Sociolinguistics

'Sociolinguistics is the field that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live'

We use language to come to terms with the world around us (i.e. 3rd person reality) -->

Classifying, Organizing, Referring, Influencing

We use language to interact with others (i.e. 2nd person) -->

establishing social relations, cooperation, belonging to a group

refers to the phonological and prosodic (=pronounciation) aspects of a linguistic variaty

US linguist, the 'father' of sociolinguistics

Performance

US linguist, the 'father' of Universal Grammar

Innateness

mutually unintelligible

>> two 'languages'

mutually intelligible

mutually intelligible

Variation according to region

Variation according to ethnology

Variation according to social background

Lexical variation according to occupation

Particular way of speaking selected for and adopted to a particular speech situation

colloquial language to show certain group identity

the collective of an individuals ways of speaking

• setting
• perticipants
• ends
• act sequence
• key
• instumentalities
• norm
• genre

time and place, physical

age, sex, social status, relationships

purpose of event itself, goals of participants

or how speech acts are organized, what topics are addressed

tone, manner, mood, emtions, atmosphere

or linguistic code; language, dialect, variety and channel (speech or writing)

standard socio-cultual rules of interaction and interpretaion

type of event (e.g. lecture, poem, letter)

the spread of English

English --> the 'new world'

America/ united states (1607/1620)

Australia (1770)

New Zealand (a790)

British settlers in South Africa (1820)

English --> Asia and Africa

• West Africa: Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon
• East Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe
• South Asia: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan

Global English:

Japan, China, Russia, Brazil, The Netherland, Austria etc...

• Inner Circle
  ‘norm-providing’

• Outer Circle
  ‘norm-developing’

• Expanding Circle
  ‘norm-dependent’

• most useful and influential model of how we can categorize existing Englishes
•  a reference point for many scholars and practitioners
•  based on history and geography --> limitations

o term Inner Circle implies that speakers in ENL countries are central  but: they should not be seen as superior!

o based on geography and history, not on speakers’ use of English

• hence: difficulty of using model to define speakers in terms of their proficiency [~ mastery, competence]
• does not account for the linguistic diversity within and between countries of a particular circle
•  grey areas betw. Inner & Outer Circle and between Outer & Expanding Circle
•  does not fully account for bi/multilingual speakers

since 1960s: ‘modern / urban dialectology’:

•  focus on social (& regional) variation
•  study of diverse social groups
•  elicitation of info & use of stats
•  creation of ling atlases & corpora

the kind of speech a person produces (withan in-group) when s/he is not paying attention to speech (~ordinary speech, informal, relaxed)
cf. ‘casual style’ (cf. Yule)

a term used to describe a native speaker of two languages or a country with two official languages, in contrast to monolingual

being capable of speaking two dialects

between languages

between dialects (or accents)

is a language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but is a contact language. That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish to communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will enable them to do so ... In contrast to a pidgin

is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers.

in language learning (Myers-Scotton 2002: 34)

“The more people learn a language, the more useful it becomes, and the more useful it is, the more people want to learn it.”

a speaker becomes more different to the other one; emphasize social distance between the speakers

i.e. Hi Bob (and the other person says) Good morning Mr. Brown

adopting a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance by using forms that are similar to those used by the other person being taked to

i.e. Oh look at those kids (and the other person says)Oh, those kids and not children

• both people converge to one another
• they become closer in whatever they are talking about.

One person converges and the other rather divergences, uses different formulation.

a stable situation where different varieties of a nlanguage are used in different situation

1. social background
2. sub-culture
3. ethnicity

• a speaker's individual way of speaking
• a speaker's collective of dialects.