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1. Lecturer: KONG SEANG ENG
Master of Education
វិទ្យាស្ថ
ា ន អាហ្គ
ា
AGA INSTITUTE
Topic: Sociolinguistics
Subject: Second Language Acquisition

2. Content
What is sociolinguistic?
• Pronunciation and word
Categorizing the ways people speak
• Idiolect and sociolect
• Standard, non-standard and codification
• Prestige, Siamization and language loyalty
• Accent, dialect and language planning
• Speech community
Descriptive tools of language variation
• Language variable
• Phonological variation
• Grammatical variation
• Lexical variation
• Discoursal variation
• Linguistics variation
• Social factors that correlate with language
variation
• Geographical and social mobility
• Gender and power
• Age
• Audience
• Identity
• Social network relation

3. 3
Sociolinguistics
What is sociolinguistics?

4. Sociolinguistics
sociolinguistics is the study of language variation and language change.
language variation language change
Variation is a characteristic of
language: there is more than one way
of saying the same thing. Speakers
may vary in pronunciation, word
choice, or morphology and syntax.
Synchronistic linguistics is the study of
a language at a particular time. In
contrast, diachronic linguistics studies
the development of a language over
time. Synchronistic linguistics is often
descriptive, analyzing how the parts of
a language or grammar work together.
For example, analyzing the word order in a sentence in Old English only would be a study in
synchronistic linguistics. If you looked at how word order changed in a sentence from Old English to
Middle English and now to modern English, that would be a diachronic study.

5. ❖Old English (500-1100 AD)
influenced by Latin
❖ Middle English (1100-1500 AD)
influenced by French
❖ Modern English (1500-present)
developed as a
language of its own
was spoken from
around the 5th century
to the 11th century.
was spoken from
around the 12th century
to the late 15th century.
which began in the 16th
century and continues
to the present day.

6. Pronunciation and Words
Old English: Old English had some silent letters. For example, in sēċean, you
will not pronounce c. That means the word is pronounced as ‘seek.’
Modern English: Some letters are not pronounced in Modern English. For
example, K in knight is silent.
The differences
Modern English Old English
You Thou
Your Thy
Yours Thine
Yourself Thyself

7. Categorizing the ways people speak
• Idiolect And Sociolect
• Standard, Non-standard And Codification
• Prestige, Siamization And Language Loyalty
• Accent, Dialect And Language Planning
• Speech Community

8. Idiolect and Sociolect
Idiolect and sociolect
However, people often use
language in ways that they
share with many other people:
most generally we can call
these patterns ‘sociolects’.
Individuals speak in characteristic
ways that might be peculiar to them
in certain circumstances: we call this
pattern their ‘idiolect’.

9. Standard, Non-standard And Codification
Standard
standard language is a variety
of language that is used by
governments, in the media, in
schools and for international
communication.
Non-Standard
Non-standard English is an
informal version of English. It
usually contains slang and
colloquialisms that wouldn't
be used in more formal or
professional settings.
Codification
codification refers to the
methods by which a language
is standardized.
Ex: A language used in school.
Ex: yeah not yes
Ex: I ain’t doing that not I am
not going to do that.
These methods include the
creation and use of
dictionaries, style and usage
guides. traditional grammar
textbooks,

10. Prestige, Stigmatization And Language Loyalty
The factors of prestige or
stigma depended very
much on speaker’s
attitude to their own
variety.
People’s attitude to the
own language often
affects the form of that
language.
Stigmatizing varieties of
language often survive
even under institutional
pressure because groups
have a language loyalty
that preserve the varieties
in the face of the
standardization form.

11. Accent, Dialect and Language planning
Definition
Accent refers to pronunciation. Dialect
refers to a whole group of language
features, including pronunciation, but also
differences in vocabulary, grammar, and
how the language gets used
Example
If you say eether and I say iyther,
that's accent. We use the same word
but pronounce it differently. But if
you say I've got a new dustbin and I
say I've gotten a new garbage can,
that's dialect.
The differences
While a dialect can include differences in pronunciations from the language it
comes from, it also includes differences in vocabulary and grammar. The word
accent, however, describes just a distinct way of pronouncing a language. It
does not include differences in vocabulary and grammar.

12. Language planning
In sociolinguistics, language planning (also known as language engineering)
is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or language
varieties within a speech community.
Example
if a government chooses to raise the status level of a certain language or
change its level of prestige, it can establish a law which requires teachers to
teach only in this language or that textbooks are written using only this
language's script.

13. Speech Community
Speech community
Speech communities are groups that
share values and attitudes about
language use, varieties and practices.
Example
a group of people who share rules for
conducting and interpreting at least
one variety of a language or dialect.
The term can be applied to a
neighborhood, a city, a region or a
nation. We all belong to at least one
speech community.

14. Descriptive tools of language variation
• Language Variable
• Phonological Variation
• Grammatical Variation
• Lexical Variation
• Discoursal Variation
• Linguistics Variation

15. Language Variable
The main tool in sociolinguistics has been the concept of the ‘linguistic
variable’. This is any single feature of language which could be realized by
different choices.
some people do not pronounce the /r/ and some do, and there are also
variations in the ways the /r/ can be pronounced.
This is a linguistic variable which is strongly determined by geographical
location:
non-/r/-pronouncers are likely to be from England, Wales, Australia. Ex: fork,
bird…..
/r/-pronouncer are likely from Scottish Highlands or the west of Ireland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M-_QpKsctU

16. Phonological Variation
Phonological variation
The study of phonological variation is an
important part of sociolinguistics, as it
can provide insights into the way that
language is used and understood by
different groups of people.
Example
including the geographical
location of the speaker, their
social class, their age, or their
ethnicity.
However, in order to be able to describe accents systematically and precisely,
sociolinguists use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

17. Grammatical Variation
A major feature of African–American
vernacular English (AAVE) is the non-
use of the verb ‘to be’ in some
contexts called Zero copula
Ex: he a big man – he is a big man
Ex: you the teacher – you are the
teacher
African–American vernacular has
developed an invariant ‘be’ to signal
habitual states.
Ex: he be busy - he be running all day.
AAVE shares with many other nonstandard grammars
is the requirement for ‘negative concord’: that is, in a
negated sentence, every element must be negated
Ex: Ain’t nobody going to help you, don’t nobody
know me

18. Lexical Variation
• Lexical variation refers to the different words and phrases we use to refer to the same
objects/concepts.
• For examples:
• When making tea, you might stew, mash, brew or draw the tea in boiling water.
• Neb in Yorkshire; a square is to Philadelphians what a block is to a New Yorker; an American
resume is a British CV, which is South African biodata; South African robots are British traffic lights;
American police batons are British truncheons which are Indian lathis and so on
• English person would say Are you finished? and an American would say Are you done? or Are you
through? tons are British truncheons which are Indian lathis and so on.
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19. Discoursal Variation
The study of discourse variation is the
attempt to find patterns of language use
that characterize the spoken language of a
definable group in a specific setting.

20. Discoursal Variation (cont.)
• Alternatively, the different ways that men and women organize narratives or
conduct conversations or arguments have been investigated to show up
apparently different objectives in speech.
• Again, gender studies have led the way here, and insights into how politeness
(and impoliteness) works have been generalized cross-culturally in
comparative studies. The discoursal end of sociolinguistics is considered by
some researchers to belong to pragmatics.
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21. Linguistic Variation
• Lastly, the entire language can be treated as a variable. Bilingual or
multilingual individuals can often move from one language to another
within a single utterance and sometimes even within a sentence. This
is called ‘code-switching’, and the shift into another language can be
used to indicate that a different ‘domain’ of experience is being
signalled.
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22. Social Factors that Correlate with
Language Variation
22
Social Factors
that Correlate
with Language
Variation
Geographical
and Social
Mobility
Social
Network
Relations
Identity
Audience
Age
Gender and
Power

23. Geographical and Social Mobility
23
Dialects within a language are often localized geographically. We can
speak of ‘dialect chains’ where the shift from one dialect to the next is
not sudden between one town or county or state and the next.
The counterpart of hypercorrection is the phenomenon observed when
some people use stigmatized forms of language (as a sort of ‘streetwise’
accent signal): this is known as ‘covert prestige’. Factors such as these
are major influences on language loyalty and language change.

24. Gender and Power
24
The notion of a ‘genderlect’ has been proposed to account for some of
the apparently systematic differences in the ways men and women use
language. These differences can be observed across the whole range of
linguistic variables, from plans of narrative and discourse organization,
to the different accents that men and women have even from the same
area
(see Coates and Cameron, 1986; Cameron, 1995; Crawford, 1995; Mills,
1995; Holmes and Meyerhoff, 2003; Coates, 2004).

25. Age
Older people and younger people use language differently. When
corresponding features of these speakers are compared, such differences can
reveal evidence of changes in the language over time. In other words, the
‘snapshot’ of current usage across the age ranges can suggest historical
language changes. This is the ‘apparent time hypothesis’; it gives us the
ability to observe potential change in progress, which was not thought
possible in the past (see Llamas, 2007b).
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26. Audience
Taking into account the audience and reception of language use
provides insights into the ways speakers behave. Most
conversations have a ‘recipient design’, that is, speakers plan their
utterances with the addressee in mind. This factor often results in
speakers adjusting their accent, style or language towards their
addressees. This phenomenon is called ‘accommodation’ and it
seems that such convergence of accents is an important cause of
language change over time (see Auer, 2007).
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27. Identity
This is an important social factor. Not only do linguistic patterns signal social
and individual identity, but people’s conscious awareness of their personal,
ethnic, geographical, political and family identities is often a factor in their
language use. Allegiance and membership of different social groups can be
expressed by language patterns, and sometimes those groups are even defined
by these patterns, whether this is a language or style or jargon (see Eckert,
2000; Dyer, 2007; Llamas and Watt, 2009; Mullany, 2007).
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28. Social Network Relations
28
It has been recognized that the relative strength of relations
between individuals within a social group (their ‘social network’) is
also important in understanding how linguistic features are
maintained, reinforced and spread. Whether individuals have
strong or weak ties to the group can be used as a measure of their
sociolinguistic influence (see Milroy, 1987; Milroy and Milroy, 1999).

29. Thank you
Thanks for listening to our group
presentation.
Q&A!