Sociolinguitic

2. Sapir (1929)
Human beings do not live in the society alone.
Language of the society predispose certain choices
of interpretation about how we view the world.
Whorf (1941)
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our
native languages. We categorize objects in the
scheme laid by the language and if we do not
subscribe to these classification we cannot talk or
communicative

3. The Whorfian Hypothesis revolves around
the idea that language has power and can
control how you see the world. Language is
guide you to your reality, structuring your
thoughts. It provides the framework through
which you make sense of the world

5. Kinship terms are words used in a speech
community to identify relationship between
individuals in a family (or a kinship unit). This is
also called kinship terminology.
A classification of persons related through
kinship in a particular language or culture is
called a kinship system

6. Hudson (1996, pp 85-6)
Society variety Seminole Indians of Florida, Oklahoma and
Trobi and Islander of the Pacific
Relationship Equivalent
father’s father’s sister’s son’s son
father’s father’s mother’s son’s son
father’s father’s brother’s son
father’s brother
father
(a) Sister = mother
(c) mother’s son = brother
(b) father’s brother = father
(c) father’s son = brother
(b) father’s brother = father

9. Color terminology has also been used to
explore the relationships between different
languages and cultures.
Berlin and Kay (1969) have tried to answer
questions such as these, drawing a data from
a wide variety of languages. According to
Berlin and Kay, an analysis of the color terms
found in a wide variety of languages reveals
certain very interesting patterns.

11. PROTOTYPES THEORY
Rosch (1976) has proposed an alternative to
the view that concepts are composed from sets
of features which necessarily and sufficiently
define instances of a concept.
Hudson ( 1996 ) prototype theory may even be
applied to the social situations in which speech
occurs

12. TABOO
people do not talk about those things
EUPHEMISMS
avoid mentioning certain matters
directly

13. According to Wardhaugh (2000, p.239),
taboo is the prohibition or avoidance in
any society of behavior believed to be
harmful to its members in that it would
cause them anxiety, embarrassment, or
shame.

14. Tabooed Subjects : Sex, death,
excretion , bodily function, religious
matters and politics
Tabooed Objects : Your mother in
law, certain game animals, and the
use of your left hand ( sinister )

15. EUPHEMISMS
Euphemistic words and expressions: allow
us to talk about unpleasant things or
neutralize the unpleasantness, e.g. Subject
of death and dying, criminality or
unemployment.
Give labels to unpleasant tasks / jobs to
make them sound less repulsive, more
attractive.

16. Conclusions
 Language use is sensitive to social
changes, in that changes in society and
culture will appear in language use.
Each social group differs from every other
in the way they are constrained in their
language use by culture, but no social group
uses language quite uninhibitedly.