II.

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Sociolinguistics is concerned with language in social and cultural context, especially how people
with different social identities (e.g. gender, age, race, ethnicity, class) speak and how their speech
changes in different situations. Some of the issues addressed are how features of dialects (ways of
pronouncing words, choice of words, patterns of words) cluster together to form personal styles of
speech; why people from different communities or cultures can misunderstand what is meant, said
and done based on the different ways they use language. Sociolinguistics encompasses a range of
methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative. For example, a sociolinguist might determine
through study of social attitudes that a particular vernacular would not be considered appropriate
language use in a business or professional setting.

Sociolinguistics includes anthropological linguistics, dialectology, discourse analysis, ethnography

of speaking, language contact studies, the social psychology of language, the sociology of language,
etc.

Discourse analysis focuses on language use above the sentence (in text) and beyond the
sentence (in context). Some of the issues addressed are the following: how texts build cohesion (the
word and meaning relationships that hold a text together) and coherence (the overall unity, topic,
and message); how texts that tell a story (a narrative) differ from those that describe something,
provide an explanation or list a set of instructions.

Sociolinguistic competence enables speakers to distinguish among possibilities such as the

following. To get someone's attention in English, each of the utterances

1. 'Hey!',
2. 'Excuse me!', and
3. 'Sir!' or 'Ma'am!'

is grammatical and a fully meaningful contribution to the discourse of the moment, but only one of
them may satisfy societal expectations and the speaker's preferred presentation of self.

Speech community is a concept in sociolinguistics that describes a distinct group of people who
use language in a unique and mutually accepted way among themselves.

Prescribing Telling people how to use their own language

Describing DESCRIBE HOW people use language

Idiolect Unique characteristics of a language that an individual speaker possesses

STANDARDIZATION is the process of development of a standard for written and/or oral

language. It occurs in a specific manner that depends on the community and the social, historical
and geographic aspects involved.

Language codified formal matters of CODIFICATION (grammars) and ELABORATION

(literature, education)

Spatial vs Temporal dimension

code-switching when people alternate between two languages or language varieties in a single
conversation
lexical gap when a language doesn't have a word for a particular concept, a word from another
language is adopted

1. Match the terms on the left to their meanings on the right:

Isogloss - imaginary dialect boundary

Jargon - words or acts not to be used in polite society
Slang - phrase / word that replace taboo words or unpleasant subjects
Taboo - words used in casual speech, by age group spread in close social groups
Euphemism - special words used by members of a profession or group

2. Match the terms on the left to their meanings on the right:

VERNACULAR - word used from a prior/ancient time

KOINE - name for a newly coined term
LINGUA FRANCA - common language or trade language used to make communication
possible between people who do not share a native language
LOANWORD - The native language or dialect of a specific population,
distinguished from a literary, national or standard language
ARCHAISM - the common dialect
NEOLOGISM - words borrowed from another language
ETYMOLOGY - study of the history of words

3. Circle the correct answer:

a. Sociolinguistics is most appropriately defined as which of these?
-The scientific study of language usage
-The study of animal vocalizations
-The study of human behaviour
-The scientific study of vocal sounds

b. The linguistic term "code-switching" refers to which of the following?

-Using a secret or exclusive language in certain circumstances
-The use of jargon within a language
-A speaker's use of more than one language, dialect or register in an utterance or interaction
-A type of cryptology

c. A person who speaks two languages fluently is most properly referred to by which of these
terms?
-Magnalingual
-Multilingual
-Extralingual
-Bilingual
d. To what does the term "lingua franca" refer?
-Speaking French
-A shared language primarily used for business, education or political reasons.
-Speaking bluntly or directly
-A dialect spoken in the Franconian region of Germany

e. New creations of lexical items are known as?

-Neologisms
-Slang
-Archaisms
-None of these

LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET

Language on the internet: speech or writing?

Members of the internet speech community, by being in habitual online contact with one another
have developed particular sociolinguistic internet norms as it can be seen in chat rooms and other
web based platforms. This virtual speech community is not restricted to the geographic place.
Online users of these speech communities that used to be isolated physically, linguistically and
socially, have been attempting to accommodate toward their new interlocutors by means of
convergence. Every online user is trying to sound more like the people he is communicating with by
using the internet Lingua Franca. From a stylistic perspective, the internet has had enhanced the
creativity in language. When writing online, numerous ways are available to create many fonts,
colors, themes. These constraints motivate the internet users to find ways to overcome them by
creating new writing styles. Pidgin languages in the past evolved due to the convergence of
cultures, trade, wars and colonization. Today, the evolution of the internet led to a similar process
and a pidgin language has been formed. Academics expect the creolization of the internet language.
OMG
CYA
BTW
;-)
:-*
Pidgin languages in the past evolved due to the convergence of cultures, trade, wars and
colonization. Today, the evolution of the internet led to a similar process and a pidgin language has
been formed. Academics expect the creolization of the internet language.
3. Match the terms on the left to their meanings on the right:

world wide web - a connection between the files that allows data to be transferred from one
file to the other
link - a representation of a facial expression such as a smile or frown, formed by
various combinations of keyboard characters
website - a shortened form of a word or phrase
web browser - an abbreviation used as a word and formed from the initial components in a
phrase or a word
acronym - a system for finding information on the Internet through the use of linked
documents. All the servers linked together
abbreviation - virtual location on WWW, containing several subject or company related
webpages and data files accessible through a browser
emoticon - a computer program used to navigate the world wide web