Transcript ELL217 Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics
Introducing
Sociolinguistics
Dr. Emma Moore
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Contents
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What is sociolinguistics?
Why study sociolinguistics?
What is the scope of sociolinguistics?
What is Sociolinguistics?
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What the academics say…
“We can define
sociolinguistics as the
study of language in
relation to society.”
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Hudson
(1996: 1)
What is Sociolinguistics?
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What the academics say…
“Sociolinguistics… is that part
of linguistics which is
concerned with language as a
social and cultural
phenomenon. It investigates
the field of language and
society and has close
connections with the social
sciences…”
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Trudgill
(2004:
21)
What is Sociolinguistics?
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What the academics say…
The sociolinguist’s aim is to
move towards a theory which
provides a motivated account
of the way language is used
in a community, and of the
choices people make when
they use language
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Holmes
(1992: 16)
What is Sociolinguistics?
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No set definition or single approach, but a set
of reoccurring themes
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Combining linguistic AND social theory
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Drawing upon our knowledge of the social world to
better understand language
What is Sociolinguistics?
Language
Society
Attitudes
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What is Sociolinguistics?
Language
Setting:
formal,
casual…
Attitudes:
religious,
gender,
education…
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Politics:
capitalist,
communist,
sexist,
democratic,
fascist…
Power:
rights,
norms,
judgements
History: war,
change,events
Why did sociolinguistics emerge?
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The legacy of formal
linguistics
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Constructs models of the
linguistic system
Phonetics and phonology,
syntax, semantics
Interested in humans’
underlying knowledge of
language structure
Isolating language structure
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Chomsky’s competence/performance
distinction
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Competence = underlying knowledge of language
structure
Performance = language output which is affected
by language-external conditions
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
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Something that makes sociolinguists
cross…
“Linguistic theory is concerned primarily
with an ideal speaker-listener, in a
completely homogenous speechcommunity, who knows its language
perfectly and is unaffected by such
grammatically irrelevant conditions as
memory limitations, distractions, shifts of
attention and interest, and errors (random
or characteristic) in applying his knowledge
of the language in actual performance. This
seems to me to have been the positions of
the founders of modern general linguistics,
and no cogent reason for modifying it has
been offered” (Chomsky 1965).
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Let’s think about that…
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Do ALL speakers share the same underlying
knowledge of language?
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How do we know?
Is language solely a cognitive process?
What do we use language to do?
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Communication AND achievement of social
goals
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Language without social knowledge = “a social
monster” (Hymes 1974: 75)
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Attitudes
Stances
Judgements
How do we know what to say?
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Not just important to know the linguistic rules,
but the social rules too
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Our sociolinguistic knowledge is structured…
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When is it appropriate to speak?
Who is able to speak?
Which speech forms are affective in getting what
you want done?
Communicative competence (Hymes 1971)
Exercise
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You want someone to pass you a copy of the
bus timetable. How would you ask:
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a friend?
someone at the bus stop?
So, what do sociolinguists want to do?
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Provide “a socially realistic linguistics”
To do this we must:
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Represent all speakers
Not rely upon speaker intuition
Be descriptive not prescriptive
This allows us to learn more about language
Example of a socially-realistic
linguistics
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Developing the work of dialectologists
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To represent all sorts of social identities, social groups and
individuals
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Region…
+ social class
+ age
+ gender
+ social group
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How do linguistic features pattern according social
groupings?
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Also known as: Variationist sociolinguistics or quantitative
sociolinguistics
Anything else?
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Solve social problems involving language
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To do this, we must:
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Think about the role of power in language
Look to language for evidence of social inequality
Examine social policy with respect to language
This allows us to learn more about society
Examples of policy implications…
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Sexism/racism in language
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Dialect and education research and inequality
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Is it harder for nonstandard children to achieve academic
success?
Language policy and planning affects social policy
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Does our language render women invisible
Multilingualism; Standardisation; Education; Globalisation
The structure of language variation
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Variation based on social factors is not FREE
VARIATION
Free Variation:
Whether or not one
form or another
form is used is
linguistically
insignificant
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She were
a good
laugh
She was a
good laugh
Sociolinguists believe in structured
heterogeneity
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Social constraints
Linguistic constraints
Social:
Social class
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She were a
good laugh
Linguistic:
Type of pronoun?
Social constraints on language
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We learn to speak in
different ways because
of our place in society
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Social class
Gender
Ethnicity
Age
Region of origin
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Language is indexical:
It reflects our social
memberships
It also helps to
construct and define
our social memberships
Are we all experts?
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We all have stories about our experience of
language and its interaction with society
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Sociolinguistics: a target for disparagement?
Sociolinguistics: as scientific and rigorous as
any other academic field
Summing Up…
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Sociolinguistics is interdisciplinary
It emerged from a particular stance towards
formal linguistics
We’ll focus on the branch of sociolinguistics
that aims to provide a socially-realistic
linguistics
References and Additional Reading
Hudson, R.A. (1996) Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
Meyerhoff, Miriam (2006) Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh:
EUP.
Trudgill (2000) Sociolinguistics, Fourth edition. London: Penguin
books.
Holmes, Janet (1992) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London:
Longman.
Hymes, Dell (1971) On Communicative Competence. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hymes, Dell (1974) Foundations in Sociolinguistics. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Required Reading: Meyerhoff (2006: Chapter 1)
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