change was not

erratic but followed discoverable rules or laws, were a basic part of the growth of dialectology. Living dialects were

seen to furnish a huge treasury of living data on phonology, lexicology, and other features of language that written

texts could not furnish. The linguist's task was to gather, analyze, and interpret this living body of language

In traditional dialectology the collection of data is the primary requirement. This entails fieldwork, the more

detailed and massive the better, within the limits of practicability, and its presentation in the form of dictionaries,

grammars, atlases, and monographs. This method Francis calls ‘item-centered’, emphasizing the individual datum

and paying little attention to underlying system. In structural dialectology, the investigator seeks to find both the

structure or system by which a dialect holds together or achieves synchronic identity and how it is changed by the

introduction of any new feature. Since any change in the system affects every feature of it, it becomes in effect a

different system, whose parts are, however, diachronically connected. There is a paradoxical element here which is

partly due to difficulties of definition. In generative dialectology, the investigator holds that the language exists

within the speaker as a competence which is never fully realized in performance. This competence, lying beneath

actual language as it is produced (and as it is recorded by traditional dialectologists), works by a series of rules

which transform it into actual speech. Thus, it is the dialectologist's task to find a basic system whose rules produce

as economically as possible the surface structure of actual dialect. The complexities or variations within a language

(its dialectal variants) may thus be traced back to a putative source form from which in the course of time they could

by speciation have developed.

DIALECT- A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.

The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as

social class.

Dialects are groups of idiolects with a common core of similarities in pronunciation, grammar, and

vocabulary. Dialects exist as a continuum in which adjacent dialects are mutually intelligible, yet with increasing

isolation between noncontiguous dialects, differences may accumulate to the point of mutual unintelligibility. For

example, in the Dutch-German speech community there is a continuous area of intelligibility from Flanders to

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Schleswig and to Styria, but with Flemish and Styrian dialects mutually unintelligible. Adjacent dialects usually

differ more in pronunciation than in grammar or vocabulary. When a dialect is spoken by a large group of speakers

of a language, it often acquires prestige, which leads to the development of a standard language. Some countries

have an official standard, such as that promoted by the French Academy.

The methods of modern linguistic geography began in late 19th-century Europe with the use of informants

rather than texts, and resulted in the first linguistic atlases of France, by Jules Gilliéron, and of Germany, by Georg

Wenker. Those techniques were refined in the United States in the preparation of the Linguistic Atlas of the United

States (Hans Kurath et al., ed.) and its derivative works. In recent years linguists have become increasingly

interested in social dialects, such as the languages of social groups within an urban population and the languages of

specific occupations (farmers, dockworkers, coal miners, government workers) or lifestyles (beatniks, drug users,

teenagers, feminists). In the United States much work has been done in the area of black English, the common

dialect of many African Americans.

A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where

a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect (although in

common usage, "dialect" and "accent" are usually synonymous).

LANGUAGE- A body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community

or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition.

It is a universal characteristic of the human species. Nothing is known of its origin, although scientists

have identified a gene that clearly contributes to the human ability to use language. Scientists generally hold that it

has been so long in use that the length of time writing is known to have existed (7,900 years at most) is short by

comparison. Just as languages spoken now by peoples of the simplest cultures are as subtle and as intricate as those

of the peoples of more complex civilizations, similarly the forms of languages known (or hypothetically

reconstructed) from the earliest records show no trace of being more "primitive" than their modern forms.

Because language is a cultural system, individual languages may classify objects and ideas in completely

different fashions. For example, the sex or age of the speaker may determine the use of certain grammatical forms or

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avoidance of taboo words. Many languages divide the color spectrum into completely different and unequal units of

color. Terms of address may vary according to the age, sex, and status of speaker and hearer. Linguists also

distinguish between registers, i.e., activities (such as a religious service or an athletic contest) with a characteristic

vocabulary and level of diction.

POLITENESS- Politeness in speech is described in terms of positive and negative face. Positive face refers to one's

desire to be liked and admired, while negative face refers to one's wish to remain autonomous and not to suffer

imposition. In everyday conversation, there are ways to go about getting the things we want. When we are with a

group of friends, we can say to them, "Go get me that plate!", or "Shut-up!" However, when we are surrounded by a

group of adults at a formal function, in which our parents are attending, we must say, "Could you please pass me

that plate, if you don't mind?" and "I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I am not able to hear the speaker in the

front of the room." In different social situations, we are obligated to adjust our use of words to fit the occasion. It

would seem socially unacceptable if the phrases above were reversed.

EX. What would you do if you saw a cup of pens on your teacher's desk, and you wanted to use one,

would you?

a. say, "Ooh, I want to use one of those!"

b. say, "So, is it O.K. if I use one of those pens?"

c. say, "I'm sorry to bother you but, I just wanted to ask you if I could use one of those pens?"

d. Indirectly say, "Hmm, I sure could use a blue pen right now."

POLITENESS AND GENDER- Men and women, on average, tend to use slightly different language styles. These

differences tend to be quantitative rather than qualitative. That is, to say that women make more minimal responses

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(see below) than men is akin to saying that men are taller than women (i.e., men are on average taller than women,

but some women are taller than some men).

- From Nancy Bonvillain's "Language, Culture, and Communication" she notes that, "women typically

use more polite speech than do men, characterized by a high frequency of honorific (showing respect for the person

to whom you are talking to, formal stylistic markers), and softening devices such as hedges and questions."

In Frank and Anshen's "Language and the Sexes", they note that boys, "are permitted, even encouraged, to

talk rough, cultivate a deep "masculine" voice and, if they violate the norms of correct usage or of polite speech,

well "boys will be boys," although, peculiarly, it is much less common that "girls will be girls" Fortunately, these

roles are becoming more of a stereotype and less of a reality.

GENDER SPEECH ISSUES: DO MEN AND WOMEN SPEAK DIFERENTLY?

WHO TALKS MORE, MEN OR WOMEN?

Sociolinguists try to make the connection between our society and our language in a way that suggests that

women talk less because it has not always been as culturally acceptable as it has been for men. Men have tended to

take on a more dominant role not only in the household, but in the business world. This ever-changing concept is

becoming le ss applicable in our society, however, the trend is still prominent in some societies across the world. It

is more acceptable for a man to be talkative, carry on long conversation, or a give a long wordy speech, however it is

less acceptable for a women to do so. It has been more of a historical trend for men have more rights to talk.

However , it is common for men to be more silent in situations that require them to express emotion. Since

childhood, they have been told to "keep their cool" and "remain calm, be a man."

Do Men and Women Really Speak Differently?

Can you tell who, most likely, is speaking?

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"Wow what a beautiful home!”

"That outfit looks lovely on you!"

"Nice coat."

"Where can I find a pair of shoes like that, I like them."

"This is a super cool shirt, I love it."

"This shirt is cool."

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Carter, R. and Nunan, D. (2001) The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Cambridge: CUP

Hudson G. (2000), Essential Introductory Linguistics. Blackwell

Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena. In Goody, Esther
(ed) Questions and Politeness pp 56-289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tannen, D. (1991). You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. London: Virago.

Trask, R. L. (1997). A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. London: Arnold. pp. 124. ISBN 0-
340-65266-7.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language(4th ed ). ( 2009). Houghton Mifflin Company