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SOCIOLINGUISTICS

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Saved by Sari Mustika
on January 13, 2009 at 11:26:52 pm
 

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

 

Sociolinguistics is one of applied linguistic study. The study of sociolinguistics focuses on the language variations that emerge in the society. 

Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used.

Sociolinguistics divided into two:

  1. Micro-sociolinguistics

The study of language in relation to society deals with small group of people in certain community. Example: meeting.

  1. macro-sociolinguistics

The study of language related to how the society treats the language.  

 

 

Fundamental Concepts in Sociolinguistics

1. Speech Community

Speech community 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.

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.

2. High prestige and low prestige varieties

Crucial to sociolinguistic analysis is the concept of prestige; certain speech habits are assigned a positive or a negative value which is then applied to the speaker. This can operate on many levels.

3. Social network

Understanding language in society means that one also has to understand the social networks in which language is embedded. A social network is another way of describing a particular speech community in terms of relations between individual members in a community. A network could be loose or tight depending on how members interact with each other (Wardhaugh, 2002:126-127).

4. Internal vs. external language

In Chomskian linguistics, a distinction is drawn between I-language (internal language) and E-language (external language). In this context, internal language applies to the study of syntax and semantics in language on the abstract level; as mentally represented knowledge in a native speaker. External language applies to language in social contexts, i.e. behavioral habits shared by a community.

 

 

LANGUAGE, DIALECT, AND VARIETIES

Language and dialect is an ambiguous term (Hougen: 1966). Common people see a dialect as non prestigious variety of language. Scholars see language and dialect as confusing term.

Hougen (1966) stated a dialect is language that is excluded for polite society.

  1. Criteria of language:
  2. Standardization
  3. Vitality: living community of speakers
  4. Historicity: sense of identity; social, political, religious, ethnicities.
  5. Autonomy: different from other language.
  6. Reduction: a particular variety maybe regarded as a sub-variety rather than as an independent entity. Ex: Pidgin.
  7. Mixture: purity
  8. De Facto norms: Good speaker Vs Poor speaker.

Dialect is subordinate variety of language.

 

 

VERNACULAR LANGUAGE

Vernacular : 1st language I multilingual community, especially informal function.

Components of vernacular:

  1. Uncodified / unstandardized variety
  2. The way is acquired, example at home
  3. Circumscribed functions

Vernacular is the most colloquial variety in a person’s linguistics repertoire. It used for everyday interact.

LINGUA FRANCA

Lingua francas is language of wider community. Lingua Franca is a language used for communication between 2 people whom the 1st language is different.

 

 

PIDGIN

A pidgin is a language having no native speaker. A pidgin develops as a means of communication between people who do not have a common language.

Pidgin is two groups with different language communicating in a situation where there is also a third dominant language.

 

 

CREOLE

It is a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers. Creoles arise when Pidgin become mother tongues.(Aitchison:1994)

The process of pidginization (simplification of language) through:

  1. Reduction in morphology
  2. Reduction in syntax
  3. Reduction in pronounciation
  4. Extensive borrowing of words from local mother-tongue.

 The process of creolization:

  1. Expansion of morphology and syntax
  2. Regularization of the phonology
  3. Increase function
  4. Increase vocabulary

Example:

  • Hawaian pidgin English Superstrate
  • Hawaian creole English substrate

 

 

DIGLOSSIA

It is a functional distribution of more than one language variety in society. (Fishman)

High and low are varieties of the same language are Diglossia base on Fergusson.

Diglossm

A diglossic situation exists when a society has two distinct codes which show clear functional separation.

A situation in which there is High variety and Law variety and each has its own functions. Example: Switzerland use standard German as High language and Swiss German as Low language.

 

 

BILINGUALISM AND MULTILINGUALISM

Bilingualism is an individual’s ability to use more than one language variety. Individual bilingualism use of more that one languages or competence in more that one languages (Clyne:1997). Multilingualism is an individual’s ability to use many languages.

Mother Togue

  1. Language passed on by an individual’s mother
  2. Language known best
  3. Language of the heart

Researcher call mother tongue as first language (L1). Meanwhile second language (L2) is language learned after one’s first either out of necessity or by personal choice, to fulfill some special purpose; individual may or may not speak it as well as first language.

Triglossia

The societies have two high languages and one low language. Example: Malaysia have two High languages such as Melayu and English, and one low language, it is Low Malay.

 

ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION

Ethnography of communication is related to language. It was introduced by Dell Hymes (ethnography of speaking). It studied base on speech community.

Speech community is a group of people that tied with at least one language / variety language and they also have norms.

v     Speech community consists of:

  1. Ways of speaking; it is tied by norm. It is the most general or primitive term.
  2. Speech situation; it is not related with speech but it’s a kind of umbrella. Many situations associated with or marked by the absence of speech. Example: Javanese wedding party: ceremonies, meal, etc.
  3. Speech event; it is activities or aspect of activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech. Example: In Javanese wedding party. There is speech event hat related to language, such as atur pambagyo and ular-ular.
  4. Speech act; it is not related to sentence and grammatical level but it implicates both linguistics and social norms. Example: ular-ular in Javanese wedding party is giving advice to the couple, joke and even singing traditional songs.

They are having close relationship.

Component of Speech: SPEAKING

  1. Setting and Scene: place or location and psychological setting
  2. Participant: speaker-listener and addressee-addressor
  3. Ends: Outcomes and goal (particular occasion)
  4. Act: form and content (what is said)
  5. Key: tone and manner (serious, sarcastic, etc)
  6. Instrumentalities: choice of channel (oral, written)
  7. Norms: interaction and interpretation
  8. Genres: Types of Utterances ( poems, proverbs, prayers, etc)

 

 

 

 

Sosiolinguistics is the study of inter relationships of language and social structure, linguistics variation and attitudes toward language. It is any set of linguistics form which pattern according to social factors. For example, the way of how to speak of student to lecturer is different from the way how the speak of student to beggar despite using the same language. It can also be in intonation/choosing the word.

The social factors are : linguistic style, dialect and language. They are called CODE.

There two kinds of sociolinguistics :

  1. Micro

It is called ethnography of communication. It studies language in relation to society. For example : language used in a meeting.

  1. Macro

It is called sociology of language. It studies society in relation to language. For example :How Surakartan society behaving Javanese

 

 

 

  • Sociolinguistic is the study of language in relation to its sociocultural. 
  •   In the Sociolinguistic, we learn both about language and about ourselves, the people who use it,  who live with it, and who live in it. Sociolinguistics, then, as the name implies, is the study of language in human society.
  • Major aspect of sociolinguistic referred to as Language Variation.    
  1. internal variation: the languages having different ways of showing the same meaning.  
  2. language variety :  general term that may be used at a number of levels.
  3. dialect : a variety of  a language spoken by a group of people, that distinguish it from other varieties of the same language.    
  •  idiolect : the speech variety of an individual speaker.

 

     Code Switching

     Code-switching is a term in linguistics to using more than one language or variety in conversation. code switching can occur between sentences(intersential) or within a single sentence (intrasential).

     Code switching can be distinguishedfrom other lanfuage contact phenomena such as loan translation, borrowing, pidgins and creoles, and transfer or interferences.

     There are different prespective on code switching. a major approach in sociolinguistics focuses on the social motivation for switching, a line of inquiry concentrating both on immediate discourse factors such as  lexical need and the topic and setting of the discussion, and on more distant factors such as speaker of group identiyi, and relation ship building. A second perspective primaly concerns syntatic constrains on switching. this is a line of inquiry that has postulated grammatical rules and specific syntatic boundaries for where a switch may occur.

     Code switching can be related to and indicated of group membership in particular types of bilingual speech comunities, such that the regularities of the alternating use of two or more languages within one conversation may vary to a considerable degree betwqeen speech comunities.

 

Fundamental Concepts in Sociolinguistics

Speech Community

     Speech community is a concepts in sociolinguistics that describes a more or less discrete group of people who use language in a unique and mutually accepted way among themselves.

     Speech comunities can be members of a profession with a specialize jargon, distinct social groups like high school students or hip hop fans. Member of speech communities will often develope slang or jargon to serve the group's special purposes and priorities.

     A speech community is also the group of people who speek the dialogue. What makes a particular group of people speak a particular dialect has to do with a number of factor which may play a more or less significant role in any particular case.

 

 

 

 

 

     SOCIOLINGUISTIC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Sociolinguistic is concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is used
  • Sociolinguist study the relationship between language and society. They are interested in explaining why we speak differently in the different social context, and they are concerned with identifying the social function of language and the ways it is used to convey social meaning.

Sociolinguists are also interested in the different types of linguistic variation used to express and reflect social factors.

Linguistic variation occurs at other levels of linguistic analysis too : sounds, word-structure ( or morphology ), and grammar ( or syntax ) as well as vocabulary.

The way people talk is influenced by the social context in which they are talking. It matters who can hear us, the relationship between the people in the particular situation, where we are talking and how the speaker feels about the person addressed ( how we are feeling ).

In any situation linguistic choices will generally reflect the influence at one or more of the following components:

1.The participants : who is speaking and 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 ?

DIGLOSSIA AND POLYGLOSSIA

Diglossia is a characteristic of speech communities rather than individual. Individuals may be bilingual. Societies or communities are diglossic. In other words, the term diglossia describes societal or institutionalized bilingualism, where two varieties are require to cover all the community’s domains

In the narrow and original sense of the term. Diglossia has three crucial features or criteria:

1.Two distinct varieties of the same language are used in the community, with one regarded as a high ( or H ) variety and the other a low ( or L ).

2.Each variety is used for quite distinct function; H and L complement each other

3.No one uses the H variety in everyday conversation.

Polyglossia : the term polyglossia has been used for situations like this where a community regularly uses more than two languages. 

CODE-SWITCHING OR CODE-MIXING

The switch is simply interjection, a tag, or a sentence filler in the other language which serves as an ethnic identity marker. Switches motivated by the identity and relationship between participants often express a move along the solidarity / social distance dimension, such as the status relationship between people or the formality of their interaction.

Code-mixing suggest the speaker is mixing up codes indiscriminately or perhaps because of incompetence, whereas the switches are very well motivated in relation to he symbolic or social meaning of the two codes. 

This kind of rapid switching is itself a specific sociolinguistic variety. By switching between two or more codes, the speakers convey affective meaning as well as information.

VERNACULAR LANGUAGES

It is generally refers to a language which has not been stanrdardised and which does not have official status.

Vernaculars are usually the first languages learned by people in multilingual communities, and they are often used for a relatively narrow range of informal functions. 

There are three components of the meaning of the term vernacular, then. The most basic refers to the fact that vernacular is an uncondifed or unstandardised variety. The second refers to the way it is acquired – in the home, as a first variety. The second refers to the fact that it is used for relatively circumscribed fungtions.

In a multilingual community this variety will often be an unstandardised ethnic or tribal language. The vernacular is a variety used for communication in the home and with close friend. It is the language of solidarity between people from the same ethnic group. The term ‘vernicular’ is used with this meaning by sociolinguists studying social dialects.  

STANDARD LANGUAGES

A standard variety is generally one which is written, and which has undergone some degree of regularisation or codification (for example, in a grammar and a dictionary); it is recognized as a prestigious variety or code by community , and it is used for high functions alongside a diversity of low varieties.

The development of standard English illustrates the three essential criteria which characterize a standard : it was influential or prestigious variety, it was codified and stabilized, and it served high function in that is was used for communication at Court, for literature and for administration.

LINGUA FRANCAS

A lingua franca is a language used for communication between people whose first language differ..

Lingua francas often developed initially as trade language – illustrating again the influence of economic factors on language change.

From a linguistic and sociolinguistic point of view, the most interesting lingua francas in many respects are Pidgin and Creole languages.

     Pidgin

A pidgin is a language which has no native speakers.

Pidgins develops as a means of communication between people who do not have a common language. So a Pidgin is no-one’s native language. Pidgins seems particularly likely to arise when two groups with different languages are communicating in a situation where there is also third dominant language.

Pidgin languages are created from combined efforts of people who speak different languages. Both sides generally contribute to the sounds, the vocabulary, and the grammatical features, and some additional features may emerge which are unique to the new variety.

To sum up, a pidgin language has three identifying characteristic:

1.It is used in restricted domains and function

2.It has a simplified structure compared to the source languags

3.It generally has low prestige and attracts negative attitudes especially from outsiders

 

The syntax of Pidgins can be quite unlike the languages from which terms were borrowed and modified, as can be seen in this example from an earlier stage of Tok PisiTn:

Baimbai                          hed                  bilongyu          i-arrait                       gain

(by and by)                   (head)             (belong you)   (he-alright)                (again)

‘Your head will soon get well again’

 

     Creole

A creole is a pidgin which has acquired native speaker.

A Creole is a pidgin which has expanded in structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions required of a first language.

Vernacular languages contrast with standardized varieties predominantly on the status and formality dimensions. Vernaculars are generally low status varieties used to express solidarity or identity in informal contexts. Standard dialects are prestigious varieties which may be used in more formal situations.

Lingua francas and pidgin languages can perhaps be best described in terms of their functions. They are both primarily means of expressing referential function – they are associated with informal but information – oriented contexts. 

NATIONAL AND OFFICIAL LANGUAGE  

A national language is the language of political, cultural and social unit. It is generally developed and used as symbol of national unity. Its function are to identify the nation and unite the people of the nation.

An Official languages, by contrast, is simply a language which may be used for government business. Its function is primarily Unitarian rather than symbolic.

DIALECT

Dialect describes features of grammar and vocabulary, as well as aspects of pronunciation.

Example:

  American dialect: You don’t know what you’re talking about.

               Scottish English: Ye dinnae ken whit yer haverin’ aboot.

               (It has the same meaning as the American dialect but it pronounces different)

 

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