Page 191 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 13: Branches in Linguistics: Socio-Linguistics

• Sociolinguistics is the descriptive studyof the effect of any and all aspects of society, including Notes
cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way langage is used, and the effects of language
use on society. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of
sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the latter’s focus is on the
language’s effect on the society. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with
pragmatics. It is historically closely related to linguistics anthropology and the distinction
between the two fields has even been questioned recently.
• It also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain social variables,
e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc., and how creation and
adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social or socioeconomic classes. As
the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social
classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies.
• Studies in the field of sociolinguistics typically take a sample population and interview them,
assessing the realisation of certain sociolinguistic variables.

• A commonly studied source of variation is regional dialects. Dialectology studies variations in
language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. Sociolinguists
concerned with grammatical and phonological features that correspond to regional areas are
often called dialectologists.

• There are several different types of age-based variation one may see with in a population. They
are: vernacular of a subgroup with membership typically characterized by a specific age range,
age-graded variation, and indications of linguistic change in progress.
• Variation may also be associated with 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 use a particular speaking style more than men do 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).
• Sociolinguistics is a quickly developing branchof linguistics which investigates the individual
and social variation of language. Just as regional variation of language can give a lot of
information about the place the speaker is from, social variation tells about the roles fulfilled by
a given speaker within one community, or country. Sociolinguistics is a practical scientific
discipline researching the language that is actually used either by native speakers, or foreigners,
in order to formulate theories about language change.
• There are numerous factors influencing the way people speak which are investigated by
sociolinguistics:
(i) Social class: the position of the speaker in the society, measured by the levelof education,
parental background, profession and their effect on syntax and lexis used by the speaker;
(ii) Social context: the register of the language used depending on changing situations, formal
language in formal meetings and informal during meetings with friends for examples;
(iii) Geographical origins: slight differences in pronunciation between speakers that point at
the geographical region which the speaker come from;
(iv) Ethnicity: differences between the use of a given language by its native speakers and other
ethnic groups;

(v) Nationality: clearly visible in the case of the English language: British English differs from
American English, or Canadian English;

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