Date: April 26, 2018

Name: Damaris Rondón

I.D: 20.738.278
IV TRIMESTER

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

1. What is sociolinguistics?

Sociolinguistics is the study of the relation between language and society—a branch
of both linguistics and sociology. Sociolinguistics is concerned with how language use
interacts with, or is affected by, social factors such as gender, ethnicity, age or social
class, for instance. Sociolinguists are interested in how we speak differently in varying
social contexts, and how we may also use specific functions of language to convey social
meaning or aspects of our identity. Sociolinguistics teaches us about real-life attitudes
and social situations.

2. Why sociolinguistics study this variations?

 The way you talk (pronunciation, word choice, grammar) says something about
your social identity. It’s kind of like your clothes the friends that you hang out with
the job that you are going
 There are strong social beliefs and attitudes associated with certain ways of
speaking.
 There attitudes are social norms, not objective facts about language itself.

3. What is dialect?

Dialect are varieties of languages that characteristic of certain groups of speakers. A

dialect is a form of a language that is spoken in a particular area. A dialect is a regional
or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, and/or
vocabulary. The term dialect is often used to characterize a way of speaking that differs
from the standard variety of the language. A dialect is a variety of a language used by
the members of a group.

4. Mention characteristic of group speakers

In a dialect can be to identify geographically defined groups who could talk of regional
dialect but people also talk alike when they share certain social factors and there we
might talk social dialects or socialites, so people talk different depending of
socioeconomic class and their ethnicity, their gender, their age, or even their sexual
orientation.
Date: April 26, 2018
Name: Damaris Rondón
I.D: 20.738.278
IV TRIMESTER

5. Mention varieties of language within a single speaker

Linguistics repertoire: varieties of language an individual has command of:

 Languages
 Dialects of the same language
 Styles and registers
Styles: language variety specific to a situation/context
 Changes in situational context lead to “style shifting”
 There are no single-style speakers.

Single speaker is an individual you have command of several varieties of language

these might be different languages all together, single speaker is capable of speaking
two or more different languages and capable of using different dialects of the same
language, maybe the dialect of the region in which you grew up and then standard variety
that is spoken more widely in the country and then even within the same dialect there is
this is variation going on variation in terms of style and register.

The language varieties shifts with the situation in which we find ourselves,
changes in situational context whether you talking to your mom or your friends or your
professor or complete stranger asking for directions, you talk a little differently.

6. Myths about dialect

 Myth: a dialect is what someone else speaks.

Reality: everyone who speaks a language speaks a dialect of the language.

 Myth: dialects always have highly noticeable features that set them apart.
 Reality: some dialects receive much more attention than others; however, the
status of dialect is unrelated to public commentary about it.

 Myth: dialects are spoken by socially disfavored groups.

Reality: there are socially favored as well as socially disfavored dialects.

 Myth: dialects reflect failure to speak correctly.

Date: April 26, 2018
Name: Damaris Rondón
I.D: 20.738.278
IV TRIMESTER

Reality: dialects are acquired by adopting the speech features of other speakers,
not by failing to adopt standard language features.

 Myth: dialects have no systematicity-they are random deviations from

standard speech.
Reality: dialects, like all human language systems, are systematic and regular.

 Myth: dialects inherently carry negative social connotations.

Reality: the social value of dialects is derived from the social evaluation of its
speakers.

 Myth: dialects are deviations from the standard, which represents the
correct from of a language.
Reality: the standard is also a dialect, but one that happened to be chosen as the
standard by historical accent.

7. Tell the different ways that dialects can differ

Dialects can differ o features which vary:

 Pronunciation
 Vocabulary
 Grammar
 Conversational practices

8. Give some examples about pronunciation variation

Some examples about pronunciation variation are: The word “god”: /gↄd/, /gαd/, /gæd/
and “buter”: /bʌtə/,/bʌrər/, /bʌʔə/, /bʌɟə/.

9. Grammar variation give some examples

Many linguistics structures have variants:

 Phonology: for example /kar/ vs. /ka:/, tomayto vs. tomahto

 Morphology: “I’m not” vs. I ain’t , prouder vs. more proud
Date: April 26, 2018
Name: Damaris Rondón
I.D: 20.738.278
IV TRIMESTER

 Syntax: “my brother’s car” vs. the car of my brother; “I gave jhon the book vs. I
gave the book to john.

There are many factors that explain variation:

Language internal: factors that have to do with the structures and meaning of language
itself.

 American speakers say “more clever” because cleverer is awkward for them to
produce (phonological explanation).
 We say “I gave the book to the old man at the counter, not “I gave the old man at
the counter the book”, because the recipient is a heavy (i.e. long) syntactic
constituent (syntactic explanation).
 We say “the cost of living”, not “the living’s cost”, because living is not a
prototypical possessor (semantic explanation).

Language external: factors that relate non-linguistic issues.

 Young speakers use “gonna” instead of “going to” more often thanolder speakers
(age as explanation).
 Female speakers hedge statements with tag questions (isn’t, didn’t she…) rather
than leaving them as is more often than male speakers (gender as explanation).
 American speakers say “tomayto”, British say “tomahto” (geography as
explanation).
 British upper-class speakers are more likely than middle class speakers to
produce a trill in very (class as explanation).

10. Who was William Labor? Do it short biographic.

William Labov was born December 4, 1927, is an American linguist, widely regarded
as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as
"an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology"
of sociolinguistics. He is a professor emeritus in the linguistics department of the
University of Pennsylvania, and pursues research in sociolinguistics, language change,
and dialectology. He retired at the end of spring 2014.

He studied at Harvard (1948) and worked as an industrial chemist before turning to

linguistics. Labov was awarded the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and
Date: April 26, 2018
Name: Damaris Rondón
I.D: 20.738.278
IV TRIMESTER

Cognitive Science by the Franklin Institute with the citation "for establishing the cognitive
basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and
for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications