Sociolinguistics

What is Sociolinguistics?
-refers to “the study of language in relation to society…” (Hudson, 1996).
-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.

Contrast between Sociolinguistics and Sociology of Language

Sociology of
Sociolinguistics
Language

“society on language” “language effects on society”

Characteristics of Sociolinguistics
1. A branch of linguistics
2. A science, concerned with the relationship between language and society.
3. It considers that language is a social and a cultural phenomenon
4. It studies language in its social context, in real life situations by empirical investigation.
5. It is related to methodology and contents of social sciences.

Field of Sociolinguistics

Language
Varieties of Language in
Maintenance
Language Contact
and Shift

Language Language
Change Planning
1. Varieties of Language

Regional (geographical) dialects

-variety of language spoken by people living in an area.
e.g. The north American people use sentence “My hair needs combing” but it becomes
“My hair needs to be combed” in the mid-north, and “My hair needs combed” in the
south.
Social dialect (sociolects)
-forms of a language that characterize the speech of different social classes
e.g. there are quite differences in Indian languages between the speech of Brahimns and
non-Brahimns castes. The Brahimn word to say ‘milk’ is haalu, while the non-brahimn
says aalu.
Registers (functional varieties)
-a term widely used in sociolinguistics to refer to “varieties according to use”
Use to describe specific vocabulary associated with different occupational group.
e.g. language of doctors, engineers, journals, legalese, etc.

2. Language in Contact

•A language which has no native speakers. It develops as a means of

communication between people who do not have a common language.
Pidgin •e.g. pidgin is Juba Arabic spoken in southern Sudan.

•Creole as a pidgin which has acquired native speakers

•e.g. Hawaiian creole, Jamaican creole, Guyana creole, etc. are all
Creole English-based

3. Language Maintenance and Shift

-Language shift happens when the language of the wider society (majority) displaces
the minority mother tongue language over time in migrant communities or in
communities under military occupation.

•change from one language or dialect to another – sentences or utterances in

Code one language
switching

•inside a sentence – elements of one language incorporated in another – words,

phrases, particles
Code mixing
 How to Maintain a Minority Language?
1. If families from a minority group live near each other and see each other frequently,
their interaction will help to maintain the language.
2. For emigrate individuals from a minority group, the degree and frequency of contact
with the homeland can contribute to language maintenance.
3. Intermarriage within the same minority group is helpful to maintain the native language
4. Institutional support from domains such as education, law, administration.

Interaction

Contact
with Intermarriage
homeland

Institutiona
l support

4. Language Change

-According to Holmes (2001: 195), the cause behind the language change is the
variation of use in the areas of pronunciation and vocabulary.
-Language change is variation over time in a language’s phonological, morphological,
semantic, syntactic, and other features.

5. Language Planning

-“Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behavior of others with
respect to the acquisition, structure, and functional allocation of their language codes”
(Cooper, 1989, p. 45).

Codification- standardizing its structural or linguistic features

Elaboration- extending its functions for use in new domains
Securing its acceptance- the status of the new variety is important, and so people’s
attitudes to the variety being developed must be considered

Conclusion
• Basically, sociolinguistics deals with language-society relationships and its study is
based on empirical analysis from real life social context.
• Sociolinguistics is different with sociology of language. Sociolinguistics focuses on
society on language while sociology of language focuses on language effects on society.
• Field of sociolinguistics studies consists of varieties of language, language in contact,
language maintenance and language shift, language change, language planning, and etc.